“You mean Mike?” Dora asked, incredulous. “You could take care of Mike. You already have.”
“Listen,” said Gino. “I’m not after small fry. I’m going to be big. I’ll run my own show. It’s not like the old days. If you want to be big today, you got to be responsible. I freeze Mike out and I got trouble. I kill him and maybe I queer the whole pitch. I’m not connected strong enough yet — not a chance of it in this stinking burg. But if I play what I got smart, I can make it. So can you if you cut loose and get moving. How about it?”
“A girl like me’s got to have a guy to cover her,” said Dora quietly. “It’s a tough pick. She goes for a wrong guy and she’s trimmed like a seal. She holds back from a right one and she’s out in the cold. That’s why I want you. We’d make a team.”
“Don’t you ever get tired?” Gino asked her. “What about Mike?”
“I’ll think of something,” she said. “I’ve got all evening to think of something. How about it if I do?”
“It better be good,” said Gino. “Here’s your chariot.”
“See you at midnight,” she said. Then she was aboard the bus.
Gino walked four blocks to the Alcove, thinking about Dora and her proposition. He wondered what he would do if she did come up with something good. Gino had an orderly mind. He liked to carry through with a plan the way it was set up. Eight thousand dollars was a lot of money. But twenty-four grand was a lot more, even for two people instead of one. If they did get rid of Mike, what about Arne? Arne, the silent, Arne, the cop-smeller, Arne, the stupid — or was he as stupid as he looked and acted? Could anybody be that stupid? Gino wondered. Arne was Mike’s friend. They’d been palling around together since grammar school. It took a lot of figuring out.
The Alcove was air-conditioned. It was a good spot for that part of town. Gino could feel the excitement like a singing high-tension wire, the moment he got inside. The usual noise was missing. The boys and girls were talking low to each other, instead of shouting it up, at this time of day.
There were three characters in one of the booths, beyond the bar. Gino could see them in the back-bar mirror. They were wearing loud, light-weight sports jackets and open-collar shirts. From the neck down, they looked like college boys on vacation.
But not from the neck up. Their faces bore the stamp of their trade. Any colleges they had attended wore bars on the windows. They were part of the big picture, maybe a very small part, but branded major league all the way. Gino regarded them thoughtfully, without envy for once, wondering how long it would take him to be one of them — or better. Eight gees, sixteen gees, maybe twenty-four gees — not big money in their world, maybe, but big enough to get inside if he handled it right.
“Beer, Gino?” It was Murphy, the bartender, with his face like a Swiss cheese. Seven holes in its round, yellow surface — two for his ears, two for his eyes, two for his nose, a big one for his mouth.
Gino said, “Yeah, a beer for now.” Then, nodding toward the men in the booth, “I see we got company tonight.”
Murphy scraped foam off the top with a black wooden spatula. He nodded and put the beer on the bar in front of Gino. Gino said, “Ozzie around today?”
“He was,” said Murphy. “He said he’d be back.” He turned his back on Gino and went down to the end of the bar to wait on somebody else.
Gino stared after him, a sardonic smile on his lips. Murphy usually liked to pass the time of day with him. But with the big boys in town, Gino was just a punk. Murphy didn’t even want to be seen talking to him. Someday, he told himself, Murphy would be dancing to a different tune. Not that Gino intended ever to walk into the Alcove if he ever came back to the City. He’d be occupying the Presidential suite at the City Hotel, the one with the black-marble bathroom. He thought of the lush ladies the bell-captain held on tap for favored customers. During his term as bellhop there, he’d seen enough of them cruising the corridors with their fur stoles and huge shoulder-bags, always carried by the strap in the hand.
He wondered if Dora would raise any hell about that and decided he’d have to take steps if she did. What right, he asked himself, did she have to put in any claim on him? He caught himself and smiled faintly. Hell, he was thinking as if he was already married to her. Married to Dora? That was out, come what might.
Sitting there, alone in the midst of the taut excitement and rising merrymaking around him, waiting for Ozzie, a sudden flicker of panic passed through him, almost making him upchuck his beer. What if he had the picture all wrong? What if Dora’s proposition had been a last chance? What if the others had ganged up on him?
They could have made it easy enough, he thought. Arne was Mike’s pal, Dora was Mike’s girl. What if she’d gotten off the bus after a couple of blocks and cut back to the hideout and the three of them had taken off with the dough? Not for a moment did he kid himself she wasn’t capable of it. Maybe he should have kidded her along instead of playing hard to get.
How could he make trouble for them without showing himself up as F. Hubert Fellowes’ murderer? He had no underworld connections, he had no dough — hell, he didn’t even have a gun. But he’d been right to have Arne throw the weapons into the river after the killing. That way there was no question of a weapon-chase, no ballistics evidence.
Gino got himself back under control. Arne lacked the brains to make such a move, and Mike lacked the cold guts. Dora had both, but she wouldn’t saddle herself with such a pair of creeps. Gino ordered another beer from the nose-lofty Murphy and helped himself to a handful of peanuts from one of the bowls on the bar. He told himself he was getting punchy, dreaming up combinations like that.
He wondered what kind of a plan Dora would dream up to get rid of Mike. Sitting there, he discovered he was not sweating for the first time in days. Time was passing. It was already dark outside. He glanced at his watch, saw it was almost nine o’clock. Where the hell was Ozzie? Gino didn’t want to leave Mike and Arne alone too long in a radio-less, unlighted room. Not Mike, anyway, not full of beer and God only knew what else.
Ozzie came in then, a dumpy, plump, friendly little man with gold-rimmed glasses and a seersucker suit. Gino gave him a sign but he went back and talked to the three big-timers in the booth. He could hear their voices, their laughter, but he couldn’t make out what they were saying. Ozzie was a great one for stories.
After a few minutes, he came to the bar, alongside Gino, and asked Murphy for a napkin to wipe his glasses on. He said out of the corner of his mouth, his voice low, “Boy, it’s hot — too hot!”
Gino got it. He looked down at his beer and rolled a couple of peanuts around the base of the glass. He said, “I’m not selling, I’m buying for a change.”
Murphy hesitated, then nodded as he put his gold-rimmed glasses back on. He said, “The place — half an hour.” Then he was gone.
Greedy little man, Gino thought. Like everyone else.
7
Ozzie was one of the few criminal institutions the City could boast, one of the few it allowed to operate. Ostensibly, Ozzie ran a discount store, one of those semi-converted lofts in which the smart purchaser can pick up anything from a claw-hammer to a five-hundred-dollar camera or a thousand-buck color TV set — at from a third to a half off the listed market price.
Actually, Ozzie was a fence, part of a nationwide string of stolen-goods dispensers with international affiliations. He’d buy anything, under any circumstances, sell anything, ditto — and always at his own price. According to the grapevine, he had a stucco mansion with a swimming pool in Miami, and an apartment on Central Park West, as well as his suite in the City Hotel. That was where Gino had got to know him, during his bellhop hitch. Without Ozzie, he wouldn’t have been able to operate at all.