Fifty-to-One

by Charles Ardai

  “I’m fine,” Tricia said. “I just need to get into my sister’s locker.”

  “Actually,” Paulie said, “she doesn’t have a locker here anymore. You have to work here to have a locker, and she doesn’t. Hasn’t for a good long time. Think she’s, ah, boxing now. You know.” He playfully threw a few punches in the air. “Though she still comes by now and again to chew the fat with her old friends. Isn’t that right girls?” The two seated women nodded when he directed the question at them, though it wasn’t clear they knew just what they were agreeing with, or much cared.

  “Maybe it’s not her locker, then,” Tricia said, “but it’s a locker, and she told me to come here and empty it out for her. Locker 22?”

  Paulie’s smile grew more strained. “She told you that?” he said. “Locker 22?”

  “She left me a note,” Tricia said.

  “Can I see it?”

  “I’m afraid not,” Tricia said. “I don’t have it with me.”

  Paulie shook his head in an unconvincing pantomime of helplessness. His palms turned up and his eyebrows rose along with them. “Sorry to say, you got some wires crossed somewhere. The lockers here only go up to 20. Maybe ask your sister to come by, she and I can figure it out—”

  “I can’t,” Tricia said. “She’s...not available.”

  “Well, when she’s available again, have her call me. We’ll work it out. Maybe the three of us can get together for a drink sometime—”

  He must’ve felt the barrel of the gun poking into his gut then, through the fabric of her dress pocket, because his face fell. He looked confused first and then fear crept into his expression. “Are you serious?” he said, his voice low. “You think you can pull a gun on me in my own place?”

  “I don’t think anything,” Tricia said. “I’ve done it. Now take me to locker 22, Paulie, or I swear to god you won’t live to hear the end of this song.”

  Connie Francis’ voice drawled on in the sudden silence between them.

  Could she really do it? Could she pull the trigger in cold blood, leave this man sprawled and dying on his well-worn parquet? She doubted it—not least of all because it would mean using up her only bullet. But she made an effort to keep this from showing on her face. To look at her, you’d have thought her a hardened jailbird.

  Paulie bristled with hostility. He was bigger than she was—but the gun more than evened up the sides. “Follow me,” he said and led her through the long, narrow room to a curtained-off section in the back. The walls were lined with lockers and the numbers on them, Tricia saw, went up to 28.

  “Are you even her sister?” Paulie asked.

  “I don’t see why you’d believe me,” Tricia said, “but I am.”

  “And she really told you to come here.”

  “She left word I could find something in locker 22.”

  “She didn’t tell you what?”

  “She didn’t have the time to go into much detail,” Tricia said.

  He stopped in front of 22 with one hand on the lock. “Why didn’t she have the time?”

  “Just open the locker.”

  “What if I told you I don’t have the key?”

  “I’d shoot you,” Tricia said, “and take the key out of your pocket.”

  “Just asking,” Paulie said. He pulled out a ring of keys, opened the padlock, and stepped aside.

  Tricia drew the gun out of her pocket, leveled it at him, used it to shoo him back a few more steps. She opened the locker door without taking her eyes off him, then swiftly shot a glance inside. There were several stacks of papers—mainly letters, it looked like, along with a pile of photographs and a telegram or two.

  “What is all this stuff?” Tricia said. “And don’t say you don’t know.”

  “Colleen called it her nest egg,” Paulie said.

  Tricia reached in, grabbed the first batch of photos off the top, thumbed through them one by one. A couple slipped onto the floor. She didn’t pick them up.

  Coral was in most of the pictures, though not all. She was younger in them—these dated back a few years, clearly, maybe to when she’d first come to New York or a little after. She’d been even prettier then and her figure had looked terrific, even in candid shots like these with their bad lighting and blurred portions where one of the subjects had moved as the shutter closed. There was a man in each of the photos, not the same one every time. By and large their figures didn’t look as fine as Coral’s, but like her they seemed not at all bashful about showing them off, at least in what they’d clearly thought was the privacy of a bedroom. They were the sort of photos you could be arrested for taking, or selling, or sending through the mails, and she felt her cheeks reddening as she looked at them. She stuffed them in her pocket, waved the gun at Paulie. “What are you looking at?” she snarled. “You just stay there and don’t move.”

  “Calm down, lady,” he said. “I’m not doing anything.”

  She reached into the locker again, grabbed a handful of the letters. They were on onionskin, carbon copies of letters whose originals had been written in ballpoint pen.

  The handwriting was Coral’s.

  She glanced down at the first letter and up again at Paulie, reading it in snatches so she could keep an eye on him.

  Dearest Royal—Artie is growing up so quickly! You’d be proud of him. He’ll be a real Barrone man someday—commanding and virile, like his father. But Royal, he needs so much, and money’s so very tight. Even a small amount would help...

  She peeled back the top sheet with her thumb, crumpling it slightly.

  Robbie, the next one down began. Artie’s growing up so quickly! You’d be proud of him. He’s going to be a real Monge man someday—strong and talented, like his father. He’s a growing boy, though, and needs so much. I hate to ask you to help, but money’s tight...

  She waved the letters at Paulie, who looked more miserable than terrified now, like a magician caught with his hand up his sleeve.

  “Just how many fathers did this kid have?” Tricia said.

  “One,” Paulie said, with a measure of defensiveness in his voice. “And you’re looking at him.”

  33.

  Songs of Innocence

  “You...?”

  “Me,” Paulie Lips said. “He’s my kid.” He patted himself on the side of the face and this time the smile that emerged seemed genuine. “If you’d ever seen him, you’d know. He’s got his poppa’s chin. The poor boy.”

  “And what was your part in all...this?”

  “Someone had to take the pictures,” Paulie said.

  “You watched her go to bed with all these other men? With Monge and Barrone?” Tricia said. “The mother of your child?”

  “She wasn’t the mother of my child yet. Not in most of them, anyway.”

  “How can you live with yourself?” Tricia said. “That’s disgusting.”

  His face darkened into a scowl. “Put down the gun and say that.”

  “So you’re bigger than me, so what. Doesn’t make it less disgusting.”

  “What do you want?” Paulie said. “To stand there and insult me? Well, the gun gives you that privilege. But don’t push me too far. I could take it away from you, you know.”

  “You could try,” Tricia said.

  They faced each other down. It felt to Tricia like a scene from the circus, the lion tamer in the cage with a tiger on one barrel and a lion on the next and nothing in his hand but a little wooden chair and a whip.

  “I’m taking all this stuff with me,” Tricia said. “Colleen wanted me to have it. She’s in bad trouble and must’ve figured it could help. If you care about her at all, you won’t try to stop me.”

  “What sort of trouble?”

  “Your boss, Nicolazzo,” she said. “You probably heard he was robbed. Hell, maybe you were in on the robbery. Maybe you both were.”

  “Uh-uh,” he said. “No way. We’re not thieves.”

  “Just blackmailers.”

  “That’s right,”
Paulie said. “There’s a difference. Being guilty of the one doesn’t mean you’re guilty of the other.”

  “Sure,” Tricia said. “You’re the picture of innocence.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Well, someone took three million dollars from Nicolazzo’s safe and he’s decided Colleen knows something about it. Maybe he doesn’t think the distinction between blackmailer and thief is so crystal clear.”

  “He wouldn’t know about the blackmail,” Paulie said. “We never tried tapping him.”

  “Well, that’s something, anyway. But he’s still holding Colleen.”

  “And how will having this stuff help get her out?”

  “I don’t know,” Tricia admitted. “But if Colleen thought it would, there must be a reason. Maybe there’s something in here that could be used against Nicolazzo, or something she thinks might point to the real thief. Or at least something that points to where Nicolazzo might have taken her.”

  “You don’t even know where she is?”

  “Not right this moment, no,” Tricia said. “But I’ll find her.”

  Paulie’s stare could’ve cut glass. “You’d better,” he said.

  “Does that mean you’re going to help me?”

  “It means I’m going to forget you pulled a gun on me,” Paulie said.

  “You’ll do more than that,” Tricia said. “Get a bag.”

  She left with an old Gladstone bag in one hand, packed with the contents of the locker. The bag shielded the gun in her other hand from view as she walked out, Paulie walking before her. She wasn’t taking any chances.

  As soon as she’d reached the sidewalk and sent Paulie back up, she flagged down a cab. Paulie might let her go, as he’d promised—but he might also sneak back down and try to follow her, or think he was being cute by staying put himself but sending someone else after her, maybe one of his dancers; they certainly had time on their hands. Or he might telephone any of a number of people to tell them where she was. There were too many bad possibilities and she was determined to be far away before any of them materialized.

  The press of people running back and forth in the street made progress slow for a few blocks, but before long things cleared up and they had a clear run up Sixth Avenue to 44th Street.

  She paid the cabbie at the corner, walked the rest of the way only after he’d driven off. She climbed the stairs and knocked on the door and didn’t wait for the panel to slide open before saying, “It’s Trixie, Mike. Are you in there?”

  The door opened. Mike stood behind it, apron smeared and stained, looking much as he had the night before. The bar behind him looked much the same as well, except that instead of several solitary drinkers with their backs to her, hunched over their glasses, Tricia only saw one. She wondered if he was a holdover from last night or the sort that liked to get an early start on his drinking Sunday mornings.

  “I’m sorry to bother you, Mike, but I need a place to go through some things in private.” She dropped the Gladstone and it landed heavily on the floor, raising a puff of dust. “Any chance I could use the back room? Twenty, thirty minutes should be plenty.”

  “In private?” said a familiar voice. “I wouldn’t think you knew the meaning.”

  And turning on his barstool, Charley favored her with a baleful stare out of the one of his eyes that wasn’t swollen shut.

  “My god, Charley,” Tricia said, her hand leaping to her mouth.

  He took a swallow from the tumbler of whiskey in his hand. “You should see the other guy,” he said.

  “I think I did,” she said, “if you mean Eddie. But you look a lot worse.”

  “Thanks,” Charley said, getting down off his stool and limping toward her. His voice was thick with drink. “That’s what I needed to hear.”

  “I didn’t mean for them to—”

  “What did you think was going to happen? Eddie’d barge in and we’d have ourselves a merry little ménage a trois?”

  “Charley!”

  “If that’s what gets your motor turning, honey, you could’ve just walked in and joined us yourself. Ah, but I forget, you’re a sweet young thing and cannot leave your mother.”

  “Charley,” Tricia said, “I didn’t want you to get hurt”—but of course this wasn’t true and she knew it. Part of her had badly wanted him to get hurt. But she hadn’t envisioned it...like this. “What did you think you were doing, going to that, that...creature’s bed—”

  “Rather than the chair you so kindly left me,” Charley said. “Oh, come off it, Tricia. You know what I was doing, and you know I was right to do it. I wasn’t enjoying myself, I was trying to find a way to get us out of there.”

  Sure. And Paulie Lips was no thief, oh no, not him—just a blackmailer. Men! Singing their little songs of innocence. Could they possibly think they were convincing anyone?

  “Charley,” Tricia said frostily, “the way out of there was not hidden inside Renata Barrone’s panties. I found a way out, and it didn’t involve sleeping with anyone.”

  “Lucky you,” he said. He handed the tumbler to Mike, then unbuttoned several buttons on his shirt, reached inside, and pulled out the leather box of photographs. “But you didn’t get these, did you?”

  “How...?”

  He spread his arms and made a little unsteady bow. He really was quite drunk.

  “A gentleman never kisses and tells,” he said.

  “Renata got them for you?”

  “No,” he admitted, “I grabbed them on my way out, saw them sitting on Barrone’s dresser—but still. The point is I have them. Now, where’s my thank you? Where’s my ‘I’m sorry, Charley, I’ll never do it again?’ Huh? Tricia?”

  “I think you ought to get some sleep,” Tricia said. Taking him by the arm, she tugged him toward the back room. “We can talk about it when you’ve sobered up.”

  “Ah, sleep and sobriety,” Charley mumbled. “You see, Mike, she does care about me. You were wrong when you said all those scurrilous things about her.”

  Mike said, “I didn’t—”

  “No, I guess you didn’t, it must’ve been me.” Charley leaned heavily on Tricia, his boozy breath just inches from her nose, his bruised flesh a rainbow of purple and yellow. “You do care,” he said, “don’t you?”

  She brushed something out of her eye—a reaction to the whiskey fumes he was breathing on her, she told herself, nothing more. “Go to sleep, Charley,” she said. “You’ll feel better when you wake up.”

  “I’ll feel like hell when I wake up,” he mumbled.

  “Well, I’ll feel better,” she said. “Do it for me.”

  She deposited him heavily on the mattress and went back for the bag. By the time she returned, he was snoring.

  While he was out cold, she went through all the material in the bag. There was a great deal of it. Coral had been putting the pinch on five men in all, some of them for years; six if you counted Paulie. He really seemed to believe he was the father of her child—but who’s to say the others didn’t? And Tricia had a feeling Coral had been hitting him up for more than just locker room space.

  Thinking of Paulie as another of Coral’s marks helped answer a question that had been nagging Tricia: If Coral kept all her other incriminating materials in the locker at the Moon, why had she kept Nicolazzo’s box of photos in the glove compartment of the car she’d extorted from Barrone? The only answer that made sense was that Coral had wanted to make sure Paulie didn’t find them, couldn’t destroy them—especially the one he’d have been most likely to destroy, the photo of himself. Which suggested that Coral had wanted to have something on him.

  Of course, maybe she just liked having something on everyone she knew.

  Barrone, meanwhile, was a bit of a puzzle himself. If it was his son who had died a month ago, not him, where had Royal been for the past month? On an assignment for Nicolazzo? Or lying low somewhere, to keep away from Nicolazzo?

  And Renata—what was she doing holed up in the old man’s h
eadquarters downtown instead of living at home with her husband? Or, if she and Robbie had been on the outs (made her finger itch, indeed), why wasn’t she living at her parents’ house, or some place of her own...somewhere, anywhere, that wasn’t a Lower East Side boy’s club filled with gunmen and criminals?

  But the big question wasn’t Paulie or Barrone or Renata—it was Nicolazzo. One question, of course, was who had broken into his safe and taken the money out, and Tricia had a feeling she’d need to answer it before this was all over. But more urgently, where would the man have gone with his hostages when his location on Van Dam Street was blown?

  Tricia scoured every letter, every photograph, looking for a clue and finally she found one, near the bottom of the pile. It was in a note Barrone had sent to Coral, dated a year earlier:

  Can’t meet you in the city, it said, that’s final. N wants us all out at his place at the track while he’s waiting out the investigation. O’Malley’s getting too damn close to play games. I’ll call you with a location and you’ll come out there if you want your goddam money.

  And penciled in the margin, in Coral’s handwriting, was the information she’d presumably copied down when he’d called: AQUEDUCT, STABLE 8, STALL 3.

  Charley stirred, turned over on his side. He didn’t wake.

  Tricia took the leather box from the corner of the mattress and slipped it into her pocket beneath the gun. One way or the other she’d be prepared.

  She stepped out into the hallway.

  “How’s he doing?” Mike asked.

  “Sleeping,” Tricia said. “Probably the best thing for him.” She made her way to the front of the bar.

  “What should I tell him when he wakes up?”

  “Tell him I said to stay here. That I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  “And if he asks where you went?”

  “Tell him you don’t know. It’ll be the truth.”

  “Are you sure it’s smart to go off on your own like this?” Mike said.

  “No,” Tricia said, and went.

  34.

  Fright

  If you want to get your money’s worth from a New York City subway ride, you’ll do as the song says and take the A train, whether it’s to Sugar Hill way up in Harlem or to Rockaway Beach way down in Queens. It’s a thirty mile ride from one end to the other, the longest you can take, and it’ll occupy the better part of two hours if you let it. If you get tired before it’s over or don’t want to spring for the extra fifteen-cent fare that kicks in right before you hit the beach, you can trade the promise of sun and sand for a day of playing the ponies at the Aqueduct Race Track in lovely South Ozone Park. Or at least you could before the State Racing Commission turned over control of the track to the newly formed “New York Racing Association” in 1955. One of the first things the new association did was to shut down the Big A and launch a renovation project that promised to deliver to gamblers the most modern racetrack of the Atomic Age. Almost three years and thirty million dollars later, the project wasn’t finished and the track was still shuttered, though plenty of pockets had gotten handsome new linings along the way. Mostly in nearby Ozone Park, which was South Ozone Park with redwood instead of aluminum siding on the walls but just as much garlic in the marinara sauce.