Butcher's Moon p-16

by Richard Stark

  Mackey went through his hundred dollars in eight minutes. Still frowning, still checking things off in his notebook, he went back to the cashier’s window, absent-mindedly fumbled his wallet out of his pocket, and said, “Better let me have—” He paused, fingered the bills in the wallet, and regretfully drew five twenties. “Just a hundred,” he said.

  “Thank you, sir.”

  He seemed to come slowly back to a full awareness of his surroundings. As the girl was sending the drawer back out to him with his twenty chips inside, he said, “Uh, miss.”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Is there a manager around?”

  “Is something wrong, sir?”

  “I want to establish a line of credit.” He seemed on the verge of dropping his wallet into the drawer, and hadn’t yet taken his chips out. “I have identification, I’m fully, uh—” He hesitated, then scooped the chips out and stuffed them distractedly into his jacket pocket.

  “Yes, sir,” the girl said. “You’ll want to talk to Mr. Flynn.”

  “Thank you,” Mackey said, and a second later did a double-take, when he remembered that Flynn was the name he was using. Thomas Flynn; he and Parker and a couple of other people all had ID in that name. “Flynn, you said?”

  “Yes, sir.” Leaning forward so her hair was touching the glass, she looked and pointed down to Mackey’s left, saying, “You’ll find his door along this wall, sir.”

  “My name’s Flynn,” Mackey said.

  The girl gave him a blank smile. “Well, isn’t that a coincidence,” she said.

  “It’s an omen,” Mackey told her. “I have a feeling I’m going to make some money tonight.”

  “Well, I hope you do, sir. Should I tell Mr. Flynn you’re coming to see him?”

  He seemed to think about it, then to make a solid decision. “Yes,” he said. “I might as well be prepared.”

  “Thank you, sir.” She reached for a phone beside her, and Mackey moved away from her window.

  Dalesia, winning most of the time on Don’t Pass and losing all of the time on nine, was slowly turning his hundred dollars over to the house. When the dice came around to him, he elected not to shoot but to pass them on to the next player, and while doing so, noticed Mackey walking along the wall toward a brown wooden door.

  There was a man in a black suit, black tie, and white shirt standing near the door, watching the action the way a cop on a beat watches cars go by. When Mackey approached he turned and gave him a flat look and said, “Can I help you, sir?”

  “I’m supposed to see Mr. Flynn,” Mackey said.

  “Yes, sir. And your name was?”

  Mackey gave a half-apologetic smile. “Flynn,” he said.

  The man’s face wasn’t meant for smiling, but he tried. “Well, that’s a coincidence,” he said.

  “I guess it is.”

  The man reached for a black wall phone next to the door. “Related, by any chance?”

  “You never know, do you? I’ll have to ask.”

  “Yes, sir.” Into the phone, he said. “There’s a Mr. Flynn out here to see you. Fine.” Hanging up, he said, “Go right on in.”

  “Thanks.” Mackey said as the door began to buzz. He pushed it open, the buzzing stopped, and he entered an ordinary receptionist’s office, ordinary in every way except that it was windowless. Several framed photographs of Tony Florio in his boxing days were on the walls. At a green-metal desk sat an ordinary receptionist, who smiled brightly and said, “Mr. Flynn?”

  “That’s right. I guess it’s some coincidence, huh?”

  “I guess so,” she said. “Mr. Flynn’s on the phone long-distance just now, but he’ll be with you in a very few minutes.”

  “Thank you.”

  She extended a large document toward him. “While you’re waiting, would you mind terribly filling this out? It could save you some time.”

  The document was a four-page credit questionnaire. “Of course,” he said. “Of course.”

  She pointed to a library table on the side wall. “I think you’d be comfortable there, Mr. Flynn.”

  “I’m sure I would.”

  The questionnaire wanted to know everything but his attitude about fucking sheep. He filled it out in a tiny crabbed hand, keeping the lies generally realistic, avoiding old gags like having a checking account in the Left Bank of the Mississippi, and when he was finished he gave the questionnaire back to the receptionist, who smiled her gracious thanks and carried it at once inside to her long-distance-telephoning boss.

  The magazines available to read were Forbes and Business Week. Mackey read about businessmen for five minutes or so, until a buzzer sounded on the receptionist’s desk. “Mr. Flynn will see you now, Mr. Flynn,” the receptionist said, and got to her feet to open the door for him to the inner office.

  Mr. Flynn was a short balding man who had put on some weight but who moved as though he were short and skinny. He wore a tan jacket and a blue-and-red bow tie, and he had come around his desk to give Mackey a firm but friendly handshake. The questionnaire was open on the desk, and Mackey could tell by Flynn’s outgoing manner that he had called the local phone number Mackey had given—as being his company’s “local leased personal premises,” as he had put it on the form—and had been told the story by Parker at the other end. Parker, playing butler-caretaker, would have said that yes, this was General Texachron’s local leased apartment, where company executives could stay when business brought them to Tyler, and that yes, Mr. Thomas Flynn was currently in residence although not at the moment present in the apartment.

  But before they got to General Texachron or the other invented particulars of the questionnaire, they had to get past the coincidence of the last name. Mackey was getting heartily sick of the coincidence by now, and was wishing he’d chosen one of his other available identities instead, but eventually the casino’s Mr. Flynn had satisfied himself that the two of them weren’t blood relatives in any directly traceable way, and they could get themselves around to the matter at hand.

  * * *

  Downstairs, Mike Carlow and Dan Wycza and Stan Devers had all skipped dessert and were having a cup of coffee. Carlow, glancing at his watch, said, “Time for us to make our move.”

  Wycza put down his cup. “Right,” he said, touched his napkin to his lips, and got to his feet. While Devers and Carlow stayed at the table, Carlow with his hands out of sight on his lap, Wycza crossed the room to where Tony Florio was standing in his usual spot near the headwaiter. “Mr. Florio?”

  Florio turned around, his greeter’s smile on his face, his hand ready to come out for a brisk shake. “Yes, pal? What can I do for you?”

  Wycza moved in close to him, turning his shoulder so as to exclude the nearby headwaiter from the conversation. Pointing into the dining room, he said, “You see those two gents there at my table?”

  Florio was expecting to be asked for an autograph, which he would give, or to join these out-of-towners in a drink, which he wouldn’t do. “Yes,” he said. “I see them.”

  Wycza said, “Well, the fella with his hands under the table is holding a target pistol down there, aimed at your balls.”

  Florio stiffened. Wycza’s hand was on his elbow in a confidential way, and quietly Wycza said, “Now, don’t make a fuss, Mr. Florio, because I’ve got to tell you something. That guy is with me, and I know about him, and I know he gets very nervous in moments of stress. You follow me?”

  Florio said nothing. It never even occurred to him this might be a gag; he believed it was the truth from the instant he heard it.

  Wycza said, “For instance, if you were to make any sudden motions, or if you were to shout, anything like that, that nervous son of a bitch over there is just likely to shoot. I hate to use him, he makes me a nervous wreck myself, but the thing is he’s a marksman. He can shoot a pimple off a fly’s ass at sixty feet, he’s just amazing. If only he was calm like you and me, but he doesn’t have our size, you know? A big man like us can be calm, but a little
guy like him gets nervous.”

  Florio, in looking now at this soft-spoken baldheaded giant, was invited to notice that although Wycza had spoken of them both as being big men, Wycza was clearly much the bigger and much the stronger of the two of them. Florio, who was used to being the biggest and toughest-looking man in any gathering, wilted a bit more. Half whispering as drops of perspiration appeared on his upper lip, he said, “What do you want?”

  “Just come on over to the table,” Wycza said. “We’ll talk a little.” He nudged Florio’s arm, and Florio began to walk.

  The two of them moved through the mostly empty tables to the one where Devers and Carlow were waiting. Carlow kept his hands under the table, and Devers kept watching the employees behind Wycza’s back, none of whom were behaving in any way out of the ordinary.

  Crossing the room, Wycza staying next to him, Florio said, “I don’t really own this place, you know. I just front it for some people in town.”

  “Ernie Dulare,” Wycza said. Pleased by the startled look he got for that name, he added another: “Adolf Lozini.”

  “You know those people?”

  “Does a baby know its mother’s breast?”

  They’d reached the table. Wycza sat Florio across from Carlow, and took the remaining seat to Florio’s right. Florio said, “If you know them, then what the hell is going on?”

  “A little heist,” Wycza said. “Nothing to worry about.”

  Devers kept looking around the room. Carlow said, to Wycza, “There won’t be any trouble, will there?” He didn’t exactly act nervous, he seemed more tense, keyed up, as though at any second the rigid control might let go and he would explode.

  Wycza, reassuring him, patted his upper arm and said, “No trouble. Tony’s going to cooperate. What the hell’s a few bucks? This place manufactures money, he’ll make it all back by the end of the week.” He turned to Florio. “Isn’t that right, Tony?”

  “There’s no money down here,” Florio said. “I’m not out to cross you people, but it’s God’s own truth, there just isn’t any money down here.”

  “I want to talk to you about that, Tony,” Wycza said. “But while we talk, let’s get a phone to this table. Will you do that, Tony?”

  “A phone?”

  Devers was raising one arm, signaling a waiter. When the man came over, being deferential because the boss was sitting at this table, Devers gestured to him to listen to Florio.

  Florio hesitated, not out of a spirit of rebellion but simply out of bewilderment. Then, feeling the silence, he turned abruptly to the waiter and said, “Paul, get us a phone here, will you?”

  “Sure, Mr. Florio.”

  The waiter went away, and Wycza said, “Now, about the situation upstairs, Tony. We’ve got a man in with your manager up there right now.”

  Florio looked at him in open shock. “You what?”

  “The manager doesn’t know what’s going on yet,” Wycza said. “When you get the phone now, see, I want you to call his office up there and explain to him how he should do what our man tells him to do.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Florio said. This was the first time in the nine years’ existence of Tony Florio’s Riviera that the place had been knocked over, and the reality of it was just beginning to hit him. This was a full-blown, big-scale, professional robbery. “How many of you guys are there?”

  Wycza gave him a tight grin. “Enough,” he said, and the waiter came with the phone. They waited silently at the table as he put the phone down and walked off with the long cord to the nearest wall-jack. He plugged it in, came back to the table, picked up the phone and listened to it, replaced the receiver in the cradle, and said, “There you are, Mr. Florio.”

  “Thanks, Paul.”

  The waiter went away, and Stan Devers said, “It occurs to me the waiter’s name might not be Paul.”

  Wycza frowned slightly and said to Florio, “You wouldn’t do anything cute like that, would you?”

  “Am I crazy?” Florio spread his hands. “How heavy can you hit me for? A Monday night’s receipts isn’t worth dying for.”

  Devers, watching the waiter, said, “He seems okay.”

  Speaking softly, Wycza said to Florio, “How about the forty thousand in the safe? Is that worth dying for?”

  Florio stared. “Wha—what forty thousand?”

  “You keep forty thousand cash in the safe,” Wycza said. “Back-up money, in case anybody hits a streak on you. That’s the money we want, Tony.”

  ”You can’t walk in off the street and know about that,” Florio said. Pale circles of anger showed on his cheekbones. “Some son of a bitch in my shop is in it with you.”

  Grinning, Wycza said, “I got it from Ernie Dulare.” Then, wiping the smile from his face as though it had never existed, he said, “Now, you call your manager upstairs. Our man is in there with him, and he’s calling himself Flynn.”

  “Flynn? My manager’s name is Flynn.”

  “That’s some coincidence,” Wycza said. “Except your manager’s real name is Flynn. Call him.”

  Florio picked up the phone, and hesitated with his finger over the dial. “What do I tell him?”

  “Tell him God’s simple truth,” Wycza said. “You’re down here with a gun stuck in your crotch, and your Mr. Flynn should do what our Mr. Flynn tells him to do or you’ll start singing soprano.”

  “What if he doesn’t believe me?”

  “It’s up to you to be convincing,” Wycza said. “Dial.”

  Upstairs, Mackey and Mr. Flynn had gone through the extra support Mackey had in that he’d been recommended to the place by Frank Faran, Mackey telling a couple of stories about himself partying with Frank Faran in Las Vegas, stories that were absolutely true except for the names of the participants. Now they were working their way through the questionnaire Mackey had filled out, and Mackey was beginning to wish he’d kept a carbon copy for himself; it was one thing to fill four pages of stupid questions with on-the-spot lies, and another thing to remember all those lies ten minutes later.

  Then the phone rang, at long last, and Mackey relaxed a little. The call was late, and he’d been beginning to wonder if maybe something had gone wrong somewhere, if maybe the casino was onto the whole ploy somehow and maybe this chummy Mr. Flynn here was just stalling him with a lot of credit questions while waiting for the cops to show up. But then the phone did finally ring, and Mackey relaxed and put his hand inside his jacket, closing his fingers around the butt of the pistol there.

  “Yes, Mr. Florio.” Flynn nodded and smiled at Mackey, asking him to wait just a second. “Yes, he’s here right now.” A surprised smile toward Mackey: Why, Mr. Florio himself knows about you. Then, a look of bewilderment: “What? What’s that?”

  Mackey smiled and took the pistol out. He showed it to Flynn and calmly put it away again.

  Flynn was sitting straighter in his chair. “I don’t understand, Mr. Florio.” Listening, blinking, he seemed like a man who didn’t want to understand. “Do you realize what you’re asking me to—”

  Mackey couldn’t make out the words, but he could hear the angry buzz of Florio’s voice in Flynn’s ear. Flynn blinked, swallowed, began to nod his head. “Yes, sir,” he said. “Yes, sir, of course, I just wasn’t think— Yes, sir.” His face pale as bread dough, he extended the receiver across the desk to Mackey, saying, “He wants to talk to you.”

  “Thanks, cousin.” Mackey took the phone, said into it, “Yeah, I’m here.”

  It was Florio’s voice, recognizable and bitter, that said, “One of your friends wants to talk to you.”

  Mackey waited, and Dan Wycza came on a few seconds later, saying, “Everything fine?”

  “Couldn’t be better,” Mackey said.

  “Then we might as well get started,” Wycza said.

  “Right. Hold on.” Mackey kept the mouthpiece near his face so Wycza would be able to hear him, and said to Flynn, “I have two friends outside. I want you to bring them in here.”

 
“You want me to go out and—”

  “No no no, Mr. Flynn,” Mackey said. “You call your man on the door out there. Tell him two gents are coming over and he should let them in. And then tell your receptionist to buzz for them.”

  “All right,” Flynn said, but there was something in his voice and in his eye that Mackey didn’t like. “Hold it,” he said. Flynn gave him an attentive look.

  Mackey said into the phone, “I think this fella here needs a pep talk from Florio. He looks like he’s nerving himself up to something.”

  Flynn, all wounded innocence, said, “I wouldn’t—” but Mackey shushed him with a wave of his hand.

  Wycza said, “Hold on,” and turned to Florio. He said, “My man Flynn says your man Flynn doesn’t understand the situation. He might have something cute in mind.”

  Angrily, Florio said, “Over my—” and stopped.

  “That’s right,” Wycza said. Extending the phone toward Florio, he said, “Maybe you ought to tell him that yourself.”

  Mackey, hearing Wycza, held his phone out toward Flynn. “Your master’s voice,” he said.

  Flynn took the phone doubtfully, held it to his ear as though it might bite him, and said, “Mr. Florio?”

  The phone bit him. Looking pained, Flynn tried to break in three or four times with no success, and finally managed to say, “Of course, Mr. Florio. You’re the boss, Mr. Florio, I wouldn’t— No, sir, I won’t.”

  Mackey waited, looking around the room. According to Faran’s sketch, that door on the right should lead to the vault room where the money was kept, and the door on the left should lead to the employees’ parlor where the dealers and stickmen took their smoke breaks and where the three armed guards hung out when they weren’t out patrolling the floor. Coming at the joint this way, through Florio and Flynn, they were by-passing all the security devices, the armed guards and the timelocks and the buzzer alarms and all the other protective arrangements that had been set up around here.

  It was Parker’s plan, to Faran’s inside information, done without any casing at all, and it was working just beautifully.