“I don’t know. Why would I hang up?”
Gennaro took a deep breath. “You know what? Never mind. Is it done?”
“Yeah, sort of.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“There was a little problem.”
“What little problem?”
“I gotta tell you. Barrington’s driver, man, oh, man, is he ever good. I bet he was a race car driver or something like that.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about his mad reaction skills.”
“Are you telling me you didn’t hit them?”
“No, I hit them. Only…”
“Only what?”
“The driver turned them out of the way at the last second.”
Gennaro rubbed a hand across his forehead. “You just said youdidhit them. And now you’re saying they got out of the way. Which is it?”
“I hit them, just not like we had planned. I smacked themin the side, and they spun around and smashed into a few other cars.”
“Hard?”
“Pretty damn hard.”
“Hard enough to hurt them?” Gennaro asked.
“I think so, but I have no idea. It’s not like I could stop and check.”
That was true, though it didn’t keep Gennaro from wanting to tear his hair out. “Was the crash bad enough to kill them?”
Manny took a moment before he said, “Maybe.”
Gennaro should have asked Toomey to hang out in the area, so that he could have reported exactly what had happened. Nothing to do about it now.
“Please tell me that you at least got away clean.”
“Oh, yeah. No problem there. I left the truck right where you told me.”
The spot was in a CCTV dead zone, allowing Manny to get away without being recorded.
“Okay, I guess that’s good.”
“You think it was enough to get us the cash faster?” Manny asked.
Gennaro tried very hard not to yell when he said, “If I had a better idea of what happened to Barrington, I might be able to answer that question.”
“I guess that makes sense.”
“You think?”
