“There’s…there’s a man named Manny who takes orders to a guy in Miami called Delgado. Sometimes they call him El Gallo on the radio because he’s a dick. That’s where. That’s where the other guns went. ”
“What are the addresses?” I demand.
“The warehouse is two-hundred-something West Fifth Street. Cold storage is…it’s on West First Street. I don’t know the exact addresses.”
Petrov makes a small sound behind me. I don’t glance at him, though. I keep watching Kyle. He looks like a boy who is finally admitting that he bit off more than he was ready to chew.
“How many?” I ask. “How many pallets left that warehouse before we got there?”
“Two,” he says, fast, eagerly. “The first night. I was there. I watched from the roof. Popeye came to oversee things. He said he didn’t trust the van’s driver because he plays pool like a liar. By now half are probably at each location.” Now he’s just spilling shit that doesn’t matter, but that’s okay. I’d rather hear too much talking than not enough of it.
“And how long will those guns stay in Bayonne?” I question him.
“I don’t know. Until later today or tomorrow?” he whispers. “When the call says south.”
“And who says it?” I press. “Who makes that call?”
He hesitates exactly the amount of time it takes for his stomach to consider what happens to him next if he holds back the intel from me. “Burn,” he says eventually. “He’s a runner who wants to be important.”
“He already is,” I say. “He’s going to be my lesson.”
Kyle’s chest is heaving now. He’s not done keeping secrets. Men never are. They hide a big one away in their sock drawer. He thinks this is the one that lets him stay a man. I lay the wrench down and take a pair of bolt cutters from the tray because I want to hear every secret he’s ever kept.
“You told me about Manny and Delgado because you think saying names that aren’t in your biker gang protects the ones that are. Now we need to talk about them. Who runs the watch at the door? Who sits in the sedan pretending to be drunk? Who decides when to change the keycode so he can feel important?”
“Don’t.” He shakes his head while staring at the cutters. “Please don’t.”
“You keep seven fingers, you can still make a fist. You keep six, you can still count your losses. You keep five, you can still ride. You keep four, you learn to hold on.”
“God,” he whispers. “God, please don’t!”
“God doesn’t come down here,” I say, catching his left hand where it tries to curl away. I take the smallest finger in the cutters and watch his chest stutter like a bad engine. “Give me a name.”
“Reed!” he blurts.
“Who?”
“They call him Reed because he smokes the thin ones. He waits in the sedan with the magazine and calls when he sees anyone who don’t belong. He—he’s not a bad guy.”
“Then he should stop doing bad work,” I remark, and remove the cutters without removing the finger because men learn animportant lesson from mercy. I lay the tool on the tray, and the relief that floods him is now a drug I control.
“Code?” I demand.
“Two-six-six-seven,” he says immediately, terrified of inventing shit. “I swear that’s what it was the last time I was there.”
“Who patrols the roof?” I ask.
“Jinx,” he says. “They only call him that to piss him off. I don’t know his real name.”
“Good,” I say, and move behind him.
There’s a tarp on the shelf we keep for when men choose the messy route. I take it down and shake it once to clear the dust. The smell of treated plastic fills the air. I throw it over Kyle’s head and the sound he makes is animalistic. His hands jerk, the chains bite. I put a boot on the line between the chair legs and lean until the steel complains. The tarp sucks into his mouth when he tries to breathe. The room fills with the wet sound of a desperate man. I count to three and lift the edge so air returns to him.
“South?” I ask.
“Yes,” he pants.
I drop the tarp. The sound comes back. It’s louder. He’s learning. I lift it up for five. He coughs a thread of spit, and it hangs between his lip and the plastic like a ribbon.
