She peeled back the top sheet with her thumb, crumpling it slightly.
Robbie, the next one down began. Artie’s growing up so quickly! You’d be proud of him. He’s going to be a real Monge man someday—strong and talented, like his father. He’s a growing boy, though, and needs so much. I hate to ask you to help, but money’s tight...
She waved the letters at Paulie, who looked more miserable than terrified now, like a magician caught with his hand up his sleeve.
“Just how many fathers did this kid have?” Tricia said.
“One,” Paulie said, with a measure of defensiveness in his voice. “And you’re looking at him.”
33.
Songs of Innocence
“You...?”
“Me,” Paulie Lips said. “He’s my kid.” He patted himself on the side of the face and this time the smile that emerged seemed genuine. “If you’d ever seen him, you’d know. He’s got his poppa’s chin. The poor boy.”
“And what was your part in all...this?”
“Someone had to take the pictures,” Paulie said.
“You watched her go to bed with all these other men? With Monge and Barrone?” Tricia said. “The mother of your child?”
“She wasn’t the mother of my child yet. Not in most of them, anyway.”
“How can you live with yourself?” Tricia said. “That’s disgusting.”
His face darkened into a scowl. “Put down the gun and say that.”
“So you’re bigger than me, so what. Doesn’t make it less disgusting.”
“What do you want?” Paulie said. “To stand there and insult me? Well, the gun gives you that privilege. But don’t push me too far. I could take it away from you, you know.”
“You could try,” Tricia said.
They faced each other down. It felt to Tricia like a scene from the circus, the lion tamer in the cage with a tiger on one barrel and a lion on the next and nothing in his hand but a little wooden chair and a whip.
“I’m taking all this stuff with me,” Tricia said. “Colleen wanted me to have it. She’s in bad trouble and must’ve figured it could help. If you care about her at all, you won’t try to stop me.”
“What sort of trouble?”
“Your boss, Nicolazzo,” she said. “You probably heard he was robbed. Hell, maybe you were in on the robbery. Maybe you both were.”
“Uh-uh,” he said. “No way. We’re not thieves.”
“Just blackmailers.”
“That’s right,” Paulie said. “There’s a difference. Being guilty of the one doesn’t mean you’re guilty of the other.”
“Sure,” Tricia said. “You’re the picture of innocence.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Well, someone took three million dollars from Nicolazzo’s safe and he’s decided Colleen knows something about it. Maybe he doesn’t think the distinction between blackmailer and thief is so crystal clear.”
“He wouldn’t know about the blackmail,” Paulie said. “We never tried tapping him.”
“Well, that’s something, anyway. But he’s still holding Colleen.”
“And how will having this stuff help get her out?”
“I don’t know,” Tricia admitted. “But if Colleen thought it would, there must be a reason. Maybe there’s something in here that could be used against Nicolazzo, or something she thinks might point to the real thief. Or at least something that points to where Nicolazzo might have taken her.”
“You don’t even know where she is?”
“Not right this moment, no,” Tricia said. “But I’ll find her.”
Paulie’s stare could’ve cut glass. “You’d better,” he said.
“Does that mean you’re going to help me?”
“It means I’m going to forget you pulled a gun on me,” Paulie said.
“You’ll do more than that,” Tricia said. “Get a bag.”
She left with an old Gladstone bag in one hand, packed with the contents of the locker. The bag shielded the gun in her other hand from view as she walked out, Paulie walking before her. She wasn’t taking any chances.
As soon as she’d reached the sidewalk and sent Paulie back up, she flagged down a cab. Paulie might let her go, as he’d promised—but he might also sneak back down and try to follow her, or think he was being cute by staying put himself but sending someone else after her, maybe one of his dancers; they certainly had time on their hands. Or he might telephone any of a number of people to tell them where she was. There were too many bad possibilities and she was determined to be far away before any of them materialized.
The press of people running back and forth in the street made progress slow for a few blocks, but before long things cleared up and they had a clear run up Sixth Avenue to 44th Street.
She paid the cabbie at the corner, walked the rest of the way only after he’d driven off. She climbed the stairs and knocked on the door and didn’t wait for the panel to slide open before saying, “It’s Trixie, Mike. Are you in there?”
The door opened. Mike stood behind it, apron smeared and stained, looking much as he had the night before. The bar behind him looked much the same as well, except that instead of several solitary drinkers with their backs to her, hunched over their glasses, Tricia only saw one. She wondered if he was a holdover from last night or the sort that liked to get an early start on his drinking Sunday mornings.
“I’m sorry to bother you, Mike, but I need a place to go through some things in private.” She dropped the Gladstone and it landed heavily on the floor, raising a puff of dust. “Any chance I could use the back room? Twenty, thirty minutes should be plenty.”
“In private?” said a familiar voice. “I wouldn’t think you knew the meaning.”
And turning on his barstool, Charley favored her with a baleful stare out of the one of his eyes that wasn’t swollen shut.
“My god, Charley,” Tricia said, her hand leaping to her mouth.
He took a swallow from the tumbler of whiskey in his hand. “You should see the other guy,” he said.
“I think I did,” she said, “if you mean Eddie. But you look a lot worse.”
“Thanks,” Charley said, getting down off his stool and limping toward her. His voice was thick with drink. “That’s what I needed to hear.”
“I didn’t mean for them to—”
“What did you think was going to happen? Eddie’d barge in and we’d have ourselves a merry little ménage a trois?”
“Charley!”
“If that’s what gets your motor turning, honey, you could’ve just walked in and joined us yourself. Ah, but I forget, you’re a sweet young thing and cannot leave your mother.”
“Charley,” Tricia said, “I didn’t want you to get hurt”—but of course this wasn’t true and she knew it. Part of her had badly wanted him to get hurt. But she hadn’t envisioned it...like this. “What did you think you were doing, going to that, that...creature’s bed—”
“Rather than the chair you so kindly left me,” Charley said. “Oh, come off it, Tricia. You know what I was doing, and you know I was right to do it. I wasn’t enjoying myself, I was trying to find a way to get us out of there.”
Sure. And Paulie Lips was no thief, oh no, not him—just a blackmailer. Men! Singing their little songs of innocence. Could they possibly think they were convincing anyone?
“Charley,” Tricia said frostily, “the way out of there was not hidden inside Renata Barrone’s panties. I found a way out, and it didn’t involve sleeping with anyone.”
“Lucky you,” he said. He handed the tumbler to Mike, then unbuttoned several buttons on his shirt, reached inside, and pulled out the leather box of photographs. “But you didn’t get these, did you?”