The door was opened quickly, chain still on, by a husky man in a flowered shirt. Red noticed a gun bulge at the man's waist.
"I have an appointment with Tony Dio," Red said.
The man unlatched the chain and ushered him over plush, thick carpet to a small balcony. On the balcony, without a word, the man began to frisk him. Ignoring this, Red sat down at the balcony table. He faced the ocean.
"Hey, I'm not finished patting you down, pal."
"Where's Tony?"
"You ain't going to see him until I see if you are wired up, pal."
"Tell Tony he can search me himself if he thinks I'm a snitch. Keep your goddamn hands off me." Red stared at the ocean.
Tony Dio, in a tennis outfit and smoked glasses, walked onto the balcony and flicked his cigar ashes over the rail. He looked as if he had been gaining weight for the past five years-King Farouk in tennis shorts. He did not shake hands.
The man in the flowered shirt walked back inside.
Dio turned and looked down at Red.
"Don't let him bother you. He does that to everybody. You know how things are these days." He stuck the cigar in his mouth.
"All I need is another couple of months," Red said. "I have a project planned and I just need a little time. I'm trying to get back on my feet. You know that."
Dio puffed and blew smoke into the breeze. He did not look at Red.
"Red, in the old days, when we were just little guys, there was no quibbling about a few bucks here or there. It's different now. It's all points, you know, percentages. Everything is points and deadlines."
The veins on Red's neck stood out. He clenched his fists.
"I just did a nickel in Terminal Island. I'm fifty-four years old. This is it for me. This is my last shot. I've got a big project planned. When it comes through I'll be able to pay you off with interest for the whole five years. You know I'm good for the twenty-five grand."
Dio turned to him and took the cigar from his mouth. "I know you are good for it. That's why I let the debt ride while you were in the joint… Now you are out. I placed my bet on the 'come line.'" He stared.
Red felt sweat begin to run from his armpits to his waist.
"I wasn't born yesterday," he said. "All I'm asking is more time. I guarantee that…”
"How much did you bring with you today?" Dio interrupted.
"Eight grand." Red laid the envelope on the table.
"Take your time with the rest," Dio said. He gazed at the ocean again. "Take another ten days."
Red stood up, "How about thirty days? I mean, there's always last-minute problems… "
"Thanks for stopping by, Red," Dio said.
As Red walked through the living room to the door the man in the flowered shirt stood behind a portable bar, watching. Red wondered if he would be the one to get the contract if he couldn't come up with the money.
In the hallway, waiting for the elevator, Red recognized the falling-away feeling, with its concomitant fire in the intestinal tract. He had made notes about the feeling in his cell and had reread them often. The name falling-away feeling was coined by him because "falling away" was the opposite of things "going one's way," that is, goals being reached, predictions of success coming true…big scores.
Red's notes had reflected that the feeling usually, but not always, was present shortly before a disaster, when things started to get out of control. A sucker screams about his money and calls the cops; shortly thereafter handcuffs bite the wrists. Even psychiatrists, actual doctors of the mind, could not predict human behavior one hundred percent of the time.
The falling-away feeling was a signal calling for careful planning to find the way out. And Red knew that there was, in every bad situation, a way out. Patience was required. And occasionally (he remembered specifically writing this with an exclamation point in a margin) brute force. In other words, "God helps those who help themselves."
The elevator doors opened soundlessly for Red Diamond. He stepped in and they closed. "The primary objective is to reduce risk," he said out loud.
Ronnie Boyce removed the fancy pink package from the attaché case and placed it in the rental locker. After glancing at the passengers in the bus terminal, he closed the locker quickly, removed the key, and pushed it into the pocket of his leather jacket.
On the way from Red's, he had bought birthday paper and wrapped the sawed-off shotgun. Red had told him it was the best precaution against a general inspection of such lockers. He said they usually wouldn't go to the trouble of opening a gift-wrapped package. Happy birthday, mother fuckers, he thought.
Before meeting Red, he would never have gone to such trouble. Now such precautions were a source of pride. "No bull can prove a murder case without the murder weapon," Red often said.
It was dusk when Ronnie drove toward the Sea Horse Motel. He left the Santa Monica Freeway and headed south on Lincoln Boulevard and smelled salt air. The smell reminded him of Carol's beach apartment six years ago. He pictured her walking around the apartment naked, tits jiggling, talking a hundred miles an hour. He thought of the arrow tattoo.
At a traffic light, a woman in tennis shorts crossed the street in snappy fashion. Her legs were long, like Carol's. Although he remembered Carol's body, he wasn't sure he would remember her face. He had not seen her since the trial, six years ago. She had sat in the dock like a penguin and testified against him. For the first months in stir he had dreamed of escaping just to kill her, but those thoughts had faded into others. Walking the yard was a mind bender.
He knew it had been his fault. After all, he chose to live with her and let her in on the bank jobs. What the hell did he expect her to do? Carol would never ride a beef for a man. She was a loner. She was one of the few broads who had her own reputation. Carol was the Queen of Plastic. She could have written books on how to make two grand a day from a hot American Express card.
He swung into the lot in front of a row of aqua-colored motel rooms and parked. He checked the note in his wallet. Sea Horse, room eleven. She had been easy to locate through the grapevine.
He walked to room eleven and knocked loudly. There was no answer. After looking around, he removed the screwdriver from his pocket, jimmied the lock, opened the door, and stepped into the darkened room. Women's clothes lay on the bed; a brassiere hung on a chair. Closing the door, he moved a chair to a corner of the room and sat on it.
He removed the switch-blade knife from his pocket, flicked it open, and cleaned his nails. The motel room was fairly clean, but small, cell-like. A print of an ocean scene hung over the bed. The room reminded him of the Burbank apartment where he had played as a child. Walls thin as paper. His mother had liked the apartment because it was near the studios, where she had worked on and off as a waitress. He remembered the cheap furniture and the hundreds of tiny bottles and jars on her dressing table, the Screen Romance magazines in the kitchen drawer, the enormous photo of Alan Ladd on the living-room wall, the smell of cold cream.
He had spent the first night away from the apartment in Los Angeles County Juvenile Hall. The next day, good old Mom had come to pick him up, carting along a whiskey-breath boyfriend. They dropped him off at the apartment after she scolded him for breaking into a car. She hadn't even taken the trouble to find out that he had broken into a house, not a car.
He had received a telegram about her death when he was in Chino serving three years for some gas-station stickups. After learning the news, he had finished his handball game.
He heard a key enter the lock and he stood up quietly with the knife in his hand.
She did not see him as she closed the door and walked to the dressing table. She turned on the table lamp; her back was to him but she saw him in the mirror and gave a sharp cry. Her hands flew to her mouth and she spun around. They faced each other across the messy bed.