The Numbers by Nick Pirog

Author:Nick Pirog
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
Published: 2023-01-28T00:09:33+00:00

30

october 27, 2011

4:46 p.m.

“Are you catering an event that you didn’t tell me about?” Gleason asked, as I strategically placed the four large trays of pasta in the footwell of the back seat.

“Just trust me,” I said, hopping into the passenger seat. I buckled up, then added, “I think we should still go see the old man at Shady Acres.”

“One, it’s called St. Michael’s. And two, you heard what Capetta said. His old man doesn’t remember anything.”

“What if he’s faking?”

“Faking?”

“Sure. Why not? I’ll bet it helped get him out of prison earlier.” I didn’t know if this was true, but I didn’t want to tell Gleason my actual plan. He’d think I was crazy. “Don’t you think it’s strange that DeSipio had a closed casket funeral? I suspect it’s because there were numbers carved into Dominic’s head. Old Man Dementia might be our only link.”

He paused a beat to think. “Just to make sure we’re on the same page, you want to drive to a nursing home to question a ninety-year-old man with dementia about a body he might have found forty years ago.”

“Correct.”

“I’m upping it to three hundred thousand dollars because I am three hundred thousand percent going to get fired from the bureau after this.”

“Deal.”

“Again, I’m not kidding.”

“Again, neither am I.”

He glared at me for a second. “How much money do you have?”

“Enough.”

He made me shake on it, then swear on Michael Jackson’s grave.

“What about Puff?” he asked, looking over his shoulder. “There’s no way he doesn’t rat us out to Joyce when we pull into the nursing home.”

Gleason was right. Whether Kip was tailing us on his own or on Joyce’s orders, the moment we pulled into St. Michael’s, he’d know what we were up to.

“You let me take care of Puff,” I assured him.

He rolled his eyes, then cranked the wheel, pulling away from the curb. I pointed fifty yards ahead. “Pull even with the white Explorer.”

He came even with Kip’s car, ostensibly blocking traffic, though there were no cars behind us. I grabbed one tray of pasta from the back seat and stepped out.

Kip’s window was still up, though I could make out his profile behind the tinted windows. Holding the tray with one hand, I knocked on the window. It didn’t go down. I knocked again. “I have a peace offering.”

The window slid down three inches, then five, then ten.

If I hadn’t been holding an eight-pound tray of linguine Alfredo, I would have thrown my hands up in surprise.

I’d asked Gleason to see if his barber could add a little pizazz to Hufflepuff’s trim, but it appeared Tyrone had gone overboard.

“Don’t say anything,” Kip said through clenched teeth.

From my time playing basketball in high school and college, I was familiar with the lingo when it came to Black men’s haircuts. Tyrone had given Hufflepuff what the brothers called a “hi-lo fade with a half-moon part.”

Kip’s curly locks were no more, shaved down nearly to the skin on the sides. The top was maybe a half inch, perfectly squared with a razor.

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