Chapter 1

I got to the job site a couple hours early. The kind of work I do, you show up too late, sometimes you don't get to go home when it's over.

Gigi was already planted in his spot, his enormous body mass taking up most of a wooden bench, a half-empty pitcher of beer on a little table to his right. The behemoth had a perfect sight-line on the front door, but his tiny eyes were too deeply flesh-pouched for me to tell where he was looking. Wrapped in a faded gray jersey pulled over drawstring pants of the same material, he looked like a moored battleship.

I found a stool at the far end of the bar. The guy behind the stick had a little slice of forehead and less chin. His eyes showed signs of life—I guessed somewhere around geranium level.

I ordered a shot—nobody does brand names in a joint like this. The inbred blinked a couple of times, then brought me some brown liquid. I asked him for a glass of water. He stared at me for a minute. You could see his mind working—it wasn't a pretty sight. Finally, enough tumblers fell into place. He reached under the bar and came up with a glass the EPA wouldn't allow you to dump without a permit.

The TV set was suspended from the ceiling by cables at the opposite end of the bar from where I was sitting. Some baseball game was on. I was too far away to hear the sound, or even make out who was playing, but I watched the moving images. Reminded me of being Inside. They rig the TV in the dayroom the same way, probably for the same reason. Most guys want to be outdoors every chance they get, but there's cons who know their soaps better than any housewife.

Usually, I drink the water, slip the whiskey into the water glass, let the ice melt into it, and then ask for another. If I think anyone might be watching close, I transfer by mouth. I was raised in places where you learn to do that with meds you don't want, watched by "staff" who hoped you'd refuse—restraints and hypos were more fun for them.

Eventually, the bartender takes away both glasses, brings me a "same again," and everybody's happy. Any regular interested in the stranger sees a man drinking solo, dedicated to his work. In a place like this, you sit by yourself not drinking, it's like a red neon arrow pointing at you. Down at you.

But I watched how other guys at the bar had to practically scream to get the inbred's attention. He mostly just stood there, in the Zen state of just being the mouth-breathing genetic misfire that he was. So I nursed my drink the way a crack-addict mother nurses her kid—if it could figure out how to drink itself, fine.

Forty minutes later, a man in a bone-colored leather sports coat shoulder-rolled in and sat down in an empty booth. Late thirties, with a tanning-bed complexion. He sported a hundred-dollar short haircut—gelled, not spiked. His wristwatch was crusted with diamonds; a three-strand loop of eighteen-karat draped against a black silk collarless pullover.

The battleship slowly broke loose from its mooring and started across the room. From behind me, two torpedoes cut across his wake. As the first passed by where I was sitting, I slid the length of rebar out of my sleeve, gripped the taped end, and took out his knee from behind. The other whirled at his partner's scream, but I was already swinging. His collarbone snapped under the ridged steel whip.

The guy in the bone-colored jacket never made it out of his booth.

I was one of the men who flowed around Gigi like river water around a big rock, all of us heading for the door. The sidewalk was empty, except for a squat-bodied man in a wheelchair. He had a begging cap on the ground next to him, one hand under the army blanket spread across his lap. Nobody gave him a second glance.

The battleship was docked at a pier overlooking the Brooklyn Navy Yard, behind the wheel of an ancient black Caddy. He covered more than half of the front seat; the steering wheel was hidden somewhere under his upper body. A thick skullcap of wiry black hair covered his bowling ball of a head. I was standing next to him, talking through the opened window. I'd done time with Gigi—keeping something solid between you and him is always a good play.

"Didn't expect you," Gigi said. "Never saw you before."

I shrugged, wasting fewer words than he had.

"I did time with your boss. Thought he'd be sending Herk to watch my back."

I shrugged again. "Herk" was short for "Hercules," named for his hyper-muscled physique. Everyone but Gigi called him "Big Herk," but Herk's 275 pounds of prison-sculptured, Dianabol-boosted chassis made him a middleweight in Gigi's league.

The man Gigi thought was my boss was me, the Burke he knew years ago. My face had changed—bullet wounds and trainee surgeons will do that for you—but the payphone that rang in the back of Mama's restaurant still took my calls. And my voice was still the same…when I wanted it to be.

"He still in your crew, Herk?"

Copyright © 2007 by Andrew Vachss.