"What?! You're telling me the boss is dead?! That's impossible!"
Jimmy was just starting his car in the garage when the call came through. His shout rattled the windows.
"It's real. West 4th and Hudson River Boulevard. I saw it with my own eyes."
"That can't be right — the boss isn't even in the country yet. He's not supposed to land until around midnight. Are you sure you didn't mix someone up?"
"Boss, I don't know when he was supposed to land. What I do know is that the man lying dead back there is Frank Gardes. I've been working for him long enough to recognize his face. And that Rolls-Royce Phantom is his personal custom order — you think I'd mistake that?"
Jimmy thought about Frank's habits. The man was nothing if not unpredictable when it suited him. Coming home early without warning wasn't just possible — it was exactly the kind of move Frank would make. Jimmy set that aside. There were bigger concerns now.
"How did he die?"
"Shot."
"By who? Who had the nerve to go after the boss? Was it Wilson's crew?"
Jimmy felt cold all over. He was Frank's right-hand man in everyone else's eyes, even if Frank himself didn't fully trust him. If Wilson Fisk had actually made his move, Jimmy's name would be on a short list.
"It was a cop. A patrol officer. His motorcycle clipped the boss's Rolls-Royce, and the boss — I think he just snapped. He pulled his gun and opened fire on a uniformed officer. In public. That cop was something else though — at point-blank range, the boss missed. Unbelievable."
"Get to the point!"
"Right — sorry. The boss fumbled the gun. Dropped it right there on the ground. The cop picked it up, chased the boss down, and put two in him. That was it."
The dealer on the other end had been selling product nearby and witnessed almost the entire sequence.
Jimmy sat in silence for a long moment.
"...Damn."
That was all he had.
Maya had spent the whole day at the athletics meet and hadn't showered since the morning races. After a long afternoon, she was itching all over. The moment she got home, she went straight to the bathroom.
When she emerged toweling her hair and walked into the living room, the TV was already on.
"— this is NBC. Breaking news: at approximately 6:24 PM, at the intersection of West 4th Street and Hudson River Boulevard in Manhattan, a shooting incident —"
Maya walked over, took the remote from Jennifer's hand over her mild protest, and changed the channel.
"— CBS News, breaking: the deceased has been identified as Frank Gardes, the New York crime boss known as the Bloody Rose —"
She changed it again. Jennifer didn't object this time — she'd already realized every channel would be running the same story.
"Good evening, I'm Alice from Fox News! As you can see behind me, the scene is absolutely packed — the NYPD has deployed over a hundred officers just for crowd control. We arrived a bit late, so we're working from the perimeter. Let me grab a few witnesses. Excuse me, sir — is your arm injured? Who did that to you?"
The blonde reporter held the microphone toward a middle-aged man in a business suit lying on a stretcher beside an ambulance. He was bald and heavyset, with a bandaged arm.
"It was Frank. Frank Gardes. One of his stray shots hit me in the arm — look, it's still bleeding." He extended the wrapped arm for the camera.
"Can you describe what happened?"
"It's a lot to explain. I'll say this much: in forty years of living, Frank Gardes may be the most embarrassing way a mob boss has ever gone out."
"...This gentleman has been at the scene for over half an hour. Why haven't you gone to the hospital yet?"
The man's expression shifted. "As the closest and most direct witness to the incident, I feel a personal responsibility to make sure the full details reach the public. How about you and I find somewhere a little more private and I give you the full story? I think you'd find it very —"
The reporter's smile went glassy as the bald man's eyes drifted south from her face. She cut her mic, turned away, and kept walking — teeth still showing — while hissing at her cameraman: "Pan away. Now."
"Hey — wait, don't go —"
Maya watched the minor farce with quiet amusement, then switched to NBC.
"— and that's the full sequence of events. Officer George Stacy has since been taken into custody at Manhattan precinct. According to Inspector Allen at the scene, however, Stacy acted in self-defense. Frank Gardes drew first and fired on a uniformed officer. It is widely expected that Stacy will be cleared of any charges —"
She clicked to Warner News.
"— bringing us to what is, by any measure, a remarkable end for a man who survived everything New York's underworld threw at him for two decades. Frank Gardes — a titan of organized crime, a man who had weathered countless storms — reduced in the end to falling by his own weapon, at the hands of an officer who'd been on the job less than a year. What this tells us —"
Maya cycled through a few more channels. Every news outlet in the city was running wall-to-wall coverage of Frank's death.
Jennifer finally took the remote back and settled on one station. "I genuinely can't believe it," she said. "Thousands of NYPD officers spent fifteen years unable to touch him. And he goes out like this — at the hands of a rookie traffic cop who'd been on the job for a few months. It's stranger than any screenplay."
It was all over the city. Ordinary people like Jennifer were talking about it. So were the wealthy.
Tony Stark clicked off his phone. "Alright, we'll pick this up later — in a few days I'll take you and your friends out on the yacht. Five hundred feet, just us. Sound good? Perfect. Mwah."
He walked into his 2,000-square-foot living room and found his father's wheelchair positioned beneath the enormous family portrait on the wall.
Tony glanced at the photo, understood immediately. His father was thinking about his mother again — she'd passed away two years ago.
Watching the formerly sharp, formidable Howard Stark sitting there in quiet grief was hard. Tony cleared his throat.
"Hey, old man. You hear what happened tonight? Big story. Big joke, actually. You know a guy called Frank Gardes? Hell's Kitchen?"
Howard turned from the portrait. "Frank? That little punk?"
Calling a major organized crime boss "a little punk" was, coming from Howard Stark, entirely appropriate.
"The one. Pathetic ending, seriously — he's going to be the punchline of every story told in this city for the next year. Want to hear how he died?"