There were two wide passenger seats facing one another in the back of the car. Tommy Tarantello and one of his men were sitting on one side and Bernie and I were told to sit opposite them. The doors closed and the car, its engine purring softly, drew away from the pavement.
I recognized the man sitting beside Tommy Tarantello—he had been with Tommy when they visited Moira a couple of weeks earlier. The scar on his face showed up pale in the shadow under the brim of his hat.
Tommy Tarantello looked at Bernie without any sign of aggression and said, “Hi, Bernie, old fellow. I thought you’d like a lift home to save you slipping in the slush and hurting yourself.”
Bernie didn’t answer. We were sitting shoulder to shoulder and I could feel him trembling. He was taking short, jerky breaths. The car turned left at Anderston Cross and drove west on Argyle Street.
This wasn’t the route to Oswald Street. I could feel fear running through my body.
Tommy Tarantello had a brown hat on his lap. Clearly, it wasn’t his, since he already had a hat—a white one—on his head. He picked up the brown hat and held it out to Bernie.
“Here you go,” he said. “Here’s your hat. The one you lost on Christmas Eve.”
Bernie took the hat with some hesitation. I’d never seen the hat before, and it was far too posh for it to be Bernie’s.
“No…” Bernie said. “It’s not mine.”
Tommy Tarantello put on a disbelieving face.
“It’s yours, it must be,” he said. “I found it outside the Greek’s gambling club in Maryhill. On the big lawn behind the house. You know the place I mean, don’t you, Bernie?”
Bernie nodded. Then his eyes suddenly widened.
“No… No!” he stammered. “I don’t know anything about it!”
Through the darkness I could see the malevolent glint in the gangster’s eyes.
He leant forward towards Bernie and said softly, “Is that really true, Bernie? So how is it that we found your hat outside the Greek’s club? On Christmas Day—that is the morning after someone had broken into the place and stolen the safe.”
The light from some of the display windows we were passing lit up Bernie’s face. The colour had left his cheeks and his forehead was covered with small beads of sweat. He stank of an acrid mixture of fear and alcohol.
“I don’t know,” he mumbled. “I haven’t got a hat like that.”
Tommy Tarantello leant even closer to Bernie and raised his voice a little.
“You’re not lying to me, are you, Bernie? Because I wouldn’t like that.”
“No… No,” Bernie stammered again. “It’s not my hat. I promise.”
“Perhaps you borrowed it from someone?” Tarantello suggested.
Bernie gulped for breath, as if he was about to panic.
“I really want to believe you, Bernie,” Tarantello said. “But that was a cold night, wasn’t it? Are you trying to tell me you had nothing on your head?”
“No, no,” Bernie said. “I’m not trying…”
And then something occurred to him and he brightened up just a little.
“I was wearing my blue cap!” he said. “Not a hat… Honest, I promise.”
“Now I understand, Bernie. I was obviously mistaken. And you were right! You were wearing your blue cap when you took part in the break-in. So, just as you said from the start, the hat couldn’t have been yours.”
Bernie nodded and sighed with relief. Suddenly his eyebrows went up as it dawned on him. “No, no, that’s not what I meant to say.”
Tarantello leant back in his chair with a satisfied look.
The man with the scar laughed quietly. “Bernie, Bernie, you must be about the most stupid fellow in the whole world, you really must.”
They let us out in the darkness under a road bridge. As soon as he was out of the car, Bernie stumbled into the darkness by the wall of the bridge.
I was about to follow him when my upper arm was seized in a tight grip. It was Tommy Tarantello. When I turned round, he looked me in the eye and said in a quiet voice, “My niece has told me that the two of you have met before. She says you helped our sick countrymen on board that plague-ridden ship that brought her here.”
I nodded.
Tommy Tarantello went on. “That means I owe you a debt of gratitude, ape. And since I always pay my debts, I’ll give you a valuable piece of advice in return.”
Tommy Tarantello pulled me a little closer and lowered his voice until it was no more than a hoarse whisper. “Get out of this town as quickly as you can! Because there is soon going to be a war.”
He clenched my arm again and hissed, “A war!”
Then he shut the car door and the white Plymouth accelerated away.
I looked around for Bernie. He was down on his hands and knees being sick in the slush. I hurried over to him and put my hand on his shoulder. The force of his retching made his whole body shake.