Apaches - Lorenzo Carcaterra [102]
Dead-Eye pulled the guns from Albert’s ears and holstered them. Boomer took one last look around the apartment, then nodded to the others. They left through the open window, Geronimo first, followed by Pins, Mrs. Columbo, the baby, and Rev. Jim. Dead-Eye stood with one leg on the fire escape and the other on the kitchen linoleum.
“He lives?” Dead-Eye asked Boomer, nodding toward Albert.
“He lives,” Boomer said with a smile, still looking at Albert. “Just long enough to tell Lucia what happened.”
For the first time all night, Albert’s eyes betrayed him. Hearing Lucia’s name washed away the cold facade of the career criminal. Now there was only fear.
“She’s going to love to hear how you stood there and watched two strangers flush two hundred thou of her drugs down a kitchen sink,” Boomer said, walking away from Albert and putting a leg out through the open window. “I can’t figure if she’ll have you shot or beaten to death. But, then again, you know her better than I do.”
Boomer climbed out the window, but as he started to close it he leaned his head in. “The cops sure as shit aren’t gonna believe your story either,” Boomer said to Albert. “Whatever that story is gonna be. You have a good night now.”
Boomer closed the window behind him and disappeared into the darkness, leaving Albert standing in an apartment filled only with the dead. He listened as police sirens wailed in the distance. His future was now as clear to him as the bodies that lay sprawled by his side.
• • •
LUCIA PUT THE receiver back in its cradle and stared down at the phone for several minutes. The midday Arizona sun filtered through the open screen doors, the gleam off the swimming pool casting her face in its warm glow. Her hair was wet and pulled back tight; gold clips held two curled-up buns in place. She stood in the center of her living room, tanned and glistening with sweat, the straps of her two-piece designer bathing suit hanging loose from her shoulders, a calm woman at peace with herself and her surroundings.
Only her eyes and her shallow breathing betrayed the rage within.
Lucia ran a manicured hand over the smooth surface of the phone as if caressing the arm of a lover. She then reached down with both hands, lifted the phone off the polished wood coffee table, and with four violent tugs yanked it free from its wall socket. She spun around and threw the phone across the room, past the open screen doors. With a splash it landed in the shallow end of her forty-foot swimming pool.
The noise brought in her two bodyguards, who’d been sunning themselves by the edge of the deck.
“Get us on a plane,” she told them, her voice eerily quiet. “The next one out.”
“Out where?” asked the bodyguard with the trim black goatee and a tattoo of Lucia’s face on his right forearm.
“New York.” Lucia stood, legs apart, hands folded on her hips, staring out at the pool. “I want to be there by tonight.”
“We takin’ cargo?” the other bodyguard asked. He was as burly and muscular as the first, with a sharp razor cut and a long, ragged scar running down his hairless chest.
“No.” Lucia turned her gaze toward him. “No cargo. But arrange to have some of your tools shipped ahead. We may have to fix a few items.”
The two bodyguards nodded and left the room to tend to their tasks. Lucia paced about in bare feet, sun still beaming off her face, forcing herself to regain focus. The raid on the drug den in Queens was the first move ever attempted against her crew, and its wake left much more than a bitter taste. It left behind questions. And in the drug business, questions were as dangerous as a loaded weapon.
The team that made the hit on the apartment were pros. No prints had been left behind. The shell casings came out of the chambers of street guns. They had their timing down, from the bomb latched to the door to the precision shooting. These weren’t the actions of either low-level dealers looking to ice a big score or a renegade outfit tied into an existing crew. Albert would have picked up on those. He had been in the drug trade long enough to have done