“Still. I’d sit with my back to the wall for the rest of my life.”
They came over a low rise in the road and nearly slammed into a Cadillac going twenty miles below the speed limit. Dealer plates from “Friendly” Manitoba. A ball cap in the window with the POW logo. Peaches tried to do the math on that. Had Canada even fought in Vietnam? Or maybe it was from a different war, Peaches not totally up on Canadian armed conflicts. The Caddie was bright red, rolling on 22s, one of those new Sevilles. American dream shit. Peaches could work an honest job his entire life and never, ever afford a Seville. And his family was in America before anyone was. Some fucking dream.
“This motherfucker,” Peaches said.
“Chill,” Lonzo said, “he’s about to have a heart attack.” Lonzo pressed on the horn, but that just made the Caddie tap its breaks, slow down another five miles per hour.
“Pull up beside him,” Peaches said.
“You want me to ride the shoulder?”
“I promise,” Peaches said, “I’ll pay your ticket.”
When they did, Peaches could see that there was a woman in the passenger seat, asleep, and behind the wheel was an old man, maybe eighty, maybe 180, hard to tell with the BluBlockers on. Probably never even heard Lonzo’s horn. Probably hadn’t even looked in his rearview mirror since the Canadian border. Probably just rode his breaks by habit.
Peaches tapped the horn. The old man startled. Looked Peaches’s way. Peaches rolled down his window, said, “Roll down your window, sir.” But the old man just stared at him, like he couldn’t comprehend how a car had come up on his left on a two-lane road.
“Bossman,” Lonzo said, “it’s cool. Nothing but open road in front of us. We’ll get a new ride in town. Forty minutes from now, you’ll be poolside. There’s easier ways.”
The Caddie slowed, and Lonzo started to pass it. “No,” Peaches said, “keep pace.”
“Not the lady,” Lonzo said. “You don’t gotta do that.”
“Roll down your window,” Peaches mouthed again, and this time the old man did. Peaches picked up the Glock from his lap, extended his arm out the window, and fired two shots. And just like that, they had a new car.
FIVE
SATURDAY, APRIL 13, 2002
LAS VEGAS, NV
THE PROBLEM WITH BEING A JEWISH HOLY MAN AND SINGLE, RABBI DAVID Cohen learned early on, is that whenever something bad happened, the entire Hebrew world felt like they had to come by his home with a homemade dish. David broke a toe playing kickball with the Tikvah Preschool kids, eight briskets showed up at his home within twenty-four hours. A sinus infection was worth a kugel, scalloped potatoes, a baked chicken, and a platter of cookies. Even the rumor of illness was good enough for a casserole or six.
Come home from the hospital with a new face? That was apparently a clarion for matzo ball soup. Already that Saturday, Connie Blau, Tiffany Friedman, and Zoe Geller had dropped off about twenty gallons of their very own special recipes, though in each case David was pretty sure they just came by to view his face. With a full beard, he wasn’t sure how much they saw, though he had patches where hair just wouldn’t grow, which gave him the haphazard look of a man with a broken razor or a shitty mirror.
And so when his doorbell rang for the fourth time that morning—it was only 11 a.m.—David had the thought that he could maybe opossum his way out of another guest. Except this time his CCTV showed FBI agent Matthew Drew alongside Gray Beard, both wearing Cox Cable uniforms and holding clipboards, standing at his gate. A Cox Cable van idled behind them, Marvin in the front seat. To the best of David’s knowledge, Gray Beard didn’t have David’s address. He wasn’t surprised he found it, only surprised he used it. Gray Beard and Marvin had done odd jobs for David over the years. A friendship had developed, or at least a close business relationship, one that allowed David to make a call from the hospital and arrange a place for Matthew to stay. But that didn’t mean you just dropped by to watch a ball game.
“Something I can help you with?” David said through the intercom. David had the high ground here. If need be, he could go upstairs and plug all three using one of his long guns. HOA frowned on brain matter on the streets, so he’d need to figure that part out.
“Got a call about an outage,” Gray Beard said.
“Wasn’t from me,” David said. He trusted that Gray Beard and Marvin wouldn’t bring Matthew over to kill him, but . . . still.
“We just need to come inside for five minutes. Adjust some wiring.” Gray Beard pointed at Matthew. “Got a trainee who needs to see how things work.”
“You think showing up at someone’s house without an appointment is a good way of doing that?” David said.
“Emergency situation,” Gray Beard said.
Bennie had David’s entire house wired. Having Matthew Drew inside of it was not going to work. Never mind that Gray Beard and Marvin in his home would put them all in some jeopardy. But if Gray Beard said it was an emergency, David had to put some stock in that, even if he didn’t like it.
“I’ll buzz open the gate,” David said. “Come in through the side yard. The box is out back.” He hit the button to open the gate, retrieved his nine, and went to go wait on whatever was about to happen next.
By the time Matthew, Gray Beard, and Marvin made it into the backyard, David was sitting at a table beneath an umbrella on the far side of the pool. He had a tumbler of scotch, Macallan 30, the good shit, in one hand and his nine in the other.
“Right there is good,” David said. He took a sip of scotch. Matthew Drew seemed smaller from this vantage point. The last time he’d seen the former FBI agent was about six weeks earlier, Matthew pretending to be a long-lost cousin to get access in the ICU, but once David was on a more private floor, those visits had to end. Last thing David needed was for Bennie Savone to meet the man. But during their hospital visits, they’d come to an accord. They were both wanted men who could only be helped by the other.
“That a saltwater pool?” Matthew said.
“It is,” David said.
“That a Glock?”
“It is.”
“Didn’t figure you to be Glock guy,” Matthew said.
“I like to be familiar with what the cops shooting at me might be using. What are you carrying?”
“Situation like this, I’d probably have a personal Smith & Wesson .380, light, easy to conceal, get up close, do some real damage. And then my service Glock for when I needed to put thirty rounds into you. But today, I come in peace.”
“Marvin,” David said, motioning with the gun. “Unbutton that big motherfucker’s shirt for me.”
Marvin looked at Gray Beard, like he needed permission, and then didn’t move.
“It don’t need to be like that,” Gray Beard said. “You want to know if he’s got a gun on him, I’m here to tell you he does not.”
“Not worried about a gun,” David said. “Just want to be sure we’re not broadcasting.”
