“It’s a trick,” Hinch complained. “Don’t listen to him, Fure. I don’t know why you won’t let me bang it out of him.”
“Because he just ain’t the bang-out type,” Furia said. “Drink your coffee, Hinch. You think it’s a trick, too, Goldie?”
Goldie shrugged in a swirl of hair. She had not bothered to brush it and she looked like a witch. “I still say they took it. He’s stalling for time.”
“I don’t know.” Furia pulled on his longish nose. Then he drummed on the table. He had scrubbed the soot off his hands and they were clean and neat again. “Suppose they see you?”
“Who?” Malone said.
“The fuzz. Your buddies. I was going to tell you to call in sick.”
“That isn’t necessary,” Malone said quickly. “The flu hit the department and I did double tricks for four days running. The Chief gave me a couple days off to rest up. So nobody ‘11 think anything of it if I’m seen in town in civvies.”
“He’s telling the truth about that, anyways,” Furia said. “I read in this New Bradford paper yesterday about how the flu hit the cops.”
Goldie said, “I still don’t like it.”
“Who asked you?”
“You did.”
“Well, I’m letting him go in. He ain’t going to be a hero, not with his wife and kid with us. Wait a second, fuzz.” Furia picked up the revolver. “Go upstairs, Goldie, and make sure those two are okay.”
Goldie pushed away from the table and brushed past Malone without a glance. She’s walking on eggs is right. He stood where he was respectfully.
“Okay,” Goldie called down.
“Okay,” Furia said. “Your story is this was an outside heist, Malone, you prove it. You got till one o’clock. You either bring me that bread or proof where it is or who’s got it. If you know what’s good for the missus and kid upstairs. Oh, and one more thing.”
“Yes?” Malone said.
“When you come back here you better not have nobody with you. And don’t try any hairy stunts like coming back heeled. Put it out of your clyde. Because you do that and Hinch and me we’re going to have to decorate your floor with your wife and kid’s brains. Kapeesh?”
“I kapeesh.”
The Vorsheks lived in the Hollow near a narrow bend in the Tonekeneke. It was a settlement of poor men’s houses huddled in the companionship of misery, but with an impersonal beauty unknown to city slums. The usual dirty children played on the tincan landscape or on the lunar stones of the riverbed during droughts and there were always flapping lines of wash, but backyards in the spring showed unbuyable stands of very old magnolias in impossible bloom, and everywhere in the summer vegetable plots as green and true as Japanese gardens.
Peter Vorshek worked in the incubator rooms at Hurley’s chicken farm. Mrs. Vorshek did handironing for the ladies of New Bradford to boost the family budget, her free time given passionately to her church. Their daughter Nanette ran a loom at the New Bradford Knitting Mill and baby-sat nights for a few favored clients. The Vorsheks were of Slovak or Czech stock, Malone had never known which. The old man, who carried around with him the smell of chickenshit, still spoke with an accent. He had the European peasant’s awe of authority. He always called Malone “Mr. Poleetsman.”
Malone pulled the Saab up at the front gate and got out. Nanette was perched in a rocker on the porch reading a movie magazine. She was wearing skintight slacks and a turtleneck.
They look a lot alike all right.
“Mr. Malone.” Nanette jumped up. “Something wrong with Bibby? I had to leave early Wednesday night because my mother was sick-she still is, that’s why I’m staying home from work-”
“I know, my wife told me,” Malone said.
“Oh! What happened to your head and face?”
“A little accident. Mind if I sit down a minute, Nanette?”
“Mind? I should say not.”
She sat down looking flattered. He took the other chair and made his onceover casual. She was a large girl, larger than Goldie in every department, with the heavy Vorshek features but plainer than Goldie’s, the pug nose, the high bones, the straight brown hair her sister camouflaged. He had seen Nanette at least once a week since her high school days, but he had never absorbed more than an impression of a sort of homely niceness, Bibby worshiped her and she was reliable, which was all he cared about. From what he had heard she rarely went out on a date. The talk among the studs was that she couldn’t be made, her old man and old lady kept her on too short a leash, the YPF type, they said, a hardnose churchgoer, as tough to crack as a nun. But Malone thought he saw a certain something in her hazel eyes.
She’s wondering why I’m here. No sign of being scared or worried like she’d surely show if she was in on this with Goldie and the two hoods. My hunch was right, she probably doesn’t even know her sister is in town.
“My father’s working and my mother’s in bed,” Nanette said with a downward look. For some reason her face was red. “You want to see mom, Mr. Malone?”
“I’m here to see you,” Malone said. “I took a chance you’d be home, knowing Mrs. Vorshek is down sick.” He managed a smile.
“Mrs. Malone know you’re here?” He could barely hear her.
“Yes. Why?”
“Oh, nothing.”
By God, she’s got a thing for me. All these years and I never knew. He had been racking his brains trying to work out an approach, and he had come up the walk still trying. This could be the break.
“Nanette.”
She looked up.
“How long have you known me?”
She giggled. “That’s a funny question, Mr. Malone. You know how long. Years.”
“Have I ever made a pass at you?”
“You? Oh, no!”
“Ever catch me in a lie, or trying to take advantage of you?”
“I should say not.”
“Do you trust me, Nanette?”
“I guess I do. I mean sure.”
“I’m glad. Because I’m going to have to trust you, too. In a very important thing. Something I can’t even tell you about. I need information.”
“From me?”
“From Goldie’s sister.”
She went white. She whispered, “Wait a minute,” and jumped up and ran into the house. When she came back she said, “It’s okay, mom’s sleeping,” and pulled the rocker closer to Malone and sat down on the edge and clasped her big hands on her knees. “She’s in trouble, isn’t she?”
“Yes,” Malone said. “But I can’t tell you what trouble, Nanette, or anything about it. All I can do is ask you to help me.
Her lips came together. “You want me to do something against my own sister.”
“The kind of trouble Goldie’s in, Nanette, she can’t get out of. Whatever you do or don’t do, sooner or later she’s going to have to pay for it. Nothing can make it worse for her. But by cooperating you can maybe help Bibby and Mrs. Malone and me. We’re in trouble through no fault of our own. Bad trouble.”
“Because of Goldie?”
He was silent. Then he said, “Will you help us?”
“I don’t get it.”
“I wish I could tell you, Nanette, I really do. But there are reasons why I can’t. Will you help us?”
She banged back in the rocker and began to rock in little fast rocks, like an angry old lady, lips’ fleshiness thinned, hairy brows drawn tight. Malone waited patiently.
“It’ll hurt Goldie?”
“I told you, it can’t hurt her more than she’s already hurt herself. You’ll just have to take my word for that, Nanette. You’ve got to make up your mind that your sister made the bed she’s lying in. But you can help out people who’ve always treated you right and never did anything against you.”
“She’s in New Bradford, isn’t she?”