Wiseguys: Blast From the Past Read Online Free PDF Page A

said.
    "Yeah." Carter finished his soda and tossed the empty can into a recycle bin. "If it's got to do with us."
    If. It was one big If.
    "If it does," Carter said, looking Tony in the eye. "I'm gonna kill the bastard."
    He said it like he thought Tony would argue the point. Tony had kept Carter from busting people up, like the homophobic asshole who threw a rock through the deli's front window. Then it had been about disrespect and intolerance, and there would have been no upside to Carter using his fists to settle the score. One lesson Tony had learned from Uncle Sid was to pick his battles. This though? This was different.
    "Yeah," Tony said. "If I don't get to him first."
     
    ∗ ∗ ∗
     
    They took turns sleeping that night, one on watch with a gun, one asleep.
    Carter took the first watch. He sat in the big armchair in their living room, lights off, just a dark, deadly bulk in the corner, gun in his lap. Tony knew from experience that Carter could sit unmoving for hours, alert and ready for anything that came at him.
    Tony didn't think he'd be able to sleep. He had a gun on the night stand next to the bed, but the bed felt empty and foreign without Carter next to him. Finally, he did manage to catch a couple of hours sleep before he went out to the living room to relieve Carter.
    "Anything?" Tony asked while he was still in the dark hall, just to let Carter know it was him. He kept his voice low, but it still sounded loud in the dark house in the middle of the night.
    "Not a peep." The armchair creaked as Carter got up. He made a couple of soft grunts as he stretched out stiff muscles, and Tony heard his jaw pop as he yawned. "Even after all these months, I forget how quiet nights are out here."
    Back in Jersey, in the city, it had never been quiet, not even in the middle of the night. There was always traffic, and guys hanging out on the streets, and somebody playing their music too loud, and somebody else yelling about it. Tony supposed things would have been different if they'd lived in the suburbs, but Uncle Sid wanted his family in the city, and he wanted them close. After Tony had gotten old enough to live on his own, he had an apartment in the same building his uncle lived in. Tony's apartment had been a one bedroom. Uncle Sid's apartment had taken up an entire floor.
    "Something to aspire to, kid," Uncle Sid used to tell him.
    He never knew that Tony didn't care about the apartment. Or the power that came with being the head of a family. What Tony wanted was the freedom to live his own kind of life. The kind of life he had here with Carter.
    He kissed Carter lightly on the lips before he took Carter's spot in the chair and Carter padded down the hallway to the bedroom. Tony had brought the gun from the bedroom. It was a solid, cold weight in his lap.
    Carter had left the blinds on the front window slitted half-open. There was a street light half a block down from their house. It was enough to throw faint light on the yard, but not enough to illuminate inside the house. If whoever was after them had night vision equipment, they'd be able to see Tony sitting in his darkened living room, but if they didn't, all they'd see was the street light reflecting off the metal slats of the blinds.
    Tony'd gotten used to waiting back when he worked for his uncle. Most days he was nothing but a glorified errand boy. Go here and get this. Bring that to someone else. Tony wasn't stupid. He knew what he was doing was picking up his uncle's share of somebody else's business.
    Protection money. It had become so ingrained in Tony's way of life that he'd half expected someone to try to shake them down when he and Carter opened the deli. It hadn't happened. So far the only attempt at intimidation had been the rock through the deli's front window, but that had been a hate crime against gays, not the start of a turf war, wiseguy against wiseguy.
    Somewhere out in the dark, a dog started barking. Tony's eyes narrowed, and he