red- and white-checkered tablecloths; garish murals of roman ruins; empty wine
bottles used as candleholders; a thousand bunches of plastic grapes, for God’s
sake, hanging from lattice fixed to the ceiling and meant to convey the
atmosphere of an arbor. Because Californians tend to eat an early dinner, at
least by Eastern standards, they also eat an early lunch, and by ten past one,
the number of diners had already peaked and was declining. By two o’clock, it
was likely that the only customers remaining would be Pantangela, his two
bodyguards, and Vince, which was what made it such a good place for the hit.
The trattoria was too small to bother with a hostess at lunch, and a sign told
guests to seat themselves. Vince walked back through the room, past the
Pantangela party, to an empty booth behind them.
Vince had given a lot of thought to his clothes. He was wearing rope sandals,
red cotton shorts, and a white T-shirt on which were blue waves, a yellow sun,
and the words ANOTHER CALIFORNIA BODY. His aviator sunglasses were mirrored. He
carried an open-topped canvas beach bag that was boldly lettered MY STUFF. If
you glanced in the bag when he walked past, you’d see a tightly rolled towel,
bottles of tanning lotion, a small radio, and a hairbrush,
but you wouldn’t see the fully automatic, silencer-equipped Uzi pistol with a
forty-round magazine hidden in the bottom. With his deep tan to complement the
outfit, he achieved the look he wanted: a very fit but aging surfer; a
leisure-sotted, shiftless, and probably harebrained jerk who would be beaching
it every day, pretending to be young, and still self-intoxicated when he was
sixty.
He only glanced uninterestedly at Pantangela and the marshals, but he was aware
of them giving him the once-over, then dismissing him as harmless. Perfect.
The booths had high padded backs, so from where he sat he could not see
Pantangela. But he could hear the cockroach and the marshals talking now and
then, mostly about baseball and women.
After a week of surveillance, Vince knew that Pantangela never left the
trattoria sooner than two-thirty, usually three o’clock, evidently because he
insisted on an appetizer, a salad, a main course, and dessert, the whole works.
That gave Vince time for a salad and an order of linguini with clam sauce.
His waitress was about twenty, white-blond, pretty, and as deeply tanned as
Vince. She had the hip look and sound of a beach girl, and she started coming on
to him right away, while taking his order. He figured she was one of those sand
nymphs whose brain was as sun-fried as her body. She probably spent every summer
evening on the beach, doing dope of every description, spreading her legs for
any stud who vaguely interested her—and most of them would interest her—which
meant that, no matter how healthy she looked, she was disease-ridden. Just the
idea of humping her made him want to puke, but he had to play out the role he’d
chosen for himself, so he flirted with her and tried to look as if he could
barely keep from drooling at the thought of her naked, writhing body pinned
under him.
At five minutes past two, Vince had finished lunch, and the only other customers
in the place were Pantangela and the two marshals. One of the waitresses had
left for the day, and the other two were in the kitchen. It could not have been
better.
The beach bag was on the booth beside him. He reached into it and withdrew the
Uzi pistol.
Pantangela and the marshals were talking about the Dodgers’ chances of getting
in the World Series.
Vince got up, stepped around to their booth, and sprayed them with twenty to
thirty rounds from the Uzi. The stubby, high-tech silencer worked beautifully,
and the shots sounded like nothing more than a stuttering man having trouble
pronouncing a word that began with a sibilant. It went down so fast that the
marshals didn’t have a chance to reach for their own weapons. They didn’t even
have time to be surprised.
Ssssnap.
Ssssnap.
Ssssnap.
Pantangela and his guardians were dead in three seconds.