Tony Saliverri never looked upset. He never looked confused or hesitant. He always looked determined, as if he was already formulating a way to turn any situation to his advantage. It was unsettling to sit with him for long periods of time. His eyes were impenetrable, making it impossible to figure out what he was thinking. It was quite an advantage to have, considering how many people’s lives he could end, and has ended with but a word.
Saliverri’s Lieutenant, Mike, had been sitting with him for five minutes and only a thirty-second discussion had taken place. Mike had told Saliverri about the drug deal being hit, all five of the men getting killed (as well as all of Sullivan’s guys) and both the money and drugs missing. Neither one of them had said a word since.
Saliverri opened his mahogany cigar box, pulled out a Cuban and lit it with his two hundred dollar silver and gold lighter. It was one of those lighters that released a torch flame that could withstand forty mile-an-hour winds, be dropped from a helicopter in Vietnam and get hit with a laser and still light a cigar. It wasn’t one of the pussy lighters that gave off an itty-bitty trickle of weak light and mild heat. Mike knew all about it because of the salesman he bought it from. Mrs. Saliverri asked Mike to get her husband something he would like. As long as it was expensive, Mike knew Tony would love it. This was one of the many reasons that Mike was invaluable to Tony. Everyone knew it, but Mike had always been insecure in his place as personal counsel.
Saliverri spun the cigar in circles, puffing as the end burned bright red, wafting fire and smoke into the air between the two men. The smoke curled up and out in a thick gray roll. Mike adjusted in his seat. Saliverri stared without blinking at his lieutenant.
The questions were coming any second. Mike knew all about getting questioned by Tony. He likened the event to running the gauntlet. Saliverri formulated every question he would ask, every response and pause in speaking before ever saying a word. He was prepared for anything at any time before a conversation took place.
Both these men were very good at bullshitting and detecting bullshit, but Mike couldn’t just sit there and repeat ‘I don’t know, I don’t know,’ as he didn’t have the answers that Tony wanted. That wouldn’t be good for Mike’s health. Saliverri wanted solutions to problems. He wouldn’t wait long for them either. Mike had to word his ‘I don’t knows’ very carefully.
“Do we know who did it?” Saliverri asked.
“The shooters were pros, four to six highly trained men, but they aren’t the main problem. The deal got leaked by somebody.”
“Was the leak one of Sullivan’s guys, or one of ours?”
“That’s what I need to find out. I need to know who knew about it from our end. I’m going to talk to Sullivan tomorrow and figure out what he thinks about it. While I’m at it, I’ll see if he’s the one who set the whole thing up. If he didn’t, he’ll be entertaining the possibility that you were responsible for the hit and be cautious around me. If he did do it, he’ll be overly friendly, trying to calm the tension. It’s unlikely that he had anything to do with it, but I want to cover all ends.
“I knew about the deal,” Saliverri said, “You knew about it, Sam and Lono knew, the rest are dead. It had to be from Sullivan’s side. Stupid, careless bastard,” Saliverri puffed on his cigar, the red glow gave his already intimidating, stern face a demonic appearance. “If it wasn’t Sullivan, who could fund a hit like this? Good gunmen aren’t that easy to come by.”
“First of all, the gunmen weren’t good, they were superb; very clean, very fast. It was a well-organized, simultaneous strike on two well-armed teams. All of our guys were wiped out with blades. That shit’s not easy to pull off. I haven’t seen anything like that since I was a button-man.
“As far as the initial funding goes,” Mike continued, “It was most likely an independent group that already has access to the equipment needed to pull it off. No need to hire more guns, they just repay themselves with the cash and the merchandise. A cut goes to the informant.
“When I find the leak,” Mike made sure to stress the when, “I’ll be able to track down the gunners and whoever set it up, if anyone else was involved.”
Mike stopped talking, somewhat afraid that he had talked too long. Even though everything Mike said was true, he was also pretty sure that Tony interpreted the whole thing as ‘Hey! I don’t know what the fuck is going on, I need to be shot in the face, and fast, don’t let me waste any more of your important time, Mr. Saliverri.’ Mike pushed the unlikely scenario from his mind, but he still wanted to hide from Tony’s damned diamond solid stare.
“How is Sullivan going to find out who the leak was?” Saliverri asked. “I’m not going to count on that dumb fuck being able to clean up this mess. Once we know who the leak is, Mike, I want you to handle it.”
“Of course, I’m not going to hand this over to him," Mike said. "But we have to be as diplomatic as possible about it. We can’t be stepping over his guys to get this figured out. I don’t think he had anything to do with the deal being knocked off, so if we start stepping on his toes, we lose him as reliable business asset.
“The leak is on his side,” Mike, again, stressing the words that were important for Tony to hear. “So, that will give us some leverage and compensation, which we will demand,” This is where Mike really shined: business. He liked when he could steer the conversation to his strong points.
“Mike…we’ve been hit before, but never this bad. I can’t let whoever’s responsible get away. It’ll be bad for business all around. If we can’t protect the deal, our men, the dealer’s men, the merchandise, the money, we’ll never get anyone to sell to us. I’m putting Nick at your disposal…”
“Wait, Tony, I don’t need him…”
“ …And you’re going to use him, Mike. He gets results fast and I need them fast. Don’t argue, I know how you feel about him, but we need him on this. I can’t let this dangle for too long. The drugs will be sold, the money will be gone and the bastards who did this will be in fucking Barbados. Just do it, Mike. Find my drugs.”
“I will…but Nick brings serious heat with him, you know? That’s all I’m saying. He’s psychotic…dangerous having him around.”
“It’s got to be done. Just do it,” Tony was done talking about this, so Mike resigned his argument.
“Alright, Tony, it’s done. I’ll give him a call and tell him to get here by tomorrow.”
Saliverri finished up his cigar, smothering it in his gold trimmed alabaster ashtray. He dismissed Mike to get started. Waiting until Mike was completely out of the room, Saliverri slouched in his lambskin chair, leaned on his oak desk and buried his head in his hands. Exhaustion swept over him. A million and half dollars was not something to easily dismiss as loss. Losing the drugs was worse. He stood to make four million on that.
It was expensive and troublesome to have Nick around, but Saliverri couldn’t afford to have this drag on. The business would suffer for the next few weeks for sure; it would become expensive very quickly. Saliverri might even have to get more drugs from another group. This would all have to be taken care of in a timely manner if he wanted to maintain the level of luxury that he’d become accustomed to. Nick was worth the risk.
* * * * *
Today was a good day for Sgt. Malloy. Not one fight had broken out, no one had spit on him yet and he hardly had to deal with any morons so far. The weather was mild in the midst of this weeklong heat wave and he’d be off work in two hours. Working the front desk at the thirteenth precinct was not what he had in mind to do for his entire career, but after eight years, he’d settled nicely into the role.
He watched the time tick away on the clock, looking forward to the hot bath he’d have with his doll of a wife when he got home. Tonight was TV night, the only night he got to spend with his wife. They watched her favorite programs and actually got to relax for a change.
He was torn from his tranquil daydream when a young detective approached the desk.
“Excuse me, Sergeant, I’m Detective Tucker. I’m working on a case that involves someone you’re holding here,” the detective told him. “I was wondering if I could question him.”
“What’s the perp’s name?” The sergeant asked.
“James Ellis.”
Sgt. Malloy began typing on the computer that was hidden just below the counter of the desk. He slid over a clipboard to the detective.
“Alright, Detective, I’m going to need you to sign here…wait a sec…hmm.”
“What is it?”
“Well, we did have him. I can’t verify if he’s still here or not.”
“Can’t verify? Does that mean you’re not supposed to verify, his verification isn’t on the computer, or you don’t know if he’s here?”
“What precinct you say you were from, Detective?”
“I didn’t, but I’m from the two-two.”
“Sorry, Detective, but I can’t say.”
“So he is here.”
Sgt. Malloy didn’t say anything. He crossed his arms.
“Look Sergeant, I’m sorry,” Tucker said, “I need to talk to this guy. I’m working on a nine-person homicide in the middle of a drug deal with missing money and missing drugs. This guy knows something I need to know. I just need to talk to him for five minutes.”
“Detective, I can’t even tell you where he is. This guy’s got Feds on him. If you want to talk to the guy so badly, you’ll have to go through them.”
“C’mon Sergeant, that’ll take me weeks. I gotta break this case before those drugs hit the street. This could get a whole lot worse. I just need five minutes. Tell you what, just give me the name of the detective in charge, that’s all I’m askin’. If he says to go to hell, I’ll go to hell, but I can’t let this thing go, Sergeant. A lot more people could get hurt.”
Sgt. Malloy uncrossed his arms and stared at his computer screen. It sounded pretty bad; nine people dead, missing drugs. He knew he shouldn’t do it, but the cop looked desperate. This did seem pretty important…but maybe that’s why the Feds wanted him. Then again, Sgt. Malloy hated Feds.
Sgt. Malloy began typing on his keyboard.
“Listen, I’m not supposed to be telling you this, but the Feds are going to come and transfer him in a few hours. Detective George, he’s in charge. He’s questioning him. Trying to get as much information out of him as he can before he’s handed over. I’ll let you in to talk to George, but that’s as much as I can do.”
“He’s being questioned right now?”
“Yeah, I’m going to need you sign here, Detective Tucker. I’ll have to get authorization from your precinct. And you say you’re from the two-two, right? …Detective?”
* * * * *
Jim sat in the interrogation room waiting for Det. George to return. George got called away for some reason and that left Jim alone for the first time in some days. He was either in a holding cell with a bunch of weird, drunk, crackhead crazies or being questioned about his ties to Oliver Sullivan’s organization. He had to go into the witness protection program now. He was worthless as James Ellis; he had to give up big deals to avoid prosecution. The feds were supposed transfer him to one of their facilities by the end of the night.
He’d given up most of what he had to Det. George, so he wasn’t quite sure why the FBI still wanted him. They could just talk to the cops.
He looked at himself in the two-way mirror, wondering if anyone was watching him. It was really annoying being in the room with that mirror. He suddenly had an itch on his face, he wanted to fix his hair and noticed his ears were actually a little different from one-another. He didn’t really want to do anything in front of the stupid mirror in case someone was looking at him. He knew it was dumb, but he just sat there looking at himself, only moving his thumbs, drumming them on the table in front of him. He wasn’t enjoying his time alone at all.
The door cracked open and another detective slid through the door. He was young for a detective, Jim thought. He was tall and had a muscular build, an intense looking guy. He had short, light colored, disheveled hair and cold blue, eyes that sat above heavy bags. He looked like his job had worn years into his otherwise youthful appearance.
“Hello Jim, I’m Detective Tucker,” He said as he took a seat across the table from Jim.
“How many of you assholes are gonna question me?”
“Well, I’m going to be the last before the Feds start grilling you. But I’m not going to be that hard on you if I don’t have to.”
“So kind of you.”
An ashtray was already on the table in front of them, so Tucker pulled a pack of smokes out of his jacket. He lit one up and took a long drag off it, like he hadn’t had a cigarette in a long, long time. When he exhaled, he blew the smoke straight up and closed his eyes, enjoying the calmness that swept through his blood. He looked back to Jim, who although looked bored, was quite interested in this strange cop. Jim was eyeballing the cigarettes. It was a long time since Jim had one, as well. It seemed that not one damn cop in the entire building smoked.
Taking the hint, Tucker pulled out another cigarette and handed it over to Jim. Jim leaned to the flame that Tucker lit for him. Jim too breathed in a long drag.
“Listen Jim, I know your sick of talking, and especially to cops, but unfortunately for me time is of the essence here, I’m not allowed to talk to you for too long. So bear with me.”
“Okay…what the fuck you want?”
“I need to know everything you knew about the drug deal between your boss and Tony Saliverri.”
Jim rolled his eyes and leaned on the table, “Why don’t you get the report from Curious George. I already told that prick everything about it.”
Tucker squinted. His cold eyes almost bore a hole into Jim’s. Jim couldn’t help but look away.
“Look, man, I swear to God. Everything I know, I already told the cops,” Jim said after Tucker’s intense scrutiny ended.
“Detective George said you didn’t tell him a God damn thing about the deal. So either you’re lying, or he’s lying. My money’s on you.”
“You guys need to get your shit straight, that guy took my statement, recorded it, everything,” Jim added a bit of aggressiveness to the statement. It made Tucker sit back in his chair to take another drag. Both men finished their cigarettes and snubbed them out.
“Ok, say I believe you, sometimes cops don’t like cops from other precincts…who else did you tell? Outside of this police department, I mean.”
“Ah, you’re from another precinct, maybe that explains why you’re not such an asshole…and you smoke. Can I have another cigarette?”
Tucker pulled out another two cigarettes, lit them both then handed one to Jim.
“Yeah…answer the fucking question,” Tucker said with more force than his usual laid back, colloquial tone.
“Nobody, Jesus…I take back what I said about you being an asshole.
“Nobody at all?”
“For God’s sake, NO! No one.”
Detective Tucker had an earpiece with a wire that ran down behind his Jacket. Jim only noticed it after Tucker put one of his fingers up to it and held it in place. He held up his finger in a ‘shushing’ signal then stood up. Jim saw that the earpiece ran to a scanner that Tucker had attached to his belt.
“You’re sure you’re not forgetting anyone?”
“I didn’t talk to anyone else about the fucking deal, no one that didn’t already know.”
“Okay…okay,” Tucker listened carefully to the scanner for a second then his brow furrowed and his lips tightened, “…goddammit, hold on a second, Jim, I’ll be right back.”
Tucker’s cigarette was still burning in the ashtray when he slid back out the door. Jim kept smoking, but relaxed in his chair this time. Being alone this time was better. Tucker was an intense guy, kind of scary, even.
Nick slid through the door trying to hide what was behind it from Jim’s point of view. He didn’t want to scare him yet. This seemed to be the quickest way to get information out of him. He wouldn’t cooperate as quickly at gunpoint.
A couple of beat cops couldn’t get the dispatcher to respond at the precinct and were heading back to check in. According to where they said they were located on the scanner, it gave Nick about thirty seconds to get to the front door. He managed to lock and block all the other ways in.
He stepped over the bodies of detectives he left lying on the floor. The separate pools of blood had spread and combined into a large red lake that covered the linoleum. Nick had trouble keeping his footing as he leapt down the front staircase. The two beat cops were already inside, standing in the front hall in front of the Sergeant Malloy’s body. Nick had hidden the body behind the desk, but blood was all over the walls from other cops he’d killed in the front hall. Unfortunately, all of the recently arrested decided to hoop and holler for freedom so he had to shoot them too. After he’d swept through the entire building, he had to come back and hide their bodies as well. It probably bought only a second, maybe two, from someone that came in from the street, but it might have been all that Nick needed.
The cops must have just discovered the body, because they hadn’t drawn their guns yet; lucky for Nick. He had already drawn.
The police officers both reached for their sidearms. Two silent bullets were placed in the head of each officer. Their bodies crumpled on top of one another in a pile. Three more units were on patrol. Two were tied up in domestic disputes. Nick was worried about the other one.
It was the second unit that had come back to see what was wrong with dispatch. The first came back when Nick was moving bodies. No one had gotten off a shot, sounded an alarm or called to an outside line for help. Timing was everything. Some green shootists still hadn’t figured that out. It was a bad idea to start blowing people’s heads off while anyone in the room was on the phone. Wait till the phone hangs up and then start shooting. In case anyone gets a shot off, no one on the other end can hear it and no one in the room can dial fast enough to tell anyone what’s going on. Even with systematic strategy, it was pretty tough to pull off in a precinct house, but…it was all about timing.
Nick pulled the two fresh bodies behind the front desk with all the others. He was getting tired of pulling bodies around. And this time, he got blood on his shirt cuffs. Cursing, he picked up the phone at the desk. When he began dialing Mike, a phone behind him rang for every button he pushed. These damn internal phone systems, Nick thought. It took him a second to figure out how to get an outside line then he dialed again.
“Mike…yeah, it’s Nick, I found the guy. Uh-huh…He got arrested on a cocaine charge a week ago…Apparently he’s been feeding the cops information about Sullivan’s organization to avoid prosecution. Thing is, he says he only told this one cop and that’s it. Before I ever walked into the room with this Jim guy, I talked to Detective…Uh… Timothy George, he said that Jim never told him a fucking thing about the deal.
“Well, yeah…I think George was crooked, so we need to find out who he was talking to, probably someone local…No, I can’t… Because I shot him…Yes, I fucking know that now…hold on a sec.”
Nick switched the receiver to the other hand and fired two shots from his silenced berretta into the cops who just walked through the door. One of them looked like he was about to say something. His face froze with his mouth open when the bullet chipped his front tooth on the way to the wall behind his head. The conversational look on his face held all the way to the floor. It must have been that unit that wasn’t tied up.
“Yeah, sorry Mike, go ahead…How the fuck am I supposed to know…Is there anyone near here who would have a snitch from this department?…There is, who?…Okay where is that? Just a sec.” Nick pulled a piece of paper off Sgt. Malloy’s notepad and started writing, “Interesting…Okay, I’ll check it out. Are there any other leads? All right, so at least he’ll know something…Uh-huh. Do we need Junior anymore then? Okay, I’ll call you.”
He hung up the phone and trotted back up the stairs. He tried not to slip this time as he walked past the bodies. He noticed out of the corner of his eye, something blue, moving. He kept his gun raised and carefully walked toward the movement.
A female uniformed officer was trying to crawl to the captain’s office. She had two bullet wounds. One had to have hit her liver because she was covered in near black blood that leaked from the hole in her gut. The other wound should have hit her heart, but it must have just missed.
Nick put his foot on her side and kicked her over on her back. She had blonde hair that was now dyed red and plastered to her face. Her eyes were bright blue and wide open, but blinking wildly from the shock. She was pretty for a cop, Nick thought. He looked down on her face and admired her beautiful features. Behind those alluring eyes, she probably didn't even know exactly what was happening. Did she have a boyfriend? Nick wondered. Was she supposed to meet him tonight after she got off work? Maybe she had kids to take care of, although she looked too young for that. He wondered if her mother and father were so proud of her when she graduated from the academy and would come over from time to time to hear all her glorious stories. Nick stared at her and wondered all about her life and she stared blankly forward.
Nick laid his foot on her and pushed his heel onto the bullet wound in her gut. Then leaned into it. A long, low guttural sound came from the girl; she was too out of it to scream. Tears streamed from the girl’s eyes as one of her arms made a feeble attempt to push his leg away. Nick pushed harder.
The girl’s eyes opened as wide as her eyelids would allow and she stared right into Nick’s eyes. Blood drooled from both corners of her mouth in thick streams.
“There’s a good girl,” Nick said, then shot her in the forehead.
Her arm fell off his calf with a slap into the standing pool of blood. Her eyes stopped blinking, but tears continued to roll down the sides of her face, cutting channels into the dried blood. Nick lifted his foot off the girl’s stomach. It made a long peeling sound as his sole pulled away from the blood soaked uniform,
Before going back to the interrogation room, Nick took a quick survey of the room to make sure no one else was moving. All the bodies were still, so he continued on. He didn’t bother hiding the carnage from Jim this time as he flung the door open.
“Thanks, Jimbo,” Nick said while leveling the barrel of his gun with Jim’s surprised face. The gun kicked and ejected the spent shell from the chamber. The only sound from the gun was that of scraping metal. Jim’s corpse kicked back with the impact of the bullet, then forward, landing on the table with a thud.
Nick left the interrogation room laughing and headed toward the back. He kicked the bench he'd placed in front of the back door away and left the building.
Finally, he removed the silencer from his pistol and holstered it. Nick pulled the piece of paper from Malloy's desk out of his pocket.
“Joe’s Bar," he read.
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