$200 and a Cadillac

XXVI



They waited in the car, sipping from Styrofoam cups of coffee they’d gotten at the gas station across from the Super 8. The night air had chilled the world just enough for a small pool of steam to collect on the windshield above the dash where Victor set his cup. Victor checked his watch as Tom spoke.

“Maybe they arrested him.”

“I doubt it. But if he doesn’t come out in an hour or two, we’ll have to switch to Plan B.”

“What’s that?”

“I don’t know yet.”

Tom shifted in his seat, leaned against the door and sipped his coffee. Victor refused to answer questions last night, and was being coy this morning too. Tom ran through a list of everything he knew about Victor. It was a short list. In fact, what did he know really? He couldn’t be sure that Victor had ever even been in the FBI. It was a story he told, it seemed believable. Tom assumed the company would have checked him out. But Tom didn’t know. He didn’t know anything for sure.

And now he was sitting in a car in a shithole town in the middle of the desert waiting for a guy to go to work who didn’t seem to have a damned thing to do with the reason they were there. Tom thought about the ocean. He liked waking up to the moist air and the smell of salt water. Not that he minded being away from home. He liked to travel as much as the next guy, but this place was f*cked and Victor was acting crazy.

“Look man,” Tom said, shifting in the seat again, “you’ve gotta tell me what we’re doing here. Do you really think this guy has anything to do with the oil? Where do you know him from?”

Victor cleared his throat and wiped his nose, but didn’t say anything. He just kept staring at the house, watching it as if the whole structure might suddenly sprout legs and scamper away across the desert. Tom watched him finish his coffee, wanting to push the issue, but not wanting to piss him off. After a few more minutes, he tried again.

“Victor,” he began. But this time Victor cut him off.

“Hey, this is a stakeout.” Victor looked over at Tom. “You have to focus. If you keep talking, we might miss something.” Victor shook his head. “Man, you wouldn’t last ten minutes at the Bureau.”

“Last I checked, we weren’t in the goddamned Bureau. And I might be more willing to sit here and stare at this guy’s house if I knew what the hell was going on. As far as I know, this is just some guy who coaches baseball in this podunk town and he doesn’t have a damned thing to do with the guys we’re after.”

“There’s something going on here.” Victor glanced over at Tom. “Last night, when I was listening on the phone, he was talking to some guy about a payoff.”

Victor kept talking while he watched the house, setting an example for Tom. He didn’t want to miss anything. “Now, if I know this guy—and trust me, I know him pretty damned well—he’s up to something. It wouldn’t surprise me if he’s involved in some kind of oil theft. The payoff may have something to do with that.”

“But we know where he lives. Shouldn’t we be looking for that guy with the oil truck?”

Victor smiled. “I think this guy might lead us to that guy. And besides, if my hunch is right, I think the baseball coach is going to leave the house and go to work at Monarch. It’s the only damned business around here where he could get placed—” Victor caught himself and cut the sentence short. But it was too late, Tom had heard it.

“What’s that supposed to mean? You mean he was sent out here?” Tom sat quietly for a second. Victor could almost hear him thinking it through. Then Tom said, “What do you mean, placed? Like someone got him the job and sent him out here? Wait a minute, like the witness protection program or something? Is that what you’re talking about?”

Victor kept staring at the house. He wasn’t talking about anything now. But Tom kept at it. “Look, man, the cat’s out of the bag now. You might as well tell me. I’m not going to say anything.”

Victor stayed quiet. He’d screwed up. He shouldn’t have said anything. That was secret information. He was obligated to maintain confidences. Breaches of government secrets were taken very seriously. But Tom wasn’t going to drop it. And if Howard Lugano was involved in anything criminal, then there was no obligation to maintain the secrecy of his identity. If that was the case, then telling Tom wouldn’t matter. What difference could it make if Victor spilled it before or after they caught him?

“Come on, Victor, who the hell is this guy?” Tom leaned forward a little, waiting for Victor to crack. He could see Victor was getting close to saying something. “What’d he do?”

“Okay,” Victor started. “But look. The only reason I’m saying anything is because I’m damned sure this guy’s involved in something.” Victor tossed his empty cup over the seat and onto the floor behind him. He kept watching the house as he talked.

“Guy’s name is Howard Lugano. He’s a mob hit man. At least he used to be, before he ratted out the head of the family he worked for back in New York. We had him dead to rights for at least three murders and we’re pretty sure he killed at least twenty others. But hell, the real number’s probably a lot higher than that.”

“No shit?” Tom laughed. His excitement caused him to bounce a little on the seat and the whole car shook.

“Calm down.” Victor turned to him. “This ain’t no joke. This guy is one bad motherf*cker. You know what his trademark was? He used to kill people by beating them to death with a baseball bat.”

Tom listened. Victor turned and watched his eyes grow wide as he processed it. After a few seconds, Tom said, “And now he coaches little league?”

Victor grinned and nodded.

“And the guy they found in the desert?”

“That’s what I’m thinking,” Victor said, and then turned back to the house. “Holy shit, there he is.”

Victor pointed and the two of them crouched down in the seat and watched Lugano, standing on his small front porch, locking his front door. He was dressed in light cotton coveralls and carried a black lunch box. Victor smiled at the absurdity. The former mob hit man dressed like an average blue collar Joe heading out to work.

He wondered how Lugano did it. How a guy used to wearing baubles and Armani suits and driving his Lincoln Continental around Brooklyn looking for the next skull to crack could survive in a place like this. It had to be enough to drive a guy like Lugano crazy. And then Victor thought of the dead guy in the desert and suspected that maybe it had.

“Are you sure this is the same guy?” Tom whispered.

Victor nodded. He was sure. He’d been the lead investigator who had personally questioned Lugano for a solid week. Wearing him down, day after day. Showing him black and white photographs. Playing him snippets of wire tapped conversations. Leaving him to guess at how much more they had on him. Leaving him to wonder what Fazioli would do to him when the feds let it be known who was talking to them. Lugano wasn’t an idiot. He knew Victor would leak it onto the street whether Lugano told them anything or not. Once he was in custody, the jig was up. They either had him, or they’d get him killed. The only way out was to start talking.

Lugano ran his hands over the pockets of his coveralls, making sure he had everything, and then went down the steps to his truck. They were parked off to the side of the house, at a hard angle, so they could just see the porch and only about half of the truck. Lugano didn’t even look in their direction. Didn’t suspect a damned thing.

A few seconds later, they watched the truck with the pipe rack on it back out of the driveway and into the street. Lugano let it idle for a second and then gassed it, turning down the street and driving away from them. Victor watched him go, waiting for the truck to get all the way to the end of the road and make the turn before he would follow. All of the space around them was wide open, which made it tough to tail someone without being spotted. But Lugano wasn’t looking for tails. He was too many years away from that kind of life and his sense of suspicion had all but disappeared.

Victor watched the side of the house, waiting to start the car, when he noticed something strange. “Wait a minute.” He perked up, blinked his eyes to clear his vision, and said, “Who the f*ck is this guy?” Victor pointed and Tom turned and saw it too.

A very fit man in his late forties scaled the rear section of the chain link fence like a professional and bounded across the yard and up against the house. He wasn’t dressed like a burglar, and his movements were swift and smooth, as though his actions required no thought at all. The man went flat against the wall and turned quickly to peek in through the glass window in the back door. Seeing no one, he sent his gloved hand through the glass and was turning the knob from the inside in half a second. And then he was gone, disappearing into the house. Textbook moves, Victor thought.

Tom stared at Victor and asked, “Who the hell was that?”

Victor returned the stare and shrugged. They waited another minute. Glancing back and forth from the house to each other. But with every second, Lugano was getting further away. They might lose him. Finally, Victor started the car and pulled away.

“F*ck it,” he said. “If the bastard’s getting robbed, it only proves there’s justice in the world.”

“Karmic fate,” Tom laughed.

“F*ckin’ A.”