«Did I tell you to bring the box?»
Jimmy smiled broadly. «No.»
«Then why did you bring it?» Felton turned to catch a side profile of himself. He flexed his arms. His triceps swelled large and powerful. He forced his right hand against his left and extended them before him. The view in the mirror was a magnificent display of tanned, rippling muscles.
«Why did you bring the box?»
«Thought you'd need it.»
Felton threw his arms behind him and cocked his head as if glancing at an oncoming bull, the matador Felton, supreme, victorious.
«Need?»
Jimmy shrugged. «It's convenient, boss.»
Felton laughed, laughed with teeth that never had a cavity, showing gums that never gave him a day's trouble in his life.
«Now!» Felton yelled. «Now!»
Jimmy backed away, flipping the highly-shined mahogany box on the bed. «It's been ten years, boss. Ten years.»
«Now,» Felton said, grabbing his last look in the mirror. «Now.»
Jimmy coiled his large frame like a spring. Felton held his right hand behind his back and waved his left in front of him, fingers wide and palms outstretched. He sneaked another look at the mirror and Jimmy sprang.
Felton caught the thrust by throwing his left shoulder, arm straight, into the charge. No finesse. No leverage. Just sheer power.
Jimmy's large Texas frame seemed about to envelop the smaller man but at the height of his rush, Jimmy let out a grunt and stopped moving forward.
Felton's large hand was in his chest. It would not be budged. Felton gave a flick of his wrist. Jimmy flailed his arms and yelled as his body bounced backward.
Like a jungle cat, Felton moved forward, grabbing Jimmy's arms, preventing him from crashing his back into the floor. He roared: «Still got it?»
«You still got it, boss. You still got it. You should've gone into pro football.»
«I leave that for you Texans, Jimmy,» Felton said with a loud laugh, pulling Jimmy's arm with a yank that brought the raw-boned man to his feet.
Jimmy shook his head to clear the cobwebs. «We're ready, boss?»
«We're ready. Bring me the box.» Felton purposely refused to look at the wooden container until he had buttoned a white shirt, put on a black knit tie and gone to his desk and removed a shoulder holster of gray suede-like leather from a drawer.
Then he nodded for the box to be opened. Jimmy carefully lifted the lid. Three gun-metal blue revolvers rested on white suede.
«O'Hara won't be needing his,» Jimmy said. «Can I take two?»
«No,» Felton said. «Is O'Hara's body at the garage?»
«Yeah. Under wraps. Same guys watching it who're looking after Tony.»
«When we get back tonight, we'll get rid of O'Hara and his revolver, and let Tony go.»
«Wouldn't ita been easier, boss, just to report O'Hara as killed? I mean it's going to feel funny getting rid of him like that.»
«And let the locals know my chauffeur got his skull crushed? I don't want this apartment pinpointed as that hooked guy's last stand. No, we have to get rid of our own.»
Felton strapped the shoulder holster on. Jimmy shrugged and removed from an envelope in the lid of the box, six official cards in laminated plastic. They were gun permits. One for New Jersey, one for New York, two each for three men, one of whom wouldn't need his again. Jimmy put the permits on the bedspread. They lay there like penny-pitching cards, old photographs of their owners in the corner.
Jimmy-a sharp, drawn face. Felton-smooth with wavy hair, the bright blueness of his eyes shining even in the black-and-white postage stamp picture. O'Hara-a wide, grinning face that now had a puncture in the skull.
They were special permits, made out to financier and industrialist Norman Felton, and bodyguards James Roberts and Timothy O'Hara.
They were special because the pistols were special. Each permit meant that the ballistics test of the pistol was registered in Washington. A bullet fired through the barrel of each gun carried ballistics markings of the barrel that identified its source as surely as fingerprints. The only time bullets had gone through the barrels on the three pistols were when the ballistics tests were made.
Felton lifted his pistol and Jimmy released a spring switch that slid open a secret drawer in the bottom of the box. There were seven more pistol barrels and a small Allen wrench.
They each put new barrels on their pistols, barrels whose ballistics markings were known only to corpses.
Felton mused aloud. «Jimmy… Moesher was never meant for this business like you and me. He'd have us all living off what we make in the junk-yards.» Jimmy just grinned. Felton playfully punched Jimmy's shoulder and Jimmy pretended to block it. They were both grinning.
«No sir,» Jimmy said, wrenching tight the barrel of his revolver. «You gotta love your work.»
«I don't love it, Jimmy, but it's necessary. It's something natural, very natural, that some of us do.» Felton thought a moment, then said: «It's natural and necessary. This is a jungle, Jimmy. Nobody ever gave us anything.»
«Nobody gave us nothing, boss.»
«The world made us what we are. You know I could have been a doctor, a lawyer, even a scientist.»
«You would have been the greatest,» Jimmy said.
«I would have been good.»
«Everything you do, boss, is good. Honest.»
Felton shrugged. «It has to be. Who'll do it for us?» He bounded over to the long closet near the full-length mirror and slid two closet doors in opposite directions.
The closet extending the full sailboat length of the room held a row of suits that for quantity might put a Robert Hall's to shame. In quality, it was Saville Row.
Felton kept thumbing through the blue suits looking for the jacket that matched his pants. The only way he could tell was by finding one without pants. After eight suits, he said to hell with it, and took the jacket.
«Jimmy?»
«Yeah, boss.»
«You're a good man.»
«Thanks, boss. What brought that on?»
«Nothing. I just wanted to say it.»
«You ain't afraid something's going to go wrong with Viaselli?»
«No. Not Viaselli.»
«That hooked guy?»
Felton buttoned the blue jacket that matched perfectly with his pants, except he knew it didn't belong with those pants.
Jimmy knew better than to press the point. When Felton was ready to talk, he would talk and not before. Jimmy put the revolver inside his jacket pocket.
Later that night, Felton was in a talking mood. Jimmy was at the wheel of the pearl gray Rolls Royce Silver Dawn, subbing for O'Hara. He drove over the George Washington Bridge, its high-wired lights glinting like an Italian festival, its span stretching onward to New York like a great aqueduct of ancient Rome, except it carried people, not water.
«You know,» Felton said, staring at New York from the back seat. «I was sorry I missed World War Two.»
«We had a war of our own, boss.»
«Yeah, but World War Two was a war, a big one. It's a hell of a thing that somebody's gotta go to an engineering school on the Hudson to learn how to run a war.»
«You could've done it better, boss.»
Felton frowned. «Maybe not better on the war side, but I would've known enough to look out for the Russians.»
«Didn't we know?»
«We knew, but I would've known better. I would've looked out for England, France, China, the works. That's what the game is, Jimmy. Outside the family, you got no friends. There's no such thing as friends. Only relatives.»
«You're the only family I ever had, boss.»
«Thank you, Jimmy,» Felton said.
«I mean it. I'd die for you or Miss Cynthia.»
«I know it, Jimmy. You remember how that hooked guy came on?»
«Yeah, boss. I was right behind him.»
«Ever see a guy move like that before?»
«You
mean at you?»
«No. No, not that so much. Just the way he moved. He came without telegraphing that he was coming on.»
«So?»
«Do fighters telegraph punches?»
«Not good ones.»
«Why not?»
«They're taught,» Jimmy suggested.
«That's right.»
«So?»
«So, who's teaching?»
«Guys can learn it lots of places,» Jimmy said. Felton was silent for a few moments.
He asked, «Seem more difficult lately to make a hit?»
«Yeah, kinda.»
«Is it the fault of the help? They getting worse?»
«About the same. You know, young punks, got a gun, they'll foul it up if you don't lead them by the nose.»
«But what was their big trouble?»
«They said their targets were getting tougher to hit.»
«But what else?»
«I don't know. Nothing else.»
«No. There's something else.»
Jimmy turned onto the West Side Drive heading for downtown New York. He eased the car into the right-hand lane. It was a Felton order. When on a job, obey the misdemeanors. No littering, no loitering, no speeding or double parking. It had always worked well.
«There's something else, Jimmy.»
«You got me, boss.»
«First they were hard to hit. And second, they never hit back. None of those mugs we hired ever got shot or even hurt.»
Jimmy shrugged his shoulders and looked for the 42nd Street exit. The conversation was beyond him. The boss was working on another one of his ideas.
«Why weren't any of these guys armed?» Felton asked.
«Lots of people don't carry guns,» Jimmy said as he turned into a ramp that led down from the elevated highway.
«People checking into Viaselli's operations or mine?»
«So they're stupid.»
«Stupid? No, they've got a pattern. Patterns and stupidity don't mesh. But that guy with a hook was a change from the pattern. If we thought that hooked bastard was fast, watch out for what comes next. I feel it. I know it.»
«You mean they're going to get better.»
«I don't think we're going to see much better. I don't think there is better. But watch out for teams. Killer teams.»
«Like we had in the forties?»
«Like we had in the forties.» Felton leaned back in his seat.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The doorman at the Royal Plaza on 59th Street near Central Park was surprised when the well-dressed occupant of the Rolls Royce insisted the doorman park his car so that his chauffeur could accompany him.
The doorman agreed quickly. One does not argue with Rolls Royce passengers.
Felton made sure Jimmy was behind him before they both entered the plush Plaza lobby, with its heavy gilt-crested chairs, ponderous plants and effeminate room clerk.
The gun and shoulder holster fit neatly beneath the suit, and Felton and his driver attracted little attention as they stepped onto the elevator.
«Fourteenth floor,» Felton said.
Jimmy slipped his right hand into his black uniform pocket to adjust his weapon. Felton gave him a quick dirty look that told him the move was wrong.
The gold-tinted elevator screen doors opened into a small foyer. Every other floor opened to a hallway with rooms. But Felton had advised Viaselli when he rented the floor in the Royal Plaza to reconstruct the entrance, eliminating the hallway in favor of a box-like entrance with peepholes.
Felton waited in the foyer and winked at Jimmy who smiled back. They both knew the arrangement of the floor and knew that one of Viaselli's body guards right now was looking them over through a one-way mirror on their left. Felton adjusted his tie in the mirror and Jimmy made an obscene sign toward his reflection with a middle finger.
The door opened. A man in a dark pin-striped suit and a bluish silk tie invited them in.
They walked calmly like a team of dancers, never showing emotion or quickening their pace, into a large, well-lit overfurnished living room filled with clouds of gray smoke and enough men in business suits to start a convention.
Only it wasn't a convention. And when Felton and Jimmy stopped in the middle of the room under a gaudy chandelier, the talk suddenly stopped and the whispering began.
«It's him,» came the whispers. «Heah, that's him. Yeah. Shh. Not so loud, he'll hear you.»
A well-manicured little man with a black knotted Italian cigar stuck between his thin dark lips came over to Felton and Jimmy, waving a thin bony right hand and flashing a twisted smile.
«Eh? Come sta, Mr. Felton?»
Felton tried in. vain to remember the man's name. He smiled a guarded recognition.
«Can I get you something to drink?»
«Thank you, no.»
The man clapped one of his hands over his chest as if restraining a bleeding heart from bursting outward onto the gold yellow carpet. «I hate to mention this, but him»-the man said bowing slightly toward Jimmy, «this ain't no place for drivers. There's gonna be a meeting, you know.»
«I didn't know,» Felton said, looking at his watch.
«He gotta go.»
«He stays.»
The little man's expressive hands opened palm outward, his shoulders hunched. «But he don't belong.»
«He stays,» Felton said without expression.
The smile that never had been a smile disappeared as the thin dark lips tightened over yellow teeth. The right hand cupped toward its owner's face in a familiar Latin gesture. «Mr. Big's going to have something to say about this.»
Felton glanced at his watch again.
The little man retreated to a cluster of compatriots grouped around a sofa. They listened to him, casting sidelong glances at Felton and his chauffeur.
Jimmy busied himself by staring down everyone in that group.
Suddenly, there was a rustle in the room as everyone seated jumped to their feet and those standing unconsciously straightened their backs. They all looked toward the big double doors that had been flung open.
A man in a conservative gray suit and striped Princeton tie stood in a doorway and called out: «Mr. Felton.»
Felton and Jimmy walked across the living room to the doors, feeling all the stares of the men behind them. Jimmy stopped at the doors while Felton entered. Jimmy waited like a sentry and then, with his cold gray-blue Tennessee eyes, took on the whole room.
The double doors had always fascinated Felton. Facing the living room, they were gold-encrusted and ornate. But on the other side, they were fine, old, oiled wood, fit for any executive's office.
The air was different too. You could breathe without inhaling smoke from a dozen cigars. The floor had no carpeting and it creaked as Felton walked over to the end of a long mahogany table at the end of which sat a finely-groomed gentleman staring at a chess board.
He had deep, friendly, brown eyes set in a firm, noble Roman face. His hands were manicured, but not polished. His hair was long, graying at the temples, but combed conservatively with a part at the left side.
He had woman's lips, full and sensuous, yet there was nothing effeminate about him. Behind him, on the wall were pictures of a stately matron and eight children, his family.
He did not look up from the chess board, as Felton sat down in a chair at his elbow.
Felton inspected the face for aging, the hands for a tremble, the body movements for hesitancy. There were none. Viaselli was still a potent man.
«What move would you make, Norman?» Viaselli asked. His voice was even, his pronunciation Oxford excellent.
«I don't know chess, Carmine.»
«Let me explain it to you. I am under attack by the black queen and the black bishop. I can destroy the queen. I can destroy the bishop.» Viaselli's lips closed and there was silence.
Felton crossed his legs and stared at the figures on the checkered board. They meant nothing to him. He knew Viaselli wanted a comment. He wou
ld not give it.
«Norman, why should I not destroy the queen and the bishop?»
«If I understood chess, Carmine, I would tell you.»
«You would be a worthy opponent if you learned the game.»
«I have other games.»
«Life is not the limit of your endeavor, Norman, but the extent of it.»
«Life is what I make it.»
«You should have been an Italian.»
«You should have been a Jew.»
«It's the next best thing.» A warm smile crossed Viaselli's face as he pondered the board. «What I never could understand was your fondness for Southerners.»
«What fondness?»
«Jimmy from Texas.»
«Merely an employee.»
«Merely? It never appeared like that to me.»
«Appearances are deceiving.»
«Appearances are all there is.»
«I have your brother-in-law,» Felton said, anxious to end the philosophy.
«Tony?»
«Yes.»
«Ah, that brings back the problem of the black queen and the black bishop. Should I destroy them?»
«Yes,» Felton said, «but not when you're outnumbered.»
«Outnumbered?»
«Just you, me and your man. You're outnumbered,» Felton said nodding to the conservatively dressed gentleman at the door.
«And all my people in the living room?»
«An evening's entertainment for Jimmy.»
«I don't think so, but nevertheless, you are not the black queen and black bishop. You are my white queen, the most powerful piece on the board. For you to turn black would be disaster for me, considering that I am under attack.»
«I am under attack too.»
Viaselli looked up from the board and smiled.
Felton placed a hand on the table. «Who are we fighting?»
«I'm glad you said we, Norman.» Viaselli soffly clapped his hands. «I'm glad, and yet I don't know. A Senate committee is coming to our area, probably in two weeks. Yet we've been under surveillance now for five years. Does the Senate prepare that far in advance? No, I don't think so. And the investigations have been different. You have noticed. With the FBI and the tax men, investigations would end up in court. But these five years of men snooping around have not ended up in court.»
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