Bad Guys Read Online Free

in his big Lincoln. The Clam soon found out that like their old man, the kids liked to get high too. He’d slip them joints regularly, and after a while he started adding angel dust to the weed. Within a month, Ramon Jr. and Wanda had developed quite a taste for the stuff, a real craving. As for Teresa, she was an easy mark. An ex-heroin addict struggling to stay clean? Come on. The Clam just showed up with the horse one afternoon when Ramon was out, and Teresa was all ready to ride again.
    Now with his whole family hooked on dope, Ramon had no choice but to play it straight with Vinnie Clams. The Clam made it clear that if Ramon fucked around with the inventory, he’d cut them right off, leave the four of them high and dry. Ramon wasn’t dumb; he figured out that altogether his family had something like a twelve-hundred-dollar-a-day habit. They needed Vinnie Clams bad. So when the Clam called him up and told him to go to a meet, Ramon did it. And when Vinnie Clams told him to stash the cash at a certain drop, Ramon did that too.
    That’s why Vinnie Clams was on his way to the Meadowlands rightnow. To make a pickup from one of Ramon’s regular drops, a very nice pickup, which was a just little overdue, as Mr. Varga had reminded him the other day.
    The Lincoln crested a rise in the highway, and like magic, the three massive structures that make up the Meadowlands sports complex appeared on the horizon: Byrne Arena, where the Nets and the Devils play, the racetrack, and Giants Stadium. Vinnie Clams fixed his gaze on the stadium and unconsciously gave the Lincoln a little more gas.
    Turning off the highway, the Clam scanned the endless parking lots that surround the Meadowlands. They were empty except for the cars parked in the employee sections. He guided the Lincoln around the ribbons of service roads that led to the stadium and headed for the far end of Lot W. Swinging the long car around, he abruptly threw it into reverse and backed up to the concrete barrier where the lot ended and the tall reeds of the wetlands began. Vinnie Clams never liked to walk too far.
    Examining the shifting cattails in the rearview mirror, the Clam decided that they’d grown at least another two feet since he’d last been here a couple of months ago. He pushed the door open and wedged his big belly out from under the tilt steering wheel, rolling out of the cool car into the oppressive heat. He coughed up some phlegm, slammed the door shut, and spat. “Fuck.”
    He pulled a crumpled handkerchief out of his pocket and mopped his face as he peered across the lot to get his bearings. Two, three, four, five, six, seven—he mentally counted the lampposts from the right-hand corner of the lot—eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen. Lucky seven times two. He squinted and showed his teeth, then stuck the handkerchief over the sweaty flab under his chins as he walked toward the fourteenth lamppost.
    He stepped carefully over the low concrete barrier and minced down the embankment with his arms outstretched like a tightrope walker. His heart was pounding when he got to the bottom. “You need a fuckin’ machete down here.”
    There were reed stalks everywhere, crowding him like prison bars. And mosquitoes and flies, the big black ones that bite. The fat man got excited and started swatting at the reeds, fighting to make room. Shit . . . where the fuck is it? He looked all around, but nothing looked familiar. Maybe I counted wrong . . . shit. His breathing became short; he wanted out of there fast. But then he spotted a path of recentlybroken reeds, and his panic subsided. The oil drum, Ramon’s path to the oil drum.
    Vinnie Clams headed down the path, fearless now. He could see it in his mind. That rusty old oil drum half-buried in the wet dirt, the rim jutting out like an iceberg on the water. His greed got there before he did. Just reach around through the rusted-out side and he’d