Boomtown, p.1
Boomtown, page 1
BOOMTOWN
A. F. CARTER
THE MYSTERIOUS PRESS
NEW YORK
CHAPTER ONE
CHARLIE
You’re a psychopath. That’s what my father said when he kicked me out of the house for the last time. I was nineteen, still a kid, but I’d always been trouble. Like from birth. No, make that from conception. My mother, according to him, was sick the entire time she was pregnant.
I wasn’t ready for independence, I admit that, and I ran from home to the office, where I pleaded my case to Mom. She wasn’t impressed. “If it was up to me,” she said, “I’d have thrown you out when you turned eighteen.”
“But I’m your oldest son.” Though my parents insisted that I’d never spoken a truthful word in my life, this much was undoubtedly true.
“First thing, I have three other children, normal children. Second thing, what’s wrong with you can’t be fixed.” She rubbed her hands together. “Good money after bad? I don’t play that game.”
My parents owned and operated Starstone Imports. The firm imported finished gemstones. We buy the rough material at mine sites all over the world, then ship it to Mumbai where Indian jewelers cut the gems before dispatching them to our offices in New York. They go from there to high-end jewelers throughout the country.
I’d failed at just about everything by then, having already flunked out of the college my parents spent a fortune getting me into, but I appreciated gemstones. Their beauty didn’t particularly interest me, only their value, which is why I helped myself on the way out. And I wasn’t about to settle for a few citrines and an amethyst with a window in the middle. I needed a decent start in this life I had to live on my own. So, along with a handful of smaller stones, I snatched a forty-carat, trillion-cut tanzanite. The blue stone came with a cert from the Gemological Institute of America declaring it to be vivid, the highest classification for a tanzanite. Vivid referred not only to its perfect saturation, but to patches of violet that flashed whenever the stone was moved. Looking into this stone was like staring into an indigo sky as the last daylight fades. It was the kind of stone that designers sell to their superrich clients for upward of eighty large.
As it turned out, I made a big mistake. I figured my parents would never call the cops on their eldest son. Beep, wrong. If I was more experienced, or even if I’d given it a little thought at the time, I would have known what was coming. That’s because unless a theft is reported to the police, no insurance company will accept a claim.
Two days later I was arrested in a Bronx pawn shop where an old man offered me a hundred bucks for what he claimed was an “over-saturated topaz.”
I got eighteen months in a minimum-security prison. Partly because my parents wouldn’t pay for a decent lawyer and I had to go with a public defender. Partly because I’d been arrested many times for petty offenses like shoplifting or selling small amounts of coke to my classmates. And partly because I refused a plea bargain that would have put me back on the street in five or six months.
I was furious on sentencing day, not that it did me any good. For the first time in my life, I was out of options. But life can fool you. Prison was just what I needed. Call it a great awakening, but my time at the Beacon Corrections Facility led directly to where I am at this moment, driving through a rinky-dink city named Baxter with a dead whore in the trunk and a guinea head-breaker named Dominick Costa sitting alongside me.
The whore wasn’t murdered. Overdose, probably, or suicide. Which doesn’t matter. What matters is what I found on my plate when I got to the double-wide trailer where she and the girls live (or in her case, lived). The other girls were freaked, but not me. Everybody dies and it’s no big deal unless you die in a whorehouse. Then somebody has to get rid of your body. A headache, yeah, but that’s what I’m here for. To solve problems. To keep the operation up and running. To maximize the return on my employer’s investment.
“So, you think Corey offed herself?” Dominick half whispers. “I mean, why the fuck would she do something like that?”
Dominick Costa has committed murder. How many times I don’t know, but he’s pure muscle, which is why Ricky sent him to Baxter. We’ll need an enforcer, he said, and I couldn’t disagree. Only Dominick Costa has the IQ of a frog and he’s only manageable because he’s scared of Ricky Ricci, who’s a thousand miles away in New York.
I normally stay in Boomtown, away from the city, but it rained last night and half the dirt-and-gravel roads are knee-deep mud. I can’t risk getting stuck, not with the whore in the trunk. So, I’m driving through Baxter in a three-year-old Honda sedan, keeping my speed down. There’s a cop in Baxter, a dyke captain named Delia Mariola. She’s a real crusader, gonna make her city safe, and I don’t doubt her commitment. But she’s got exactly zero say in Boomtown, which is in Sprague County.
“Maybe she OD’d,” I finally say.
“On a coupla bags a day?”
“And whatever she might have bought on the outside. Or the johns put up her nose.”
Technically, our girls aren’t trafficked. These women are older, the youngest past thirty, and they’ve more or less adjusted to the life and the working-class johns they service. They get a piece of every trick they turn, less room and board, and they can leave anytime they want, no hard feelings. As long as they’ve paid off debts, including the loans they took prior to working for us. Loans we retired before we transported them to Boomtown. And there’s the drugs, too, which we are happy to supply.
I have a hard rule. No shooting up. I don’t need the johns walkin’ away because some bitch’s tracks are oozing. Other than that, it’s whatever you want, as long as you work your shift and pay for your highs out of your earnings. No earnings, of course, no drugs. One hand washing the other.
Ricky did the original research and set the goalposts on the day he called me in. I assumed that he’d sniffed out my side deals, which could’ve gone very bad for me. But Ricky had something else in mind. Somethin’ much bigger. First, he showed me a map of this little city. You wouldn’t give it a second glance, your eyes passed it on a map, but that was about to change.
“Nissan’s building a factory there. Gigantic, right? Like three million square feet, I kid you not. Like fifteen hundred acres. So, who’s gonna build it? The locals? There ain’t enough workers in the whole city to build that plant, even if they had the skills, which they mainly don’t.” Ricky was talking with his hands, which he does when he gets excited. “They’re gonna come runnin’, Charlie, construction workers from all over the country, and they’re gonna leave their families behind. So, whatta ya figure they’ll want after work?”
I responded without hesitation. “Broads, drugs, gambling . . . and loans when they burn up their paychecks and can’t send money home.”
“How ’bout truckers haulin’ the iron, the concrete, the wiring, the rebar? How ’bout them?”
“Same thing.”
“I want every cent, Charlie, and soon. The construction won’t last that long, and when it’s over, most of those workers are gonna head home. We gotta get it while we can.”
The speech was typical Ricky in its ambition. Ricky wants to run New York the way Al Capone ran Chicago. He isn’t close, and isn’t likely to get close. Capone never had to face the RICO act. But reality never dominated Ricky’s scheming, and I wasn’t surprised until he named me to manage operations in Baxter. This was a big move up for me. I’d been running a hot jewelry setup that bought from high-end thieves and sold to greedy collectors online. A diamond necklace from a top designer is easy to identify. The FBI maintains a database, as does the industry’s trade associations. You try to sell that necklace, you’re takin’ a big risk. Unless you strip out the diamonds.
With rare exceptions, the stones themselves are as anonymous as anonymous gets. I remounted them, then sold the rings or bracelets or necklaces at twenty-five percent below wholesale to private clients who must have known what they were getting and didn’t care.
“Corey was all right,” Dominick said. “I liked her.”
“Okay, so what?”
“We should, like do something.”
“What, you wanna buy her a coffin, maybe a wreath, put up a headstone?”
I shouldn’t be talking this way. The sarcasm, I mean. It feels good, but it doesn’t work. I can’t help myself, though. The schmuck’s worried about a dead whore, for Christ’s sake. Me, when my mother died, it had exactly zero effect on my mood. Like nothing, right? Because everybody rots in the end.
“We could maybe say somethin’.”
“Pray, you mean?”
“Somethin’, okay? To show that she lived.”
Enough being enough, I don’t waste my breath with another comment that’ll go right over the jerk’s head. We’ve passed Baxter’s northern border. Now we’re in Revere County and it’s boonies all the way. Farms and cattle and pigs, fields sheeted with frost that go on forever. I turn onto a state road, Highway 20, and drive for about a mile until I come to a grove of trees that runs deep enough to hide what’s about to happen. It’s three o’clock in the morning and the road’s deserted, but I’m not wasting time.
“All right, Dom, there’s a shovel in the back. I want you to get out of sight and dig some kind of grave. There’s somethin’ else I need to do.”
“Hey, it’s cold out there.”
“The exercise’ll keep you warm.”
The moron stares at me for a moment and I know what’s coming. Back east, Costa took orders from Ricky and nobody else. Most likely, Ricky sent
“I ain’t gonna stay out here alone, no transportation if I have to make tracks in a hurry.”
Anger’s not my thing and I’m not angry now. But I can do anger. Hell, I can do rage when it’s called for. Plus, I bulked up in prison and I wasn’t small to start out. So Dominick jerks back when I turn and poke a finger into his chest.
“I don’t wanna hear that.” I keep my voice halfway between a snarl and a roar. “You work for me out here and you’ll do what the fuck I tell you to do.”
When Costa finds his voice, it’s half an octave higher than usual. “I work for Ricky,” is the best he can do.
“Ricky’s a thousand miles away.” Now I’m poking as fast as I can. “Out here, I’m in charge. Completely, Dom, like one hundred fucking percent. You don’t like that, get on a train tomorrow morning.”
Costa leans against the door and stares at me through dark brown eyes that appear black in the dim light. I’m supposed to be afraid of him, right? He’s a killer, a hit man, right? But I don’t do fear, either, and when the truth finally dawns on him, he draws a breath. Relieved, I think. No more decisions to make.
“Awright, Charlie. But don’t forget me. I get the creeps out of the city.”
CHAPTER TWO
CHARLIE
I come into Baxter by a side road, eyes jumping from the windshield to the mirrors. Looking for cops who don’t appear. No shocker because Oakland Gardens, hard on the county border, isn’t the kind of neighborhood cops feel the need to protect and serve. The houses are more like shacks and they’re spread out, like they can’t stand to look at each other. Most have been abandoned and there are no squatters either, cold as it’s been.
All to the good. I drive past one of the few houses still occupied. It belongs to a biker-pimp named Titus Klint, as does the Harley parked in the yard and the mixed-breed bulldog on a long chain. The animal’s already torn up a pair of rival bikers and I know Titus feels secure having the dog around. The mutt has to weigh more than a hundred pounds.
The animal’s name is Spike, a choice that I’m sure taxed the limits of Klint’s imagination. It pulls at the chain and barks loudly, fangs flashing, then shuts down, enemy vanquished, when I turn the corner.
I pull over and park fifty feet from the intersection. The street I’m on must have a name, but there’s no marker and the streetlight on the corner is dark. Me, I’m not the hesitating type once I make a decision. I tried to reason with Klint, a pimp by trade, to bring him and his girls into Ricky’s orbit. He refused, threatening me with total destruction if I even spoke to him again.
It isn’t something you forget, that kind of insult. That we were already set up only made it worse. Our whores work at the Paradise Inn, a double-wide trailer with a bar-lounge in front and rooms to either side in the back. A prefab Quonset hut almost next door also has a lounge in front, but the larger section in the back houses a small casino. The joint isn’t much—a couple of roulette wheels, three blackjack tables, a craps table, and a dozen slots—but it’s a real moneymaker. The drug part is also running, though in an earlier stage. We have a presence in several bars and we’re wholesaling to a few dealers.
For now, each of these operations is managed by its own crew, but I can pull them together, maybe twenty-five men, at a moment’s notice.
Klint made his own bed. He could have accepted our terms, could have paid tribute. He didn’t. Now he’s going to become an object lesson. I pop the trunk release and get out of the car. My weapon is in the trunk; Corey too. She was still pliant when we folded her into a fetal position, but she’s stiff as a board now. At the moment, though, I’m focused on the leather bag next to her feet, the bag and the silenced Sig Sauer automatic inside. Silencers are now legal in forty-two states, thanks to the NRA. Mine isn’t legal, of course, but once manufacturers began shipping suppressors to gun stores, a certain number inevitably found their way onto the black market. Like the one attached to the .22 caliber Sig Sauer. The pistol isn’t very powerful. Or very accurate. Beyond twenty yards, in fact, it’s just about worthless. Close in, though, it’s a lot quieter than nine millimeters or forty-fives. Even silenced, guns make noise.
I slide my hands into surgical gloves, also in the bag, and slip a surgical mask over my mouth and nose. I’m not trying to prevent infection, only to avoid leaving my DNA at what’s sure to be a crime scene.
There are no lights in the windows that I can see when I turn the corner of a half-demolished house next door. I’m facing the back of Klint’s house, but I can already hear Spike growling as I cross the space between the two homes to squat beneath a window that looks into an empty bedroom. The window’s been raised a few inches, all to the good.
Out front, Spike begins to bark, softly at first, then loud enough to be heard back in New York. The din is impossible to ignore and I wait, pretty much unconcerned, until I hear Klint’s gravelly voice, instantly recognizable.
“Shut the fuck up, shut the fuck up, shut the fuck up.”
I raise the window and slip inside, only to find a mattress on the floor to my left with someone lying on it, a woman or a small man. With the covers pulled up, it’s impossible to be sure.
“Shut the fuck up, goddamn it.”
The bedroom door’s open a bit and I peek through the gap to find Klint standing with his back to me. He’s still yelling and the dog’s still barking, so I’m not worrying about making noise. No, I’m imagining Klint finally closing the door, imagining the look on his face when he turns to me. Will he beg? Attack? Try to run out the door? Will he plead his case, swear eternal fidelity and an ongoing piece of his action?
There was a time in my life, before I learned my lesson, when I would have surrendered to temptation. To look into Klint’s blue eyes when he realized that his empty promises wouldn’t save him, to relish the moment, the power. To hell with the possibility that he’ll attack, that I’ll miss or only wound him, that he’ll get his hands on me. The risk is part of the thrill, maybe the best part.
No more, though. Now it’s all about results. I have a job to do, a simple job, and I do it.
Dominick’s waiting for me right where I left him, but there’s no grave. I’m thinking he changed his mind, that he intends to defy me, but then he scratches at the ground with the blade of the shovel.
“It’s frozen,” he announces.
“What’s frozen?”
“The ground. You wanna open a grave, you’re gonna need dynamite.”
I take the shovel and give it a try. Dom’s not exaggerating. The winters out here are beyond cold and there’s no digging through the frozen ground. Not with a shovel. This is something a better manager might have anticipated. In town, between the full sun and the hundreds of vehicles traveling over the Boomtown roads, there’s mud everywhere. Out here, in deep shade, winter hasn’t let go.
“Let’s make tracks, Dom.”
I don’t have to tell him twice and we drive away seconds later. I have no choice now. I have to get rid of the whore’s body and that means dumping it where it’s likely to be found. I enter Baxter the way I left it, along backstreets, until I find a block where the few homes still standing appear to be unoccupied. We have to move fast, but I don’t rush. I can’t anyway, because the whore’s body is jammed and we have to ease her out, a shoulder first, then her feet, finally her head. But once free, she’s no problem and we carry her to a chimney standing by itself a few yards from the car, then drop her. Time to go.
“She was somebody’s kid,” Dominick says out of the blue.
“You don’t think she sprang, full-blown, from the head of Zeus?” I might as well have spoken Martian. Dominick’s eyes become dolls’ eyes, blank as buttons. “Do what makes you feel better, Dom, only do it fast.”
I get the blank stare for a few more seconds, then Dom’s lips begin to move. “Hail, Mary, full of grace . . .”
CHAPTER THREE
DELIA
Every time I look at Boomtown, which is what it’s universally called, the same question jumps up to bite me: How did this happen? On one level the answer is simple. In June of last year, Boomtown Enterprises, an LLC registered in Panama, purchased a strip of Sprague County land bordering a Baxter County neighborhood called the Yards. A half mile deep by two miles long, the acreage was purchased from several corporate farmers. Impromptu roads that would never meet code in Baxter were then laid almost overnight and the land divided into lots.
