“I don’t know. He hasn’t checked in.”
“Find him. Bring it here. Everything.”
Fat Tutti escorted Rizzato to his car. The Cadillac groaned when Tutti sat behind the wheel.
What kind of Sicilian is called Claude? Tutti thought as he dislocated the man’s wrist.
Rizzato turned away. His stomach lurched. Bad enough Tutti broke Claude’s jaw by reaching into his mouth and giving it a twist.
On his bed on the top floor of a ratty three-story walkup in the shadow of the viaduct and a short stroll from the Buchanan bus depot, Claude Marzamemi had tossed the Finnegans’ silver, a wall clock, electric can opener, the wife’s pearls, and several steaks that had begun to thaw. But no $950. Tutti had torn Marzamemi’s pants by the pockets and found all of six dollars in bills and change.
Marzamemi was on his knees. When he sobbed, he went “woo woo woo.”
Fat Tutti told Rizzato to make a sack out of the soiled bedspread and pick up everything.
Meanwhile, while Lucille the bookkeeper cowered in a corner, Boo Chiasso rifled through Rizzato’s desk at the Delmenhorst warehouse. Then he went through the filing cabinets. That’s where he found a diamond ring, several bracelets, men’s and women’s watches, necklaces, cufflinks, a couple of brooches, a paper bag full of silver dollars, and two pistols. And cash held together with a rubber band. Boo unrolled the bills and counted quickly. In twenties and fifties, $950.
He used the phone on Rizzato’s desk.
“Give me Mimmo,” Boo told old man Russo.
Mimmo was at the counter. He knew he had the authority to do what was coming next. When Russo beckoned, Mimmo eased off the swivel stool. As that moment, Tutti, who was carrying the loot-filled bedspread, pushed Rizzato into the candy store. Rizzato fell, the side of his face striking the floor.
Three weeks after Rizzato disappeared, Mickey Gagliano went to see Mimmo. He turned up humble, which was still his way despite the success of his scheme.
“Can I have a word, Mr. Mistretta?”
It was late, closing in on midnight. Old man Russo was gone. Mimmo was dealing solitaire and Fat Tutti was drowsing in the back room, a Pep comic on his mammoth lap. Boo Chiasso was elsewhere: He took Lucille the bookkeeper to the pictures over at Radio City. Mrs. Miniver. Her husband objected, but what was he going to do? Tony Rizzato had a feeling his brother Santo was in an oil barrel somewhere out in the Meadowlands.
Mimmo waved for Gagliano to sit.
“Do you remember me?” he asked.
Mimmo did not. “Of course,” he said. “I got a memory like a hippo.”
“The armored car.”
“Wait. That was you? Forty-seven Gs. Am I right?”
Fifty-two. Gagliano had pocketed five thousand, four thousand of which he still had. The other thousand, minus fifty, he had planted in Rizzato’s file cabinet among the stolen goods after having failed to tell him Kenny Finnegan was a state trooper. “Yes, sir,” he replied. “That was me.”
An earner, thought Mimmo. “What’s on your mind?”
Gagliano fidgeted. He rolled his cap in his hands. “Mr. Mistretta, I’d like to run the Delmenhorst business for you.”
Delmenhorst? What the hell is— Then it came to him. “No, no. That’s done. Finito.”
“I’m sorry,” Gagliano said quickly. “I didn’t express myself right. I would like to run it like a legitimate business. Like it was under the Germans. Everything on the up and up.”
From deep in the back room, Fat Tutti let out a bestial snore.
Gagliano explained. The in-home business was nickel-and-dime stuff. For goodwill. Make the neighbors happy. But industry, that was another story. And the Yellow Flats uptown, plus they were throwing up projects all over the county. It was a gold mine. Remember, those salesmen were pulling down twenty Gs a year and Bamberg, the founder, he had a mansion over on Riverside Drive. You know, someday the war is going to end and people like a nice floor under their feet. At a fair price.
“I’m saying if I keep the costs down, run it shipshape, I can kick up to you solid, Mr. Mistretta. Heck, I can do the big jobs practically by myself. We can win like champions on this, hand to God.”
Impressed, Mimmo sat back. “You’re a go-getter, kid.”
“Me? Not me. You. You’re the man who made it right.”
Mimmo nodded. Who didn’t like a compliment? “So if you’re playing square and you’re kicking up, what’s in it for you?”
Smiling sheepishly, Gagliano said, “I like laying linoleum.”
So direct was the answer that Mimmo was instantly satisfied. He offered the kid his hand.
© 2017 Jim Fusilli. Black Mask Magazine title, logo, and mask device copyright 2017 by Keith Alan Deutsch. Licensed by written permission.
Betrayal
by Bill Pronzini
“Can doing first-rate work as consistently as Pronzini really be as effortless as he makes it seem?” Kirkus Reviews asked in its starred review of Endgame, the final book in the author’s Nameless Detective series (Forge, June 2017). Also out this year is The Dangerous Ladies Affair, his fifth novel-length Carpenter and Quincannon series collaboration with Marcia Muller.
Nick sits on the bench watching the old man feed breadcrumbs to a gaggle of pigeons. The day is warm, the trees and shrubbery starting to bud, the lawns turning a bright green. The kind of day, after a long winter, that makes the world seem like a more peaceful place than it is.
“How come you sat down here with me?” the old man asks him. “Most younger guys, strangers, they don’t want nothing to do with somebody my age.”
“You looked like you could use some company. Other than those birds, I mean.”
“They ain’t company. Feeding ’em helps pass the time, that’s all. Fattening ’em up for a good stew.” He chuckles at his joke, then sobers. “Good to have somebody to talk to for a change,” he says. “Got no friends around here, no friends at all anymore.”
“What about family?”
“Gone. All gone. What’d you say your name was again?”
“Nick.”
“Mine’s Charlie. Don’t think I’ve seen you here before.”
“Well, I don’t come as often as I’d like. I work long hours, don’t get much time off.”
“I know how that is. I used to put in long hours too. What kind of work you do?”
“I’m a cop,” Nick says.
Charlie’s rheumy eyes brighten. “No kidding? Now ain’t that a hell of a coincidence. I used to be on the job myself.”
“Is that right?”
“Worked out of the Forty-eighth. Which precinct you in?”
“The Seventy-ninth.”
“Uptown.”
“No, it’s downtown.”
“Right. Downtown. Uniform or plainclothes?”
“Plainclothes the past four years.”
“What rank?”
“Detective Third Grade.”
“I was a sergeant. Took me twenty years, but I finally made it. Figured I had it made too.” The brightness fades in the rheumy eyes. “I sure as hell was wrong about that.”
“Were you?”
“The bastards threw me off the force, right before I was due for my pension. You want to know why?”
“Why?”
At the old man’s feet the pigeons coo and burble. One of them tries to peck at his blue-veined hand; he swats it away, then throws crumbs at it. “Claimed I was dirty, that’s why. On the take, and worse — a thief. You remember the Hollis Transport holdup?”
Nick shakes his head.
“Happened back in... I don’t remember exactly,” Charlie says. “Awhile back. Two armed robbers shot a guard, made off with seventy-five large in cash. Me and my partner, Pete Decker, got a tip on where the perps were holed up, this abandoned warehouse on the east side. We went in after ’em, just the two of us. Brass said we should’ve waited for backup, but we had other ideas. There was a lot of shooting, bullets flying all over the goddamn place, only time I ever fired my service weapon except on the pistol range. When it was all over the two perps were dead and Pete had a slug in his arm. Department reprimanded us for not following procedure. That’s all Pete got, the reprimand. I got the shaft.”