The Lagotti Family Series Read online

  His real concern was the vault because that wasn’t down to him and if that bit fell apart they were all screwed. The good news was that they were going to hit the joint just after it opened for business so the vault would be fat with cash and open. They wouldn’t even need to take anyone’s fingernails off with a pair of pliers.

  But the bottom line was they needed to get hold of some fire power, in part to scare the civilians and in part to take care of any situation that might arise.

  PETE HONKED THE horn twice. He’d had enough waiting around for one day and it’d only just gone past breakfast time. He honked again.

  “Come on, come on. What the fuck’s taking you so long?” he said to Brian in his head. They had a long, dull drive ahead and Pete just wanted to get it over and done with. There was business to take care of. Gun business.

  Pete was generally a happy driver. He enjoyed controlling the vehicle, harnessing the power of the engine. Raw power. But dealing with gun sellers was a different matter altogether. The guys who bought and sold guns for a living were a different breed. They were cold, man. Steely cold. Life was cheap when you could blow a man’s brains apart with a slight movement of one finger on a trigger. So no matter how well you knew them, you had to give your supplier a respectful wide berth. And that meant close encounters had an edge to them.

  So Pete was fine with today’s trip apart from the destination which was hanging on his mind already. And he didn’t need Brian jerking him about before the day had begun. He honked three times in quick succession.

  Finally Brian ambled out the building and slunk into the back passenger seat.

  “What am I? You’re fuckin’ chauffeur?” barked Pete, “Get up here!”

  “Sorry, man. Wasn’t thinking.”

  “Too fucking right, ya mook.”

  Brian clambered out the back and dropped himself in the front passenger seat.

  As soon as the door was shut, Pete slammed on the gas and they were off. He switched the radio on and KWFM 101.2 All Country, All Western burst out the speakers. Despite his ill humor, Pete was still a professional and made sure his speed never beat the limit. There was no way he was going to get stopped by the cops on this trip.

  “Settle in, it’s going to be a while and I don’t wanna get off for no piss stop,” instructed Pete when they reached the I-95 turnpike.

  “Fine by me. Let’s get this job done. The sooner we are there, the sooner we are back, ‘n’ no offense to you, but I don’t want to be stuck in this tin can all day myself.”

  “None taken. I like a man who keeps his eyes on the prize. You and me’ll get on just fine.” And with that Pete sat quiet again, thinking what a coon lovin’ cocksucker he had sat next to him. The sooner they got back, the sooner that sack of shit could leave his car. And then there’d only be one or two more times he’d have to be near the cocksucker and the other fag. Not that he had anything against fags, no. But they were both coon lovers and that sat badly at the back of his throat.

  Just before the Joppa exit Pete punctured the silence: “I need a piss,” and pulled off the I-95 onto the South Mountain Road until they reached a diner he knew a few blocks away.

  One thing Pete had not brought with him was any heat of his own. After all, he was just the chauffeur. Up to this point, he hadn’t seen the need but Brian had managed to piss him right off. Pete knew he’d hidden a small snub nose in the john at the Steers Rancho diner.

  “Stay here, I’ll be back in a min,” instructed Pete.

  “Sure thing,” auto-replied Brian.

  PETE WENT TO the right of the main entrance and headed for the washroom door. A check both the cubicles were empty and he went into the left one and shut the door. Lid off the cistern and he felt for the plastic bag he’d taped to the inside several months before.

  And there it was. He ripped the elephant tape off and grabbed the gun and bullets he’d secreted for just a day like today. Put them in his pocket, placed the cistern back on and flushed.

  Then he hightailed it back to the car, but Brian was missing. Again. Coon loving cocksucker. He hooted twice and fumed some more. The crazy thing was Pete would have been very happy to have gone inside himself - if that was where Brian was - because Pete knew the very horny Lucy who served up hot coffee and more for a traveler passing through. But Brian would have found out this was more than a chance stopover at a diner because Lucy would no doubt remember him from the last time he was here. He’d doubt that many customers took her from behind on the kitchen table.

  As soon as Pete had entered the rest room at the side of the gas station, Brian got out of the vehicle and headed straight for the door of the adjacent diner. He went to the counter and asked for a coffee to take away.

  “Going far, honey?” asked Lucy, the waitress who had a tarnished badge over her left breast. She wore too much blusher and not enough bra but that’s how she got most of her tips from the middle aged locals who came to her counter most days of the week. Most of her tips and the occasional dose of crabs.

  “Got a few more miles to go, hon’, that’s why I need the coffee,” smiled Brian back at her. Lucy poured a hot cup of brown liquid into a paper cup. “Milk?”

  “No thanks, Lucy.”

  Brian placed a dollar bill on the counter. Lucy turned round with the coffee, having wrestled a plastic lid onto the cup.

  “Keep the change.”

  “Why thanks, you can come in my establishment any time you want, darling.”

  “I sure will remember that,” said Brian and he walked out the door and back to the car where Pete was already back behind the wheel.

  “WHERE THE FUCK were you? I told you not to leave the car.”

  “Chill. I wanted a coffee and here it is, is all.”

  “Where’s mine?”

  “As you needed a piss after only twenty minutes in the car, I didn’t think you’d want one otherwise we’ll be zigzagging our way to Philly all day long. From one gas station head to the next. And neither of us want that now, do we?”

  Pete was silent and fuming for tens of miles and cranked the radio station louder to drown out Brian from his car.

  Things weren’t much better the following hour but neither of them were in the mood for a long heart to heart anyway. Eventually, Pete took the volume down on Tammy Tunes low enough so Brian could think without wanting to rip out his eyeballs. Or Pete’s.

  To try to keep Pete on-side, as he’d said to Andrew he wanted to do, Brian broke the silence: “My Ma comes from Wilmington,” and this random fact seemed a lot less random considering they were hurtling through Wilmington at the time.

  “Want me to stop so’s we can pay her a visit?” asked Pete, not sure where this was going and taken aback that Brian had kicked off a conversation after so much silence.

  “The crone’s long since buried ‘n’ gone. On the way back, we can dance on her grave if you’re so minded.”

  Pete laughed a wheezy, smoker’s laugh. “Hey, I only asked. Family’s important.”

  “Depends what kind of family you got makes ‘em important or not.”

  “S’pose so. S’pose so. Didn’t mean nothing by it, kid, okay?”

  “Sure thing. I doubt you ever met the bitch anyhow. So no skin off your nose. Don’t sweat it.” And Brian let out a small, calculated chuckle. Just enough for Pete to know that all was fine between them. “I’m gonna kill that queer baiter before all this is over,” he promised himself.

  Nothing much happened else on the way there. Pete pulled off the I-95 when they reached Philly Airport.

  “I thought we were heading into town?”

  “Nope, never was. Always going to be the airport.”

  “But you didn’t say it was the airport, only Philly.”

  “Yep, you’re right there. Never did say. Never did say,” agreed Pete.

  Brian wasn’t too happy about being misled by Pete, not that he wanted to go to Philly, anyway. More it showed how little Pete trusted him. And on the day, they were
all going to need to put all their trust in Pete. He sure wasn’t making it easy.

  Pete pulled into the long stay parking lot, a vast graveyard of vehicles, all in neat rows as far as they eye could see. You could understand why Pete had picked the place. No-one would see them and anyone turning up at random would be heard ages before they got near enough to see anything.

  They went three rows left then six rows right until they stopped near a blue Dodge. Nothing special, just another auto in this field of autos. Game on.

  Pete got out and, at precisely the same moment, a guy hopped out of the Dodge, came to the back, shook hands with Pete and popped the trunk. Pete peered into the trunk, shook the guy’s hand again and banged on the hood of their car: Brian’s signal to join them.

  “Hi.”

  “Hi. Like what you see?”

  “What’m I looking at?” monotoned Brian, in full work mode, eyes and ears open to the slightest sniff of trouble. He’d brought along a snub nose in case of need and, at this point in proceedings, his fingers were coiled around the weapon hidden in his pants’ front pocket.

  8

  “I GOT MAGNUMS, I got Colts. I got Smith ‘n’ Wessons. I got ammo for all. You tell me what you’re lookin’ to buy and we can take it from there,” intoned the guy, his seller’s spiel tripping off his tongue. Chuck had gone through this ritual a thousand times before in a thousand airport parking lots all over the country. Always the same, never a word different. People he came across weren’t going to be swayed by any smart chat from him. They were serious people with serious business in mind. They just needed the time to see what he had and make a choice.

  In Chuck’s experience most people liked the simplicity of the Colt but some preferred the unbelievable sense of power that came from the kickback of a Magnum. The noise was also useful if you had to deal with civilians too. Others liked the S and W. Its rifle made the West if you believe the myth and Jimmy Stewart movies. No, that was the Winchester. Oh fuck, who cares? Different dudes liked different guns. Finito.

  Brian pointed at the Magnums. As Chuck had noted, Brian liked them because they felt heavy in his hand and they cracked out such a fucking loud bang when you squeezed the trigger you’d have to be Satan himself to want to fuck with whoever was holding that piece of metal. Brian selected two .44s, and two .38s and enough bullets to fight his own war in Vietnam.

  Before they’d set off on their day trip, Frank had made it real clear to both of them that they were not to insult Pete’s man. They should not get ripped off, but they might need him again before the job, so leave him happy. So the haggling process involved Brian naming a price, Chuck doubling it and Brian taking a hundred bucks off as some kind of discount. Easy.

  Then Brian asked about the M112. Did Chuck have any? Chuck smiled and pulled over a tarpaulin near the back of the trunk to reveal a large black suitcase, locked.

  He pulled out a key from his pocket, turned the lock and flipped open the case to show the whole thing packed with C4 explosive forming units about eleven inches long and a couple of inches square: military grade C4 known as M112.

  “How much you looking to buy?”

  “Just one - and detonators and such.”

  “That’s fine. I have it all here.”

  Another empty haggle and the C4 was wrapped in a blanket in the back of Pete’s trunk, along with another blanket containing the guns and a small attaché case for the ammo.

  They all shook hands and Chuck got back into his car and waited. Pete and Brian returned to Pete’s stolen auto and they headed for the parking lot exit.

  THE MOOD WAS better on the way back, the tension lifted partly just because they got the job done without any hassle and partly because Pete had shown himself to be useful and not just a country-and-western loving dickwad.

  As they got nearer to Baltimore, Brian asked Pete to exit onto the I-695 to Towson. When they got there, he directed Pete this way, then that, until they’d gone way down Allegheny Avenue and stopped at a derelict factory. This time it was Brian’s turn to say: “Wait here,” and he got out. He grabbed the items from the trunk and headed into the factory.

  The place had been deserted for years because no-one round here had the spondoolix to get it back on its feet. Inside the factory was a rabbit warren of storage rooms and the main area was filled with machinery and conveyor belts. This was Brian’s preferred hidey-hole mainly because even if you went into the factory, it’d take you a lifetime to check out each room and Brian never used the same room twice. Many years ago, he’d been a security guard here so it was a home from home for him.

  He got back to the car and Pete had already turned it around. Then back on the I-95. Pete felt better about life now the stress of the day was over. And the fact he hadn’t used his piece on Chuck, who could be quite a volatile motherfucker if he chose to be.

  Brian was a lot less annoying to him too. So much so Pete suggested grabbing a bite back at the diner. He cared less whether Brian found out he’d had a particular purpose there and cared more about popping the gun back in its hiding place and getting inside Lucy’s black crotchless panties. She might have been a waitress but she was definitely a whore.

  The men downed their burgers and fries in short order and Pete went up to pay.

  “Was everything to your liking?”

  “Everything, darling. Everything I can see, for sure. Mighty fine.”

  “Well, I’ve got hidden depths, you know, babe.” Lucy licked her lips and thrust out her tits at Pete to emphasize her words.

  “And how’m I going to get my hands on those depths?”

  “I finish at one if you care to pop back. We can party ‘till dawn: I’m not on shift until tomorrow afternoon.” More licking of lips, more tit thrusting.

  Pete stood with his legs apart and his hands in his jeans pockets. Rocking back and forth on his heels, mirroring Lucy’s thrusting with his own.

  “Party on, Lucy. Party on. I’ll bring the tequila ‘n’ you bring your hidden depths.”

  “I never leave home without them, deary.”

  All the while, Brian was looking on from their booth, watching the conversation in mime. They were clearly flirting away at each other and Brian thought he might have to call a very expensive taxi to get back to Baltimore.

  Then Pete came back and they hightailed it back to Brian’s brownstone.

  “Thanks for hooking me up with Chuck.”

  “Da nada,” and almost before Brian could shut the door, the car zoomed off into the dark.

  ANDREW IMAGINED WHAT he and Brian would do with their share of the loot. There’d be new clothes and a new car and a bigger, better apartment and that’s all he really ever wanted. A nice place to live with a nice man, who cared and loved him. Not much to ask in the general scheme of things. Just a lovely man to hold him in his arms and tell him he’s safe. That’s all.

  And Brian was pretty much that guy. Okay, he’d go off on the odd unplanned trip to Vegas or AC but, apart from that, he was dependable. Unlike Martin, who had been the love of his life when he first came out. That was one flakey dude. Had opened his mind to so many experiences. Sexual experiences. But had helped him in so many other ways too.

  The trouble was you couldn’t live with a person like that. Not all the time. Martin drove him crazy.

  So that is why Andrew left him and shacked up with Brian: a tender, kind man who loved him greatly and held him in his arms and made him feel safe in this ugly, dangerous world. A man who made him feel safe.

  Hardly without opening his eyes, Andrew got out of bed and went to the bathroom, brushed his teeth, washed his face and hit the head. Then he lay back down on the bed and went back to sleep.

  When he awoke at around eleven, he sat up with a start and looked around for Brian. Then he remembered Brian had gone off early with Pete to get hold of the guns and explosives for the job. Nice. He’d chill in the apartment and cook them something for this evening. Brian liked his home-cooked food.

  An
drew planned the menu and checked they had all the ingredients in the cupboard. He made a list because it quickly became apparent there was almost nothing to eat in the kitchen, unless they had dinner composed of dry, stale bread and some rancid butter.

  Paella was the dish du jour, so there’d need to be plenty of shellfish, brown rice, spices and some neatly chopped vegetables. A trip to the corner shop was inevitable and long overdue. Andrew would also get some cereal for breakfast, bread and butter to replace the blue versions he threw away a few minutes ago, some milk for his coffee. And some coffee too. The more Andrew thought about food, the longer the shopping list grew until he realized there was no way he could carry it all home with him, even if it was just the other side of the street. He’d have to pay the boy to help, which wasn’t a problem in itself. It’s just that he and Brian agreed not to allow strangers in the apartment when they were on a job. Basic security and nothing more.

  Brian never bought food so he had no idea of the problems of shopping and keeping to their agreements. Don’t let strangers in the apartment. Don’t go off with strangers from bars. Don’t lie to him at any time about anything. Don’t, don’t, don’t. And Andrew’s rules in return? Love me, hold me, make me feel safe. Brian was a prize A fucker really, wasn’t he?

  Nah, he just wanted to be careful and keep them both safe, but those rules were pretty controlling because they sounded as though they applied to both of them but really they only applied to him.

  And it wasn’t so much suffocating, which it was, as much as untrusting. If Brian couldn’t trust him, and had to make up a bunch of stupid rules to hide this, what else was Brian hiding? And why did he feel the need to control Andrew so very much because Andrew didn’t want to control Brian to the same extent? At least, he didn’t think he did. But Andrew did always want to know where Brian was. Every minute of every day. And it made him feel quite uneasy not to be with Brian today, with Pete.