“Fifty-Eighth Street.”
“You’ve met him there before?”
“Yeah. To make payments on the loan.”
“What was he charging you?”
“Five points a week.”
“Not exactly Chase Manhattan,” Jackie said.
“When were you supposed to meet him?”
“You mean today?”
“Today, yes.”
“Right after it went down.”
“That was six o’clock,” Jackie said. “That makes you a little late, Dom.”
“Yeah, it makes me a little late,” Di Nobili said, and started looking very worried again.
“I want you to call him,” Michael said. “Have you got a number for him?”
“Yeah.”
Michael went to a file cabinet across the room, opened a drawer, and took from it a wrapped telephone pickup the tech unit had bought at Radio Shack. Attaching the suction cup to the earpiece of his phone, he said, “This is what I want you to say to him. Tell him everything went down the way it was supposed to, but you had a flat tire, and you had to have it fixed, which the garage just finished doing. You got that so far?”
“No, I’m a fucking moron,” Di Nobili said.
Michael looked at him.
“Mister,” he said, “you want me to go home, is that it?”
“I’m sorry,” Di Nobili said.
“Just keep on being an asshole,” Michael said, “and I’m out of here in a minute. Capeesh?”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“Good,” he said, and plugged the cable into his taping and monitoring deck. “If he asks you what took so long to get a flat fixed, you tell him it’s the holidays and the weather is bad.”
“Will he buy that?” Jackie asked.
“I think so,” Di Nobili said.
“Make sure he does,” Michael said. “Tell him you’ll bring the money to him now, but it might take a while, the streets haven’t been plowed yet, traffic’s backed up, whatever you want to say. I want to buy a few hours,” Michael said, turning to Jackie, “give us time to wire him, set up the excuse for...”
“What do you mean?” Di Nobili said. “You’re gonna wire me?”
“He still doesn’t understand,” Jackie said, shaking her head.
“You’ll be going in wired, yes,” Michael said. “Any problems with that?”
“No, sir.”
“Good. Call him.”
Di Nobili fished a slip of paper from his wallet, consulted it, and then, holding it in his left hand, punched out the number with his right hand. The equipment was set up so that everything being taped could be monitored simultaneously; Michael and Jackie both put on earphones. The phone rang once, twice, three times...
“La Luna,” a man’s voice said.
“Let me talk to Sal,” Di Nobili said.
“Who’s this?”
“Dominick Di Nobili.”
“He knows you?”
“He knows me.”
“Hold on.”
Michael nodded approval. He noticed that Di Nobili had broken out in a cold sweat.
“Hello?”
A man’s voice. Gruff.
“Sal?”
“Yeah.”
“This is Dom.”
“Where the fuck are you, Dom?”
“I’m in a garage on Canal Street. I just had a flat tire fixed.”
“You know what time it is?”
“Yeah, it’s late, I know.”
“I been waitin’ for your call since six o’clock.”
“I was lookin’ for a phone booth when I got the flat.”
“How’d it go?”
“Fine.”
“Any problems?”
“No problems.”
“And you’re where now?”
“The garage that fixed the flat. I got to pay my bill, and then I’m out of here.”
“What took you all this time to get a flat fixed?”
“It’s the holidays. Also the traffic’s terrible. And I don’t know this fuckin’ part of the city,” he said, improvising. “Time I found an open garage...”
“So is it fixed now?”
“Yeah, I told you.”
“So when can you get here? I been waitin’ here two fuckin’ hours for you.”
“I can come there right now, you want me to.”
“Yeah, do it.”
“But I got to warn you, the roads are really terrible, Sal, it’s a fuckin’ blizzard out there. It might take me a while t’get uptown, I mean it.”
“You’re on Canal, what the fuck’s gonna take you so long to get to Fifty-Eighth?”
“You should see it out there, Sal. There’s cars stuck all over the place...”
“I don’t give...”
“... slippin’ and slidin’, I never seen anything like this in my life.”
“So get a dogsled. I don’t give a shit it takes you till midnight, I’ll be here waitin’ for you.”
“Okay, but it might be a long wait, is all I’m sayin’.”
“I got nothin’ else planned,” Sal said, and hung up.
Di Nobili looked at Michael.
“Good,” Michael said.
It was close to ten o’clock when Di Nobili walked into La Luna Restaurant on Fifty-Eighth Street and Eighth Avenue. Di Nobili was wearing under his clothing two pieces of equipment: a JBird digital disc recorder and a KEL transmitter. An empty car had been parked across the street from the restaurant. It was equipped with a repeater that would receive the signal from Di Nobili’s transmitter and send it out again, at a much higher frequency, to the unmarked sedan in which Jackie and Michael were parked three blocks away. There would be two recordings made, one on the JBird’s microchips, the other on the monitoring tape. They had warned Di Nobili not to sit too close to the clatter of silverware or china, or anywhere near a jukebox or a speaker. He had told them Sal usually conducted business in a quiet corner booth near the kitchen. Also, at this hour on a Monday night, there shouldn’t be too many customers in the restaurant. They were hoping there wouldn’t be.
Jackie had previously signed out for the twenty-three thousand they’d used in the buy-bust, but this was a whole new operation, and if Di Nobili’s information proved useless, they would need the flash as evidence when they brought him to trial on the Section 220. Michael personally signed out for a fresh wad of cash — which happened to be five grand short. The shortage was what Dom would attempt to explain to Sal the Barber in the next ten minutes. This was why they’d needed to buy the extra time, so that Dom could reasonably account for how he’d happened to come up with eighteen thousand dollars instead of the twenty-three he’d got for the dope. They were hoping the cash discrepancy, and Dom’s explanation for it, would lead to the next step in the escalation.
Neither of them was wearing earphones, which would have been noticeable from the sidewalk. Instead, the monitoring and recording equipment sat on the floor of the car, the volume control turned up. They waited expectantly now, a man and a woman who looked like a loving couple with eyes only for each other, but who were instead two law enforcement officers who were all ears. Softly, silently, the snow fell relentlessly on the car, covering it in white.
“Took you long enough,” Sal said.
Sal Bonifacio, he of the gruff voice, the short temper, and the quick fists. Sal the Barber.
“Yeah, well, I told you,” Dom said.
“Where’s the money?”
“Right here.”
Silence. Dom undoubtedly taking the envelope of cash out of his pocket, handing it over to Sal.
“She test it?”
“No.”
“I’m surprised. Must be she trusts us, huh?”
Sal laughing. Dom joining in. Honor among thieves. Good cause for laughter.
“What’d she look like?”
“Who?”
“The cunt. Anna Garcia.”
“Good-looking redhead.”
In the car, Jackie whispered, “Thanks, Dom.”
“What I hear, I wouldn’t mind boffin’ her.”