Don Winslow - The Power of the Dog

They come for him the next night.

Callan’s walking home from work, the front of his jeans and the tops of his shoes covered with sawdust. It’s a cold night, so he has the collar of his coat pulled up around his neck and his watch cap pulled low over his ears.

So he doesn’t see or hear the car until it pulls up beside him.

A window slides down.

“Get in.”

There’s no gun, nothing sticking out. It’s not needed. Callan knows that sooner or later he’s going to get in the car-if not this one, the next one-so he gets in. Slides into the front seat, lifts his arms and lets Sal Scachi unbutton his coat and feel under his arms, the small of his back, down his legs.

“So it’s true,” Scachi says when he’s done. “You’re a civilian now.”

“Yeah.”

“A citizen,” Scachi says. “The fuck is this? Sawdust?”

“Yeah, sawdust.”

“Shit, I got it on my coat.”

A nice coat, Callan thinks. Has to be five bills.

Scachi pulls onto the West Side Highway, heads uptown and then pulls under a bridge and stops.

A good spot, Callan thinks, to put a bullet into somebody.

Conveniently near the water.

He hears his heart thumping.

So does Scachi.

“Nothing to be afraid of here, kid.”

“What do you want from me, Sal?”

“One last job,” Scachi says.

“I don’t do that kind of work no more.”

He looks across the river at the lights of Jersey, such as they are. Maybe me and Siobhan should move to Jersey, he thinks, get a little distance from this shit. And then we could walk along the river and look at the lights of New York.

“You don’t have a choice, kid,” Scachi says. “Either you’re with us or you’re against us. And you’re too dangerous for us to let you be against us. You’re Billy the Kid Callan. I mean, you’ve shown from day one you got a taste for revenge, right? Remember Eddie Friel?”

Yeah, I remember Eddie Friel, Callan thinks.

I remember I was scared for myself, and scared for Stevie, and the gun came out and up like something else was moving it and I remember the look in Eddie Friel’s eyes as the bullets smacked into his face.

I remember I was seventeen years old.

And I’d give anything to have been anywhere but in that bar that afternoon.

“Some people gotta go, kid,” Scachi’s saying. “And it would be.. . impolitic… for anyone actually in the family to do it. You understand.”

I understand, Callan thinks. Big Paulie wants to purge the Cozzo wing of the family-Johnny Boy, Jimmy Peaches, Little Peaches-but he also wants to be able to deny that he did it. Blame it on the Wild Irish. We have killing in our blood.

And I do have a choice, he thinks.

I can kill or I can die.

“No,” he says.

“No what?”

“I’m not killing any more people.”

“Look-”

“I’m not doing it,” Callan repeats. “If you want to kill me, kill me.”

He feels free all of a sudden, like his soul is already in the air, flying over this dirty old town. Cruising around the stars.

“You got a girl, right?”

Crash.

Back to earth.

“Her name’s something funny,” Scachi’s saying. “Like it’s not spelled the way it’s pronounced. Something Irish, right? No, I remember-it’s like old dress material girls used to wear. Chiffon? What is it?”

To this dirty world.

“You think,” Scachi’s saying, “something happens to you, they’re just going to leave her to run to Giuliani, repeat pillow talk you guys maybe had?”

“She don’t know anything.”

“Yeah, but who’s going to take the chance, huh?”

There ain’t nothin’ I can do about it, Callan thinks. Even if I grabbed Sal right here, took his gun and emptied it into his mouth-which I could do-Scachi’s a made guy and they’d kill me and they’d still kill Siobhan, too.

“Who?” Callan asks.

Who do you want me to kill?

Nora’s phone rings.

Wakes her up. She’s sleepy, having been out on a late date.

“Do you want to work a party?” Haley asks.

“I don’t think so,” Nora says. She’s surprised that Haley’s asking her. She’s a long way past working parties.

“This one’s a little different,” Haley says. “It is a party, they want several girls, but it’s all going to be one-on-one. You’ve been specifically asked for.”

“Some kind of corporate Christmas party?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

Nora looks at the digital clock on her alarm radio. It’s 10:35 in the morning. She needs to get up, have her coffee and grapefruit and get to the gym.

“Come on,” Haley’s saying. “It’ll be fun. I’m even going.”

“Where is it?”

“That’s the other fun thing,” Haley says.

The party’s in New York.

“That’s some tree all right,” Nora says to Haley.

They’re standing by the skating rink in Rockefeller Plaza, looking up at the enormous Christmas tree. The plaza is packed with tourists. Carols blare through loudspeakers, Salvation Army Santas ring bells, streetcart vendors hawk warm chestnuts.

“See?” Haley says. “I told you it'd be fun.”

It has been, Nora admits to herself.

Six of them, five working girls and Haley, flew first-class on a red-eye, were picked up by two limos at La Guardia and driven to the Plaza Hotel. Nora had been there before, of course, but never at Christmastime, and it did seem different. Beautiful and old-fashioned with all the decorations up, and her room had a view of Central Park, where even the horse carriages were festooned with holly wreaths and poinsettia.

She took a nap and a shower, then she and Haley set out on a serious shopping expedition to Tiffany’s and Bergdorf’s and Saks-Haley buying, Nora mostly just looking.

“Spend a little,” Haley said. “You’re so cheap.”

“I’m not cheap,” Nora says. “I’m conservative.”

Because a thousand dollars is not just a thousand dollars to her. It’s the interest on a thousand dollars invested over the course of, say, twenty years. It’s an apartment in Montparnasse and the ability to live there comfortably. So she doesn’t spend money loosely because she wants her money out there, working for her. But she does buy two cashmere scarves-one for herself and one for Haley-because it is very cold and because she wants to give Haley a present.

“Here,” she says when they step back out onto the street. She pulls the chalk-gray scarf from the bag. “Wrap up.”

“For me?”

“I don’t want you to catch cold.”

“How sweet you are.”

Nora wraps her own scarf around her neck, then adjusts her faux-fur hat and coat.

It’s one of those clear, cold New York City days, when a breath of air is startling in its frigid intensity and the wind comes rushing down the canyons that are the avenues, to bite your face and make your eyes water.

So when Nora’s eyes tear up as she looks at Haley, she tells herself it’s the cold.

“Have you ever seen the tree?” Haley asks.

“What tree?”

“The Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center,” Haley says.

“I guess not.”

“Come on.”

So now they’re standing, gawking at the huge tree, and Nora has to admit that she’s having fun.

The last Christmas.

This is the point Jimmy Peaches is making to Sal Scachi.

“It’s my last freaking Christmas outside the joint,” he’s saying. Calling phone booth to phone booth to leave the Feds out of the conversation for once. “For a long freaking time. They got me dead to rights, Sally. I’m going away for thirty-to-life, this fucking Rockefeller Act. By the time I get pussy again I probably won’t care.”

“But-”

“But nothing,” Peaches says. “It’s my party. And I want a big fucking steak, I want to go to the Copa with a beautiful babe on my arm, I wanna hear Vic Damone sing and then I want to get the world’s best piece of ass and fuck until my dick is sore.”