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possession of a truckload of high-end sneakers—mostly Air Jordan VIIIs. Knowing how moulies went bugfuck nuts for overpriced kicks, they hauled them into Bed-Stuy and wholesaled the lot to the Raysor brothers. Since it was Christmastime, everybody made out.
    All the dealers used kids as runners, usually on bikes. They passed unnoticed most of the time, and were hard to charge when caught. And they worked cheap. So when Vinny approached the brothers with an offer to rent ten of their kid runners for a couple of hours, no problem—just pay up front. He and Aldo had divided up a list of new and used car dealers who had contracts with Tommy. Aldo had taken Queens, Vinny had Brooklyn.
    The kid in front was doing the talking.
    â€œF’reals? You payin’ us to bust up cars?”
    â€œThat’s what I said.”
    A big grin. “Shit, we do that for free!”
    Vinny held out his hand. “Then gimme my money back.”
    Laughter from the front and back seats. Right. Like that was going to happen.
    â€œJust remember: Don’t bust them up too bad. These are used cars here and we don’t want the owner feeling they’re too banged up to fix. Just a bunch of dings and cracked windshields is all. Now get going. We got a lotta stops to make tonight.”
    As the other kids piled out of the car and began scrambling up the fence, the older one hung back and said, “Why you hatin’ on cars so much?”
    Hate cars? Nah. Vinny hated Tommy. And so he was only after cars connected to Tommy.
    The car detailing idea had hit Vinny a couple years ago when Tony the Cannon took them on a window-breaking spree to get even with the Genovese family. At that time Tommy had been horning in on Vinny’s salvage operation and Vinny had thought it could be of big-time benefit to him to help Tommy find something for himself. Something that perfectly suited a dick like him.
    So Vinny went hunting and found a guy with a car-detailing business. The owner of Augie’s Auto Detailing & Repairs was in to Tony for big bucks. Arrangements were made and soon Tommy took over as the new proprietor of the business while the previous owner, the aforementioned Augie, was demoted to manager but still ran it. After all, with hands like those, what did Tommy Ten Thumbs know about detailing?
    Almost immediately after Tommy’s arrival, Augie’s clients began to experience huge jumps in vandalism. Vinny and Aldo each lent a personal hand to help make that happen. The damage sent Augie and his crews to work. But soon after they’d fixed everything good as new, it would happen again. And again. This was getting expensive for the dealers. So Tommy, sympathetic soul that he was, stopped by the clients and offered complete coverage for a single annual fee. Consider it an insurance policy: No matter how much damage happened over the course of a year, Augie’s Auto Detailing & Repairs would be good for it. Just pay the annual fee and fuhgeddaboudit.
    The dealers knew a bargain when they saw one and got in line to pay up. They put the word out to other dealers who weren’t Augie’s clients but were experiencing their own upsurge in vandalism, and the new guys got on board too.
    Miraculously, the vandalism stopped almost as suddenly as it started. But the annual premiums kept rolling in. With almost no detailing to be done, Tommy fired Augie and the work crews. He hired freelancers for the occasional little job now and then, and frittered away whatever revenue from the annual premiums didn’t go up his nose.
    He visited the otherwise empty Augie’s office once or twice a week to check the mail. Sitting pretty, Tommy was.
    Well, tonight was the wake-up call. But just to keep things from being too obvious, Vinny and Aldo were going to ferry the kids to a couple of lots unconnected to Tommy. That oughta muddy the waters enough to keep Tommy’s coked-up brain from connecting the dots.
    Vinny gave the