“You think they found the backups, too?”
“Who knows? These guys, the minute they find one bug, they go around tiptoeing with their fingers to their mouth.”
“I’ll talk to Freddie Coulter,” Michael said. “He may have to go in again.”
“What do we do meanwhile?” Regan asked. “Pack it in, or what?”
“Stay with it,” Michael said. “The backups may still be working.”
There was activity everywhere around them on Canal Street, tourists strolling, residents shopping, Chinamen hawking fish in baskets, souvenir sellers waving lacquered bowls and paper lanterns to the three men as they came up the street. Spring was truly here at last, and the air was virtually balmy. Andrew was walking in the middle. Petey was on his left, Bobby on his right. Petey was wearing brown. A brown suit, brown shoes, a maize-colored shirt, a brown tie. He walked with his hands behind his back, the thumbs linked. The expression on his face was extremely grave. Bobby, on the other hand, looked as though someone had just hit him with a baseball bat. He kept shaking his head in disbelief.
“Which other rooms?” he asked.
“The kitchen, the phone on the counter there,” Andrew said. “And the one upstairs in the bedroom. On the nightstand alongside the bed.”
“They all have bugs in them?”
“Yeah, what Sonny called ‘Brady bugs,’ I’ll show you what they look like when we get back to the office. There was one downstairs under the cutting table, too. In the tailor shop.”
“Is the pay phone bugged, too?” Bobby asked. “The one in the shop?”
Andrew wondered who he’d been calling from that phone.
“I don’t think so. But the bug under the table could pick up anything in the room.”
“How long has this shit been in place?” Petey asked.
“Sonny didn’t know. This thing he found out back, in the terminal box, is something called a ‘slave.’ It takes the signal from the bug, does something to it, sends it out again to whoever’s listening.”
“Who do you think’s listening?” Petey said.
“Who the fuck knows?” Andrew said.
“That meeting about Moreno...”
“Yeah.”
“In the conference room? We were talking some pretty heavy stuff there,” Bobby said.
“How about when Rudy died?” Petey said. “When we were discussing the whole damn...”
“I know.”
“This is very serious.”
“I’m tryin’a think what else we talked about,” Bobby said. “On the phone. In the conference room. You mind if I smoke?” he asked, and without waiting for Andrew’s answer, pulled a package of Camels from his breast pocket, tapped a cigarette loose, popped it into his mouth, and flipped open his lighter. Andrew didn’t object. They were outdoors, and this was serious business.
“Anyway,” he said, “Sonny yanked out the slave and all the bugs, so nothing’s operational anymore.”
“How’d they get in there, is what I’d like to know.”
“You let any people in there could’ve done this thing?” Bobby asked.
“You crazy?”
“Well, who’s been up there, for example?”
He was puffing frantically on the cigarette now, clouds of gray smoke trailing behind them as they walked. A little girl in a pale blue dress, running by with a boy younger than she was, stopped dead in the middle of the sidewalk, pointed her finger at Bobby, and squealed, “You’re gonna get cancer!”
“Get lost,” Bobby said.
“Cancer, cancer,” the little girl chanted, and ran off with the younger boy, who gigglingly picked up the chant, “Cancer, cancer, cancer, cancer...”
“Fucking brats,” Bobby said.
“What about the bedroom phone?” Petey asked.
“I told you.”
“Ever talk business on it?”
“Not that I can think of.”
“The kitchen phone?”
“Most of the business is on the phone in the conference room.”
“You ever talk business with any of your girlfriends?” Bobby asked.
“No.”
“You may have said something you didn’t realize,” Bobby said, and shrugged, and stamped out his cigarette, and immediately lighted another one.
“I didn’t tell anyone anything, don’t worry about that,” Andrew said. “I’m more worried about the phone in the fucking conference room!”
“Andrew, who are these girls?” Petey asked solemnly and gently, sounding very much like a priest in a confession box.
“Why do you want to know?”
“’Cause somebody put a hundred fuckin’ bugs in,” Bobby said.
“None of these girls put...”
“How do you know one of them ain’t a cop?” Bobby said, puffing furiously again.
“I know none of them are cops.”
“For Christ’s sake, none of them are cops,” Petey said. “Would Andrew be dating a fuckin’ cop?”
“You sure of that?” Bobby asked.
“Yes, I’m sure,” Andrew said.
“Because, Andrew, I mean no disrespect,” Bobby said, recognizing he was treading dangerous ground here. “But if the place got bugged once, it can get bugged again. Your father’s in jail because there was a bug in a place he never thought there could be one.”
Andrew listened.
“Tell us who these girls are, we’ll ask around,” Bobby said. “Quiet, no fuss. We’ll just ask around. See who’s who and what’s what, okay? No disrespect intended.”
“None taken,” Andrew said. “But I don’t want anybody asking around. I’ll do my own asking.”
“I meant no disrespect,” Bobby said.
“I told you none was taken.”
“We were talking murder that day,” Petey said softly.
“I know that.”
“We were talkin’ about killing that fuckin’ spic!” Bobby said.
“This is very serious,” Petey said again.
“He was killed in a foreign country by two foreigners we never heard of,” Andrew said. “We’ve got nothing to do with it.”
“You ordered the hit,” Petey said gently.
“I’m not worried about it.”
“Well, I’m not a lawyer,” Petey said, “but when those cocksuckers get hold of anything we say in private, they have ways of makin’ a fuckin’ federal case of it. Literally.”
“They put together three felonies,” Bobby said, “we’re...”
“Two and a mis,” Petey said.
“We’re lookin’ at twenty-five for openers.”
“We don’t know what they have,” Andrew said. “The bugs could’ve gone in yesterday, for all we know.”
“Or they could’ve been in there forever, for all we know,” Petey said.
“They could be makin’ their case right this fuckin’ minute,” Bobby said.
The men fell silent. They walked in the sunshine on a bright spring day, each separately wishing those bugs had never, been installed, each separately wondering what they’d said while someone somewhere out there was listening. They were silent until they reached Broome Street. As they turned the corner, Bobby said, “You think they flipped that fuckin’ Benny, used to press clothes? Or that new kid, whatever his name is?”
“Mario,” Petey said.
“I don’t think they flipped any pants pressers,” Andrew said.
“Then how’d they get in there to do all that?” Bobby said.
“Bugs all over the place,” Petey said. “How’d they get in?”
“You didn’t give a key to any of these broads, did you?” Bobby asked.
“No,” Andrew said.
“’Cause they had to’ve got in some way.”
“They have ways of gettin’ in,” Petey said. “They’re bigger thieves than, thieves.”