“Erin!” Tricia said.
“No time to be a shrinking violet,” Erin said. “I’d take it off if it would get us a ride.”
But that proved unnecessary. A white Pontiac convertible with a chrome dart running along the side drew to a stop, throwing up a little cloud of dust. The driver was a man in his middle forties, corpulent and sunburned, driving with one hand on the wheel and the other arm extended over the back of the empty passenger seat beside him.
“Car broke down, girls?” he said, eyeing the two of them over the top of his black-framed sunglasses.
“That’s right,” Erin said, leaning on the side of the car. “We need to get back to Manhattan.”
“Ah,” the man said. “That’s a shame. A real shame.” He tore his gaze away from her cleavage with some difficulty. “I’m headed to Bensonhurst. Much as I’d enjoy your company...” He made a movement toward the steering wheel and Tricia saw his foot inch toward the gas. He gestured with his chin at Erin, who was still leaning on the door. “If you don’t mind...?”
“Lucy,” Erin said, and it took Tricia a moment to realize Erin meant her, “why don’t you show the man what you’ve got in your pocket?”
“The pict—” Tricia said, and then: “Oh.” She took out the gun, aimed it at the driver, whose face fell. He looked ten years older suddenly.
“We need to get back to Manhattan,” Erin said. “You want to drive us, or would you rather get out here so we can drive ourselves? Or would you prefer the third option?”
“What’s that?” the man said nervously.
“They call it Dead Street for a reason,” Erin said, and smiled.
For a moment it looked like the man might stomp the gas and peel away, but he must’ve figured his chances of outrunning a bullet weren’t good enough to risk it.
Grudgingly he said, “Get in.” And to Tricia, “Please, just be careful with that thing.”
“Don’t worry about Lucy,” Erin said. “She’s a crack shot. Steadiest hands in the east.”
“That right,” the man said.
“Oh, yeah,” Erin said. “Took home three medals for marksmanship. Isn’t that right, Lucy?” Tricia didn’t say anything, just concentrated on keeping the steadiest hands in the east from shaking while she climbed into the car.
“She’s modest,” Erin said. “But deadly. So drive carefully.”
He drove very carefully.
Half a mile down the road, they saw a bay stallion grazing at the side of the highway. Two cops were beside it, one talking into a radio.
Erin and Tricia both turned slightly in their seats to face away from the policemen.
“Keep your hands on the wheel,” Erin said, “and your mouth shut.”
“What are you,” the driver muttered, “car thieves or horse thieves?”
“Now, now,” Erin said. “No reason a girl can’t be both.”
38.
Deadly Beloved
They pulled to a stop in the shadow of the Williamsburg Bridge. “Don’t look back,” Tricia said, the first words yet that she’d spoken to the driver, and she said them in the most menacing tone she could muster. She kept one hand in her pocket as she climbed out of the car, then hastened with Erin to the subway the instant the Pontiac sped out of sight.
Would the driver stop at the nearest police station and report them or just count himself lucky and hurry off to whatever he was late for in Bensonhurst? No way to know, and it was best not to take any chances.
The Times Square station was crowded when they arrived there and Tricia briefly lost sight of Erin on the way out. They found each other on the street.
“I left Charley in a bar near here,” Tricia said, “a sort of after-hours place run by a guy named—”
“Mike?” Erin said. Tricia nodded. “I know Mike. He’s okay.”
“He was very decent to us,” Tricia said. “Let us use his back room.”
Erin gave her a funny look. “You and Charley? You used Mike’s back room?”
“Yes. We needed some sleep. Only managed to get an hour or so, but...”
“I bet you did,” Erin said. “I didn’t think you had it in you, kid. Or that he had it in you. I guess I shouldn’t underestimate Charley.”
Tricia found herself blushing furiously. “We just slept there,” she said. “Nothing else.”
“Save it for the folks back home,” Erin said. “I know better. Charley took me to Mike’s back room once, too.”
“I’m telling you, nothing happened!”
“Well, if that’s true,” Erin said, making the turn onto 44th Street, “I’m sorry for you. You missed something fine.”
Tricia found herself wondering, from the look on Erin’s face, whether maybe she had.
They climbed the stairs to Mike’s place, knocked on the door, knocked again when no answer came. After another minute, footsteps approached, the panel slid open, and then Mike opened the door. “Did Charley find you?” Mike said breathlessly.
“What do you mean did he find me?” Tricia said.
“When he woke up and saw that you were gone, he was pretty sore. Mostly with me. Wanted to know why I let you go off by yourself.”
“What were you supposed to do, physically restrain me?”
“That’s exactly what I asked him. He said yes, physically restrain you. If that’s what it took.”
“So where is he?”
“He went through all those papers you left here—the photos and letters and so on, and he found this.” Mike picked up Royal Barrone’s note from the bar. There was Coral’s handwriting, in the margin: AQUEDUCT, STABLE 8, STALL 3. “He asked if that’s where you’d gone. I said I didn’t know. He went anyway.”
“When was this?”
“Maybe an hour after you left? Hour and a half?”
“And you haven’t heard from him since?” Erin said.
Mike shook his head. He led them over to the bar, walked behind it, took out two glasses unasked and filled them with beer from a tap. “I’m sorry, Erin. I shouldn’t have let him go.”
“That’s right,” Erin said. “You should’ve physically restrained him.”
“You think he’s in trouble?”
“Yes,” Erin said.
“But he’ll get out of it,” Mike said. “He always does.”
“You just keep telling yourself that,” Erin said. “If it makes you feel better.”
Tricia, meanwhile, was trying to think who would have been waiting for Charley at the track when he arrived—Nicolazzo’s men? Or the police?
“We’ve got to go back, Erin,” Tricia said. “Now we really do.”
“No way,” Erin said. “You think Charley would want us to put ourselves in danger?”
“I think he’d want us to get him out of there,” Tricia said, “just like he came for me when the police tried to arrest me downtown.”
“Get him out of where?” Erin said. “We don’t even know where he is.”
“I’ve been calling around,” Mike said. “That’s why I couldn’t come right away when you knocked—I was on the phone. He hasn’t been arrested. I’ve got friends on the force who’d know it if he had.”
“You might think that’s good news, Mike,” Tricia said, “but arrested’s probably the better of the alternatives right now.”
“I’m just saying, he’s not in police custody. That’s all I know.”
“Well, he’s in someone’s custody,” Tricia said. “Or he’d be back here already. Or at least he’d have called.”
The phone on the wall behind the bar chose that moment to ring.
They all looked at each other. Mike reached out an arm, lifted the receiver the way a ranger might pick up a snake.
“Mike? Mike?” came a tiny voice. “Say something, Mike, I can’t talk for long.”
“Charley?” Mike said, bringing the receiver to one ear but keeping it tilted away from his head so they could all hear.