361

by Donald E. Westlake

  He said, “The big moment, eh, boy?” He was like an actor, all made up in his starchy costume, ready to go on.

  He sat down on the edge of the bed and looked at the empty bottle standing beside the ashtray on the floor. He said, “You aren’t juiced, are you?”

  “No.”

  “Good. I want to give you a rundown on these people.”

  I lit a cigarette and waited. If he felt like talking, I could listen.

  He said, “There’s thirty-eight people going to be here, not counting you and me. Nick Rovito and Irving Baumheiler and Little Irving Stein are here because I’m here. There’s seven other guys here because those three are. And twelve more here because of the seven. And sixteen because of the twelve. You see?”

  I nodded.

  “The point is, it’s Nick and Irving and Little Irving you got to watch for. Those three. By you, they’re the only ones here. Nick Rovito and Irving Baumheiler and Little Irving Stein. You met them, right?”

  “Not the last one. Little Irving.”

  “Oh. Little guy, baldheaded. You’ll recognize him.”

  “All right.”

  “Fine. Now, all you do is stay with me. You don’t have to talk unless you feel like it. The less said the better, maybe. But stick with me, at least till the talking’s done. You got to pee, do it now.”

  I shook my head.

  “You sure?”

  “Goddamn it.”

  “Okay, okay. Just so you know. You got to stay right with me. Right side, you see? On my right side.”

  “All right.”

  “You got your brother’s Luger?”

  “The other one’s smaller. The revolver.”

  “Where is it?”

  I pointed at the dresser. “Top drawer.”

  “Wear it. Where you can reach it, where you can show it. But not where you can’t hide it. You know what I mean?”

  “In my belt, at the side.”

  “Okay, fine.” He stood up, smoothed the wrinkles out of his jacket and trousers. I reached off the bed for the ashtray and put it on my chest. He said, “Don’t get me wrong. Nobody’s going to shoot nobody. But maybe somebody wants to know if you’re carrying, you see? And you are.”

  “Okay.”

  He walked around the room, blowing cigar smoke like a big cattleman. “There’s two kinds of people in this world, Ray,” he said. “There are leaders, and there are followers. And there’s only the one kind of follower, but there’s all kinds of leaders. There’s glorious leaders that take a whole goddamn country over the cliff, and there’s ward leaders that wouldn’t last a day without the snow-shovel patronage. And all kinds of leaders in between, you see what I mean?”

  “I see what you mean.” It was a phrase I’d heard him use before. He was talking now because he was nerved up. I didn’t even have to make believe I was listening.

  “Now most of these guys that are going to be here tonight,” he said, “they’re what you might call middle-ground leaders. They can lead a bunch of followers fine, just so long as somebody else tells them how. Somebody else like Nick and Irving and Little Irving, you know what I mean?”

  I looked up at the ceiling and blew cigarette smoke at it. The ashtray rode my chest. Kapp prowled around the room, talking to let off steam. “Most of these guys,” he said, “these middle-ground leaders, they’ve been around straight on through since the thirties. But their top men, like Nick and the Irvings, they’ve been out of commission for a while. So the rest of these guys have just drifted. Some of them are with the mob now, way down at the bottom of the list, where the crumbs fall. They’ll be here, because they want to move up a notch. And they figure Nick or one of the Irvings for their real boss anyway, not one of these thin, slick snotnoses like they have today. So there they are, they’ve already got a little chunk of the organization in their pocket. When the time comes, they consolidate that chunk and then maybe send a couple arms to help straighten out some other neighborhood somewhere. See what I mean?”

  “Yeah.” I moved the ashtray off my chest and sat up for a while.

  “And the other kind of guy we’ll see,” he said, “is the independent. New York’s a big apple. There’s independents working right inside the city limits, not even paying off to the regular organization. A neighborhood book, a little quiet unionizing, one thing and another. All off in little corners, out in Brooklyn and Queens. Small-time leaders again. They want to be part of the mob, if Nick and the Irvings and me are running it.”

  “Yeah.”

  “We got half an organization already,” he said. “All we do is grab the other half. Like plucking a peach.” He laughed. “You know what I mean? Like plucking a peach.”

  Over our heads people were walking back and forth. Kapp looked up at the ceiling. “I better go up,” he said. “You come up as soon as you can.”

  “Yeah.”

  He went to the door and opened it. Then he looked back at me and closed it again and said, “You sore at something, boy?”

  “Nothing special.”

  He shook his head and grinned at me. “You’re a surly bastard,” he said.

  “I’m the strong silent type.”

  He widened his eyes. “You sore about that little trick on the dock?”

  “No.” I swung my legs over the side. “The hell with it. I’m not sore at anything.” I put the ashtray on the dresser and got out Smitty’s gun. It was full again. The barrel was cold.

  “Get dressed up sharp,” Kapp told me.

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  “Surly as they come.” He went out, grinning and shaking his head.

  I put on a dark gray suit and a light gray tie and black shoes. Square shirt collar. I stuck Smitty’s gun inside my belt around on the left side, with the butt forward. So I could reach over with my right hand and get it. Then I went upstairs.

  Most of them were there. The archway between the two rooms was wide, almost as wide as the rooms. The chairs were set up informally around the two rooms, but so that everybody could see everybody else and nobody had their back to anybody else. The poker players had quit. People in tight suits and fat grins were shaking hands and showing their teeth. Three chauffeurs were doubling as bartenders, bringing glasses of beer or House of Lords out from the kitchen. All thirty-eight were talking. Most of them were smoking cigars. The rest were smoking cigarettes. I lit one myself and went around the wall to Kapp. He was with Rovito and a little baldheaded guy with a big nose.

  Kapp put his arm around my shoulders and said, “You remember Nick.”

  “Sure.”

  We nodded at each other, and Rovito smiled first.

  Kapp motioned the cigar hand at the other one. “And this is—”

  “Little Irving Stein,” I said. I nodded at him. “Nice to meet you.”

  “You reckanize me? Sure, why not?” He poked Kapp’s elbow. “Did I tell you? I got a broad works for me, she does nothin’ but read books for a mention of Little Oiving. I put the covers on the living room wall. Mostly paperbacks, you know? Half the wall I got already. You think they forgot? Nobody forgot, don’t let ’em kid you. They’re still grateful, Ed, they still got a soft spot in their hearts for the selfless bums kept them in booze all those years in the desert. Ain’t that right, Nick?”

  Nick showed teeth, and didn’t quite look down at Little Irving. Kapp said, “Well, the hell, let’s get going.” He turned and put his cigar on the edge of an ashtray and then straightened again and clapped his hands. “Cell and block!” he shouted. “Cell and block!”

  A lot of people laughed, and then it got quiet.

  Kapp said, “Let’s all sit down, what do you say?”

  It was the same as any bunch of people at a meeting. Chairs squeaking around, people finishing conversations. Then there was the last cough, and silence.

  There were five of us standing, thirty-five of them seated. Kapp leaned against the archway between the rooms, his arms folded and his cigar pointing at the ceiling. I stood to his r
ight and back just a little. Nick Rovito stood leaning against the wall near the corner diagonally to my right. Irving Baumheiler, a very fat man in a vest with his thumb in the vest pocket, stood behind a chair facing me, midway between Nick and the opposite side of the arch. Against the far wall in the other room stood Little Irving Stein.

  Except for me, there wasn’t a man in the room under fifty-five. Most of them were the other side of sixty. Gray hair, dyed hair, and no hair. Half of them in new out-of-date clothes. All of them watching, smoking, waiting.

  Kapp motioned to one of the chauffeurs, in the doorway to the kitchen. He came over with a tray and Kapp took a House of Lords. So did I. It was quiet.

  Kapp broke the silence. He looked at the full glass in his hand and said, “There’s a lot to tell in this little glass. What’s in it made a lot of guys a lot of dough. People who didn’t want it said nobody else should have it, and then it made some other people even more dough.” He grinned at the glass. “Or maybe the same people, who knows? I made my share out of it when they said it wasn’t legal. Then they grabbed me for not splitting with them on money they didn’t want me to make. And said it was legal after all. And then I went to a place where they didn’t serve it, legal or otherwise. Fifteen years without a drop, boys. That’s a hell of a long trip to take on a water wagon.”

  It was a water-glass, half full. He downed it in three swallows, and tossed it empty, underhand, across the room to the chauffeur in the doorway. Nick Rovito said, low, “Get on with it, Eddie.”

  “That was the ceremony, Nick. The christening. Gents, I want you to meet my boy. My son, goes by the name of Ray Kelly.” Then he pointed the cigar at face after face in a counterclockwise circle around the room, and called off the name of every man there.

  I watched for the first seven, my blank face and their blank faces, and then the hell with it. I drank the House of Lords from eight to twenty-one, turned and put down the empty glass on a table from twenty-two to twenty-four, lit a cigarette till thirty-three, and watched the last five. “And that, Nick,” he finished, “was the introduction.”

  Nick didn’t say anything. He didn’t move.

  Kapp inhaled cigar smoke and blew it out again. “They said liquor was illegal,” he said, talking to the smoke this time, “and then they said it wasn’t. But a lot of money was made while it was. Now, who knows what else they may decide is legal? How about Mary Jane? Ray, what do they call it now? Marijuana.”

  “Pot,” I said.

  “Ugly. All right, what about it? No after-effects, less habit-forming than tobacco or liquor. Maybe we’ll wake up one morning and it’s legal.”

  A guy to the left muttered, “They better not.” A few others laughed.

  Kapp nodded at him. “Yeah, Sal, I know what you mean. The same with off-track horse betting, huh? Or all of gambling, like Nevada. All over the country. Maybe so, some day. Or whores in ghettos, like they tried in Galveston and some other places.”

  Little Irving said, “What’s the point, Eddie?”

  “The point? I don’t see why we shouldn’t figure it all legal right now, that’s the point. Retroactive, you know what I mean? Like their stinking income taxes. You see what I mean?”

  They grinned and nodded and shifted around in their chairs, relaxing, puffing on their stogies, grinning at one another. Nick grinned, too. He said, “And that was the joke, huh, Eddie?”

  Kapp said, “Right you are, Nick. And now we get to the pie.”

  They quieted again. Kapp said, “Let’s get the size of the pie straight. It isn’t the country. It isn’t the east. It’s New York City. And the stuff around it, Jersey City and Long Island and the rest.”

  Somebody said, “Greater New York.”

  “That’s the word.”

  Somebody else said, “Why so modest, Eddie?”

  Kapp said, “You tell them, Irving.”

  Baumheiler cleared his throat and took his thumb out of his vest pocket. He said, “I mention to you gentlemen five names. Arnold Greenglass. Salvatore Abbadarindi. Edward Wiley. Sean Auchinachie. Vito Petrone. These gentlemen are old friends of ours, of most of ours. They are our contemporaries, more fortunate than we in not having had their careers interrupted in the late thirties or early forties. They would still be considered our friends. They, and others of our friends, are now operative at the national and regional levels. They agree with us that we deserve Greater New York more than the group that now has it, contingent of course on our proving our ability by taking it from the incumbents. National and regional organizations, as well as local organizations from other centers, will not interfere in the struggle. We have their assurances on this point. This is based on our own assurances that we harbor no ambitions beyond Greater New York.”

  “For the moment,” said the guy who’d spoken up before.

  Baumheiler looked severely at him. “For ever,” he said. “We are not, and will not be, a rival organization. We are part of the existent organization, and shall continue to be so.”

  Little Irving Stein said to the ambitious one, “You ought to know better, Kenny.”

  Kenny, who was at least as old as Stein and twice the size, shifted uneasily in his chair. “I just wanted to get it straight,” he said.

  Kapp said, “If we made a move like we wanted a bigger pie, they’d stop us from getting any pie at all. And they could, any time they wanted. Right, Nick?”

  Nick nodded heavily. “That’s right,” he said. “My people understood that already.”

  “Mine do, now,” said Little Irving. He glared at Kenny.

  Kapp said, “We know who these punks are, this bunch that Irving called the incumbents. We know them from the old days, right? They shined our shoes in the old days, am I right?”

  Somebody said, “Office boys.”

  “That’s the word,” said Kapp. “Office boys. Soft easy-living punks. They ain’t in the rackets, they’re a bunch of businessmen. You know what I mean? They live quiet, they send each other inter-office memos. They’re a bunch of accountants. Am I right?”

  Most of them nodded or said, “You’re right.”

  “Accountants,” repeated Kapp. “Office boys. They’re afraid of muscle, they’re afraid of the noisy hit. A quiet hit is what they like, an old lady’s hit. Arsenic in the five o’clock tea, you know what I mean?”

  They laughed.

  “Sure,” said Kapp. He was laughing with them. “An old lady’s hit. They’re a bunch of old ladies. They’re soft. They hear a loud noise, they think it’s a backfire. On the payroll they don’t have even one good demo man. Huh? Am I right?”

  “The only bombs thrown around New York,” said somebody, “are by amateurs.”

  “We ought to hire them, that’s what I say,” said Kapp. He got a laugh on that one, too. A bunch of old friends, getting set up together, getting along.

  Kapp motioned to the chauffeur in the kitchen doorway. “Time for a round,” he said.

  Glasses came around and everybody was noisy for a minute, and then Kapp said, “As I was saying.” Silence. He smiled into it. “As I was saying, these pretty people are soft. They’re soft. Do they know we’re coming? Sure they do. Are they scared? So scared, boys, they’ve been using the noisy hit. I swear to God. They’ve been trying for Ray here, for my boy. They gunned his foster father, Will Kelly. You boys remember Will Kelly.”

  They all agreed, they remembered Will Kelly.

  Kapp said, “They tried to gun me, too, on my way out of D. Ever hear of anybody try to gun somebody? They missed! They don’t even know how!”

  Nick Rovito said, “We’ve got the point, Eddie.”

  “I want to be sure of that,” Kapp told him. “We aren’t up against people like the Gennas or Lepke or any of Albert A’s boys or anybody like that. We’re up against a bunch of bush leaguers. We’re up against a goddamn P.T.A. Okay.” He became suddenly brisker, more businesslike. “Okay,” he said. “They’re in, and we’re out. And we’re not gonna get in their way. We’re
gonna get in our way, or not at all.”

  Baumheiler said, “Remember Dewey, Ed. You do not want to stir things up too much.”

  “How much does it take, Irving? We want them out. We want us in. How much do we have to stir to get what we want? I promise you, I won’t stir any more than that.”

  Baumheiler chewed slowly on his cigar. “I don’t like the idea of too much noise, Eddie,” he said. “Bombs going off, lots of bullets, lots and lots of hits. I don’t like such an idea. And I am not an old lady.”

  Nick Rovito said, “What worries you, Irving?”

  “Noise, Mr. Rovito. I do not—”

  “You can call me Nick, Irving.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Rovito. I do not like—”

  Kapp said, “Irving, are we going to get along here or aren’t we?”

  “We can discuss the situation, Eddie, surely.”

  “On a first-name basis, Irving. When we’re back in, you and Nick can hate each other some more. But right now we got to work together.”

  “We’ve always been able to work together in the past,” said Baumheiler, with a side glance at Nick, “despite our differences.”

  “Stick with first names, Irving. We’re all old friends.”

  Baumheiler shrugged heavy shoulders. “If you think best, Eddie, then of course. To answer your question—Nick—I do not like noise. I do not like the idea of the State Crime Commission handing me a subpoena. I do not like the idea of being hauled, like Frank Costello, before a televised Congressional investigation. I do not like the idea of Federal accountants interesting themselves overmuch in my affairs. This is a different time, a different world. Our former associates are not used to noise, I agree. However, the citizenry is equally unused to noise. We would find them perhaps less tolerant than was once the case. I recommend circumspection.”