Cure

16

March 25, 2010

Thursday, 10:44 p.m.

There they are!” Carlo said as Brennan turned onto 17th Street on the north side of Union Square. As usual the area was alive with people, including sidewalk musicians, panhandlers, and students of all ages and ethnicities. Despite the crowds, Susumu Nomura and Yoshiaki Eto still managed to stand out slightly because of their attire. Like the previous night, they were dressed in black sharkskin suits, white shirts, black ties, and dark glasses.

“Let’s be clear on this,” Carlo said. “We drive to the pier, supposedly to get the explosives for the supposed distraction, we all get out, saying we need everybody to help carry the explosives back to the SUV, and head inside. That’s where we’ll do the hit. Remember, these guys are going to be armed, and they don’t hesitate to use their weapons.”

There was a general grunt of acquiescence from all present. Brennan and Carlo were in the front seat, with Brennan again driving. Arthur and Ted were cramped back in the third row. The middle seats were left empty for Susumu and Yoshiaki.

Brennan pulled over to the curb in front of the Barnes & Noble store, which had closed some forty-five minutes earlier but whose interior lights were still on. Susumu and Yoshiaki were busy glancing in at the window display.

“Okay,” Carlo said, twisting around in his seat and looking back at Arthur and Ted. “You guys ready? You have your pieces handy?”

Both Arthur and Ted raised their hands to give Carlo a quick glance of their respective automatics and then lowered them out of sight. “Good,” Carlo said. “We don’t expect any trouble, but we might as well be prepared.” Carlo then turned to Brennan. “Are you ready?”

“Obviously I’m ready,” Brennan responded with a bored tone. Sometimes he thought Carlo was a bit too melodramatic.

Carlo lowered his window and whistled. Susumu and Yoshiaki both snapped around at the sound and quickly came to the car, bowing to Carlo as they did so. They lost no time climbing into the middle row, although they paused ever so briefly when they realized there were people in the backseat whose faces were dimly illuminated by the ambient streetlight.

“That’s Arthur and Ted back there,” Carlo called out in explanation.

The Japanese pair twisted in their seats to look at Arthur and Ted once they were settled and the door was closed. They bowed multiple times, repeating “Hai, hai” over and over. It was apparent to the others that they were significantly jazzed up, in anticipation of the planned burglary.

Brennan hooked a left around Union Square and traveled east on 14th Street all the way to the East River. There he headed north on the FDR Drive. For a while no one spoke. Everyone was juiced up but for different reasons. Arthur was the only one who was actually worried about what might happen, as he was by far the most reflective in the group and a firm believer in the adage: If something can go wrong, it will.

Brennan exited the FDR at 34th Street, got onto Third Avenue, and from there descended into the Queens-Midtown Tunnel. As Susumu and Yoshiaki had expected to head farther north on the FDR, they became restive at having entered the tunnel and immediately lapsed into an argument with each other in Japanese. It was obvious they were confused. It was Yoshiaki who spoke up.

“Excuse!” he said, leaning forward. “Why we go to Queens?”

Carlo turned in his seat, making eye contact with Yoshiaki. “Must get explosives,” he said, mistakenly believing he had to use pidgin-like English. “We use explosives to make diversion while we break into iPS USA to get the lab books. Understand?”

“Where do we go in Queens?” Yoshiaki questioned.

“An old Vaccarro family warehouse on a pier at the river,” Carlo said, still facing around. “We use it for storage. There’s explosives there that we will use for tonight’s explosion.”

“What’s a pier?”

“It’s this long thing made out of wood that goes out into the water so ships can park next to it.”

“Futou?” Yoshiaki questioned.

“Yeah, well, I wouldn’t know.”

“East River?”

“That’s right. East River. The pier is on the East River.”

For a few miles Yoshiaki and Susumu spoke loudly back and forth, to the point that Carlo became concerned they might refuse to go along and demand to be taken back to the city. But it didn’t happen. Abruptly they fell quiet, and Carlo hoped they would stay that way for just a little longer.

Emerging from the tunnel, Brennan exited the expressway as soon as he could, crossed over Newtown Creek on McGuinness Boulevard, and turned right on Greenpoint Avenue. At first there were lots of bars and restaurants, but as they approached the river, the neighborhood deteriorated to a point best described as dilapidated-industrial. As Carlo looked out his window, the two things that stood out were the lack of lights and the lack of people. In sharp contrast to the vibrancy of Union Square, the area looked like a postapocalyptic movie set. There seemed to be nothing alive until he saw a large rat whose eyes suddenly sparkled like diamonds as the rodent looked in the direction of the Denali’s headlights.

Five minutes later Brennan pulled right up to the padlocked gate in the ten-foot-high chain-link fence, topped with coiled razor wire that surrounded the Vaccarro property. Carlo hopped out with the key, and in the glare of the headlights unlocked the gate to allow Brennan to drive in. Then, in the darkness, he relocked the gate before running forward and climbing back into the SUV.

The hulk of the concrete-block warehouse was on Brennan’s left as he drove forward toward the base of the pier. About midway along the building’s side, there was a small porch fronting a heavily padlocked entry door. Above the door was a wooden sign with peeling paint faintly bearing the name AMERICAN FRUIT COMPANY.

“Explosives here?” Yoshiaki questioned, staring out at the dark warehouse.

“This is it,” Carlo said. He slipped his hand beneath the lapel of his jacket and unsnapped the strap that secured his Glock .22 in its shoulder holster. Then he opened the storage compartment between the two front seats and got out two flashlights, handing one to Brennan. When Brennan turned off the headlights, both he and Carlo switched on the flashlights. With no moon, it was black as pitch outside.

“Okay,” Carlo said. “Everybody out to help carry the equipment.” He and Brennan climbed from the car simultaneously. Carlo opened the rear passenger door for Yoshiaki, who was sitting behind him. Brennan did the same for Susumu. To emphasize that they were supposed to be carrying out material, Carlo continued to the back of the car and opened the tailgate. The plan was to go inside the office for the takedown.

Carlo continued on to the office door, pulling out the same ring of keys he’d used for the outer gate. With the flashlight under his arm he first unlocked the padlock and then the door itself. Just as he was about to open the door and get the interior light, on he became aware of commotion behind him. Turning, he witnessed Yoshiaki knocking away Brennan’s hand. Brennan was merely trying to urge Yoshiaki forward. Both Yoshiaki and Susumu had stopped short of the porch in front of the entrance.

“We wait outside,” he said. Behind him, Carlo could see Arthur and Ted emerging from the car. The problem was that they still had their guns in their hands as Carlo had ordered, in case there was some kind of emergency. The other problem was that Susumu happened to be looking in their direction while Yoshiaki was looking forward. Obviously, both Japanese enforcers had gotten suspicious about what was going down.

Susumu’s reaction was to cry out “Kaki,” or guns, and draw his own weapon and pull off several shots, hitting Arthur in the right upper arm with the bullet exiting out the back. With his gun at the ready, Ted let fly a barrage of bullets of his own, several of which found their mark, one hitting Susumu directly in the chest, piercing his heart and killing him instantly.

Yoshiaki’s reaction was to take off running. With no choice in the matter, he sprinted away in the direction of the pier, ducking and weaving as he did so, his reaction time catching everyone by surprise. Carlo and Brennan quickly directed their flashlights in the fleeing man’s direction while struggling to get their own weapons from their shoulder holsters. Ted had to run a few steps forward to clear the car in order to get an open line of sight. He pulled off several more shots in quick succession but couldn’t tell if he’d hit the fleeing man or not. Regardless, Yoshiaki kept running, ducking, and weaving, as he quickly disappeared from sight into the misty darkness hanging over the pier.

“Help Arthur,” Carlo yelled to Ted. Arthur had fallen to his knees, holding his right arm with his left. He’d dropped his weapon after being struck. An expanding patch of red stained his shirt over his upper arm. “Shit, shit, shit! The fucker shot me!” he yelled, as if surprised. “Why did he have to shoot me?” he demanded. With Carlo’s and Brennan’s flashlight beams quickly receding as they ran after Yoshiaki, Ted and Arthur found themselves in complete blackness. Lucky for Arthur, there was little or no pain, just a heavy dullness.

Ted made his way back to the SUV, and opening the driver’s door, he snapped on the headlights. Going from near perfect darkness to a bright illumination caused both men to squint. Wasting no time, Ted searched for something to use as a tourniquet, then pulled his belt free from his trousers. “Let’s see the wound,” he said as a warning before ripping Arthur’s shirt from the cuff up to its armhole. On the front side of Arthur’s arm midway between the shoulder and the elbow was a clean quarter-inch entrance wound. On the back side the exit wound looked like a disk of hamburger meat. Luckily for Arthur, it was not bleeding as much as oozing.

“You’re going to live,” Ted pronounced, realizing the tourniquet, for the moment, was not needed.

Brennan and Carlo had run the length of the warehouse and then pulled up short. Yoshiaki had run out to the end of the pier and stopped himself.

“We cannot allow him to escape,” Carlo said, out of breath.

“You don’t need to tell me that,” Brennan said, equally out of breath.

“What is he doing?”

“It looks like he’s taking off his shoes.”

“Oh, shit!” Carlo said. “He’s not going to try to swim, is he?”

“I think he is. He’s taking off his damn clothes.”

“Run out there and shoot him before he tries to get away.”

“The hell I will,” Brennan said. “He’s sure to have a gun. You run out there!”

The two men stood there and watched. It appeared as if Yoshiaki was making a neat pile of his clothes. The next moment he was gone.

Without any talking, Carlo and Brennan, each holding a gun in one hand and a flashlight in the other, made a mad dash toward the end of the pier. As they neared, both slowed, fearful it might be some sort of trick to lure them in close. At a hesitant walk, they moved ahead, holding their guns directed ahead at the ready.

Brennan heard the splashing first, and he yelled, “He’s in the water!” as he sprinted ahead, passing the tidy pile of clothes carefully placed on top of the pair of shoes. The shoes were oriented exactly parallel to the pier.

Brennan rushed to the very end of the pier. Yoshiaki could just be seen sloshing forward with an awkward head-out-of-the-water stroke, turning his face from side to side as he reached out with one hand and then the other. Brennan trained his flashlight beam on him as Carlo came up to Brennan’s side. Both men trained their automatics on Yoshiaki and rapidly emptied their magazines. As the sound of the last shot faded away, along with its echoes from the dark neighboring buildings and piers, Brennan and Carlo stared at the spot where moments earlier Yoshiaki had been desperately thrashing about while attempting to swim to Manhattan. Now, like the rest of the river, it was as still as a pool of crude oil, reflecting the peaceful Manhattan skyline.

First for five minutes, then for ten, and finally for fifteen, Brennan and Carlo kept their flashlights trained on the spot, hoping it was the end of the embarrassing affair. At one time there was a sudden rapid swirl at the spot, suggesting the presence of some large creature, giving both men a scare, but Yoshiaki did not loom up for a sudden, desperate lungful of air. It was clear he was a goner.

“We must have hit him,” Carlo said, breaking the silence.

“It seems that way. That was too close for comfort. If he’d gotten away, Louie would have had our heads.”

“Now why don’t you swim out there and retrieve the body?” Carlo said.

“Hell I will!” Brennan snapped with true emotion. Just the thought of entering the black, oily river with whatever it was hiding was enough to give Brennan gooseflesh.

“I was just kidding,” Carlo said, slapping Brennan on the back hard enough to make the man step forward to prevent a fall.

Brennan grabbed Carlo’s forearm before Carlo could retract it out of the way. “I have told you not to hit me,” Brennan snarled, pushing his face in close to Carlo’s. The tenseness of the preceding events made him overreact to this recurring provocation.

Carlo pushed him away roughly. “Oh, grow up. I was just kidding, for chrissake, about you swimming out there. You’d never find the body in a million years. With the currents here, the body’s probably two hundred feet or so downriver.” Carlo bent over to pick up Yoshiaki’s clothes and shoes. “Let’s get back and check on Arthur. We’ll probably have to do an emergency run before we head out to the Narrows to get rid of Susumu.”

The two men walked quickly back along the pier. Every so often the water beneath them emitted a swirling sound around the piles, attesting to the strength of the current.

“Louie is not going to be happy about Yoshiaki,” Carlo said.

“Tell me about it,” Brennan said, having cooled down a degree. “But the situation would have been ten times worse if the guy had made it to Manhattan.”

“Maybe we shouldn’t bring it up unless he asks. Hell, as strong as the current is, who knows where he’ll end up. He might even make it to the ocean, where he was supposed to end up.”

Brennan cast a quick glance in Carlo’s direction. “It’s your call. It’s your job to communicate to the capo, but if you’re asking if I would go behind your back and tell him, that wouldn’t happen.”

“Good,” Carlo said. “Then I won’t tell him unless he asks.”

“How are you going to explain Arthur?”

“I’ll tell him the truth. These Japanese guys are wild, which is why we wanted to get rid of them. They don’t think twice about taking out their pieces and blasting away. Hell, Arthur’s a good example.”

Back at the car they found everything was okay. Ted had bandaged Arthur’s wound with the arm of Arthur’s shirt, and there was only slight bleeding. The main problem was that Arthur was in serious discomfort. Although initially it hadn’t bothered him much, once the numbness wore off, he claimed the pain was terrible.

Stashing Susumu’s body in a body bag and then into the rear storage area of the SUV, the men piled back into the vehicle and made their way out of the American Fruit Company’s compound and headed back to Elmhurst. As soon as they were on the expressway, Carlo called Louie.

When Louie disconnected the phone line from talking to Carlo, he didn’t know whether to be angry or relieved. From experience he knew that hits could go well or they could go bad. He was relieved to a degree that it was over but upset that Arthur had been wounded. Four against two seemed to have been more than adequate odds.

Without hanging up the handset, Louie pulled his address book out of his desk’s center drawer and got the number for Dr. Louis Trevino. Doc, as he was known, had been the doctor for the Vaccarro family for many years. He’d been recruited from St. Mary’s Hospital, where he’d done an internship and had handled most of the Vaccarro crime family’s needs over the years, including a number of clandestine gunshot wounds.

The phone rang many times before a tired voice answered.

“Doc, it’s Louie. We got a problem with Arthur.”

“What is it?”

“A gunshot wound to the right upper arm, through and through.”

“The bone involved?”

“I don’t think so.”

“That’s a blessing. How about the major vessels?”

“Negative again, or so it seems so far.”

“Where is he?”

“I told them to go straight to Saint Mary’s. I’d guesstimate they’ll be there in, say, a half-hour.”

“I’ll meet them in the ER,” Trevino said, and hung up.

“Thanks, Doc,” Louie said, even though he knew it was too late.

With the call to Doc out of the way, Louie sat at his desk and prepared for the next call. He knew what message he wanted to convey but wasn’t sure of the words. As he pondered, he glanced out the window of his study off the living room of his grand waterside house in Whitestone, New York. With no leaves on the trees, he had a partial view across a neighbor’s yard of the graceful Whitestone Bridge with its illuminated cables. Looking at the bridge reminded him of his much better view of the Throgs Neck Bridge from the living room, which faced in the opposite direction down his sweeping lawn to his dock. Thinking of his dock reminded him that it was soon going to be time to get his boat out of winter storage.

Pulling his mind back to the issue at hand, calling Hideki Shimoda to deflect any suspicion of Vaccarro involvement in Susumu’s and Yoshiaki’s disappearance as Paulie had cleverly suggested, Louie wanted to get it right. The key ingredient, he was aware, was that he had to act truly pissed off.

Galvanizing his courage, Louie made the call. To his surprise, the phone was picked up with a simple “Hai” after a single ring, as if Hideki had been sleeping with his hand on the receiver.

“All right, Hideki, what’s the fucking story, and I don’t want any bullshit,” Louie roared. “I just got a call from my guys, who are still hanging around fucking Union Square waiting for your fucking guys to arrive. What’s the fucking story?”

Louie rarely used profanity, but he had pulled out all the stops, thinking Hideki would expect it. The response was less than he hoped for. “Excuse me, I think you want to talk with my husband.”

Louie rolled his eyes as a gruff Hideki came on the line. Louie tried to repeat the opening salvo but with significantly less profanity. After the mistake of not ascertaining who’d picked up the phone, it was the best he could do.

“Is this Barbera-san?” Hideki questioned.

“Who else do you think would be calling you at this hour?” Louie demanded, sounding as irritable as he could manage.

“You say Susumu and Yoshiaki not show up tonight?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying. And I want to remind you that this operation was being done for your benefit, not ours.”

“That is true, Barbera-san,” Hideki admitted. “Hold the phone for one moment. Let me call them to ask where they are. There must have been a misunderstanding. I am sorry. They are my most reliable aides.”

Louie could hear Hideki speaking in Japanese to whoever was there with him. Then he came back on the line. “My wife is getting my mobile phone. I am most sorry about this. Is there still time to make the raid?”

“Let’s see where your men are. If they are near Union Square, perhaps we could squeeze it in.”

Louie could hear Hideki try to make two calls. Unsuccessful, he returned to Louie. “I cannot get them. This is very strange.”

“So far as you know, they were aware the break-in was for tonight?”

“Absolutely for tonight.”

“When was the last time you spoke to them?”

“Not since they drove me back to the office after visiting with you, Barbera-san. At that time they were eager to work with you again tonight. They said so specifically.”

“Do you think there is any chance something could have happened to them?” Louie questioned.

“How do you mean?”

“Last evening my guys told me that your guys had expressed some fears about your rivals. Something about a threat they got if they went ahead and killed Satoshi.”

“Which rivals?” Hideki asked warily.

“The Yamaguchi-gumi.”

There was a pause. Louie let the idea germinate for a full minute before adding, “I could ask Carlo and Brennan if they remember exactly what was said.”