Shotgun Opera Read online

  Shotgun Opera

  Victor Gischler

  Mike Foley can never forget the night he tagged along with his brother on a job for the mob that ended in a hail of bullets. Now his brother is dead, Mike’s making wine in Oklahoma, and life is almost as good as it gets when you’ve been hiding out for forty years. Until his past comes calling.

  Mike’s nephew Andrew needs to disappear, and he needs to do it yesterday. Hanging with the wrong kind of friends, he’s seen something he shouldn’t have, and now he’s running for his life with an assassin on his trail. The consummate professional hit woman, Nikki Enders is the most lethal of a deadly sisterhood. And Andrew Foley is next on her extermination list. Unless Uncle Mike can stop her. As kill teams descend on Foley’s farm, one pissed-off ex—tough guy is about to take a final, all-or-nothing stand with shotguns blazing....

  Shotgun Opera

  Victor Gischler

  A DELL BOOK

  For Jackie

  Acknowledgments

  So many people to thank. I’m sure I’ll miss somebody. Apologies. Apologies.

  Let’s start with the crew at Bantam Dell. Bill Massey, whose editorial advice keeps me focused. I do listen to you. I promise. The cool folks in publicity who get the word out: Sharon Propson and Susan Corcoran. Keep talking me up! And I can’t forget the captain of the ship, Irwyn Applebaum. Thanks for stopping at that bookstore in Arkansas and buying that first copy of Gun Monkeys.

  Continued and heaping thanks to the men at the V&G Writing Lab: Anthony Neil Smith and Sean Doolittle. I appreciate both the pats on the back and the cold splashes of water in my face.

  The booksellers and the readers. Without you guys, I might as well stick the pages of these novels to my refrigerator with a magnet.

  Prologue

  HARLEM, 1965

  “When the noise starts, half them spooks are gonna spill out the back.” Dan Foley thumbed buckshot shells into the twelve-gauge. When it was full he checked his revolver. “So I want you ready to splatter ’em real good. Right?”

  Dan’s little brother Mike smacked the barrel magazine into the .45 Thompson gun. “Right.” Mike had more guns, .45 automatics under each arm and a.32 revolver strapped to his ankle. “How many in there?”

  Dan shrugged, screwed the cap off a flask of whiskey, tilted it back and swallowed, wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “They’re playing cards and sucking reefer. They won’t know what hit ’em. I mean, shit, be careful, sure. But I’d say maybe a dozen guys. Give or take.”

  Two against twelve. Mike gripped the tommy gun tight. No problem.

  They sat in the Buick a block down. Dan looked at his wristwatch, lit a cigarette. “Five minutes.”

  Mike didn’t like waiting. But waiting was what he did. Dan was the man, and Mike waited for Dan to give the word. That’s how it had always been for the five years since Mike was eighteen and Dan had taken him on his first job. Mike had been scared shitless, but when the shooting started, even he’d been surprised at how steady he’d turned out. He’d picked his targets, squeezed the trigger, hadn’t flinched or wavered even when the bullets had whizzed past his ears. He’d killed four men his first night out, and afterward Dan had bought him shots of bourbon until he threw up and passed out.

  Dan and Mike made a living solving problems for the guineas. Sometimes the mob needed to lean on the competition but didn’t want the blame. Mike didn’t pretend to understand underworld politics. All he knew was that there was good money in making people go away.

  Now he was preparing to punish this Harlem gang for trespassing on the mob’s heroin trade. It didn’t make a damn bit of difference to Mike which gang of scumbags pushed the poison. All he knew was that the friction made enemies, and the situation put cash in his and his brother’s pockets. That was how Dan had explained things. It wasn’t the place of two Irish boys to try to understand the morality. They provided a service and got paid and that was all there was to it.

  Dan cranked the Buick and pulled it into the alley behind the club. He pulled a grenade out of his coat pocket, showed it to Mike, and winked. “When you hear this baby go off, get ready.”

  Mike frowned at the grenade. “Where the hell did you get that?”

  “Jersey.”

  Dan got out of the car, gave Mike the thumbs-up. Mike watched his older brother disappear around the corner, the barrel of the twelve-gauge poking out the bottom of his overcoat. Mike got out of the car too, loitered near some trash cans, and kept an eye on the back door. The door was flanked by two dirty windows. He couldn’t see anything but dim light inside.

  Quiet. A horn beeped out on the street. A pigeon flapped up on the fire escape.

  Then the grenade. Mike felt the explosion in his feet. Shouting from within. The percussion pop of small pistols augmenting Dan’s thundering shotgun.

  And even though Mike had been expecting it, he still jumped when the back door flew open. There were six of them in dark suits, ties pulled loose, bloodshot eyes. One held a bleeding shoulder. Only three gripped revolvers.

  The tommy gun bucked in Mike’s hands, belching fire and raining lead. His aim went high at first, but he wrestled it down. He rattled the gun from left to right, catching the six men across the midsection. They bent in half, clutching chest and guts. One managed to get off a shot, puncturing the trash can next to Mike with a metal tunk.

  He emptied the barrel magazine, shattering the windows with the last few rounds. He dropped the smoking machine gun and drew his automatics, stepped over the dead hoods and entered the building. There were two more corpses just inside the door. The tommy gun had chewed them up good. He turned left, found a kitchen. More bodies. He’d killed another man and a woman when he’d shot out the windows. He approached the bodies, pointed his pistol at the woman’s head. If either one moved, he’d need to finish them.

  The woman lay facedown. Something stuck out from beneath her. A leg. A short, thin brown leg with a ruffled pink sock on the foot. Mike went cold. The room tilted. He focused on the pink sock. Somehow Mike couldn’t get his breath. He reached for the woman’s shoulder with a shaking hand, wanted to turn her over, see what he’d done. He had to see, had to know. Images of the child’s bullet-shredded face sprang to mind, and he froze. Could he stand to look?

  Someone grabbed him from behind, and Mike jumped.

  “What are you doing?” shouted Dan. “Get in that other room and make sure it’s clear. I’ll check across the hall.”

  “Right. Right.” Mike shook himself.

  Dan crossed the hall. A second later Mike heard two more shots.

  He was supposed to check the door on the other side of the kitchen but found his feet rooted to the floor. He kept looking at the leg and the pink sock and willing it to move. He didn’t even notice when the door across the kitchen opened and the man came out and pointed a gun at him.

  “Mike, get down!” Dan shoved Mike from behind.

  The guy fired, hit Dan in the shoulder, blood sprayed. Dan grunted, lifted his own pistol, and pulled the trigger three times. The guy grabbed his belly and doubled over. But he lifted his pistol again, his hand shaking, aimed at Dan.

  Mike snapped out of it. He’d been careless, let himself be distracted. He raised his .45 and put two slugs into the guy’s chest. He took a step back, spit blood, and fell.

  Mike went to his brother, who was slumped against the wall, holding his shoulder and clenching his jaw. “Jesus, Dan.”

  “Never mind. Get us out of here. White faces in this neighborhood stand out, and cops will be on this place in two minutes.”

  Mike put an arm around Dan, half dragged him to the Buick. They drove out of the alley fast, zigzagged, and eased into the flow of traffic. Mike checked all the mirrors but nobody seemed to be following.

  Dan looked green but forced a chuckle.
“Don’t worry, little brother. I’ve been hit worse than this.” He unscrewed the cap of the whiskey flask, fumbled it with shaking hands. The booze spilled, puddled on the floor at Dan’s feet.

  “Hang on,” Mike said. “We’ll get you to somebody. Get you sewn up real good. Don’t even sweat it.”

  But Mike wasn’t worried about Dan. Since Mike had gone in with Dan, Dan had been shot four times, stabbed twice, had his ribs cracked with a baseball bat. Dan was a big, meaty, tough guy. The Ruskies could explode an A-bomb up his ass, and Dan would come out of it smiling. So Mike wasn’t thinking too hard about Dan. He was thinking about a little brown leg and a pink sock and about how nothing would ever be the same again.

  PART ONE

  1

  Anthony Minelli, his cousin Vincent, and their pal Andrew Foley played five-card draw on a makeshift table in a nearly empty warehouse on the New York docks.

  “Full house, motherfuckers. Queens over sevens.” Vincent drained the rest of his Bud Light, crumpled the can in his fat fist, and tossed it twenty feet. It clanked across the cement floor, echoed off metal walls. Vincent scooped the winnings toward his ample belly. Three dollars and nine cents.

  “Nice pot,” Anthony said. “You can buy a fucking Happy Meal. Now shut up and deal.”

  “Hey, it’s the skill that counts. I could be on that celebrity poker show on A&E,” Vincent said.

  “Fuck you. It’s on Bravo. And you ain’t no celebrity.”

  Andrew Foley smiled, reached into the Igloo cooler for one of the few remaining beers. He enjoyed the playful back and forth between the cousins but never joined in. He popped open the beer, sipped. He’d had a few already and was pretty buzzed. He’d also lost nine bucks at poker, not having won a single hand. But that was okay. Like the Minelli cousins, Andrew had been paid a cool grand for his work at the docks today. The money had come just in time.

  Andrew was in his junior year at the Manhattan School of Music and he was always short on money. He was a week late on rent when Anthony had called with the offer. Andrew was well aware Anthony and Vincent were wiseguys in training and that a deal with them was sure to be a little shady. Andrew had known the two cousins since they were all in grade school. Andrew’s father and their fathers were pals. He balked at the thought of doing something illegal and maybe getting caught, but Vincent continued to assure him that the whole thing was easy money, a big fat moist piece of cake. Andrew needed cash. Period. Andrew’s landlord wasn’t a forgiving man.

  Besides, it really did seem like a pretty easy job. A no-brainer really. Somebody ( Just never you mind who. Don’t ask no fucking questions.) wanted a cargo container from one of the big freighter ships unloaded without going through the usual customs. This was a tall order, and a lot of people had to be bribed or distracted. Andrew, Vincent, and Anthony had a simple job. Shepherd the cargo container from the freighter to the unused warehouse way hell and gone down the other end of the wharf. The guy who’d set up the deal didn’t trust the usual union grunts to handle it, and anyway a lone cargo container getting that kind of attention would cause talk. Andrew was being overpaid enough to keep his trap shut. It was understood silence was part of the deal.

  They’d forklifted the container into the warehouse and that was that. The job had seemed so simple and the guys were so giddy about their easy payday that Andrew forgot all about an overdue term paper when Anthony produced a cooler of beer and Vincent had pulled a deck of cards out of his pocket.

  “What do you think is in there?” Vincent’s eyes shifted momentarily from his cards to the cargo container.

  Anthony picked something out of his teeth, then said, “Drugs.”

  Vincent raised an eyebrow. “Oh, yeah? You got some inside information?”

  Anthony said, “It’s always drugs. Gimme two cards.”

  They played cards, talked quietly, drank beer.

  The little explosion rattled the warehouse. They dropped their cards and hit the floor. Andrew covered his head with his arms, his heart thumping like a rabbit’s. One of the metal doors on the cargo container creaked open. A chemical smell from the explosive hung in the air.

  “Jesus H. Christ.” Anthony was the first to his feet. “What happened?”

  Vincent stood up too, dusted himself off. “How the hell am I supposed to know?”

  Andrew stayed on the floor, but he uncovered his head and risked a peek. Smoke in the air. Then they heard something, noise from within the container.

  “Somebody’s in there,” Andrew whispered.

  Vincent shook his head. “That’s fucking impossible.” He’d whispered too.

  The cousins were huddled together. Andrew stood up and huddled with them. They watched the cargo container expectantly. It was like a scene in War of the Worlds, Andrew thought. The guys looking at the spaceship, waiting for the aliens to come out. They whispered at each other from the sides of their mouths.

  “How could anyone breathe in there?”

  “Maybe there’s more than one.”

  “Illegal immigrants?”

  “Should we go over there?”

  “Fuck that. You go over there.”

  A figure emerged from the container, and they froze.

  The newcomer had dark olive skin, deep brown eyes. Black hair slicked back and dirty. A thick curly beard. He wore a stained denim shirt, threadbare tan pants. Military boots. A small pistol tucked into his waistband. Over his shoulder he carried a large brown duffel bag.

  Vincent took a step forward, raised a hand. “Hey!”

  Andrew put his hand on Vincent’s shoulder, held him back. What did the dumb wop think he was doing?

  The stowaway jumped at the voice, then fixed Vincent with those hard dark eyes. He put his hand on the pistol in his pants, didn’t say a word. Vincent held up his hands in a “no problem here” gesture. The stowaway backed toward the door, his hand on the gun the whole time. He turned, opened the door, and exited the warehouse quickly and without a backward glance.

  Anthony recovered first. “What the fuck?”

  Andrew let go of Vincent’s shoulder. “What did you think you were going to do?”

  Vincent looked a little pale. “Shit if I know. I just saw the guy and Shouldn’t we do something?”

  Andrew walked toward the container. “Let’s have a look.” The cousins followed.

  The three of them stood at the door and peered inside. Dark. An odd tangle of straps and harnesses. It looked like a car seat had been arranged to withstand rough seas.

  Andrew examined the container door, which had been latched from the outside. There was a small hole at the level of the latch blown outward from within, leaving the metal jagged and scorched. The guy inside had known exactly what to do to free himself.

  Vincent held his nose. “What a fucking stink.”

  Andrew nudged him, pointed into the corner of the container at an object that could only be a makeshift toilet. Food wrappers and other debris littered the container’s floor.

  Anthony shook his head. “Oh man. We just helped smuggle some kind of Arab terrorist motherfucker. What are we going to do?”

  “Not a goddamn thing,” Vincent said. “We were paid to bring the container here and keep our fucking mouths shut. We weren’t supposed to hang around and play cards. We were never meant to see this. I don’t care if that was Osama Bin Laden’s right-hand guy. We’re going to keep our fucking traps shut and not do a thing.”

  Fear bloomed in Andrew’s gut, but he agreed. Maybe if he kept quiet about this, never told a soul, it would all go away.

  He was known among his fellow terrorists as Jamaal 1-2-3.