Tim Green: Exact Revenge

He was shaking too.

And then she told her story.

IN THE BOWELS OF A GARAGE on 79th Street, Frank locked up a dark green Ford Excursion with a beep and a blink of its lights. The truck was loaded up with almost everything he needed. Food. Clothes. Weapons. Passports. They’d cross the Canadian border into Montreal. From there they’d fly to Sydney. The other end of the world. The only thing left was the money-he checked his watch-and by now, Mickey should have that.

He walked up and around the concrete bend. The parking attendant, a dark young black man reading a paperback, had his feet propped up on the glass inside his booth. Frank held up his ticket and winked at the kid, then proceeded up the ramp and into the gritty wind, where he turned right and headed for home.

They were waiting for him in the first narrow alleyway between buildings. He saw them as they sprang and he tried to turn and run, but he hadn’t taken a step before they were on him and he felt the sharp point of a knife prick his skin an inch from his windpipe. He froze.

The blade came to rest along the carotid artery, pressing into his skin. The warm flow of blood seeped down into the folds of his neck. Frank swallowed and lost control of his bladder. He quickly squeezed and kept the warm wetness from spreading beyond his underwear. A hand reached around and removed the gun from under his arm.

“Get in, Frank,” said a voice in his ear that he recognized.

A navy blue Grand Marquis had pulled up alongside the curb. The driver reached back and over to swing open the rear door. Frank got in, fighting the urge to yank his arm free from the man’s grip. He slid into the car and strained his eyes to see. The two men wedged themselves in on either side of him. Ramo’s men. He felt a gun barrel pressed to his ribs. They pulled out into the street, and when they got under the first light, he saw the man behind the wheel was the scar-faced Dominic Battaglia.

Frank felt his insides go tight.

He looked at the men on either side of him. They were staring straight ahead. Soldiers following orders. Neither of them knew that he had a fishing knife up his sleeve. Now wasn’t the right time, but it might save him later.

“Let me go, Dominic,” he said in a croak. “I’ll give you all the money.”

“You think I’m like you?” Dominic said into the rearview mirror. His lips were pulled clear of his teeth.

“It’s a lot.”

“I know how much it is,” Dominic said. “We all do.”

Frank’s mind spun with a billion possibilities. The car passed over the 59th Street Bridge, then onto the BQE. When they passed the Atlantic Avenue exit where Ramo Capozza lived, Frank knew he was going to die. He could kill one of them with the knife, but he’d die. His eyes searched for an interested Port Authority officer when they passed through the toll at the Verrazano Bridge. There was none.

As they crossed over onto Staten Island, Frank looked north toward the big city. The galaxy of lights. The dark towers. He bit into his lower lip and narrowed his eyes.

They left the main roads and turned onto an empty street marked by a huge billboard with a sketch of the office buildings soon to come. At the back end of the deep loop, tall piles of dirt and stacks of raw steel girders shone under the car’s yellow beams. They left the pavement and jolted along a dirt track, through the dirt piles and steel, coming to rest in a cloud of dust at the edge of a foundation hole.

The men on either side of him got out, and for an instant, he felt almost free.

“Get out, Frank,” Dominic said, wagging a snub-nosed.38 into the doorway of the car. “Don’t make me tell them you squealed like a pig. Be a man. Ramo said if you were a man, you could go easy. Me? I voted to make it last.”

Frank slid his bulk to the edge of the seat and hoisted himself out into the warm night. His armpits had bled all the way through his suit coat and he smelled the sour scent of his own fear. His eyes darted up toward the shadowy form of a machine. One of the men was climbing up its side. He heard a heavy metal door squeak open and closed and then the coughing of a diesel motor as it spun to life. Its rheumy eyes glowed and Frank saw now that it was a concrete mixer.

“Come on,” Dominic said, pushing Frank toward the hole with the.38 in his back.

Frank stumbled forward. The other muscle was on his left with his gun out too. Dominic stayed behind him. The barrel of the mixer clanked into action, spinning with an electric whine.

“Kneel down,” Dominic said, pointing to the lip of the black hole.

Frank heard the truck’s gears grinding into place and the squeak of the axle as it crept forward. He knelt down and bowed his head. He started to shake and blubber.

“Dominic, please ,” he said, sobbing. “You can have it all .”

He turned his head back to see Dominic with his legs slightly straddled, moving the pistol toward the back of his head.

“I don’t want to die,” he said, whining and holding his trembling hands up near his temples.

Dominic’s toothy grin shone in the headlights of the cement mixer. Frank spun and grabbed Dominic’s hands and gun at the same time. The gun flashed, blasting a hole through Frank’s palm, but he hung on, dropped to his shoulder, and flipped the smaller man over his back into the hole. Frank rolled, his ears ringing. The second man’s gun fired, licking with orange flames, and he felt the bullets humming past his head. Something struck his leg as he came out of his roll with the.38 leveled.

One shot to the head and the man went down like a puppet.

Frank ran limping at the cement mixer. The third man was bursting out of the door, jumping for the ground with the knife in his hand. Frank shot him in the chest in midair and he fell in a heap.

Frank turned and bolted back to the lip of the hole. He stuffed the.38 in his pocket, scooped up the second man’s Glock, and checked the load, calmly standing over the deep dark trench, listening. As his eyes adjusted, he saw a shape moving slowly along the bottom. He fired three quick shots and heard Dominic screaming in pain and fear.

Frank moved closer, limping on down the length of the foundation hole, his feet scuffing up little clouds of dust in the headlights. His left hand was throbbing now and he balled it into a fist to try and stop the bleeding. Dominic still screamed.

“Hey, Dominic!” he shouted above the noise. “Fuck you!”

Frank unloaded the Glock into the hole, careful to shoot only below his business partner’s waist. Dominic’s squealing continued now at a heightened pitch. Frank tossed the empty gun down in the hole. His own gun was in the second man’s waist and he took it out before dragging his body to the edge of the hole and kicking the gun into the bottom of the trench with Dominic. The third man went in too, along with the.38 before Frank climbed into the cab of the mixer. He eased the truck to the edge and dumped its load, filling the bottom of the footer with four feet of concrete.

LEXIS CAME OUT of Lincoln Center in high heels, clutching Allen’s arm to steady herself. “Thank you,” she said, looking up at him, burying her nose in the sleeve of his tuxedo jacket. “I know that’s not your favorite thing.”

“That’s ’cause you are,” he said, opening the door of the limousine for her.

Lexis bit her lip.

“What’s wrong?” Allen said. “I thought that was nice.”

“Very nice,” she said, smiling and touching his arm.

“Man, it’s late,” Allen said, looking at his watch. “You gotta be tired, huh?”

Lexis yawned and nodded her head.

“I’ll drop you off,” he said, his voice suddenly upbeat. “I’m shot too, but a bunch of guys are meeting in the Village. You know, since it’s my last night.”