“Probably.”
“Or you could bet on Baron. And wind up tending bar at a higher salary, getting a bonus here and there. Or he could lose and you could get killed.”
“I take that chance either way.”
“Sure,” he said. “I could lose and you could get killed. Getting killed is something that could happen either way. It’s a risk. You can’t look at the risks in this business. They’re always around. You got to look at the rewards. You want to tend bar forever?”
“It’s a good job.”
“But not a very big one. There are bigger.”
I put out my cigarette. The smoke was scorching my lungs and my throat. “I could have gone straight to Philly,” I said. “I could have shot Fell dead as a lox and flown back and the hell with it. No sides to take, no wars to start.”
“You could have.”
“But that’s over now. Now I have to pick a side. Now there are two sides and I have to pick one of them.”
“Yeah.”
“Well,” I said. I stood up and stepped away from the booth. “Take it easy, Tony. I’ll see you.”
11
The flight left Buffalo at two-eighteen A.M. The rain had eased up by then and what was left of it didn’t bother the pilot at all. I had a seat over the right wing. I was wearing a black tie and I had a gun in my jacket pocket.
The stewardess offered me magazines but I wasn’t interested. Instead I let her keep bringing me cups of good black coffee. Not that I was in any danger of falling asleep. But the coffee speeded things up, made the connections in my brain take shape a little faster, a little easier.
It wasn’t real yet. It was a dream, say, or a high school play, or one of those gangster pictures I used to watch, or some other illusion that had nothing to do with reality. The plane was a movie set standing still, the gun in my pocket a prop loaded with blanks.
So I pushed the gun and the whole routine out of my mind and sat there concentrating on the stewardess. She was a green-eyed redhead with a figure that looked good despite the tailored blue uniform she wore. Her pretty pink skin looked just as good in that uniform as Brenda’s did in hers. But there was a point at which I could no longer concentrate on the stewardess, so somewhere in the sky between Buffalo and Philadelphia I went to the john to get rid of some of the coffee. I checked the gun there, too. It was a big gun, a heavy gun, a Browning Parabellum with a thirteen-cartridge magazine. It must have weighed two pounds. I took the magazine out and practiced with the empty gun, sighting at imaginary targets and squeezing the trigger. I hadn’t fooled around with this sort of weapon since basic training, a long time ago. I liked this gun, the weight of it, the feel of it. It was a shame I was going to have to leave it in Philly.
I put the magazine back, tucked the gun away in a pocket and went back to my seat. At three-thirty-seven the pilot put the plane down on the runway at Philadelphia International Airport. It was a lousy landing, bumpy and jarring. For a minute I thought the gun would go off in my pocket. It didn’t.
It was cold in Philly but there was no rain. I got off the plane and headed across to the terminal. My fingerman was waiting for me. He looked me over, noted the black tie and decided I was his man. He came over to me.
“You Crowley?”
I nodded. Fingermen are supposed to be small and shriveled, with ferret faces and shifty eyes. He was six-four and he was fat. He was wearing a plaid lumber jacket and heavy cordovan shoes. He looked stupid.
“My name is Garstein,” he said. “You’re supposed to come with me.”
“Sure,” I said. “Wait here a minute.”
He waited there while I found my airline desk and looked for a plane back to Buffalo. There was one that left at four-fifteen, a non-stop flight. That gave me a little less than three-quarters of an hour, which was fine. I made reservations on it. I used the name Albert Miller again, the same name I’d had coming in from Buffalo. A pretty blond took the reservation and thanked me. I told her it was a pleasure.
I went back where I had left Garstein and he was waiting dutifully. “You’re supposed to come with me,” he said again.
“I know.”
“I show you this Dante Fell bum. He’s a punk. A wise punk.”
“You talk too much,” I said.
He looked at me and turned his mouth off. I was the trigger and he was the finger so he was supposed to be respectful. He kept his mouth shut and led me from the terminal to a parking lot where his car was parked. It was a Plymouth with a crimped fender. He got behind the wheel and I sat next to him on the front seat. He started the engine, pulled the car out of the lot and drove off down a highway.
“How far to the city?”
“Not far. A mile, two miles. Used to be that the airport was way out in the country. The city spread.”
The road we were on was a wide one, a busy one. There was traffic even at three-thirty in the morning. It wouldn’t do.
‘This Dante Fell—”
I told him to shut up again. He did for a minute but then asked if he should get some music on the radio. I told him I didn’t like music. He gave a sad shrug and went on driving.
There was a crossroad up ahead. “The next right turn,” I said.
“What about it?”
“Take it.”
“It’s out of our way,” he said. “This is the best route.”
I put my hand in my pocket and found the gun. I cocked it and put a bullet in the chamber under the hammer. “Take the turn,” I said.
“Somebody following us?” He looked doubtfully in the rear mirror. Then he turned to look at me.
I took the gun out and let him see it. His eyes became very wide and his face pale. I said, “Garstein, you talk too much, you ask too many questions. Take the turn or I shoot you.”
He wondered about it for a minute. The car slowed down and we turned at the intersection. It was a quiet road, not any traffic in either direction.
“Now what?” he asked.
“Drive,” I said.
He drove about the length of three city blocks. Then I told him to pull the car off the road. He didn’t want to but when I shoved the nose of the Browning into his fat neck he did what I told him to.
“I don’t get it,” he said. “I just don’t get it.”
“You don’t have to.”
“Baron sent you. Lou Baron, from Buffalo. Right?”
“Right.”
“To do a job,” he said desperately. “On Fell, Dante Fell. Not me. I’m nothing, I’m nobody, I’m Jack Garstein and I don’t count for a thing. You got your signals crossed, Crowley.”
“You still talk too much. It’s a lousy habit.”
“God damn!”
“Get out of the car, Garstein.”
He did not want to get out of the car. He tried talking some more but I poked him with the gun. He got out on his side and I crawled across the seat and followed him onto the road. Then we walked around the car and stood in some farmer’s field.
“You’re gonna shoot me,” he said. “You’re gonna kill me.”
That didn’t deserve an answer.
“Crowley, there’s a car coming. You can’t shoot me — they’ll see you. You can’t.”
“So we wait until they pass.”
I watched him think. He was trying to get up the nerve to run out into the road and ask them for help. The car came. There were two kids in the front seat, high school kids looking for a place to park. They drove past us and Garstein didn’t move.
I pointed the gun at him.
“Please,” he said.
“Shut up.”
“Crowley...”
It still wasn’t real. I was a machine, primed and ready. It wasn’t real.