Free The Vulture's Game by Lorenzo Carcaterra

UPPER WEST SIDE, AUGUST 6, 2002
    10:00 P.M.
    The late-model sedan was parked under an overpass near the 96th Street exit of the West Side Highway. Headlights off, tinted windows rolled up, and eight-cylinder engine idling, white puffs of smoke rising from dual exhausts. Two men were in the front seat, one talking on a cell phone, the other resting his head against soft leather, eyes closed, looking to shake off the effects of too much wine and too little sleep. A light rain dotted the windshield and rear window.
    The first man snapped the cell phone shut and tossed it on the dashboard. “I knew as much before I talked to him as I do now,” he said. “I mean, shit, is it too much to ask when the guy is supposed to show and what we’re supposed to do when he does?”
    “I only heard your end of it,” the man behind the steering wheel said, eyes still closed. “Maybe it’s one of those situations where the less we know, the better off we are. You know, in case whatever is
supposed
to happen
doesn’t
and the whole thing heads sideways.”
    “Maybe so, Jerry,” the other man said, “but it would be nice if we at least were told
something
.”
    “You were on the call for at least ten minutes,” Jerry said, “and you didn’t say much from your end. Which means you must have gotten a heads-up on a few things.”
    The second man took a few deep breaths, gazing out the passenger side window, his thin features highlighted by the glint of city lights. “Some guy is supposed to show up,” he said, “a capo from Marelli’s crew. He drops a leather satchel on the hood, then turns and walks away. We wait five minutes, then grab the satchel and toss it in the backseat. We head back to Queens, park the car on Jackson Avenue, leave the satchel where it is, and meet up back at the restaurant. That was the plan laid out the other night and that was the plan just retold to me on the call.”
    “They give you a tease as to who the guy might be?” Jerry asked. “Or what the hell is in that satchel?”
    “Not a clue either way,” the man said. “Here I am closing in on fifty and in this racket since I was old enough to crack a parking meter and I’m still no better than a damn messenger.”
    He paused and turned to look over at Jerry, who was sitting up now, searching through his pockets for a pack of gum.
    “You can’t sit there and tell me shit like this doesn’t burn your ass as well?”
    Jerry shrugged. “Maybe I didn’t go into this expecting as much as you did. We’re muscle hire for a guy who made himself rich working real estate and construction swindles. We’re never going to be more than that, never going to be a part of his inner circle. We are who we are, Bobby, and we’re paid to do what we do. And maybe it’s time for you to begin to expect nothing more than that.”
    “You mean like that job last month?” Bobby said. “We go out, torch some poor bastard’s house all because he wouldn’t give up air rights to our guy. That old man was no threat to anybody and he was as likely to sell air rights as you and me are to be sworn in as U.S. marshals. But his blood is on us. We’re the ones who set the fire that killed him. The guy that sent us? He was at some swank to-do on Park Avenue. With the mayor, no less. Read about it the next day in the papers. The old man we toasted got the front page, our guy gets Page Six, just the way he likes it.”
    “Don’t bang yourself up over that,” Jerry said. “The old man was supposed to be on a golfing vacation in Florida, not in the living room watching a ball game.”
    “But he
wasn’t
,” Bobby said. “And six will get you twelve our guy didn’t lose any sleep over the way it played out.”
    “And neither should we,” Jerry said. “Look, if all this is eating at you as much as it sounds like it is, why don’t you walk away? You got some money put aside. Take it and find a place where none of this shit matters.”
    The satchel landed with a soft