CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

 

 

On the way back home, I kept going over the layout, especially how it looked from Tony New’s end. I realized there were some spaces, that it was maybe not as tight as it should be, but I figured I had slid over those pretty well. I must have. The kid had bought it without much hesitation.

Well, if he wasn’t at least a little bit stupid, he wouldn’t be doing what he was doing. Right?

I didn’t answer myself.

I parked in the garage, pulled out the bag, went in the back. In the living room the blinds were closed. I discovered that Tony New was not quite as stupid as I’d thought.

He was sitting quietly on the couch. Shithead was standing close by.

Holy fucking—

“Gee, I’m sorry,” I said, trying to sound a lot calmer than I felt. “I keep forgetting to get that extra key made for you.”

“Don’t need no key.”

“Shut up, shithead,” the kid said.

“It’s always a pleasure to see you,” I said. “You know, mi casa es su casa, and all that, but what’s going on? I thought—”

“I don’t care what you thought. There’s been a change.”

“But—”

“Shut up, old man, and sit down.”

It was my living room, but I accepted the invitation anyway. As I sat in the wing chair, with the bag of dope at my feet, I wished the wings would start to flap and float me out of there.

Instead, the phone rang. I started to get up, but the kid silently pointed me back down. He went into the kitchen and answered it. After a couple of minutes, he came back.

“That was Rudy. He said he couldn’t spot any surveillance on you.”

Mentally, I sighed. “That’s good. Isn’t—”

“No, it isn’t. It’s strange, is what it is.”

“But there wasn’t supposed—”

“Shut up, old man! I’d like to know why they let you walk loose out of there with fifteen keys of coke.”

Tony nodded and Shithead came over, picked up the bag, and set it on the coffee table. He unzipped it, looked inside, whistled appreciatively.

“Get on with it,” the kid said.

Shithead opened a small suitcase that I hadn’t noticed until then and took out a black rectangular box that was about the size of a walkie-talkie unit. He flipped a switch and held it over the bag.

“It’s hot.”

Tony New looked at me with a smile that was anything but amused and slowly shook his head. “Find it.”

One by one, the bruiser took the white bricks out of the bag and held them up to the box. It was obviously one of those gadgets that told you if there was a bug around. It figured Tony New’d have something like that. I wondered why I hadn’t thought about it before. A queasy feeling was spreading through my bowels like a triple dose of a laxative.

“That Nicholson must really think I’m dumb,” the kid said as he watched Shithead work. “If he let an old croaker like you go without a tight tail, then he either gave you thirty pounds of quinine or something, or he wired the coke.”

Well, I clearly couldn’t fault his logic. Mine, however, was looking more and more like wishful thinking, if not complete self-delusion.

With the eighth package Shithead examined, he said, “Got it!” and held it out to his boss. The kid looked disgusted and told him to open it. The bruiser got a large clear plastic bag out of his suitcase and something from his pocket that proved to be a wicked-looking switchblade when it sprang open with a swishing sound. He put the package of cocaine inside the plastic bag, carefully slit the wrapping, and let the lumps of white flakes run out. The package was half-empty when a quarter-sized object dropped out. Shithead picked it up and looked closely at it. “Homing device,” he said, handing it to the kid.

Tony New held it in his palm. He wet the tip of his index finger and touched it to the film of dust that covered the transmitter. He rubbed the stuff off inside his upper lip, paused briefly, then grunted appreciatively. “Well, it ain’t quinine. Though Nicholson is sure going to wish that it was.” He gave a brief little laugh, then stared coldly at me, holding up the device between two fingers. “Now, suppose you tell me about this.”

“I don’t know anything about it,” I said, hoping I sounded shaken, surprised, and completely innocent. I didn’t know about the other two, but the first of those qualities came through loud and clear. With good reason.

“No?”

“No.”

“You’re full of shit, old man.” Almost regretfully the kid said, “I guess I’ll just have to get my boy to ask the questions.”

Shithead yucked a couple of times, then came over and looked down at me speculatively. He still held the open knife. I felt like a Thanksgiving turkey. Now, who wants a wing?

“Really. I don’t know—” Before I got to repeat my lie, there was a knock on the door.

“Who’s that?” the kid said, looking hard at me.

“I don’t know. I can’t see through wood.”

Shithead brayed a laugh, then quickly swallowed it as he glanced at Tony New. He poked me in the shoulder with his fingertips, hard enough to cause shooting pains down my arm. Why couldn’t I remember not to be so damn wise all the time?

“Open it,” the kid said. “But stay cool.”

The bruiser pulled a gun from his pocket, which looked big enough to stop an elephant, and waved it at me. “Yeah. Be cool.”

“Shut up, shithead.”

The two of them moved out of the sight line from the door but kept me covered. I wondered who it could be. The way things were going, I figured it could’ve been anyone, from the ghost of Christmas past to a Cuban expeditionary force come to liberate the neighborhood.

Oh, shit.

It was Mrs. Bernstein, a ruffled floral apron over a faded floral dress.

“Mr. Spanner, I haven’t seen you for a while, so I just wanted to make sure you’re still coming for dinner tonight, like you promised. I made your favorite.” She smiled.

Shit.

“Gee, Mrs. Bernstein. I’m afraid something’s come up. I was just about to call you and—”

“Who’s there, Jake?” the kid said, his voice all friendly curiosity.

“Just a neighbor who—”

“Why don’t you invite the lady in?”

“No, I don’t—”

But Mrs. Bernstein had already walked happily past me into the living room.

“Are these your sons?” She smiled.

“Only if I’d had relations with a gila monster,” I muttered.

By then Mrs. Bernstein had noticed the gun. Her smile wavered, then disappeared altogether.

“What’s going on, Mr. Spanner? Are you in trouble?”

“Don’t worry. It’s nothing very serious.”

“Lady, sit down,” Tony New said, gesturing to a chair.

“Thank you, but I think I’d better—”

“Sit down!” the kid hissed.

“Mrs. Bernstein, you’d better sit down.”

She looked at me, and then at them, and then bustled her plump body over to the chair.

“I’m cooking cabbage rolls, and I must get back or else they’ll dry out.”

“Fuck the cabbage rolls, lady, and shut up!”

“Young man! I—”

“Mrs. Bernstein,” I said. “Be quiet. Please!”

I couldn’t believe it. The nightmare was becoming more and more lunatic.

Tony New looked from me to Mrs. Bernstein. By the time he got back to me again, he was smiling in a way that made me feel like rats were walking through my intestines.

“Now,” he said. “I asked you a question before we were interrupted.” He held up the transmitter.

“I told you. I don’t know anything about it.”

The kid smiled again. “Then I guess we’ll just have to ask the old lady about it.”

He nodded to Shithead, who went and hulked over Mrs. Bernstein. One of his giant paws started to finger her flabby upper arm. At the touch a small yelp escaped from her, but she stifled it. Her body was rigid. She looked at me with watery brown eyes. They looked very large behind the thick lenses of her glasses.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

“All right, all right!” I said. “I’ll tell you. Just get him away from her.”

Tony New motioned with his head and the ape stepped away, kind of disappointed. I was beginning to hate Shithead almost as much as Rudy.

“Okay. It was a setup. After the drop, the cops were going to stick with the pickup car. If you were in the car, they’d grab you right away. If not, they’d follow it until the dope got to you.”

He nodded, like it was what he’d expected. “Whose bright idea was this?”

I didn’t say anything.

“Whose?” the kid hissed.

“All right. It was mine.”

Tony New stared at me for a long time; then his lips drew back, revealing lots of tiny white teeth. I didn’t suppose they were really pointed; they just struck me that way.

“You must’ve thought you were real smart. Fucking old men.”

I kept quite. There wasn’t much I could say.

“Dear Grandfather, that cocksucker, thought he was smart. He wasn’t. What about you? You still think you are?”

“I guess not,” I said with complete sincerity. “Look. The setup is queered. You’ve got the dope. Why not just take it and go away? Tie us up, leave the transmitter, and walk out free. Hell, by the time they catch on to what’s happened, you can probably have the stuff already distributed.”

For a minute I thought he was going to go along with it; then he shook his head, with that small sinister grin of his.

“Why not?”

“Because that’s what you want me to do. Maybe that’s part of your smart little plan.”

“Oh, Jesus. I’m not that smart, for Christ sake!”

“No, you’re not, old man. But maybe Rudy missed something. Maybe cops are waiting around the corner... No. We’ll just play things like they’re scheduled. The drop’ll go down, only there’ll be something else in the bag, and you and I’ll keep the snow and go oft someplace else. And Nicholson’ll be left looking up his ass, wondering what the fuck happened.” He laughed in that pleasant way of his. He sure was a cheerful little son of a bitch.

“Then you’ll let the lady go? You don’t need to hold her.”

He smiled and shook his head.

“What for? She has nothing to do with this.”

“Insurance.”

“What?”

“I go with you. My boy stays with the old broad. That way you don’t try anything cute, like speeding or going through a red light, or something to cue the cops. If he doesn’t hear from me that everything’s okay, he finishes her.”

I heard Mrs. Bernstein suck in some air but she didn’t move or cry or say anything. I had to hand it to her; she had more spunk than I’d thought.

“Understand?” The kid smiled.

I nodded.

Shit. It was one thing to screw up when it affected you. It was something else when another person got involved. I wasn’t crazy about old Mrs. Bernstein, but if nothing else, I’d do my best to see that she got out of this. However, being something that might be considered a witness, she probably didn’t have much of a chance. Shit.

“Now just sit down, old man, and we’ll wait.”

I sat, and we waited. On the kid’s instruction, Shithead got out some simple laboratory gear from his case—an alcohol burner, a flask, some glass tubes, a thermometer—and tested samples from some of the bricks of cocaine. It looked like he was determining the melting point. Whatever he did, all the coke proved to be pure and first class. I was so glad.

At one point Mrs. Bernstein started snuffling a little.

“Don’t worry,” I tried to reassure her. “It’ll all be all right.”

She shook her head. “No, the cabbage rolls are ruined.”

About three dozen snappy remarks came to mind, but I merely smiled encouragingly.

As I watched Tony New calmly sitting on the couch, feet barely touching the floor, smoking one long cigarette after another, I thought back a couple of centuries to that afternoon, when I sat in Pershing Square and just wanted all this to be over. I still wanted that. What scared me was that I found I was no longer very interested in the way it might turn out. I’d been floating at sea, hanging onto an old log, for so long that I just wanted to let go and sink. And rest. And the hell with everything else.

“J. Spanner: Sank without a trace, in the Slough of Despond.”

I shook my head. My broken finger was throbbing. Tony New grinned coldly at me. Mrs. Bernstein shifted in her chair. Not yet, goddammit. Not just yet.

It finally got dark. Shithead found a suitcase of mine and put the coke into it. Then he filled up the original canvas carrier with a bunch of old paperbacks that were stacked in the spare room.

Tony New looked at the dramatic covers and the titles promising havoc, bloodshed, and mayhem, and shook his head. “Is this where you get your ideas, old man? It would’ve been healthier if you’d stuck to Reader’s Digest.”

For once, I had to agree with him. Hardly anybody in the Digest ever got involved with kidnapping, robbery, the cops, cocaine, or the mob. Mostly they just whittled. Or carved funny faces in apples. Sounded good to me.

The kid dropped the transmitter in with the books, zipped up the bag, and we were ready to go. But not before I had to watch Shithead tie up Mrs. Bernstein, none too gently.

There wasn’t much I could say to her, but I tried to say it. She smiled.

Shit.

Tony New and I went out the back door. It was another hot, gritty night, much like the one that had started all this. Cloud cover was low, and no stars were visible. It figured.

I had wanted to make a wish.