Vantagio closed the circuit and sat there beaming at Heller.
“There’s one more thing,” said Heller. “Vantagio, could you get me the phone number of Bang-Bang Rimbombo. I want to call him from my suite.”
“Celebrating, are you?” said Vantagio. “I don’t blame you. As a matter of fact, he’s right here in Manhattan and the parole officer is riding his (bleep) off.” He wrote the number on a scrap of paper and handed it over. “Have fun, kid.”
It left me blinking. Vantagio might be smart but he hadn’t penetrated that one. Heller was full of surprises, (bleep) him. What was he going to pull? Blow up the university? That was the only way I could think of that would let him keep the promise he had just made to Babe Corleone.
Chapter 8
About an hour later, Heller came out of his room. The tailors must have delivered something, for in the elevator mirrors I could see that he was dressed in a charcoal gray casual suit — the cloth must be some kind of summer cloth that was very thin and airy but looked thick and substantial. He had a white silk shirt with what appeared to be diamond cuff links and a dark blue tie. For a change he wasn’t wearing his baseball cap and in fact wore no hat at all. But when he crossed the lobby he was obviously still wearing spikes!
He clattered down the steps of a subway stop and caught a train. He got off at Times Square and was shortly clattering up Broadway past the porno shops. He turned into a cross street. I thought he must be going to a theater for he gave some attention to billboards of stage plays as he passed them.
Then he was looking up a flight of stairs. K.O. ATHLETIC CLUB, read the sign. He clattered on up and entered a room full of punching bags and helmeted boxers sparring around.
He was evidently expected. An attendant came over, “You Floyd?” and then beckoned. Heller followed him into a dressing room and the attendant pointed to a locker. Heller stripped and hung up his clothes. The attendant gave him a towel and shooed him through a door into a smoking haze of steam.
Heller groped around, fanned some steam out of the way and there was Bang-Bang Rimbombo, sitting on a ledge, streaming sweat and clutching a towel about him. The little Sicilian’s narrow face was just a diffused patch in the fog.
“How are you?” said Heller.
“Just terrible, kid. Awful. I couldn’t be worse. Sit down.”
Heller sat down and dabbed at his own face with a towel. The sweat started to pour off him, too. It must be awfully hot.
They sat in utter silence, steam geysering around them. Now and then Bang-Bang would take a gulp of water from a pitcher and then Heller would take a gulp.
After nearly an hour, Bang-Bang said, “I’m starting to feel human again. My headache is gone.”
“Did you take care of what I asked?” said Heller. “I hope it wasn’t too much trouble.”
“Oh, hell, that was easy. Hey, I can bend my neck. I haven’t taken a sober breath since I saw you last.” He was silent for a while and then apparently remembered what Heller had asked. “This time every week, Father Xavier goes down to Bayonne. He’s Babe’s confessor, knew her since she was a kid on the lower East Side. He has dinner with her and then hears her confession and then brings a load of hijacked birth control pills back to town. One of his stops is the Gracious Palms. So it wasn’t any trouble. You’ll have them later tonight. You don’t owe me nothing. They wasn’t no use.”
“Thank you very much,” said Heller.
“If all things was handled that easy,” said Bang-Bang, “life would be worth living. But just now it ain’t. You know, life can be pretty awful, kid.”
“What’s the matter? Maybe I can help.”
“I’m afraid it’s all beyond the help of God or man,” said Bang-Bang. “Up the river I go next Wednesday.”
“But why?” demanded Heller. “I thought you were out on parole.”
“Yeah. But, kid, that arrest was very irregular. A machine gun is a Federal crime but the late Oozopopolis rigged it to be found by the New York Police and they got me on the Sullivan Law or whatever they call illegal possession. I didn’t go to a Federal pen; they sent me up the river to Sing Sing.”
“That’s too bad,” said Heller.
“Yeah. They’re so crooked they can’t even send you to the right jail! So when I was paroled, I of course went home to New Jersey. And right away, the parole officer dug me up and said I was out of jurisdiction, that I couldn’t leave New York. So I come to New York and we don’t control New York like we used to before ‘Holy Joe’ got wasted. So Police Inspector Bulldog Grafferty is leaning all over the parole officer to send me back to the pen to finish my time — they tell me now it’s eight months, kid. Eight dry months!”
“Is it because you haven’t any place to live? I could—”
“Naw, naw, I know a chick on Central Park West and I moved in with her and her five sisters.”
“Well, if it’s money, I could—”
“Naw, naw. Thanks, kid. I got tons of money. I get paid by the job and under the counter and that’s the trouble. The parole officer made it a condition that I get a regular job. Imagine that, kid. A regular job, an artist like me! The job I do have nobody dares report and that leaves me bango right out in Times Square with no clothes on. Nobody will hire an ex-con. Babe said she’d arrange a regular pay social security job in one of the Corleone enterprises but that connects the family up to legit business — I’m too famous. I won’t risk getting Babe in trouble, never. She’s a great capa. So that’s what I’m up against. They said, ‘Regular job: social security, withholding tax or a charge of vagrancy and back you go this next Wednesday.’ That’s what the parole officer said.”
“Gosh, I’m awful sorry,” said Heller.
“Well, it made me feel better just getting it off my chest, kid. I feel tons better. Headache gone?” He shook his head experimentally. “Yep. Let’s get a shower and get out of here and have some dinner!”
They were soon dressed. As they passed out through the training room, I suppose Heller just plain could not resist socking something — it’s his vicious character. As he passed by a punching bag, he hit it. It flew off its springs.
“I’m sorry,” said Heller to the attendant.
“Hey, boss!” the attendant yelled at somebody.
A very fat man with a huge cigar in his mouth came over.
“Look at what this kid did,” said the attendant.
“I’ll pay for it,” said Heller.
“Hmm,” said the fat man. “Punch this one over here, kid.”
Heller went over to it and punched it. It simply vibrated back and forth — slam, slam, slam, slam.
“That other one just had a weak spring, Joe,” said the fat man. “You ought to keep this equipment under repair.”
I laughed. Heller couldn’t punch so hard after all. He’s always bragging and showing off. Good to see him come a cropper now and then.
The theater crowds had gone in. “Y’ever want to see the last end of a show,” said Bang-Bang, “wait for intermission when the crowd comes out to smoke and then walk back in with them. You get to see the last acts but I always get to wondering how they got into all that trouble in the first acts, so I don’t do it.”
They came to a huge, glittering restaurant with a huge, glittering sign:
The maitre d’ spotted Bang-Bang in the line and dragged him out. He led them to a small table in the back.
“Some of them diners,” said Bang-Bang, “is celebrities. That’s Johnny Matinee over there. And there’s Jean Lologiggida. The theatrical stars all come here to eat. And after the opening night, when the stars come in, if it’s a hit everybody claps and cheers. And if it’s a bomb, they turn their backs.”