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He’s strolling toward the fountains in the park, putting off the inevitable meeting with his friends (who’ve finally gotten out of the hospital), when his body suddenly freezes, his lungs like lead and his heart pounding in his chest.
It takes him a moment to pick out the thing he’s reacting to: a man in a suit harassing a skateboarder, flashing a badge; the man’s got his back to Anton, and Anton manages to get control of himself enough to slip behind a tree, where he stays, trembling, for what feels like hours. When one of the buskers comes over to ask if he’s all right, Anton runs, feeling every moment like the man is on his heels.
That night, he convinces himself that there are countless suited men in the city, and that it’s almost impossible that he ran into the same one, so far from his normal hangouts. But when he dreams, he sees the moment that clued him in: a cell phone flying across the pavement, slapped out of the teen’s hand by that man who was clearly, clearly not a cop.
When he finally works up the courage to see his friends, they don’t beat him up nearly as badly as he’d expected, but they mock him enough, trading comments about his “sugar daddy,” the guy in the suit. Anton gives Troy a bloody lip, mostly on principle.
Keith mentions that a friend of his cousin has been keeping tabs on Detective Carter, and that she’s nosing around after some guy in a suit. Going pale doesn’t help with the mockery, but Anton feels too sick to care. At least if it’s clear that he’s terrified of the guy, his friends won’t think that he’s somehow in league with him.
The next time is a fluke: While Seamus limps into an apartment to broker a deal, Anton stands guard, and he’s just starting to feel bored when he hears a quick exchange of gunfire from across the street. He hits the ground behind Seamus’s car and watches, horrified, as a man in a suit drags a body up out of a downstairs apartment and down the street a ways before tossing it into the trunk of a car and casually driving off.
Despite the dim street lamps, he did get a decent look at the man’s face: There’s no mistaking it this time. He stays on the sidewalk, choking back sobs until Seamus shows up and kicks him in the shin.
“What’s the matter with you?” Seamus growls. Apparently he didn’t even hear the gunshots.
“Another sighting of your sugar daddy,” Troy says smugly. “Out by the waterfront. Broke a guy’s window and tasered him in broad daylight.” He sounds almost impressed.
Anton just sneers at him, and keeps packing the next shipment for the Bulgarians, wishing that he could run off and live in some small town like he used to, where the man in the suit wouldn’t find him. But all he’s got is here on the Lower East Side, and where would he even go? The guy follows him even into his dreams.
Seamus’s bum leg (thanks to the man in the suit) has Anton handling more of the big deliveries. The Double D’s come first—the Bulgarians—and he’s just coming out with two big empty bags when he hears gunfire down the street. Lots of it. Shattering glass.
Both palms get skinned as he vaults behind a dumpster and scrambles desperately underneath it, on the verge of praying to a god he no longer believes in. How many times this month is he going to get shot at?
He’s almost not surprised when he hears the voice that haunts his dreams. Not clear enough to make out the words, but when Anton peeks out from under the edge of the dumpster, he sees the guy’s got a gun out, and is pulling another guy along by the upper arm. And the other guy—some pudgy middle-aged man who looks like the last kind of guy to end up in a firefight—appears to be wounded, but there’s no telling who did the wounding.
“Guess who shot down a consulate car in broad daylight? Angelo’s little brother saw it happen. Says the gun he used was huge, man.”
“Heard he stole an ambulance, too. With a dying man inside. Guy’s cold-blooded; wonder what he wants the fresh body for?”
Anton wishes they would all just shut up.
He’s just getting into his car after dropping off some guns for Hector’s gang when there’s an explosion from the garage he just left; it rocks the car, and he freezes, key halfway into the ignition switch. When he dares to glance over, he sees a guy in leathers striding right for the giant gaping hole in the door that moments ago was labeled Hector’s in giant orange letters.
He can’t get his hands to move. If he tried to drive now, he’d probably crash into something. Or drive straight off into the water.
A few shots later, and Hector’s garish purple GTO comes peeling out, and Anton doesn’t need to get a good look at the driver to know exactly who just stole the most recognizable car in the city.
A week later, he’s window-shopping for a new bike, admiring all the high-tech versions that he’ll never own and wishing he had the money, or could at least drum up the courage it’d take to steal that much from Seamus. Not that he even knows how to drive the thing, but he could learn. (But then, it’s not like he could deliver sacks of guns on a bike.)
And then, as he’s crossing the street, debating if it’s worth taking a look at the kind of bikes that are actually in his budget, some old guy in a fancy suit (the kind who could afford a nice bike, but would never actually ride the thing) cries out Oh my god, it’s a bomb!
Anton freezes, again, his eyes tearing up at how useless he gets in any sort of danger now, but then he struggles past the feeling and whirls around, looking around frantically (there’s nowhere to hide) for the man in the suit who has to be around here, has to be involved—but there’s no one who looks even close to the man who’s been dogging his heels all these months. Just the old guy, jerkily limping forward—I have to warn him!—
—and then a massive explosion throws both of them off their feet.
Through the ringing in his ears that muffles the horrified cries of onlookers, all Anton can think is that it’s the first time in three months that he’s been hit by something that isn’t directly related to that damn man in the suit.