Fifty-to-One hcc-104

by Charles Ardai

  “Emptied?” Tricia said. “Then someone else robbed him, not you.”

  “Well,” Coral said. “Not completely emptied. There was a box in the very back, a flat leather box in the corner. It was dark. Whoever’d been there before me must have missed it.”

  “And you took it?”

  “It was small,” Coral said, squeezing Tricia’s hands tight enough that it hurt. “I didn’t even look inside till I got it home. I just grabbed it and ran.”

  “And what was in it?”

  Before Coral could answer, they both heard the key in the lock, then the click of a gun being armed. “Ladies,” Mitch said through the door, “I’m coming in.”

  15.

  The Gutter and the Grave

  “What was in it?” Tricia whispered. “Coral, quick!”

  “Pictures,” Coral whispered back.

  “Ladies?” Mitch called. “Make some sound so I know you hear me.”

  “We hear you,” Tricia shouted. “And we’re nowhere near the door.” Then in a low voice to Coral, “What sort of pictures? You mean like dirty pictures?”

  “Not the way you mean,” Coral whispered, her words all rushing together. “It was dead people, murdered, lying in the street. There was one where they shot a man outside a bar, he was lying in the gutter, must’ve had fifteen bullet holes in him. And you could see who shot him. They were standing over him with their guns out.”

  “You recognize who they were?”

  “Yeah, one of them was—”

  But the door had swung open and Mitch had walked in, gun extended before him in one hand. “What are you girls gossiping about?”

  “Nothing,” Tricia said.

  “Get over here,” Mitch said, “pick that up,” gesturing toward the sack lying on the floor, “and put it on. He wants to see you again.”

  Tricia stood. “It was good to meet you, Colleen,” she said. “I hope to see you fight someday when this is all over.”

  Coral didn’t say anything. Tricia pulled the bag on and followed Mitch out the door.

  Upstairs, when the bag came off, Tricia found herself looking at Charley Borden. He gave her a wan smile. His hands were tied behind him and his hair was disheveled. He had on a vest and pinstriped pants, but the suit jacket that went with them was nowhere to be seen. Strewn on the ground at his feet were the contents of his pockets: a leather wallet, a comb, some coins, a pack of playing cards, some keys on a metal ring.

  Nicolazzo paced in a little circle between them, a few steps forward and a few back, saying nothing, just glaring at each of them in turn. In one hand he held his stiletto, playing idly with the blade, springing it out and pulling it back in. There wasn’t a trace of blood on it that Tricia could see, or on the circular patch of carpet where the throw rug had been.

  “So, my dear,” Nicolazzo said, “have you decided to tell me what you know, or shall we have another round of mumblety-peg?”

  “You can save your breath,” Borden said. “She doesn’t know anything.”

  “My friend, it’s your breath you should be worried about conserving, not mine.” Nicolazzo held the blade up to Borden’s throat and turned to Tricia. “So? What have you got to say?”

  “I don’t know where your money is,” Tricia said, “or who took it. That’s the plain truth.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Nicolazzo said.

  “But I do know,” Tricia continued, and her voice only trembled a little as she said it, “what else was stolen from your safe.”

  Nicolazzo’s eyes narrowed.

  “It’s photographs, isn’t it?” Tricia said, her mind clicking along, trying to make sense of what Coral had told her. A man lying in the gutter, dead. Other men standing over him with guns—one of whom Coral had recognized. Coral, who’d worked for Nicolazzo and so would have known some of Uncle Nick’s other employees. “Incriminating photographs,” she said. “The sort you’d keep in your safe in case you ever needed to use them, but that you otherwise wouldn’t want anyone else ever to see. Photos of your own men—something you can hold over their heads to keep them in line, maybe?” Off to one side, she saw Mitch shift uncomfortably.

  “Trixie,” Borden said in a strained little voice, trying hard not to touch the blade hovering below his chin. “You’re a very imaginative girl, but maybe this isn’t the time to be dreaming up the plot for your next book—”

  “Quiet, you,” Nicolazzo said. Then to Tricia: “Go on.”

  “If these pictures wound up in the hands of the police, it would be bad for you. If they wound up in the hands of your rivals, it might be even worse.”

  “Never mind that,” Nicolazzo said. “Where are they?”

  “If you let us go—all of us—I’ll find them and I’ll bring them to you.”

  “I don’t like that idea,” Nicolazzo said. “I don’t like it at all. If I let you all go, what incentive would you have to come back? No. I think maybe it’s better if I do a little work right now on this young fellow here. Perhaps I should take the skin off him one inch at a time, till you tell me what I want to know.”

  “May I say something?” Borden said.

  “Hush,” Nicolazzo said. “You’re a little apple, waiting to be peeled. Little apples do not talk.”

  “If you touch him,” Tricia said, “I’ll never tell you anything.”

  “Do you really think so? Do you really think you will be able to stand there and watch him suffer when it’s entirely in your power to put an end to it? When all you have to do is utter a few words—a location, an address—and the man’s pain stops?”

  “How do I know you won’t just kill him then? And me, too, while you’re at it.”

  “Because, my dear, I always keep my bargains. I am a man of my word. Ask anyone. Salvatore Nicolazzo has never welshed on any deal in his life. Million dollars on a wager? I pay off. If I lose. And collect if I win. That’s the way it works in my world. If you don’t have your word, you’ve got nothing.”

  “And I have your word,” Tricia said.

  “You have my word. That I will not harm either of you if you return my stolen property to me. The photos and the money. And that I will if you do not.”

  Tricia looked at Borden, straining to keep his head back, away from the knife, and at Nicolazzo, holding it there carelessly, loosely, but with the same avid look on his face that he’d had before using that very blade to end another man’s life. She thought about her sister down in the cellar, and about Erin—and about herself.

  “The money I can’t promise,” she said, “but I’m pretty sure the photos are on Cornelia Street. I don’t know exactly where—but I’m confident I can find them, and when I do I’ll bring them to you. That’s the best I can offer.” She stepped forward bravely, hands on her hips. “Now let him go.”

  “Go? No, I won’t do that. He and I will wait here for you. We’ll—” He glanced about, bent down, and picked up the deck of cards from the floor. He closed the stiletto and slipped it into his pocket. “We’ll occupy ourselves with a little game. You play cards, do you, Mr. Borden? A bit of rummy, perhaps? Or canasta? You can play it with two, I’ll show you how.” To Tricia he said, “But come back quickly, my dear. Or I’ll grow impatient with canasta and teach him another game I like. It’s called ‘Fifty-to-One.’ Those are the odds, you see. The odds against.”

  “Against winning?” Borden said, clearly relieved no longer to have a switchblade quivering at his neck.

  “Against surviving,” Nicolazzo said, and all the blood that had returned to Borden’s cheeks drained away again.

  Nicolazzo snapped his fingers at Mitch. “You—go with her. Make sure she doesn’t try anything funny. And get rid of the stiff, while you’re at it.”

  “Yes, boss,” Mitch said.

  A plump finger rose admonishingly.

  “Uncle Nick,” Mitch said. “Excuse me.”

  Nicolazzo smiled. “Now Mr. Borden,” he said, “would you like the first deal or shall I?”

 
16.

  Night Walker

  Mitch pulled the bag off her head as they crossed the 59th Street Bridge into Manhattan. He left it lying on the front seat between them.

  “So we were in Queens?” Tricia asked after taking a few deep breaths to clear her head of the burlap smell. She didn’t turn to look at Mitch. She watched the New York skyline rush toward them through the windshield instead.

  “Never mind where we were,” Mitch said. “The less you know, the better.”

  “How can you work for a man like that?” Tricia said.

  Mitch shrugged, held the wheel steady. “He’s not a bad sort. Most of the time.”

  “He just killed a man!”

  “So?” Mitch honked and swerved around a station wagon that was going too slowly for his taste. “Guy was no prize. Cheated on his wife. Played lousy music.”

  Tricia didn’t answer. It wasn’t lousy music. But that hardly seemed like the point most worth arguing about right now.

  “I never did anything to him,” Tricia said finally. “Charley and Erin didn’t, and god knows Cor—Colleen didn’t.”

  “Yeah?” Mitch said. “That’s not what it sounded like to me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Mitch raised his eyebrows, let them fall, kept his eyes on the road. “Sounded to me like she did plenty. Little leather box, and all.”

  “Were you listening? At the door?”

  “Could be,” Mitch said.

  Tricia pinched the bridge of her nose between her fingers. She could feel the beginnings of a bad headache.

  “You heard everything?”

  “You think your sister really had her baby in a taxi, or she was just pulling your leg?”

  “So why didn’t you say anything to your boss? To Uncle Nick?”

  He shrugged again. “I would’ve, if I’d had to. I was waiting to see what you’d do.”

  “What I’d do.”

  “Would you offer to go get the photos. I knew he wouldn’t let you go alone.”

  “And you wanted to be with me...why?”

  “Think about it,” Mitch said.

  “The photos,” Tricia said. “Incriminating photos of his own men. Are some of them photos of you?”

  “Could be,” Mitch said.

  Something dawned on Tricia. “You’re the one. The one she recognized.”

  “Saw it in her eyes as soon as I picked her up in the ring,” Mitch said. “I was saying to myself, how the hell does this twist know me? I never saw her before in my life. Well.”

  “And you want, what, when we get the pictures you’ll take yours out before we give them to Nicolazzo? Won’t that be a little obvious?”

  “We’ll take a few out. Not just mine.”

  “That’s fine for you,” Tricia said. “But what about me and my friends? He’ll say I’m holding out on him, that I welshed on our deal.”

  “Just tell him that’s all you found,” Mitch said.

  “He’ll kill us!”

  “You?” Mitch said. “With how well you dance? He won’t kill you.”

  “My sister—”

  “Why would he want to lose a good fighter?” Mitch said. “She brings in a decent gate.”

  “But Charley and Erin—”

  He shrugged once more. “You can’t have everything.”

  “I’m not going to let him hurt them,” Tricia said.

  “The man lost three million dollars. He’s got to hurt someone.”

  “What if I tell him you made me give you the photos of you,” Tricia said.

  “I’d say you were lying,” Mitch said, “and that he should beat the truth out of you.”

  They were nearing the end of the bridge, slowing as they approached the turn-off for Second Avenue.

  “But there’s no reason it needs to come to that,” Mitch said, flipping on his turn signal. “You’ve got nothing to gain by—hey!”

  Tricia had been inching her fingers toward the door handle and now had turned and in one swift movement tugged up the door lock, unlatched the door, and dived out onto the macadam. She fell on her shoulder and rolled twice, narrowly missing being run over by the station wagon behind them. The other driver leaned on his horn angrily and a few more cars joined in. She saw the door of Mitch’s car still swinging open. The car came squealing to a halt.

  She got up, ran to the concrete barrier at the side of the bridge. A few yards away she would’ve been looking down a hundred feet at the cold and unforgiving surface of the East River, but here it was just a twenty foot drop to the 60th Street underpass. She climbed onto the barrier, turned, and let herself down carefully, dangling by her fingertips before allowing herself to drop. For a second she was falling through the air. Then she hit the sidewalk and sprawled backwards onto her rump. Looking up she saw Mitch’s face appear above the barrier. The honking had become a full-on chorus, drivers angry at this wiseacre who’d left his car standing in the exit lane, blocking their way.

  “Get back here,” Mitch shouted, aiming a long arm down at her, finger extended like Uncle Sam. He started to climb over the barrier and she scrambled to her feet, ready to run—then she saw a hand appear at Mitch’s shoulder, a wooden nightstick protruding from it.

  “Mister,” came the cop’s voice, shouting to be heard over the cacophony, “what do you think you’re doing?”

  “My—my wife, officer, she just—she jumped over—”

  Tricia ducked under one of the bridge’s huge concrete stanchions.

  “I don’t see anyone,” the cop said a moment later.

  “But she just...”

  “You been drinking, mister? Let’s see that car of yours.”

  Tricia couldn’t hear Mitch’s response as the two of them walked away. But she thought about that car of his. If she had any luck, the cop would ask to look in the trunk. Get rid of the stiff Nicolazzo had said. Robbie hadn’t been in the back seat; he had to be somewhere.

  Come on, she said to herself, you’re New York’s finest, look in the goddamn trunk.

  She dusted off her palms and started walking, fast as she could, first west to Second Avenue and then south toward her sister’s place downtown. She had no money for a taxi, not even for a subway. And she had four miles to walk. At least with the sun down, the heat wasn’t so powerful. She opened the top button of her dress. Let a little air in.

  Much of the city was shutting down for the night, shopkeepers dragging cartons and signs in from the sidewalk, pulling down metal gates over their plate glass windows. The bars on either side of the avenue, conversely, were coming to life, strains of jukebox music pouring out each time one of their doors swung open, neon lights blinking on overhead.

  There was life on the street—pedestrians and loafers, men in their undershirts and trousers taking an evening smoke on the stoop of their apartment buildings, cars motoring by at a casual pace. This was a neighborhood of four- and five-story brick buildings inhabited by working men and women, restaurant staff and seamstresses, dock-workers and laundry workers, Irish mostly; and those as were still out of doors gave her the eye as she passed, one or two of the men whistling low, one throwing her a loud kiss. She was used to it, and most nights it wouldn’t have bothered her, but tonight it added to her feeling of straining toward a goal and not making progress, like she was walking through sand or mud or in a dream. Cornelia Street was far away, in the city’s lower reaches, and here she was walking through a darkening forest of hungry-eyed men with bare arms and puckered lips. The El had run here once, she knew, its metal tracks casting the whole of the avenue into darkness; and though it had been demolished nearly twenty years back, as night fell it was almost as if you were still walking under its shadow, listening with half an ear for the clattering roar of ghost cars overhead.

  As she passed 49th Street, a man fell into step beside her; she glanced and for a moment was relieved to see the blue of his uniform—but only for a moment.

  “You all right, miss?” the flatfoot said.

 
“Yes, sir,” Tricia said. She tried to keep her voice even, her head down.

  “This isn’t a neighborhood for a girl to go walking alone.”

  “I’m just a couple of blocks from home,” Tricia said, resisting the urge to walk faster, to try to get away. How many more steps would she get before he took a good look at her face and recognized her from the bulletin O’Malley must have circulated? When would he put out a hand and stop her, leaving her the choice of running for it or heading off to jail?

  She felt a trail of perspiration forming along her spine and prayed it didn’t show.

  “I’m fine—thank you,” Tricia said. “You don’t need to walk with me.”

  He stopped, and against every impulse urging her on, she stopped as well, tried to appear casual, at ease, not twitch under his stare.

  Had she gone too far? Should she apologize? She was on the verge of doing so when the policeman tipped his cap to her and said, “All right, miss. Have it your way.” He fell behind as she walked on. She glanced back and saw him peering into a parked car, going on with his rounds.

  Thank you, she whispered to herself, for blind policemen, thank you. Only please let the one on the bridge have been more observant.

  The streets passed, one by one, and her legs grew sore from exertion, but she didn’t stop, didn’t even slow, didn’t dare. Somewhere down by Washington Square Park, a three-year-old boy was waiting for his mother to come home; and a box of photographs that could send who knew how many men to jail was sitting out on a table or hidden behind the public toilet tank down the hall or waiting in the dust under the bed. If the cops had let Mitch go—and they might have, they easily might have—he’d be heading down there as well, and faster than she could hope to make it. He didn’t have an address, but Cornelia Street was only one block long, maybe a dozen buildings on either side—he didn’t need an address, just time enough to canvass them all. And he surely had money with him; and he had a car; and his gun, he had that, too.