“Nothing,” Tricia said.
“Get over here,” Mitch said, “pick that up,” gesturing toward the sack lying on the floor, “and put it on. He wants to see you again.”
Tricia stood. “It was good to meet you, Colleen,” she said. “I hope to see you fight someday when this is all over.”
Coral didn’t say anything. Tricia pulled the bag on and followed Mitch out the door.
Upstairs, when the bag came off, Tricia found herself looking at Charley Borden. He gave her a wan smile. His hands were tied behind him and his hair was disheveled. He had on a vest and pinstriped pants, but the suit jacket that went with them was nowhere to be seen. Strewn on the ground at his feet were the contents of his pockets: a leather wallet, a comb, some coins, a pack of playing cards, some keys on a metal ring.
Nicolazzo paced in a little circle between them, a few steps forward and a few back, saying nothing, just glaring at each of them in turn. In one hand he held his stiletto, playing idly with the blade, springing it out and pulling it back in. There wasn’t a trace of blood on it that Tricia could see, or on the circular patch of carpet where the throw rug had been.
“So, my dear,” Nicolazzo said, “have you decided to tell me what you know, or shall we have another round of mumblety-peg?”
“You can save your breath,” Borden said. “She doesn’t know anything.”
“My friend, it’s your breath you should be worried about conserving, not mine.” Nicolazzo held the blade up to Borden’s throat and turned to Tricia. “So? What have you got to say?”
“I don’t know where your money is,” Tricia said, “or who took it. That’s the plain truth.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Nicolazzo said.
“But I do know,” Tricia continued, and her voice only trembled a little as she said it, “what else was stolen from your safe.”
Nicolazzo’s eyes narrowed.
“It’s photographs, isn’t it?” Tricia said, her mind clicking along, trying to make sense of what Coral had told her. A man lying in the gutter, dead. Other men standing over him with guns—one of whom Coral had recognized. Coral, who’d worked for Nicolazzo and so would have known some of Uncle Nick’s other employees. “Incriminating photographs,” she said. “The sort you’d keep in your safe in case you ever needed to use them, but that you otherwise wouldn’t want anyone else ever to see. Photos of your own men—something you can hold over their heads to keep them in line, maybe?” Off to one side, she saw Mitch shift uncomfortably.
“Trixie,” Borden said in a strained little voice, trying hard not to touch the blade hovering below his chin. “You’re a very imaginative girl, but maybe this isn’t the time to be dreaming up the plot for your next book—”
“Quiet, you,” Nicolazzo said. Then to Tricia: “Go on.”
“If these pictures wound up in the hands of the police, it would be bad for you. If they wound up in the hands of your rivals, it might be even worse.”
“Never mind that,” Nicolazzo said. “Where are they?”
“If you let us go—all of us—I’ll find them and I’ll bring them to you.”
“I don’t like that idea,” Nicolazzo said. “I don’t like it at all. If I let you all go, what incentive would you have to come back? No. I think maybe it’s better if I do a little work right now on this young fellow here. Perhaps I should take the skin off him one inch at a time, till you tell me what I want to know.”
“May I say something?” Borden said.
“Hush,” Nicolazzo said. “You’re a little apple, waiting to be peeled. Little apples do not talk.”
“If you touch him,” Tricia said, “I’ll never tell you anything.”
“Do you really think so? Do you really think you will be able to stand there and watch him suffer when it’s entirely in your power to put an end to it? When all you have to do is utter a few words—a location, an address—and the man’s pain stops?”
“How do I know you won’t just kill him then? And me, too, while you’re at it.”
“Because, my dear, I always keep my bargains. I am a man of my word. Ask anyone. Salvatore Nicolazzo has never welshed on any deal in his life. Million dollars on a wager? I pay off. If I lose. And collect if I win. That’s the way it works in my world. If you don’t have your word, you’ve got nothing.”
“And I have your word,” Tricia said.
“You have my word. That I will not harm either of you if you return my stolen property to me. The photos and the money. And that I will if you do not.”
Tricia looked at Borden, straining to keep his head back, away from the knife, and at Nicolazzo, holding it there carelessly, loosely, but with the same avid look on his face that he’d had before using that very blade to end another man’s life. She thought about her sister down in the cellar, and about Erin—and about herself.
“The money I can’t promise,” she said, “but I’m pretty sure the photos are on Cornelia Street. I don’t know exactly where—but I’m confident I can find them, and when I do I’ll bring them to you. That’s the best I can offer.” She stepped forward bravely, hands on her hips. “Now let him go.”
“Go? No, I won’t do that. He and I will wait here for you. We’ll—” He glanced about, bent down, and picked up the deck of cards from the floor. He closed the stiletto and slipped it into his pocket. “We’ll occupy ourselves with a little game. You play cards, do you, Mr. Borden? A bit of rummy, perhaps? Or canasta? You can play it with two, I’ll show you how.” To Tricia he said, “But come back quickly, my dear. Or I’ll grow impatient with canasta and teach him another game I like. It’s called ‘Fifty-to-One.’ Those are the odds, you see. The odds against.”
“Against winning?” Borden said, clearly relieved no longer to have a switchblade quivering at his neck.
“Against surviving,” Nicolazzo said, and all the blood that had returned to Borden’s cheeks drained away again.
Nicolazzo snapped his fingers at Mitch. “You—go with her. Make sure she doesn’t try anything funny. And get rid of the stiff, while you’re at it.”
“Yes, boss,” Mitch said.
A plump finger rose admonishingly.
“Uncle Nick,” Mitch said. “Excuse me.”
Nicolazzo smiled. “Now Mr. Borden,” he said, “would you like the first deal or shall I?”
16.
Night Walker
Mitch pulled the bag off her head as they crossed the 59th Street Bridge into Manhattan. He left it lying on the front seat between them.
“So we were in Queens?” Tricia asked after taking a few deep breaths to clear her head of the burlap smell. She didn’t turn to look at Mitch. She watched the New York skyline rush toward them through the windshield instead.
“Never mind where we were,” Mitch said. “The less you know, the better.”
“How can you work for a man like that?” Tricia said.
Mitch shrugged, held the wheel steady. “He’s not a bad sort. Most of the time.”
“He just killed a man!”
“So?” Mitch honked and swerved around a station wagon that was going too slowly for his taste. “Guy was no prize. Cheated on his wife. Played lousy music.”
Tricia didn’t answer. It wasn’t lousy music. But that hardly seemed like the point most worth arguing about right now.
“I never did anything to him,” Tricia said finally. “Charley and Erin didn’t, and god knows Cor—Colleen didn’t.”
“Yeah?” Mitch said. “That’s not what it sounded like to me.”
“What do you mean?”
Mitch raised his eyebrows, let them fall, kept his eyes on the road. “Sounded to me like she did plenty. Little leather box, and all.”