Fever City (8 page)

He went in alone, stepping into a contained wave of cold air rising up all around, as if the kitchen had been built upon a layer of snow. It took him a minute before he noticed them: the smudge marks of wet footprints that had nearly dried. Men's shoes. He crouched down, and ran a handkerchief across the drying stains of red. The faintest trace of blood.

He turned to where Bella sat in the doorway, pleading with her eyes for him to cross the threshold back to the world without apparitions. The world where the dead did not return. He peered at her, moving closer. There was something wrong. Her breath was smoking in the cold. Her whiskers were coated in a thin white casing of frost about her muzzle. The cold ice tingled his fingers.

He gathered up a single suitcase and left forever. For all he knew the cold and the footprints were still lurking in that house. Many times he had tried to recall the footprints. Were they his? Or did they belong to the fence? He'd been waiting for the fence for two hours, sitting low in the front of a stolen car in the shadows he had made when he'd taken care of the streetlights. The fence didn't seem to realize he was already merging into darkness as he got out of his car, Hastings walking quickly across the soft, betraying lawn, his pistol fully extended, timing the shot with the slam of the door, the fence going backwards into the car and then forwards onto the lawn. Hastings caught a glimpse of the eyes right after the shot: not so much a regard as a physical affirmation of the passing of life. The swift flutter upwards as they cast off their light and prepared themselves for the big stare into the Long Oblivion. Then he was crossing the road, disappearing into the altered summer night, looped with the shadows of assassination; with the loss of a stolen life.

No witnesses.

Except for Bella.

Was the presence he and Bella had both felt that night merely the last vestiges of the fence; a physiological registration of extinction like that final look in his eyes? Or was it a manifestation of something else—life after death, the pursuit of judgment; the suffusion of a restless, aggrieved life force? Perhaps a shattered energy had contaminated him when he fired the kill shot. The splatter of psychic evidence linking him to the crime forever.

Or maybe it was simpler than that. Maybe it wasn't a ghost that was haunting them in the kitchen; maybe it was just Hastings and his past. A past that was catching up with him in Chicago.

‘Well, look what that mangy, poor excuse of a cat dragged in!' Roselli slapped Hastings on the back like he was arriving at a Jaycee meeting in Waterloo, Iowa, everyone excited by the quality of the wives who were being swapped that night.

Hastings peered through the curtains. Jack-o'-lanterns flickered with orange malice from the windows of otherwise normal households. Kids circulated with bedsheets and broomsticks. Old people were taunted, cats tormented, children terrified. The Feast of Fear stalked the city, feeding on superstition and confectionary. ‘Close that fucking blind, Jesus, the Feds could be watching.'

Indeed the Feds could be watching. Hastings could almost hear the stutter of the shutters of long-lens cameras across the road. One by one, they'd be shot, going in or coming out, their images imprisoned by a rusted thumbtack against a wall in some clapped-out office south of downtown.

Hastings exchanged looks with Luchino, who offered him a French cigarette. Yellow paper; black tobacco. Harsh and strong as the mistral. Of all the men in the room, Luchino was the mystery. Hastings had heard he'd started up like him; on the legit in a war, a seventeen-year-old franc-tireur nailing Nazi officers with precision shooting in the maquis, then elbowing his way into the black market as a gofer during the USS Corsica period. Cigarettes gave way to heroin; Bonifacio to Marseille and the French Connection, Luchino always around to deliver a bullet to anyone who got in the way.

Hastings watched Nicoletti and Alderisio sitting in the corner like two classroom dunces. They were not friends, they didn't even like each other, but they were forever linked by the primordial bonds of blood—both family and spilling. Hunched and illiterate, they avoided any communication, even eye contact, barely acknowledging anyone else in the room. Association was complication—what if they had to whack you going out the door? Their heavy presence created a claustrophobic gloom. The only jauntiness came from Roselli, drinking scotch and talking about a visit he'd made the summer before to Agrigento. ‘Fucking amazing. Those Greeks. Those Romans. Building goddamn temples you wouldn't believe. History. There ain't nothing like it.'

‘Who gives a rat's ass about history?' The dulcet tones of Momo, as he came through the door. ‘You're all here to change the future, not fuck around with the past. And you're doing it by putting a bullet in the president.'

There was the rasping irritation of a dry flint, then the silence of flame. ‘Why?' Luchino asked.

‘Ain't none of your fucking business,
why
?'

Luchino leant forward and exhaled with a brief, sharp thrust and the flame disappeared. ‘When I kill a man, I want to know why. It is not a right; it is a requirement.'

‘Be careful, my French friend. In this country we don't ask questions.'

‘I am Corsican, not French. And in my country even the dead ask questions.'

‘Well, in my country the dead shut the fuck up and stay that way.'

Luchino stared at Momo for a long moment. His face had been polished bronze by the sun: more a visage on a coin than something living. ‘Any brute can kill . . . ' He half-glanced at Nicoletti and Alderisio, his eyes passing judgment. ‘But to end a man's life under carefully controlled circumstances and then to elude capture is another matter. For that, there is a psychological element. And this requires an understanding of the motives behind such acts.'

‘His brother is causing—'

‘Shut up.' Momo barked at Roselli, then turned back to Luchino. ‘We want him dead. That's motive enough.'

Luchino smiled and nodded, stubbing out his yellow cigarette. It was not a gesture of capitulation, it was a moment of resolve. He had just come to the same conclusion as Hastings: kill the others. Steal the money. Run.

Roselli led the way into a windowless room, Hastings pausing before going inside. He could sense death the way a fisherman could sense a change in the weather: through his bones; reactive, not deductive. His eyes swept the surfaces: bloodstains mopped off the floor. Cordite blush on the furniture. Bullets wormed out of walls by prodding fingers. The room was a sponge of evil acts and wicked memories. Carnage, cruelty, suffering.

Luchino felt it too, but the others just sauntered in with the bored indifference of a husband forced along on a house inspection when he has no intention of buying.

There were maps up on the far wall. Little red pins—like schoolboys playing soldier at Soldier Field. The motorcade route. A photo of a gun-crazy chump, posing with an M1 Garand and an angry scowl, his cheeks puffed out in indignation. ‘This is your patsy. Thomas Arthur Vallee. A-1 certified nut. Korean vet. Fucked around with some U2 intelligence unit in Japan. Weapons collector. Knows how to handle a rifle.' Roselli tossed a file on a table, then sighted through an imaginary carbine. ‘Bang-bang. Happy Deathday, Mr. President.' Momo laughed, but Nicoletti and Alderisio just stared. Luchino's hand hesitated, like a snake handler who had just been bitten the night before, then opened Vallee's file. The word
schizophrenic
stamped on a medical form invaded the room and was mocked by the dual gaze of Nicoletti and Alderisio.

‘So what's the plan?' Hastings asked.

Roselli tapped a street on the map. ‘Set up a sniper's nest here in the warehouse, where the motorcade slows to take the turn, shooting down as they pass. Four guns in a hotel here, shooting across as they come.'

‘Four guns . . . ?' Luchino and Hastings exchanged shadow glances.

‘Four.' Momo shouted it as though Luchino were deaf, holding up four stubby fingers. ‘Back. Side. Bang-bang and good-bye.' Momo leant over, spat between his feet.

Hastings stared at Luchino. The same thought was going through both their minds. Cross fire. Stray bullets. Confusion. Perfect cover for Nicoletti and Alderisio to fire point-blank into the back of their heads.

Hastings cleared his throat. ‘So who takes what?'

‘You're the sniper's nest team.'

Meaning . . . ‘Just me?'

‘Fuck no, the four of you plus the patsy.'

‘And who is in the hotel?'

‘That don't concern you . . . '

‘
Mais
. . . '

‘How do you say “Ain't none of your fucking business” in French?' Momo's laugh was more a cough.

Luchino's eyes appealed for solidarity. Hastings turned to Roselli. ‘This other team . . . ?'

Nicoletti stepped forward. It was the first time Hastings had ever heard him speak. ‘The man said, none of your fucking business.'

Two options. Kill him or walk away. Hastings voted for kill, but before the fatal gesture was released, Luchino had stepped between Hastings and Nicoletti, speaking to Roselli. ‘Two teams getting away? In the middle of a firestorm, with hundreds of policemen? I am sorry, my friend, but that's our business.'

Nicoletti got in real close to Luchino. They were all grown men. All killers. So-called professionals. And still they couldn't avoid this—a schoolyard challenge. ‘What the fuck's the problem? Just drop the gun and run.'

Alderisio snorted with amusement.

Luchino's voice was low with the effort to control his anger. ‘Runners are targets. Runners get chased. Have you not seen what dogs do to passing runners?'

Nicoletti turned to the others. ‘What the fuck is he talking about?' Then to Luchino: ‘Did you just insult me?'

Hastings couldn't stand it anymore. ‘All he's saying is: we don't want to stand on each other's toes . . . '

‘What is that, a threat?'

‘This is . . . ' Luchino had the blade to Nicoletti's throat. Hastings didn't see it coming. He glanced at Nicoletti, caught the glimpse of nickel in his fist. Nicoletti had gone for his piece and Hastings had missed it too.

Hastings finally got it.

Luchino was better than him.

Full of remorse, Hastings filled both his hands with gunmetal, one pointing at Alderisio, who was liable to get himself and Nicoletti killed, the other at Roselli and Momo—just in case. Luchino nodded, satisfied with his ally. ‘Now,
mes amis
, will you let Monsieur Roselli answer the question?'

Roselli slowly raised his hands. ‘Settle down, boys, we're all friends.'

‘Then you better explain to us who the other team is and how you expect to get all of us out alive.'

Roselli looked at Momo, who nodded. He was famous for hating the sight of blood . . . especially his own, and Momo knew he was just two angry men away from a bloodbath.

‘Cubans.'

‘Communists?'

Roselli looked at Luchino like he was crazy. ‘Fuck no! Anti-Castro.'

The knife under Nicoletti's chin disappeared. It was not taken away; it just vanished as quickly as it appeared. A ghost blade. Luchino either had a gimmick or he was a magician. Hastings kept his guns out though. Everyone was still in that dangerous simmer time, when emotions were so hot, people forgot they were mortal.

‘How many?'

‘Four.'

Like them. ‘Who are they?'

‘Put those fucking guns away and I'll tell you . . . '

Hastings watched Nicoletti and Alderisio. ‘Everyone nice and calm again . . . ?'

‘How the fuck do I know—he pulled the knife.'

‘I pulled the knife, my friend, because—'

Nicoletti interrupted. ‘I ain't no fucking friend of yours.'

Luchino shrugged with sad acceptance. ‘Because—my enemy—you had already gone for your gun. That makes me nervous.'

‘Who gives a shit, you fucking frog.'

Hastings made a mental note. Kill Nicoletti before Alderisio. He intervened. ‘Castro, anti-Castro. So what? Question is, can they shoot?'

‘Ex-military. CIA-trained. They were Bay of Pigs.'

The ones that got away. ‘So they're pissed.'

‘Awful pissed and pumped and ready to do what it takes to nail the president.'

‘Why two teams? You could put two of us in the warehouse, and two in the hotel?'

Roselli looked at Momo uncomfortably, caught out being stupid. Again. Roselli hadn't thought of that question. He was going to have to improvise his lie.

‘Backup, that's all. We can't afford to miss.'

Especially if the target had expanded to include Hastings and Luchino. Hastings turned to Momo. ‘I don't get it. A Chicago hit. You know everyone will finger you.'

‘That's my alibi. I'd have to be nuts to do it on home turf. Besides, what with the Cubans . . . '

He shut up fast. Not fast enough. Luchino tapped the edge of ash from his cigarette. His only outward reaction to the revelation: the Cubans were being set up too. They were patsies. Just like the psycho, Thomas Vallee. And just like Hastings and Luchino. Only Vallee and the Cubans would be blamed, would be hounded down and shot by the police, their bodies displayed like Zapata's alongside posing ghouls. Hastings and Luchino's fate would be very different. They would simply disappear. Luchino's sun-bleached blue eyes stared into his. The secret knowledge was shared. Roselli and Momo had no idea they knew—how could they: they were men without instinct; men without epiphanies. Nicoletti sat there and sulked. Alderisio picked his nose. They were patsies too—only further along in the game. After the bodies and the guns had been taken care of, and the concrete floors hosed down and the drains unclogged of human remains. They were the final act. The dry-cleaning. The polishing of the faucet and the door handle. The endgame in the perfect crime. Nicoletti and Alderisio: a couple of woodlice extinguished with the parting footsteps. Unnoticed. Unmourned. Unmissed.