Wiseguys: Blast from the Past - 1 

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and 
incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or 
are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, 
locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely 
coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the 
publisher. 

Wiseguys: Blast from the Past 
HIGH BALLS 
An imprint of Torquere Press Publishers 
PO Box 2545 
Round Rock, TX 78680 
Copyright © 2011 by Aaron Michaels 

Cover illustration by Alessia Brio 
Published with permission 

ISBN: 978-1-61040-567-6 

www.torquerepress.com 

All rights reserved, which includes the right to reproduce this 
book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever except as 
provided by the U.S. Copyright Law. For information address 
Torquere Press. Inc., PO Box 2545, Round Rock, TX 78680. 

First Torquere Press Printing: September 2011 

Printed in the USA 

Wiseguys: Blast from the Past - 2 

Chapter One 

The family from Jersey showed up at Tony and 

Carter's deli at five after two on a Friday afternoon mid-
way through August. 

Tony tried not to react. Easier said than done, but just 

because the family was from Jersey didn't mean the guy 
knew Uncle Sid or the rival family that had wiped out 
Sid and every other member of his business family. 

Everyone except Tony and Carter. 
Carter was in the back. He'd just put two pans of 

lasagna in the oven in preparation for the dinner crowd, 
and he'd be starting in soon on the pizza dough. Carter 
had been experimenting lately with pizza. Not designer 
pizzas loaded with artichoke hearts and goat cheese like 
they had in those fancy schmancy places in L.A., but 
good old-fashioned Italian sausage and pepperoni with 
plenty of mozzarella and a hand-tossed crust, just like 
they used to get in the Italian delis back home in Jersey. 
So far, the customers loved it, locals and tourists alike. 

Nothing like a taste of east coast Jersey in a little 

Idaho town fifty miles south of the Canadian border. 
Odd place for a couple of former wiseguys to start a new 
life. Odder still for a couple of former wiseguys to settle 
down like an old married couple and open their own 
deli, not that Tony had one single complaint. He'd put a 
couple of pounds on himself sampling Carter's 
experiments. 

"The good life," Carter said whenever he kissed 

Tony's slightly rounded belly. 

"You complaining?" 
"Naw. Put a little meat on them skinny bones. Give 

me something to hold on to." 

Tony had always been skinny as a rail. That was one 

of the reasons his Uncle Sid had been grooming Tony 

Wiseguys: Blast from the Past - 3 

for the business end of the business. The kid's got no 
muscle, he can't scare anybody, Sid always used to say. 
Tony had hated it when his uncle said shit like that 
around the old man's lieutenants. It cost Tony the respect 
the old man said everybody in the family deserved. 

Not that it mattered now. Sid was dead, gunned down 

with the rest of his crew in a neighborhood restaurant 
the family had controlled. Tony would have been dead, 
too, if Carter hadn't gotten him out. 

Even now, the few extra pounds Tony had packed on 

from eating Carter's cooking had all settled around his 
middle and left the rest of him lean. He wasn't sure 
whether he liked the additional weight, but as long as 
Carter didn't care, Tony could live with it. So long as he 
didn't get his uncle's beer gut. Tony didn't want to 
become one of those scrawny old guys who looked like 
they swallowed a basketball. 

Carter didn't have Tony's problem. Carter was a big 

man, but on him the weight was all muscle, even with 
all the pizza and lasagna and baked ziti he ate. Back in 
Jersey, Carter used to work out on a heavy bag at the 
gym when he wasn't busting heads for Sid. Since they'd 
opened the deli, Carter got a workout hefting fifty pound 
bags of flour and heavy metal pans the size of sheet 
cakes full of the classic Italian food that kept them in 
business. 

By the time the family from Jersey walked through 

the deli's front door, the lunch crowd was over for the 
day and Tony was busy restocking the cold case with 
thin-sliced Italian salami and provolone. He kept twice 
the amount of food they would ever need in one day in 
the cold case, because back home the deli cases had 
been filled to over-flowing. The secret to success, 
someone had told Tony when he was a kid, was to look 
successful. In the delis of Tony's memories, that meant 

Wiseguys: Blast from the Past - 4 

stocking more food than you hoped to sell. 

Tony had taken that advice to heart. Not only was 

their cold case full of meats and cheeses, antipasto and 
salads and cheesecake, the walls on both sides of the deli 
were covered in shelves stocked full of everything from 
dry Italian salamis and pepperoni and jars of cured 
olives and capers and bags of every kind of dried pasta 
Tony could find, to olive oil, canned tomato and 
marinara sauce, canned Alfredo sauce, strings of garlic, 
pickles in glass canisters filled with brine, and loaves of 
bread delivered fresh daily by a local bakery. Pans full 
of baked ziti and lasagna and veal parmesan steamed on 
hot trays off to the side of the cold case. Tony wanted 
people to know they were in an Italian deli even with 
their eyes closed. He wanted their mouths to water 
before they stepped close to the counter. 

He shouldn't have been surprised to see a group from 

the old neighborhood. The whole town made its living 
on tourists. The town bordered the west side of a lake 
that reminded Tony a lot of Tahoe, or what Tahoe must 
have looked like before gambling moved in. 

The deli was less than a two block walk from the 

lake. Tourists who had been out on the lake all day and 
didn't want to go to a fancy restaurant somewhere else 
on the town's three-block main street would start 
showing up around four looking for quick takeout. A 
few regulars, locals who didn't like to cook in the 
summer, either, would start showing up around five-
fifteen. If the day was a good one, the deli might even 
get some calls for takeout before Tony and Carter closed 
up shop at seven. Let the fancy restaurants cater to the 
late-night crowd. By seven, Tony was tired enough that 
all he wanted to do was go home and spend the night 
with Carter. 

Tony pegged the family as part of the old 

Wiseguys: Blast from the Past - 5 

neighborhood before they ever opened their mouths. 
He'd never seen them before, but he could tell Jersey 
girls anywhere. It was a combination of the hair and the 
makeup and a certain way of walking -- attitude and 
swagger and tough-girl entitlement. Back when he'd still 
been part of Uncle Sid's family, Tony's aunt had trotted 
out girl after girl from the neighborhood in an attempt to 
get Tony to settle down. He knew the look. 

"Oh, man, this smells like home," the man said, his 

voice loud and expansive. "You ever think we'd find 
something like this out here in the sticks?" 

"Think they have ziti?" the woman asked. "I haven't 

had a good ziti since we got on the plane." 

The man was in his late forties, solid, olive-skinned 

and dark-haired. He had dark eyes behind wire-rimmed 
glasses and the kind of permanent five o'clock shadow 
only a heavy beard could produce. He had a big gold 
ring on his pinky finger and brought the smell of rich 
cigars and old liquor with him in the door. He walked 
with the slight swagger of a man who didn't expect to be 
messed with. 

The family had two kids with them, a bored-looking 

girl of about thirteen, iPod buds in her ears, a too-short 
baby doll tee showing off her tanned adolescent belly, 
and a boy of about eight. The boy was skinny and dark-
haired, his tee-shirt hanging off him like he was a coat 
hanger. He had dark eyes that seemed to see everything 
but hold it deep inside, like his own little secret. He 
reminded Tony of himself at that age. 

"What can I do for you folks?" Tony asked. He didn't 

smile. Even after months of not being a wiseguy, putting 
on a smile for strangers still felt fake. Carter, now he 
could smile at anyone and make it look like they'd been 
friends for life. Then again, Carter could glare silently 
and make the object of his stare consider just how fast 

Wiseguys: Blast from the Past - 6 

he should leave town. 

"You have ziti?" the woman asked Tony. 
"Got a fresh pan." Carter had brought it out an hour 

ago. Tony had only served up one portion so far. 

"That's what I want," she said. 
"You're not gonna eat it all," her husband said. 
"Then I won't eat it all. What do you care? I'll save it 

for later." 

"Get her ziti," the man said to Tony. 
The kids ordered sandwiches, and the man wanted a 

meatball sub. Tony went about putting their order 
together, all the while conscious of the man's eyes on 
him. 

"You're from back home, too," the man said to him. 
Tony spooned meatballs and sauce on the fresh roll. 

"Yeah. Been out here a couple of years." 

"Where from?" 
"Trenton," Tony lied. "My pop had a place back 

home." 

"I been to Trenton a few times. What's your pop's 

place called?" 

Tony wrapped up the meatball sub in foil, then 

dished up the ziti in a to-go tin. "Closed up when I was 
just a kid. I'm kinda winging it here, going from what I 
remember." 

"Good memory." 
Tony was pretty sure the guy caught that Tony hadn't 

really answered the question. Tony was ready for the 
guy to press the point, but he didn't. 

Tony crimped the edges of the to-go tin to keep the 

cardboard cover in place over the ziti and went to work 
making the kids' sandwiches. Maybe he and Carter had 
gotten lucky this time. Running into another Jersey guy 
was bound to happen sooner or later. Even if the guy 
was connected, it didn't mean he'd know them from a 

Wiseguys: Blast from the Past - 7 

hill of beans. 

Then Carter stepped through the door from the 

kitchen, and Tony knew their luck had run out. 

Not that the guy said anything. Neither did Carter, 

but it was obvious they knew each other. The man's eyes 
narrowed behind his wire-rims, and the air suddenly felt 
thick, like before a thunderstorm when the clouds were 
gathering overhead, heavy with rain, but nothing had 
happened yet. 

Carter stared at the man, eyes flat. Carter kept his 

hair shaved down to his scalp. His skin was dark olive 
and deeply tanned, with sweat beaded up from the steam 
in the kitchen. He wore a plain white tee-shirt that 
snugged tight over the thick muscles of his arms and the 
hard bulk of his chest. Even without a word, Carter's 
mere presence implied a threat, and Tony could tell the 
man from Jersey knew it. 

Carter looked away first, as if the guy from Jersey 

didn't matter. "I got something in the back I want you to 
try," he said to Tony. "After you're done here." He went 
back into the kitchen without another glance at the man. 

"Trenton," the man muttered under his breath, as the 

kitchen door swung shut after Carter. It sounded like the 
guy was cementing the lie in his memory. He handed 
two twenties to Tony. "Keep the change, kid," he said, 
then he and his family took their food and left the deli. 

No one else was in the deli to see the exchange. Tony 

wiped his hands on the apron he wore tied around his 
waist and went through the door into the kitchen. "You 
want to tell me who the hell that was?" he asked Carter. 

"Enforcer for Luciano." Carter opened the oven and 

checked his lasagna. "I busted heads with him once, 
back when your uncle owed Luciano a favor. We went 
calling on this corner grocer thought he didn't have to 
pay." 

Wiseguys: Blast from the Past - 8 

Carter didn't say what happened with the grocer. In a 

situation like that, there were only two possible 
outcomes. Either the grocer paid and the enforcer went 
away happy, or the grocer didn't pay, in which case the 
grocer went away permanently. Back in the day, Tony 
never asked Carter the specifics of what he did. He 
didn't want to start now. Not unless it was going to cause 
them trouble. 

"We got anything to worry about?" Tony asked. 
Carter shut the oven door. "Depends on who Luciano 

owes favors to." 

In Tony's old life, favors were the currency of 

business between the families. Every family craved 
power and respect, that went without saying, but favors 
from one family to the next might keep your own people 
out of jail if the cops were on someone else's payroll but 
not yours. Favors bought you building permits and 
delivery routes and a cut of another family's action. And 
every once in a while, favors bought you someone like 
Carter to help keep the local businesses in line. 

Luciano's people hadn't been the ones who hit Uncle 

Sid and his lieutenants back in Jersey. That had been a 
young family with a boss who had something to prove, 
and he'd done it by turning a family restaurant into a 
killing field. But just because Luciano hadn't wiped out 
Uncle Sid's entire operation in one single blow, that 
didn't mean Luciano wasn't allied with the new boss or 
didn't want to curry favors. 

If Luciano wanted a favor in return -- a big one --

he'd report to the new guy that Sid's nephew, the one 
he'd treated like his own kid, the old man's only relative 
who'd survived the hit, was alive and well and running a 
deli in Northern Idaho. 

"Guess we better watch our backs," Tony said. 
Carter wiped his hands on a towel and leaned back 

Wiseguys: Blast from the Past - 9 

against the stainless steel sink, soapy water steaming 
behind him. "We could pack up," he said. "Get in the 
van. There's a whole lot of country we haven't seen yet." 

They could. But they'd used a lot of the money they'd 

stashed in Carter's van when they left Jersey -- all they 
money they'd saved from working for Sid and running 
their own little protection racket on the side -- to open 
the deli. The place was paying for itself these days, but 
they hadn't been able to replace much more than a few 
thousand dollars of the money they'd started out with. 

Besides, Tony could tell from Carter's attitude, the 

quiet way he'd asked the question, that Carter didn't 
much like the idea of leaving. Tony didn't, either. 

Tony shook his head. "This could amount to nothing. 

I'm not leaving over nothing." 

"We gonna get ready, just in case?" 
Carter didn't mean get ready to move on. He meant 

get ready for war. 

"Yeah," Tony said. "I guess we should." 

Wiseguys: Blast from the Past - 10 

Chapter Two 

Tony had never been a foot soldier. Carter was the 

fighter. Tony had been groomed for management. 
Middle management. Uncle Sid's only son had been in 
line to be boss after the old man died. Tony could have 
hoped for no more than becoming his cousin's 
lieutenant, and he had no problem with that. He didn't 
have the temperament to run a family. Hell, even Carter 
knew that. 

Except for the few times his uncle had made him go 

shoot out in the woods just so he'd know how to handle 
a gun, Tony had had nothing to do with guns. Carter was 
the one who took to guns just like he'd taken to fighting. 

Carter was the one who got them guns now. 
It wasn't as easy in rural Idaho to get a gun as it had 

been on the streets of New Jersey. Back in Jersey, Carter 
had a network of guys who knew other guys who knew 
guys with enough firepower to start a private war. Now 
it took Carter two days to come up with enough guns to 
make him happy. 

"We only got two hands each," Tony said, staring at 

the array of shotguns and pistols laid out on their bed. 

"Got places I'm gonna stash some." 
"Not where any kids can find them, right?" 
Carter took a step back and stared at him. "Listen to 

you, Mister Domestic." 

"Fuck you. I don't want some kid getting hurt over 

this." 

"I don't want us getting hurt over this. And no, I'm 

not stashing anything anywhere a kid can find it and 
decide to play Cowboys 'n Indians." 

Tony picked up the nearest handgun, a .9mm.  He felt 

the weight, released the magazine and then slapped it 
home again, just to practice how. He sighted down the 

Wiseguys: Blast from the Past - 11 

barrel, held the pose for a minute, then put the gun back 
down. 

"This is probably for nothing," Tony said. 
He wanted to rub the hand that had held the gun 

against his trousers. He could still remember what it had 
been like back in that restaurant in Jersey. How gunfire 
had gone off around him without warning, the pop pop 
pop of the handguns and the big boom of the shotguns. 
The whine of a bullet whizzing by his ear, the smell of 
marinara mixed with blood and spent gunpowder, and 
the shouts and screams of the wounded who knew they 
wouldn't make it out alive. 

Now he made himself stand still instead of rubbing 

his hand. Back in those days, he'd made himself do a lot 
of things he didn't want to do. He'd thought the bad old 
days were over. Maybe they were, but he didn't have a 
good feeling about this. 

"I need some practice," he said to Carter. "Let's go 

for a drive." 

* * * 

The part of Northern Idaho where Tony and Carter 

lived wasn't congested like the cities farther south, but 
they still had to drive nearly an hour, the last bit over 
dirt roads, to get to a place where gunshots wouldn't be 
reported to the sheriff. Carter's van was getting old, but 
it made the trip just fine. In winter, the van would have 
bogged down in the snow less than ten minutes outside 
of town. 

The country was pretty up here. The most green Tony 

had ever seen back in Jersey was when Uncle Sid took 
Tony and Carter on fishing trips when they were 
teenagers. Not that Uncle Sid had ever actually fished, 
but the motels they always stayed in were in the country, 

Wiseguys: Blast from the Past - 12 

nestled in woods thick enough to get lost in. 

Back then Tony used to think that rural Jersey had all 

the green in the world. To a city kid used to concrete and 
asphalt and the occasional sapling struggling against the 
smog, the orchards and forests they passed on the way to 
Uncle Sid's favorite motel looked like some medieval 
fiefdom.  Sid certainly acted as if he was lord of the 
manor, fucking every comely wench in sight. 

The place Carter found for them to target shoot put 

Jersey to shame. Tall pines, more than a hundred feet 
from root to tip, towered overhead, crowding together 
like soldiers marching off to war. Beneath the pines was 
a no-man's land of fallen branches, desiccated pine 
needles, and ancient wildlife trails. 

Tony stood next to the van and watched a rabbit 

high-tail it through the underbrush. The rabbit was safe. 
Tony had no desire to add wild game to the deli's menu. 

Carter hauled a cardboard box from the van and set it 

down next to a big log from a long-dead pine, the victim 
of a windstorm or maybe the last evidence of a 
controlled burn. He pulled empty bottles from the box 
and set them on the log along with a couple of empty 
cans. Then he paced off what he must have thought was 
a reasonable distance. He took one of the handguns from 
the small of his back where he'd tucked it beneath the 
waistband of his jeans. He didn't even sight, just pulled 
the gun out and fired in one smooth move. His shot took 
off the neck of a beer bottle. 

Carter smiled. "I still got it." 
Yeah, he did. 
Tony was rusty. He had to sight along the barrel, and 

even then it took four shots before he got the bullet 
where he wanted it. 

"Not bad," Carter said when Tony stopped firing. 
"Not great." 

Wiseguys: Blast from the Past - 13 

Tony finished off the rest of the bullets in the gun, 

then ejected the spent magazine. If he'd been in a battle, 
he would have simply slapped home a fresh one. Now 
he took the time to snap bullets into the empty. 

"If this goes down," Tony said, "how many guys you 

think we'll be up against?" 

"One, if they think they're smarter than us. Two, 

tops." 

That made sense. Enforcers like Carter usually 

worked alone. Sometimes, like when Luciano collected 
a favor, two guys went -- one to keep the mark in place, 
the other to work him over. This time, though, one of the 
marks was Carter. They might be tempted to send more 
than two, but that would draw attention. 

"They think they're smarter than us?" 
Carter shrugged. "They think they're badder than us. 

Don't know about smarter." 

"Might be badder than me. Don't know about you." 
Carter's chuckle lightened the mood. For a minute, 

Tony forgot how deadly serious the situation was. 

He took aim and squeezed off a few more shots. He 

switched guns and did the whole thing over again. As he 
worked the guns, pulling the trigger started to feel less 
unnatural. Tony would never be as good as Carter, but 
maybe he'd be good enough. 

Uncle Sid hadn't been good enough. He'd been 

ruthless as all fuck, but he'd grown complacent. He was 
comfortable with his place in the grand scheme of 
things. He'd forgotten there were other bosses hungry 
enough to try to take him down. 

Nothing had been out of the ordinary the day Uncle 

Sid and the rest of his crew were ambushed. They'd 
gone to one of Uncle Sid's favorite restaurants, La 
Vecci's, just Sid and his son, Tony, Carter, and Sid's 
lieutenants. No wives, no girlfriends. Uncle Sid had 

Wiseguys: Blast from the Past - 14 

business to talk about, and he paid the owner of La 
Vecci's well to make sure the man was never tempted to 
let the cops bug the joint. It was a safe place to talk. 

But Sid miscalculated. He put too many of his men 

all in one place at one time. Everybody drank too much 
wine with dinner. Ate too many heavy meals of pasta, 
and afterward, everyone had eyelids too heavy to keep a 
decent lookout. 

Tony hadn't known the men who stepped through the 

restaurant's front door. They'd opened fire before he got 
a good look at their faces. He wasn't even sure if there'd 
only been two who came in that way. Tony had been too 
busy trying to stay alive to count. 

The fact that Tony walked out of there in one piece 

was due to Carter, not to anything Tony had done on his 
own. Instead of trying to take out the guys who'd come 
through the kitchen to catch Sid and his men in a cross 
fire, Tony had been shielded by a heavy wooden table 
Carter had overturned right before he got hit with a 
round in the shoulder. 

Even shot, Carter took care of him. He got Tony out 

of that restaurant in one piece. 

Someday Carter wasn't going to survive taking care 

of him. Tony didn't want to think about that. 

Tony let the gun hang relaxed at his side. He wanted 

to practice firing when he didn't have time to aim, but 
for a moment he was enjoying the quiet of the forest and 
the lack of gunfire. 

"Think we should split up for a while, make it hard 

for them?" Tony asked. 

"Not a fucking chance." Carter picked up a shotgun, 

nestled the stock against his shoulder, and fired. This 
time one of the beer bottles exploded in a rain of 
powdered glass. "We don't even know they're coming." 
He shot again. A can went flying. "I ain't leaving you." 

Wiseguys: Blast from the Past - 15 

Tony didn't want him to. He wasn't sure if that was 

smart, but he wanted Carter at his side. 

Always. 

* * * 

They made love that night for a long time. 
Tony would be the first to admit they weren't the 

most adventurous of lovers. Hell, until the demise of his 
uncle's organization, they hadn't been lovers at all. Only 
after they fled New Jersey had they acted on their long-
smoldering attraction for each other. Tame described 
most of their love-making, and Tony was good with 
that. He knew Carter loved him, and he made sure 
Carter knew he was in it for the long haul. 

"Look at you," Carter said as they both stripped down 

for their nightly bath. The house they lived in had a tub 
that fit the both of them, and they put it to good use, 
bathing together every night. "You did better today than 
you thought you would. Mister Dangerous." 

Tony snorted. "Only if they come at us blindfolded." 
"Blindfolded, huh?" Carter stepped out of his shorts. 

He was half-hard already, his cock heavy and thick 
between his muscular thighs. "That has possibilities." 

Carter had always been solidly muscular. Tony had 

never been turned on by guys in general, but Carter's 
body, with his smooth skin cut close to thick muscles, 
the cords and veins of his arms, his broad shoulders and 
narrow waist and hips -- just the sight of Carter naked 
never failed to make Tony so hard he ached. By the time 
he got out of his own clothes, his hard on could have cut 
steel. 

Carter got in the tub first. Tony got in afterward, 

settling in the hot water with his back against Carter's 
chest, Carter's cock nudging the crack of his ass. 

Wiseguys: Blast from the Past - 16 

Nighttime baths were part of their routine. They 

showered in the morning, then put on the clothes they 
wore at the deli like they were putting on the public part 
of themselves. They didn't fuck in the mornings after 
they showered. That part of their day was for business. 

In the evenings, the bath was their transition from the 

public Tony and Carter to the private couple. The men 
who could be vulnerable with each other, who didn't 
have to be tough guys ready to take on the world if it got 
in their way. Half the time they jerked each other off in 
the tub, too impatient to wait any longer, their hands 
slippery first with soap and then with come. Then they 
went to bed and fucked and slept in each other's arms. 

Tonight, instead of soaping Tony's chest with the 

washcloth, Carter put the wet cloth over Tony's eyes. 

"What the fuck?" Tony said. 
He reached up to take the cloth away. Carter's hand 

on his wrist stopped him. "Leave it," Carter said. "I 
wanna try something." 

Tony hesitated. He didn't like having his eyes 

covered. It reminded him too much of the times he knew 
his uncle's enforcers, the guys who had years on Carter 
and dozens more "enforcements" under their belts, 
shoved one of his uncle's enemies, blindfolded and 
hogtied, in the trunk of their car and took him for the 
last ride of his life. A few of them liked to wrap the 
guy's necktie around his eyes and set him walking down 
an alley, thinking he was free, then cap him twice in the 
head. For sport. 

"You're gonna like it," Carter said. 
Tony felt the rumble of Carter's deep voice in his 

own chest. This would be different. This was Carter. 
Carter wouldn't hurt him. 

Tony let his hand fall back in the water. 
"Just relax," Carter said. His steady breathing, the 

Wiseguys: Blast from the Past - 17 

rise and fall of his chest beneath Tony's back, went a 
long way toward helping Tony finally release the 
tension he'd held all day. 

"What do you have planned here?" Tony asked. 
Carter's voice dropped half an octave. "Sit back and 

you'll find out." 

They never put candles around the tub. Instead, they 

left the lights on over the vanity. The little light bulbs 
made the inside of Tony's eyelids glow a faint red. He 
felt better being able to see a little through the 
washcloth. He tried to tell himself that was stupid, but it 
made a difference. 

Nothing happened for a while, just the steady rise and 

fall of Carter's chest, the slow drip from the bathtub 
faucet, the subtle creaks of the house settling in for the 
night. Tony was about to doze off when he felt Carter 
move. 

He was ready for Carter to grab him beneath the 

water, but instead he felt the gentle touch of Carter's 
fingers on his forearms. Slow and soft, Carter ran his 
fingertips from Tony's wrists where they rested beneath 
the water all the way up to Tony's shoulders, then back 
down again. 

Carter could be gentle for a big man, which would 

have been surprising to the guys they knew in Jersey. 
Tony was used to it by now, but this... this was different. 
This touching made Tony's skin come alive, and not just 
the skin on his arms. 

The way Tony was nestled up against Carter, the bath 

water came up to just below his nipples. Carter's 
movements made the water lap up against them in soft 
little waves, a lick of warmth followed by the cool kiss 
of air as Carter's fingers kept sensitizing Tony's skin. 

Would he have felt as much, and as deeply, if he'd 

been able to see? Tony doubted it. His cock ached, and 

Wiseguys: Blast from the Past - 18 

Tony knew he was hard as a rock again. 

The next time Carter's fingertips skimmed up his 

arms, Carter kept going. Over the hard angle of 
Tony's shoulders, along his collarbone to the front of his 
neck, and on up beneath his chin, Carter's fingers spread 
their magic. Tony's need coalesced now in those wet 
nipples, spread down through him, dipped in at his 
bellybutton, ran like a live wire through his groin into 
his cock to settle heavily in his balls. 

"You got a plan here?" he asked Carter, his voice 

rough. 

"What, you don't like this so far?" Carter nuzzled up 

against the side of Tony's neck. "'Cause from where I sit, 
it looks like you like this a whole lot." 

Tony shifted in the tub, trying to find some sort of 

release for his aching cock. "I got fuckin' blue balls is 
how much I like this so far." 

"I'm not gonna touch you. Not there. But you're still 

gonna come for me, just from me touching you like 
this." 

Tony almost groaned. "Wait 'til it's my turn. You're 

gonna get what's coming to you, I get my hands on you." 

"I'm counting on it." 
Carter's fingertips started their way back down, over 

Tony's collarbone, around the hard angle of his shoulder, 
over the lean muscles of his arms, down below the water 
to his wrists. 

Carter was enjoying this a hell of a lot, if the dig of 

his cock at Tony's backside was any indication. How 
Carter was managing to hold himself still, Tony didn't 
know, but except for the slow sweep of his hands up and 
down Tony's arms, Carter didn't move. 

Exactly how long was he going to keep doing this? 
Tony got his answer sooner than he expected. On the 

next upward sweep of his hands, Carter abruptly leaned 

Wiseguys: Blast from the Past - 19 

forward. His teeth nipped down on Tony's earlobe the 
same time one of his hands pinched down on Tony's 
nipple. Carter wrapped his other arm around Tony's 
waist and thrust up, his cock sliding in the crack of 
Tony's ass. 

Water splashed, and Tony yelled even as his balls 

contracted at the sudden jolt that ran from his ear to his 
chest right down to his cock. He came, and he came 
hard, grunting and shuddering in Carter's grasp, and the 
washcloth slipped off his face. 

Tony squeezed his eyes shut tight against the sudden 

light, too intent on trying to make this feeling, this 
exquisite feeling, last as long as possible. Behind him, 
Carter groaned, long and low. He pumped himself twice 
against Tony, and Tony knew he wasn't the only one 
who'd come without a hand on his cock. 

Afterward, they lay boneless against each other in the 

cooling bath. Tony finally opened his eyes. He lifted his 
hands out of the water, not surprised that the skin on his 
fingers had pruned up. 

"Where the hell did you learn that?" he asked in a 

low, satisfied voice. 

It took Carter a moment to answer. "I just got 

inspired," he finally said. "Thought I'd try something 
new." 

Something new? "What, you didn't know you could 

make me come like that?" 

Carter chuckled. "I did, though, didn't I?" 
Tony wasn't the only one who was satisfied. 
"I'm never gonna live this down, am I?" Tony said. 

"You, making me do that without even touching me." 

"Oh, I touched you. Not on your cock, but I touched 

you." Carter's lips brushed the back of Tony's neck. 
"You have no idea how much I wanted to." 

"Yeah?" 

Wiseguys: Blast from the Past - 20 

"Let me get you in bed, and I'll show you how 

much." 

That, Tony thought, sounded like the best plan of all. 

Wiseguys: Blast from the Past - 21 

Chapter Three 

Nothing happened for a week. Tony was beginning to 

think that maybe they'd over-reacted. Just because the 
guy from Jersey worked for Luciano didn't mean he and 
Carter were next on the hit list. Small town Idaho might 
be out of the way enough that Luciano figured they were 
no threat. 

Then Bess disappeared. 
"You guys haven't happened to see her, have you?" 
The question came from Norman, the owner of the 

town's lone sporting goods shop. On their first day in 
town, Tony and Carter had stopped a robbery from 
going down in Norman's store. The robbers hadn't been 
wearing masks. Norman knew as well as Tony and 
Carter did what that meant, and he'd done more than say 
thanks. He'd become their friend. 

Norman was sixty if he was a day. He didn't care that 

Tony and Carter were a couple, and if anybody voiced 
their opinion about how two men shouldn't be together, 
Norman would tell them to mind their own damn 
business. He'd been the deli's first customer, and he'd 
been their best customer ever since. 

Bess was only a couple years younger than Norman. 

She ran a bed and breakfast on Main Street, along with 
the fancy restaurant that took up the B & B's first floor. 
Norman called Bess his "good friend", but everybody in 
town knew Bess was Norman's girl. 

After they stopped the robbery at his store, Norman 

had arranged for Tony and Carter to stay in the best suite 
at the B & B for a few days. Tony and Carter had 
celebrated their first Christmas as a couple in that suite, 
complete with a real Christmas tree and Carter's 
homemade lasagna giving the place the smell of back 
home. 

Wiseguys: Blast from the Past - 22 

Ever since the guy from Jersey had ordered a 

meatball sub and left behind a side of unwanted 
complications, Carter had taken to propping open the 
door between the kitchen and the front counter so he 
could keep an eye on Tony. Operating the deli that way 
wouldn't stand up to a health inspection, but Tony knew 
he couldn't talk Carter out of it, so he didn't try. When 
Norman asked about Bess, Carter couldn't help but 
overhear. 

He came out behind the counter wiping soapy water 

off his thick arms. "She missing?" Carter's voice was 
low like it always was when he got down to business. 

"I don't know." Norman's eyes were faded blue, large 

and worried behind thick glasses. He was thin and wiry, 
but no one in their right mind would ever call Norman 
old. "I went over to her place for coffee, like I always do 
in the mornings, but she wasn't home. She's not at the B 
& B, either. She'd call me if she was going somewhere. 
We got in the habit of calling each other ever since..." 

Norman trailed off, but Tony knew what he meant. 

Bess had told him once that they knew how close they'd 
come to losing each other when the kids tried to rob 
Norman's store. 

Tony and Carter exchanged a look. 
This wasn't Jersey. People didn't just go missing here. 

People got drunk on the weekends, went out hunting and 
maybe shot themselves in the foot. There was some 
vandalism, like the rock that had been thrown through 
one of the deli's plate glass windows that spring, but 
gangs didn't roam the streets, cops weren't on the take, 
and old ladies didn't up and disappear from their houses. 

"You seen anybody new in town?" Tony asked. 

"Somebody who doesn't look like a tourist?" 

Norman blinked a few times. "New? What do you 

mean?" 

Wiseguys: Blast from the Past - 23 

"Somebody like us?" Carter asked. 
Norman almost said "gay" -- Tony could see it on the 

tip of his tongue -- but then he got it. Tony always had a 
feeling Norman knew what kind of background he and 
Carter had, but Norman had never said anything about it. 
Now Tony knew. 

Norman knew they were wiseguys. Correction --

former wiseguys. He just didn't care. 

"Hard to tell," Norman said. "Summer months, lots of 

people in and out all the time." 

That was part of the problem. Anybody who showed 

up from Jersey would have the perfect cover. All they 
had to do was act like any other tourist. Pretend to be 
here for the scenery, to go fishing on the lake, or even 
say they were just passing through on their way up to 
Canada. If the guys Luciano sent were smart, they could 
blend in. 

The thing with Bess could be unrelated. Enforcers 

didn't go around kidnapping innocent old ladies. What 
would be the point? To draw the two of them into some 
candyass search for her, get them off by themselves so 
they'd make an easy target?  Luciano's guys would have 
to kill Bess, too, and probably Norman because no way 
would Norman stay out of it even if Tony asked. That 
made it messy. Messy drew the wrong kind of attention 
from the local cops. 

Tony thought it over. It would take a lot of time and 

effort to find out Bess had any connection to them, even 
with Norman hanging out at the deli a couple times a 
week. An enforcer wouldn't risk something like that, not 
when he already knew where to find the two of them. 
No, an enforcer would come at them when they were 
alone. Brace them in their house when they were 
sleeping, catch them on the way to the van. No enforcer 
worth his salt would come at them sideways like this, 

Wiseguys: Blast from the Past - 24 

but Tony didn't like the coincidence. 

Little old ladies didn't go missing for no good reason. 
That meant whoever was here from Jersey was an 

amateur. Fucking Luciano had hired an amateur to take 
them out, and he'd been here long enough to latch onto 
their connection to Bess. 

"You better call Clifford," Tony said. 
Clifford Sewell was the local sheriff. He didn't like 

Tony, and he especially didn't like Carter, but beyond 
the occasional visit to the deli just to let them know he 
was keeping an eye on them, Clifford had left the two of 
them alone. 

Some of the color left Norman's face. "You think 

something's happened to her?" 

"Better just to call him," Carter said, his voice low 

and serious. He exchanged a look with Tony. It said 
they'd be looking for Bess whether or not Clifford 
Sewell got involved. 

* * * 

Tony kept the deli open the rest of the day with the 

help of Julie, their part-time summer counter girl, while 
Carter went out to do what Carter did best. 

Thanks to the over-abundance of food already in the 

case, Tony had more than enough food to last the day, 
even with an influx of teenagers who showed up around 
three. He finally ran out of baked ziti about the time 
Carter came back, looking grim. 

"You okay to handle things out here?" Tony asked 

Julie. 

"Yeah, sure, Tony." Julie looked at the two of them 

with big eyes. "Everything okay?" 

"Just fine," Tony told her. "You've been a big help 

today. I won't forget that." 

Wiseguys: Blast from the Past - 25 

Julie was a smart kid. All of seventeen, and she 

worked harder than most adults. She never talked about 
her home life, but Norman had told Tony once on the sly 
that Julie's father was long gone and her brother was 
doing time for boosting a car. The money Julie earned at 
the deli helped support herself and her mom. The only 
time she'd ever asked Tony for anything non-work 
related, it hadn't been for herself but for her cousin, 
Jason, and it had been a favor Tony and Carter both 
were happy to provide. 

He felt her gaze follow them into the kitchen. 
Carter took a soda out of the fridge, popped the top 

and took a long drink. Tony kept walking through the 
kitchen and out the back door. He didn't want to take a 
chance that Julie could hear whatever Carter had to say. 

A single-lane driveway ran behind the deli. On the 

other side of the driveway, the ground sloped down to a 
small marina tucked into a narrow channel leading to the 
lake. The channel was too small for sailboats. Only 
rowboats and the occasional power boat tied up at these 
docks. 

People were starting to come back from a day on the 

water. Tony watched as a power boat idled on low, 
barely enough forward momentum to push the boat 
toward its tie down. The guy with his hand on the motor 
was bare-chested and sun burnt a nice, deep red. What 
skin wasn't burnt was fish belly white. He'd be in a 
world of hurt tomorrow. 

"What'd you find out?" Tony asked Carter, keeping 

his voice low. 

"Not much, and nothing good." Carter took another 

drink from the can, eyes on the guy with the sunburn. 
"She's still not back. Yesterday's deposit was in the 
strong box, ready for the bank. Jewelry's still there. So's 
her car." 

Wiseguys: Blast from the Past - 26 

"Sheriff catch any of that?" 
Carter shrugged. "I didn't hang around to find out." 
"He gonna figure out you were there?" 
The look Carter gave him was amused. "I'm not that 

rusty." 

That was one less worry. If Carter got his ass thrown 

in jail, it would make them all that much easier to pick 
off, one at a time. 

"This ain't right," Tony said. "We never went 

sideways at somebody like this." 

"Could have nothing to do with us." Carter took 

another long drink from the can. "She could have 
something going on nobody here knows about." 

"Not even Norman?" 
"Especially not Norman. You ever know anybody 

who tells somebody else everything about themselves?" 

True. Tony figured he knew Carter about as well as 

anybody, but there were things about Carter, especially 
about his childhood, that Carter never talked about. Like 
his old man. Tony had seen the bruises when they were 
little kids. Carter's old man was probably the only one 
who'd ever laid a hand his kid and not come out the 
worse for it. Tony used to wonder if Carter ever turned 
the tables on his old man, but he never asked. Some 
things you just didn't talk about. 

From where they were standing, Tony could see the 

access road to and from the public park on the lakeshore. 
This time of day, traffic was bumper to bumper leaving 
the park. Just as many people were leaving on foot, 
crossing over the bridge that spanned the narrow 
channel. Most of the people leaving the lake were 
families with kids, the guys toting coolers, their wives 
toting diaper bags and towels and blankets, the kids 
worn out from a day of family fun. Tony didn't see 
anyone who looked out of place. 

Wiseguys: Blast from the Past - 27 

The land fronting this side of the lake was flat. The 

park was little more than public parking, a big grassy 
area with volleyball nets and shade trees, and a cinder 
block concession stand. On the other side of the lake, 
miles away, the land rose sharply from the water. The 
hills were steep and thickly forested and dotted with 
expensive homes on private roads. That made for a 
whole lot of wild area to hide one elderly woman. 

"We're not gonna find her unless they want us to," 

Tony said. 

"Yeah." Carter finished his soda and tossed the empty 

can into a recycle bin. "If it's got to do with us." 

If. It was one big If. 
"If it does," Carter said, looking Tony in the eye. "I'm 

gonna kill the bastard." 

He said it like he thought Tony would argue the 

point. Tony had kept Carter from busting people up, like 
the homophobic asshole who threw a rock through the 
deli's front window. Then it had been about disrespect 
and intolerance, and there would have been no upside to 
Carter using his fists to settle the score. One lesson Tony 
had learned from Uncle Sid was to pick his battles. This 
though? This was different. 

"Yeah," Tony said. "If I don't get to him first." 

* * * 

They took turns sleeping that night, one on watch 

with a gun, one asleep. 

Carter took the first watch. He sat in the big armchair 

in their living room, lights off, just a dark, deadly bulk 
in the corner, gun in his lap. Tony knew from experience 
that Carter could sit unmoving for hours, alert and ready 
for anything that came at him. 

Tony didn't think he'd be able to sleep. He had a gun 

Wiseguys: Blast from the Past - 28 

on the night stand next to the bed, but the bed felt empty 
and foreign without Carter next to him. Finally, he did 
manage to catch a couple of hours sleep before he went 
out to the living room to relieve Carter. 

"Anything?" Tony asked while he was still in the 

dark hall, just to let Carter know it was him. He kept his 
voice low, but it still sounded loud in the dark house in 
the middle of the night. 

"Not a peep." The armchair creaked as Carter got up. 

He made a couple of soft grunts as he stretched out stiff 
muscles, and Tony heard his jaw pop as he yawned. 
"Even after all these months, I forget how quiet nights 
are out here." 

Back in Jersey, in the city, it had never been quiet, 

not even in the middle of the night. There was always 
traffic, and guys hanging out on the streets, and 
somebody playing their music too loud, and somebody 
else yelling about it. Tony supposed things would have 
been different if they'd lived in the suburbs, but Uncle 
Sid wanted his family in the city, and he wanted them 
close. After Tony had gotten old enough to live on his 
own, he had an apartment in the same building his uncle 
lived in. Tony's apartment had been a one bedroom. 
Uncle Sid's apartment had taken up an entire floor. 

"Something to aspire to, kid," Uncle Sid used to tell 

him. 

He never knew that Tony didn't care about the 

apartment. Or the power that came with being the head 
of a family. What Tony wanted was the freedom to live 
his own kind of life. The kind of life he had here with 
Carter. 

He kissed Carter lightly on the lips before he took 

Carter's spot in the chair and Carter padded down the 
hallway to the bedroom. Tony had brought the gun from 
the bedroom. It was a solid, cold weight in his lap. 

Wiseguys: Blast from the Past - 29 

Carter had left the blinds on the front window slitted 

half-open. There was a street light half a block down 
from their house. It was enough to throw faint light on 
the yard, but not enough to illuminate inside the house. 
If whoever was after them had night vision equipment, 
they'd be able to see Tony sitting in his darkened living 
room, but if they didn't, all they'd see was the street light 
reflecting off the metal slats of the blinds. 

Tony'd gotten used to waiting back when he worked 

for his uncle. Most days he was nothing but a glorified 
errand boy. Go here and get this. Bring that to someone 
else. Tony wasn't stupid. He knew what he was doing 
was picking up his uncle's share of somebody else's 
business. 

Protection money. It had become so ingrained in 

Tony's way of life that he'd half expected someone to try 
to shake them down when he and Carter opened the deli. 
It hadn't happened. So far the only attempt at 
intimidation had been the rock through the deli's front 
window, but that had been a hate crime against gays, not 
the start of a turf war, wiseguy against wiseguy. 

Somewhere out in the dark, a dog started barking. 

Tony's eyes narrowed, and he strained to hear anything 
else. Dogs were a good alarm system. The dog could 
have been barking at a stray cat. Then again, it could be 
barking at someone walking through the neighborhood. 
Someone who wasn't supposed to be there. 

A couple of minutes later, Tony thought he saw a 

shadow moving across the street at the very edge of the 
view afforded by his front window. He stayed very still 
and waited, and sure enough, part of the shadows moved 
against the darker shadows created by shrubs and hedges 
and parked cars. 

Somebody was across the street, moving slowly and 

quietly through the night. 

Wiseguys: Blast from the Past - 30 

There's a way a professional enforcer moves. 

Someone like Carter, even though he was big and 
muscular, still walked with self-confident grace. A 
fluidity and ease of motion that comes from long years 
of being the top dog in any room. Even though the 
shadow across the street moved slowly, Tony thought he 
saw the same kind of fluidity and grace. 

This wasn't some homeless guy stumbling down an 

unfamiliar neighborhood. It wasn't a drunken husband 
shuffling home after too much beer. 

No, this was someone deliberate. Someone who was 

exactly where he wanted to be. 

Watching Tony's house from the shadows across the 

street. 

Tony stayed where he was. It did no good to start 

shooting at shadows, not in a neighborhood this quiet. 
So Tony watched the watcher. 

The guy stopped walking and stood still for a long 

time. If Tony hadn't seen him moving a minute ago, he 
wouldn't have spotted him now. The guy just blended 
too well with the shadowy street. 

Tony almost stopped blinking, intent on not losing 

sight of the guy. If the guy came across the street and 
got close to their front yard, Tony would have to rethink 
his decision about not shooting first. He didn't want to 
get caught flat footed and a split second too late in 
reacting, like his uncle did when shooters came through 
the restaurant doors. 

But the guy didn't come close to the house. He stood 

in the shadows, unmoving, for a good five minutes. 
When he finally did move, it was to back away. 

Tony got up from his chair and approached his front 

window at an angle, both so the watcher wouldn't see 
him and so he could see where the guy was going. He 
watched the guy walk to the end of the street, where he 

Wiseguys: Blast from the Past - 31 

was illuminated beneath a street lamp. The guy was too 
far away for Tony to get a good look at his face, but he 
could tell the guy wasn't a bodybuilder like Carter. He 
was average. Average height, average build, average 
dark hair of average length, and wearing a dark jacket 
and blue jeans. If the guy had a gun, it was tucked in the 
waistband of his jeans at the hollow of his back. Tony 
didn't see a gun in the guy's hand. 

Was he being paranoid? Making up shit about a guy 

who what -- got mixed up where he was supposed to be? 

Tony didn't think so. 
This guy had been sent to check them out. Maybe to 

take them out, but for some reason, he'd gone away 
tonight instead. 

Tony wasn't sure he'd recognize the guy in daylight. 

All he really knew was that the guy wasn't Carter's size 
and he had dark hair. Not that there were many people 
Carter's size. 

At least now they knew. Luciano had sent an enforcer 

to take care of them. 

And he could be any one of a hundred average 

looking guys they saw every day, and they'd never know 
it was him until it was too late. 

Wiseguys: Blast from the Past - 32 

Chapter Four 

The next morning when she came into work, Julie 

handed Tony an envelope. 

"Where'd you get this?" Tony asked. The envelope 

was plain white, business size, with his name typed on 
the front in some old style typewriter print. 

"It was in my mailbox this morning." She bit down 

on her lower lip and looked at Tony like she was 
wondering if she'd done something wrong. "I check for 
the mail before I leave for work, kind of a habit, and the 
only thing inside was this envelope." 

Tony turned the envelope over. It was sealed, no 

writing on the back. 

"I didn't look inside," Julie said, her words rushed. "I 

mean, if that's what you're wondering. That's the way I 
found it." 

Tony frowned. Another sideways move. That didn't 

jibe with the enforcer he'd seen last night. That guy had 
been studying them like a pro. Tony had half expected 
gunfire when they left their house this morning in 
Carter's van, but the neighborhood was its normal 
weekday morning summer self. 

"Thanks," he told Julie. "You did good." She stood 

there like she was expecting something else, and Tony 
realized the envelope had spooked her. "Seriously, you 
did good." 

"Okay, Tony." He saw her make an effort to quit 

chewing on her lip. "You want me to get the tables set 
up?" 

Setting up the tables meant making sure the napkin 

holders had napkins and the salt and pepper shakers 
weren't empty. "Yeah, sure," he said. "Just do your 
normal stuff. This is nothing to worry about." 

He didn't quite force a smile, but he made himself 

Wiseguys: Blast from the Past - 33 

take the intensity down a notch. Julie gave him a 
tentative smile in return. 

He left her checking the tables and took the envelope 

back into the kitchen, closing the door Carter had left 
open. "We got something." 

Carter dried his hands on the towel that hung from a 

belt loop. 

Tony slit the envelope open with one of Carter's 

sharp kitchen knives. Inside was a piece of lined paper 
torn from a spiral notebook. The torn edge was frayed, 
one corner ripped off, and the paper was folded into 
thirds like a business letter. When Tony unfolded the 
paper, a lock of gray hair fell out of the paper and onto 
the kitchen floor. 

Bess had gray hair that hung down to her waist. Tony 

couldn't tell if this was hers or not. The lock on his floor 
wasn't long, but that didn't mean it hadn't come from 
Bess. 

"Son of a bitch," Carter muttered. He bent down and 

picked up the hair, put it in a baggie. "The bastard say 
anything, or he just sending us hair?" 

"Yeah, he told us something." 
There was only one line of printing on the notebook 

paper. An address and a time. Nothing else. No demand 
for money. 

"This is fucking stupid," Tony said. 
He read the address and time to Carter. Carter's eyes 

went flat, and he crossed his arms in front of his chest. 

"It's a fucking trap," Carter said. 
"Yeah." It couldn't be anything else. The address was 

for a place a good twenty miles to the south. Tony'd 
have to look it up on a map to be sure, but it was a good 
bet the place was well off the beaten path. 

Bess was the bait to lure them away from town and 

off by themselves. 

Wiseguys: Blast from the Past - 34 

The smart thing would be to turn the note over to the 

sheriff, but the sheriff would have a whole lot of 
questions Tony didn't want to answer. Like why them. 
And who was behind it. The sheriff wasn't dumb. He'd 
figure things out, and then they'd have to leave and start 
over somewhere else. Tony wasn't ready to do that. He 
liked it right where they were. 

That left only one alternative. 
Tony folded up the note and put it in his pocket. 

Carter put the baggie with the lock of hair in the back 
pocket of his jeans. Their eyes met. Tony saw the same 
thing in Carter's eyes that he knew was in his own, only 
in Carter's case there was a good deal of banked, 
smoldering anger behind his flat stare. 

"What time we leaving?" Carter asked. 
The note said 6:00 p.m. It was a little after eleven in 

the morning. 

"Soon as we can get the place shut down." 
He'd pay Julie for the day, tell her they decided to 

take a drive being it was such a nice day. She might not 
believe him, but she was a good kid. She'd keep her 
mouth shut. It was one of the reasons Tony hired her out 
of all the high school girls who had answered his ad for 
part-time help. 

After Carter got the food put away, they'd go home 

and get their guns. They'd drive out early, find the place, 
and do a little reconnaissance of their own. The enforcer 
had checked them out good, probably more than just last 
night. He didn't think he could get at them on their home 
turf without drawing more attention than he wanted, so 
he set up this little kidnapping drama to lure them out to 
the sticks where a little gunfire was no big deal. 

They might well be walking into a trap, but they'd 

survived traps before. They'd survive this one too. 
They'd get Bess back to Norman, and with any luck, 

Wiseguys: Blast from the Past - 35 

they'd send a message back to Luciano. Maybe next 
time, he'd think twice about sending some goon out to 
finish off the rest of Uncle Sid's family. 

* * * 

The address on the notepaper turned out to be a 

farmhouse on the east side of the two-lane highway that 
ran from Coeur d'Alene all the way north to the 
Canadian border. 

Carter drove. Tony sat in the front seat of the van and 

studied the land. 

The farmhouse was a good couple of miles off the 

highway at the back edge of a flat meadow. The 
meadow was sectioned into grazing pastures for cattle 
and sheep. The same kind of thick pine forest that 
surrounded the east side of the lake where Tony and 
Carter lived hugged the back of the farmhouse. 

Carter had the window down on his side of the van. 

The air smelled thick and musty, choked with the odor 
of manure and the hot, green smell of the fields mixed 
with the dry dust of the road. 

It was an odd place for an enforcer to set up a 

confrontation. 

"Something's not right here," Carter said as he 

brought the van to a stop on the rutted feeder road a 
quarter mile away from the farmhouse. 

From here, they had a good view of the place. The 

single-lane feeder road, little more than a long driveway, 
widened into a parking area in front of the house. The 
fields butted up against the road, green infiltrating the 
hard-packed dirt in stubborn clumps. The farmhouse 
was a one story, white-washed number with a covered 
porch in front. It looked like something out of a forties 
black and white movie. 

Wiseguys: Blast from the Past - 36 

The only cars in front of the farmhouse were an old 

El Rancho and a battered pickup truck. No rentals. An 
enforcer from back home would have rented a car from 
the airport, just like a hundred other tourists. He 
wouldn't have boosted a car unless he had to, and then 
he'd make sure it was a car that wouldn't break down 
first chance it got. Carter's van could have outrun either 
of these two vehicles. 

The guy Tony had seen last night wouldn't be caught 

dead in either of the dilapidated wrecks in the driveway. 
If he was the pro Tony thought he was, the guy from last 
night would have made them go to any one of fifty 
different rental cabins up in the woods or a motel room 
in some rundown dump where truckers wouldn't even 
spend the night. He wouldn't take over some working 
farm. Too many variables. Too many things that could 
go wrong. 

"This can't be about us, not the way we thought," 

Tony said. "This is something else." 

Carter grunted his agreement. "So what do we do 

about it?" 

Tony thought for a minute. He'd been approaching 

this like they were about to meet an equal. Some 
wiseguy whose business it was busting heads and taking 
care of his family's business. That was the guy Tony had 
seen last night. 

But this? The whole snatch and grab with Bess, the 

ransom note that wasn't a ransom note, just an invitation 
-- all along, Tony had thought it felt like amateur night. 
He looked at the pickup through a pair of binoculars, 
and the last piece fell into place. 

It was amateur night.  There was only one way to 

deal with amateurs. Tony needed to quit reacting and go 
do what he and Carter did best. 

"We got an invitation," Tony said. "I say we take 

Wiseguys: Blast from the Past - 37 

them up on it." 

Carter put the van in gear. They drove the remaining 

quarter mile, van bouncing over the ruts and clumps of 
grass, tires kicking up a cloud of dusty, dry dirt. Tony 
didn't care if the guys in the farmhouse saw them 
coming. All the better if they did. 

Tony and Carter both had handguns when they got 

out of the van. Tony's was in the pocket of his jacket; 
Carter had his nestled in the hollow of his back beneath 
the waistband of his jeans. 

Insects buzzed out in the tall grass beyond the pasture 

fence. There were no horses here, only sheep in the 
nearest field and cattle in the field beyond. The sun was 
high overhead. Tony had no intention of waiting until 
six, and now he was glad he hadn’t. Fucking amateurs. 
They didn't know who they were messing with. 

An old golden retriever lay on the covered porch off 

to the left of the door. It thumped its tail at them as they 
approached. 

"Hey, fella," Carter said. He stooped to scratch the 

retriever behind one ear, and the dog's tail thumped 
harder. "You better get out of here," Carter said to the 
dog. "Ain't gonna be pretty." 

No, it probably wasn't. When people didn't know 

what they were doing, like whoever was inside the 
house, things always got messy. 

The front door was solid wood, closed and probably 

locked. The screen door was closed, too, and the drapes 
were pulled shut on the windows to each side of the 
door. The drapes had been open when Tony had looked 
at the place through the binoculars. 

"Guess they know we're here," Carter said. 
Tony nodded at the door. "Then let's introduce 

ourselves." 

The screen door wasn't locked. Carter opened it, but 

Wiseguys: Blast from the Past - 38 

instead of knocking on the front door, he took a deep 
breath, seemed to center himself, and then exploded 
with a hard kick that sent the solid wooden door 
swinging inward with a crash. Not many people could 
do that -- kick a door open on the first try. Tony had 
seen Carter do it more times than he could remember. 

Someone inside the house shouted, and someone else 

screamed. 

No matter what the amateurs inside were expecting, 

anticipating what Carter might do and seeing him in 
action were two different things. By kicking open a door 
the bad guys thought wouldn't budge, Carter had given 
himself and Tony a split-second advantage before the 
bad guys regrouped. Tony didn't intend to waste it. 

He had the gun out of his pocket by the time the door 

bounced back off the interior wall, shuddering on its 
hinges.  Tony strode through the door like he owned the 
place. 

The door opened on a front room, dark and dingy as a 

cave with the drapes shut. One low wattage floor lamp 
was lit off in a corner behind a recliner to the right of the 
door. The coffee table in front of the recliner was littered 
with beer cans and takeout bags from McDonald's, and 
the whole place smelled like rancid grease and old 
sweat. 

Three people were in the room. Two men, burly in a 

gone-to-seed way, dressed in worn jeans and flannel 
shirts with the sleeves ripped out. Their arms and faces 
were tan, their small eyes wide in surprise. The third 
person was the one who'd screamed -- Bess, held 
immobile with an arm around her body and a knife to 
her throat. 

"You didn't knock," said the guy holding Bess. He 

was Tony's height but outweighed him by a good forty 
pounds, none of it muscle. He stood in front of a wood-

Wiseguys: Blast from the Past - 39 

paneled wall, Bess held tight in front of him like a living 
shield. "I guess faggots don't knock." 

His buddy was sitting in a recliner in front of the 

floor lamp. He held a shotgun aimed at the doorway 
where Tony stood. "That's downright rude, don't you 
think?" 

Bess was a sturdy woman in her early sixties. Her 

face was pale now, and she looked scared, but she didn't 
look incapacitated by her fear. Good. Things were going 
to happen fast, and they weren't going to be pretty. 

That's what people who weren't in the life failed to 

understand. Wiseguys, especially guys like Carter, got to 
be tough guys because they didn't hesitate. They 
accepted that they could and probably would get hurt. 
Might even get killed. They didn't let the fear of getting 
hurt slow them down. Pain -- and death -- were just 
occupational hazards. 

These two good old boys, forty and fat and no doubt 

used to being top dog in their own little world, probably 
didn't spend a whole lot of time contemplating their own 
deaths. They set up their little ambush, sure that they'd 
have the upper hand. They probably expected Tony and 
Carter to hand over their weapons so Bess wouldn't get 
hurt. They might even let her go, although Tony doubted 
it. They certainly wouldn't let Tony and Carter go, but 
Tony had known that the minute he spotted the license 
plate on their truck. 

These were the two bastards who'd thrown a rock 

though the deli's front window just because they didn't 
like the fact that Tony and Carter were a couple. These 
bastards had gone from throwing rocks to kidnapping. 
They didn't plan to stop there, not with a couple of fags 
who refused to turn tail and run. 

Too bad Tony and Carter weren't going to let them. 

Wiseguys: Blast from the Past - 40 

Chapter Five 

Tony didn't have time to warn Bess. He had to trust 

that she'd keep her head and know what to do when the 
time came. 

The guy in the chair with the shotgun aimed at the 

front door where Tony stood probably thought he had 
the upper hand. He did, right up until Tony dropped to 
the ground. While Tony was still falling, he brought his 
gun around and fired at the guy. It wasn't a great shot, 
but in such close quarters, it didn't have to be. 

The shot took the guy in the gut. He made a small oof 

of surprise, and blood started to blossom on the plaid of 
his shirt. The shotgun he held went off; whether the guy 
meant to fire or his finger just jerked on the trigger, the 
effect was the same. The blast took out a foot wide 
section of the front door. Tony got hit with shrapnel and 
probably a couple of pellets, but the focus of the blast 
missed him. 

The shotgun blast missed Carter, too. He'd never 

stopped moving. While Tony had taken a split second to 
size up the situation, Carter never broke stride. He 
walked through the front door like the shotgun and the 
knife didn't exist. 

Before the guy holding Bess knew what was 

happening, Carter had clamped down on the guy's wrist 
and twisted his arm and the knife up and backwards. 
Bess, like the trooper she was, dropped and rolled out of 
the way, and Carter hit the guy with an upper cut to the 
bridge of his nose and another beneath his ribs. One 
more punch to the face, and the guy was out like a light. 
Carter never even drew his gun. 

Before the guy with the shotgun could fire again, 

Tony shot him in the shoulder. The guy's hand went 
slack, and the shotgun dropped onto his lap. 

Wiseguys: Blast from the Past - 41 

Still on the floor, Tony took aim at the guy's head. 

"Don't make me kill you," he said. "You know I won't 
lose sleep over it." 

The guy had two holes in him. They weren't huge 

holes, but he was bleeding pretty freely from both. The 
guy's face was shocky and pale, and he looked like he 
was about to throw up. He pushed at the shotgun with 
his good hand, and it fell onto the blood-splattered floor. 

The other guy was still out, his nose a ruined, bloody 

pulp. 

Tony took his finger off the trigger and lowered his 

gun.  His side ached where he'd been hit, but it could 
have been worse. A shotgun and a knife to Bess' throat -
- it could have been a lot worse. 

Bess lay on the floor, shivering. 
"You okay?" Carter asked. He crouched down next to 

her, holding out his left hand. The knuckles of his right 
were covered with blood that wasn't Carter's own. "That 
asshole cut you?" 

Bess put a hand to her neck. Her fingers came away 

wet, but only a little. "Bastard," she said, her voice 
shaky. "Billy Munroe, you little shit." She sat up, looked 
at Carter's hand, and before she took it, she punched the 
guy on the floor -- Billy Monroe, apparently -- with a 
pretty decent right to the belly. 

Carter grinned at her. "Always knew there was a 

reason I liked you." 

"You're good boys," she said, and finally she took 

Carter's hand so he could help her to her feet. 

"Fucking faggots," said the guy bleeding in the chair. 
Tony pushed himself to his feet and kicked the 

shotgun out of the guy's reach. Not that he looked like 
he could bend over to get it. If anything, he looked like 
he was about to join his buddy in dreamland. 

"Watch your mouth," Tony said. "Carter doesn't like 

Wiseguys: Blast from the Past - 42 

that word. I don't, either." 

The guy kept his mouth shut, but his eyes burned 

with pain and hatred. He was beat, but that fact hadn't 
made it to his brain yet. Tony sighed. With a guy like 
that, they might need to beat him again until it sunk in it 
would be smarter for him to just leave them alone. 

"Think we ought to call an ambulance?" Carter said. 
He was just giving the guy shit, but Bess answered 

him. "You should let him sit there and bleed," she said. 
"Harold's got no more sense than his brother." 

Brothers. Tony could see the resemblance now. Sort 

of. Billy's face was smeared with blood from his broken 
nose, and the flesh around his eyes had begun to swell, 
making his features hard to see. 

"They hurt you?" Tony asked Bess. "Before we got 

here?" 

She shook her head. "They wouldn't let me go home, 

kept that shotgun out and at the ready just so I knew 
they were serious. But they didn't hurt me." 

That was good. Tony didn't want to have to convince 

Carter not to kill them. 

"If we call the sheriff," Tony said to her, "what are 

you gonna tell him about what happened here?" 

Bess looked him in the eye. She knew what he was 

asking. 

"You shot him in self-defense," she said. "He shot at 

you, and you shot back." 

"That's not what happened!" Harold's voice didn't 

have much strength to it, if it ever did. He sounded more 
like a petulant little boy than a hate-filled man. "He shot 
me! I didn't do nothing to him, and he shot me." 

Tony wiped his hand over his side. He was bleeding, 

but not so much he needed to worry about it. 

"You didn't do nothing?" Tony said to Harold. "Then 

how come I got buckshot in me?" 

Wiseguys: Blast from the Past - 43 

"You got shot?" Bess bustled over to Tony and took a 

good look at him. Tony winced as she prodded at his 
side. "Sit down," she said, all business and no longer 
shivering. "Over there." 

She pointed him at a rickety, stained kitchen table 

surrounded by three cheap chairs to the left of the front 
door in what was no doubt originally designed to be a 
dining room. Given the stacks of crap on the table, Tony 
doubted anyone actually ate there. 

"I'm all right," Tony said. 
Bess glared at him. "Sit." 
Tony sat. He kept his eyes on the guy in the chair, but 

he sat. 

Carter pulled out his cell phone and placed a call to 

the sheriff. The guy on the floor -- Billy -- stirred and 
moaned, but he didn't try to get up. Bess brought hot 
water from the kitchen, along with a roll of paper 
towels, and proceeded to clean Tony up. Carter stood in 
the living room, keeping watch over the two brothers 
while everyone waited for the sheriff. 

Tony kept his gun in his lap until they heard the 

sheriff's car roll down the dirt driveway, then he laid his 
gun on the kitchen table. Carter had pulled his shirt out 
to cover the gun at his back. Unless the cops patted 
Carter down, they wouldn't see his gun. No need for the 
sheriff to find out both of them had unregistered 
weapons. 

This part was over. Bess was safe. Tony was ready to 

get the hell out of here. 

If the sheriff let him. 

* * * 

Bess made Tony go to the hospital where a pretty 

emergency room doctor removed four shotgun pellets 

Wiseguys: Blast from the Past - 44 

from Tony's side along with a few pieces of splintered 
wood from the door. 

Considering how things could have gone, a few 

pellets and some wood wasn't a bad outcome. Fucking 
amateurs always complicated things. At least Bess was 
safe. 

Back in Jersey, he would have been treated by a 

doctor on his uncle's payroll. Hospitals had to report 
gunshot wounds to the police, so back home, the only 
time someone in the family went to the hospital was 
when the injury was life threatening. But this time the 
sheriff already knew what had happened at the Munroe 
farm. Tony had no need to keep his injuries secret. 

Bess had told the sheriff exactly what she told Tony 

and Carter she would. The sheriff had looked skeptical, 
but Bess stuck to her story with the same backbone that 
let her sucker punch her kidnapper. Whether the sheriff 
believed her or not, he didn't attempt to discredit her 
version of events. 

"You doing okay?" Carter asked him when they both 

made it back to Carter's van. 

Tony relaxed against the passenger seat. The doctor 

had a light touch, but the local anesthetic was beginning 
to wear off. He felt the sting from where she'd poked 
around getting the pellets out. If the sheriff hadn't 
insisted on talking to Tony while he was still on the 
emergency room bed, a thin curtain all that separated 
him from the next bed over, he'd be home already. 

"Yeah," he told Carter. "I'll live." 
Carter didn't push it. There'd been too many times 

when Carter was the one with a bullet hole or knuckles 
so busted up he had to ice his hand just so he could 
make a fist. He knew what it took to get through the 
pain. He'd let Tony deal with it in his own way. 

Carter stopped for a red light three blocks from the 

Wiseguys: Blast from the Past - 45 

deli. It was full night now. The sun had set while the 
pretty emergency room doctor had been digging out the 
pellets. The daytime tourists, the ones who spent their 
time sailing on the lake or lounging on shore, had gone 
back to their motel rooms to nurse their sunburns and 
watch cable TV. The retail shops on the main drag were 
closed for the night, their storefronts shuttered or closed 
off with heavy metal gates and padlocks. 

The people on the street now were the partiers. The 

bars were still open, lounges with karaoke machines and 
small raised stages and pubs with a baseball game on the 
television behind the bar and pretty bartenders to sling 
drinks and keep the customers happy. The people out on 
the streets now -- tourists and locals alike -- had a harder 
edge. They were out for booze or drugs or sex, and even 
behind their smiles, Tony could see the kind of need that 
had kept Uncle Sid's family in business for decades. 

A group of people crossed the street in front of the 

van. Most of them were the kind of party people Tony 
would have expected. Three of them weren't. 

"Think Sewell bought our story?" Tony asked. 
"What we told him?" Carter asked. 
"Or what he's been told." 
Tony watched the three guys. All were in their mid to 

late thirties, all trying very hard to blend in but not doing 
that great of a job. It was like watching a panther at the 
zoo trying to blend in with a bunch of flamingos. 

"Bess sticks to what she said, then yeah, the sheriff 

don't have a choice," Carter said. "Unless he comes up 
with something on his own, and not something from 
Frick and Frack back there." 

The Munroe brothers didn't strike Tony as the most 

reliable witnesses, but he wouldn't make the mistake of 
underestimating the sheriff.  Clifford Sewell was far 
from a local yokel just barely doing his job. He knew 

Wiseguys: Blast from the Past - 46 

Carter and Tony were more than they appeared, he just 
couldn't prove it. Both of them had been vigilant about 
keeping their noses clean. This was the first time they'd 
been compelled to do something that wasn't strictly 
legal. Tony hoped that the fact they actually rescued 
Bess would go a long ways toward making the sheriff 
focus his attention elsewhere, like on the idiots who 
kidnapped her. 

The three men had reached the sidewalk on the other 

side of the street. The one Tony pegged as the leader 
moved with a quiet kind of menace. He had dark hair 
that would have been slicked straight back from his 
forehead in Jersey, but here he'd parted it neatly on the 
side with just an attempt to comb it away from his face. 
He was clean shaven, his dark slacks pressed, and the 
silk tee-shirt he wore under his sports jacket was just a 
cut above high-class tourist. He didn't look directly at 
the van, but Tony was pretty sure the guy had seen them 
just the same. 

More importantly, Tony had seen him. 
The light turned green, and Carter made a left turn. 

They were about a half mile from their house. After a 
block, they left the bars and lounges of the main drag 
behind. Houses took the place of stores, most of them 
single family homes more than fifty years old. Thirty 
foot, forty foot pines crowded front yards strewn with 
bicycles and swing sets and abandoned dolls and soccer 
balls. The cars here had seen better days, just like the old 
guy sitting in a wife beater and shorts on his front porch, 
illuminated only by the pale light from a television in his 
living room. Ten years ago the old guy and the cars and 
even the houses would have been something to see. 

"They did it, didn't they?" Carter said. It wasn't really 

a question. 

Tony looked at him. 

Wiseguys: Blast from the Past - 47 

"Those guys," Carter said. "They're the assholes who 

busted the window." 

Tony didn't need to answer, but he said yeah anyway. 
Earlier in the year, the Munroe brothers had thrown a 

rock through the front window of the deli. At the time, 
Tony didn't know it was them. He'd had only seen the 
back end of a pickup truck speeding away and caught a 
part of the license plate number. He'd recognized the 
truck parked in the Munroe's driveway. 

"You shoulda let me take care of them back then," 

Carter said. "Would've saved everyone the trouble this 
time around." 

Carter had wanted to bust heads when their window 

had been broken. He'd wanted to treat the busted 
window like he would have any other insult against the 
family, which meant he wanted to take care of things the 
way Uncle Sid used to have him take care of things. 
Tony had said no. They weren't the same people here 
that they'd been back in Jersey, and besides, the busted 
window had been personal, not business. It had been a 
hate crime done by cowards. Carter had let the subject 
drop. 

Then the Munroe brothers had decided to up the ante. 
The minute Tony had figured out who'd taken Bess, 

he'd made a decision to do whatever it took to get her 
back alive and unhurt. It hadn't been guts alone that 
made him take on a guy with a shotgun; it had been 
guilt. Bess had been kidnapped because of them. 
Because of who they were together. 

Tony leaned his head back, more tired than he could 

remember being in a long time. "It wouldn't have 
changed anything," he said. "If you'd taken care of them 
back then, we'd still be right here today." 

"What the fuck are you talking about?" 
"You bust their heads then, they still would have 

Wiseguys: Blast from the Past - 48 

done something stupid, they just would have done it 
sooner. You saw that guy I shot. If he could have got up 
out of his chair, he would have tried to ram that shotgun 
down my throat." 

"My old man didn't teach me much, but he did teach 

me this. Some guys you gotta beat quick and beat hard 
so they don't get up again. You don't, and they think 
they're invincible." Carter punctuated his words by 
thumping a fist on the steering wheel. "You don't bust 
their heads so bad they can't remember who they are, 
then they go and do stupid stuff like kidnap an old lady 
because they think nobody'll do anything about it." 

"I'm telling you, it wouldn't have changed anything, 

not unless you killed them, then you'd be in jail," Tony 
said. "That's never gonna happen, not if I have anything 
to say about it." 

They drove the next block in silence. Tony was right, 

but Carter was right, too. The Munroe brothers would be 
trouble again -- not for a while, not until they healed up 
and made bail, if they could make bail -- but they'd be 
trouble. Them or somebody like them. 

"We did what we did," Tony said. "What matters now 

is we don't let it happen again." 

"So we bust heads next time?" 
Tony looked out at the quiet neighborhood. It wasn't 

much different than any other run down neighborhood, 
full of reminders of the good old days that maybe 
weren't that good to begin with. Tony and Carter drove 
down this street every day on the way to the deli. Tony 
was used to these streets, just like he was used to the old 
man sitting on the dark front porch in his wife beater. He 
was used to Norman and Bess and Julie, who worked for 
them to help support her mom. 

Life was good here, but it wasn't good enough to risk 

their freedom or the safety of any of their friends. 

Wiseguys: Blast from the Past - 49 

"Next time," Tony said. "We move on." 

Wiseguys: Blast from the Past - 50 

Chapter Six 

They didn't make love that night. 
It was the first night they hadn't made love since 

they'd been in Idaho. Tony wanted to, but Carter insisted 
Tony needed sleep more than sex. Tony was too tired 
and too sore to argue. 

The sheriff had confiscated Tony's gun. Tony had 

expected worse. Carter hadn't exactly bought any of 
their arsenal at Norman's sporting goods store. Instead 
of arresting him for possession of an unregistered 
firearm, the sheriff had told Tony it was strike one and 
to keep his nose clean. Tony figured if they hadn't 
rescued Bess, he would have been spending the night in 
jail. 

Not that the loss of one gun mattered all that much. 

Carter had procured enough weapons for a small army. 
Tony had a different handgun within easy reaching 
distance on his night stand. He dry swallowed two 
aspirin instead of taking the pain pills the E.R. doctor 
gave him. He didn't want his head muddled; he just 
wanted to take the edge off the pain. 

He closed his eyes and tried to float away, but sleep 

wouldn't come. The bed was too empty without Carter's 
comforting bulk, and the emptiness had an unsettling 
feel to it. The same night the deli's window had been 
busted, Tony and Carter had vowed to each other that 
they'd always have the other's back. It was as close as 
the two of them would ever come to getting married, and 
Tony was good with that. But tonight he'd felt a chill 
that he didn't think was entirely in his head. 

Carter didn't like sitting back and waiting. He didn't 

like letting assholes get away with the kind of shit the 
Munroes had back when they'd busted the window. He 
probably didn't like that Tony hadn't told him who the 

Wiseguys: Blast from the Past - 51 

Munroes were when he'd first figured it out back at the 
farmhouse.  But if Tony had, Carter might have killed 
both of the brothers instead of just breaking the one's 
nose. If that had happened, no matter what Bess told the 
sheriff, they'd probably both be spending the night in 
jail. 

Finesse, that's what Uncle Sid had taught Tony. 

"Guys like Carter, they're just muscle. No brains. You 
gotta be the brains, and to be the brains, you gotta think 
ahead. Don't let nobody disrespect you, but don't you go 
disrespecting yourself by acting stupid." 

Of course, as far as Uncle Sid was concerned, Tony 

letting Carter fuck him up the ass wouldn't exactly be a 
sign of proper respect, either. But Tony had news for 
Uncle Sid. Getting fucked up the ass by Carter was the 
ultimate sign of respect. And love. 

And he fucking missed it. 
Tony shifted on the bed and winced at the twinge of 

pain in his side. He had to think of something else or 
he'd end up with a hard on the size of Detroit. The 
problem was, every time he shut his eyes, he kept seeing 
their friends' faces. 

Bess's face when Carter kicked in the door, her eyes 

wide and round, and a knife at her throat. 

Norman's face at the hospital, tears brimming in his 

eyes as he held Bess' hand while the doctor patched up 
the cut on her neck. It hadn't been a bad cut, no stitches 
required, but Norman had been more scared for Bess 
than he'd been for himself during the robbery. 

And the worst thing -- Norman thanking Tony and 

Carter over and over again for bringing his girl back 
safe. 

The two of them had never had to deal with 

something like that back in Jersey. Wiseguys didn't go 
after wives. They didn't go after girlfriends or daughters 

Wiseguys: Blast from the Past - 52 

or the women who ran their own businesses and served 
whoever frequented their place, no matter what family 
they belonged to. Sure, when turf wars got out of 
control, innocents sometimes got caught in the crossfire, 
but nobody snatched women or kids to use as bargaining 
chips. By the time Bess and Norman finally left the 
hospital, Tony felt like he needed to either punch 
someone or explode. Carter probably felt worse. 

After he'd spent an hour trying unsuccessfully to get 

some sleep, Tony finally gave in and got up. A nice, 
steady pounding had taken up residence inside his skull. 
He needed Carter, even if it was just to be in the same 
room with him. Tony took the handgun and padded 
down the hall on bare feet toward the living room. 

"You're early," Carter said, his voice a low rumble. 

He was in the same chair as the night before, a solid 
mass of dangerous, implacable menace in their dark 
living room. 

"Couldn't sleep." Tony glanced out the front window, 

half expecting to see the dark-haired guy from the 
crosswalk hiding in the shadows across the street, but 
the street was empty and quiet. 

"Need something?" 
A clear conscience. Funny thing for a wiseguy to 

wish for. 

"We kidding ourselves about fitting in here?" Tony 

asked. 

Carter took his eyes off the front window for a split 

second. "Today was nothing. We been through worse." 

"Not here." 
The first day they'd been here, when they'd stopped 

the robbery in Norman's store, Carter had been shot. 
They'd been lucky, the bullet had just grazed him. 
They'd been luckier today, and that had been against a 
couple of hicks who only hated them because they didn't 

Wiseguys: Blast from the Past - 53 

hide the fact they were a couple. 

"They took Bess because she's our friend," Tony said. 

"Is Julie gonna be next?" 

"That's gonna happen anywhere we go. We could be 

in the gay capital of the world and somebody's gonna 
take a swing at us just to prove they're tough guys. 
That's been happening to me my whole life. The only 
way to deal is to stand your ground." 

Carter was looking back out the window again, but 

his voice had a hard edge that Tony didn't think was 
entirely directed at the homophobes of the world. The 
same chill he'd felt in his empty bed had infiltrated the 
room. 

"You mad at me?" Tony asked. "Because I said we'd 

move on?" 

Carter took a minute before he answered. "You and 

me, we're tight," he said finally. "My arms are the ones 
gonna hold you at night, and I'll stand by you 'til the day 
I die, you know that, but I don't like to run." 

"We ran away from Jersey." 
"We stayed there, we're dead men." 
"We might be dead men here, too." 
Outside in the night a dog barked, a high yipyipyip. 

Tony shifted away from the window, and Carter tensed. 
From where he stood, Tony could still see the street, 
silvery and quiet in the faint light of the streetlights. 
After a few moments, a cat streaked out from beneath a 
Toyota parked across the street. Tony let out a breath he 
hadn't realized he'd been holding. 

"Why we even talking about this?" Carter said. "How 

come you're thinking about running from guys like those 
idiots that took Bess when we're sitting here waiting for 
guys from back home to make their move? If we're 
gonna run, why ain't we running?" 

It was an honest question. Tony wished he had a 

Wiseguys: Blast from the Past - 54 

straightforward reason. 

"All I know is it would be the wrong thing to do," he 

said. "We got a life here that has nothing to do with 
what went down in Jersey, and I'm not about to give that 
up because somebody got sent out here to take us down 
when we were minding our own business. Guys like the 
Munroes, that's different. That's because of who we are, 
in this life, not what we were." He took his gaze off the 
street long enough to glance at Carter. "There's no 
fighting that. I don't want anybody we care about hurt 
because of who we are now." 

A red dot bloomed on Carter's chest a split second 

before Tony caught movement in the shadows out of the 
corner of his eye. 

"Move!" he yelled at Carter, even as he ducked down 

beneath the window. 

Wiseguys: Blast from the Past - 55 

Chapter Seven 

Carter dove out of the chair the same instant a bullet 

hole blossomed in the window with the sound of 
breaking glass. 

The bullet thumped into the chair just over Carter's 

shoulder. Two more followed in quick succession. The 
bullet holes in the living room window formed a nice, 
neat, circular pattern just about the size of a man's heart. 
The shooter was good. 

Tony's gun didn't have a suppressor. Neither did 

Carter's. The guy shooting at them did. He also had to 
have night vision gear. No way could he have seen 
inside the house otherwise, and that was no lucky shot. 

"How many?" Carter asked. 
Tony could just barely make out where Carter was 

hunched on the floor, out of sight of the guy with the 
gun. He didn't look like he'd been hit, and he didn't 
sound like he was in pain. 

"Only saw one," Tony said. 
"That leaves two more." 
"We start shooting up the neighborhood, people are 

gonna notice." 

"Then we do this quiet," Carter said. He crab-walked 

over to where Tony had his back to the front wall of the 
house alongside the front window, and gave Tony a 
hard, fast kiss. "I still got your back. I'm gonna set up by 
the back door. Anybody comes in that way, I'll take care 
of 'em." 

"I got the front," Tony said. 
One more kiss and Carter was gone, faded into the 

shadows of the house. 

They'd locked the back door before Tony had gone to 

bed. That wouldn't stop anyone determined to get in. 
With any luck, the shooter thought he'd taken Carter out, 

Wiseguys: Blast from the Past - 56 

which would leave the odds three to one in the bad guys' 
favor. When they busted in the house, they'd find that 
the odds, with Carter still healthy, were just about even. 

Waiting in the dark by himself, Tony had nothing to 

listen to except the rapid beating of his own heart. He 
wasn't going to kid himself. These guys were pros. They 
couldn't be intimidated like the Munroe brothers, and 
they weren't about to make any stupid mistakes. 
Enforcers who made stupid mistakes died young. The 
guys Tony had seen in the crosswalk weren't young. 

He'd known all along that this day might come. The 

only way they could have avoided it would have been to 
stay on the road, never stopping anywhere for long, 
never leaving a trail. That wasn't any way to live. 

Had they been fooling themselves all along? Living 

on borrowed time since Jersey? Nothing more than dead 
men walking? 

Not if he could fucking help it. 
Tony shut his eyes just long enough to center 

himself. 

He couldn't risk looking out the window. That was 

just asking to get the top of his head shot off. So he 
stayed there, back against the wall, eyes open now, his 
breathing and heart rate back to normal. 

Waiting for the shooter to make the next move. 
It didn't take long. 
At first, the sound seeping in through the bullet holes 

in the glass sounded like the rustle of wind through the 
leaves in their front yard trees. Except there was no 
wind, not even a light breeze. What Tony heard was the 
soft tread of someone coming up their driveway and 
disturbing the leaves that had blown from the trees 
during the last windstorm. 

The guy had probably scouted their house. He was 

good, but he wasn't perfect. Even with night vision gear, 

Wiseguys: Blast from the Past - 57 

walking silently outside at night was harder than it 
looked. Or else maybe he didn't think he had to be that 
careful. Anyone who knew Tony and Carter well enough 
to be sent to kill them also knew Tony wasn't the 
muscle. 

Tony left the wall and crawled across the floor to the 

couch, which was across the room from the chair where 
Carter had been sitting. Tony grabbed one of the throw 
pillows off the couch and crouched down behind it. He 
propped the pillow on the tip of the couch and buried the 
gun in the pillow. It wouldn't absorb as much noise as a 
suppressor, but it was better than nothing. 

From his spot behind the couch, Tony had a clear 

shot at the front door. The pillow would fuck with his 
aim, but all he needed was a body shot, and the door 
would frame the guy nicely. Tony didn't think the 
shooter would try to come in through the window. 

He was right. 
In the almost non-existent light, Tony heard more 

than saw the guy try to turn the doorknob. The front 
porch creaked as the guy shifted his weight. Tony could 
almost see him freeze, then try the handle again. The 
door was locked, just like the back door, but then Tony 
heard a click and a thump -- the guy had a lock gun --
and then the sound of the handle turning. 

The guy did have night vision goggles on. The 

goggles distorted the size and shape of his head, made 
him look like some movie monster instead of just 
another goon from back home. 

Tony didn't move, he didn't even breathe. He held the 

pillow steady so that it would look like it had been 
tossed on the back of the couch. He watched the guy 
with only one eye, keeping most of his head behind the 
pillow. Tony's hair was dark again, not blonde like he'd 
bleached it after they first left Jersey. Tony hoped he 

Wiseguys: Blast from the Past - 58 

looked like just another shadow in the room, even 
through the goggles. 

At best, he'd get one, maybe two shots before the guy 

trained his own gun on Tony. The best bet would be a 
shot to the guy's torso, the biggest target, but so far all 
Tony could see of the guy was his goggled head and the 
gun he held out in front of himself. 

Tony made himself wait. Kept his hand steady, his 

breathing light and as quiet as he could. He watched as 
the guy swept the front room with his gun, his goggled 
head slowly turning in Tony's direction. 

When the goggles were pointed directly at him, Tony 

froze. He didn't breathe, didn't move, didn't even blink. 
Not enough of the guy was in the room to take a chance 
at shooting him. If Tony shot now and the bullet didn't 
take the guy down, Tony would be as good as dead. 

In reality, the guy probably didn't look in Tony's 

direction any longer than at any other point he examined 
with his night vision gear, but to Tony it felt like an 
eternity. The guy turned to the corner where Carter had 
been sitting. The guy lowered his head to look at the 
floor where he no doubt expected Carter to be bleeding 
out. 

This shooter was a pro. He didn't flinch when he saw 

the floor was empty, but he did take one more step into 
the room. 

It had to be enough. Tony couldn't wait any longer. 
He let his breath out and squeezed the trigger. 
Stuffing sprayed out from the pillow along with the 

bullet. The sound of the shot wasn't as loud as it would 
have been without the pillow of muffle it, but the noise 
was still startling in the absolute silence of the house. 

The guy with the goggles turned back to Tony before 

Tony could even tell if his bullet hit the mark. Tony 
squeezed the trigger again and again. And again, hoping 

Wiseguys: Blast from the Past - 59 

each time that one of the bullets did enough damage to 
keep the guy from firing back. 

They didn't. 
The guy fired. Tony winced, but the guy's shot went 

wide and smacked into the wall to Tony's left. 

Then the guy crumpled to his knees, and Tony saw a 

wet patch glistening on the front of his dark shirt. 

Tony stayed where he was until the guy face planted 

on the floor.  Moving as fast as he could, Tony got out 
from behind the couch and kicked the guy's gun away 
from his outstretched hand, then picked it up. He 
checked the guy's pulse under the jaw line. He still had 
one, but it didn't seem like a strong, steady beat. Tony 
didn't want the guy dying in his house, but he wasn't the 
one who'd brought the fight here. 

Tony thought about taking the night vision goggles, 

but decided against it. Now wasn't the time to play 
around with technology he'd never used before. The gun, 
though -- that Tony kept. The guy'd only fired four 
shots, and a suppressor was better than a pillow any day. 

The adrenaline rush Tony had felt when the guy first 

turned the door knob was beginning to wear off. His 
side hurt and his head pounded, but the job wasn't over 
yet. There were two more guys out there. 

He risked a quick look out the open door. Nothing 

moved in the shadows. No more black-clad men in night 
vision gear crept up their driveway. Did that mean the 
other two would be coming around the back? 

He hadn't heard anything from Carter since he left to 

cover the back of the house. Carter hadn't yelled for him 
after the shooting started, but then again, Carter 
wouldn't. He'd wait until the fighting was over to make 
sure Tony was okay. 

The decision to join Carter at the rear of the house 

was an easy one. Tony padded softly down the hall and 

Wiseguys: Blast from the Past - 60 

into the kitchen, pausing to check at each open doorway 
in case someone had come in through a downstairs 
window. No one had. 

"It's me," he said softly when he got to the kitchen. 
Their back door opened off to the right of the stove 

onto a little concrete pad where Carter had set up a gas 
grill. The top half of the back door was a lattice-pane 
window. Their back yard neighbors had landscaping 
spotlights that illuminated their trees. The realtor who'd 
first shown them this house warned them that some 
people found the lights annoying, but they were within 
code, so if they rented the house, they'd have to put up 
with the lights. Tony thought it was an odd sales pitch, 
but he and Carter were used to city living where there 
was constant light and noise. Tony found the lights 
soothing in the same way that Carter enjoyed lit candles. 

None of their neighbors had turned on any outdoor 

lights. Maybe that meant none of the neighbors had 
heard the shots Tony fired through the pillow. Enough 
ambient light from the spotlights on the neighbor's trees 
shone through the back door window that Tony could 
see Carter with his back up against the wall to the side 
of the door. He'd be out of sight to anybody coming in 
through the door until it was too late. 

"You okay?" Carter asked. 
"Yeah. I got the guy's gun." 
Carter made a soft sound, and Tony knew he was 

grinning. "Always knew you were a tough guy." 

Tough guy. Coming from Carter, that was a 

compliment. Uncle Sid never thought Tony had it in 
him, one of the reasons he'd never had a closer 
relationship with his uncle. He didn't have enough of a 
killer instinct to be real family, not in his uncle's eyes. 

It struck him then that if the hitter in the front room 

died, he'd be the first person Tony had killed.  Would 

Wiseguys: Blast from the Past - 61 

that finally make his uncle proud? 

It didn't matter. His uncle was dead, he and Carter 

were alive, and Tony meant to keep it that way. "I got 
your back," he said. 

"Never doubted it," Carter said. 
It didn't take long before the other two guys made 

their move. They would have recognized Tony's muffled 
shots for what they were, and they'd know there was no 
longer any need to be stealthy. 

A shadow blocked out part of the light coming in 

through the back door. The glass window in the door 
shattered inward, and a gloved hand felt around inside 
for the lock. 

Carter let the guy unlock the door. As soon as the guy 

started to step through the open door, Carter grabbed his 
arm and pulled him all the way into the kitchen. Carter 
used the momentum to swing the guy around and slam 
him up against the wall. 

The guy had a gun in his other hand, but when he 

slammed into the wall, the gun went flying. Carter quick 
punched the guy's face and belly, and he dropped to his 
knees. Carter clubbed the guy in the back of the head 
with the butt end of his gun, and the guy fell flat on the 
kitchen floor and didn't move. 

Tony let out the breath he'd been holding. 
Two down. One left. 
That one guy left had to be the guy Tony had pegged 

as the leader, the man with the dark hair that would have 
been slicked back from his face in Jersey. Muscle 
always went in first on a hit. The last guy in would be 
the thinker. Tony was counting on that. 

Wiseguys: Blast from the Past - 62 

Chapter Eight 

Tony almost didn't see the last of the shooters. He'd 

been too intent on Carter's fight with the guy who broke 
through their back door. When Tony turned back toward 
the hall, he saw a dark blur, and then a fist connected 
with his jaw. 

Tony's head rocked to the side and backward, and he 

lost his balance. 

The third guy had come in through the open front 

door. He'd waited until he heard the commotion in the 
kitchen, then made his own move. 

By the time Tony got his gun up, the guy had a gun 

of his own pointed at Carter. 

"Looks like we got a stalemate," Carter said. His 

hands hung loose at his side. He stood in the middle of 
the dark kitchen seemingly unconcerned about the red 
dot in the middle of his chest. 

"Put the gun down," Tony said, his voice far calmer 

than he felt. He held his own gun steady, pointed at the 
center mass of the guy's chest. They stood close enough 
to each other that he didn't have to be particular about 
his aim. 

"You put yours down," the guy said. 
"I do that, you kill us both," Tony said. "Don't see the 

percentage in that. Do you?" he asked Carter. 

"If I was you, I'd just shoot him now," Carter said. 
"You'd be dead, too," the guy said to Carter. "You're 

the muscle here, not him. Even if he shoots me, I still 
get a shot off at you, and I'm pretty damn good at what I 
do." 

"You got no reason to be here," Tony said. "You 

shoot, and you're gonna die for no good reason. That 
how you want to go out?" 

The guy's eyes flicked off Carter for a split second to 

Wiseguys: Blast from the Past - 63 

look at Tony. Tony made sure his aim never wavered. 
He wanted the guy to know he was serious. 

Tony could almost hear the gears turning in the guy's 

head. Enforcers were ruthless, skilled hunters who did 
what they were told. Even enforcers who were thinkers 
like this guy weren't always the best at working outside 
the box. Back when Carter had worked for Tony's uncle, 
he hadn't thought much beyond his orders, either. Out 
here and away from the family, Carter had stretched 
beyond what he'd been back then. Even if Tony's uncle 
magically resurrected, no way could Carter -- or Tony --
ever go back to the way things had been. 

This enforcer was maybe thirty, tops. Enforcers didn't 

live long unless they moved up in the organization to a 
position that didn't require them to knock heads for a 
living. This guy was either on his way up or on his way 
out. Tony was banking that he was on the way up and 
smart enough to take an opportunity when it was 
presented to him. 

"I die, I'd go out killing a couple of faggots," the guy 

said. 

Carter's expression hardened. "Watch your mouth," 

he said. 

The guy laughed, humorless and short. "If I knew I 

was coming after a couple of fags like you, I'd have 
done the job for free." 

He was trying to provoke Carter into doing 

something stupid. Tony had to get the guy's attention, 
and the easiest way to do that was to turn the insults 
around. 

"How's it feel?" he asked the guy. "Knowing you got 

beat by a couple fags like us?" 

"From where I'm standing it don't look like I got 

beat." 

"Yes, you did." Tony nodded his head at the guy 

Wiseguys: Blast from the Past - 64 

sprawled on the kitchen floor. "You're all that's left. 
Your boss sent three of you, and you're all that's left. 
You shoot now, and you won't be left, either. Whatever 
happens, you still got beat by us. And you want to know 
what's funny about that?" 

The guy didn't want to ask, Tony could tell by the 

expression on his face, but he couldn't help himself. 
"What?" 

Tony 's jaw ached and his head hurt. He was sick of 

the stupidity of the entire situation, and he was sick to 
death of this guy pointing a gun at Carter. For a 
moment, Tony almost shot him on sheer principle, but 
he needed the guy to deliver a message, and the guy 
couldn't do that if he was dead. 

"None of this had to happen," Tony said. "What 

family sent you? Which boss?" 

"Toretti," the guy said. 
Not Luciano like they'd thought, but Toretti. What a 

fucking joke. Toretti ran whores and numbers two burgs 
over from where Uncle Sid's territory ended. When 
Toretti's goons took out Uncle Sid and his lieutenants, it 
had been the first salvo in a war over territory. Tony 
never thought Toretti would come out on top in that war, 
but he must have. Tony hoped Luciano got a big-ass 
favor in return when he sold the two of them out to 
Toretti. 

"Toretti." Carter snorted. "He ain't got but two brain 

cells in that puny head of his, and those two don't get 
along so well." 

Tony could see the muscles in the guy's jaw clench. 

"I should shoot you just for disrespecting the boss." 

"He disrespected my family," Tony said. 
"And you two fags didn't do nothing about it," the 

guy said. "Until Jojo comes back from vacation and tells 
Luciano this story about seeing ghosts in Idaho, and 

Wiseguys: Blast from the Past - 65 

Luciano decides to play nice, the boss don't even know 
you two were alive." 

Jojo -- the guy on vacation with his wife and two 

kids. 

"But here you two are, and as long as you're 

breathing, the boss has a problem." The guy smiled. "I 
eliminate problems, so here I am." 

"That's what I'm trying to tell you," Tony said. 

"There's no problem here." 

"You two are here." 
"And we're no problem for your boss. Look around 

you. You see any of the families from back home? You 
been here long enough to scope us out. You see any 
numbers going on? Any protection rackets? We're out of 
the business." Tony bit off the last four words to make 
them count. "If we're all that's left of my uncle's family, 
then there's no family. There's nothing but the two of us. 
We're not planning on going back. Are we?" he asked 
Carter. 

"Not a chance," Carter said. 
"You're telling me you two are happy hicks now?" 

the guy said. "How come I don't buy that?" 

"We're living together," Tony said. "Out here in the 

open. We even walk down the fucking sidewalk holding 
hands. What's that tell you?" 

Tony could see the guy think that one over. He might 

not believe anything else that Tony had told him, but the 
guy knew what that meant. He had to know, just like 
Tony and Carter knew, that the two of them would never 
be able to stay together and get any respect from any of 
the other families. Even if they wanted to take over 
Uncle Sid's old operations, they couldn't, not and still be 
together. 

"I go back and you're not dead, I got my own 

problems to deal with," the guy said. "My boss, he don't 

Wiseguys: Blast from the Past - 66 

like it when I walk away from a job." 

"You won't be walking away," Tony said. "You'll be 

taking a message." 

"Oh, yeah? What message?" 
"Leave us alone, and we'll leave you alone. No 

retribution for my uncle, for the rest of the family. That 
score's settled, once and for all." 

"That's it?" 
"That's it," Tony said. 
"And if I say no?" 
Tony raised the barrel of his gun so that it pointed at 

a spot between the guy's eyes. "Then you don't walk out 
of here alive, and I find another way to send the message 
to your boss." 

"You can't kill us both," Carter said. "Take the deal 

and walk out of here alive, or die. It don't matter to me." 

"You'd be dead, too," the guy said. 
One corner of Carter's mouth quirked up, just a little. 

"Like I said, it don't matter to me." 

Tony wasn't sure what did it, either the futility of the 

situation, simple math, or that little quirk of Carter's 
mouth, but the guy finally lowered his gun. When the 
red dot disappeared from the front of Carter's shirt, Tony 
felt like he could breathe again. He lowered his own 
gun. 

The guy on the floor groaned and one of his arms 

moved, like he was trying to push himself up. 

"Get your friend and get the fuck out of here," Tony 

said. 

The guy didn't want to do it, Tony could tell. He was 

a shooter, not a pack horse. He looked at the guy on the 
floor like so much dead weight, and for a moment, Tony 
thought he'd shoot the man himself. 

In the end, the shooter put his gun in a shoulder 

holster and bent to help the guy on the floor get to his 

Wiseguys: Blast from the Past - 67 

feet. 

"You got one more in the living room," Tony said. 

"Except I don't think he's getting up." 

"Then he's your problem," the shooter said. 

* * * 

This time the sheriff wasn't as accommodating. 
One dead body and a middle of the night shootout 

apparently wasn't what the sheriff had in mind when 
he'd told Tony to keep his nose clean. Only the fact that 
there were bullet holes in the front window and another 
one over the couch, not to mention the fact that the dead 
guy had night vision goggles and was all the way inside 
the front door, kept the sheriff from charging Tony with 
manslaughter. 

The sheriff definitely wasn't happy with their story 

about Tony's gun. Carter had gotten rid of Tony's gun --
all the guns in the house -- before they'd called the 
sheriff to report the invasion of their home. Tony didn't 
know how, and he didn't want to. The less he knew, the 
less he'd have to lie about.  They'd told the sheriff that 
the dead guy's accomplice had stolen Tony's gun, but 
Tony knew the sheriff didn't buy the story. He just had 
no evidence that Tony was lying. 

Not that the sheriff didn't try. He kept Tony in the 

little interrogation room for more than two hours trying 
to shake his story, but Tony had been grilled by cops 
back in Jersey. He knew how to stick to his story and 
otherwise keep his mouth shut. 

Finally, Sheriff Sewell leaned back in his chair. He 

pointed a small remote at the camera in the upper corner 
of the interrogation room. Tony wasn't surprised that the 
interrogation had been recorded. He was surprised when 
the sheriff turned the camera off. 

Wiseguys: Blast from the Past - 68 

If they'd been in Jersey, turning the camera off would 

have been the prelude to a more physical form of 
questioning by a dirty cop on another family's payroll. 
Tony didn't think that would be the case now. Sewell 
didn't strike him as a guy on anybody's payroll except 
the county's. 

"You two bring trouble with you," the sheriff said. "I 

know what you are, and I know if you were in a 
talkative mood, you'd swear up and down that you've 
left the life behind." 

Tony kept his mouth shut. There it was, out in the 

open. Sewell was studying Tony with his flat cop's eyes, 
waiting for a reaction from Tony. Tony made sure not to 
give him one. 

The sheriff was pushing fifty, but there wasn't an 

ounce of fat on him. His uniform was pressed and neat, 
and the only way Tony could tell that the man had been 
dragged out of bed to deal with Tony and Carter was the 
hint of stubble on his face. No, Sewell was anything but 
a country bumpkin cop, and he was nobody they could 
cajole. The best they could hope for was a stalemate. 

"So, let's say you've left the life behind," Sewell said. 

"Maybe you have. Norman and Bess tell me you're good 
boys. Maybe you are. But you're still trouble." 

Tony narrowed his eyes. "You about to run us out of 

town?" 

The sheriff sighed. "Not my style," he said. "But if 

you are good boys like they say you are, you might want 
to think about relocating voluntarily." 

"We got a life here. Got a business." 
Sewell nodded. "And friends who care about you. I 

understand that." 

"Then maybe you got a problem with us because of 

something else?" 

The sheriff wouldn't be the first cop Tony knew who 

Wiseguys: Blast from the Past - 69 

was a homophobe, but the idea made him sad. Made him 
think that the Munroe brothers might be getting off with 
just a slap on the wrist. 

The sheriff's mouth set in a tight line. "I don't care if 

you're queer or straight or swing both ways. That's not 
the issue here, and I figure you're smart enough to know 
it. My job is to care about the safety of the citizens of 
this town and the tourists who keep their businesses in 
business. What I hope you care about is the safety of 
your friends. Bess could have ended up dead. Your 
neighbors could have been hit by a stray bullet. The little 
girl who lives across the street from you, the Connors' 
kid, she could have been killed by one of those guys 
who came gunning for you." 

Tony knew the little girl the sheriff was talking 

about. He'd never known her name, but she was pretty 
and blonde and had a pink bicycle that she rode back 
and forth to school, and if she was ten, she was old. 

The sheriff stood up. He folded the little notepad he'd 

used to take notes during his interrogation closed and 
put it in the breast pocket of his uniform shirt. 

"That mean we're done here?" Tony asked. 
"We're done." 
Sewell held the door to the interrogation room open, 

and Tony left. His side hurt, a dull throbbing that ran 
counterpoint to the pounding of his aching head. The 
aspirin he'd swallowed before the enforcers hit the house 
had worn off hours ago. Now that the shooters were 
taken care of, Tony intended to take the pain pills the 
E.R. doctor had given him and sleep for about a week. 

The sheriff's office was in an old, stucco building 

across the street from City Hall. From the outside it 
looked no bigger than the church where Tony had 
attended mass every Sunday with his uncle's family. 
Uncle Sid always sat up front, and every Sunday Tony 

Wiseguys: Blast from the Past - 70 

had walked up and down the main aisle to that front pew 
without a second thought. Now the corridor from the 
interrogation room to the little room out front where 
Carter waited for him looked longer than a football field. 
With the sheriff following close behind him, Tony had 
to force himself to make that walk look no more difficult 
than strolling down the aisle at church. 

Instead of opening the last door between Tony and 

freedom, the sheriff put his hand on the doorknob. 

What now? 
Sewell waited until Tony looked him in the eye. 

"Think about what I said. If any of the people you care 
about get hurt because of you, if that little girl across the 
street gets so much as a hangnail because of you, you 
won't be walking out of a place like this until you're old 
and gray." 

Tony didn't say anything. There was nothing he could 

say. 

After a moment, the sheriff opened the door. Carter 

stood up from the bench seat where he'd been waiting, 
looked between Tony and the sheriff, but didn't ask how 
it went. The fact that Tony wasn't in handcuffs spoke 
volumes. 

"Keep your noses clean," the sheriff said again, then 

he shut the door, leaving Tony and Carter alone. 

Carter took Tony's hand, held it gently. "You ready to 

go?" 

"Beyond ready." He didn't look back at the closed 

door. "Let's get the fuck out of here." 

Wiseguys: Blast from the Past - 71 

Chapter Nine 

Tony slept for what felt like days. 
When he woke up, the sun was shining, brilliant hot 

light outside the bedroom window. They were back in a 
suite at Bess' bed and breakfast. The house they rented 
was a crime scene. They wouldn't be able to go back 
until the sheriff's people released the place. Given how 
the sheriff felt about them, Tony had no idea when that 
might be. 

He blinked until his eyes focused, then he looked at 

the bedside clock. Nearly eleven in the morning. They 
should have been at the deli four hours ago. 

He'd taken his pain pills before he'd finally climbed 

into bed just as the sky was turning pale pink in the east. 
The pills had put him out like a light. Now every muscle 
in his body felt stiff and sore. When he sat up, his 
abused side protested. The skin felt tight where he had 
stitches, but at least he didn't have the hot, cotton-
headed feeling of a fever. 

He must have made some sort of noise, because 

before he got his feet on the floor, Carter appeared in the 
bedroom doorway. "Hey, sleepyhead," Carter said, 
grinning. "'Bout time you woke up." 

"Fuck you," Tony said, managing a small grin. "How 

come you're not at work?" 

"Figured we could use a day off, so I made an 

executive decision. We're taking a holiday." 

"Holiday?" 
"Yeah. The first annual Tony and Carter Kicked the 

Bad Guys' Collective Asses Day." 

"Catchy name." 
"Think Hallmark will put out a card?" 
Tony snorted. "Hate to imagine what'd be on the front 

of it." 

Wiseguys: Blast from the Past - 72 

The floors in the suite were hardwood. Bess had put a 

few throw rugs here and there – hardwood was fucking 
cold in the middle of an Idaho winter – but now the cool 
wood felt good beneath Tony's feet. He shuffled his way 
into the tiny bathroom. The tub wasn't as big as the one 
in their house, but it was big enough. 

"I need a bath," he said to Carter when he was done 

with the toilet and brushing his teeth. "Want to join 
me?" 

"No bath." Carter handed him a mug of coffee. The 

suites at Bess' came complete with kitchens. From the 
smell, Carter had put this one to good use. "Not 'til those 
bandages come off." 

"I stink." 
Carter leaned in and kissed him. "I don't mind." 
Tony let himself enjoy the kiss. Carter hadn't shaved 

yet, and the stubble of his beard felt rough and 
wonderful against Tony's face. "I need a shave, too," 
Tony said. 

"You need a sponge bath, a shampoo, and a shave." 
"Fucking sponge bath?" Sponge baths were for old 

shits who couldn't get themselves out of bed. 

"Doctor's orders." 
"Yeah?" 
Carter grinned and grabbed a washcloth. "Dr. Carter." 

He closed the lid on the toilet. "Now sit down and let me 
get to work." 

Tony sat. 
He'd worn a simple, white tee-shirt to bed along with 

a loose pair of boxers. Carter turned the tap on in the 
sink, and while he waited for the water to heat up, he 
helped Tony off with the tee-shirt. 

"Hurt much?" Carter asked when Tony lifted his arms 

and winced. 

"Not so much as if he'd gotten a better shot at me." 

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"If he'd gotten a better shot at you, we wouldn't be 

talking now." 

No, they wouldn't. They'd gotten lucky, both 

yesterday afternoon and last night. Tony knew it, and so 
did Carter. 

Tony peered down at his side. The skin poking from 

beneath the bandages wasn't as red as he expected. He 
had some bruises that hadn't been there yesterday when 
the E.R. doctor patched him up. The bandages didn't 
have any blood staining the white gauze. No bleeding, 
even after last night. Another good sign. 

Carter stoppered the sink, and after it filled with hot 

water, shut off the taps. The sound of running water 
gone, the sounds of mid-day in the height of tourist 
season filtered in through the open bathroom window. 
Bess' place was on the main drag a block down from the 
deli and right next to a Tex-Mex restaurant. >From the 
sounds of things, the restaurant wasn't hopping busy yet, 
but the staff was making enough noise banging pots and 
pans around and yelling back and forth to each other 
than it almost drowned out the South of the Border 
canned music blaring out of the restaurant's speakers. 

Even with all the racket from next door, Tony liked 

life here. He liked the deli and the customers, even the 
ones who couldn't make up their minds what to buy. He 
liked Julie, and he couldn't have asked for better friends 
than Norman and Bess. He liked the house he and Carter 
lived in, and the way they both fit in the tub like it was 
made for them. He even liked the way the bed springs 
squeaked and the mattress thumped against the wall 
when Carter made love to him with all the tenderness 
and power in that hard-muscled body of his. 

"I don't want to leave," Tony said, like he was 

answering a question that hadn't been asked. 

Carter lifted his head from where he'd been gently 

Wiseguys: Blast from the Past - 74 

washing the skin around Tony's bandages. His eyes were 
soft now with an emotion that he mostly kept under 
wraps. "Then don't," he said. 

"Sheriff knows who we are. Not our real names, but 

who we are." They both used names that weren't exactly 
the same ones on their birth certificates.  Carter had kept 
his old last name for his first. Tony had taken a generic 
last name. But it wouldn't take much for the sheriff to 
put it together, not now that he had a dead body in the 
morgue that could be traced back to Jersey. "He's 
motivated. He'll figure it out." 

"He let you go last night." 
"He wants us to leave. He's giving us the 

opportunity." 

Carter sat back on his heels. "And you're gonna take 

it." It wasn't a question. 

Tony reached out for Carter's hand and held it. So 

much strength in Carter's thick fingers. He didn't want to 
leave, either. Tony had to make him see it was the smart 
thing to do. 

"I'd rather spend my life on the road in that fucking 

van of yours just to make sure you're with me than risk 
seeing either one of us in jail. I'm not about to live my 
life without you. I think we said something about that, in 
a room not that much different than this one." 

They'd actually said vows to each other, spoken their 

love out loud, the same night the Munroe brothers had 
thrown a rock through the deli's front window. Then 
Carter had taken Tony to bed and fucked him nearly 
senseless, and it had seemed like life couldn't get any 
better. 

Carter's lips thinned, and for a moment Tony thought 

he'd have an argument on his hands. Then Carter said, 
"My fucking van? The same van that brought your sorry 
ass cross country?" He smiled. "The same van where I 

Wiseguys: Blast from the Past - 75 

first fucked you?" 

Tony smiled back. "Off the side of the road in the 

middle of fucking nowhere? Where you popped my 
cherry? Yeah, that van, and I bet I wasn't the first cherry 
you popped in that thing." 

Carter leaned forward and kissed him. "The only one 

that counted, paisan," he said. "The only one that 
counted." 

* * * 

They kept the deli closed for two more days while 

they worked out the details of what they were going to 
do and Tony's wounds healed. 

On the second day, the sheriff released the house, and 

Tony and Carter moved out of the bed and breakfast. By 
then, Tony was sick and tired of sponge baths, even with 
Carter giving him a hand job and finishing him off with 
his mouth. 

The next day, they opened the deli back up like 

nothing had happened. Their first customers were Bess 
and Norman, who each ordered more than they'd eat in a 
week and brushed off Tony's attempt not to charge them. 
Carter came out from the back, and the four of them sat 
around one of the deli's small tables. 

"You sure about this?" Norman asked. 
"Never meant this to be permanent," Tony lied. 
They'd called Bess and Norman the night they'd made 

the decision to leave. There'd been gentle hugs and near 
tears, but Tony had a hunch their friends already knew 
he and Carter would be leaving. 

"Besides," Tony said. "I've been through winter here 

already, and once was enough." 

"He don't like to shovel snow," Carter said. "Fucking 

lightweight." He looked at Bess. "Pardon my French." 

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She waved a hand at him. "Nothing I haven't heard 

before, and probably said myself." 

Norman smiled at her. "And I should know." 
"Yes, you should, you old coot." Bess' answering 

smile made Tony's heart ache. They were the only 
people he would truly miss. 

"I want to thank you both for everything you've done 

for us," Tony said. "Everything you're going to do." 

"We're happy to do it," Norman said. "Does she know 

yet?" 

"Not yet." Carter said. He looked at the clock on the 

back wall. "We asked her to come in a little early." 

"We'll let you know how it goes," Tony said. 
"Do you have a backup plan?" Norman asked. 
"Hoping we don't need one." 
"Well, then, good luck." Bess reached across the 

table, and with a surprisingly strong grip, pulled Tony 
forward by his apron just enough to give him a kiss on 
his cheek. "Let us know how things go for you, and not 
just with this." 

She looked at him hard, and Tony got the message. 

He didn't know how to tell her that she'd never hear 
from him again. 

The deli was busy all morning, like the word had 

spread around town that they were open. The customers 
were a mix of locals and tourists. The locals wanted 
bagels and coffee and even some of the ziti that filled 
the deli with the aroma of Italian cheese and garlic. The 
tourists wanted sandwiches and antipasto salad and 
loaves of sourdough bread and sour pickles from the 
plastic barrel. Tony figured they did more business in 
the two hours before Julie and her mom came in the 
front door than they did most days even during their 
busiest weeks. 

Wiseguys: Blast from the Past - 77 

Julie looked nervous, like she was afraid they were 
going to fire her. Tony had called her the night before to 
let her know that the deli would be open and to ask her 
to come in a half hour early because they had something 
important to talk to her about. She'd apparently brought 
her mother along for moral support. Tony was surprised 
-- Julie had always struck him as a self-sufficient kid --
but in a way, it made what they were about to do a little 
easier. 

"Hey, guys," Julie said. She handled the introductions 

like an adult, but all the while her fingers worried the 
edges of her apron. 

Tony smiled at the both of them. "Relax. No firing 

squad today, okay?" 

Julie smiled back, only a small smile, but her fingers 

stopped twisting the white cotton apron. 

"C'mon back," Tony said, holding open the pass-

through from the restaurant proper to behind the counter. 
"We got something we want to talk to you about." He 
looked at Julie's mom, Eleanor. "Both of you, since 
you're here." 

Eleanor was a small woman in her late forties. Life 

had not been kind to her, and it showed on her face and 
in the way she carried herself. Her hair was shot through 
with gray, her shoulders slumped, the skin underneath 
her chin baggy, and her eyes tired. Still, Tony could see 
traces of the good-looking girl she'd once been, like her 
daughter. He hoped they would accept what he and 
Carter planned to do. 

There really wasn't anywhere to sit in the back, so 

Tony and Carter leaned against the big steel refrigerator, 
Julie stood near the door between the deli and the 
kitchen, and Eleanor leaned against the sink. Julie's 
hands had started to twist the edges of her apron again. 

"We have an offer we want to make to you," Tony 

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said to Julie. "We want to sell you the deli." 

Julie froze, her eyes widening. "What?" 
"We're leaving town. We want to sell you this 

business." 

Julie shot a startled glance at her mother. "We don't 

have that kind of money," Eleanor said. 

"We'd set it up so you could make payments." 
Eleanor's eyes narrowed. "What kind of payments? 

What kind of interest?" 

So Eleanor had a good idea what they'd been, too. 

Did she always know? Or was it something she'd figured 
out in the last few days? The business at Tony and 
Carter's house hadn't exactly been front page news, but 
this was a small town, and small towns thrived on 
gossip. Tony figured pretty much all the locals knew 
he'd killed someone who'd broken into their house and 
that other gunmen had gotten away. Put that together 
with their obvious roots, and everyone probably thought 
he was the real life equivalent of Tony Soprano. 

If nothing else, Eleanor's reaction let Tony know 

they'd made the right decision about leaving. 

"Look," Tony said. "What we want to do here is sell 

you a business you can keep running. We like this place, 
and we like this town, and most of all," he said, staring 
at Julie, "we like you. We're not going to squeeze you. 
This deal is on the up and up." 

"Or so you say," Eleanor said. "What's to say you 

won't want it back?" 

"Once we're gone, we're gone," Tony said. "You 

won't hear from us again. You make payments to 
Norman, reasonable payments. Something you can 
afford." 

Norman and Bess had agreed to be the go-between 

when Tony approached them with the idea of selling the 
business to Julie. Norman said he'd have no problem 

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depositing the money in an account Tony would set up 
just for that purpose. Tony intended to have the sale 
handled by a local escrow company, everything above 
board and legit. 

"Business isn't great here during the winter," Julie 

said. 

"Then we lower the payments so you can keep the 

place going. Or you can close up shop during the winter 
and live off the summer profits." Half the businesses on 
Main Street operated that way. "Up to you." 

Julie looked at Carter. "So you're really leaving?" 
Carter nodded, just the slightest movement of his 

head. "Time to hit the road again. See what else is out 
there that we haven't seen yet." 

"You know, not everybody feels like those jerks," 

Julie said. "Like you shouldn't be here, or shouldn't be 
together. Isn't that why you're leaving?" 

"Julie," Eleanor said, her voice low and intense, like 

her daughter had asked someone dangerous something 
inappropriate and might be handed her head for her 
trouble. 

Carter looked at Tony. This was Tony's question to 

answer, since it had been his decision to leave. 

"Those jerks are going to keep being jerks until 

someone we care about gets hurt," Tony said. 

"Like Bess," Julie said. 
"Yeah," Tony said. "Like Bess. Or Norman." He 

looked at her, let her see a little of the worry that made 
the hard decision a little easier. "Like you. We don't 
want that to happen because of us." 

Julie swallowed hard, and her eyes swam, but the 

moisture didn't spill over. 

"We can take care of ourselves," Tony said. "We've 

been doing it for a long time. But we can't take care of 
everyone we know and still run this business. You 

Wiseguys: Blast from the Past - 80 

understand that?" 

Julie nodded, the movement as slight as Carter's had 

been. At that moment she looked very small. "I think 
so," she said. 

"Will you think about it?" Tony said. "Just don't take 

too long." They planned to be gone within a week, 
whether the business sale went through or not. If Julie 
didn't buy the deli, they'd walk away and leave 
everything behind. 

Eleanor stepped away from the sink, walked over to 

Tony and looked him in the eye. "Swear to me that 
you're being truthful," she said. "That you won't hurt my 
baby girl." 

Tony could have taken offense, but he didn't. He 

might have made the same demand if someone had 
offered a seemingly unbelievable deal to Carter. "I love 
your daughter like she was my kid sister," Tony said, 
returning Eleanor's frank stare. "Anybody hurt her, I'd 
rip his heart out. I'm not about to be the one who does 
the hurting." 

Eleanor stared at him hard. Tony didn't look away. 
In the end, she must have been satisfied with what 

she saw. "Julie?" she asked her daughter. 

Julie looked down at her hands. They were shaking. 

"Oh, shit. That's not good." She looked up at her mom. 
"Do you think I can do this? I still have a half-year left 
of high school." 

"I think you can do anything you want," Eleanor said. 

"But I think we should sit on this for a day, then talk 
about it some more." Eleanor looked at Tony, then at 
Carter. "If she gives you an answer tomorrow, is that 
soon enough?" 

"Definitely." 
"What about Jason?" Julie looked guilty, like she'd 

just thought of something she shouldn't have forgotten. 

Wiseguys: Blast from the Past - 81 

Jason worked in the deli sometimes, but that was 

more of an excuse for him to spend time working on 
strength training with Carter. The kid was in denial 
about being gay. Tony didn't blame him. The kid had 
been beaten by some other kids -- probably relatives of 
the Munroes -- just because they thought he was gay. 
Carter had offered to teach the kid how to take care of 
himself. The ruse of working at the deli was to mollify 
the kid's religious mom. 

The strength training had paid off, and not just in 

added muscles. Jason wasn't working at the deli now 
because he was at a football camp sponsored by the 
church his mom attended. Julie had told Tony that it was 
the first organized sport Jason had ever tried out for. 

"Hire him if you want," Tony said. "You'll be the one 

calling the shots." 

She looked startled at that. Tony doubted she'd ever 

called the shots about any part of her life. "What 
about..." she gestured at Carter, the rest of the sentence 
unsaid. 

"He'll be fine," Carter said. "You tell him I said he's a 

good kid." 

Tony held out his hand. Julie took it, and they shook 

hands like the deal was done. "Take today off, with 
pay." He could feel her still trembling. "The customers 
will be glad you did, considering I don't think you're up 
to handling food right now." 

She laughed, a nervous, relieved, embarrassed sound. 
"When you come in tomorrow, you let us know what 

you've decided. If you want to do this, we'll sit down 
with the books and come up with numbers that work for 
everybody. Okay?" 

"Yeah," Julie said. She finally smiled, and Tony 

thought he knew what her answer would be. "Yeah," she 
said again. "Okay." 

Wiseguys: Blast from the Past - 82 

Chapter Ten 

"Last night here," Carter said to Tony. "I think we 

should celebrate." 

The house looked empty, even though the furniture 

would be staying. Most of it had come with the house, 
anyway. The few things they'd bought during their stay, 
like the chair where Carter had sat during the night 
waiting for the shooters to attack them and the queen 
size bed they shared, wouldn't fit in the van. Tony 
wondered what the new tenants would make of the 
bullet holes in the chair. He and Carter had already fixed 
the hole in the wall and paid to have the living room 
cleaned. 

They'd be traveling light. Not as light as when they'd 

left Jersey with just the clothes on their backs and the 
stuff Carter had in the back of his van, including the 
money he'd been stashing in the side panels. This time 
they had duffel bags and suitcases filled with clothes 
and things that were important to them, like the 
champagne bottle from the night they'd said their vows 
and the photographs they'd taken on the houseboat 
where they’d spent their honeymoon. They had two 
down sleeping bags and enough blankets to keep warm 
even in winter in case they had to sleep in the van, but 
Tony expected they'd be spending most nights in motels. 
They had the guns the sheriff hadn't found and enough 
ammunition to take care of themselves if Toretti sent 
more guys after them. Tony didn't think he would, but it 
didn't hurt to be prepared. 

Yesterday afternoon they'd signed the papers and 

turned the keys to the deli over to Julie and her mom.  
Julie had decided, after talking with a lawyer and no 
doubt after a lot of discussion with her mom, to put her 
mom's name on the business along with her own. Tony 

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didn't care. He had a gut feeling about Eleanor, and that 
feeling said she wouldn't cheat her daughter out of the 
business. That was good enough for Tony. As long as 
Julie was taken care of, he was good with that. 

They’d celebrated selling the deli with a dinner at 

Bess' restaurant, just the six of them: Tony and Carter, 
Eleanor and Julie, Bess and Norman. Tony pretended 
not to see the tears in Bess' eyes when she hugged him 
one last time, and Norman pretended that the smile he 
pasted on his face was genuine. Even Carter had been 
misty-eyed when they'd finally climbed into his van for 
the drive home. 

The last night this would be their home. 
"I got kinda fond memories of this place," Carter 

said. 

"Yeah?" 
Carter grabbed him in a bear hug from behind. 

"Yeah." 

Tony didn't wince. The stitches were out, and his 

bruises were almost gone. He'd taken a shower that 
morning, and it had felt like heaven. 

"You wanna take a bath with me?" Tony asked. "I 

feel like a good soak." 

Carter's lips grazed the back of his neck. "That all 

you feel like?" 

Tony grinned. "It's a start." 
Carter ran the bath water, complete with bubbles, 

while Tony stripped out of his clothes. Tony had 
discovered early on that Carter preferred bubble baths 
when he was in a romantic mood. If the amount of 
bubbles was any indication, he was in for a long night of 
lovemaking, not fucking. He was good with that, too. 

Carter got in first, then Tony climbed in and settled in 

Carter's arms. The bubbles tickled his chest, the hot 
water loosened his muscles, and the hard steel of 

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Carter's cock against his ass made his own cock twitch. 

"I'm gonna miss this tub," Carter said. 
"We'll get one and put it in the van." 
Carter chuckled. "Wouldn't that be the thing. Then 

we could do this in the middle of nowhere." He reached 
around Tony, one large hand cupping Tony's balls. 

Tony dropped his head back against Carter's 

shoulder. "Yeah, I'm gonna miss this tub, too." 

Carter squeezed, just enough pressure to get Tony's 

cock's attention. His lips pressed against the side of 
Tony's face. "You remember the first time we did this?" 

"First time you grabbed my balls?" 
A deep chuckle rumbled through Carter's chest. Tony 

felt it in his bones. "Yeah, that, too." 

For a while, they stayed like that, Tony soaking, 

Carter fondling him, pressing soft kisses on his skin. 
Tony was hard now, but it was the kind of hard he could 
sustain without an aching need to come. 

"You got anyplace you'd like to go?" Tony asked. 
Carter's hand stopped moving under the water. "You 

don't have that already figured out?" 

"Figured we'd talk about it." 
They didn't have too many choices for roads leading 

out of town. They could either go north and into Canada 
or south toward Coeur d'Alene. If they skirted the lake 
to the east, in less than twenty miles they'd be in 
Montana. 

"We never planned on stopping here," Carter said. 
No, they hadn't. They'd just been driving and things 

worked out. 

"So that's what you want to do?" Tony asked. "Just 

point the van down the road and see what happens?" 

"Long as we don't wind up back in Jersey." 
Tony trailed one hand under the water, rubbed his 

fingertips across Carter's thickly muscled thigh. "You 

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ever miss it?" 

"Busting heads?" 
"Yeah." 
"Nah." 
Tony smiled. "Good to know." 
They didn't have as much money as they'd had when 

they left Jersey, but they had enough to get by. Neither 
of them cared about an extravagant lifestyle. They'd end 
up somewhere else that felt good, and they'd stay there 
for a while. It didn't much matter to him where that was 
as long as Carter was with him. 

"So, we go south for a while?" Tony asked. 
Carter chuckled. The hand that wasn't fondling 

Tony's balls squeezed in between their bodies, and Tony 
felt Carter's fingers probing at his backside. 

"That a direction or a request?" Carter asked. 
He didn't wait for Tony to answer before he pushed 

one thick finger inside. Playing with his balls had 
loosened Tony up, and once inside, Carter knew exactly 
where to press. 

Tony let out a long, low moan as Carter continued to 

fondle him inside and out. He let his head fall back on 
Carter's shoulder. This was heaven. 

"Maybe we should take the fucking tub," Tony 

muttered. 

"Mmmm," Carter said, his mouth against the back of 

Tony's neck. 

Carter's hand had started squeezing Tony's balls in a 

rhythm almost like the one Carter used when he was 
making love to Tony with his cock, not his hands. Tony 
couldn't keep his hips still. 

"You gonna grab my cock here eventually?" he 

asked. 

Carter's lips moved up to Tony's ear. "You are," he 

murmured. 

Wiseguys: Blast from the Past - 86 

Tony shuddered, then he grabbed his own cock and 

started stroking in time to what Carter was doing with 
his hands. 

The feeling was incredible. Carter had added a 

second finger, filling him up, and was rubbing and 
squeezing his balls, all the while Tony was adding the 
friction his cock so desperately needed. He didn't stroke 
fast -- he didn't need to. He felt entirely possessed and 
loved and cherished, and that, more than anything else, 
was what made him come. 

While he was still so relaxed he felt he could float 

forever right there and be perfectly happy, Carter lifted 
him up just enough so that Carter could slip his cock 
inside. Carter only thrust a few times, almost like he 
wanted to be careful because they hadn't lubed up, and 
then he came, too. 

Tony sat like that on Carter's lap, Carter's cock 

softening inside him, for so long that his wet skin dried 
in the warm night air. He'd been content here. They'd 
been content here, but maybe it wasn't so much the place 
on the map as it was the place they'd come to as a 
couple. It really, truly didn't matter where they ended up, 
or even if they never settled down again but just 
wandered from place to place. 

Tony took Carter's hand from beneath the water 

where it was still cupped loosely around his balls. He 
brought Carter's fingers to his lips and kissed each one. 

"We're gonna do okay," he said. "We're gonna be 

okay." 

He could almost feel Carter's smile. 
"Never doubted it," Carter said. 

The End 

Wiseguys: Blast from the Past - 87 

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His uncle Sid is a mob boss with connections. Tony 
finds himself a little out of his league, aside from his 
friend and bodyguard, Carter. When the family business 
falls to him, Tony has a tough decision to make. Stay 
and do a job he hates, or take Carter and run. Even if he 
can get away, Tony's not sure he and Carter can make a 
life together. What does the future hold for these 
wiseguys? 

Naughty: Wiseguys: Christmas in Idaho 

Wiseguys Tony and Carter are back, and they're in 

Idaho for Christmas, thanks to the snow. When Carter 
decides he wants to learn to ski, they head for the local 
supply shop, bonding a little with the owner. Things go 
awry for the pair, though, and they're not sure they'll 
even survive the holiday. Can Tony and Carter make it 
through? 

Animal Attraction 2 

Love animals? Love hot men who love each other? 

Animal Attraction 2 has all that and more. Talented 
authors Kiernan Kelly, Aaron Michaels, Jane Davitt, CB 
Potts, Julia Talbot, and Sean Michael go all out to prove 
that animals can bring people together, and that love can 
turn up in unexpected places and in unusual ways. From 
slow and steady to a hot, fast burn, the romance is right 
there for the taking, right along with the adventure. 

With slithering boa constrictors, big cats, and rodeo 

roughstock, the stories in Animal Attraction 2 will take 
you from the jungles of the Amazon forest to the snow-

Wiseguys: Blast from the Past - 88 

topped mountains of Central Asia to glamorous 
Hollywood mansions. Racing after dangerous 
predators—and dangerous men—the heroes in these 
stories are all chasing something. Or is something 
always chasing them? 

Comstock 

Reggie Grayson has a secret admirer. A traveling 

Shakespearean actor in 1883 Virginia City, Reggie's 
already been robbed at gunpoint by a masked bandit, 
and now he's receiving drawings and roses from a 
mystery man who won't leave his name. Is this any way 
to make his debut as a leading man? 

Desperate to discover if his secret admirer is the 

ruggedly handsome man who watches the stage from 
the shadows of a private box, Reggie's quest to meet the 
man of his dreams plunges him headlong into danger 
and intrigue in the lawless days of the silver rush on the 
Comstock Lode. 

Wiseguys: Blast from the Past - 89