“Capeesh,” I said.
“How’s the tie look?”
“It looked better when Nancy was making ’em.”
“Don’t start with me. What are you my Jewish mother?”
“No, I’m your Irish rose. Get out there and try not to cough up blood.”
He smirked at me. “Sweet, Melvin—you’re a real sweetheart.”
Sinatra was great. The crowd loved him. His voice did seem to have a rasp tonight, a kind of burr in it, but it was attractive, somehow, more mature. His ballads were heartbreaking—during “I’m a Fool to Want You” Jackie began to cry—and he seemed to have a new energy in the up-tempo stuff, like a peppy version of “All of Me” and the swinging “Saturday Night (Is the Loneliest Night of the Week).” Maybe he did have some career left out in front of him.
By the time Frank got on stage, however, Rocco had noticed us—and he would, from time to time, shoot daggers toward Jackie and me. Charley seemed to be trying to settle him down, touching his brother’s hand, even sliding an arm around Rocco’s shoulder, whispering.
In the middle of “The Hucklebuck”—a terrible song, typical of what Columbia was sticking Sinatra with these days—I told Jackie I needed to step out to take a leak. She was aware, of course, that Rocco had been shooting us death rays, and claimed to have to go herself.
While she was in the ladies’ room, I was—and I’m sure this will come as no surprise—in the men’s room. This wouldn’t be worth noting, if—just after I zipped up—Rocco hadn’t come striding in.
The men’s room at the Chez Paree—this one, anyway (there were several)—was good-size; we had it to ourselves, Rocco and I, the show being in progress and all.
“Hi, Rocky,” I said, voice echoing in this cathedral of porcelain altars and Crane confessionals, and went over to the sink and began washing up.
His voice, like his footsteps, echoed, too: “What’s the idea, Nate?”
I let the water run, soaping my hands. “Oh, I always wash my hands after I piss or shit—you ought to try it, Rocky. Latest thing.”
Rocco—who looked spiffy in his tux, very handsome except for that horror-show pockmarked puss surrounded by skunk-streaked hair—didn’t smile. That business about me kidding him, that treating-him-like-a-regular-guy routine, wasn’t going to play.
His voice boomed hollowly: “You know what I’m talkin’ about, Heller—I’m talkin’ about you picking up my castoffs…. You gonna go through my garbage, too? See if there’s any sandwiches I didn’t fucking finish?”
Still washing up, I turned my head and said, “She’s not garbage, Rocky. She’s a nice kid. She’s still a nice kid, even after your beatings.”
More echoing footsteps—he was within arm’s reach of me, now. The close-set eyes under the black slashes of eyebrow were fixed on me like twin revolver barrels.
He grinned—a grin as terrible as he was. “Maybe you don’t know it yet, Heller—but that ‘nice kid’ is a goddamn ad—a fuckin’ jabber!”
He meant an addict who used a hypo.
I soaped my hands, a regular Lady Macbeth. “Rocky, you’re the one who turned her into a junkie. I’m the one who’s gonna help her.” I shot him another sideways glance. “I’m asking you as a friend, Rock—back off. She’s not your property, anymore.”
The black-slash eyebrows leapt up his forehead; his lip peeled back over white store-bought teeth. “Her ass will always be mine, you dumb fuck! All I gotta do is snap my fingers…” He snapped them. “…and she’ll come crawlin’ on her hands and knees, beggin’ for—”
I didn’t know whether he was going to say dope, or make some filthy sexual reference, but I didn’t care to hear it, in either case.
Which is why I threw a handful of soapy water in his wide-open eyes.
His hands came up to his face, like I’d splashed him with acid, not harmless sudsy water, and I swung a hard right (wet) hand into his balls.
His yowl of pain echoed as he folded up and went down, and now he was the one on the floor, crawling. While he was still helpless, I frisked him, found no firearms, and then I leaned over and hit him in the face—in the right eye, in his burning eye.
And then I slugged him in his other eye, his burning left. Two shiners for one seemed a fair exchange to me. Finally rage fueled him—and perhaps the stinging in his eyes abated— enough for him to rise up off the floor and come at me.
But I’d had plenty of time to get my nine millimeter out. He hadn’t seen me pull it, but he saw the gun now, and he froze— hands clawed before him, a werewolf in a tuxedo.
That was the tableau Charley Fischetti witnessed when he came in the John, looking for his brother, no doubt.
“No, Heller,” Charley said, approaching tentatively, hands up and out, sending a nonthreatening message. He too was in a tux, his dyed-blond hair combed perfectly back. His elevator shoes clip-clopped, echoing. “Don’t do it—let him go.”
I cocked the automatic; the click echoed, too, like another footstep.
“Doesn’t he know who he’s dealing with?” Rocky asked his brother, flabbergasted, astounded, frustrated by my actions. Then to me: “Don’t you fucking know who you’re dealing with?”
I smiled at him, but my gun hand was trembling—just a little. “You’re a tough man, Rock. A killer. I’d be impressed, only I killed more Japs in one afternoon than your goombah career total.”
Rocco was trembling, too—whether with fear or rage or both, I couldn’t say. At the same time, he seemed coiled to spring; and part of me welcomed that.
Charley stood next to us—had he moved forward two steps, he’d have been between us. “Come on, Heller—back off…. Rocky, back off…back off!” Charley swallowed, eyes flicking from me to his brother and back again. “I know what this is about—it’s that girl, isn’t it? That goddamn girl….”
“Her ass is mine!” Rocco snarled.
I backhanded the son of a bitch.
He couldn’t believe it. Rocco just stood there with his red eyes and touched the red in the corner of his mouth and couldn’t believe it.
“You touch her again, you come near her again,” I told him, “I will kill you so fucking slow you’ll be begging me to finish you. I’ll shoot your toes off and let you bleed to death out your fuckin’ feet.”
Rocco didn’t know what to say. The skunk-haired gangster looked afraid; it did not seem to be a state he was terribly familiar with. People were, after all, supposed to be afraid of him.
“Rocky,” Charley said, gently, “you put the girl out on the street with her bags—you sent her away. If Nate wants to take up with her, that’s his business.”
Rocco looked at Charley in amazement, searching his brother’s face for some sign that these were just words meant to fool me. If he found that, I didn’t sense it.
Charley turned my way, his voice gentle, reasonable. “Nate— can Rocky go now? Could you and I speak, alone, for a few moments—just the two of us?”
I shrugged. “Sure. Rock, did you need to use the facilities before you leave? Maybe you want to throw some water on your face.”
Rocco’s upper lip curled back, like a Doberman about to growl—or attack.
“Go, Rock,” Charley said, and he took his brother’s arm and tugged him away from where he’d stood facing me. “Go sit at the table and enjoy Frankie and stay away from our friend, Mr. Heller here…and stay away from the girl.”
Rocco swallowed, nodded, and hurried out.
Charley, breathing hard, leaned against the sink counter. “Nate…Nate, are you insane? Aren’t you fucking aware my brother is a very violent man?”
“I’ll take those questions in order: yes I am insane; that’s how I got out of the Marines. And your brother is a violent man—almost as violent as I am, and much tougher with women than I’ll ever be.”