17
“HOW IS THE hand?” Primo asked when he met Mike at the station house the next morning. “The pain, it is keeping you up?”
“Pain?” Mike said, seeming confused. He knew he wasn’t looking so good. He hadn’t shaved and there were deep circles under his eyes. “Oh, yeah, the hand. Hurts some.”
“Uh-huh,” Primo said. “You no look so good. Maybe you need a day off.”
“Ginny,” Mike mumbled as if he hadn’t heard. “She had a … problem at the place an’ they … well. She left.”
“The girl? The one you sent the flowers?”
“Yeah.”
“Mamma mia. You are in love! Look at you. You are like shit from the goat. We will find this girl, no?” Primo said, as if that were a matter of course.
“And there’s another thing,” Mike added with a weary but satisfied tone. “I learned a little something about the Bottler.”
“How, the hell did…?”
“I went after a guy, a guy that Ginny was with … at the house. He needed some straightening out, so…”
“So you straightened him,” Primo said with a little grin. “But why do I think he is not so straight really.”
“Yeah, well,” Mike said. “Truth is I nearly killed the bastard. Came that close.”
“And? What does that have to do with this Bottler?”
“Everything,” Mike said, then took a deep breath and told Primo what he’d learned from Johnny Suds.
* * *
“Okay, so we find the girl—” Primo started to say once Mike had finished.
“Maybe,” Mike said as he dropped into his chair.
“What is this maybe? We will find her. That is all there is to that.”
“I talked with the captain,” Mike replied. He stopped to check on who was within earshot. “He wants us to see that cop; the one that got stomped by those two guys.”
“Shit! I was hoping maybe we could get out of that.” Primo threw up his hands “When it rains it comes in the cats and dogs.”
“You mean it pours,” Mike said. “Suppose you’re right about that.”
“Right. It pours in cats and dogs.”
Mike gave a slight shake of his head. “So whadya mean by that anyway? What else is going on?”
Primo handed him a note. It was written in Italian. The letters were big and jagged like stabs at the page. Whatever it said, it was no love letter. “What’s it say?” Mike asked, turning it over to check the other side. “How’d you get it?”
Primo pulled a knife from his pocket. It was a stiletto, with a long, thin blade and an ebony handle. Primo raised it and jabbed it down into Mike’s desk, where it quivered dramatically, which seemed to please him somehow. “The note, it was stuck to my door with that. To make a long tale a short story, it says they will cut me up into little pieces and feed me to pigs.” Primo shrugged. “The usual thing.”
“Pigs?” Mike said, not entirely sure that Primo wasn’t making one of his jokes.
“Pigs. Sure. They eat anything, bones, shoes, brains. They are not so picky eaters.”
Mike grimaced. “Nasty. The Black Hand?”
“Of course. They no forgive so easy. For them it is vendetta.”
Mike grinned at that, which drew a puzzled frown across Primo’s brow. “What is so funny? They want to turn me into pig shit and you think that is funny?”
“Exactly! That’s what’s funny, partner. You’re pig shit already.” Mike pulled the knife from his desk and examined the hole it left with a frown. He fingered the needle-sharp point of the blade. “I suppose you thought about fingerprints?”
“I put the talcum powder on it when it was still in the door. No prints. They are angry, but not so stupid.”
“Listen,” Mike said, turning serious. “You can stay with me if you want. I got room. Probably be a lot safer.”
“With you?” Primo shook his head and said with a smile, “You draw trouble like flies on the shit. I would be a safer man in the Tombs.”
“Could be, but don’t say no. Say maybe at least. Think about it.”
“Maybe then.”
“Good. The door’s always open, partner.”
Primo didn’t say anything. He just stuck his hand out to shake. Mike took it, standing as he did.
“Now what,” Primo said after an overlong silence.
“Now we solve the case, find the girl, put a muzzle on that stupid cop, and try to keep you from getting fed to the pigs.”
Primo laughed. “Easy. What are we doing after lunch?”
* * *
They headed toward the hospital, but made a detour to the shop where they’d beaten the cop, whose name they had learned was Bascomb. The shop owner was happy to see them. “The cops was just here,” he said with a glance out the window. “No more’n two minutes ago. Listen, I told ’em all about the two gangsters beat that cop in here. Eastmans they were; one tall an’ dark with a scar on ’is cheek, the other shorter an’ heavier with bandy legs an’ a tooth missin’.”
“Very convincing,” Mike said with a somewhat relieved grin. “Anything else?”
The storekeeper told them everything he’d told the cops, pretty much a straight description of what had actually happened while leaving out any references to him and Primo. There was no need to embellish that really. They thanked the man and Mike made an effort to give him ten dollars, a week’s wage for a man like him, but he refused. “Worth ten bucks just to see that bastard get a good beatin’,” he told them almost wistfully. “You boys go on an’ don’t worry ’bout me.”
* * *
They started toward the hospital, but stopped after a couple of blocks. Mike looked at Primo, who seemed to know what he was about to say. “What the hell are we going to see that bastard for?”
“You are saying what I’m thinking,” Primo said, nodding. “We tell the captain Bascomb was sleeping when we went.”
“Sleeping. Yeah, he was sleeping an’ the doctor said not to disturb him.”
“Sleeping, yes. So what now?”
“I was thinking we should stop back at that store,” Mike said once they were outside the hospital. “We forgot to ask him about the Bottler.”
“The clerk? Why bother?” Primo said. “I thought you got everything from that Suds guy.”
“Ya don’t ask you don’t get any answers, right? Besides we did him a favor, maybe he’ll help.”
The shopkeeper was surprised to see them again. He was still friendly, if a bit puzzled. “You boys forget somethin’?”
“We have returned to ask the thing we wanted yesterday,” Primo said, which brought a wary cloud to the shopkeeper’s face. “We are looking for a man. He is called the Bottler, a strange name I know, but maybe you have heard it?”
The shopkeeper looked from Primo to Mike as if measuring them before he replied. They caught his look, but said nothing, watching as the man made his decision. Mike could almost see the gears turning in his head. He’d helped them out with the Bascomb situation. He might figure they were even. So they waited, hoping that the weight of silence might do what words could not. The shopkeeper took a swipe at the marble countertop with a damp rag he’d been holding, rubbing at a stain on the stone. He looked up from his countertop after a moment and took a deep breath as if he was about to plunge into icy waters. He smiled then in a resigned sort of way and said, “Ain’t you boys had enough trouble?”