Cutting in and out of the traffic, Tony continued edging closer to the little car up the front. At the next set of lights, Junior pulled away again. Max didn’t have to say a word this time, Tone put his foot to the floor. Then he spotted the cop car parked up at the side of the road, and stopped.
‘Fuck,’ said Max.
The lights changed. Tone took off again, full-speed, edging up as Junior came within distance. They were three cars behind, then two, then one. Then the lights again. This time Tone ignored them. Brakes squealed, horns tooted, people shouted and screamed. No one got killed, but it was only by luck. Tone was on Junior’s bumper as he headed over the North Circular. Soon as he came off it, Junior pulled the car to the side and with a chirp of brakes parked it nose-first against the nearest pavement. Then he tumbled out of the driver’s-side door, and ran.
Max was out of the Jag before Tone brought it to a halt. He hit the road and was off along the pavement after Junior. Thirty paces and Junior came to a brick wall. He was trying to hurl himself over it when Max caught up and dragged him down. Junior started yelling.
‘Shut up,’ snapped Max, shaking him. ‘We’ve got your sister in the car. You want her to come to grief? Keep that up and she will.’
Junior shut up.
Yeah, he thought a lot of his family, Max could see that. Shame that familial loyalty didn’t stretch to Annie. He knew his ex-wife was a crazy, maddening cow, but that had never stopped him loving her one hundred per cent.
He gripped Junior’s arm and marched him to the Jag. Then he threw him in the back with his sister, and Tone drove them all to Holland Park.
Annie was in the study when she heard the doorbell ring. Rosa was down in the kitchen, chances were she wouldn’t even hear it. But Bri was there on the door, he’d get it. She’d just got off the phone to Alberto, who’d rung in to say he had Layla with him, she was safe. She was worried for Alberto, but at a loss to know how she could help him. Soon, he’d warned her, he was going to have to run.
Christ, Alberto, please don’t leave it too late, she thought, shuddering. She went to the window, looked out. There was a van out there, a black van, it had been there for a couple of weeks now; people coming and going around it, workmen she had supposed. But now… she wasn’t so sure.
She felt bad about having called him. He shouldn’t be here, helping her. She shouldn’t have asked him to come.
When the Feds took Alberto, she knew the whole edifice of his organization would come crashing down. Without his rigorous control of the streets, Queens, New York, would be a zoo again, wide open to any little tosser with attitude. She thought of Naples, where only recently a whole host of Mafia godfathers had been arrested. Shortly after their trials and convictions, the police authorities had found themselves unable to cope with the sudden outbreak of criminal chancers running wild.