11
It was a few minutes past eleven when Retnick rang the bell at Amato’s home. A cold wind hammered at the garbage cans set out along the curb, and street lights thrust cones of pale yellow light into the deep shadows along the sidewalk. Joe Lye opened the door, nodded jerkily at him, and said, “Come on along with me.”
Retnick stepped past him and walked down a hallway to the kitchen. He wasn’t worried about Lye’s advantageous position behind him; it wasn’t likely that Amato would try to kill him in his own home. Amato was sitting in his shirtsleeves at the kitchen table, smoking a short black cigar. The room was brightly lighted and smelled of peppers and ground coffee.
“What’s on your mind?” Retnick said, as Lye drifted to one side of him and stood with his back to the wall.
Amato smiled and shook his fingers gently before his face. “You could turn that around, eh?” he said. “What’s on your mind?”
“You wanted to see me,” Retnick said. “Here I am.”
“Come on, don’t be so hard,” Amato said. “How about some coffee?”
“Don’t bother.”
Amato shrugged and sighed. “So you’re mad at me,” he said. “Maybe you think you got reason to be. Maybe you think I put Hammy up to picking a scrap with you. Well, that’s wrong, Steve. Hammy was working on his own, and I fired him for it. Now don’t that prove I’m trying to get along with people?”
“Everyone knows you’re a decent, generous guy,” Retnick said, smiling coldly. “Tell me something new.”
Amato cocked his head to one side and studied him for a second or two with narrowing eyes. Then he said gently, “There’s no point being sarcastic. I’m trying to be fair. You thought I turned Hammy loose on you. All right, that’s understandable. So you pick up my kid and rough him up a little. I don’t like that, Steve. It was a dumb move. But I figure the two mistakes cross each other out. I’m ready to forget them. How about you?”
Retnick shrugged. “I’ve already forgot about the fight with Hammy,” he said. “But he won’t forget it that fast.”
“Yeah, you really landed on him,” Amato said slowly. “Now I got something else to say. How would you like his job?”
“Let’s don’t strain to be funny,” Retnick said.
A little flush of color moved up in Amato’s dark cheeks. “I ain’t being funny, Steve. That ain’t my way. The job pays two hundred bucks a week. And you can do better than that in a fairly short time. A business agent ain’t a bad job, as I guess you know. You could make it in a couple of years if you played everything smart. You listening to me?”
“Sure, I’m listening,” Retnick said.
“There’s no point worrying about the past,” Amato said. “Here’s how I feel. You live today. You got a living to make, a family to take care of, things like that. That you got to do now, today, not last year or five years ago. Carrying grudges don’t pay no bills. So how about it? With a steady job you can get an apartment, get back with your wife, start living a good normal life again. And there’s plenty of room with me, I guarantee you. So how about it?”
“I don’t need a job,” Retnick said slowly. Amato was serious, he knew, and that was the most disgusting part of it. Men compromised themselves in order to work. That was the rule and Amato understood it well. The choice was not between good or bad, but between bad and worse; a man was either an active participant in evil, or a silent accomplice. To stand in a middle ground meant economic suicide. And the necessity to compromise performed a moral alchemy on men; it altered them drastically and made them very easy to manage.
Amato shrugged and smiled. “Everybody needs a job, Steve.”
“I’m wasting time. You have anything else to tell me?”
“Sure, sure,” Amato said softly. He stood and came around the table, looking up at Retnick with cold sharp eyes. “You want to be a hard guy, eh? Make trouble, bother me. How long you think you’ll last, eh?”
“What’s your guess?”
“I don’t have to guess,” Amato said. Tilting his head to one side he flicked the back of his hand across Retnick’s lapels in a contemptuous gesture. “Big tough guy, eh? Make trouble for me.” Amato’s grip on his temper was slipping; his voice was suddenly hoarse and thick. “Well, I tell you this. You’re a big mouth, that’s all. A big-mouth slob. I tell you now keep out of my way. You put your nose in my business and I’ll cut it off for you. You forget about Ventra, forget about Ragoni, forget about my business. Then you’ll stay alive. You bother me and you’ll get your head blown off. You understand that?”
“Why should I forget about Ventra?” Retnick said, very softly.
“Because I say so,” Amato shouted, and with the back of his hand slapped Retnick across the chest. “You do what you’re told if you want to stay alive. I tell you—”
Retnick smiled and hit him in the stomach then, almost casually, and Amato bent over with a convulsive flurry of motion, hugging his arms tightly to his body and sputtering feebly through his straining mouth. His face was very red as he sagged helplessly against the kitchen table and put out one hand quickly to prevent himself from sliding to the floor.
Retnick turned with dangerous, menacing speed and struck Lye’s forearm with a chopping blow of his hand. The gun Lye was raising clattered onto the floor, and he stiffened against the wall, one arm hanging uselessly at his side, his mouth twisting cruelly in his small pale face.
Retnick picked up the gun and put it in his pocket. He was breathing hard, trying to control his anger; it wasn’t time to make a final move. Staring at Amato he said thickly, “You’re lucky. Don’t crowd it.”
Amato’s eyes were strange and wild. “You’ll die for this, Retnick. I swear to God.”
Retnick backed to the door, his hand sliding down onto the gun in his pocket. “Don’t say anything else, Nick. I don’t want to kill you.”
Amato stared at him, breathing raggedly. He shook his head slowly from side to side then, knowing he was close to death.
“Not yet,” Retnick said.
Outside he crossed the dark street and stopped in the shadow of a parked car. For a moment or so he watched Amato’s door, but it remained closed; Lye wasn’t coming after him tonight.
Retnick walked quickly toward the avenue. Turning left at the intersection he went by closed shops and markets, dark theaters that advertised Spanish subtitles. He wanted to find a phone, but everything was closed for the night. Two sailors across the street were arguing with drunken good humor about something or other, but there was no one else in sight. And there were no cabs. Retnick walked four blocks before coming on an all-night drugstore, and from there he put in a call to the Thirty-First. Lieutenant Neville was on another line, a clerk said. Would he hang on?
It was a short wait. Neville said hello, sounding tired and impatient.
“This is Steve,” Retnick said. “I want to see you tonight.”
Neville hesitated. Then he said, “Where are you?”
Retnick told him and Neville said, “This had better be interesting. I was on my way home. I’ll pick you up in ten minutes.”
Retnick waited in the darkness a few doors from the drugstore, his back to a brick wall and a cigarette in his lips. When Neville’s black sedan slowed down at the intersection, he moved out to the curb and held up his hand. The car pulled up alongside him and stopped. Retnick climbed in, Neville released the clutch, and they headed north on Tenth Avenue, cruising evenly to make the lights.