Immoral Certainty by Robert K. Tanenbaum Page B

years.”
    “OK, I see what you mean,” Karp admitted. “So where is he, and why’d he skip?”
    “Hey, the fuck I know! Am I his brother? But the Pick didn’t kill him.”
    Devlin cleared his throat and said, “Ah, Butch, I got to agree with Guma. Now that we’re talking about it, I remember one of my guys telling me that some Bollano people were asking around after Impellatti the weekend after Ferro got hit. They don’t seem to know where he is either.”
    There was silence in the room for a few moments after that, which was broken by Tony Harris. “What about his car?”
    Everyone looked at Harris. He was a wiry young man in his fourth year with the Bureau, a good lawyer and the regular third-baseman on the D.A.’s softball team. “What car, Tony?” asked Karp.
    “Impellatti’s car. He’s got a car, hasn’t he? I mean, he doesn’t go to work on the subway. Also, he’s a driver. He wanted to get away for some reason, he’d probably take the car.”
    Karp looked at Devlin, whose expression was admissible evidence that no, the cops hadn’t thought of looking for Little Noodles’s car.

CHAPTER
4
    “S o, you goin’ a work today, Felix, or what?”
    “Yeah, maybe, if I feel like it. You goin’?”
    “I guess. But it don’t start ’til four.”
    “You still working that security job?”
    “Yeah. Fuck, I get paid for rackin’ out, which I would do anyway, so….”
    “Yeah, hey, so what do they keep there, that, what is it, a warehouse or somethin’?”
    “Yeah, a warehouse. It’s all white goods, like fridges, and stoves, washers, like that.”
    “Any TV or stereos?
    “Yeah, sometimes. Hey, Felix, you thinkin’ maybe you wanna take the place off?”
    “No, Stevie, I’m thinking of goin’ into the fuckin’ warehouse business, I wanna check out the competition. They know you been in the joint? At the job?”
    “Fuck I know. They didn’t ask. Shit, fuckin’ half the dudes work there been in. If not, they’re some kinda gook or some kind of weird nigger, from Pakistan or some damn place. Who the fuck else is gonna work that kinda job?” The two men were silent for a moment, as if contemplating the economic reality behind that question.
    Felix Tighe was lying on a narrow sofa bed in the living room of his friend’s apartment. His friend, Steve Lutz, was leaning in the doorframe that led to the apartment’s bedroom, dressed in maroon gym shorts and a cut-off Rolling Stones T-shirt, the first Schlitz of the bright morning in hand.
    He was a lean, muscular man in his early twenties, with a narrow, lantern-jawed face and lank, dark, neck-length hair. His arms were tattooed with the usual assortment of hearts, knives, names and snakes. He kept his mouth open, even when not talking, showing uneven yellow teeth.
    Lutz took a long swallow and asked, “You wanna work out?”
    “Yeah, in a minute.”
    Lutz disappeared into the bedroom, and shortly afterward Felix heard his grunts and the clank of weights. He rolled over and reached for his first cigarette. He tried to remember if he had exceeded his self-imposed ration of five daily cigarettes the previous evening, and decided he probably had. He had been with Anna, who smoked like a chimney. He’d have to get her to cut down.
    He sat up and looked around the living room, wrinkling his nose in disgust. There were dirty clothes strewn in piles on the floor and the remains of a large pizza on the square bridge table in the center of the room. Beer cans, some crushed, some still holding stale dregs, littered the floor and overflowed the large rubber garbage pail in the corner. He could see into the tiny alcove kitchen through a torn curtain made of an Indian bedspread. Filthy dishes were piled in the sink and three squat brown bags of dripping garbage were lined up on its drainboard. The close air stank of old beer and orange peel.
    Felix got out of bed, naked except for a pair of bikini underpants printed with a zebra-skin pattern, and picked