The Family Business 3(76)

Daryl





53


Vegas and I were sitting on the trunk of the BMW 750i his mother had just given me, eating Chinese food out of the container. We’d been parked under the Van Wyck Expressway overpass for about ten minutes when three police cars, two marked and one unmarked, pulled up on either side of us.

“Here comes the cavalry,” Vegas announced as the police car doors flew open. A very familiar-looking police captain exited the unmarked car, followed by three uniformed officers. As they approached us, Vegas and I placed our Chinese food containers on the roof of the car and stepped forward.

“Vegas.” The captain nodded, offering his hand, which Vegas took. He turned his attention to me. “Daryl Graham, I thought you were dead.”

“Well, you never was that smart, were you Marks?” The two of us eyed each other, until I felt a jab in the ribs from Vegas. I hated cops, and I especially hated Marks’ corrupt, greedy ass, but he had always been a Duncan ally, and they couldn’t afford to lose that connection, so I backed down.

“Look, I was hoping after that mishap at the warehouse that this would somehow help.” On that note, Vegas opened the rear car door and pulled out a half-filled green trash bag that he handed over to the captain. Marks looked in the bag, nodded his head, and handed the bag to another officer a few steps behind him.

“We good?” Vegas asked.

“I’m not going to say we’re one hundred, but this will go a long way to making things right.”

A long way to making it right? There was almost two million dollars in that garbage bag, and I doubted a quarter of it would find its way into the hands of the families of those fallen officers. Realizing this truth just made me hate this corrupt, dirty motherf*cker even more.

“Okay, then maybe this will make it all the way right?” Vegas nodded at me, and I hit a button on my keys that released the trunk.

Vegas motioned for Marks to follow him to the trunk. I stood back and watched Marks’ face light up like a Christmas tree.

“Get the f*ck outta here. Is that—?”

“Sure as hell is.”

Marks motioned for the other officers to check it out. I glanced over at Vegas, who smirked at me. He’d called it right. Turning Brother X over to the cops would be ten times worse than killing him. “We good now, Conrad?” Vegas asked.

“Better than good,” Marks replied, turning to his men. “Get his ass outta there.”

“He’s got a broken jaw, so he might not do too much talking,” Vegas said with a laugh as they dragged X out of my trunk and into one of the patrol cars.

Marks shook Vegas’s hand.

“Conrad,” Vegas whispered, “if he happens to end up dead, I need a body so my brother can get married without jumping through hoops.”

“You got it,” Marks said before he walked back to his car. The three cop cars rolled out, and Vegas and I went back to our Chinese food.

“So, what do you think the odds are that X will see the inside of a jail cell?” I asked.

“Not good. There’s no doubt in my mind that he’s going to end up dead somewhere. It just comes down to how many days he’s going to have suffer,” Vegas replied.

“Damn, that there is the definition of that old saying, a fate worse than death.” We both laughed as I picked a shrimp out of my container.

“I guess this is all over now?” Vegas said.

“Yeah, I guess, but there’s still something I can’t wrap my head around.”

“What’s that?” he asked.

“This whole X and Bernie thing. It just doesn’t make sense to me. X was a radical Muslim, right?” Vegas nodded. “Now, from everything we’ve been able to put together, and from what Elijah told us, X was taking orders from Bernie Goldman. Not just a Jew, but a Hassidic Jew. What radical Muslim is going to do that?”

Vegas shrugged. “Hey, maybe it was all money related. I mean, Elijah did say Bernie put a million dollars on the table to kill Pop, and X took it. Plus, don’t forget Elijah said some other brother was at their last meeting, ordering X around, so maybe that’s who was really in charge.”

“Yeah, that’s what worries me. Something tells me this whole thing is far from over.”





Vegas





54


Once the war was over and word got out that Pop had returned home and may never recover from his coma, people he’d known for years began stopping by to pay their respects. Frankly, we were growing tired of the stream of visitors and wanted time alone just to be together with our family, but LC Duncan was a legend and deserved to be honored. They came from as far away as Australia and India, Europe and South America, and they all said the same thing: that our father was an honorable man who they knew they could count on. He had a reputation for saying what he meant and meaning what he said, and that alone made him stand out in our business.

People talked about their desire to continue working with him. No one mentioned him being on death’s door, or discussed how long he was expected to live. In fact, all anyone wanted to talk about were the moments he had touched their lives. Pop was decidedly old school about the way he did business with a simple handshake, but once you took his hand, you were not going to mess things up.