The Fever Kill

Chapter Seven

The Bentley with tinted windows started following him as he turned the corner onto Main Street. It wasn't exactly an undercover vehicle. A few cars were around, some foot traffic on the sidewalks, shopkeepers out front. It was as good a place as any to get the next bit of business out of the way. He pulled the 'Stang over, climbed out, and leaned against it while the Bentley drew up behind him and parked.

Cruez lumbered out of the driver's side. He went six-seven, a man-monster weighing maybe three-fifty, with a face like a lump of clay that a class of emotionally disturbed children had pounded the hell out of. He liked using a. 357 long-barrel Magnum. In his hand, it looked like a derringer.

Cruez had saved Crease's life twice and Crease had returned the favor a couple of times during bad double-cross deals over the years. Crease knew their shared history wouldn't stop the monolith for a second if Tucco gave the word. Cruez was an insanely loyal dog to his master. All the bosses had a guy like this. He was imposing enough to keep away the minor troublemakers, rough enough to do damage when he had to, and huge enough that he could block a few bullets while the big cheese ran for cover.

This was going to be a scene.

Tucco was already drawing it out, taking his time getting out of the Bentley. Showing Crease that nobody could ever get away, he'd follow you down any rabbit hole, even if it led to Vermont. Cruez stood at the back door of the Bentley, opened it, and waited.

The seconds ticked off. Crease didn't feel like watching. He very much wanted to see Morena and was afraid the weakness was showing in his face. He was out of cigarettes so he stepped up the curb to a nearby convenience store and asked for his brand. They were out. He asked for another. They'd never heard of them. Finally he just pointed to a pack and paid.

Cruez was in the same spot, the back door of the Bentley still open, Tucco still inside with Morena. Man, the drama. Where the hell would any of them be without the drama. All of this and nothing was going to happen today anyway. This was just the second push.

Finally Tucco slid free from the car. Today he was dressed like a Wall Street stockbroker in a four thousand dollar black suit, long leather coat tugged to the side so you could see the suit, nice shades. He and Cruez and the car looked as out of place in Hangtree as they might've in the Mississippi Delta.

Tucco stood 5'3", going about a hundred-thirty pounds of bone and wiry sinew. He had a slight Spanish accent that he consciously affected so he could sound like a Spanish Harlem tough. Otherwise he sounded as uptown as anybody in a white collar. Truth was, he'd been hand-fed by maids and grown up with a view of Museum Mile in Manhattan, the son of two highly successful stockbrokers who made their biggest hauls every time the economy took a downturn. They raked it in during the Reagan years. Tucco had built up his double-life from scratch, same as Crease had.

It wasn't an act anymore. When Tucco gave the dead gaze it would rattle almost anybody. The lifelessness there, the pure infinite blackness of it. Crease had never been able to figure out where it came from. Not poverty, not shame. Not even rage over real or imagined slights. Crease had talked to Tucco stoned, sated, and medicated in the hospital with his guts opened up to drain. Tucco had rambled and whispered and hissed and Crease still didn't know a thing about what really went on behind the guy's eyes.

You could push Tucco pretty hard. He liked it, going right to the edge. Crease had seen it several times while they worked together. How the traffickers would talk circles around him and rip him off right in front of his eyes, and Tucco wouldn't do anything about it. The other dealers, especially the Colombians and Haitians, they'd chop a guy to pieces with a machete if he spoke out of turn or stepped on someone's shoe.

But Tucco liked walking the rim of his own malevolence. Sometimes for weeks or months, until the day came when someone would go too far, and Tucco would finally have enough. He'd react fast as a serpent then, pulling the butterfly blade and going to work with it. Sometimes it would be over fast and sometimes he really took his time.

He'd make the gang watch. Guys with ten kills who were hard as iron would turn green and pass out. Tucco liked to turn and give a grin to Crease, and Crease would light another cigarette and grin back. He'd put it all down in his reports, every detail no matter how insane or unbelievable it sounded, and the squad would go and bust some other honcho. No matter what he did, nobody wanted Tucco badly enough to let Crease drag him in.

Tucco stepped up, took one look around Main Street, and said, "No wonder you got a taste for the life, coming from a hole like this."

"Yeah."

"How long were you here?"

"Until I was seventeen."

"That explains why you're crazy."

The life didn't just mean money and slick cars and strutting into a booked restaurant without a reservation and getting the best table. It was the darkness, the dirty belly, the fear in the other guy's eyes, the being bad, and the knowledge that you could take whatever you wanted so long as you could keep it.

Crease said, "Anybody can get a taste for the life. Look at you. You like to play that you come from Spanish Harlem, but your parents were top line shakers and you were born on Fifth Avenue. Not in the back of a cab either. When you were a baby, you had servants trading off diapering you. If you were lucky, your mother maybe changed you on Sundays."

"Nah, she'd just make me hold out until Monday, when the maid came back to work. It was all right."

"You like the ride up here?"

"Yeah. I like the trees. All the colors, this is the right time of the year to catch them. I'd heard about people doing that, caravans of cars coming up this way, mooks driving three hundred miles just to stare at the leaves. It always sounded really stupid to me. But I liked it. What else they got up here? Syrup?"

"Yeah," Crease said. "There's syrup. And military boarding schools. Bed and breakfasts. Dairy farms. Lots of them."

"That just about it?"

"And llamas."

Tucco drew his chin back, his shades reflecting Crease's face back at him. "What?"

"Yeah."

"C'mon. The hell for?"

"Special wool for bulky sweaters."

"Is that right?"

It was a dumb conversation, but you always had to have dumb conversations with the other guy when both of you were waiting for the other to jump first. A part of your head was anticipating the knife, thinking about how long it would take you to get out your own. Meanwhile, you talked about leaves and llamas.

Cruez was just standing there looking like one of Zapata's banditos. You could hack at his face with an ax and probably not notice the difference afterward. He didn't worry Crease, but he might get in the way just enough to trip him up.

Tucco took off the shades. He wanted to show off the death glare, try to really spook the shit out of Crease. It wasn't going to work but you had to go through these little games, it was just the way that they had to be.

Those black, blank eyes focused on Crease now, Tucco's face empty of all emotion.

"You want to know what I did to her after you left?" Tucco asked. His voice was utterly empty, meaning it was supposed to be serious. But Crease knew he was really laughing inside, still making his own fun.

"I already know," Crease said.

"I cut her." Tucco tried to smile and his lips barely quivered. "I took her nose first. It happened so fast she didn't even know it was gone for a minute. There was nothing but a hole there and I could look all the way back into her head. You think you'd still want to fuck her without a nose? I don't think so. I think you'd throw up. Then I hacked off a few of her fingers. Not too many, just a couple. I left her her thumbs, so she can still open bottles of beer and shit. But they were important to me, those fingers, right? You know what I mean. I didn't like that she'd been touching you with them."

Crease said, "You didn't do anything to her."

"I slit her tongue up the middle, turned her into a snake. Kinda sexy really, I think I'm starting to get a little kinky in my old age, the two pieces slithering around in her mouth. Last, I took her eyes. Those gorgeous eyes, man, and you know I'm someone who appreciates a woman's eyes. The way they twinkle, the way a sexed-up mama gives you that hooded lid look, right, when she's trying to get you into bed. I still got 'em, in a little jar back at home, if you want to see them. Sitting there, the cook serving me, I have the jar next to me, tell it how my day went."

Crease gestured to the Bentley. "You left your window open."

"What?"

"I can see her in the back seat drinking, looks like a scotch on the rocks. Not that I'd ever believe you'd hurt her. Not even if her fingers did touch me."

Tucco turned and looked back at the car, tilted his head a little to see Morena in the back staring at them, sipping her drink. It was funny and it wasn't funny. She caught Crease's eye and the old familiar ache climbed back into his chest.

Tucco said, "Yeah." His hands started to move. "I'm gonna reach into my pocket for a cigarette."

"No," Crease said. "You're not." Instead, Crease drew his own pack and proffered it.

"What's this? Are those… Jesus Christ, are those menthol?"

"All the store had left."

Tucco waved them away. "You're making me sad, seeing you like this. How'd this happen to you?"

It was a good question, Crease thought. He still wasn't any closer to an answer.

"You in this place, I'm finding it hard to believe."

"I do too."

The smell of burning leaves drifted through the air. Tucco stared off at the hills in the horizon. "So where'd you bury that other one I sent after you?"

"Jinga's boy? I sent him home."

"You did? How'd he get there?"

"I gave him some cash to pay his way on a truck."

It tickled Tucco so much that he almost let out a laugh. You couldn't ask for more from him. Just seeing a flash of his teeth was like outright hysteria in anybody else. "If Jinga hears that story he'll kill the idiot himself. And you know the imbecile is gonna tell him."

"Seriously, you offered him twenty g's to ice me? You couldn't keep it even slightly realistic?"

"He was a moron to believe me. That Jinga, he hires some stupid people. Not my fault that these dimwits expect every fairy tale you tell them to come true. Besides, I knew he wouldn't get the drop on you. I didn't want him to."

That sounded like the truth. This whole thing, it was just Tucco-and Crease too, he had to admit it-having more fun while they both ramped themselves up, got the adrenaline going. You couldn't take things too seriously in the life, not even while somebody was getting waxed in front of you. While machine guns stitched the walls around you and you hid behind an end table no thicker than cardboard. You always had to take it easy, find the humor in the moment, even if there was none.

"You need much longer to do what you came here to do?" Tucco asked.

"I don't know."

That was an affront. It was squirrelly, not giving an answer. It made Tucco purse his lips and go, "Humph."

Crease lit one of the menthols and took a drag. Jesus, it was like smoking cough drops. "Another couple of days, nothing you can't deal with. Watch the leaves for a while longer. Maybe you can figure out a way to break new territory up here, get some guys in the truck stop to work for you. Get some kickback with smuggling over the border."

"Canada, yeah. Big thing now is wetbacks coming up from south of the border, and Asians coming in from north of the border. Getting guys with 18-wheelers, hauling freight… plenty of room for fifty, sixty chinks trying to start a new life."

"See, you can be benevolent. Asians will be naming their kids after you. Tucco Lee."

Tucco's brow started to knot at the thought of it, until he realized Crease was just fucking with him. "So, this thing you have to do here. It has to do with your father? And how you came down to New York, and why you're a narc?"

"In a way, yeah."

"Good, get it squared, then we'll square up, see where we stand."

Crease said, "I'm going to get in the back of the Bentley and talk with her. Give us some privacy."

Tucco was too slick to show he was pissed about it. It went back to how he liked to be pushed right to the edge.

But Cruez swung out in front of Crease and tried to block him, which was the totally wrong move to make. He'd juked the show. Tucco was playing it so cool, and now he had to extend that cool to Cruez too. You could see it got under Tucco's skin a little, having to go the extra yard and put his arm on the monolith and ease him back. It put too much attention on the scene and too much focus on the fact that Crease was getting what he wanted.

Tucco said, "Sure, you get yourself a drink too, all right? Got everything you could want back there." Knowing Crease didn't drink but making the offer anyway. "Your old man, he liked whiskey, right?"

"The cheaper the better." Grinning, Crease let the cigarette dangle. When you had a pose you liked to hit you had to stick with it. "This will only take a minute."

"Take your time in my car, with my woman, man. What's mine is yours."

There was a time when it was true. Tucco wouldn't deny Crease anything. It was part of the action, dangling everything you owned in front of your crew's faces. See which one of them would leap for the bait, which ones wouldn't.

The ones that wouldn't were more greedy. They were only biding their time until they could get it all. The ones who acted like they didn't want anything, those you got rid of first.