Wiseguys: Blast From the Past (2 page)

They could. But they'd used a lot of the money they'd stashed in Carter's van when they left Jersey -- all they money they'd saved from working for Sid and running their own little protection racket on the side -- to open the deli. The place was paying for itself these days, but they hadn't been able to replace much more than a few thousand dollars of the money they'd started out with.

Besides, Tony could tell from Carter's attitude, the quiet way he'd asked the question, that Carter didn't much like the idea of leaving. Tony didn't, either.

Tony shook his head. "This could amount to nothing. I'm not leaving over nothing."

"We gonna get ready, just in case?"

Carter didn't mean get ready to move on. He meant get ready for war.

"Yeah," Tony said. "I guess we should."

Tony had never been a foot soldier. Carter was the fighter. Tony had been groomed for management. Middle management. Uncle Sid's only son had been in line to be boss after the old man died. Tony could have hoped for no more than becoming his cousin's lieutenant, and he had no problem with that. He didn't have the temperament to run a family. Hell, even Carter knew that.

Except for the few times his uncle had made him go shoot out in the woods just so he'd know how to handle a gun, Tony had had nothing to do with guns. Carter was the one who took to guns just like he'd taken to fighting.

Carter was the one who got them guns now.

It wasn't as easy in rural Idaho to get a gun as it had been on the streets of New Jersey. Back in Jersey, Carter had a network of guys who knew other guys who knew guys with enough firepower to start a private war. Now it took Carter two days to come up with enough guns to make him happy.

"We only got two hands each," Tony said, staring at the array of shotguns and pistols laid out on their bed.

"Got places I'm gonna stash some."

"Not where any kids can find them, right?"

Carter took a step back and stared at him. "Listen to you, Mister Domestic."

"Fuck you. I don't want some kid getting hurt over this."

"I don't want
us
getting hurt over this. And no, I'm not stashing anything anywhere a kid can find it and decide to play Cowboys 'n Indians."

Tony picked up the nearest handgun, a .9mm. He felt the weight, released the magazine and then slapped it home again, just to practice how. He sighted down the barrel, held the pose for a minute, then put the gun back down.

"This is probably for nothing," Tony said.

He wanted to rub the hand that had held the gun against his trousers. He could still remember what it had been like back in that restaurant in Jersey. How gunfire had gone off around him without warning, the
pop pop pop
of the handguns and the big boom of the shotguns. The whine of a bullet whizzing by his ear, the smell of marinara mixed with blood and spent gunpowder, and the shouts and screams of the wounded who knew they wouldn't make it out alive.

Now he made himself stand still instead of rubbing his hand. Back in those days, he'd made himself do a lot of things he didn't want to do. He'd thought the bad old days were over. Maybe they were, but he didn't have a good feeling about this.

"I need some practice," he said to Carter. "Let's go for a drive."

∗ ∗ ∗

The part of Northern Idaho where Tony and Carter lived wasn't congested like the cities farther south, but they still had to drive nearly an hour, the last bit over dirt roads, to get to a place where gunshots wouldn't be reported to the sheriff. Carter's van was getting old, but it made the trip just fine. In winter, the van would have bogged down in the snow less than ten minutes outside of town.

The country was pretty up here. The most green Tony had ever seen back in Jersey was when Uncle Sid took Tony and Carter on fishing trips when they were teenagers. Not that Uncle Sid had ever actually fished, but the motels they always stayed in were in the country, nestled in woods thick enough to get lost in.

Back then Tony used to think that rural Jersey had all the green in the world. To a city kid used to concrete and asphalt and the occasional sapling struggling against the smog, the orchards and forests they passed on the way to Uncle Sid's favorite motel looked like some medieval fiefdom. Sid certainly acted as if he was lord of the manor, fucking every comely wench in sight.

The place Carter found for them to target shoot put Jersey to shame. Tall pines, more than a hundred feet from root to tip, towered overhead, crowding together like soldiers marching off to war. Beneath the pines was a no-man's land of fallen branches, desiccated pine needles, and ancient wildlife trails.

Tony stood next to the van and watched a rabbit high-tail it through the underbrush. The rabbit was safe. Tony had no desire to add wild game to the deli's menu.

Carter hauled a cardboard box from the van and set it down next to a big log from a long-dead pine, the victim of a windstorm or maybe the last evidence of a controlled burn. He pulled empty bottles from the box and set them on the log along with a couple of empty cans. Then he paced off what he must have thought was a reasonable distance. He took one of the handguns from the small of his back where he'd tucked it beneath the waistband of his jeans. He didn't even sight, just pulled the gun out and fired in one smooth move. His shot took off the neck of a beer bottle.

Carter smiled. "I still got it."

Yeah, he did.

Tony was rusty. He had to sight along the barrel, and even then it took four shots before he got the bullet where he wanted it.

"Not bad," Carter said when Tony stopped firing.

"Not great."

Tony finished off the rest of the bullets in the gun, then ejected the spent magazine. If he'd been in a battle, he would have simply slapped home a fresh one. Now he took the time to snap bullets into the empty.

"If this goes down," Tony said, "how many guys you think we'll be up against?"

"One, if they think they're smarter than us. Two, tops."

That made sense. Enforcers like Carter usually worked alone. Sometimes, like when Luciano collected a favor, two guys went -- one to keep the mark in place, the other to work him over. This time, though, one of the marks was Carter. They might be tempted to send more than two, but that would draw attention.

"They think they're smarter than us?"

Carter shrugged. "They think they're badder than us. Don't know about smarter."

"Might be badder than me. Don't know about you."

Carter's chuckle lightened the mood. For a minute, Tony forgot how deadly serious the situation was.

He took aim and squeezed off a few more shots. He switched guns and did the whole thing over again. As he worked the guns, pulling the trigger started to feel less unnatural. Tony would never be as good as Carter, but maybe he'd be good enough.

Uncle Sid hadn't been good enough. He'd been ruthless as all fuck, but he'd grown complacent. He was comfortable with his place in the grand scheme of things. He'd forgotten there were other bosses hungry enough to try to take him down.

Nothing had been out of the ordinary the day Uncle Sid and the rest of his crew were ambushed. They'd gone to one of Uncle Sid's favorite restaurants, La Vecci's, just Sid and his son, Tony, Carter, and Sid's lieutenants. No wives, no girlfriends. Uncle Sid had business to talk about, and he paid the owner of La Vecci's well to make sure the man was never tempted to let the cops bug the joint. It was a safe place to talk.

But Sid miscalculated. He put too many of his men all in one place at one time. Everybody drank too much wine with dinner. Ate too many heavy meals of pasta, and afterward, everyone had eyelids too heavy to keep a decent lookout.

Tony hadn't known the men who stepped through the restaurant's front door. They'd opened fire before he got a good look at their faces. He wasn't even sure if there'd only been two who came in that way. Tony had been too busy trying to stay alive to count.

The fact that Tony walked out of there in one piece was due to Carter, not to anything Tony had done on his own. Instead of trying to take out the guys who'd come through the kitchen to catch Sid and his men in a cross fire, Tony had been shielded by a heavy wooden table Carter had overturned right before he got hit with a round in the shoulder.

Even shot, Carter took care of him. He got Tony out of that restaurant in one piece.

Someday Carter wasn't going to survive taking care of him. Tony didn't want to think about that.

Tony let the gun hang relaxed at his side. He wanted to practice firing when he didn't have time to aim, but for a moment he was enjoying the quiet of the forest and the lack of gunfire.

"Think we should split up for a while, make it hard for them?" Tony asked.

"Not a fucking chance." Carter picked up a shotgun, nestled the stock against his shoulder, and fired. This time one of the beer bottles exploded in a rain of powdered glass. "We don't even know they're coming." He shot again. A can went flying. "I ain't leaving you."

Tony didn't want him to. He wasn't sure if that was smart, but he wanted Carter at his side.

Always.

∗ ∗ ∗

They made love that night for a long time.

Tony would be the first to admit they weren't the most adventurous of lovers. Hell, until the demise of his uncle's organization, they hadn't been lovers at all. Only after they fled New Jersey had they acted on their long-smoldering attraction for each other. Tame described most of their love-making, and Tony was good with that. He knew Carter loved him, and he made sure Carter knew he was in it for the long haul.

"Look at you," Carter said as they both stripped down for their nightly bath. The house they lived in had a tub that fit the both of them, and they put it to good use, bathing together every night. "You did better today than you thought you would. Mister Dangerous."

Tony snorted. "Only if they come at us blindfolded."

"Blindfolded, huh?" Carter stepped out of his shorts. He was half-hard already, his cock heavy and thick between his muscular thighs. "That has possibilities."

Carter had always been solidly muscular. Tony had never been turned on by guys in general, but Carter's body, with his smooth skin cut close to thick muscles, the cords and veins of his arms, his broad shoulders and narrow waist and hips -- just the sight of Carter naked never failed to make Tony so hard he ached. By the time he got out of his own clothes, his hard on could have cut steel.

Carter got in the tub first. Tony got in afterward, settling in the hot water with his back against Carter's chest, Carter's cock nudging the crack of his ass.

Nighttime baths were part of their routine. They showered in the morning, then put on the clothes they wore at the deli like they were putting on the public part of themselves. They didn't fuck in the mornings after they showered. That part of their day was for business.

In the evenings, the bath was their transition from the public Tony and Carter to the private couple. The men who could be vulnerable with each other, who didn't have to be tough guys ready to take on the world if it got in their way. Half the time they jerked each other off in the tub, too impatient to wait any longer, their hands slippery first with soap and then with come. Then they went to bed and fucked and slept in each other's arms.

Tonight, instead of soaping Tony's chest with the washcloth, Carter put the wet cloth over Tony's eyes.

"What the fuck?" Tony said.

He reached up to take the cloth away. Carter's hand on his wrist stopped him. "Leave it," Carter said. "I wanna try something."

Tony hesitated. He didn't like having his eyes covered. It reminded him too much of the times he knew his uncle's enforcers, the guys who had years on Carter and dozens more "enforcements" under their belts, shoved one of his uncle's enemies, blindfolded and hogtied, in the trunk of their car and took him for the last ride of his life. A few of them liked to wrap the guy's necktie around his eyes and set him walking down an alley, thinking he was free, then cap him twice in the head. For sport.

"You're gonna like it," Carter said.

Tony felt the rumble of Carter's deep voice in his own chest. This would be different. This was Carter. Carter wouldn't hurt him.

Tony let his hand fall back in the water.

"Just relax," Carter said. His steady breathing, the rise and fall of his chest beneath Tony's back, went a long way toward helping Tony finally release the tension he'd held all day.

"What do you have planned here?" Tony asked.

Carter's voice dropped half an octave. "Sit back and you'll find out."

They never put candles around the tub. Instead, they left the lights on over the vanity. The little light bulbs made the inside of Tony's eyelids glow a faint red. He felt better being able to see a little through the washcloth. He tried to tell himself that was stupid, but it made a difference.

Nothing happened for a while, just the steady rise and fall of Carter's chest, the slow drip from the bathtub faucet, the subtle creaks of the house settling in for the night. Tony was about to doze off when he felt Carter move.

He was ready for Carter to grab him beneath the water, but instead he felt the gentle touch of Carter's fingers on his forearms. Slow and soft, Carter ran his fingertips from Tony's wrists where they rested beneath the water all the way up to Tony's shoulders, then back down again.

Carter could be gentle for a big man, which would have been surprising to the guys they knew in Jersey. Tony was used to it by now, but this... this was different. This touching made Tony's skin come alive, and not just the skin on his arms.

The way Tony was nestled up against Carter, the bath water came up to just below his nipples. Carter's movements made the water lap up against them in soft little waves, a lick of warmth followed by the cool kiss of air as Carter's fingers kept sensitizing Tony's skin.

Would he have felt as much, and as deeply, if he'd been able to see? Tony doubted it. His cock ached, and Tony knew he was hard as a rock again.