THE BLACK CROWN VICTORIA SNAKED ITS WAY THROUGH Woodhaven and then into traffic along the Jackie Robinson. The driver, a chunky forty-ish man in a thick military coat, looked out over the highway and unclenched his teeth. “No,” he said.

Next to him in the passenger seat was a guy named Hector Amira. They called him Spackle because he wore these work boots that were covered with pigeon-shit patterns of dried paint and plaster. Three of his brothers, apparently, were painters.

Anyway, Hector was Panamanian with some Honduran and Chilean on his mother's side. Not an imposing guy physically, but he was ropy and gaunt. He was leaning against the window now in his Yankees cap and his hip-hop pants and his big, square Gucci glasses with brown lenses and his little goatee and wincing like he had to piss or something. “It ain't right, bruh. That's all I'm saying.”

The driver shook his big head but didn't say anything.

Whether they liked it or not, everybody in that crew got a nickname. The driver, Aleksey Ignat, didn't like it. They'd dug him up out of a body shop in the South Bronx where he was ripping up stolen cars at night and selling off the parts. Due to his mechanical inclinations, the guys started calling him Torque, which fit also because he was built like a frontloader.

Torque was Czech, straight off the boat at age nineteen. Hector disliked him right away. Guy wasn't right, Hector thought. You could see it. He was dour, quiet. You never knew what he was thinking or what he was going to do. Hector had no idea what happened in his life to make him that way, but he'd crossed paths with men like this at Rikers, and he could spot them a mile off. Some inside part of them was dark and poison and always trying to find ways of transferring the pain onto others.

Hector wasn't happy when the boss told him to ride along on this job and make sure everything went OK. Well, it didn't.

“Boss says keep it low-key,” Hector was telling Torque, “and you got to send the mofo out over Ninth Avenue like a sack of laundry.”

“I do the job,” Torque told him. “That's all.” Torque's powerful hands gripped the wheel so hard that Hector could see the joints pressing up against his leathery skin. Torque was looking at him now, too, his cold wolf eyes set low in his lumpy oatmeal head.

Hector had lots to say about this. Throwing that dude out of the car was not the job, but he had to be careful how he broached it. Guys like Torque could smell weakness and fear, and as soon as you showed it, you were done. He could sort things out in his head later, Hector told himself. Right now was game time, and he better be on point.

“Yeah,” he said, purposely sarcastic, showing Torque how tough he was. “And like all the nice people who saw that dude out there on the sidewalk, they could see what a good job you did, huh? And the ambulance guys, too, and the cops and the—”

“Enough,” Torque said. “Too early for paranoid fantasy.”

“Being careful ain't like being paranoid, bruh, see that's different.”

“No, same thing. What's done is done. Obsessing over possibilities for problems is waste of time.”

Hector let it sit for a moment. He never wanted to be in this position. His mother came here and got citizenship and raised five kids all by herself after his good-for-nothing drug-addicted father hooked up with a stripper and hit the road. He died of alcohol poisoning a few years later in Salt Lake City.

That wasn't Hector.

Sure, he did a lot of dumb things when he was a kid but unlike a lot of others, he grew up before it was too late. He knew the risks when he got into the life, but his options were limited, and it was the fastest way he could think of to earn a pile of cash and change his circumstances. He had a kid at home, a bank account, a passport, and big plans for his future. He was finally making some decent money and now, just like that, he could lose everything he'd worked for.

Hector swallowed and shifted in his seat. This was the part he'd been dreading, but it had to be done. He looked at Torque across the console and said as matter-of-fact as he could, “And so, yeah, like, what's the plan for what's riding in the trunk, huh? Why don't you tell me that, cuz?”

Torque squinted and looked sidelong at Hector. Despite his size, he was lightning-quick. Hector could just see him yanking the wheel real hard or slamming the brakes and then lashing out with an elbow or one of those hydraulic hands. But Torque kept it cool.

“One to the head,” he said. “Neat. Efficient. This is problem for you, eh? Unpleasant business.”

Hector eased back into a slouch, his tatted-up left hand stroking the seatbelt up and down, affecting nonchalance. “Like I say, bruh, that shit ain't right. Now we got circumstances, you hear me?”

He could see that Torque was getting tired of this. “I take care of unpleasantness in trunk. You go home and sleep, dream nice paranoid dreams.”

Hector just shook his head, telling himself to calm down and stay with the program. He reached down below the seat and slowly withdrew a black plastic bag containing a semiautomatic pistol. The weight of it in his hand was disturbing. “You gonna take care of this here, too, right? Ditch it?”

Torque gave him another look, and there was something in it Hector couldn't read—resignation maybe. He was quiet for a minute, and then he said, “This is old Glock, once belong to my brother.” Then he turned and looked Hector in the eye. “It has great sentimental value.”

That one caught Hector off guard. Sentimental value? For real? What a wack job this guy was. So Hector just spat it out: “Fuck dat, cuz. This shit's hot; it's gotta go.”

Torque looked out over the Jackie Robinson and said, “Fine,” and that was it.

Hector let out another breath and hoped that Torque didn't hear it.