“The Shelby’s gone, Frank.”
“Too bad. It was a beauty. You trade it?”
Trupo said nothing, but his upper lip curled in a sneer as he walked around to the driver’s side, reached in and snatched the Caddy keys from the ignition.
The detective went back to the trunk and opened it up, and Frank and Huey swapped glances.
Silence, but for distant bridge traffic, accompanied Trupo standing there, looking down into the trunk for what seemed the longest time, and was maybe ten seconds.
“Wanna come over here a minute, Frank?” Trupo asked politely.
Frank came over.
Six kilos of heroin basked in the meager illumination of the trunk light.
“Now what are we gonna do about this?” Trupo asked. “This is illegal contraband, you know.”
“We’re gonna shut the trunk,” Frank said, “and say good night, and forget you even pulled us over.”
“No.” Trupo raised a forefinger. “You know, I think I have a better idea.”
Then the SIU dick leaned in, plucked two heroin bricks from the group, and tucked them under his arm. “Okay with you, Frank? ’Cause we got other options.”
“Do we.”
“I mean, if you rather I took it all and threw you and your brother in the fuckin’ river, is another option.”
Frank, expressionless, said, “Here’s a third: next time it’s your whole fuckin’ house blows up and not just your candyass car.”
The two men stared at each other. Neither face held any expression; neither man blinked, either.
Not until Trupo, genuine sadness crawling into his expression, said, “I loved that car.”
“A pity.”
“You wouldn’t know where I could get a turkey butchered, would you? Do they keep overnight, once they been shot in the head?”
“Couldn’t help you with that.”
Trupo sucked in breath, then slammed the trunk closed, yelled to his partner, “Let’s go,” and walked away with his cut of the heroin tucked under his arm like a couple loaves of bread.
Frank got in on the rider’s side of the Caddy, Huey on the driver’s, and Huey was about to start the car when Frank slammed his brother’s head into the window so hard, the safety glass cracked.
Huey groaned, and choked off sobs.
Frank leaned in and his upper lip peeled back over his teeth as he said, “Don’t you ever put me in a car with dope in it again. Or you’ll be the one thrown in the fuckin’ river.”
In another unmarked car, Richie Roberts — pleased with himself for abandoning his bleak Thanksgiving for staking out Nicky Barnes’s club — sat and watched through binoculars. He couldn’t see exactly what happened in the parked Caddy, but he’d seen the SIU detectives, helping themselves to a small fortune in heroin.
Someday, Richie thought. Someday...
20. Insured for Life
Last night Joey Sadano had called, and asked Richie to stop over this afternoon, Saturday. And Richie Roberts was nothing if not loyal to his friends, so his best intentions to curtail (if not cut off) any contact with his high school buddies, due to their Organized Crime ties and such, well, those seemed to be going the way of most best intentions...
The two old friends were in Joey’s spacious white modern kitchen, the windows over the sink looking out on the backyard and the pool, where Marie Sadano and the kiddies were splishing and splashing.
Joey, in Bermuda shorts and a paint-factory explosion of an Hawaiian shirt, was showing off something called a microwave oven. Richie, in a T-shirt and white jeans and a cap with a “W” for Weequahie, was wondering if his friend’s pride over this big boxy kitchen-counter doohickey could really be the reason for Joey calling to insist Richie come over.
Right now, through the TV-screen-like glass door of the box, popcorn was bouncing off the inner walls and the sound was like every firecracker in China going off.
“What the fuck is a ‘micro’ wave, anyway?” Richie asked, working his voice above the racket. “Micro like in Mr. Microphone? Cooks so loud you can wait out in the other room and know it’s done?”
“You are so fuckin’ out of it,” Joey said, laughing. He gestured to the squat fat gizmo. “It’s a scientific force like atomic energy. It rearranges molecules and shit.”
“Molecules of what?”
Joey shrugged. “You name it. Of popcorn, for starters. But you don’t wanna put your head in there. Or you’ll get your molecules rearranged like Hiroshima.”
“Sounds delicious.”
It smelled like scorched shit, when Joey opened the door and raked the popped kernels out into a bowl, most of them burnt. Joey insisted Richie try some. It tasted like scorched shit, too.
“I can get you one of these,” Joey said, nodding at the microwave. “Just like this, brand-new. Have it delivered and everything.”
“Thanks, but no thanks.” This fad would never catch on.
Richie moved away from the smell, noticing a snapshot stuck with magnets on the refrigerator: Joey and his wife and kids outside a snowy cabin under a perfect blue sky. “Looks nice. Where is this, anyway?”
“Aspen,” Joey said, coming over. He plucked a packet of snapshots off the counter. “Here’s some more. Man, it’s paradise.”
Richie thumbed through the photos — skiing, snowball fights, kids making a snowman, Marie looking pretty with a glass of wine by a rustic fireplace...
“Yeah,” Joey said, “we just got back. Had a great time. That’s where we were, case you was trying to get a hold of me.”
Richie hadn’t been. “I’d like to go there some time, Aspen. Always wanted to go skiing those slopes.”
“Oh, yeah, man it’s wild. You know who we met? Burt Reynolds. Saw Robert Redford, from a distance. Johnny Carson, too. I ain’t kiddin’ — all kinds of Hollywood people go up there. Hell, they’re buying everything’s not nailed down.”
Richie held onto the photos, then jerked a thumb at the shot on the fridge, of the family grouped outside the cabin. “That your place?”
“Are you kidding?” Joey said, grinning, waving the suggestion off. “You think I could afford a log-cabin palace like that?”
“I don’t know. Can you?”
“You know what it’s worth? Ski-in-ski-out, five bedrooms, sauna, everything. Naw, we were guests... No, that’s not my place. Richie... it’s yours.”
“What?”
“If you want it. That’s your place, Richie.”
Silence hung in the kitchen along with the scorched smell. The only thing Richie could hear was the distant splashing of the girls outside the window, only that sounded a world away, somehow.
Richie was trying to find a way to say what he needed to say, when Joey jumped in.
“Rich, isn’t there some way we can accommodate this situation? Something we can do about you... leaving the big guy alone? You know who I mean.”
The elephant in the kitchen, the elephant that was always in any room with Joey and Richie: Joey’s uncle Dominic Cattano.
Richie said, “You know, don’t you, that if I don’t report what you just said to me, I could be in a lot of trouble. And if I do report it, your ass’ll be in a sling.”
Joey’s shrug was an effort to be casual but the tightness in his voice belied the gesture: “I’m hoping you won’t do that. A lot of cops make certain accommodations, Richie, a lot of good, underpaid cops who understand that certain things in this world ain’t gonna ever change, so why buck it?”
Richie, for the first time, began looking around the kitchen with an eye on where microphones could be hidden: Joey’s deck wear wouldn’t allow a wire.