“Any of those wrecks drivable?”

Sal stopped and looked around. “Yeah, I s’ppose. Not legal-like. A coupla them’ll getcha from here to there, but probably not back.”

“I don’t need to get back.”

“Whatchathinkin’?”

Jack was beginning to feel a little better now.

“I’m thinking I may take out some of my fee in trade after all.”

12

“How long are we going to sit here?” Vuk Vujovic said, lighting another Marlboro.

All he’d done today was camp in this damn car in this rich neighborhood and smoke while they waited for this woman to show. He was stiff, restless, bored, and an unbroken chain of cigarettes had left his tongue feeling like soggy cardboard. The Lincoln was comfortable to drive, but he felt as if he’d moved into it. He checked his bleached hair in the rearview mirror. Dark roots were starting to poke through; he was going to need a touch-up soon.

“How many times are you going to check your hair?” said Ivo from the passenger seat. “Afraid it’s going to fall out?”

“Not mine, old friend.” He glanced at Ivo’s dark but thinning hair. “I’ll still have plenty when you’re as bald as an egg.”

“At least I won’t look like a girlie-man.”

Vuk laughed to hide his irritation at the remark. If anyone in this car was a woman it was Ivo—an old woman. “The ladies love the color.”

Ivo grunted.

They’d met in the Yugoslav Army and later had gone through the Kosovo cleanup together. With the army and the country in shambles after that, they’d hired on with Dragovic.

Vuk stared at the woman’s door. Look at this neighborhood. Elegant brick-fronted town houses on an almost private block that dead-ended at a little park overlooking the East River. No places like this back home, unless you were high in the regime. He tried to imagine what it cost to live here.

“I hate this waiting.”

Ivo sighed. “Could be worse. We could still be in Belgrade waiting for our back pay.”

Vuk laughed again. “Or waiting on line for a gallon of gas.”

“Do you ever think about home?” Ivo said, his voice softer.

“Only when I think about the war.” And he thought about that every day.

Such a time. How many woman had he taken? How many men, some KLA, most simply able-bodied males, had he marched into fields or stood against walls and shot dead? Too many to count. How powerful he’d felt—a master of life and death, surrounded by cries and wails and pleas for mercy, a master whose whim decided who lived and who died, and how they died. He’d felt like a god.

Vuk missed those days, missed them so much at times it nearly brought him to tears.

“I try not to.”

Vuk glanced at his companion but said nothing. Ivo had always been soft, and now he was going softer. This was what happened when you lived in America. You went soft.

I’m going soft too, Vuk admitted. I used to be a proud soldier. Now what am I? A bodyguard to a gangster—a Serb by birth, yes, but more American than Serb—and sent on wild-goose chases like this one. But he knew he was better off than others of his generation still in Belgrade.