“Hold it,” he said. “Just a minute.” He squinted his eyes because he wanted to show that he too could be conspiratorial. “I’m getting an ugly picture,” he said. “I’m getting an ugly feel here like you two are cooking up something around here, something between you two, and maybe you think I’m gonna get left out.”
Remal was too surprised by this diagnosis to say anything, and Quinn sat still.
“All I get from the doubletalk with you two is that one steals from the other, and the other one knows it, and the other one says you can have it back, and all that polite crap with nothing else showing, to me, you know what that looks like? Like maybe you two are trying to pull something over on me. And when that happens…”
“Really, Cipolla,” said Whitfield, “you must be quite wrong.”
“I must? How?”
Whitfield did not know how and shrugged. “Quinn,” he said, “before he speculates us all into a disaster, would you kindly explain what goes on here?”
“ He should explain?” and now Cipolla felt he had his feet back under him. “I took the run over here to get it straight from you and Remal how in hell you ship water across and don’t even know it. And I’m here with the message…”
“Before you give the message,” said Quinn, enjoying his trick of interrupting the other one, “I’ll explain it. They couldn’t explain it because, like you said yourself, they didn’t even know what they were shipping.”
“So?” said Cipolla. He was not sure whether he had been corrected, or reprimanded, or what.
“I hijacked the alcohol and sent along the water. How I did it isn’t important. What is important-and this is why you are here-is the fact that it was possible to cut into the line of supply.”
Cipolla said, “So,” and waited for more.
“You got a sloppy set-up over here, on this side of the run. I’m here no time at all and pulled this thing off without any trouble. I can do it again. I can do it in different ways. But the main thing right now, Cipolla, the set-up here stinks.”
“Who sent you?” said Cipolla.
“Nobody.”
“Who sent him?” said Cipolla to Whitfield this time.
“Well, in a manner of speaking he was sent, though the explanation wouldn’t help you a great deal. In Quinn’s sense of the word, of course he was not sent, though…”
“I’m sorry I asked,” said Cipolla. “Where you from, Quinn?”
“The States.”
“Who you with?”
“I’ll tell you what I’m going to do, Cipolla. I’ll talk to whoever you are with. Okay?”
“Listen here. When it comes to trouble-shooting…”
“All you got is troubles. You got nothing to shoot with. You got a wide-open line of supply at this end, and I can run it better.”
The tone of the talk decided Cipolla to pick another victim for the moment. He looked at Remal and said, “What have you got to say about this?”
Remal sighed and put his skullcap back on.
“Mister Quinn,” he said, “is of course right. At the moment I cannot say much more. I have two problems here. One is you, and the other is Mister Quinn. I am frankly confused at the moment and don’t know what else to say.”
Cipolla took a cigar out of his pocket and looked at it for a moment, so that he would he doing something. When he started to talk again he talked at the cigar.
“All this time,” he said, “we been thinking you were running things over here. Remal is a pretty good end at this point of the line. We been thinking that. Now, what turns out, he sits here and is too confused to know what to say or to know what goes on.” Cipolla looked up and talked straight at Remal. “I’m gonna go back,” he said, “and explain to cut you right out of this set-up. We got other ways, you know that, and right now you look washed up to me.”
There was some more talk back and forth, but Quinn wasn’t listening. He had the fast image of Remal becoming a nonentity in this thing, a collapse much too fast, the whole thing self-defeating. He saw it this way, that with Remal out there would be no deal for Quinn. He did not think beyond that, but thought only that his whole effort in Okar might now go down the drain. No Okar set-up, no nothing. No Remal, and nothing.
“You got it wrong,” he said to Cipolla. “You don’t know what you’re junking here, what part’s good and what part’s bad.”
“But you know, huh?”
“Yes,” said Quinn, and then the rest came out as smoothly as if he had practiced this kind of thing for a very long time. “I can give you the details some other time, but the no good part in the set-up isn’t that big.”
“How big?”
“Whitfield here. That’s all.”
Whitfield gaped. He sat up in his chair as if he hadn’t heard right and then he started to stutter something, but Quinn was not looking at him. Quinn was looking at Cipolla to see if the right impression was made.
“Quinn,” Whitfield got out, “what did I ever do to you?”
Quinn did not answer. He kept looking at Cipolla and then he said, “Well? You going to go hog wild on this thing or am I going back with you and set this thing straight?”
Cipolla put the cigar back into his pocket and got up. “Okay,” he said. “We’re leaving after dark.”
Chapter 17
They all seemed to be leaving the room alone because nobody looked at anyone else or talked. Quinn stopped on the landing and lit a cigarette and then walked down the stairs slowly. No rush now, and feeling a little bit tired. But it had worked. He was getting in, right on top of Remal, and the little panic of losing this thing was now almost forgotten. When Quinn got downstairs the Sicilian had gone and Remal was walking out the front door with Beatrice. She looked back at Quinn and then away again. Her face had not changed while she had looked at him but Quinn had not seen too clearly, or had not cared too much. He watched the two walk down the street but he actually saw only Remal. Then he walked through the arch to the bar.
Whitfield was there and when he saw Quinn he quickly tossed down his drink and started to leave.
“Hey.” said Quinn. “Listen a minute.”
Whitfield stayed where he was because very quickly he felt too indifferent to argue.
“You know there was nothing personal in that, you know that, Whitfield. Buy you a drink?”
Whitfield pulled his empty glass towards himself and said very slowly, “Damn your bleeding eyes, Quinn, I have never seen anything more contemptible in my life. And I hope you get yours.”
“What?”
“You won’t get it from me, because I’m not the man or the type and don’t understand any of this anyway, but let me make clear to you, Quinn, I despise you.”
“Now listen…”
“I cannot say that I dislike you. That would involve some sort of activity on my part, and any sort of activity on my part is of course rare. But I despise you. I would go so far as to spit. Thank you, I’ll buy my own drink,” and Whitfield waved at the waiter.
The two men did not talk while the waiter first made a gin drink for Whitfield and then poured Scotch over ice for Quinn. After that Quinn had to haul himself out of a deep, heavy dullness in order to say something or other to Whitfield. He wished the other man would understand him.
“Whitfield, look here. Maybe you’ve heard about business. I know you’ll have nothing to do with it but you must have heard of it.”
“Spare me,” said Whitfield and looked away.
“Don’t you know I have nothing against you?”
Whitfield looked back at Quinn and said, “That’s what makes it so surprising.”
“Look. When I get over there and talk to whoever runs that end of the line, I’m going to make it my business…”
“Stop saying business to me.”
“I’ll see to it they don’t get the wrong impression about you. Only reason I used you for the goat up there in the room was to keep that idiot, what’s his name…”
“Cipolla. It might interest you to know that’s Italian for onion, and perhaps you shouldn’t bite into that one too hard.”