Frank and Doreen, they didn’t talk too much, had Chicago accents so thick it was like sitting in the bleachers at Wrigley.
“Two minutes,” Peaches said. “Three at the most.”
Mike rolled down his window. Sniffed. “It’s so wet out here, Uncle, I’m gonna have to double up.”
Back in the day, Peaches worked alone. But this was a two-man job, and Mike had shown himself to be pretty good with accelerants. He didn’t know why Mike needed to sniff to figure out the wetness in the air, but whatever. Everyone had their moves.
“Do what you need to do.” Peaches reached into the backseat, unzipped his travel bag, took out a steel-headed drilling hammer. He didn’t have any guns with him, because he’d be tempted to use them, and this wasn’t the type of neighborhood where people would sleep through a gunshot.
Frank Fishmann had been a driving a truck for Kochel Farms for twenty-five years, so his back was fucked up, his knees were shit, his night vision was half gone. He was fifty-five, about thirty pounds overweight, and he hadn’t been bright enough to decline the job of hustling the Rain Man out of town in the back of his refrigerated meat truck. Well, Peaches considered, maybe that wasn’t exactly true. He probably didn’t have a choice. Frank was bright enough not to come forward to the FBI with information on where he’d dumped Sal Cupertine, even though that information was worth a $500,000 reward. Instead, he’d spent the last two years hiding out on Ronnie Cupertine’s dime. The one guy still alive, other than Ronnie, who knew where Sal Cupertine might be living was spending his days on the edge of the continent, ocean view. Probably the best years of his life.
Mike popped the trunk, came out with three gas cans, headed into the darkness. He’d set the fires on their way out, if Peaches thought they needed the cover, or in case things got messy. Peaches walked over to Frank and Doreen’s bungalow, the one closest to the street, the stench of gasoline already starting to waft toward him, pounded on the door, waited, pounded again. A light came on.
If Doreen answered, that would be too bad.
A shadow crossed the peephole. Peaches raised his left hand and waved, gave a faint smile. “It’s me,” Peaches said. “So sorry to bother you in the middle of the night.” Whoever was on the other side of the peephole took another few seconds, probably contemplating the risk. If this were Chicago, a bullet would already be through the peephole and out the back of their head. “So sorry,” Peaches said again. “Frank? Is that you? It’s me. Mr. Taylor.” That’s what Frank knew him as. The neighbor up the way. A real nice guy.
The porch light came on and Frank opened the door, stepped onto his small front porch, closed the door behind him. Had on a pair of pajama bottoms, no shirt. A tattoo of an eagle on his chest. That was unexpected. “What’s going on, Mr. Taylor?” he began to say, honest concern in his voice, but before he could get it all out, Peaches hit him flush on the right temple with the hammer, caving in the side of his head with a single blow. Maybe breaking his neck, too, judging by the way Frank went to the ground, his body kinked into an S.
Peaches hit him three more times, regardless, stopping only when he saw brain matter.
Frank Fishmann’s whole life ended in three seconds. Maybe fewer. That’s all it took, if you knew what you were doing.
Mike appeared out of the shadows and they picked up Frank, carried him to the Taurus, dropped him in the trunk, closed it. Looked around.
Nothing.
Peaches checked his watch. Three minutes, start to finish. Almost exactly.
“All right,” he said, more to himself, really. “All right.” He could still do it. He wasn’t just about the business. That was good to know.
“We good?” Mike asked.
They’d left a fair amount of blood and hair and viscera on the porch, but once Doreen realized Frank was gone, what was she gonna do? She was a felon, at this point, even if she wasn’t before. She could call Ronnie, but Peaches didn’t imagine she knew his number. Or his name. Probably had no idea of anything, if Frank was any kind of decent. She couldn’t go back to Chicago, that was for sure. Best thing for her, really, was to pretend nothing happened. Live her life. Hose off the porch.
“What’s the word, Uncle?”
Peaches loved Mike. He did. Twenty-two. His little sister’s kid.
But still.
This is why Peaches usually preferred to work alone. If he didn’t want to worry about Mike flipping on him one day, Mike had to have his own crime tonight, something bigger than an accessory beef, which the government didn’t mind turning their heads on. So Mike had to have it worse. Burn half a dozen people to death while they slept? You didn’t plead down on that charge, no matter what you gave up.
“Light it up,” Peaches said.
•
Two days later, back in Chicago, Peaches went through an OG in the Gangster 2-6—the Mexican gang the Family used to move drugs—to make the meeting happen. Lonzo Guijarro middled heroin and meth out to the hinterlands, so he and Peaches had done a few deals over the last couple years. Fair prices, no drama, Peaches able to get some good shit for the tribes, Lonzo getting credit for opening up a new market, everyone square.
Even with that shared past, Peaches still had to deliver ten Gs in a Trader Joe’s shopping bag to Lonzo that morning, the two of them meeting at the Diner Grill in Lakeview, where Lonzo liked to eat breakfast. Peaches set the bag between them on the counter like it was filled with organic bananas and locally sourced honey.
“This is nonrefundable,” Lonzo told him. He didn’t even bother to look inside or count the money. “If the boss doesn’t like the way you walk or thinks you got bad breath or some shit, that’s not my problem. You cool with that?”
“I’m not a complainer, Lonzo,” Peaches said. “Mr. Cupertine doesn’t take to me, that’s fine. We don’t need to be friends. You and me, we don’t need to be friends either.”
Lonzo shifted on his stool. The Diner Grill was an old railroad dining car, so it was just twelve stools up against a Formica counter, one guy working the grill, another guy taking orders, both dressed in white shirts, white soda jerk hats, everyone overhearing everyone, if anyone bothered to listen. “All’s I’m saying,” Lonzo said, “is that the boss is keeping it low. You feel me?”
Peaches couldn’t say he blamed him. Ronnie had spent the better part of the last year trying to unfuck himself after the Chicago Tribune detailed widespread corruption within the Chicago FBI’s Organized Crime Task Force, eventually tying Sal Cupertine’s murder of three undercover FBI agents and a CI at the Parker House to a series of gangland and jailhouse killings of Family and Gangster 2-6 soldiers and associates, and then what appeared to be some modicum of complicity with the FBI, suggesting that a network of high-level snitches were working both sides of the aisle, culminating in the faked death of Sal Cupertine. The Family had Sal shipped out of town in a refrigerated meat truck—the one driven by Frank Fishmann—and then dumped a couple of their soldiers’ bodies in the Poyter Landfill, along with Sal’s ID, and everyone played nice, acted like Sal Cupertine was dead, case closed. It all fell apart courtesy of a tip from a former FBI agent named Jeff Hopper, who conveniently disappeared, too, until his severed head showed up in a Dumpster in Chicago a few weeks after the first stories hit.
Peaches read about it just like the rest of the city did, except he saw a crack opening. So when the DOJ ended up cleaning house locally, putting on some show trials down in Springfield, then rousting half of the Family on a variety of charges, hollowing out the organization of the real earners, low-level guys copping to every crime they could, Peaches made note. The middle management was loyal, willing to save their boss from prison, probably for a little something when they got out. Do a couple years in Stateville or Joliet, come out, get a bar or a restaurant in Elmhurst? Easy. But it also meant Ronnie Cupertine was going to have a vacuum in the middle of his organization.
Because