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 motherfucker. 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 fuck 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