"The hospital," said Charlie Ponte. He mugged toward his crew. "O.K., let's try that one. Why were you going to the hospital?"
"Because my brother's there. His girlfriend got knocked through a window."
Ponte folded his arms across his chest and turned a perfect deadpan toward his boys. They grinned on cue, four white Rochesters to his Jack Benny. "Come on, kid, you're Vinnie Delgatto's son, you can do better than that."
"Charlie, listen," said Bert the Shirt. "I was there when Gino called."
"So now the old lady's chimin' in," said Ponte. "Shut up, Bert. And stop insultin' my intelligence, the both of ya. Gino's been in his hotel room all fucking day, that much I know. You think he's glued to the Weather Channel? I think he's hosing that top-heavy bim he's with. Either way, he ain't inna fucking hospital, and as for her, she's probably been gettin' knocked around all right, but not tru any windows. So cut the bullshit before I get annoyed."
Joey gazed blankly at the dim yellow light bulb and tried to ignore the way the stench of garbage was poisoning his saliva. He tried to find a way to believe that his brother hadn't set him up. He couldn't.
Ponte drummed his fingers on the metal desk. The only other sound was the deranged laugh of a gull at the top of the pyramid of trash. "Gino came outside exactly once today," the Boss resumed. "Around sixthirty. Just when it was getting dark. He comes out with a little suitcase. He looks around. He puts the bag inna trunk. He looks around again, and goes back inna hotel. Coupla hours later, you guys show up. Ya take the car, come riding out here in the middle of fucking nowhere. I mean, really, gents, how does it look?"
The neat little man sprang down from the desk and his dainty shoes clicked dryly on the cement floor. He walked to the empty rectangle of the doorframe and motioned for Joey and Bert to follow. They stood close together and looked out at the alp of garbage. It had weird floodlights on it and gleamed an un-earthly pinkish orange. At half a dozen random places along the slope, parked bulldozers looked like yellow toys. Most of the mountain was not exposed but had been covered over with a heavy plastic seal. Here and there, the seal was slit by long obscene gashes oozing rot.
"Ain't it amazing," Charlie Ponte said, "the advances that have been made in gahbidge? Ya see the way they cram it in those seams there? It's like stuffing a quilt. Deep, those slits. Fresh gahbidge, it gets squeezed in there and that's the end of it."
Joey did not like the way Charlie Ponte looked at him while saying this. He could handle being called fresh garbage. But he didn't relish the thought of spending eternity with other people's coffee grounds in his ears, the rank oil from other people's tuna fish sliming through his hair. "Hey, Charlie," he croaked, "we ain't involved in this."
Ponte turned toward him, in no particular hurry and without even a hint of malice on his face, and slapped him hard across the cheek. "You don't call me Charlie. Only my old friends call me Charlie, and kid, I got my doubts about whether you and me are gonna know each other that long." He gestured toward the largest of his goons. "Bruno, bring that fucking bag in heah."
In a moment Bruno was back, carrying a small, square case covered in turquoise vinyl. He put it on the desk under the cone of yellow light.
Charlie Ponte approached it slowly and critically. "Lookit this piece a shit," he said, flicking the case's plastic handle. "No class, your brother. It don't even lock. This fucking guy don't care how he treats my stuff."
He undid the two brass clasps and opened the case. It was lined with fake turquoise silk and had a small mirror built into the top. Slowly, with the salacious care of a man nibbling his way around a piece of wedding cake but saving the flower for last, Ponte started removing items from the bag. Lipsticks. Powder. A bottle of Nair. A box of tampons. An atomizer of perfume. He even took time to have a whiff of it. "Chanel number sixty-nine," he pronounced, and his goons obediently chuckled. Then he removed deodorant, tweezers, an eyelash curler. Mascara, eyeshadow, a disposable douche. "I love messin' around a woman's things," he said. " 'Zis givin' anybody a hard-on?"
Joey, had he been able to speak, would have answered an emphatic no. His knees were weak and he was tasting garbage-tainted snot from when Ponte's slap had set his sinuses running. Bert the Shirt had turned gray as his dog but seemed oddly at ease with the idea of being dead. He'd been there, after all; for him it wasn't that big a deal.
Ponte looked happy. Even as he got near the bottom of Vicki's cosmetics kit, he seemed to have no doubt that his emeralds were inside. Finally things were falling right for him. He'd get his stones back, kill Joey and Bert, bulldoze their corpses through a gash in the mountain of garbage, then bump off Gino when the occasion offered. Only when the turquoise case was totally empty did he begin to show some slight concern. But only slight. He took a penknife from his suit pocket, slit the take silk lining, and pried off the little mirror. Finding nothing underneath, he became just one small notch more agitated. "Bruno," he said, "smash the fucking thing."
In a single motion, Bruno crossed the reeking shed, turned the empty case upside down, and clobbered it with his gun butt. The vinyl tore, and underneath it were thin layers of Styrofoam, cardboard, and Chinese newspaper. The goon dug his fingers between the layers and tore them apart, but there were no hollow places and no emeralds. Then he splintered the plastic handle, but it contained nothing. Having reduced the case to a heap of rubble, he dropped his hands and looked at his boss as if to ask, What do I rip apart next?
Charlie Ponte crossed his arms and seemed to be considering. Then, for the first time all evening, he looked angry. The skin moved on his forehead, his black eyes seemed to pull in closer toward his nose, and one side of his upper lip lifted as if he were sucking something out of his teeth. He put his forearm on the desk and brushed it clean with a vicious sweep. Vicki's jars and bottles smashed against the cinderblock wall, and far from masking the vile stink of garbage, her scents blended in to make it still more foul, adding the cloy of carnal cheapness to the general corruption and making the shed smell like a whore-house on the lowest rung of hell. "Fucking shit," said Charlie Ponte. "Enough cockin' around. Now I want some fucking answers."
He slapped the desk, walked up close to Joey, and spit in his face. The warm saliva trickled down his cheek and Joey was sure he would vomit if he didn't wipe it off before it reached the corner of his mouth. He started to lift his hand. "Touch your face and I'll break your fucking arm," said Ponte. "Now talk. What the fuck you doin' with your brother's car, and where's my fucking emeralds?"
Joey tried to speak but couldn't, and Ponte nodded at Bruno. Bruno grabbed Joey by the hair and pulled back as if to yank off his scalp. Then he put the muzzle of his gun in the soft hollow behind Joey's ear.
Joey tried desperately to say something, and when he heard a voice he thought he had succeeded, but in fact it was Bert who was talking.
"Come on, Charlie, the kid don't know shit. He don't know nothin'. He's a loser. He's a nobody."
"Yeah?" said Ponte. "Well then, what about you, old lady? You ain't a nobody. A fucking limp-dick has-been maybe, but not a nobody. You got connections. So what the fuck is what?"
Bert cradled his dog and shook his head. "Charlie, I swear on my mother, we ain't involved. I don't know any more than what we already told ya."
"I think ya do," said Ponte. "And I ain't got all fucking night." He glanced over at his troops. "Tony, take his fucking dog."
"No," said Bert.
"Shut up, old woman. Tony, take his fucking dog, put it onna desk, and get ready to blow its fucking rains out. Enougha this shit."