The Pontiac sedan had seen better days.
So had Danny Marino.
The Pontiac was parked half on the curb outside a warehouse near the waterfront, somewhere south of Brooklyn Heights. Danny wasn’t entirely sure where. The streets had changed names twice since Tony Spada had given him directions, and the directions hadn’t been very good to begin with. Continue reading
The man from Miami arrived wearing a white suit in the rain.
Danny decided that was either confidence or stupidity. Continue reading
Charlie drove the Pontiac into Brooklyn without saying another word. Danny had discovered that Charlie could go for remarkably long periods without talking. It was one of the things Danny liked about him. The other was that Charlie seemed to know where he was going. Continue reading
Danny Marino was beginning to enjoy the advantages of being nobody. Nobody watched a nobody.
Important men lowered their voices when other important men entered the room. They stopped talking when a capo appeared. They changed the subject when somebody from another family came through the door.
Danny was a nobody that they sent for coffee. That was how he learned about Miami. Continue reading
The Pontiac sedan was parked under a dead streetlight on Second Avenue.
Rain had polished the pavement black. Storefront signs floated upside down in the gutters, broken into pieces whenever a cab went by. Somewhere down the block a delivery truck was unloading newspapers. The bundles hit the sidewalk one after another with a heavy slap. Continue reading
“We need to talk about the bomb.”
Danny looked around the room. Continue reading
Danny got into the Pontiac. The man beside him closed the door. Nobody said anything.
The driver pulled away from the curb and joined traffic as though he had been doing nothing more suspicious than waiting for his wife outside Macy’s.
Danny sat in the back with the second man. He smelled cigarettes, wool, and something medicinal. The man beside him was perhaps forty-five. Dark suit. White shirt. Plain tie. No jewelry. His shoes were polished but not new. Continue reading
The Pontiac sedan had been parked across the street for forty minutes. Danny knew that, because he had been watching that car for thirty-nine of those forty minutes.
It was black, four-door, clean enough to belong to somebody who didn’t park on the street very often. Two men sat in front. Dark suits. Dark hats. Neither had gotten out.
Danny finished his coffee. Continue reading
The five hundred dollars changed Danny’s financial condition from desperate to temporarily mysterious.
He paid what he owed at the rooming house, bought two shirts, had his shoes repaired, and put the rest in his pocket. Continue reading
Nobody contacted Danny for three days. That bothered him more than if somebody had. Continue reading