“Renata, let go. Please. Stop that.”
“Oh, but you like it,” she said. “I can tell.”
“I like it fine,” Charley said, “but I need to go.”
“I’ll show you what you need,” Renata said, and whatever response Charley had been about to give was stifled under a barrage of laughter and kisses.
There was a keyhole in the door, but Tricia didn’t stoop to looking through it. She continued on to the bedroom, grabbed her shoes, hesitated, then dug a handful of money out of the pocket of Charley’s pants, transferred it to her own.
You need every advantage you can get? Well, Charley, so do I.
Holding her shoes in one hand, she slipped silently down the stairs. She put the shoes on when she reached the ground floor.
Love ‘em and leave ‘em, that’s me. Every one I can. You certainly couldn’t say the man hadn’t been up front; he told you right out what a creep he was. The problem was, even when he made it clear he was lying you couldn’t believe him.
She remembered Barrone denying it, saying, She’s not just ‘some girl’ to you.
Yeah, well.
She entered the kitchen, empty now except for Eddie, who either was the earliest riser in the house or had stayed up all night. He sat at a circular table with a cardboard cereal box and an empty bowl, plus the pair of guns Barrone had taken from them, the Luger and Heaven’s smaller gun, the one Tricia had been carrying. Two piles of bullets were lying on the tabletop between them.
“Miss,” he said.
“It’s Trixie, Eddie. You can call me Trixie. We’re going to be working together, after all.”
“Okay,” he said. “Trixie.”
“Listen,” she said, thinking, all right, I’ve found Charley, I’ve found the guns, now it’s time to get on with it. She had a brief twinge of remorse, but she stifled it. Coral wasn’t going to have to wait till mister love ’em and leave ’em got around to leaving this one.
“Listen,” she said again. “Renata was asking for you just now.”
“Really?” The poor boy’s eyes lit up.
“Mm-hm. She said to ask you to come up. Just go quietly. And,” Tricia said, “don’t knock. Just let yourself in.”
“Really?”
“Mm-hm.”
He was halfway out of his seat before he looked back at the table. “I don’t know...I don’t think Mr. Barrone would want me to leave you here with the guns, Trixie.”
“Well, I don’t think Renata would want me coming up to the room with you. It sounded like she was looking forward to having some privacy with you.”
“Privacy,” he said.
“Look, the guns are empty, right?” He nodded. “Fine. Then here—” Tricia swept the bullets up in her hands and held them out to Eddie, who cupped his palms to receive them. “Now I can’t do anything. And you can go enjoy yourself.”
Eddie jammed the bullets in his pockets and hastened to the door. “Thanks, Trixie. You’re a pal.”
“Have fun, Eddie,” she said.
When she heard his step on the stairs, Tricia picked up the Luger. She tried loading it with the one bullet she’d managed to hold out, clamped between her palm and the base of her thumb. It didn’t fit, so she grabbed the other gun, tried loading it into that one. It clicked neatly into place.
One bullet wasn’t much. But it would have to be enough.
From upstairs she heard a commotion. Someone was shouting. Doors were opening on other floors. It was time to go.
She hustled to the front door and down the five stone steps to the street.
Subway...subway...she looked around hastily to orient herself then headed off to the west.
I’m coming, Cory, she thought.
And Charley? She thought of him, too, as she went, thought with a little regret of what he’d be facing now at Eddie’s hands, and Renata’s, and Mr. Barrone’s, if he wasn’t able to talk his way out of it. But hell, he’d be able to talk his way out of it. Maybe not before picking up a few bruises, but—
You made your bed, Charley, Tricia thought. I hope she was worth it.
31.
The Wounded and the Slain
She rode the train, rattling and shaking and nearly empty, out to Queens Plaza, where she begged a map from the token booth clerk in the station. She unfolded it and took a minute to find Van Dam Street. It looked like half a mile to get there, another mile or so before it crossed Greenpoint Avenue. She thought about splurging and blowing some of Charley’s money on a taxi, but on a Sunday morning in Queens you were as likely to see a circus caravan pass as an empty cab. She didn’t see either and started walking.
She did pass a small grocery store whose owner was letting down the awning with a long metal hand-crank. She stopped inside and picked up a couple of buttered rolls and a coke—not much of a breakfast, but she wolfed it down and kept going.
In the pocket of her dress, the gun—lighter now, with just the one bullet—felt like a brick, weighing her down. She wondered if she’d actually have the guts to use it. To stand in front of a man, the way Heaven had, the way Nicolazzo had, and end his life with a movement of her hand, a flick of a finger.
If her own life depended on it, she supposed she could, or if Coral’s did. But if it didn’t? Or if it wasn’t clear?
She thought with a shiver of the dead men she’d seen since this began—more in one day than she’d seen in her previous 18 years, if you counted the ones in the photos, and a tie even if you just counted the ones slain before her eyes. And there was a big difference between seeing her father or granddad laid out in their best suits, hair carefully brushed and cheeks touched with makeup, a preacher by their side, the church choir singing hymns, and seeing a man’s blood spill out of him onto the floor. Dead was dead—but the polite, quiet death of a funeral ceremony was worlds apart from the loud report of a gunshot, the acrid tang of powder in the air, or the snick of a blade unfolding and the desperate groan when it met flesh.
She wished she could get it out of her mind, but as she made her way toward Nicolazzo’s hideout the images kept coming came back to her, the dead men and their near cousins, the ones who’d survived the recent events but not unscathed: Stella with her branded cheek; O’Malley with his bandaged face; Clohessy in the alley where Charley had left him, bearing who knew what sort of wound. It frightened her to think of the blood that had been shed, the pain suffered, and all because of her—because of the book she’d written, the men she’d spurred into action. And women, too. Her own sister, a thief. Stella told me about this book she’d seen, Coral had said. That gave me the idea.
She had to make things right. She had to. Somehow.
She reached Van Dam, followed it south toward the huge green sward of Calvary Cemetery. It wasn’t the same size as the mammoth burial plots down by where the artists lived in Brooklyn, not quite; but it was plenty large and it loomed in the distance, a wholly unneeded reminder of mortality. Bring me your dead, it seemed to Tricia to be saying. Bring all you want. We’ve got room for more.
She counted blocks, referred to her map, drew near. When she reached the intersection, she didn’t recognize any of the buildings, but why should she? She’d had a bag over her head coming and going. But in this neighborhood of narrow, wedge-shaped blocks, only one corner could properly be called the corner of Van Dam and Greenpoint, and only one building could properly be said to be on that corner. And it looked about right: There was a front way and a back way in, there was gravel in the rear, and there were several stories, enough to require a staircase with 39 steps. The windows were shuttered from the outside and, where she could see between the shutters, curtained on the inside. As you’d expect—a man who had to smuggle himself ashore in a pickle barrel wouldn’t take any chances with his privacy. There were no sounds coming from the building, which might mean anything or nothing. Tricia couldn’t see any lights on inside, but she wasn’t sure she’d be able to in the daytime even if they were on.