Hardcase

CHAPTER 22

Old mob guys who never quite became made men don't die, they just end up as truck drivers for the mob. Charlie Scruggs and Oliver Battaglia had both been low-level button men back during the Genovese era, but now, in their golden retirement years, were driving this goddamn truck all the way from Vancouver to Buffalo. Charlie was sixty-nine years old and stout and leathery, with a face full of burst blood vessels; he still wore his Teamsters cap everywhere and proudly told everyone of the week he spent as personal driver and bodyguard to Jimmy Hoffa. He had the constitution of a healthy pit bull. Oliver was tall, thin, saturnine, a chain-smoker, only sixty-two but sick much of the time, and—Charlie Scruggs now knew after eight of these damned Vancouver-Buffalo runs—an absolute pain in the ass.

The truck was no eighteen-wheeler, just a basic six-ton carryall: what Charlie had called a deuce-and-a-half back in Korea. Because it was a smaller truck, it could go on backroads and even on streets without much notice. Charlie did all the driving; Oliver rode shotgun—literally, since there was a sawed-off shotgun in the concealed compartment at the top rear of the cab—but Oliver was so slow that Charlie put his faith in the Colt.45 semiautomatic that he kept in a quick-draw holster under his seat.

In eighteen years of driving trucks for the Organization, neither Charlie nor Oliver had ever had to draw his weapons. That was the benefit of working for the Organization.

The drawback was that they had to take the goddamned long way to Buffalo. Not only driving two-thirds the way across Canada—a country Charlie hated with a passion—but not even taking the direct route down through Michigan, back into Canada at Detroit, and up along the north side of Lake Erie. The problem was Customs. More specifically, the problem was that the Canadian and American Customs guys on the arm for the Farino family worked only the night shift at the same time a certain Thursday of the month at the same place: the Queenston Toll Bridge at Lewiston, about six miles north of the Falls. They were getting close. After more than seventy-two hours on the road, Charlie was creeping the truck north out of the Canadian city of Niagara Falls, on the scenic road that ran along the river and gorge. Of course, it wasn't very scenic now—a little after 2:00 a.m. — and neither Charlie nor Oliver would have given a shit about the view in the daylight, but Charlie had orders to stay off the QEW that ran along the shore of Lake Ontario—too many eager Mounties—so he'd had to take Highway 20 down from Hamilton and then head north again from the Falls.

The truck was filled with stolen VCRs and DVD players. Even crammed full, the deuce-and-a-half couldn't hold all that many machines, so Charlie wondered where the profit was. He knew, of course, that the decks were being dumped after being used to copy pirate tapes and discs, but it was still a mystery why the Organization thought it was worth their while to ship a few score of the units all the way from Vancouver to a has-been family in Buffalo.

Ah, well, thought Charlie, ours is not to wonder why, ours is but to do and die.

A few miles below the big park at Canada's Queenston Heights, Charlie pulled the truck into an empty rest area. He shook Oliver awake. "Watch the truck. I gotta go take a piss."

Oliver grunted but rubbed his eyes. Charlie shook his head, went into the empty visitors' center perched right on the edge of the Niagara Gorge just north of the whirlpool, and took his piss. When he came out and crawled back up into the cab, Oliver was sleeping again with his bony chin on his bony chest.

"Goddamn you," said Charlie and shook the shotgun man.

Oliver went face forward into the metal dash. Blood trickled out of his left ear.

Charlie stared for a fatal minute and then went for his.45. Too late. Both doors were flung open and an array of grinning black faces and aimed pistol muzzles pointed his way.

"Hey, Charles, my man," said the tallest jig, who had a goddamned diamond in his front tooth and was waving a huge gun. "It's cool, my man. Forget the piece, Charles." The jig held up Charlie's pistol and then dropped it back in his jacket pocket. He pointed the huge revolver. "Just be cool a minute, and then you be on your way again."

Charlie Scruggs had had guns pointed at him before, and was still around to tell about it. He didn't like the fact that they knew his name, but Oliver may have told them that. He was not about to be intimidated by this pissant. "Nigger," he said, "you have no idea the shit you just stepped in. Do you know who this truck belongs to?"

Several of the blacks, especially the one near Oliver wearing a red do-rag, began glowering hate/kill looks, but the tall bald black just looked surprised. "Who it belong to, Charles?" he said, his eyes widening like Stepin Fetchit's.

"The Farino Family," said Charlie Scruggs.

The black's eyes got wider. "Oh, my goodness gracious, heavens to Betsy," he said in a fag voice. "Do you mean the Mafia Farino family?"

"I mean this truck and everything in it—including Oliver and me—are Organization property you coon sonofabitch," said Charlie. "You touch anything in it, and there won't be a shithole in Central America where you can hide your black ass."

The bald man nodded thoughtfully. "You probably right, Charles, my man. But I guess it be too late." He glanced mournfully at Oliver. "We done already touch Ollie there."

Charlie glanced at his dead companion and tried to phrase his next sentence carefully.

The jig did not give him the chance to speak. "Plus, Charlie, my man, you already use the N-word."

Malcolm shot Charlie Scruggs through the left eye.

"Hey!" screamed Doo-Rag from the opposite side, ducking low behind Oliver's body. "Tell me when you about to do that, motherfucker."

"Shut the fuck up," said Malcolm. "'Jectory be up. See Charles's brains on the roof there? You in no danger, nigger."

Doo-Rag glowered.

"Get the machines," said Malcolm.

Doo-Rag flashed a last look but went around behind the truck, cut the padlock with bolt cutters, and crawled in. A couple of minutes later he came around the driver's side carrying a stack of DVD players.

"You sure they the right ones?" said Malcolm.

"Yeah, I sure I'm sure," said Doo-Rag. He pointed to the decal with the serial number on top of each of the players.

Malcolm nodded and Cutter came around the front of the truck. The others made way for him. Cutter removed a small knife from his pocket, pulled open a screwdriver blade, and opened the back of the top DVD.

"You right for a change, Doo." Malcolm nodded again, Cutter took the DVD players, and everyone except for Doo-Rag and Malcolm headed for the Astro Van. "Start the engine," said Malcolm. "Set the block."

"Fuck that," said Doo-Rag. "All that blood and brains and shit. Top of the fucker's head gone, man. Dude could be HIV positive or something."

Malcolm grinned and set the barrel of his huge Smith & Wesson Model 686 Powerport.357 Magnum up alongside Doo-Rag's head. "Get the keys. Start the truck. Set the block."

Doo-Rag crawled in and did all those things. The engine roared as the wooden block was jammed against the accelerator.

"Now," said Malcolm, stepping back, "trick be to pop that brake off, put it in gear, and get the fuck off the running board before truck get there, my man." Malcolm pointed to the edge of the gorge less than fifty feet in front of the truck. There was a light fence there, but no guardrails. Some traffic passed on the road, but no cars pulled into the empty rest area.

Doo-Rag smirked, kicked the brake off, leaned delicately over Charlie's slumped, bleeding corpse, kicked in the clutch, and hit the gearshift lever.

The truck bounced over the concrete parking chock and tore up frozen turf as it roared for the fence.

Doo-Rag rode along for a minute, swinging on the running board, stepping off nonchalantly at the last possible second before the truck tore through the fence and plummeted out of sight, ripping trees and branches off the side of the cliff as it went.

Malcolm set the.357 back in its long shoulder holster under his topcoat and applauded. Doo-Rag ignored him and watched the truck fall.

It was a little over two hundred feet to the river below. This gave the truck time to do a half gainer,

Charlie's corpse flying out the open door in the dark, before the vehicle slammed, upside down, into the huge rocks right at the edge of the swirling water. Dozens of VCRs and DVD players went flying out over the river, each one making its own splash. One of them almost made it as far upriver as the whirlpool. Everyone in the van cheered at the noise that came up out of the deep gorge.

There was no explosion. No fire.

Charlie had been planning to gas up on the American side, where the fuel was cheaper.