"There he is," Brown said. The tune ended. The teenagers on the floor applauded. The band played a little signature rift, and came down off the platform. Carella could not shake the feeling of impending loss.
"Hey," Roselli said, "what are you guys doing here?”
"Mr. Roselli," Brown said, "how'd you know Katie's parents were dead?”
“She told me," he said. "When?”
"While we were on tour. She was very upset about it.”
“Told you they'd been in a car accident?”
"Yes.”
"Told you this four years ago?”
"Sometime on the tour, I don't know if it was exactly four years ago.”
"Explained that her rich brother who'd inherited all that money didn't want to have anything to do with her, is that right?”
"Yes.”
"Did she happen to mention when the car accident took place?”
"No.”
"Last July, Sal.”
"Not four years ago, Sal.”
"The Fourth of July, Sal. Last year.”
He looked at them. He wasn't doing any arithmetic because he knew it was too late for arithmetic. He knew exactly what they knew. He knew Katie couldn't have told him about her parents unless he'd seen her since last July. He knew he'd made a mistake, and the mistake was a bad one, and he couldn't see any way of correcting it. Across the river, lights were beginning to show in apartment buildings. When night came in this city, it came with heart stopping suddenness.
He put his head in his hands and began weeping.
"I can't tell you what a great job I think you kids did," Charlie says.
He's been drinking too much and his speech is slurred. A bottle of beer in one hand, he staggers as he walks to the safe, catches his balance, says, "Oops," gives a gurgly little giggle and then grins in broad apology and winks at Katie. He raises the bottle in a belated toast. "Here's to next time," he says, and tilts the bottle to his mouth and drinks again. Sal is hoping he won't pass out before he opens the safe and pays them. He himself has been smoking pot all night long, and is a bit dazzled, so to speak. He certainly hopes Katie isn't too tired to count the money.
Charlie is wearing a wrinkled white linen suit, he looks as if he's auditioning for the role of Big Daddy in Sweet Bird. Chomping on a cigar, belching around it, he takes it out of his mouth only to swig more beer. Finally, he sets the bottle down on top of the safe. his is a big old Mosler that sits on the floor, he has some difficulty kneeling down in front of it, first because he's so fat, and next because he's so drunk. Sal is really beginning to worry now that they'll have to wait till morning to get paid. How's Charlie even going to remember the combination, much less see the numbers on the dial? And how is he himself, Salvatore Roselli, going to know the difference between a single and a hundred-dollar bill, so absolutely wonderfully stoned is he.
It is unbearably hot here in the office. The window air conditioner is functioning, but only minimally, and Charlie has thrown open the French doors to the deck, hoping to catch a stray breeze. Outside, there is the sound of insects and wilder thins, the cries of animals in the deep dark. Only the alligators are silent.
Sal is slumped in one of the big black leather chairs, T-shirt all sweaty, legs stretched out, beginning to doze. Charlie is kneeling in front of the safe, having difficulty with his balance, reciting the combination out loud as if there's no one in the room with him three to the right, stop on twenty. Two to the left, past twenty, stop on seven. One to the right, stop on thirty-four but the safe won't open.
So he goes through the same routine once again, and then another time after that until he finally hits the right numbers, and boldly yanks down the handle, and flamboyantly flings open the safe door. All grand movements. Everything big and baroque. Like drunken Charlie himself.
The night's proceeds are in there. Charlie's crowd is composed largely of teenagers, and they pay in cash. He starts counting out the bills, has to count them three times, too, before he gets it right. He puts the rest of the money back in the safe, hurls the door shut, gives the dial a dramatic twist. He's now holding a wad of hundred-dollar bills in his left hand. With his right hand, he braces himself against the safe and pushes himself to his feet.
He turns to Sal where he's sprawled half-asleep in the black leather chair.
"Hey, Piano Boy," he says, and staggers over to him. "You want this money?”
Sal opens his eyes.
"Would you like to get paid?" he says.
"That's why we're here, boss," Katie says.
"You want this money?" Charlie asks again, and shakes the bills in Sal's face.
"Stop doing that," Sal says, and flaps his hands on the air in front of him, trying to wave the money away.
"Sweet Buns, you want this money, here's what you got to do," he says, and shoves the wad of bills into the right-hand pocket of the jacket.
They bulge there like a sudden tumor. He unzips his fly. And all at once he's holding himself in his hand.
"Come on, Charlie, put that away," Katie says.
"What you want me to put away, girl?" Charlie says. "The money or my pecker?”
"Come on, Charlie.”
"You want me to put this money back in the safe? Or you want me to put my pecker in little Sally's mouth here?”
"Come on, Charlie.”
"Which?" Charlie says. "Cause that's the way it's gonna be, Katie.
Either the boy here sucks my dick, or you don't get paid.”
Sal doesn't know how to deal with this. He's a city boy unused to the ways of wild land crackers. He thinks for a moment he'll run outside and get the others, all for one and one for all, and all that. But Charlie has grabbed Sal's chin in his hand now, and he is squeezing hard and moving in on him with a drunk's bullheaded determination, waving his bulging purple cock at him the way he waved the wad of money only minutes ago.
City-boy coward that he is, Sal sits frozen in Charlie's grip, incapable of movement.
It is Katie who says, yet another time, "Come on, Charlie," and hits him from behind with the beer bottle he left on the safe. Beer flies in a fine spray as she swings the bottle at his head. The man staggers, but he is not essentially wounded, Katie's blow is ineffectual at best. But Sal is instantly on" his feet, shoving out at Charlie's chest, pushing the fat drunken fool through the open French doors and out onto the deck, and then lunging at him one last time, his fingers widespread on Charlie's chest, a hiss escaping his lips as he pushes him over the railing. There is a splash when he hits the water, and then, instantly, a terrible thrashing that tells them the alligators are getting to him even before he surfaces.
Sal is breathing very hard. He has just killed a man. "The money," he says.
"You killed him," Katie says. "The money. It was in his pocket?”
"Never mind the money.”
"Do you remember the combination?”
“Sweet mother of God, you killed him!”
“The combination. Do you remember it?”
On the river below, there is an appalling stillness. Three to the right, stop on twenty, two to the left, past twenty, stop on seven. One to the right, stop on thirty-four.
Katie recites the numbers aloud to him as he slowly turns the dial to the right, and to the left, and then to the right again. He opens the door. From the wad of money in the safe, he peels off the money due them, and returns the rest to the safe, and closes the door, and twists the dial to lock it again. Katie watches as he wipes the dial and the handle clean. She is moving. from foot to foot, like a little girl who has to pee. He wipes the beer bottle, too, and puts it back on the safe top where Charlie had earlier left it. He looks around one last time, and then they leave the office.