Gutierrez looked up and down the street, using both hands to grasp the lapels of his dinner jacket like a judge, his chin tilted up slightly. His long thin nose sniffed the air. There was something recalcitrant and illogical in his stiff bearing; it didn’t go with his slim build. He cut the figure of a man who brooked no offense, yet always seemed to be expecting one. So insecure he’d kill to prove he wasn’t.
He reminded me of a few guys I’ve known—shorter guys, usually, or slight of build, but so ferociously determined to prove they could be just as dangerous as the big guys that they never stopped fighting, never paused for breath, ate too quickly. The men I’d known like this either became cops or criminals. There didn’t seem to be much room in between. And they often died quickly and young, an angry question frozen in their faces.
“He looks like a pain in the ass,” I said.
Broussard placed his hands on the seat back, rested his chin on them. “Yeah, that about sums the Pharaoh up. Too much to prove, not enough time to prove it. I always figured him for snapping, maybe walking up to Chris Mullen and busting a cap in his forehead some day, Cheese Olamon be damned.”
“Maybe this is that day,” Angie said.
“Maybe,” Broussard said.
Gutierrez walked around the Lexus and leaned back against the front quarter panel. He looked down the alley he blocked, then at his watch.
“Mullen’s coming your way.” Poole’s voice was a whisper over the walkie-talkie.
“Unfriendly third party out front,” Broussard said. “Hang back, man.”
“Copy.”
Angie reached up and tilted the rearview mirror a bit to the right so we had a clear view of Gutierrez, the Lexus, and the edge of the alley.
Mullen appeared at the end of the alley. He ran a palm down his tie, looked at Gutierrez and the Lexus blocking his path for a still moment.
Broussard leaned back from the front seat, removed his Glock from his waistband, and racked the slide.
“This goes bad, don’t move from this car, just call 911.”
Mullen held up a slim black valise and smiled.
Gutierrez nodded.
Broussard ducked down on the seat and hooked his fingers over the passenger door handle.
Mullen reached out his free hand, and after a moment Gutierrez took it. Then the two men hugged, clapped each other’s backs with their fists.
Broussard let go of the door handle. “Oh, this is interesting.”
When they broke their clinch, Gutierrez held the valise. He turned to the Lexus and opened the door with a flourish and small bow, and Mullen climbed into the passenger seat. Then Gutierrez walked around to the driver’s door, climbed in, and started the engine.
“Poole,” Broussard said into his walkie-talkie, “we got Pharaoh Gutierrez and Chris Mullen out here acting like long-lost brothers.”
“Hush your mouth.”
“Swear to God, man.”
Pharaoh Gutierrez’s Lexus pulled away from the curb and rolled past us.
As it continued up the street, Broussard raised the walkie-talkie to his lips. “Clear, Poole. We’re tailing a dark-gray Lexus SUV driven by Gutierrez with Mullen riding shotgun. They’re heading out of the project.”
As we passed the second alley, Poole came jogging out. He wore a vagrant’s disguise similar to my own except he’d added the dash of a dark-blue bandanna. He removed it as he crossed behind our car and trotted to the Taurus, and we followed the Lexus back onto Boston Street. Gutierrez took a right, and we followed into Andrew Square and then over to the annex road that ran parallel to the expressway.
“If Mullen and Gutierrez are friends now,” Angie said, “what does that mean?”
“Shitload of bad news for Cheese Olamon.”
“Cheese is in prison, his two lieutenants—supposedly mortal enemies—join up against him?”
Broussard nodded. “Take over the empire.”
“Where’s that leave Amanda?” I said.
Broussard shrugged. “In the middle somewhere.”
“The middle of what?” I said. “Crosshairs?”
16
One of the things that happens when you follow scumbags around for a while is that you grow a little envious of their lifestyles.
Oh, it’s not the big things—the sixty-thousand-dollar cars, the million-dollar condos, the fifty-yard-line seats at Patriots’ games—that really get to you, though they can be annoying. It’s the small, everyday carte blanche a good drug dealer enjoys that seems truly alien to the rest of us working folk.
For example, in all the time we watched them, I rarely saw Chris Mullen or Pharaoh Gutierrez obey traffic signals. Red lights, apparently, were for the wee people, stop signs for suckers. The fifty-five-mile-per-hour speed limit on the expressway? Please. Why go fifty-five when ninety gets you there all that much faster? Why use the passing lane when the breakdown lane is free and clear?
And then there was the parking situation. A parking space in Boston is about as common as a ski slope in the Sahara. Little old ladies in mink stoles have fought gun battles over a contested spot. In the mid-eighties some moron actually paid a quarter million dollars for a deeded parking slip in a Beacon Hill garage, and that didn’t include monthly maintenance fees.
Boston: We’re small, we’re cold, but we’ll kill for a good parking space. Come on up. Bring the family.
Gutierrez and Mullen and several of their minions we followed over the next few days didn’t have that problem. They simply double-parked: wherever and whenever the mood struck them, for as long as they desired.
Once, on Columbus Avenue in the South End, Chris Mullen finished his lunch and walked out of Hammersleys to find a very pissed-off artiste complete with signature goatee and three studs in one ear waiting for him. Chris had blocked in the artiste’s dumpy Civic with his sleek black Benz. The artiste’s girlfriend was with him, so he had to make a stink. From where we sat, idling a half block up on the other side of the street, we couldn’t hear what was said, but we got the gist. The artiste and his girlfriend shouted and pointed. As Chris approached he tucked his cashmere scarf under his dark Armani raincoat, smoothed his tie, and kicked the artiste in the kneecap so deftly the guy was on the ground before his girlfriend ran out of things to say. Chris stood so close to the woman they could have been mistaken for lovers. He placed his index finger against her forehead and cocked his thumb, held it there for what probably seemed like hours to her. Then he dropped the hammer. He took his finger back from the woman’s head and blew on it. He smiled at her. He leaned in and gave her a quick peck on her cheek.