But better that than where she was now. Better a lifetime of sweaty embraces under dim lights than the deadly attentions of a man like Nicolazzo.
Tricia climbed to the second floor, where she found the club’s door wedged open with a doorstop. The music playing sounded languorous and soporific, almost as if the record player were set at too slow a speed. Connie Francis’ voice came on, asking who’s sorry now, and the two women working at the moment went round and round with their charges in time to her plaintive query. Two other women seated on chairs against the wall looked up when Tricia walked in, then looked down again when they saw her. No trade here, just competition.
A man in dungarees and a button-down shirt came over, quickly taking Tricia’s measure as he approached. She recognized him from one of Nicolazzo’s photos—this was Paulie Lips, recognizable at a glance from the prominence not just of his lips but the entire lower portion of his face, which culminated in a shovel-shaped jaw with a darkening shadow of stubble just below the skin.
He had the self-confident walk and attitude of a man in charge and gave the impression of being the manager here. Tricia could see his eyes darting about her person, noting her wrinkled dress, the missing buttons, the perspiration on her forehead and under her arms, the circles under her eyes. A job seeker, he must’ve been thinking; and perhaps if there’d been more business to go around he’d have entertained the notion or at least strung her along, but Tricia could see he was getting ready to send her on her way.
She didn’t give him the chance. “Hey, are you Paulie?” she said. He stopped, looked at her more closely. “My sister used to work here, and she left something she asked me to pick up. In her locker.”
“Oh?” he said, taken aback. “Who’s your sister?”
“Colleen King.”
A smile unfolded on his face but it had all the sincerity of a Halloween mask. “Colleen,” he said. “That would make you Patty, right?” He took her hand and squeezed it. “I guess she mentioned me?” He didn’t wait for her to answer. “So, what, you just get into town?” His voice dropped and he edged closer. “Do you need anything? Some money? You look a little...”
“I’m fine,” Tricia said. “I just need to get into my sister’s locker.”
“Actually,” Paulie said, “she doesn’t have a locker here anymore. You have to work here to have a locker, and she doesn’t. Hasn’t for a good long time. Think she’s, ah, boxing now. You know.” He playfully threw a few punches in the air. “Though she still comes by now and again to chew the fat with her old friends. Isn’t that right girls?” The two seated women nodded when he directed the question at them, though it wasn’t clear they knew just what they were agreeing with, or much cared.
“Maybe it’s not her locker, then,” Tricia said, “but it’s a locker, and she told me to come here and empty it out for her. Locker 22?”
Paulie’s smile grew more strained. “She told you that?” he said. “Locker 22?”
“She left me a note,” Tricia said.
“Can I see it?”
“I’m afraid not,” Tricia said. “I don’t have it with me.”
Paulie shook his head in an unconvincing pantomime of helplessness. His palms turned up and his eyebrows rose along with them. “Sorry to say, you got some wires crossed somewhere. The lockers here only go up to 20. Maybe ask your sister to come by, she and I can figure it out—”
“I can’t,” Tricia said. “She’s...not available.”
“Well, when she’s available again, have her call me. We’ll work it out. Maybe the three of us can get together for a drink sometime—”
He must’ve felt the barrel of the gun poking into his gut then, through the fabric of her dress pocket, because his face fell. He looked confused first and then fear crept into his expression. “Are you serious?” he said, his voice low. “You think you can pull a gun on me in my own place?”
“I don’t think anything,” Tricia said. “I’ve done it. Now take me to locker 22, Paulie, or I swear to god you won’t live to hear the end of this song.”
Connie Francis’ voice drawled on in the sudden silence between them.
Could she really do it? Could she pull the trigger in cold blood, leave this man sprawled and dying on his well-worn parquet? She doubted it—not least of all because it would mean using up her only bullet. But she made an effort to keep this from showing on her face. To look at her, you’d have thought her a hardened jailbird.
Paulie bristled with hostility. He was bigger than she was—but the gun more than evened up the sides. “Follow me,” he said and led her through the long, narrow room to a curtained-off section in the back. The walls were lined with lockers and the numbers on them, Tricia saw, went up to 28.
“Are you even her sister?” Paulie asked.
“I don’t see why you’d believe me,” Tricia said, “but I am.”
“And she really told you to come here.”
“She left word I could find something in locker 22.”
“She didn’t tell you what?”
“She didn’t have the time to go into much detail,” Tricia said.
He stopped in front of 22 with one hand on the lock. “Why didn’t she have the time?”
“Just open the locker.”
“What if I told you I don’t have the key?”
“I’d shoot you,” Tricia said, “and take the key out of your pocket.”
“Just asking,” Paulie said. He pulled out a ring of keys, opened the padlock, and stepped aside.
Tricia drew the gun out of her pocket, leveled it at him, used it to shoo him back a few more steps. She opened the locker door without taking her eyes off him, then swiftly shot a glance inside. There were several stacks of papers—mainly letters, it looked like, along with a pile of photographs and a telegram or two.
“What is all this stuff?” Tricia said. “And don’t say you don’t know.”
“Colleen called it her nest egg,” Paulie said.
Tricia reached in, grabbed the first batch of photos off the top, thumbed through them one by one. A couple slipped onto the floor. She didn’t pick them up.
Coral was in most of the pictures, though not all. She was younger in them—these dated back a few years, clearly, maybe to when she’d first come to New York or a little after. She’d been even prettier then and her figure had looked terrific, even in candid shots like these with their bad lighting and blurred portions where one of the subjects had moved as the shutter closed. There was a man in each of the photos, not the same one every time. By and large their figures didn’t look as fine as Coral’s, but like her they seemed not at all bashful about showing them off, at least in what they’d clearly thought was the privacy of a bedroom. They were the sort of photos you could be arrested for taking, or selling, or sending through the mails, and she felt her cheeks reddening as she looked at them. She stuffed them in her pocket, waved the gun at Paulie. “What are you looking at?” she snarled. “You just stay there and don’t move.”
“Calm down, lady,” he said. “I’m not doing anything.”
She reached into the locker again, grabbed a handful of the letters. They were on onionskin, carbon copies of letters whose originals had been written in ballpoint pen.
The handwriting was Coral’s.
She glanced down at the first letter and up again at Paulie, reading it in snatches so she could keep an eye on him.
Dearest Royal—Artie is growing up so quickly! You’d be proud of him. He’ll be a real Barrone man someday—commanding and virile, like his father. But Royal, he needs so much, and money’s so very tight. Even a small amount would help...