December, 1992

I was in the passenger seat of the car, and Gene was driving it. Driving very fast, I might add, about seventy miles an hour down Route 95. I told the stupid fuck that the cops were after us in an unmarked car. I had a gun at my waist, and so did he...it was around early December fourteen years ago.

"Pull in here, quick!" I said to him, and Gene tore up the asphalt making this 90-degree turn into the parking lot of this little bar in Fort Lee. It knocked my brain against my skull, I'll tell you. Coulda puked right on the floor.

"Jesus Christ," Gene muttered, roaring down the parking lot and braking hard in a parking space. I was getting real tired of all this paranoid bullshit. Still, I needed a way to get him alone, somewhere secluded.

Gene leaned back in his chair, and closed his eyes. I caught site of a spot just behind his ear, just inches away from me...if he didn't notice me pulling out the gun, I could kill him easily. My hands slowly slipped down to my waist, unhooking the silenced .32 from its holster.

"Shit..." Gene muttered, turning out the window. "They coulda got us..."

I made my move. I quickly but carefully lifted the heavy gun, weighted by the silencer, and held it to Gene's head. I didn't want to blow his brains all over my clothes, but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.

I pulled the trigger, squeezing metal against metal, and a muffled pop filled the car. Gene's head slammed against the window, blood streaming down his face. I missed his brain stem, but fuck it, at this range any shots would kill him. I fired twice more in the darkness, and Gene slumped in his seat, just a small bit of blood on the window pane.

No exit wound, and no gore. Not even a lot of blood. I was proud of myself, but it was time to ditch the evidence. You have to be real speedy about these things.

I grunted as I opened the car door and stepped out, keeping my dark gloves on. The gunshot residue would be all over the gloves, and no way was I being connected to the hit. I slammed the door closed, leaving Gene inside, the poor bastard. Unless any busybody was wandering around the bar's parking lot late at night, they wouldn't find his body until morning.

I contemplated my options. Putting a plan together in your head isn't the same as actually carrying it out. Like the great Chink general whatever-the-fuck-his-name-is said, an inflexible plan is one sure to fail. Confucius, or maybe the art of war guy. Or some Greek guy. Whatever, the point is that unforeseen problems can occur.

Right now, the hit had gone smoothly, as far as hits go. I began walking out of the parking lot, hoping that my black clothes would provide camouflage in the darkness. Route 95 winded its way a little bit onward past the Palisades Cliffs, over the Hudson...the George Washington Bridge. That would be a good spot to get rid of evidence. I began walking...

Gene's kids might be deprived of a daddy, but considering the fact that his wife was banging her coworker on the side, I shouldn't think her widowage will last long. It's not something that bothers me; I never really knew Gene as a person until that night. Honestly, without any irony, you never get to know a person truly until you either fuck 'em, or kill 'em.

I'm a stand-up guy, if I do say so myself, and since my sixty-two-year-old dad's one of the capos of the family, I don't think I'd be executed. Still, if I were to get involved in an accident of some sort, I'd hope that my wife would understand. Yeah, I got kids. My boy's six years old, and my little girl is four. Two kids is good enough, though.

Not a lot of cars were passing by on the highway, which was good for me. As I rounded the corner, the Hudson River came into view. I was high up on the Englewood Cliffs, overlooking the water, where the stars reflected on the dark river. Across on Washington Heights, apartment buildings of Uptown Manhattan rose into the sky, giving way to office buildings, high-rises, and condos all the way down the West Side.

It's a beautiful sight, and one that gets me every time. It's really a great place to live. I hate to get emotional over little things, but nostalgia is one thing that sure as hell can make me tear up.

I walked down the pedestrian section of the bridge, reaching into my jacket and unscrewing the silencer from the pistol. I looked over the edge, down maybe two hundred feet to the Hudson River. Speaking of nostalgia, when you're a kid who doesn't like dropping shit off cliffs or rooftops and seeing how they land?

I chucked the silencer with all my might over the guardrail and eagerly leaned over to see the little metal piece plummeting down toward the water. It took a couple seconds for the silencer to hit the surface, hopefully sinking down right to the bottom.

I kept the gun itself in my jacket. If the police ever found that little silencer—God forbid—it would be useless to them. Just a silencer, without any gun. The gun...I had a special treatment for that.

Some idiots like to keep guns as mementos of hits. Back in '88, this stupid son of a bitch called Mr. Strong, the cops raided his house and found a gun in his underwear drawer. Linked him to three murders, and they locked him up for life. If he just had thrown it in the river, it wouldn't be so bad; I'm going to make sure this hit was never linked to me.

I walked back over the bridge, back to Jersey, and back to that parking lot where Eugene Sheehan's car sat. Yeah, yeah, they always return to the scene of the crime...spare me, for all our sakes. I'm pretty good with tools—another obvious joke right there—and I can take a gun apart with ease.

Just kinda casually walking along, I began dismantling what I could of the gun. I took off the slide, and popped the magazine out. My dad taught me this certain way to take out all the springs and the trigger, so I did that too, walking back to the car.

I opened up the trunk and looked inside; there was a tireiron on the floor of the trunk, which I grabbed. I once saw a guy beaten to death with a tireiron, I remembered. Back during the unrest of '80. Bad times, let me tell you.

I laid the gun on the ground, ejecting the bullets from the magazine and throwing them into a nearby storm drain. Returning to my gun, I smashed the tireiron down on the son of a bitch, breaking the muzzle. I gave that gun a couple good whacks, breaking off the pieces like plastic.

There was a story on the news a while ago about this seven-year-old who busted up a plastic toy and ate the pieces, because she thought it was candy. Like that would be the logical conclusion after busting up a goddamn water gun? If she was younger, I could let that slide, but the girl was seven! I'll raise my kids proper, so they don't go doing stupid shit.

I picked up the gun's pieces, maybe twenty small ones in all, and stuffed 'em back in my jacket. I set the tireiron back in Gene's car, and waved goodbye to the guy. He was still in his seat, leading me to believe no one had discovered him yet. Good.

If I called for a taxi at this hour, they might remember me. True, I'm in front of a bar, but it would still raise questions, especially when Gene is found the next day. Now this was back in the days before cell phones, so I couldn't just call up a guy and have him drop me off. I live pretty far away, too.

I remembered, my friend Patrick lives in West New York, not too far away. Still around two hours, on foot. About eighty minutes had passed already since I had shot Gene. The walk to the bridge and back had taken time, so did breaking up the gun.

Well, I started walking. I was in pretty good shape...still am, if you see what I'm saying. I tried to get a mental map of Hudson County in my head...down through Cliffside Park, Union City, West New York...it would be a bit longer than expected.

To make a long story short, it was a long walk. My feet grew real sore after a while, but it was good for one reason. Every ten minutes, whenever I passed a sewer grating or open storm drain, I would throw in one of the teeny-tiny pieces of the gun. I would just throw it right in there. See, I had about twenty of these little tiny pieces...if a cop found the whole thing, he'd know it was a gun, but if a cop found a tiny piece, he'd just dismiss it, especially at the bottom of a storm drain.

So they find the silencer...they know there's a gun in the area. Big deal! They'll never find all twenty little pieces, and even if they do, my fingerprints ain't even on it! I start feeling confident. I hope my friend Pat will let me burn my gloves at his place.

As I walked through Union City, I saw I'm in a bad section. Some East European guy is standing on a corner with a 'hoor at his side. Prostitution is big in Union City, they send all these sex slaves over from Russia and the Ukraine. Some black dudes are walking down the street, not looking particularly dangerous. A couple homeless guys carrying shit in shopping carts are on the sidewalk.

I try to look like the most dangerous guy out there. I stick my hands in my pockets, gritting my teeth. This isn't exactly my territory, there are some Italian types in Union City who don't exactly agree with my family. An idea strikes me, right out of the blue.

I go up to this bearded homeless guy and I say to him, "You look cold. Need a pair of gloves?" I take off my gloves—sprayed with gunshot residue, I might add—and wave them at him.

"Yeah, sure," the homeless dude says after a second of thought taking the gloves from me. "That's cool."

I smile, and keep walking.

Eventually, I'm out of the bad section of Union City, and by this park. Now that's an even worse section at night, so I stayed out of there. They cleaned the place up a lot since then, and it's a nice place to go now. Not too much criminal activity, not since then...

I knew Pat's house was only a couple blocks away in West New York, so I kept on walking. My feet were killing me, sore as hell, and as I passed 76th Street, I saw the end in sight. Pat had better be home, I thought to myself.

Pat's apartment building was a nice joint, very classy. I rang, and the receptionist answers me real snotty. Like I'm waking her up or something. "Mr. Coyle will be with you in a moment," she says, like I'm bothering her. "It is nearly three o'clock in the morning, so I can't guarantee he'll buzz you in."

But sure enough, Pat buzzed me in. Ain't that right, Pat? Sorry about that whole mess, at least you know why...I never told you this story before? Sheesh, I thought I had. Well, you know the ending, don't you.

Pat buzzed me in and I took the elevator up to his apartment, and he says, "I was wondering who was waking me up at three o'clock in the morning!" But he says it nice, in a friendly way.

I says to him, "I'm a bit lost, and I need a place to stay. I can't call a cab, 'cause I just shot a guy in the head." My exact words. Yeah, black humor. Like Pulp Fiction.

"Sure, stay here, you can use the phone if you want," Pat replied to me. He was a real good sport about it, weren't you, Pat?

So I got my affairs in order, and laid down on Pat's couch. He had this weird shit on his walls back then, remember? These crazy African paintings? I got a real kick out of that.

I laid my head down and went to sleep. God, it was relaxing just to sleep. I pulled the pillows to me and was out in a heartbeat.

Yeah, I know...You expected me to stay up at night, thinking about Gene, right? You expected me to feel real guilty about killing a family man. Let me tell you, I slept like a baby that night. My conscience was clear as crystal. This isn't like in the movies, son.