“No, Renata, we’re leaving.”
“Or what?” Renata said. She turned to the bartender: “You won’t believe what this one’s been telling me she’d do to me if I don’t do what she says.”
“What’s that?”
“See how she’s got her hand in her pocket there?” Renata said. “She says—”
“Renata,” Tricia said.
“She says,” Renata said, “that she’s got a gun in there.”
“Renata—”
“A gun?” the bartender said and laughed. Then he saw Renata wasn’t laughing. “Man, that’s not cool.”
“She’s joking,” Tricia said.
“I’m not joking,” Renata said. “She said she’d shoot me if I didn’t do what she says.”
“You said that to her? That you’d plug her? That’s not cool at all.”
“Of course I didn’t say that,” Tricia said.
“You got a rod in there?”
Tricia smiled weakly. She pulled her hand out of her pocket, empty.
“No rod,” Tricia said.
“I’ve got eyes,” the bartender said. “I see it there in your pocket.”
Sure enough, the outline was showing, plain as day.
Some of the other people sitting at the bar were looking at her now.
“It’s not a real gun,” Tricia said. “It’s just a prop, from this show we’re doing.”
“We’re not in any show,” Renata said. “That’s a lie.”
“Listen,” the bartender said, “I don’t know what’s going on here—but when you start bringing firepower into it, that’s a matter for the Man.” He lifted a black telephone onto the bar from underneath.
She didn’t know which ‘Man’ he meant—the police or his employer. Either way, though—
“That’s not necessary,” Tricia said. “I’m leaving.”
“Better believe you are,” the bartender said as she backed away, keeping her hands in the air. He kept his on the telephone receiver. “Bringing a piece into the Rusty Bucket. That’s way uncool. That’s zero cool. That’s negative cool.”
He patted Renata’s hand and she put on a hurt-and-frightened face to suit.
“Okay, Renata,” Tricia said, “you win. But what exactly do you expect me to tell your uncle?”
“Anything you want, long as it’s not about me.”
“And why shouldn’t I tell him about you?”
“I didn’t take his money,” Renata said. “That’s the truth. I didn’t take it and I don’t have it. You tell him otherwise and you’ll get a second innocent person killed.”
“Innocent!” Tricia barked. “You’re about as innocent as Mamie Van Doren.”
The bartender lifted the telephone receiver. They could all hear the dial tone.
He said, “If you’re not gone in five—”
She was gone in two.
42.
Shooting Star and Spiderweb
“Great,” Mike said. “Just great.” He turned to Erin. “And you—did you get the call?”
“Like Billy Sunday on a Saturday night.” Erin lifted a cocktail napkin from the bar. She’d scrawled an address on it. Mike took one look at it and said, “That’s the pier. Where the boat was tied up.”
“Well, it’s where they want you to bring the money,” Erin said, to Tricia. “And the pictures.”
“The pictures are easy.” She patted her pocket. “The money—that’s another story.”
“It sure is,” Erin said. “But I haven’t exactly been sitting on my rump while the two of you went all over town chasing wild geese. I’ve made arrangements.”
“What arrangements?”
“We need three million dollars, right? Or anyway a box that looks like it’s got three million dollars in it. You’d think the box would be the easy part, but actually that wasn’t so. Hope you don’t mind that I emptied this.” She dragged a footlocker out from behind the bar.
“Fine with me,” Mike said.
“Now for the three million dollars part.” She swung the lid open.
No one would have mistaken the contents for money—the hand-cut slips of paper were the right size and shape but they’d clearly been cut out of newsprint or, in some cases, what looked like pages of the phone book. “That’s not going to fool anyone,” Tricia said.
“Not the way it is now, it won’t,” Erin said. “But with enough layers of actual bills on top it’ll pass inspection.”
“You want to tell me where these layers of actual bills are going to come from?” Tricia said.
“By all means,” Erin said. “They’re going to come from a Mister Reynaldo Bruges.”
“And who is mister...?”
“Bruges,” she said, pronouncing it like she was clearing her throat. “He’s a fine Argentine gentleman who sometimes calls Madame Helga to book a model or two for a party he’s throwing. For some high roller.”
“ ‘High roller’ meaning—”
“The man’s a bookie,” Erin said. “Takes bets, makes book. Hands over layers of actual bills when one of your bets comes in.”
“That’s your plan? Place some bets and hope one of them comes in?”
“Who said anything about hoping? I’m talking about a sure thing.”
Tricia saw Mike nodding out of the corner of her eye. “What? What am I missing here? What’s this sure thing you’re so...sure about?”
“The third race at Belmont,” Erin said, handing over a copy of the Racing Form. There were a batch of bill-sized holes in the front page, but the “Races of the Week” listings on the next page were intact. There were a dozen horses listed for the third race. Ten of the names she didn’t recognize. Two she did. She’d briefly shared a stall with one of them.
“Uncle Nick’s not going to leave anything to chance,” Erin said. “If he’s got people sticking around to pick up the purse, he knows there’s going to be a purse for them to pick up.”
“You’re devious,” Mike said.
“Why, thank you,” Erin said. “I try.”
“How much money did you put down?” Mike asked.
“All that Reynaldo was willing to float me, or more precisely all he was willing to float Charley. I told him I was putting the bet on for him.”
Tricia said, “And you put it on...”
“Shooting Star and Spiderweb, each to win and then the two of them to win and place, either combination. We’ll clear more than eleven thousand dollars if they do. That’ll fill the box nicely.”
“And if they don’t win?”
“Then Charley owes some money he can’t afford to pay,” Erin said. “It won’t be the first time. I’d say he’s got bigger worries right now than that.” She took Tricia by the shoulder. “But they will win. Nicolazzo’s not a gambling man, not with his own horses on his own track.”
“You think Belmont’s his track?” Mike said.
“His and his friends.” She turned the knob on the old RCA Mike kept beside the cash register. With a soft crackle the sound faded in. She tuned it, stations passing in a blur till she got to the far end of the dial. “...and it’s Curtain Call and Rented A Tent, Curtain Call coming up on the outside, Curtain Call taking the lead—no, it’s Rented A Tent, Curtain Call and Rented A Tent, they’re neck-and-neck, I’m telling you, this one’s gonna be close, it’s—it’s—It’s Curtain Call, folks. Followed by Rented A Tent, and Brassy Lady coming in to show. Those are your results, folks, coming to you live from the Belmont Race Track, where every race is a winner.” A trumpeter played a few notes of “Off to the Races” and the program went to commercial.
“How many more to go?” Tricia asked.
Erin looked at the paper. “Two. That was the first.”
They sat impatiently through the second race, which took a while to get started and another while in the post-race analysis afterwards. Then came some more words from the sponsor. But eventually the horses were at the starting gate for the third race. The tension couldn’t have been any worse at the track than it was in Mike’s bar.