Baltimore Noir - Laura Lippman [65]
Jilly wiped his mouth with the back of a hand. “Vignieri,” he said.
“Aren’t they having their own problems?”
“Who isn’t? Fucking deals they offer today, the government, guys are lining up like it’s the lotto to make a deal.”
Tommy noticed the rain coming down harder, but didn’t mention it. “Angelo tight with New York?”
“Used to be very tight with them,” Jilly said. “I suppose he still has something going there, or why he reached out inna first place?”
“The one coming here a made guy?”
The waitress was back with another anisette. She set it on the table and picked up Tommy’s glass to refill.
“Fuck knows,” Jilly said when the waitress was gone. “I’ll tell you a good one, though, you wanna hear a war story about a made guy come down here from New York to do a thing a few years ago.”
Tommy moved his chair in. He set his elbows on the table and smiled.
Jilly smiled too. “Guy comes here to do a job, take somebody out from Philly was hiding the Camden Yard. Was between the bosses, something do with the casinos in Atlantic City, back when they first went up. Anyway, the New York guy comes down, has dinner with a few of us, he don’t shut up breaking balls about the Jets, the Mets, and then I think it was the Knicks too, I’m not mistaken. They won it too that year, but not against the Bullets. Bullets were gone early, I think. Anyway, he’s going on and on about the greatest city inna world, a couple of us get an idea, we get up to piss and make a call over to Lombard Street, some crazy kids hanging out there. A few of them go back to the hotel this New York hot shot is staying and fuck up his car.”
Tommy laughed. “Now I know you’re shittin me.”
Jilly made the sign of the cross. “I shit you never,” he said. “It was kid stuff, don’t get me wrong. We’d all rather have put a couple in his big fat mouth, the cocksucker, but it turns out, the kids they sent to the garage there, the hotel garage the guy was staying, they slash the four tires plus the one in the trunk, they rip up the upholstery, all the leather there, and they carve Erioles and Colts all over the hood, the fenders. Shoved a golf ball or some shit in the gas tank too. The guy was fucking livid when he gets back from whatever he did. It was dumb shit, but we all pissed our pants the next few days after. Angelo heard the story and sent the kids fucked the car up some kegs of beer and a few of the older broads from one of the strip joints.”
“Who was the guy? You remember him?”
“Agro something. Somebody Agro, I think. He’s a big shot there now, I’m not mistaken. Skipper with the Vignieri crew.”
“That’s one I gotta remember,” Tommy said. “It’s a great way to fix a ball-breaker.”
Jilly looked up toward the front door and spotted a man wearing sunglasses. “Look at this mamaluke,” he whispered. “Middle of the fucking night, he’s the nightrider with those shades.”
Tommy turned to see who Jilly was talking about.
“He puts on a white baseball hat, he’s our guy, which he is, I can tell,” Jilly said.
The man in the sunglasses pulled a white baseball cap from his coat pocket. He took his time looking around the restaurant before putting it on.
“Cocksucker,” Jilly said.
“What?” Tommy said.
“Fucking Mets hat.”
Forty-five minutes and thirty-five miles later, which was all that separated Baltimore from Annapolis, Jilly sat in a stolen Taurus half a block from the Tidewater Marina while he waited for Tommy Red and the guy from New York to return from their visit to the Tina Marie. The rain was coming down hard. It had just started to thunder when Jilly spotted the white Mets hat.
He flashed the headlights to get their attention. The two men ran back to the car. Jilly unlocked the doors when they were close. Tommy sat in the back. The guy from New York sat up front.
“How’d it go?” Jilly asked.
“Done and done,” Tommy said, “the both of them.”
“Which means you have something for me now,” the guy from New York said.
Jilly said, “You can take that hat off now, it stopped raining soon’s you got in the car.”
The New York guy wasn’t