In the end, I just sit down next to him, my hand in his hair, wondering what Mom and Dad would say if they could see us now.
16
Angelo
“I don’t like the look of that car,” Felice comments, glancing in the rearview.
“Which one?” Levi turns, his hand over the back of the seat, eyes narrowed. “The Chevy?”
Felice nods. I squeeze my fist. This could turn into a fight.
It started when we drove down to Boston to arrange the King Kong shipment with Giraldo. We came down and loaded twenty crates onto the truck that Giuseppe’s now driving about half a mile ahead of us. Everything went smoothly, but Felice has been making comments for an hour now about he has a bad feeling. Felice’s instincts are killer-sharp. I trust them.
When I look at the Chevy, I see what he means. The men behind the wheel are wearing leather jackets and have that Albanian look I’ve come to be familiar with. As an experiment, I change lanes and make as if I’m going to take the off ramp. Sure enough, they do the same. I change lanes again and they follow.
“Only an idiot would do something on the highway,” Levi says.
I don’t like that waver in his voice at all. He’s not the Levi I know, the one who’s up for violence at the drop of a hat if it comes to it. He doesn’t sound scared, exactly, but he doesn’t sound ready, either. He’s been so fucking jittery lately. He lights a cigarette. I crack the window.
“We won’t be on the highway forever,” Felice says. “Two in the front, but I can’t see in the back. Could be as many as five.”
I nod. “What do you think?”
Felice rubs his hands together like a professional assessing a problem. “We wanna save the shipment right? And we’re all tooled up. If we’re up for a fight, I say we escort the truck as far as the city, and then lead them on a wild goose chase so they don’t know where we’ve stashed it. My hunch is they’ll pounce when they get the chance, unless this is just about the shipment. But we’ve gotta be ready.”
“Could lead them to the armory,” I muse. “They come in, thinking it’s just an ice-cream shop …”
“And there we are with rifles and Kevlar vests,” Felice finishes. “Yeah, that’ll work.”
“Okay. Call Giuseppe.”
As Felice makes the call, I glance in the rearview, first at the Chevy and then at my second. Levi has already smoked his cigarette. He tosses it out of the window and lights another one.
“You good?” I ask.
He grins, same old Levi. I wonder if I’m reading too much into him. “Sempre, Angelo. You don’t have to worry about me.”
I nod and turn back to the road. The rest of the drive is oddly peaceful, considering that we’re most likely going to be killing or killed soon. I make plans for the Kong shipment: outlining distribution responsibilities in my mind. And then my mind goes to Dani and I feel the urge to look at that photo she sent me again. It’s good that it’s digital, because if it was a Polaroid it would already be worn and faded from my fingers brushing over it.
We pull into the city and, as he and Felice arranged, Giuseppe takes a left when we take a right. We watch the rearview and see that the Chevy is following us, not the truck, and so we head toward the ice-cream shop that doubles as our armory.
I’m thinking what gun I’m going to use—something high-magazine and with a decent rate of fire—when the Jeep comes barreling out of the alleyway and smashes into the car.
There’s smoke and a beep-beep noise that might be a phone or an alarm; I’m not sure. My head is pounding and, through blood-smeared eyes, I watch as an Albanian casually walks toward my side of the car.
He has a gun in one hand and a pair of handcuffs in the other.
I grab for my gun but the seat belt is cutting into me at an awkward angle. The Albanian sees what I’m doing and leaps forward, putting the barrel of the gun to the glass and shaking his head. Up this close, I see that I’ve been quick to judge that he’s an Albanian. He is actually just a nondescript-looking man, around thirty, with a businessman’s haircut and dark eyes. He could be anybody riding the subway to work Monday morning.
“This motherfucker thinks I’m going to give myself up.”
“He wouldn’t have brought those cuffs if they were going to kill you, boss,” Felice wheezes from beside me.
I glance to his side of the car, the one that was hit, and see that his entire lower half is a patchwork of blood. While he grins at me—as though to let me know he’s okay—it’s obviously causing him pain. Levi is unconscious in the back, lying on his side.
Tap-tap. The man bangs the glass with his pistol, demanding my attention.
“Get out,” he says, voice dim through the ringing in my ears.
The other men have pulled up now: four in total, climbing from the Chevy. We’re surrounded. We’re screwed.
“My men are not to be harmed,” I tell him as the other men all pull their pistols, aiming them casually at the car. I can hear a trickling noise that I hope isn’t oil. I wonder if this car’s about to explode. “That’s my condition.”
“Boss!” Felice protests. “I can’t let you do this—”
In Italian, I say, “Quiet, brother. This is the only way.”
The man with the cuffs turns to the others, says something, and they all shrug. I assess my body. There’s a numb pain draped over me, but other than that, I’m okay. Felice took the brunt of the impact.
He reaches for the door and pulls it open. Cold night air stings at me. He leans into the car and takes my gun and, all I can do is sit here, thinking about how Father is going to be fucked now. They’ll have his son, the best leverage they could ever dream of.
Then Felice whispers quickly in Italian, “He has a blade in his boot, boss. Left foot.”
I nod shortly and climb from the car, but—oh, silly fucking me—I’m so rocked from the crash that my legs turn to Jell-O beneath me and I stumble. The men all step back, laughing like I’m here for their personal entertainment.
What I do next hurts my pride, even if I know it’s just for show. I start begging to the man in the cuffs, pawing at his boots.
“Please,” I moan. “Don’t do this. I’ve got money!”
“Angelo fucking De Maggio,” one of the men chuckles. “Jesus. And this is the man we’re supposed to be scared of—Jesus. Let him keep going, Mikey. Begging for his life suits the prick.”
“Don’t use my name!” the man with the cuffs, Mikey, snaps. “What the hell is the matter with—”
As I’ve been faux-begging for my life, I’ve been moving my hands over his boot. Now I flip up his jeans and grab the blade and spring to my feet all in one fluid motion. They all seem shocked for half a second, caught off-guard at how quickly I can move after the crash. And that half a second is all I need to put Mikey between me and the others and place his own knife against his throat.
“Gun, Mikey,” I growl in his ear. “Give me the gun.”
When he doesn’t move, I reach around with my free hand and ditch the knife and grab the gun. I put it against the side of his head, watching the men carefully. They’ve all got their pistols raised.