If, that, is you picked the right guy to run behind. Nobody exists without being connected to other people somewhere along the line, and if you made a mistake and connected yourself to a guy who was going to come to a bad end, then maybe you would come to a bad end too. But that wasn’t going to happen to Benniggio, no, sir. He had tied himself to a fellow named Caliato, and he’d never had a moment’s doubt or a moment’s regret. Caliato was safe, and he was going to be important, and his buddy Benniggio was going to be one step behind him all the way.
“Benny.”
Benniggio looked up at his master’s voice. He’d just been dealt the beginning of a seven-card stud hand — seven of diamonds and nine of spades down, queen of clubs up — and he turned away from it, saying, “Yeah?”
“The phone’s ringing,” Caliato told him.
Benniggio looked blank. There was a phone on the other desk, not the one where he and Tony Chaka and Mike Abadandi and Artie Pulsone were playing poker, but it wasn’t ringing. Benniggio couldn’t hear it ringing. He said, “The phone?”
“In the car,” Caliato said. He was over at the desk nearest the tollbooth window so he would be able to hear it. The others were at the desk where they could look out through the front window and see the Fun Island gates across the way.
“Oh,” Benniggio said, and got to his feet. “Fold me,” he said to the others — he would have said that even if the down cards had also been queens — and went outside and around to the Lincoln.
It was funny to hear a phone ringing in an automobile, Benniggio never got used to it. Feeling Caliato’s presence just the other side of the window behind him, he got into the back seat of the Lincoln now, opened the compartment, and took out the phone. “Hello?”
“Caliato?” The voice sounded in a hurry.
“Who’s calling?”
“Is this Caliato?”
“Mr. Caliato would like to know who’s calling,” Benny said.
There was a little hesitation, and then the voice said, reluctantly, “Tell him Mr. O’Hara.”
“Oh! Why didn’t you say so! This is Benny.”
“I wasn’t sure who you were,” O’Hara said.
“Hold on a second.”
Benniggio cupped a hand over the phone’s mouthpiece and leaned out the open window to call to Caliato, “It’s O’Hara.”
There was clear glass in the tollbooth window, with a long opening at the bottom. Benniggio saw Caliato nod and heard him say, “Ask him what he wants.” The glass made his voice sound far away.
Benniggio nodded, and leaned back in, and said into the phone, “Cal wants to know what you want.”
“I’m hung up here,” O’Hara said angrily. “They’ve got us on a roadblock. Tell him I don’t know when the hell we can get away from here, I just got away for a minute, I told them I had to go to the John.”
“Hold on.”
Benniggio cupped the phone again, leaned out again, and called, “He ain’t getting off at six. They got him on a roadblock.”
“Ask him when he’s getting off.”
“He says he don’t know.”
Caliato frowned. Benniggio, watching him, felt colder in the car than he’d been inside the building, though there was no reason for it, the building wasn’t heated. Or maybe the presence of five people in there had warmed it up. Anyway, he wished now he’d buttoned his overcoat again before coming out.
Caliato said, finally, “Tell him there’s a watchman comes on at ten. Tell him he’s straight, it’d be better if we could get this done with before he gets here.”
“Right.” Benniggio put the phone to his ear again and repeated Caliato’s message.
“Damn it,” O’Hara said. “I’ll try to get off. I’ll do what I can.”
“Okay.”
“Tell Caliato — ” A little silence. “Tell him he shouldn’t go in without us.”
“He knows that,” Benniggio said.
“Yeah. All right. Tell him I’ll call again later on when I find out for sure what’s happening.”
“I’ll do that,” Benniggio said, and hung up, and got out of the car. He glanced across at Fun Island, and there was nothing happening there, no movement, nothing. There hadn’t been, not since they’d seen the guy go in.
It would be a funny thing if the guy was gone. If they were all waiting around out here to charge in and gobble him up, and he was gone already, out some other hole, like a mouse getting away from a cat.
Except that Cal had said there wasn’t any other way out, and Cal never said things he wasn’t sure about. He never did. So the guy was still in there. And he’d keep.
Benniggio walked back into the building and shut the door behind him. Leaning against the wall near the door was Tony Chaka’s rifle, its pink blanket sagging down around it, showing a bit of the stock. When he’d mentioned it, a while ago, Cal had made him go get it out of the car. Just in case cops did get nosy, just in case any of them came by and took a look inside the two cars parked there, it would be a good idea not to have a rifle wrapped in a blanket lying on the back seat. It would be a good idea not to call attention to themselves, just in case. Which was Cal being careful again, careful and thorough, doing the kind of thing Benniggio admired him for.
Caliato looked across at him as he came in now, and said, “Anything else?”
“Naw, that was it. He’ll call again if he finds out anything.” Benniggio grinned. “He’s really worried we’ll go in without him,” he said.
Caliato frowned at him and gave a tiny headshake. Benniggio understood at once that he’d done something wrong, and felt very nervous, but he didn’t know what it was. He stood there blinking.
Caliato made a small head movement at the three guys sitting around with Tony Chaka’s playing cards in their hands, and Benniggio suddenly realized what he’d done. Those guys weren’t supposed to know that anybody was in this on shares.
Benniggio made a small nod of his own, to show he understood, and a sheepish little smile to show he was sorry and hoped there were no hard feelings. Caliato nodded back, but didn’t smile, and turned his head to look out the window, Mike Abadandi, shuffling the cards, said, “You in now! Benny?”
“Naturally,” Benniggio said, very hearty and loud. He went over and sat down in his place. “When am I not in?”
Seven
NINE-THIRTY. Caliato took another cigar out of his jacket pocket, then paused, considered, turned the rocket-shaped metal container in his hand, and finally put it back again in his pocket. He’d already smoked three cigars, his mouth was tasting brackish from the last one, it would just be a waste to light up another. He wouldn’t enjoy it. He’d be smoking it just to kill time, and that was a wasteful thing to do to a good cigar. Almost criminal.
But Christ, it was slow. By six-thirty it had been too dark in here for the others to see their cards, and they’d had to quit the poker game and find some other way to occupy their minds. They’d talked together, Abadandi and Pulsone in particular were storytellers by nature, Abadandi with recountals of seductions and near-seductions in his own past and Pulsone a teller of movie plots and third-hand war anecdotes, but as it had gotten darker and darker, to the point where they couldn’t see each other’s faces any more, the talk had died down, and now they were all just sitting there, one or two of them always with a cigarette going, sitting there in the dark like soldiers in a troopship waiting to land on some island somewhere. Waiting to land on Fun Island. When?
Caliato’s stomach rumbled. Around eight he’d sent Chaka out for pizza and coffee for everybody, and the smell of it was still in the air now, mixing with the stale smell of Caliato’s old cigars and the new smell of cigarette smoke and the faint smell of five heavy human beings wrapped up in thick clothing and stuck together in a small cold room with little ventilation for three hours. The smells all together were not terrible, but they were unpleasant. And the pizza and coffee weren’t sitting right in Caliato’s stomach. And above all, they were still here and waiting.