Blindsight

“All right, move on,” Angelo commanded. “We’re police.” Angelo flashed an old police department badge that he kept in his pocket for just this sort of occasion. The fact that it said Ozone Park when they were currently in Woodside made no difference. It was the shape and the glint of metal that caused the desired effect. The small crowd started to disperse.

“They’re not police!” Frankie yelled.

Tony responded to Frankie’s outburst by putting his Beretta Bantam to the side of Frankie’s head. “One more word and you’re history, kid.”

“In the car,” Angelo commanded.

With Angelo on one side and Tony on the other, they stood Frankie up and dragged him to the car. Opening the rear door and pushing his head down, they shoved him inside. Tony climbed in after him. Angelo ran around and jumped into the driver’s seat. With a screech of rubber they headed west on Roosevelt Avenue.

“What are you doing this for?” Frankie asked. “I haven’t done anything to you guys.”

“Shut up!” Angelo said from the front seat. He was keeping his eye on the rearview mirror. If there had been any sign of trouble, he would have turned on Queens Boulevard. But everything was quiet so he kept going straight. Roosevelt became Greenpoint, and Angelo began to relax.

“All right, punk,” Angelo said, glancing in the rearview mirror. “Time to talk.” He could just see Frankie cowering in the corner, keeping as far from Tony as possible. Tony was holding his gun in his left hand with his arm draped over the back of the seat. Tony’s eyes never left Frankie.

“What do you want to talk about?” Frankie asked.

“The job you and Manso did on Paulie Cerino,” Angelo said. “I’m sure you guessed that we work for Mr. Cerino.”

Frankie’s eyes darted from Tony’s face to Tony’s gun, then up to the image of Angelo in the rearview mirror. He was terrified. “I didn’t do it,” he said. “I was just there. It was Manso’s idea. They forced me to go. I didn’t want to do it, but they threatened my mother.”

“Who’s “they’?” Angelo asked.

“I mean Terry Manso,” Frankie said. “He was the one.”

With a sudden wicked slap, Tony cracked Frankie across the face with the barrel of his gun.

Frankie screamed and pressed the palms of his hands against his face. A trickle of blood oozed between his fingers.

“What do you think we are? Stupid?” Tony sneered.

“Don’t hurt him yet,” Angelo said. “Maybe he’ll be cooperative.”

“Please don’t hurt me anymore,” Frankie pleaded between sobs.

Tony swore contemptuously and forced the barrel of his pistol between Frankie’s fingers and into his mouth. “Your brains are going to be all over the inside of this car if you don’t smarten up and stop screwing around with us.”

“Who else was involved?” Angelo asked again.

Tony withdrew the barrel of his gun so Frankie could talk.

“It was just Manso,” Frankie sobbed. “And he made me go along.”

Angelo shook his head in disgust. “Obviously you are not cooperating, Frankie. Remember about the lights. At the same time Manso threw the acid, the lights went out. That wasn’t a coincidence. Who was screwing around with the lights? And the car. Who was driving the car?”

“I don’t know anything about the lights,” Frankie sobbed. “I don’t remember who was driving. Somebody I didn’t know. Somebody that Manso got.”

Angelo shook his head in disgust. Nothing was easy anymore. He hated this kind of dirty stuff. He had entertained vague hopes that Frankie would have spilled his guts the moment they got him into the car. Obviously that was not to be the case.

Glancing up into the rearview mirror, Angelo caught a glimpse of Tony’s face in the flickering light of the passing streetlamps. Tony was sporting one of his contented smiles that told Angelo Tony was enjoying himself. Even Angelo thought Tony could be scary on occasion.

Once they got to the Greenpoint pier area in Brooklyn, Angelo turned right on Franklin, then left on Java. The area was run-down, especially the closer they got to the water. Abandoned warehouses lined the street. Seventy-five to a hundred years ago, the area had been a thriving waterfront, but that had long since changed save for a few isolated enterprises, like the Pepsi-Cola plant up toward Newtown Creek.

In the cul de sac where Java Street dead-ended at the East River, Angelo drove through a chain-link gate. A sign over the gate said: AMERICAN FRESH FRUIT COMPANY. The car began to vibrate on the rough cobblestone surface, but Angelo didn’t slow down. When he could drive no farther, he parked.

“Everybody out,” Angelo said. They were parked in the shadow of a huge warehouse built out over the pier that stuck out almost a hundred yards into the East River. Just across the river was the monumental mass of Manhattan ’s glittering skyline. Tony got out holding Doc Travino’s little black bag and motioned for Frankie to get out too.

Angelo unlocked an overhead door to the warehouse, pulled it up, and motioned for Frankie to enter. Frankie hesitated on the dark threshold. “I’ve told you everything I know. What do you want from me?”