“Boss, I was trying to make him wait for a cab,” Hammy said, rubbing his big hands together nervously. His little eyes were wide and frightened. “He pulled away from me, and I grabbed him. Maybe I hit him. But not hard. And he just fell over. I... I dumped him then. That was all I could do. You got to give me a break.”
“You’re getting a break,” Amato said coldly. “I could turn you over to the cops. But I’m letting you go. But I want you to go fast, understand? Get out of town and stay out.”
Hammy looked desperately puzzled and hurt, like a child whose values had been ridiculed by a trusted adult.
“This ain’t a fair shake,” he said at last. “It’s because of that Polack, Retnick. You think I’m no good because he dropped me. I told you I was drunk.”
Lye said softly, “You’re crowding your luck, Hammy. You heard Nick. Don’t let me see you in New York again.”
Hammy looked away from Lye’s fixed and deadly smile. He knew what that smile meant. “I’m going,” he said wetting his lips. “I ain’t mad.”
“I’ll see you to the door,” Lye said. “Then I don’t want to see you again anywhere.”
When Lye returned to the kitchen, Amato was seated at the kitchen table puffing on a cigar. “Has Retnick got a phone?” he said, looking up at Lye through the ropy layers of smoke.
“Yeah. There’s one in his boarding house.”
“Call him up and tell him I want to see him. Right away. Here.”
“You think he’ll come?”
Amato shrugged. “Sure. That’s why he roughed up the kid.”
“You should let me handle him now,” Lye said. “He’s trouble, Nick. And he’s getting help from the boys at the Thirty-First.”
“Go call him up,” Amato said. “I don’t want any more loud bangs along my stretch of the docks. You call him.”
“Okay, Nick.”
While Lye was out of the room his wife came in and put a saucepan of milk on the stove to heat. The kitchen was crowded with equipment, all of it gleaming and new. Anna seemed at home among these mechanical marvels. They were a big thing to her, Amato knew. Mario, the church and the kitchen. That was her life. He watched her, frowning slightly, as she took down a large breakfast cup and measured out two tablespoonfuls of brandy into it. Then she stirred the steaming milk slowly, and a little smile touched her full patient lips.
“For the kid?” Amato asked her.
She nodded, without looking at him; her attention was claimed by the simmering milk. “He’s upset,” she said.
“He’ll be okay.”
Anna poured the milk into the cup and put the saucepan back on the stove. Then she turned and looked at her husband. There was a curiously cold expression on her dark face. “He told me a man hit him tonight,” she said. “Can’t you keep him safe?”
“Things like that happen. They don’t mean nothing.”
“This mustn’t happen to him, Nick. He’s all I got. You know that.”
“Sure, sure,” Amato said irritably. Most of the time he was glad he’d arranged to have Mario shipped to America. But there were moments when he wished he’d let him rot in Naples. The boy gave Anna something to think about besides polishing the furniture and hanging around the church. That part was fine; but her simple-minded anxiety about him was a bore. Amato had bought little Mario the way he’d buy an ice box or a suit of clothes; they had no kids and Anna cried about it at night, so he got her sister to ship them her oldest boy, Mario. That was fifteen years ago, and since then Anna had lived for the boy, coddling and smothering him with her frustrated maternal longings.
“I’ll take care of him,” Amato said, hoping to end the matter.
“He’s not strong like other boys,” Anna said. “He’s not rough and wild. He should make something out of himself. It’s no good that he works with your men. He should be a priest or a teacher.” Anna spoke with dogged insistence, as if emphasis alone might make her dreams come true.
Amato puffed on his cigar, avoiding her eyes. The cow with the rosary, he was thinking. The idea of Mario as a priest or teacher — or anything at all for that matter — struck him as slightly absurd. “Don’t worry about him,” he said. “He’ll be okay.”
“I try not to worry,” she said. “You don’t know how hard I try.” Then she left the room without looking at him and went quickly down the hallway to her son.
Lye returned in a moment or so and sat down at the end of the table. “I talked to him,” he said. “He’ll come.”
Amato grunted and puffed on his cigar. His mood had turned sour and bitter. He wouldn’t have admitted it, but Anna’s jealous preoccupation with Mario made him feel unimportant. “You seeing that broad of yours tonight?” he asked Lye.
“It’s pretty late,” Lye said, trying to be casual about it.
“Can’t you answer a simple question?” Amato said. “I know it’s late. I got a watch, too.”
“Yeah, I’ll see her, I guess,” Lye said.
“You got a nice life,” Amato said, staring at Lye. “Martinis and steaks, real high style.” The thought of Kay Johnson made him restless and irritable; he had never seen her apartment but he imagined it as a place of soft lights and deep chairs, with music playing, maybe, and lots of good liquor in crystal decanters. And he saw her there, very pale and blonde, with white shoulders that smelled of perfume, and a long robe that showed off her breasts and hips. “How’d you get to know her?” he asked Lye.
“A friend of mine, a bookie, introduced us at the track,” Lye said. The conversation made him uneasy; he felt his mouth beginning to tighten. “I drove her home that afternoon, and—” He shrugged, “Well, I started seeing her, that’s all.”
“You must have hidden talent,” Amato said, staring deliberately and cruelly at Lye’s twisted mouth. “You ain’t the best-looking guy in the world, you know.”
“I get along,” Lye said, trying to control his growing tension.
“Maybe it’s them prayers of yours being answered,” Amato said. “You prayed when you were in jail, but God didn’t get you out, Joe. I guess the prayers went into another account.”
“How the hell would I know?” Lye said, lighting a cigarette and throwing the match aside nervously. “Things just work out, that’s all.”
“Then why pray?” Amato said.
“Why don’t we talk about something else?” Lye said.
“Maybe you pray for the hell of it,” Amato said. “For fun, maybe.” He didn’t know why he was needling Lye; it wasn’t improving his own temper. “I can arrange for you to start praying again, if that’s what you like. There’s that Donaldson rap still hanging over your head. I guess you remember that.”
Lye took a deep drag on his cigarette and tried to smile; but it was a ghastly effort. “Why should you send me back to jail?” he said. “I do my work. I’m with you all the way. You know that, Nick.”
“Sure, I depend on you, Joe,” Amato said, frowning faintly. “Let’s forget it. How did Retnick sound?”
“No way in particular. He just said he’d come over.”
“He may be your next job.”
Lye nodded quickly. “I ain’t worried.” He felt the tensions easing in him, flowing mercifully from his rigid body. It filled him with shame to be so vulnerable to unreasoning fears; but those nights in the death cell had driven a shaft of terror into the deep and secret core of his manhood. The dream had come again last night, the violent red dream that repeated itself with the monotony of a stuck phonograph record. There were always the profane, laughing guards, the rush along the corridor, and then the rude altar and the straps that tightened across his bare chest until he could no longer breathe. And the guards stared at him, laughing obscenely, and there was nothing he could do about it. The dream sickened him; there were parts of it he had never been able to tell Kay about...