Felix said, “Pretty girl. We should do something for her for helping out.”
“I’ll do something for her,” Nolan said. “What about Joey?”
“Well, he’s not pleased that you’ve taken his clothes away from him.”
“It’s one way to keep him in his room.”
“And he doesn’t like my sending Greer in to watch him all the time, either.”
“That’s another way.” Nolan was beginning to get quietly pissed off at this smug little lawyer.
Earlier, Nolan had assured Joey that the Family would hear nothing of their conversation, and Joey had talked easier that way, but after Nolan was finished with him, Felix and the two bodyguards had shouldered into the room to find things out for themselves. Nolan hadn’t stayed around to watch, as redundant violence irritated him, but it wasn’t his show anymore, so he’d let it pass.
“Other than that,” Felix was saying, “Joey Metrano’s turned into a humble, quiet little guy. He’s full of apologies and bowing and scraping. He knows that his life is hanging by the slenderest of threads now that he’s admitted helping Charlie hoax the Family.” Felix said the word “Charlie” as though he were spitting out a seed. “He’ll be taken back to the city tomorrow morning and kept under close watch. I don’t need to go over what Joey told us, do I? He probably told you much the same. Says all he was doing was keeping some of his cousin’s money in a bank account, and knows he’s one of several doing that for Charlie, though he insists he doesn’t know who any of the others are. Claims he had nothing to do with helping Charlie pull off the phony death, other than knowledge of the fact, and says he doesn’t know who did. Well, what do you think, Nolan? Is he lying or not? You think there’s any chance he knows where Charlie is?”
“No,” Nolan said. Charlie was too smart to tell Joey much, and it figured he wouldn’t let his different co-conspirators know each other either. Less you know, less you can tell under duress. “I figure Joey’s telling the truth. I questioned him pretty thorough.”
Felix said, “I questioned him rather thoroughly myself, or I should say Greer and Angelo did. So I have to agree with you. It would seem Joey’s told us everything he knows.”
Nolan said, “No wonder he’s a humble, quiet little guy. It’s been a bitch of a night for him.”
Felix leaned close, like a quarterback giving the signals. “We better come to some kind of mutual understanding, Nolan, about how we’re going about handling this affair. I can’t be sure how many people were involved in helping Charlie put over his little charade, but I think it should be obvious to you that there is going to be some, shall we say, extensive inter-Family housecleaning.”
“Give me two days.”
“What can you do in two days?”
“Try me.”
“What are you asking?”
“Leave me alone for two days. Give me that long before you start weeding out your bad stock.”
“Where will you start?”
“I have some people in mind to see.”
“What sort of people?”
“Family people. Some people who seem likely bedfellows for Charlie.”
“Such as?”
Nolan told him.
Felix nodded. “They’re well insulated, you know. Not that easy to get at.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“You’ll be needing some information from me, addresses, telephone numbers, that sort of thing.”
“Yes.”
Felix thought for a moment. Then he said, “Is there a phone I could use?”
Nolan pointed across the pool, where there was a snack bar, closed now, of course, but with a phone on the counter. Felix got up and walked over to the counter and used the phone. Nolan watched Sherry swim. She was graceful.
Ten minutes later Felix was back. “Two days,” he said.
“Thanks,” Nolan said.
“You know, I still don’t understand how you guessed Charlie.” Felix laughed, “I mean a dead man, my God. I would have assumed it was someone from your field.”
They’d been over that this afternoon and Nolan didn’t want to go into it again.
“Call it a hunch,” Nolan said.
It was, of course, much more than a hunch. Nolan knew it was possible that a pro thief had pulled the job, some heistman down on his luck who needed ready cash and knew Planner’s safe in the back room usually had a good piece of change in it. But it was unlikely as hell. Maybe in sheer desperation, but otherwise Nolan couldn’t see a professional hitting Planner: you don’t hit one of your own. The old guy had virtually no enemies in the trade, and was a valued friend of everyone who knew him and made use of him.
And right there was another reason: Planner had too many friends to risk stealing from him. Whoever pulled this had ripped off not only Planner, but maybe a dozen professionals who’d entrusted emergency money to Planner’s safekeeping. What it came down to was this: let it leak you were the one who wasted Planner, a hundred guys would drop the hammer on you.
An amateur, then?
No. Someone outside the trade was even more unlikely. Why would some amateur pick an antique shop to knock over, and a shabby one at that? If he did, how would he know about that safe, way back in the second of two storerooms? No, an amateur would probably just empty the cash register and run.
Most important, nobody — nobody outside of Nolan, Jon and Planner — knew an eight-hundred-thousand-buck haul from a bank job was nestled in that safe. Very few people knew for sure Nolan had pulled that particular job, and no one would likely figure he’d leave the money with Planner.
Except maybe Charlie.
Charlie might’ve figured it.
Charlie not only knew that Nolan had pulled the bank heist, he also knew Nolan had been wounded after the robbery and wounded badly, because it was Charlie and his people who shot Nolan, in that fucking double cross Charlie pulled. He would’ve known Nolan would have to hole up close by. He would’ve known Nolan hadn’t had the time or health to get properly rid of the money; he could’ve figured that the money had stayed right there where Nolan was holing up. Charlie could’ve used his vast Family resources to investigate Nolan’s working habits, his associates, especially in the immediate area, to determine precisely where Nolan was hiding, sooner or later coming up with Planner.
When the Family started negotiating with Nolan, a Nolan who was still just getting on his feet, Charlie’s inside sources (the same people within the Family who helped Charlie “die”) could’ve relayed word to him that Nolan was resisting transfer of the money. And Nolan had told Felix and others who pressed moving the money to a Family bank, “I’m not sweating the money’s safety. It’s been okay where it is this long and a while longer won’t make a difference.” Perhaps these words of Nolan’s (foolish words, he knew now) had gotten back to Charlie.
But Charlie was dead.
Sure.
That auto-wreck business had smelled to Nolan from word go, but he’d wanted Charlie to be dead so bad he’d accepted it. Even then he’d questioned Felix, who had told him that this pretense of an accident was a necessity, that Charlie was simply too high in the Family to die anything but a “natural” death.
Sure.
That was where the hunch part did come in. Deep down in Nolan’s gut, Charlie didn’t feel dead. Nolan had ignored the tingle in his gut, chalking it up to all that time the feud with Charlie had lasted, figuring there was bound to be mental residue left after all the emotional and physical violence Charlie had caused him over the years. But now with Planner dead and the money, all that money stolen, Nolan was listening to everything his gut had to say.
So how could Felix be expected to understand? This was a complex chain of logic intertwined with instinct and was something an attorney in a tailored suit could never comprehend.