"Oh?"
Angelo shrugged. "If you want to kick back forty percent of your take to us, we'll consider overlooking the lack of respect, the sense of common old-world courtesy, that you boys seem short on."
Rosato's pleasantness dropped away like the facade it was. He leaned forward and spoke through clenched teeth. "You Mayfield Road boys are soft. Second-generation pussies. Inherited the family business from your daddies. Where I come from, we make our own way."
"Really?"
"You bastards are getting eaten up alive by that Boy Scout Ness. You're not on top of things. The ground is falling out from under you. We, on the other hand, we're sitting pretty."
Angelo said nothing; his face was devoid of expression; his eyes were placid. He exhaled smoke.
That seemed to unnerve Rosato a bit-which it was supposed to.
With a magnanimous wave of the hand, Rosato said, "We're not telling you to shut your action down. We feel there's room in the marketplace for competition. Maybe we can both have a slice of the pie. Maybe the best man will win. That's the American way… Mr. Scalise."
Angelo thought about that.
Then he said, "Would you agree to raise your odds to the accepted 600 to 1?"
Rosato did a poor job of suppressing a smile; obviously, he felt Angelo was showing his weakness already. But Rosato responded, toughly businesslike: "What would be in it for us?"
"You wouldn't have to raise 'em right away. But once you're established, you'll have your customers. Why waste the honey, once you attracted all the fucking bees you need?"
Rosato thought about that. "And there'd be no trouble between us?"
"Well," said Angelo, with a winning smile, "my cousin won't like it. But he trusts me. He listens to me. I could swing it, yeah."
Rosato laughed shortly. "For a price, you mean."
"For a price. Not a piece of the action: a flat fee of ten grand."
Rosato glanced at the dead-eyed man, who-a beat later- shrugged.
"That might be possible," Rosato said.
"And if you needed anything smoothed out," Angelo said, "you could come to me. In some cases, what the hell-I'll do you a little favor, out of friendship. Other times, it might cost you a little."
"That could get out of hand…"
"It won't. You got Angelo Scalise's word. But I don't want you to deal with me direct."
"Who, then?"
"There's a colored guy who works for me name of Leroy Simmons. He'll be our contact."
Rosato smiled at the dead-eyed guy, who actually cracked a smile. So did the pock-marked kid.
"Are you sure about that?" Rosato said, with smug amusement. "We recruited him tonight-not an hour ago. Right in this very club."
"I know," Angelo said, easily. "I ran into him outside. I told him to wait."
Rosato drew back. "Wait? What in hell for?"
Angelo laughed. "I knew what he was doin' here. It's all over the east side that you gents are holdin' court here. When he saw me, well-afraid I scared him shitless."
"Is that right?"
Angelo gestured open-handedly. "I thought we might… work something out. Between gentlemen. So I 'recruited' Leroy myself. Let's go out and talk to him."
The three men exchanged wary glances.
Rosato said, "Why don't you go out and invite Leroy in?"
Angelo frowned. "Are you fuckin' nuts? I don't want the three of us seen together." He meant Rosato, Leroy, and himself; he was excluding Rosato's goons in the head count.
"I don't like it," Rosato said.
"Hey-paesan. I'm not packin' heat, okay? You wanna frisk me when we get out there? Go ahead. I'm alone. You can bring your boys, I don't give a fuck."
Rosato drew a slow breath. Then he and his goons ex-changed glances again and Rosato shrugged, to himself more than them, and said, "Okay. Let's go see Leroy."
They abandoned the booth and left the club, Angelo taking the lead in his sauntering way.
The night was chilly, but none of the men wore topcoats. Rosato and his boys had left theirs in the club; and Angelo had left his elsewhere, too.
Rosato touched Angelo gently on the arm. "No offense- but I'm gonna take you up on your offer."
"What offer?"
"To let one of my boys frisk you."
"No big deal." Angelo shrugged, good-naturedly.
The dead-eyed sallow one patted Angelo down then looked at his boss and shrugged. Rosato nodded to him, then nodded to Angelo and said, "Where's Leroy?"
"Step into my office, gents," Angelo said, gesturing to the alley.
Rosato and his boys again traded glances, but they followed Angelo into the dark alley. They outnumbered him three to one, after all, and were armed and he wasn't.
"Where the fuck is he?" Rosato demanded, unbuttoning his suitcoat. The alley was claustrophobic and blacker than the east side and dead-ended at a row of garbage cans.
"Right here," Angelo said, and he took Rosato gently by the arm and pointed to Leroy, a small, handsome, sharply dressed Negro who was sitting between two garbage cans with his throat slit.
Rosato took a step backward as Angelo dipped down, plucked the switchblade from beside the corpse as the dead-eyed bodyguard moved forward. Angelo grinned and lashed out with the blade and cut the man across the throat. Those dead eyes opened very wide and a hand came up and gripped where he'd been slashed and blood streamed down and through his fingers in narrow red ribbons. He fell to his knees and his eyes were really dead when he flopped face-down on the cement near Leroy.
Rosato was moving backward and the other bodyguard was coming forward, the skinny pockmarked kid, yanking a gun from under his suitcoat and Angelo kicked him in the balls and when the skinny kid curled forward, gun dropping from his popped-open fingers, Angelo smacked him on the jaw, a good sharp smack that took the kid's legs out from under him. Then the kid was clutching his nuts, on his back like a dog scratching itself, and Angelo jammed the switchblade into the kid's stomach. The pockmarked kid began to gurgle, but never really made much noise at all.
The stunned Rosato was fumbling for a gun under his arm, but Angelo was on top of him, and pulled the suitcoat down around Rosato's shoulders, ripping it, pinning his arms, and hit Rosato in the forehead, violently, with his own forehead. The rush of pain felt just fine to Angelo.
Rosato was on his knees now, as if praying, or about to beg, which perhaps he was.
Angelo yanked Rosato's gun from its shoulder holster and stuck it in his own waistband and stood beside Rosato like a priest about to offer the host.
"I'm not going to kill you," Angelo said pleasantly. "Not tonight. If you're still in town tomorrow, you'll be deader than shit. Deader than your boys, deader than that nigger fink over there."
Rosato's whole face was trembling. "What… what do you want?"
"I want you to get the fuck outa Cleveland, what do you think I want, goombah? You wanna come back with some soldiers and play war, well, us second-generation pussies would just think that's dandy. That's the 'American way,' ain't it? Elsewise, all I wanna see is the ass-end of ya."
"What… what about… this?" Rosato's wide eyes made reference to the trio of bleeding corpses nearby.
Angelo shrugged. "A couple of Pittsburgh racketeers, who was far from home and in over their heads, got in a knife fight with a nigger policy runner. No big deal."
Rosato was shaking like a showgirl's behind; it was funny to Angelo. Funnier than fucking hell.
"We play this any different," Angelo said, "and the papers are gonna be full of gang-war bullshit, and Ness will be on all our asses. I got enough shit from that son-of-a-bitch already, so just go. Okay? Go."
Rosato, tentatively, rose. Angelo pulled the man's torn suitcoat back up around his shoulders, brushed him off as if he were Rosato's valet.