Hot Metal

He was known to everyone as Bullet, ever since Tony Mondo held a gun to his head over some $20 scam and elected not to pull the trigger, because: "You're not worth the cost of a bullet."

The name stuck, partly because he moved as fast as a bullet too, whizzing from deal to deal, scam to scam, all over the city like a November fog. Fast as a bullet, but never straight as a bullet.

My first jobs for him were irregular as he was: sometimes three jobs a day, sometimes nothing for a month, sometimes driving to Brooklyn, sometimes to Boston, Maine, Philadelphia, or off the map entirely. Sometimes just a two foot by two foot brown paper parcel, sometimes a full trailer.

I was seriously considering finding more reliable work, when Sally D came along.

No-one ever used Sally D's full name. She was the daughter of a mob boss, the main family on Staten Island, the only times she ever used her full name, twice in all the years I knew her, it carried with it a heavy threat. Mess with me, Sally D, and you have my family to deal with.

At the time they got together she was just 19, a real stunner, shoulder length blonde hair, the longest legs in Manhatten and looks like a magazine model, always wearing the latest fashions, often setting them, a cigarette stuck permanently between her fingers, face alternating between smile or scowl, never a compromise.

Sally D brought order to Bullet's chaos. Sally had an uncle with contacts in the metal business, two brothers in Boston, and Bullet began to concentrate his efforts on supplying the brothers. Bullet proved world class at ripping off metal. If he passed you a dime you'd best check it hadn't had its edges shaved off. Within no time at all I was driving a full truck of steel or Aluminum to the two brothers in Boston every single day of every single week.

Bullet never had a problem meeting an order, metal found its way to him as if he were some kind of magnet. Sometimes he'd steal it straight from a the production line, a truck would leave the factory gates of an aluminum plant and a day later, via various contacts I knew little about, he'd steal it, pack it up in a different truck and sell it back to them. The aluminum companies must have had some idea what was going on, but no reason to do anything, as everyone benefited. They got paid full rate for the missing load by their insurer, then bought it back half price from Bullet. There was enough money for everyone to take their cut, nobody had any incentive to change a thing.

Most of the time I had no idea what I was driving, let alone where it came from. I was the honest one in Bullet's team. All I had to do was drive, deliver the goods and drive home. If the police stopped me what was the worst that can happen, how do you prove a pile of metal's a stolen pile of metal?

It was the best of jobs. The nature of the work meant that I earned about double what I'd normally make as a driver, for a steady eight or nine hour day, didn't even have to lift anything off the truck, a load of steel is too heavy so everything's mechanised. I'd get to spend an hour or so in a Boston diner while the truck was being unloaded, grab a pile of blueberry pancakes and coffee and watch the world go by.

The only problem with the whole operation was Bullet. He didn't like the routine of it all, he was still playing his own games, private scams that made little money but kept his hand in, as he called it, or made life difficult, as Sally D saw it.

You always had to count your change with Bullet, check your wallet when he was around, but he'd always played fair with the two brothers. Their reputation made Sally D's father and his family look like a group of children's party clowns. Play fair with them and they were generous with you, I always got a handsome gift at Christmas, something for my wife and kids. I'd never known anyone stupid enough to play anything other than straight with them.

Everything was perfect, until one day everything changed. As far as I was concerned it was a normal day. I picked up the truck from where I'd been told (never the same place) and drove it out of NYC. I set off just after seven, figuring I'd beat the worst of the traffic and finish early, get to take Mikey to baseball practice after school. It all went to plan, the roads were empty, by the time I'd reached Boston the commuter traffic had faded. I flung the keys to Tom, the brothers' regular guy, and strolled to the nearby diner. "Back in an hour," I said, already hungry.

I was halfway through my plate of pancakes when the brothers walked in, glanced around the diner, walked over and sat opposite me. "There's a problem," said the older brother, Tony, leaning across the table and meeting my eyes with his own, "the truck's empty."

The brothers were intimidating. Sure they were big and muscular, but that was nothing, they just had an air of menace around them. The sort of guys you walk away from if you happen upon them in a bar. But I couldn't walk away, I was already in deep, very deep. "Sorry," I said, "I'll phone Sally, I must have picked up the wrong truck, got my orders wrong or something. I'll drive straight back and be back with you in no time."

Tony shook his head sadly and slowly, he was so close to my face I couldn't even see what his brother was doing. "We've called Sally, spoken to Bullet, they say the metal was in the truck when they left it. They say if it's missing it's not their fault, must have been stolen."

"Hang on," I said, "you don't think that I took it. Where'd I get a crane to lift it?" I patted my empty pockets to show I wasn't carrying a truckload of metal with me.

Tony leant back in his chair so that he could turn and exchange whispers with his brother. I was too nervous even to take a swig of coffee, like a prisoner on death row waiting for the result of his appeal. Except that death row prisoners get the chance of an appeal, I rather fancied that the brothers didn't hold with that sort of nicety.

Eventually Tony leant forward again. "No, you're alright, too much in there to do anything stupid," he said, tapping my head with his trigger finger. "Take a message to Bullet, from us. We'll let him off this time, but he pays us the money pack, every dime of it, and no business again until it's paid back."

And that was it, the work dried up. Bullet refused to admit he'd tried to rip the brothers off by getting them to pay for an empty load, made out some chancer had happened upon a truck full of steel and managed to walk off with it. The brothers dismissed this as the pile of crap it obviously was. After three year's of constant work I suddenly had nothing to do. I managed to find some jobs, from guys I'd met on the road, there's always work for a good driver and I was glad to be away from any trouble.

Sally D pleaded with Bullet, even offered to pay the money back herself, through a loan from her family, but he was stubborn. Stubborn and stupid - he lost ten times more from lost trade than he got from the scam, but Bullet lived for the con, the scam, the game of chance. Of course, in those days the men still had control of the money, Sally D didn't have a dime to her name, so all she could do was curse Bullet's stupidity.

This left the brothers in a difficult situation. Bullet had brought them a regular supply of easy cash for several years, and in their world money was more important even than family. They could easily wave away the lost load, they'd make the money back in a few days. The only thing stopping them was the code; a guy had ripped them off, a low level loser at that, every rule said they had to pay him back.

They say that a bullet fired from a gun reaches a temperature of 246 degrees and there were three bullets fired into Bullet's head as he walked to the car one spring morning: hot metal. I guess he was worth the cost after all.

Sally D was just behind him, locking the door, but there were no orders to harm her: her family meant that her brains were out of bounds. So it all changed. With the money she inherited she rose up big time, mostly legitimate business, or semi-legitimate: bars, restaurants, beauty salons, vending machines. Chances are if you go into a bar in Manhatten Sally D has a share in it, she has a share in most things, though I doubt you'll see her name written down anywhere.

She offered me work, I even got offers from the Boston brothers, but I was ready to go straight, couldn’t take the risk with my kids. No matter how much they offered, it wasn't worth the cost of a bullet.