Ciglio’s looked different in the daylight. Without the spotlights, the gold letters came off as plain garish. Even the diners at the outside tables looked somehow cheap.
Inside, the piano man was still warming up – a staccato tinkling that mimicked my pulse. Kitchen smells came at me – oil and garlic and cream, the scent of a heavy sauce, fetid to my senses in that moment. The maitre d’ saw me right away, the same man as before, and out of the corner of my eye I registered someone at a far table glance up when he moved towards me. Looking properly, I saw it was Gilardino.
A signal went to the back and then Moe Rosenberg was at the kitchen doorway. Seeing him appear, the maitre d’ returned to his lectern and his reservation list – clued in to what was going down, happy enough to bury his head. Rosenberg made no sign for me to approach, just waited on me, jangling a set of keys in his right hand. I took a breath and started walking towards him, all of it so subtle that the sprinkling of other patrons didn’t even notice what was happening. As I passed him, Gilardino rose from his table, leaving a half-eaten plate of linguine and a white napkin covered in orange stains. He fell in step behind me.
Rosenberg turned and made his way down the dark corridor to the same back room. I followed him without a word, steeling myself to see Siegel again. Brooding on what to say. Praying my gamble was right.
The room was empty.
‘Where’s Siegel?’
‘Ben’s got bigger concerns than you. So do I, but, short straw right here, I guess.’
Relief washed over me. Behind it came a sense of disappointment.
The harsh crack of the back door bolt being thrown snapped me to attention. Gilardino pulled the door open and went down the corridor towards the rear entrance. Rosenberg waved one finger, nonchalant, signalling for me to go too. Suddenly the outside door was open and light flooded in, blinding me a moment.
They led me out into the rear lot that had been my first introduction to Ciglio’s. The dented garbage cans and patchedup paintwork were more revealing of the nature of the place than the frontage. A custom Chrysler limousine was idling at the kerb, a man behind the wheel I didn’t know. Gilardino opened the back door and pointed for me to get in. Rosenberg dropped down next to me, Gilardino riding shotgun.
We took off towards Sunset, then crossed it and continued down a cookie-cutter residential block lined with palms. We made two turns in quick succession and my sense of direction failed me, my mind a riot I was no longer in control of.
‘You write the piece?’ Rosenberg said.
‘What do you think?’
‘I think your mouth has balls enough to get you in trouble.’
He took a cigar from his pocket and put it to his lips.
‘What’s the rest of the scam?’ I asked. ‘You said to me—’
‘Don’t tell me what I said. You didn’t write a word, did you?’
‘My editor would never have gone along with it.’ I felt disgust as soon as I said it, an abdication of responsibility I never meant to take. ‘I would never have gone along with it,’ I added, my voice sounding small.
The car turned sharply and Rosenberg waited it out before lighting his cigar. A fleck of half-burned tobacco settled on his necktie, blue-grey smoke diffusing around the cabin. ‘You told him to run,’ he said.
He let the words hang there, my pulse accelerating into the red.
‘You told him to run, didn’t you?’
I kept my eyes on the street, trying to figure where we were, fearing where we were headed. Wondering if Tanner had eyes on me still.
‘That was a bad decision.’ He flicked ash into the silver ashtray in his door.
We drove a short while longer, backstreets exclusively, time slipping. I didn’t notice we were in an alleyway until we stopped outside what looked like a warehouse. Gilardino got out and opened Rosenberg’s door for him. He gestured for me to do likewise, flashing his piece as he did.
A metal door in the warehouse wall had been opened from inside. Gilardino hustled me towards it, and the car was already leaving by the time I went in.
It was unlit inside, but I could tell the building was cavernous, the air cool and damp. It was a warehouse or loading bay of some kind, but empty. Our footfalls echoed off the brick walls, a brittle sound. Gilardino turned a lamp on and set it on the floor.
Not quite empty.
On the far side, a figure was slumped in a chair, back to me. My heart skipped, and then the guilt came on when my eyes adjusted enough to see it was a man – not Lizzie.
‘Real bad decision.’ Rosenberg started moving towards him, the man pitched sideways and unmoving.
I drew up behind the figure and knew it was Trent Bayless even before I saw his face. Rosenberg circled around him, a wide berth, and positioned himself right in front. Gilardino had slipped away into the shadows somewhere, but I heard him draw his gun.
Rosenberg summoned me with two fingers. I followed his path and could barely stand to look as Bayless came into full view. His face was a bloody mess; a dull sheen of blood caught in the lamplight. His hair was matted with clots of it. There were holes in his shirtfront where they’d burned him with cigarettes. His head was lolled to one side, and he looked ready to fall off the chair. The ropes around his wrists were barely holding him in place.
I saw his chest rise and fall, realised he was still alive, and couldn’t look any more. ‘You goddamn son of a bitch.’
‘In every sense, you did this to him.’
A faint wheeze came from Bayless’ throat.
‘Let him go. He needs a doctor. Let me take him to a hospital—’
‘He’s past that, and you know it.’
‘No.’
Rosenberg waved his hand again, not at me. Footsteps from the dark—
‘NO—’
Gilardino appeared in the lamplight and shot Bayless in the temple. The chair toppled sideways and he fell the short distance to the floor, hitting shoulder first with a soft thud.
I gripped my head, my hands like a vice. Couldn’t tear my eyes off the corpse in front of me.
Rosenberg stepped to my shoulder. ‘He tried to set up a meeting with Ben. That your idea too?’
Took me two tries to get a word out. ‘No.’
‘You sure? Because that was what marked him out in the first place. Then you telling him to run came out this morning, once we got to talking, and that was the ballgame right there.’
I screwed my eyes shut. ‘But he didn’t run.’
‘No, but it wasn’t him we needed to punish.’
My jaw trembled, from guilt as much as anger.
‘You understand?’
He took a photograph from his pocket and held it out to me between his thumb and fourth finger, cigar in the same hand. Before I could think, I slapped it away, the cigar skittering across the floor, embers sparking off the concrete, and the photograph spinning off to the side.
In a blur his hand came up and I braced for a punch, but I realised he was holding up his palm, telling Gilardino to hold off. I looked around, saw he was only a few feet behind me.
Rosenberg dropped his hand. ‘You just can’t keep out of your own way, can you?’ He folded his arms. ‘Pick it up.’
I stood there, motionless – not defiance but a fear that as soon as I bent over he’d shoot me. But he inclined his head towards where it lay, said again, ‘Pick it up.’
I backed away a couple steps and crouched down to get it, hating myself every inch of the way, keeping both men in front of me and in sight as I did. The photograph was face down. I snatched it and stood up, held it out to give back to him. ‘I don’t want it.’
‘That’s not your choice to make.’
I lowered my eyes and turned it over. It was a shot taken from distance, and hard to make out in the gloom. I held it closer, squinting, and saw Lizzie standing at the window of the Breakers Motel.
It fell from my hand.
‘Think about how you’ll feel when it’s her at your feet over there, and not a stranger.’
My eyes followed Rosenberg’s finger, almost a surprise to see Bayless’ corpse again – briefly forgotten in the shock. Fresh blood pooling under his head and creeping across the concrete.
‘You screw around this time, and it’s her next. And if you get some stupid idea like you’re indispensable, think twice. I know what you’re about, and once she’s dead, there’ll be no screw left to turn on you, so you’ll go too.’
I kept staring at Bayless, my vision losing focus, seeing only red on grey shrouded in blackness; then looking straight into the lamp, the white light burning through my eyes and searing into my brain, knowing I deserved the pain and more, and that it was only a down payment on what was to come – for them, for me, for all of us. All of us apart from Lizzie. ‘I’ll never let you lay a finger on her.’
He watched me a moment and I could feel his eyes roving over my face. ‘Do as I say and you won’t have to worry about it.’ He sounded almost conciliatory, as if the conviction in my voice unnerved him.
He nodded towards Gilardino. ‘Vincent’ll give you the next envelope. Three days to make them pay the money, but I want your piece written and ready to print inside of forty-eight hours. Bring it by Ciglio’s so I can see it. Square it all with your editor now – he presents you a problem again, you take care of it. No excuses this time.’