“The point is,” Charley said, “the person you really want is Nicolazzo, right? Well, that’s just fine with us—we don’t have any love for the man ourselves. In fact, we were getting ready to go after him—it’s what we got the guns for, the ones you took away from us. If you want to do something smart, why not let us finish what we started? Give us back the guns and we’ll get rid of him for you.”
Tricia gave him the sort of look you’d give to a relative who’d suddenly proposed skinny-dipping in the fountain in front of the Plaza Hotel.
“You?” Barrone said. “With your mug shot and your marked cards and your fumbling around in toilets? Sal would eat you for breakfast.”
“Yeah? Seems to me he had the chance and here we are, still uneaten.”
“You said yourself, you got lucky.”
“So maybe we’ll get lucky again,” Charley said. “Or maybe not, maybe we’ll fail, but if so you’re no worse off—if he kills us we’re just as dead as if you did it, and at least that way it’s one less pair of murders you have to answer for.”
“What if he doesn’t kill you? What if he captures you, makes you talk, and you tell him about me to save your rotten life?”
“You think he’d believe us?” Charley said. “Or do you think he’d believe we were just making things up to save our rotten lives?”
Baronne seemed to be mulling it over. His finger was still on the trigger, though.
“And that’s if we fail,” Charley said. “But maybe we won’t fail. Maybe we’ll succeed. Right? It could happen. And then...”
“And then what?”
“And then whatever you want,” Charley said. “You can move up, take his place. You can stop being a lackey, running a tenth-rate used car lot while he’s hobnobbing with stars at swanky nightclubs. You’re the man’s brother-in-law, aren’t you? You’re married to his sister. When do you get what you’re due? Well, we can help you get it. But only,” Charley said, emphasizing the critical point, “if you don’t shoot us.”
Barrone thought about it for a while, during which time Tricia felt sweat running down her back and sides in rivulets. She’d never been this frightened in her life, not even when she’d been climbing down the rain gutter from twelve stories up. The widening stains on Charley’s shirt suggested he was feeling some anxiety himself.
After letting them stew a while, Barrone lowered his gun, released the hammer. “You’d have made a good salesman, Borden. If you do things half as well as you talk about them, maybe you’ve got a chance.” He shook his head. “Maybe. But never forget you’re one wrong step away from a bullet in the back.”
“Trust me,” Charley said, “that’s not the sort of thing I’m likely to forget.”
In the seat beside him, Tricia started breathing again.
Barrone sat back, slipped his gun inside his jacket. “Marked cards,” he said. “You little sneak.” He waved the deck at Charley. “Want to see how you would’ve done with a straight deck?”
Charley said, “Not really.”
“Come on,” Barrone said. “Just for a lark.”
“Fine,” Charley said, staring at the back of the topmost card. “Six of diamonds.”
Barrone thumbed the card in Charley’s direction. “Let’s see.”
Charley reached out, turned the card over. Two of spades.
“You’re a lucky man,” Barrone said.
“Sometimes,” Charley said. “Just not at cards.”
29.
Robbie’s Wife
The car pulled to a stop at Fulton Street, near where the Fish Market would be opening for business in just a few hours. Already there were trucks pulling in and offloading crates that stank of fresh catches and seawater. The driver came around and opened the door. Barrone gestured for them to get out first. He followed, wincing as he got to his feet. He was not a young man and was carrying a lot of weight on those not-young knees.
“Come upstairs,” he said.
“If it’s all the same to you,” Charley said, “we’d just as soon be on our way—”
“I said come upstairs,” Barrone said.
“Why?”
“You want your guns back, for one thing, and I’m not handing them to you loaded. Apart from that—have you gotten a look at yourself?” He grabbed hold of the back of Charley’s neck, steered him over to one of the limo’s side-view mirrors. Tricia followed. Charley fingered the stubble on his chin as though surprised to discover it there. “You can’t go after Sal looking like a bum and smelling worse—not if you want to have a serious chance to get close to him. You need a bath, you need a shave. And you need some sleep—look at your eyes. I’ve seen smaller bags on a Pullman car.” He snapped his fingers at the driver, a young man who looked like he’d grow up to be Barrone’s shape if he lived long enough. “Eddie, clear out the room on the top floor.” The driver nodded, headed off.
“Mr. Barrone,” Tricia said, “it isn’t that I’m not grateful—I’d dearly love a good night’s sleep. But my sister’s in trouble now. We can’t just leave her in Nicolazzo’s hands while we lie down and take a nap. We’ve lost enough time as it is.”
“All due respect—Trixie, is it?” Barrone said. “If Sal wanted Colleen dead, she’s dead already. If she’s alive now, she’ll still be alive in five, six hours.”
“You sure it’s not that you’d prefer her dead,” Tricia said, “because she’s been squeezing you?”
“What, for a few bucks and a car? I don’t like it, but I don’t want her dead for it.” Barrone waved an arm at her. “Anyway, look at you. You’d be no use to her the way you are now. You can barely stand up.”
It was true enough. She was listing like a tree in loose soil.
“Now for the last time,” Barrone said. “Come upstairs. Or would you rather do it at gunpoint?”
“No, no,” Charley said. “We’ll come.”
Inside, the building was spare, obviously less a home than a headquarters. There was a kitchen on the first floor, but it was full of burly men with empty shoulder holsters, some downing beers as they read the newspaper, some running oil-stained cloths through the pulled-apart mechanisms of their guns. The rooms Tricia and Charley passed as they climbed the stairs were under-furnished—a sectional sofa in one corner, a bare table in another. There was, Tricia thought, no woman’s touch; which made sense, since as far as she could see, there were no women.
Barrone stopped climbing after two floors. He leaned on the banister and watched as they continued without him. “Go ahead,” he said. “There’s a bathroom on the top floor. Eddie should’ve put out a razor for you. We’ll talk strategy in the morning.”
When he’d dropped out of sight at last, Tricia leaned in close to Charley and whispered. “What the hell are we doing? We’re working for him now?”
“We’re breathing,” Charley said. “One thing at a time.”
“But he expects us to kill Nicolazzo for him. We can’t do that!”
“You don’t know what you can do till you try,” Charley said.
Tricia’s feet felt like stones and her head felt even heavier. Just keeping her eyelids open was an effort. “We’re not killers, Charley,” she said. “I’m not, anyway.”
“The police think you are.”
“So I might as well be? Is that what you’re saying?”
“I don’t know what I’m saying. I’m too tired to think.”
They turned the last corner and made their way up the final half-flight of stairs. The floor they came out on was a little better decorated than downstairs, with floral wallpaper and moldings up by the stamped-tin ceiling. An open door at one end of the short corridor led to a bathroom and Tricia could hear water running into a tub. Through the door at the other end she saw the corner of a bed. Halfway between two bales of hay and unable to choose, the donkey starved to death. That wouldn’t be her fate. Let Charley take the bath; she’d sleep first.