TWENTY-FIVE

At dusk, she sat in the half-full parking lot of the Tick-Tock Diner, engine off, watching the traffic on Route 3, the lights of Manhattan in the distance. With the dark had come a light snow. The diner’s Christmas lights reflected off the wet blacktop.

The man on the phone had told her five o’clock, but she’d been here since four, parked in the shadows at the far end of the lot, occasionally running the engine for heat. The .38 was beneath a newspaper on the passenger seat.

At six thirty, a new Impala glided into the lot, did a slow circuit, and parked close to the diner. The engine and headlights cut off. No one got out.

After ten minutes, the Impala’s window slid down. The driver scanned the lot, looked at his watch. The window went back up.

She waited him out. Fifteen minutes later, he got out of the car, a short, heavily built man in a suit and overcoat. He looked around as he crossed the lot, hands in his pockets, and went up the flagstone steps to the diner entrance.

She put the .38 in her coat pocket, got out of the car. Through the diner windows, she could see him stop at the register and speak to the female cashier. She pointed, and he moved off.

Crissa went up the steps and inside, saw the driver turn into an alcove at the far end of the diner. She followed and came to a short hallway with a pay phone, MEN and WOMEN doors facing each other. She gave it a moment, waiting for someone to come in or out, then pushed open the MEN door. No one at the urinals. In the mirror, she could see the driver standing in a stall, the door open. All the other stalls were empty. He flushed, zipped up.

She came up behind him, put the muzzle of the .38 to the back of his head, crowded him into the stall. She pushed the door shut behind her, bolted it.

“Easy with that thing,” he said.

She reached around, felt under his suit jacket. “What’s your name?”

“This could get a little embarrassing, don’t you think? We were supposed to talk in the car.”

She drew a small automatic from his belt.

“What’s this for?” she said.

“Hey, I don’t know who you are. Better safe, right?”

Her thumb found the magazine release. She held the gun over the toilet and shook it. The clip slid out, splashed into the water.

“I really wish you hadn’t done that,” he said.

She put the gun in her pocket.

“What’s your name?” she said again.

When he didn’t answer, she cocked the .38, felt him stiffen.

“Be careful with that,” he said.

“Name.”

“Carmine.”

“You alone, Carmine?”

“What do you think? I was sitting on my ass out there for a half hour. You had to be watching.”

They heard the men’s room door open. She screwed the muzzle of the .38 into his scalp. Someone used a urinal, whistling softly to himself. He flushed, ran water in the sink, and then they heard the rattle of the towel dispenser. The door opened and closed again.

“You’re starting to piss me off,” he said. “I’m here as a favor. Take that thing away from my head, before I take it away from you.”

“Tough guy, huh?”

“Try me.”

She lowered the gun.

“I don’t know who you are either,” she said. “Or who you work for. Better safe, right?”

“I’m here as a gesture to our friend down the Shore. That’s all. You understand that?”

“Yes.”

“Then don’t make me regret it.”

“What do you have to tell me?”

“This is the only time we’re ever going to meet. So stop busting my balls and listen up. I’m not repeating shit.”

She decocked the .38. “Go on.”

“There’s a guy used to work for Tino, just got out of Rahway. His name’s Eddie Santiago. They call him Eddie the Saint. He was Tino’s go-to guy when the old man had to make a move and didn’t have enough muscle.”

“So?”

“So Eddie’s back in the fold. He’s the guy that took out your two partners.”

“How do you know that?”

“Word gets around. He’s matto, crazy. No one wants anything to do with him. Sometimes he runs with a punk kid named Terry Trudeau. A burglar.”

She remembered the alligator clips on the alarm wire.

“Where do I find them?” she said.

“You’re on your own with that. Tino hangs at a market sometimes, up in Irvington. He keeps an office in the back. Eddie, who knows?”

“Why are you telling me all this?”

“Like I said, for our friend. He has some favors due.”

“You work for Tino?”

“That prick? Never.”

“Who do you work for?”

“The pope. How long are we going to stay in here?”

She put the .38 away, reached back and unbolted the stall door.

“Wait here five minutes,” she said. “Then go out to the counter, order a cup of coffee, sit there and drink it. I’ll be able to see you through the window. If you come out and try to follow me, you won’t give me any choice. You know that, right?”

“Got it.” He snapped his gum. “Coffee. Right.”

She backed out of the stall, let the door swing shut. He stayed where he was. She took out his gun, dropped it into the trash can by the door, went back into the diner and toward the exit, not walking fast, not looking back.

In the parking lot, she knelt by the Impala, Christmas lights bathing it in red and green. She took out her pocket knife, sank the tip into the right rear tire. Air hissed out.

She did the same to the right front, the Impala’s springs creaking as it sank lower, settled crookedly. She looked back at the diner windows. He hadn’t come out.

She closed the knife and walked back to her car.

*   *   *

The phone woke her.

She looked at the nightstand clock—10:00 P.M. She’d fallen asleep fully dressed on the bed, the phone beside her.

It trilled again. Hector’s number. She hit SEND, lifted it to her ear.

Silence. Then a man’s voice said, “I know you’re there. I can hear you breathing.”

She waited.

“We should talk,” he said. “Before all this gets out of control.”

“Talk about what?”

“What you’ve got. What I want. What I’ll do to get it. It’s not too late to work it out.”

“How will we do that?”

“Simple. Give me the money you took from the card game. All of it.”

“What card game?”

“Don’t. You didn’t get where you are by being stupid, did you? Don’t start now. You’re going to come out ahead anyway, right?”

“How’s that?”

“You’ll be alive.”

When she didn’t respond, he said, “That’s good. You’re thinking.”

“I am. Maybe I know a couple things about you, too.”

“Good for you. Like I said, we’ll keep it simple. We agree on a figure, you hand it over. You go steal some more from someone else. All there is to it.”

“That easy, is it?”

“Just that easy. I’m going to call you back tomorrow, and then I’m going to tell you where and when we’re going to meet.”

“Oh, we’ll definitely meet,” she said. “I guarantee that.”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself. Been to Texas lately?”

She felt her arms grow cold.

“What do you mean?”

“Cute little girl. She yours?”

The laptop, she thought. The photos. It had been stupid to leave them on there.

“Still there?” he said.

She took a breath, let it out slow. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Elktail Elementary, that a good school? Two Rivers, Texas. I looked at a map. What is that, a couple days’ drive? Maybe two hours on a plane?”

“What do you want?”

“I want you to stop fucking around. I did two of your partners. You doubt my seriousness?”

She thought of Hector in the trunk, what they’d done to him.

“Way I see it, there’s an easy way and a hard way,” he said. “Easy way is to get all that cash together and give it to me, then walk away. We do it the hard way, I’m not responsible for the consequences.”

“I think you’ve gotten some bad information.”

“Stimmer told me you took more than four hundred out of that game. Maybe you spent some of it, but that still leaves both of you with close to two hundred K apiece, right?”

“There was never that much.”

“No? Your buddy Hector seemed to think that was a good guess. He held out for a while, loyalty and all that, but he wouldn’t shut up near the end. You’d be surprised what people tell you if they think there’s even the slightest chance you’ll let them live.”

“You’re a sick fuck, aren’t you?”

“Maybe tonight I’ll be a sick fuck on my way to Texas. What are you going to do, hide her somewhere for the rest of her life? I find her and then our negotiations change, don’t they? Two hundred won’t be enough. Seems to me I’m giving you the easy way out.”

She looked out the window. Snow had begun to blow against the glass.

“Skull it out as much as you want,” he said, “but there’s only one way you’ll get rid of me. Give me the money and write it off to experience. Look at all the angles. It’s the only way out.” The line went dead.

She sat on the bed, could feel her heart in her chest. She started to punch in Leah’s number, stopped. Better to use a pay phone. If he somehow got this phone from her, the number would be in there. It would be a place to start.

Even the money wouldn’t be enough, she knew. Once she gave him the cash, however much, she’d be dead. He couldn’t take the risk. Wouldn’t leave her out there, alive, trying to figure out a way to get it back.