“You think I’m blind!” Captain America roared, tightening his choke hold. “I forgot my jacket in the car, and when I came out— You think I wouldn’t see you leave!?”
“P-Please . . . you don’t understand . . .” Wojo pleaded, realizing that the car he saw leaving was a taxi. Cap was a man of action. He’d jumped in a cab to race back home.
“Please . . . Inside . . .” Wojo added, twisting wildly, fighting to get loose, clawing at his own neck. Cap’s grip was too strong. Wojo was thrashing now, his face a pale purple, tears squeezing out behind his eyes. He could picture Oscar the Grouch and his misshapen mask. By now, the Taser would be wearing off. He’d be here soon.
“You steal my car . . .” Cap roared.
Ten seconds.
“。 . . and break into my house!?”
“If we don’t— Please . . . He’s—” Wojo begged. “If we don’t go, he’ll kill us . . . !”
“He?” Captain America asked. “Who’s he?”
Tink. Tink.
Outside the driver’s window, a knuckle tapped against the glass.
In perfect sync, both Wojo and Captain America turned left, looking up at a saggy, askew Oscar the Grouch mask. The man in the mask raised his gun.
Pffft. Pffft.
Two quick shots. Then a third when he saw who else was in the back seat.
Anthony Wojowicz wilted sideways. A small burn mark from the bullet appeared in his temple and sent a spray of blood across the passenger seat. Dead at thirty-two years old.
Behind him, Captain America—an Army veteran named Archie Mint—slumped forward, a matching burn mark on his cheek.
Wojo’s luck had finally run out. But when it came to Archie Mint, well . . . even in death, Mint still had a bit of luck coming.
1
Wonderly Square, Pennsylvania
Four hours. He spent four hours working on her body.
“Ziggy, let her be. She looks good.”
“Good?” Jim Zigarowski asked, standing over the coffin, makeup brush in his hand. “Not great?”
“Let me rephrase. Great. Beautiful. Michelangelo would say you’re Michelangelo,” said Puerto Rican Andy. Zig never liked the name, but Andy had been calling himself that since fourth grade, when there were three Andys in his class. Today, at three hundred pounds, Puerto Rican Andy lumbered through the viewing room at Calta’s Funeral Home, carrying a metal easel with a bushel of bright daisies that he placed at the foot of the coffin. “She hasn’t looked this good since Reagan was President.”
“Don’t listen to him, ma’am,” Zig whispered, leaning down toward the dead elderly woman with high cheekbones and pale pink lipstick. Fallen #2,546. Mrs. Leslie Paoli, ninety-three years old. Dead from stomach cancer and whatever else you catch when you spend your last decade in a nursing home. “You look even more beautiful now, Mrs. Paoli.”
Zig meant it. For four hours, he’d polished her nails, cleaned her dentures, used putty and makeup to cover the bruises on her neck and arms from all the machines at the hospital, and washed and restyled her hair, which probably hadn’t been shampooed in months. He even put her in the same dress—gold sequins with a crystal butterfly pin at the shoulder—that she was wearing in the photo next to her b—
“Bossman, they’re here!” Puerto Rican Andy called out, sweat running down his shaved head, skating toward his neck tattoo—a phoenix—that poked out from the collar of his white dress shirt. Andy was big and looked like a convict, but as his parole officer had told Zig, the phoenix referred to Dumbledore, Puerto Rican Andy being the biggest Harry Potter fan in rural Pennsylvania. Ravenclaw, Andy would say to anyone who asked.