I looked out the window at an imitation Washington’s Monument with a cross on the top. Something ran across the Caddy’s path and disappeared into shrubbery. It looked like a rabbit but it was hard to tell.
“You know what’s happening in this town, Nat?”
I shrugged. “A little. Not much.”
“All calm on the surface and all set to boil underneath. The cops handed you a hard time, Nat. A pair of bulls named Zeigler and Kardaman. They put you through the wringer. You know why? They thought you were an imported gun. Talent from someplace coming into town to do a job. A job on Baron.”
“They thought I was hired to hit him?”
“To hit him in the head. To give him an extra mouth.”
There was very little to say to that.
“I’ll take a cigarette now, Nat.”
I gave him one. He lit it with the dashboard lighter and blew out the smoke without inhaling. We were still driving around and I was getting an unguided tour of the cemetery. He was right — it was peaceful as hell.
“Lou’s a funny guy,” he said. “He’s been big for ages. A hell of a long time to ride tall. He made friends, he made enemies. That’s what this is all about, a matter of friends and enemies. Your friends stay big and you’ve got everything nailed. Your friends fall on their faces and you fall on top of them.”
I threw my cigarette out a window. It missed a tombstone by a few feet and landed in wet grass.
“Baron had friends,” Quince went on. “One of them got shot in a barbershop. You remember that one?”
“I remember.”
“Other friends. None of them got picked up at Apalachin. The boys there didn’t invite Baron’s friends. You understand?”
I nodded.
“So Lou is in a little trouble,” Quince continued. “Right now things are cool, everybody smiles at everybody. The governor’s been throwing this state crime commission at everybody, he wants to be president or something, and nobody sticks his face out. Everything is cool. This won’t last forever. They’re cool now, they’ll be warmer later.”
“And Baron?”
“Dies,” he said.
He let the word sit there and float in the air. It was the right word in the right place. I looked out the Caddy’s window at a million graves, each one neatly marked, each one as cold as death. I saw a hole where someone had been digging a fresh one. I thought suddenly of Ellen. Then I thought about Baron again — who was going to die.
“Not today, not tomorrow, maybe not this year. But soon. It’s a matter of friends, a matter of who has what kind of leverage. This whole business is a business of levers, of who has what hold on who. But all the bricks are going to fall on Baron. No choice. Even he knows it.”
For a few minutes I didn’t ask the question. “What’s your angle?” I finally said.
“Baron dies. Somebody has to be the new Baron.”
“You?”
He shrugged. “There are other guys. There’s also me. We wait and see.”
“And why tell me all this? What’s my angle?”
He shrugged again. “It’s all a matter of friends,” Quince said. “I said that before. I got some friends. I can use other friends. I don’t know much about you. All right, I don’t have to know much, I’m not asking you your religion. What I know, I like. I like your style.”
“Thanks.”
“When Baron falls, I might need you.”
“So?”
The palms spread upward. “That’s all.”
“My father told me never sign a contract. Not even a verbal one.”
“So you had a smart father. But there’s no contract, Nat. I didn’t bring a contract along. Not even verbal. Just things to say, just information so you can start thinking about things. That’s all.”
“Uh-huh.”
“We can be friends,” he said.
“We’re friends now.”
“Better friends. We can do each other favors. And if things break right after Baron goes, you could sit in a nice spot. You could do worse.”
“I probably could.”
We drove out of the cemetery. He must have known the place pretty well. We were on Main now, heading north. I had got lost the minute we entered the cemetery.
“So we talked,” he said. “So I told you things and you listened. That’s all. Now let’s find Berman’s house and play poker. I feel lucky tonight.”
We played cards around an octagonal table in Mel Berman’s recreation room. It was a small and pine-paneled room in the basement of his ranch house in a middle-class suburb of Buffalo. We played stud and draw. Nobody had much to say.
Berman ran an appliance store in one of the city’s shopping districts. The appliance store lost a little money every year. Berman made money because he wrote numbers and booked horses when he wasn’t busy selling television sets and dishwashers. His family didn’t know this.
The Bermans belonged to a synagogue and country club. Berman’s wife worked on fund-raising committees. His daughter went to dancing class at the synagogue. His son was a sophomore at a public high school. Berman loved his wife and his son and his daughter.
The game was going when Tony and I got there. It didn’t break up until eight or nine in the morning. Somewhere around seven-thirty Berman’s wife came in with a tray of food. She gave us scrambled eggs, toast, jelly, coffee. The food was good. Berman apologized for the lack of bacon, told us his wife kept a kosher kitchen.
A little while before we called it quits Berman’s son came in to say goodbye to his father. His name was Sanford, Sandy for short. He and his father were buddies.
“Take it easy on the broads,” Berman told him. “You can catch more than a cold.”
Sandy punched Berman on the arm. “Watch out for him,” he told all of us. “He draws to inside straights.”
We went on playing. I wound up around fifteen bucks ahead for the evening. Then Tony drove me back to the Stennett. We didn’t talk on the way, at least not about Baron and how he was going to die. We coasted on small talk and he let me off at the hotel. I walked inside, went upstairs and climbed into bed.
When I woke up a few hours later a warm hand was rubbing my back, massaging the nape of my neck. I rolled onto my side and opened my eyes.
Brenda was smiling down at me.
“You said I was to come around this morning,” she said.
I mumbled something.
“You want me to come back in a few hours?” But tired as I was, I wanted her anyway. I told her to get undressed and I rolled over on my back and watched as she took off her clothes. Her body looked better every time I saw it.
“You know what to do,” I said, closing my eyes. “My wallet’s on the dresser. Help yourself to fifty before you go. And take it nice and slow now, and put me back to sleep again.”
I lay there, more asleep than awake, and she did all the things she was supposed to do.
I fell back asleep again. I never even heard her leave the room.
9
It was my second Sunday, my second day off. I crawled out of bed somewhere in the middle of the afternoon and found my way to the phone, which was ringing. It was Anne Bishop.
“That date of ours,” she said. “It’s still on?”
I shook my head to clear it, which hurt. The night before I’d been Round Seven’s best customer and an even better customer of an after-hours joint called Moon High. Now my head was the size of a basketball and ached.
“Date,” I said.
“You were going to take me for a long ride. And dinner.”
I remembered. “An hour,” I said. “I’ll pick you up.”
I put the phone to bed and turned into the bathroom for a shower and a shave. I cooked water for coffee and drank it scaldingly black until things settled down between my ears. I put on a new suit and a sincere tie, and went downstairs.