A navy blue Lexus, the mid-sized one – the GS I thought – pulled up at exactly four o'clock. Jack was in the passenger seat talking on his cell phone and his nephew Michael was behind the wheel. He pulled up to the curb too close and too fast; I skipped backwards as fast as I could, but I still caught the spray from the wave of gasoline-scented gray slush sent up by the tires.
 
I slapped mud and melted snow from my pants and jacket. Jack powered down his window and covered the mouthpiece of his phone with the palm of his left hand.
 
"Hurry up, Carver, we're picking up Cook, too, and we're behind schedule."
 
Jack was obsessed with being on time. He gave all his people watches for Christmas so that they don't have any excuse for being late. After our last big job he gave me a silver-edged Philip Patek watch with a leather band and letters for numbers and this little sun and moon on a dial under the surface of the main face so you know whether it's day or night, but I never wear it. I have it locked up in a safe-deposit box with the rest of my "just in case" stuff – my passport, a fake driver's license, thirty-two caliber Walther pistol and thirty grand in cash. I keep an old Timex with no band in my pocket.
 
I started to take off my jacket as we pulled away from the curb but Jack, covering the mouthpiece again and watching me in the rear-view mirror, stopped me.
 
"Put your coat back on, Carver."
 
"Alright, but can we turn the heat down? It's a fucking sauna in here."
 
Michael shoots me a look over his shoulder, like he wants to rip my face off.
 
"When you're driving you can play with the thermostat. I'm cold. I'm driving. The heat is staying right the fuck where it is."
Jack finished mumbling into his phone and tucked it into his khaki overcoat. He leaned forward, pulled a wrinkled brown paper lunch sack from under his seat and handed it to me through the space between passenger and driver's seats. I didn't have to look inside; from the weight alone I could tell that it was a gun.
 
"Michael, turn down he heat. Carver, put that in your belt and cover it with your jacket. No, not there. Put it on the side, where nobody can see it but you can still get to it fast."
 
I tucked the black semi-auto between my belt and hip on my left side and pull my worn, brown leather jacket over it. I wanted to say something cool or funny so that Jack wouldn't know how scared I am, but my throat felt tight and my mouth was dry. Michael was fiddling with the in-dash thermostat.
 
"What the fuck, Jack? I don't know how to work this thing."
 
"The plus button makes it warmer and the minus button makes it colder," sneered Jack.
 
"I thought those were for the goddamn stereo," explained Michael, sheepishly.
 
"It's not that complicated. Jesus, you're a chip off the old block."
 
Michael's mother is Jack's sister. They don't get along. She goes to the Most Holy Redeemer four times a week and was always telling Jack that he'd go to hell if he didn't repent. Jack didn't believe in God.
 
"So, where the fuck does this prick live, anyway?" Michael snapped, clicking the thermostat button repeatedly.
 
"In Stalton, near the river," said Jack absently, thumbing through the call list on his phone.
 
"Stalton, shit. I hate driving through Stalton. Place gives me the creeps."
 
Stalton was a turn of the century neighborhood in what used to be a big industrial district. When Ford and Chrysler moved their plants to Cleveland in the sixties the people moved away. Most of the buildings were abandoned now and a lot of them were burned out, but it was a good place to stay of you were broke or hiding out. I was pretty sure that Cook lived on the North side, though.
 
"Doesn't he live over by the stadium?"
 
From the look Jack shot me in the rearview, I knew I'd said something wrong.
 
"No, he lives in Stalton," he said, his calm belying the glare he was still directing my way, as cold as the day was and twice as dark.
 
"I guess he moved. Probably got sick of the crowds," I covered, lamely.
Jack stopped looking at me, so I figured I covered my mistake adequately. Still, I didn't know why Jack would lie about where Cook lived, unless maybe we were meeting him somewhere else because Cook didn't want Michael to know where his real place was. Maybe the man just didn't get along with Michael; most people didn't.
 
"Probably got sick of there not being enough hookers around. That bastard's so ugly he'd have to pay double to get a bee-jay from a crack whore." Michael tapped out a drum roll on the wheel with his palms. Jack offered him a weak smile and I forced myself to laugh. Michael was sure he was funny; he'd even done his "act" on open-mike night at a sleazy comedy club called Chuckles, the name about as original as Michael's jokes. I didn't think he was funny at all; mostly he just ripped on famous people or the poor schlubs in the audience and said
"fuck" a lot. Maybe my sense of humor was off. I didn't always get jokes, though I always tried to laugh. One thing I knew for sure was that Michael was a trigger-happy sociopath. Jack didn't even use him on the regular jobs anymore after he shot a nineteen year-old bank clerk three times in the face because, in his words, "she looked like a cock-tease."
 
Jack points Michael toward the south-bound expressway entrance, but the younger man pulled into the mostly empty parking lot of a City's Best Chili Dawgz restaurant instead. Jack's eyes narrowed to dangerous-looking slots as he glared at his nephew but his voice, as always, remained low and soft as velour.
 
"Where do you think you're going?"
 
"Fuck, Jack, I've been driving you around for five fucking hours now. I need some goddamn food already. Look, I'll use the drive through. It'll just take a sec."
 
"We're on a schedule." Jack indicated his watch, a massive, vintage platinum Rolex with several carats-worth of diamonds glittering around the edge of the face.
 
"Relax, we have plenty of time. You want anything? What about you Carver? Come on, my treat," he said, sounding magnanimous.
 
I wasn't really feeling hungry, but Jack ordered a chili dog and a Sprite, so I did too. Michael ordered two foot-longs with onions and extra chili and two large onion rings.
 
"For Christ's sake, Michael, how are you going to eat all that messy shit and still drive? You're gonna fuck up my car," growls Jack, his voice actually betraying some emotion.
 
"So what's up with this car, anyway? You've always been an American guy. Lincolns and Caddies." He paused to stuff six inches of his first foot-long into his mouth and then continued, spewing bits of chili and hotdog bun all over the dash in the process. "These Jap rice-burners really ain't your style. You know what you should get? You should get a truck. One of those big-ass Caddy trucks. The Escalade. Or a Hummer. Speaking of which, who's up for a trip to Madam Chu's for a rub and a tug after this?"
 
"Close your fucking mouth when you eat, Michael," hissed his uncle.
 
"Alright, Mom." Michael did another drum roll on the dash and guffaws, dribbling a mouthful of half-chewed hotdog down his shirtfront.
 
"Fuck, man. This is a Versace shirt."
 
"Shut your goddamn mouth and drive. You're going to miss the exit. Turn here."
 
I couldn't remember Jack ever sounding so annoyed.
 
"North?"
 
"South."
 
Jack said Cook's place was near the river, so we must be getting close. I put the rest of my half-eaten dog back in the grease-clear paper City's Best bag. I felt like I was going to puke. I didn't know Cook very well, but I'd been on a couple of jobs with him and he seemed like a good guy. I had no idea what he did, but it must have been bad – first Jack gave me a gun and now he was bickering with Michael, who he usually just ignored. Not to mention the fact that we were meeting the guy in Stalton, which had been the unofficial graveyard for two-thirds of the active crews in town for as long as I could remember. We weren't going to pick Cook up, we were going to kill him.
 
We got off the expressway on Nolan Boulevard , near the old hockey arena, defunct for a few years at least; I was still inside when the
 
"Lakeside Louts," as my old man called them, played their last game there before moving to the new place downtown with the corporate name. It must have been embarrassing for a bunch of big-time NHL-ers to play in the Little Debbie Center. Paid the bills though, something I knew all about.
 
The only other cars around were windowless and burned-out, their hoods propped open over gutted engine bays, their wheels replaced by cinder-blocks. We cruised past block after block of flat-roofed, dirty brick rowhouses, uniform in their lack of glass in the widows and heavy coatings of faded, illegible graffiti. There were no people around either, with the exception of one white-haired black man with a matted beard and a torn army jacket, pushing with one hand a rusted grocery cart full of aluminum cans and bulging black plastic garbage bags, his free hand gesturing wildly in the air as he ranted and raved to an audience of one, the mangy Jack Russell tethered to the side of the cart by a length of cable coaxial.
 
"Take a left at the stop sign. Your other left," Jack said, clearly frustrated with his nephew's inability to navigate. 
 
"I thought you said right," whined Michael.
 
Okay, pull up here...no, the next one."
 
We stopped in front of a brick and stone twin in the middle of the block. The first storey windows were boarded up and the second storey windows were mostly broken.
 
"What a dump. Cook would live in a shit-hole like this. The guy's a fucking moron. I'm gonna enjoy popping him."
 
With his left hand, Michael pulled open his suit jacket, revealing a shoulder holster from which he started to take a fat-barreled, nickle-plated revolver – a forty-five or three fifty-seven, a gun that fairly screamed overkill.
 
"Stay in the car and keep it running," Jack said, motioning for his lieutenant to sheath his weapon. "Carver, you come with me."
Michael shrugged and put the pistol back in its holster. Jack got out of the car, looked up and down the street a couple times, then went up the walkway and into the dilapidated house. I took a deep breath and followed him, my heart jackhammering against my ribcage as I slogged through the slush and trotted up the stairs.
 
The entryway was dim, the only light coming in through the chinks in the boarded-up windows. The floor was covered in broken glass, rat turds and crushed Busch Light cans.
 
"Are you sure anyone lives here?" I croaked, barely able to get the words out of my parched throat.
 
"I'm fucking well sure that no one does."
 
Jack was looking at me, his hands in his pockets.
 
"So what are we doing here?"
 
I put my hands in my coat pockets so that Jack wouldn't see how badly they were shaking. I didn't like the way he was looking at me. I could feel the gun through my jacket, its steel cold digging into my flesh.
 
"We've been having some problems lately. The cops know too much. Way too much," he said, his perpetual frown deepening. "I've had to cancel two jobs in the last month. Something stinks, Carver."
 
"Shit, Jack, you know I would never fuck you, man."
 
I took my right hand out of my pocket and placed it over my heart; my left hand was still pressing against the gun in my waistband, like I was making an oath on the burner instead of the Bible, a fitting symbol, all things considered.
 
"Do you remember what I told you about instinct?" He asked, reaching out and putting a his hands on my shoulders.
 
"You said you don't need anything else if you have it."
 
"That's right, Carver. You know what my instinct tells me about you?"
 
"Please, Jack." The gun was too light. It was empty. He gave me an empty gun to trick me into coming here and now he was going to do me right here, in hell's own foyer, my corpse freezing along side these ancient beer cans – and probably thawing in the spring and rotting in the coming summer 's heat, whatever was left freezing again long before anyone found me.
 
"When I first met you I thought, ‘this is a guy I can trust, this is someone I should have watching my back all the time.' Do you know what I think now?"
 
Jack was smiling at me. His teeth were sharp and very white and his right upper incisor was gold.
 
"No."
 
"I think, this is a guy I can trust. You want to prove me right, Carver?"
 
"Of course, Jack," I said, managing to sound cool despite my still-thundering pulse and the wave of relief that rolled over me. "Tell me what to do."
 
"That's my boy, a true soldier." He slapped both my shoulders with the palms of his hands, which had been gripping me tightly as he spoke.
 
"Go back to the car; sit in the back seat. Tell Michael that Cook is in here and that I'm going to do him myself. Tell him that I want him to meet me around back. Have him pull into the alley behind this dump. Have you done this before?"
 
I shook my head, feeling strangely ashamed, though the last shred of conscience that remained in me screamed that shame was the last thing I should feel about the fact that I had no experience with murder.
 
"Well, you've got to break your cherry some time if you want to be my main guy," he insisted, cupping his gloved hands together in front of his mouth and blowing a cloud of steam into the pocket they created. "I have to know you can do it. Shoot him in the head at least three times. Keep the gun; we'll toss it in the river on our way back.
 
"There's a big red gas cannister in the trunk. When you're done, take it out and pour about half of it over him and the rest on the back end of the car, around the tank. And make sure you unscrew the gas cap and stuff a rag or some paper towels in there before you light it.
 
"There's a red Caddy in an alley one block behind us. I'll be waiting for you there." He put his hands back on my shoulders and looked me dead in the eyes, no clearly readable expression on his face, though his usual frown was gone. Then he actually smiled. "I knew I was right about you, son."
 
I turned and went outside. The gun was too heavy at my side; it felt like it was going to slip through my belt and slide down the inside of my pants leg. I imagined this happening as I went down the steps, the gun discharging when it hit the walkway's cracked and weed-choked pavement and blowing a chunk out of my foot. Jack offers to make me his main guy if I just hit Michael and instead I end up crippling myself. I didn't know why, but thinking of the worst thing that could possibly happen always made me smile, loosened me up.
 
My smile faded as I got to the car, though. I tried to plan out my move, tried to see myself shooting Michael, but I couldn't seem to think clearly. I opened the door and slid into the back seat. My target was listening to rap on the stereo. He shifted in his seat so that his back was against the driver's side door and looked blankly at me.
 
"What the fuck are you doing back so soon?" He broke into a grin. "I know why. You pussed out! You fucking pussy! Does Jack want me to come do it?"
 
He started to get out of the car.
 
"No," I blurted, just as his booted left foot crunched in the gravel and slush in the street. "He said to pull around into the alley. He said he was going to do it himself."
 
Michael put the car in gear and pulled it around the corner of the block; we cruised along slowly for a minute, finally finding the narrow allyway, which he pulled into. I clenched my fists as tightly as I could in order to stop my hands from shaking.
 
"Damn, you fucked up, Carver. Jack's been talking about you nonstop lately. Acting like you was going to be his new captain or some crazy shit like that. I thought I had some real competition. But when the last card came out you turned into a blubbering vagina, just like I always said you would."
 
He turned in his seat so that his back was against the door and leaned toward me, laughing and showering me with saliva and the stink of chili and onions. I wanted to take the gun out and shoot him right then and there, but I was afraid to do it with him looking directly at me; plus, I was in the wrong position. The gun was on my left, which meant that if I went for it now I'd have to switch hands before I had a clear shot, giving him plenty of time to catch on and go for his own piece.
 
He suddenly stopped laughing and frowned; with the mirth gone from them his eyes were terrifying, cold and empty like there was nothing inside of him but an endless, ravenous black hole.
 
"What am I, your fucking chauffer? Get up here in front." He demanded, pointing exaggeratedly at the empty passenger seat. "I don't like to have someone sitting behind me without no backup here. Not even a wispy little cunt-hair like you."
 
I got out of the Lexus and walked around toward th front. For a second, just before I got in, I thought about shooting him through the window. Because the alley was so narrow, however, I couldn't stand more than a couple feet back from the car. I would have had to shoot down and it would have been hard to get him in the head, like Jack told me to do. And I had to make sure he was dead or at least incapacitated right away; if he got a shot off at this range from that cannon in his armpit, I'd be dead.
 
I got in and slammed the door shut behind me. Michael was laughing at me again.
 
"Shit, Carver, I hate to break this to you, but you're pretty much fucked in this organization. There's nothing Jack hates more than a pussy. That's why he keeps me around. I am the ultimate non-pussy. I'm the anti-pussy! Tell me," Michael was laughing so hard by then that he could hardly speak. "What's it like to be a total fag?"
 
It was like a switch had been flipped. My fear turned instantly to rage as I looked into Michael's ugly, porcine face convulsing with hysteria, his vile fucking breath washing over me, brown chili-spittle dribbling from the corner of his mouth. I pulled out the gun, an all-black Sig-Sauer nine milimeter, and pointed it at his face.
 
"Who's a pussy now, bitch?"
 
Michael kept laughing for a good ten seconds, stopping abruptly when I pulled back the hammer, easing it out with my thumb until it clicked into place with a sound straight out of a movie. All of a sudden he went pale.
 
As scared as he obviously was, though, he didn't freeze, and before I could think he grabbed the muzzle with his right hand, his left disappearing into his jacket. I pulled the trigger as he tried to jerk the weapon from my grip. His hand disintegrated with the roar of the pistol, the car filling with the sharp, metallic smell of brimstone and a mist of blood and bits of bone and tissue. He screamed as he pulled the revolver from his jacket, a high-pitched animal sound. I pointed my piece at his right eye and pulled the trigger twice more in quick succession. The window behind him spiderwebbed and turned red at the same time. His body slumped briefly, then began to convulse. From his left nostril a bubble of snot and blood expanded to the size of a golf ball before popping soundlessly.
 
I continued to point the gun at Michael's collapsed face until his body stopped shaking. My ears were ringing, head pounding, spinning, and I felt naseaous. I opened the door and stumbled out of the car; the frigid air hit me like a sock in the gut and I couldn't breath. I dropped to my knees and vomited, the chunks of bread and hotdog sank into and melted the slush down to the alley's pavement and sent a cloud of steam full of the stench of bile and chili up around my face.
 
The ringing was quieter now, and although my head still ached, my stomach felt better.
I stood up slowly, putting the gun back in between my body and belt as I rose. Everything felt easier, suddenly in real time after a roller-coaster ride in fast forward. I leaned back into against the vehicle and closed my eyes for a few seconds, clearing my head. Then I turned and reached into the gore-soaked interior, past Michael and under the his seat where I felt around until I found and pulled the trunk and gas tank releases.
 
I went back to the trunk and pulled out the heavy, three quarters-full, five-gallon plastic gas cannister. After lugging it back around to the still-open passenger door, I braced it against my knee and tilted it forward a good forty degrees, for once actually appreciating the eye-burning, sterile fumes since they covered up the more organic stink of the bloody mess that had once been Michael Fitzgibbon.
 
When I'd poured out at least a couple of gallons onto the corpse, I recapped the container and set it down beside the car while I looked for a rag or something that would work as one. I rifled through the glove compartment and came up empty, but when I checked under the passenger seat I found an old, ratty green and yellow State U t-shirt.
 
I soaked the shirt in fuel and tied a knot in one end, then pushed that bit down into the gas tank. Finally, I hunted through my jacket and
pants pockets until my fingers brushed against the dented surface of the old man's ancient brass Zippo, my fucking inheritance. In a single, practiced movement I flipped open the lighter's lid and struck the flint, creating a thick, tapered column of flame, a thin strip of blue at its base followed by a slightly thicker band of orange and a spear of yellow on top. I held the fire up to the corner of the gas-soaked football tee where it flickered in the rising wind for a minute before igniting the cloth, which quickly flared up. I took a single step sideways and flung the only thing my father ever gave me other than a set of rotten genes, into Michael's lap. I was barely able to get out of the way as a huge gout of flame leapt out of the open door with a deep, pulsating roar, a rippling cylindrical orange and yellow tower that flattened against and raced up the gang graffitto on the brick wall beside the car.
 
I took a few paces backwards, unable at first to turn away from the awesome sight, but then common sense kicked in and I turned and sprinted down the alley and into the street, where the cold wind that had only trickled down between the buildings was like a physical blow, frigid and cutting but also somehow cleansing and happy, chasing a paper cup playfully between my ankles as I skated around the corner on the filthy slush.
 
I kept running, down the rest of the block and half-way down the next, only stopping to catch my breath when I could see the mouth of the alley where Jack said he'd be waiting. I'd pretty much recovered and was about to rejoin the boss when I heard a dull, shuddering thump from behind me; it sounded a lot like a very nearby thunderclap and was loud enough that I took a look over my shoulder, though there wasn't much to see – just a trickle of greasy black smoke that appeared to come right up out of the middle of the block of houses I'd just left.
 
I felt calm now and my breathing wasn't as labored as it had been as I walked purposefully around the corner and down the alley. Jack was sitting right where he said he would be, in the passenger seat of a silver Cadillac DTS, reading a magazine – Dog Fancy , his favorite. I opened the door and slide into the driver's seat. The engine was already running and the heater was on full blast. Jack looked up from a two-page spread on Border Collies and smiles at me. It was a real smile as opposed to the sort of forced half-grin he gave his former driver. He reached over and put a hand on my shoulder.
 
"You did a good job, son. You're my number one now, Daniel, my main guy." He paused, serious now, and looked me in the eye for a couple of seconds. Then his face relaxed and he smiled again. "Come on, kid, I've got a present for you."
 
I backed the Caddy slowly out of the alley and cruise down the block, taking the first left, toward the highway.