EYEHEARTZOMBIES

My fears of being alone in a strange club with these hired guns was short-lived. A few sips and Simon and the rest were ready to hit the road and get the job done. I didn’t have much of a choice, so I went with them.

Simon and Lucca got into a small, white, European car that I never would have thought Lucca could fit into on his own. Manuel pointed to a grey sedan and I climbed into the passenger seat next to him. Worried about how well a fifteen-year-old Puerto Rican would drive, but glad to be out of the club and going to work, I rode with him for two hours to an out-of-the-way alley where we could watch the hideout.

The hideout was a small warehouse with “Barthelme and Sons” painted on the sign above the door. It wasn’t any more or less shabby than the buildings around it, and the sign looked like it hadn’t seen fresh paint in twenty years. As far as fronts go, it was a damn nice one. We sat and watched the doors. And sat. And sat. And sat. At some point in the middle of the night, we heard an engine approaching and watched a beat-up van — the very one Joey and I had gone to retrieve — pull up to the roll-up doors and stop. Two people got out, one on each side, and opened the metal garage door. One of them got back in and drove the van into the building. They pulled the door closed and we didn’t hear anything else that night.

“Why don’t we go in?” I asked a few minutes after the door closed. “They’re in there. We should go get them!”

“Shhh,” Simon said. “You said there were four, right? We wait for four. If we kill two, the other two will never show.”

“Oh.” I sat back, ashamed. I waited.

Slowly dawn crept in on us and we decided to move the cars. Manuel and I moved our car a few blocks away and then walked back to the alley. Simon sent Lucca around to find an abandoned warehouse that we could hole up in while he took his car home. He came back a few hours later in a taxi cab. He paid the cabbie and then asked Lucca what he had found. There hadn’t been any movement from the cased warehouse, but we were hidden in the alley, just in case.

Lucca led us to a building half a block to the west. This building rose a few stories above all of the surrounding buildings and the top floor was completely empty. We would be able to watch the streets and the building without any trouble. Lucca was a very smart man in his own way.

We worked out way up to the top floor, breaking doors and locks as needed — Lucca has more uses than you first see — and when we got to the top, Simon sent Manuel out to get food. I got first watch on the roof, while Simon watched from a window.

Manuel, who had started to insist I call him Manny, came back with food and sat on the roof with me while we ate. “You like this?” Manny asked me.

“What? The food?” He had brought back hamburgers from some roadside stand. “Yeah, it’s OK.“

“No, no.” He shook his head. “�Te gusta matar a personas?” I just stared at him blankly and he finally decided I had no idea what he meant. He mimed shooting a gun and stabbing with a knife. “You like that?”

I chuckled a bit. “No…yeah. I dunno. Sort of. Yeah, I guess. I mean, it’s all I know how to do.” I shrugged. Wasn’t much of an answer, I suppose. It seemed to satisfy him, though.

Manny grinned at me, nodded, and, with a mouthful of hamburger, said “Me too.” I smiled back and him, then turned back to watch the hideout.

“My…mi papa…he knew…uh…” Manny ran a finger down the side of his face. “�Cara Cicatrizada? You know?” I thought for a second.

“Capone? Al Capone? Your old man was in Chicago during all of that? Did he get out or…?” I kind of trailed off, not sure if Manny would tell me anything.

“Yeah! He’s at home, sleeping.” Manny smiled with pride when talking about his father. I never got to meet his old man, but I’m sure he was a sight better than mine.

We talked for a few more minutes about various crime bosses we knew off, mostly of “Lucky” Luciano who was in all the papers and what we’d do when we made it big. Manny wanted to buy a whole lot of cars, twenty or thirty of ‘em, and drive a different one each day. Just as I was really getting warmed up on my plans, a new car approached the warehouse we were watching.

It was a small sedan, low-riding, with wheel covers and darkly tinted windows. We couldn’t see if how many where it in, but it drove up to the same garage doors as the van last night and honked three times. The door rolled up and someone inside began to wave the car in. I couldn’t see the truck, but from this new angle, I could see that there was a second door in the back of the garage that led to the alley behind. No worry about the van slipping away there, though, as the alley dead ended on both sides just a half block away in either direction.

I saw the driver of the sedan get out before the garage door banged shut. He was a short man with dark hair and olive skin. He had a briefcase with him and looked around completely unafraid. That’s one of the problems with small-time hoods; they don’t realize how fleeting life really is.

He learned soon enough.

Manny and I dropped the half-eaten hamburger and ran to the stairs. Pounding down the stairway, I was yelling for Simon at the top my lungs. I could hear Manny yelling “�Sim�n!” behind me, too, as we ran. The door at the top floor landing flew open and Simon was there, eyes wide, wondering what we were yelling about. I skidded to a stop and told him that more people had just arrived.

“How many? Did you get a count?”

“At least one,” I said. I saw the driver. I think it was the asshole who shot Joey. And I’m pretty sure there was another guy or two with him. They were in a dark green sedan. They honked twice and the door opened right up for ‘em.” I could hardly breath, but I spat this all out in one breath.

simon looked at me and Manny for a second, then turned to Lucca and said “Let’s go.” Lucca nodded, picked up a shotgun and walked to the staircase. “There are guns over there for you two,” Simon said, pointing to a steamer trunk I hadn’t noticed before; Lucca must have brought it up.

Manny and I went over to the trunk and stared down at more guns than either of us had ever seen in one place. “I…I don’t really want to go,” Manny said. “I’d rather stay here.”

“Fine with me,” Simon said. He was checking the revolver he had just pulled out of the holster hidden under his jacket. It was a snub-nosed eight-shot .357. One of those guns you see the cops use in the movies. A Saturday night special. He checked it to his satisfaction then tucked it back into it’s holster. He picked up a box of bullets of the table and dumped several into his breast pocket. He tossed another box, this one full of shells, to Lucca, who tucked it into the massive pocket of his overcoat. I saw the other pocket bulging with a similar lump. They seemed ready and I didn’t want to get left behind. I looked into the box.

Inside where a few holsters, some boxes of shells and bullets, and a couple of guns. I looked at them, then picked the other Saturday night special. I dug out a holster, too, but Simon grunted at me that “You won’t have a use for that,” so I put it back. I loaded the gun and put several more bullets in my pocket.

“OK, I’m ready to go,” I said and we started down the stairs.