“Don’t turn around,” Tricia said.
“Ah, Tricia,” Renata said, flipping her lighter closed and replacing it in the clutch purse she was carrying. “You think I didn’t know you were there?” She didn’t turn, didn’t look back over her shoulder, but they could each see the other’s face reflected in the darkened store window beside them. “I spotted you the moment I stepped outside.”
“I don’t believe you,” Tricia said. “If you had, you’d never have let me get the drop on you.”
“Drop? What drop?” Renata laughed. “You dumb cluck. There are three men watching us right now who’ll shoot you the moment I give the signal.”
“Oh, yeah? What’s the signal?”
She wagged the cigarette between her fingers. “I drop this on the sidewalk. Grind it out under my toe. It’ll be the last thing you see. Unless you walk away right now.”
“I can pull this trigger before they get me.”
“I doubt it,” Renata said. She didn’t seem nervous at all. She took a long pull on the cigarette, exhaled a mouthful of smoke. “Not going? All right. Have it your way. What do you want?” She raised the cigarette. “You don’t have much time left.”
“The money,” Tricia said. “Where is it?”
“What money?”
“The money you took from your uncle’s safe. The three million dollars.”
Now Renata began to laugh in earnest, really laugh, so hard her shoulders shook from it. “Oh, god. That’s rich. You think I took it.”
“Yes, I do,” Tricia said. “You took your uncle’s money, and then spent the past month holed up in your father’s headquarters for protection. I don’t know if you planned it together or you did it on your own, but he must know about it now because he’s been keeping out of sight too—lying low with you for the past month, trying to keep you safe. That went on until this morning, when poor Eddie barged in on you and you decided you had a sacrificial lamb you could turn over to Uncle Nick to get the heat off you once and for all.”
“What an imagination,” Renata said. “A headshrinker would probably say it’s because of all the loving you’re not getting—oh, yes, Charley told me about you, Miss Knees Together.”
Tricia pressed the gun against the base of Renata’s spine. “Keep talking. You’ll spend the rest of your life in a chair.”
“Touchy, aren’t we?” Renata burned off some more of the cigarette with another drag, then held it up to show off its rapidly diminishing length. “Sure you don’t want to go now? I would if I were you.”
It wasn’t that Tricia wasn’t tempted—what if there really were three gunmen drawing a bead on her right now?—but she shook her head. “Are you telling me,” she said, “that you didn’t take Eddie to your uncle’s earlier today? That you didn’t kill him? Because your uncle told me otherwise.”
“No, Tricia, I’m not telling you that. I’m telling you I didn’t take his money.”
“And I’m saying you’re a liar,” Tricia said. “You lied to your uncle about Eddie, certainly. And why would you have lied about who stole the money if you didn’t do it yourself?”
“How do you know Eddie didn’t do it?” Renata said. “The man confessed.”
“Yeah, he confessed—to stealing both your uncle’s money and his photographs,” Tricia said. “But I know who stole the photos, and it wasn’t him.”
“But then—then you must know who stole the money, too,” Renata said, “and that it wasn’t me.”
“Uh-uh,” Tricia said. “Not so fast.”
Renata fell silent. She was taking no more drags on her cigarette now, Tricia noticed, though it continued to burn slowly toward the filter.
“And,” Tricia said, emboldened, “I think you’re lying about the three men watching us, too. I don’t think there’s anybody watching us. I think nothing will happen when you finish that cigarette.”
“You prepared to bet your life on that?” Renata said.
“Are you?” Tricia said.
They watched each other in the window. Tricia held the gun without wavering. Steadiest hands in the east.
“No,” Renata said briskly. “I’m not.” She dropped the cigarette butt on the ground, where it continued to smolder. Nothing else happened. “Let’s you and I sit down, why don’t we.”
They sat across from one another at a cafeteria on the corner of Dutch Street. The nearest other patron was five tables away and engrossed in a paperback novel, so Tricia was able to keep her gun aimed at Renata behind a menu without anyone noticing or complaining. Except Renata herself, and her complaints fell on deaf ears.
“Why don’t you put that thing away?”
“Why don’t you start talking,” Tricia said, “so I don’t have to use it?”
“As if you’d really shoot me in a public place,” Renata said.
“It’s been a long couple of days, Renata,” Tricia said. “Don’t bet on me making good decisions.”
Renata poured some sugar in her coffee, stirred it. “You know my uncle thinks you have his money. That’s what Eddie told him.”
“Yes, I know. It’s not true—but I don’t expect to be able to convince him of that unless I can find out who does have it.”
“Well, don’t look at me,” Renata said.
Tricia pulled back the hammer of her gun.
“I didn’t take his money,” Renata insisted. “I wish I knew who did.”
“If you didn’t, why do you care who did?”
Renata seemed to make a decision. “I’m going to tell you something that could make my life a lot more difficult if you repeated it. I’m not just doing it because you’ve got a gun on me. I’m doing it because if you’re serious about finding out who took the money, you might be in a position to make my life a lot easier than it’s been for the past month.”
“How’s that?”
“I didn’t steal my uncle’s money,” Renata said, “but not for lack of trying.”
“Go on.”
“I took a shot at it,” Renata said. “I arranged to get into the Sun after hours, went in all set to open the safe and clean it out. Had an escape route planned and everything. But there was no money for me to get. By the time I got there, the safe was already empty.”
Tricia had a powerful feeling of déjà vu. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about an empty safe. Nothing in it. Someone else had already been there, broken in, and emptied the thing out.”
“You expect me to believe that? That you tried to rob the Sun but some other thief got there first?”
“You see why I’ve been lying low?” Renata said. “You see? It’s the truth, but you don’t believe it. Why would Uncle Nick?”
“Why, indeed.”
“I’m not worried that he could have found my fingerprints—I wore gloves, I’m not a complete idiot. But who knows what else he might have found that could lead back to me? And someone might have seen me going in or coming out of the building—I can’t swear no one did.” Renata gulped some coffee. “So ever since, I’ve been cooped up in that place on Fulton Street, waiting for the old bastard to catch whoever robbed him and put an end to it. But a month’s gone by, he hasn’t caught anybody, and according to my father he’s been getting crazier and angrier about it by the day, rounding everyone up with the slightest possible connection—”
“Tell me about it,” Tricia said.
“Eventually, one way or another, he’d get to me. I had to feed him someone. And then Eddie walked through my door.”
“It wasn’t Eddie’s fault. He thought you’d asked him to come,” Tricia said. “You know that, right?”
“Yeah, that’s what he said. That you told him I’d sent for him. As he stood there gawping at us. It was awful.”
“Well, you certainly paid him back for it.”
“That’s right,” Renata said. “I did.”
“Let’s get back to the robbery,” Tricia said, trying hard to push aside her feelings of guilt over h
er own role in Eddie’s death. “You’re saying you just happened to decide to rob your uncle on the same day someone else happened to do the same thing?”
“Not exactly,” Renata said. “I didn’t choose that day out of thin air.”
“Oh?” Tricia said.
“Look, I’ve been thinking about Sal’s safe for years now. I grew up thinking about it—about all the money he kept in there, about what the combination might be. I’d made up lists of possible combinations—I know something about how the man thinks, so I was pretty sure one of my guesses would be right. And I knew I could get into the room, I’d just copy my father’s keys. But I’d never gotten myself over the hump and actually decided to do it. Because what if I did and something went wrong? If I got caught? He’d kill me. I mean, he loves me, I’m his niece, but if I stole from him? He’d kill me without thinking twice. That’s the kind of man he is.”
Seeing how he’d treated her husband for a lesser offense, Tricia was not inclined to disagree.
“Then about a month ago I’m sitting in one of the bars my father runs—you know he runs all sorts of businesses for my uncle, right? Bars, a garage downtown, couple of motels in Jersey. Anyway, I’m sitting there, middle of the day, having some lunch and a couple of drinks, minding my own business, and I hear these two guys in the booth behind me talking. And what they’re talking about is this robbery they’re planning. I mean, they were being quiet, but I was sitting right on the other side of the divider, I could hear every word. And after I’d listened for a few minutes I realized it was Sal’s place they were talking about robbing. There was this whole complicated scheme—up a wall, through a window, I mean crazy stuff. But I started thinking: This is my chance. All I have to do is go in first, clean the place out, then let these two clowns take their stab at it. They’re the ones who’d get caught—no one would ever look twice at me.
“So I waited to hear when they were planning to do it. And they said it very clearly: the eighteenth at 3:30. They said it twice.
“So, fine—I got everything ready for the eighteenth, only I went in at 2:00. Plenty of time, right? Figured it shouldn’t take me more than 45 minutes, and I allowed myself twice that.” Renata shook her head sadly. “They must have changed the plan. When I got to the counting room, they’d already been. The safe was cleaned out. And I was the one left holding the bag.”
“You’ll pardon me for saying so,” Tricia said, “but what a load of crap.”
“I swear to god,” Renata said, “it’s true. May I be struck dead if I’m lying.”
“You overheard two guys in a bar. Talking about robbing Sal Nicolazzo.”
“Yes.”
“A bar run by one of Nicolazzo’s main deputies. By his brother-in-law.”
“Yes.”
“And you decided you’d beat them to the punch, take your shot at the money, only they beat you instead.”
“Yes!”
“Christ, Renata,” Tricia said. “Do you see any hay stuck in my hair? Do I look like some hick you can bamboozle with a crazy yarn about two mysterious crooks who are stupid enough to discuss their cockamamie plot in a place owned by the man they plan to rob, but slick enough to pull it off and vanish without a trace?”
“All I can tell you is what happened,” Renata said. “Whether you believe it or not, that’s your business.”
“So what did these two men look like?”
“I didn’t get a good look at them.”
“Of course not,” Tricia said.
“They were sitting behind me!”
“Naturally,” Tricia said. “So what bar was it?”
“Why does that matter?”
“Because we can go there and see if we can find anyone else who remembers these guys.”
“It was a month ago!”
“What bar was it, Renata?”
“I don’t remember,” she said. “It was a month ago. I had a couple of drinks in me. Maybe more than a couple.” Tricia kept staring at her and so did the gun. “One of the ones on the west side, maybe Royal’s Brew or the Rusty Bucket. Probably the Bucket. I’m not sure.”
“You’re not sure.”
She shook her head. “They pretty much all look alike. My father used the same crew to build them all.”
“You know what I think?” Tricia said. “I think these two men in this mysterious bar are like the three men you said were watching us just now on the street, the ones who were supposed to kill me when you dropped your cigarette. You’re a liar, Renata, and not even a good one.”
Tricia stood.
“Are you going to shoot me?” Renata said.
Tricia put the gun in her pocket, but kept her hand in there.
“Let’s see this bar of yours,” she said. “Then I’ll decide.”
41.
Zero Cool
The Rusty Bucket was a wood-paneled bar, inside and out, and at first glance it did look a lot like every other dark, nondescript bar in the city: high stools, low lights, assorted pictures and gewgaws hanging from the walls. But when you walked through the door you realized the place had a certain atmosphere of its own, less the result of its décor than of the people clustered around its tables and in the booths against the back wall. They were young, for one thing, many just a year or two older than Tricia and some of the girls not even that. The men wore striped t-shirts and worn dungarees and tennis shoes or moccasins with no socks; one had kicked his off and was barefoot. Only a few were entirely clean-shaven, the rest sporting combinations of sideburns and goatees and unkempt half beards. The girls wore their hair in horsetails or just hanging straight to their shoulders, with no makeup on and hand-rolled cigarettes burning between their fingers.
There was no jukebox; instead, a small stage had been constructed out of low wooden blocks, and a combo—two men and a woman—sat on chairs there, sluggishly stroking their instruments. The woman pulled a low, slow melody out of her guitar while the men accompanied her on bongos and bass.
“What kind of place is this?” Tricia whispered, feeling self conscious.
“It’s where the far out crowd gathers,” Renata said, her voice rich with contempt. “Especially on weekends, when they’re not in the fancy schools mommy and daddy are shelling out for.”
“It’s different during the week?”
“During the day it is. Then it’s just a bar. The rest of the time, it’s—well, you can see.” She folded her sunglasses and put them away in her purse.
The girl stopped strumming and the crowd gave her performance a light spray of applause, some murmurs of approval. In the silence that followed, glasses were emptied and filled, voices raised and lowered. Tricia heard a match flare and then smelled the cloying odor she remembered from the artists’ house in Brooklyn.
“So this is the place,” Tricia said, “where you heard your two master criminals plotting?”
“I told you, I’m not sure. You remember every place you’ve ever been?”
“The important ones I do.” She prodded Renata in the back. “Let’s see if the bartender remembers anything.”
“He’s probably not even here during the week.”
“We’ll see.”
The bartender was a slope-shouldered, narrow-faced character with long arms and long skinny fingers and black Buddy Holly glasses perched on the bridge of his nose. Behind them, his eyes were red.
“Can I ask you something?” Tricia said.
“Lay it on me,” the bartender said.
“You work here during the week, or only weekends?”
“Only when I need bread,” the man said with a grin, “which means I slave all seven, sister.”
“Well, my friend here,” Tricia said, “tells me she was in a couple of weeks back, saw two guys here, sitting in one of those booths, talking about something pretty important. We’re trying to track them down.”
“All right,” the bartender said. “I dig. What’d they look like?”
Through her pocket, Tricia nudged Renata
with the gun.
“I don’t know...one was about your height,” Renata said, “but a little bigger around, huskier. He had a beard, or the start of one, anyway.”
“You just described half the people here,” the bartender said. “And the other?”
“A few years older, a little smaller, a little thinner. Less hair—like maybe he was starting to lose it. No beard.”
“You’re putting me on, right? You want to know if I’ve seen a couple of guys, one’s taller, one’s shorter, one’s heavier, one’s skinnier. Well, sure I have, and so’s everyone else who’s ever been to an Abbott and Costello picture.”
“Thanks, mister,” Tricia said. “That’s a lot of help.”
“Cool down, mama, don’t you blow your top,” the bartender said. “I didn’t say I couldn’t help, you just got to give me more than that to chew on. You remember anything else?” he asked Renata. “What those cats were wearing? What they sounded like?”
“They sounded like New Yorkers. The older one might have been from Brooklyn, it sounded like. The other one, the bigger one with the beard...I don’t know, could’ve been from upstate somewhere. Sort of a flat voice, like Warren Spahn—you know what he sounds like? The ballplayer?” The bartender shook his head. “You ever hear Harold Arlen, when he sings his own stuff?”
The bartender nodded this time. “Strictly dullsville—not my scene at all. But yeah, I’ve heard his sides.”
“Well, like that.”
He mulled it over.
“You remember what they were having?”
“No.”
“What day it was?”
“About a month ago.”
“But what day of the week?”
Fifty-to-One hcc-104 Page 24
