Hard Case Crime: Fifty to One (34 page)

“Good. Good. So listen, here’s the pitch: I want you to come work for me. Dance for me. Ditch that bastard Nicolazzo, forget the Sun, come work here. I’ll double your salary and you’ll make the same again in tips. More, maybe. Depends what you’re willing to do.”

“He means will you lay for it,” Reenie said. She had a queer high-pitched voice, like a boy who’d swallowed the helium from a toy balloon.

“Tschah,” Magliocco said, or something to that effect. “Just make the drinks.” And to Tricia: “It’s up to each girl what she’s willing to do. There’s no house limit here, each girl sets her own limits. So, you know, whatever you’re comfortable doing, where you draw the line, that says how much money you can make. We got rooms in the back, you want to use them—but a good dancer like you, you could make decent dough without even taking none of your clothes off, probably.”

“Mr. Magliocco,” Tricia said, straining to keep her tone civil, “I appreciate the offer, and I’ll seriously consider it—I mean that. Truth is, I can’t go back to work at the Sun and I’ve got to work somewhere. But right now I just can’t think about myself. Charley Borden’s in deep, deep trouble and I’m the one that landed him there. I’ve got to get him out, and we have a plan, but for the plan to work we need money, and the money Charley won on that horse race is the money we need. Can’t you just pay what he won and then we can talk about the job later?”

“No,” Magliocco said. “But I’ll tell you what I will do. You sign a contract saying you’ll come to work for me and I’ll pay off that bet the next minute. It’s what they call a quid pro quo—you know what that means? It’s French for you scratch my back, I scratch yours.”

Reenie had come over with the drinks—just two of them, one for Tricia and one for Magliocco—and she said, “That ain’t French, dummy, it’s Latin.”

He took one of the glasses from her hand, dashed its contents in her face. “And that ain’t a drink no more, now it’s war paint. Make me another and keep your yap shut.”

Tricia could see the slow burn the poor girl was doing as the liquor ran down her cheeks and dripped onto her décolletage. She waited with dread for the second glass to go flying. But Reenie turned to her politely and held it out for her to take. What could she do? Tricia took it.

“Excuse me,” Reenie said, with great dignity. “I’ll be back in a moment.” Then she was gone, through a side door.

“You shouldn’t have done that, Mr. Magliocco,” Tricia said. “It was cruel.”

“She shouldn’t have mouthed off.”

“Still.”

“Don’t feel bad for her,” Magliocco said. “She’s a spoiled little brat. I’d have tossed her out on her can a year ago if she wasn’t so damn good in the rack.” He made a drinking motion with one hand and Tricia reluctantly took a sip. It tasted like licking paperclips. “So, what’s it gonna be—you want to come work for me?”

There were probably things Tricia would have wanted to do less, but they weren’t coming to mind.

What she said, though, was, “I’ll do it—but only if you pay that money out to Erin right now. And I mean now.”

“Eager,” Magliocco said, “I like that.” He snatched up the receiver of a telephone by the sofa. “Joey?” he said. “Yah, it’s me. The redhead still there? Good, good. Hold on.” He waved Tricia over to a desk on the far side of the room, beneath the window. “There’s paper and pens there.” There were. “Sit down. Write. ‘I—,’ whatever your name is, ‘—being of sound mind and body, do hereby solemnly swear to come work for Alessandro Magliocco starting tomorrow and continuing for as long as Mr. Magliocco says I should. Yours truly, et setra, et setra. You got that? Read it back.”

“I didn’t get it all,” Tricia said.

“That’s all right, just sign the bottom, I’ll fill it in later.”

She signed. It wasn’t her name that she signed—not even her fake name—but ink went on the paper, and that seemed to be good enough for Magliocco. As far as he was concerned, a deal had been made. He returned to his phone call. “All right,” he said, “give her the money. What? Yes, the money. Borden’s money. Yes, all of it. What? I don’t care, hundreds, fifties, whatever you’ve got. What’s that? Yeah. Yeah, she did.” He hung up.

“You won’t regret this,” he said. “It’s much better here than at the Sun. A much better class of customer.”

“I can see that,” Tricia said.

The side door opened then and Reenie came through it, pulled it shut quietly behind her. She’d changed out of the dress and was wearing slacks and a blouse under a blue raincoat. In one hand she held a cardboard suitcase.

“What the hell’s that?” Magliocco said.

“I’m leavin’,” she said. “I’ve had enough of you.”

“Like hell,” Magliocco said. “You don’t leave till I say you leave. You signed a contract.”

She came over, buttoning her raincoat as she came. “Here’s your contract,” she said, reaching into the pocket of the coat. At first Tricia couldn’t see what she pulled out. Then it went
thump
into his massive chest and she could see half of it, the half that was sticking out. It looked like the wooden handle of a chef’s knife.

Magliocco staggered forward, groping for the knife, spraying blood. Most of it went on the raincoat, which Tricia realized she’d probably worn for that very reason.

“It’s like you said, Al,” Reenie said. “Every girl’s got to draw the line somewhere. Well, this is where I’m drawing it.”

The big man went down on his knees. He was gasping for breath, trying to say something. Whatever it was, it didn’t come out. The only sound he made was the impact when he hit the floor, driving the knife in deeper.

“Everything okay in there?” came a voice from outside.

With one fist, Magliocco was pounding against the floor. But after the first couple of blows, his fist fell slower, then slower still, and then stopped altogether.

Reenie unbuttoned the raincoat, stripped it off, and held it by the collar, careful not to get any blood on her clothes.

“Hey, you,” she said. “Here. Catch.”

She flung the bloody raincoat at Tricia and, while it was flying toward her, screamed.

“She killed him!” Reenie wailed. “She’s killed Al!”

While a scrambling began on the other side of the door, Tricia watched the raincoat loft toward her. If she caught it, she’d have Magliocco’s blood all over her—her hands, her clothes. Of course, it wasn’t her raincoat and she could prove it; they’d all seen her come in without it on, and it’s not as though she could’ve been hiding it somewhere while being frisked to within an inch of her life. But seeing the big man’s blood on her might be enough to set them off without thinking—his lieutenants might not pause before whipping out their guns and blasting away.

So Tricia hurled herself to one side and let the coat land in a ruinous heap on the rug. She regained her feet as the door banged open, slamming against the wall, and two men rushed in, the pepperpot and another she hadn’t seen before. “My god!” Reenie screamed. “He’s dead!”

“I didn’t do it,” Tricia said, her hands going up as they trained their guns on her. “She did. Look at her, she’s got some in her hair, it’s all over her coat. Look—see her suitcase, she said she was leaving him and he tried to stop her. Honest to god, it wasn’t me. Take her fingerprints—they’ll be all over the knife. I mean, assuming wood takes fingerprints, I don’t know if it does—”

“Quiet,” the new man said. He unclipped a radio from his belt and spoke into it: “Joey, Joey, you there? Lock the place down, don’t let anyone leave. You hear me? No one in or out.”

After a second’s delay, Joey’s voice crackled out of the radio: “You’re too late, that woman just left, with Borden’s money. Should I go after her?”

“No, stay here, I need you to lock the place down.”

“Roger,” Joey said, sounding for the first time like his military haircut might once have suited him.

“Roman,” the new man said, “go get the doc.”

“But if he’s dead—” the pepperpot said.

“If he’s dead it won’t matter, but if he’s not it will. Go.”

Roman darted off.

“Now, you.” He went up to Reenie, shook her by the shoulders till she stopped wailing. “What happened?”

“That little bitch,” she said, her chest heaving, “she pulled out a knife and stabbed him right in the chest.”

“Where’d she get the knife?”

“I don’t know, ask her.”

“I did ask her. She said you did it.”

“Who’re you gonna believe, her or me?” The guy didn’t answer quickly enough. “Tony! I
loved
him!”

“Sure—the true love of a woman for a pile of dough.”

“Don’t say that.”

“Why not? You pocketed plenty.”

“Of course he took care of me, Tony. I was his woman.”

“You were his
moll,
baby—not even, you were just some teenage tail he kept on hand for when there were no grown-up women around.”

She slapped him, hard, the crack ringing in the air. “Don’t you ever say that,” she said.

“That one’s going to cost you,” Tony said. “Later. First we’ve got to—hold on, where’d...?”

Tricia, who could only hear his voice faintly at this point, figured he must have noticed now that she was gone and begun searching the room for her. She hastened along the passageway on the other side of the door Reenie had used for her earlier exit and entrance. She’d snuck through it while Tony was occupied with Reenie, and she heard it swing open behind her now.

“Hey!” he shouted.

Fortunately she was already at the end of the corridor and was able to make a turn before the pair of gunshots he fired reached the spot where she’d been standing.

He ran; she ran faster. Pulling open a heavy door, she found herself in the wings of the stage, behind the velvet curtain. On the other side of the curtain, she heard people milling about, a confused murmur of voices, Joey’s rising above them: “People! People! Calm down, I’m telling you, this is a routine security matter...” She didn’t stick around to hear the rest of his explanation, though she’d have been curious to. Did the maitre d’ even know his boss was dead?

Tricia dashed through the cluttered backstage area to a service exit, but Joey had gotten there first and the door was locked and barred. She rattled the bar briefly out of sheer frustration and moved on.

But to where? The front door was out, obviously; and she didn’t know enough about the layout of the place to guess where the other exits might be, never mind which one Joey’s lockdown would reach last.

She shot blindly past several doors, all of them internal ones, not ones that would lead to the outside. Then, struck by a momentary inspiration, she doubled back.

Where would Joey’s lockdown reach last? Probably this room. She pushed through a door marked
LADIES
.

A window, she told herself on the way in—that’s what she needed. She said a little prayer: Let there be a window. Please, any window. Even a small one.

And there was—a very small one. It was high enough up on the wall that she had to drag over a trash can to reach it, and then, once she had, it took all her strength to force it open even half a foot. Wriggling through a half-foot opening was a painful process and twice she thought she’d gotten irretrievably stuck. But a combination of inhaling deeply, straining like a woman in labor, and kicking like mad eventually deposited her headfirst in a litter-strewn alleyway behind the club. She didn’t bother dusting herself off, just hobbled to the mouth of the alley, looked this way and that, and ran out onto Park Avenue South. A taxi screeched to a halt inches from her shins. Apologizing profusely for nearly getting run over, she tumbled into its back seat.

“Where you going, lady?” the driver said, glancing in the rearview.

She gave him Mike’s address.

“You look like you left that place in a hurry,” the driver said. “Anything the matter?”

“Just some men trying to kill me,” she said. “It’s been like that a lot lately.”

“You want me to take you to the police?” he asked.

“God, no,” Tricia said. Then, seeing his expression in the mirror, she said, “They’re so busy. I wouldn’t want to bother them.”

Ten minutes saw them to the door of Mike’s building. Tricia had just enough money to pay the fare with a few pennies left over for a tip.

“You sure you’re okay?” the driver said.

“I’m fine now,” Tricia said. “Just as long as no one followed us here.”

“Followed us?” the driver said. “The way I was going? Not a chance.”

It was true—he’d gone at top speed, weaving between cars and taking corners recklessly enough that more than one pedestrian had jumped back cursing. She’d certainly seen no sign of pursuit out the back window, despite checking repeatedly, and she saw none now. As the cab drove off, Tricia finally found herself breathing a little easier. With any luck, Erin and the money would already be upstairs, and Mike, too; they’d get everything ready for the morning and even have time to grab some sleep.

She climbed the stairs, knocked on the door, entered when it swung open.

And there was Mike, behind the bar, and Erin in front of it, a bulging paper grocery sack by her feet. There was the little leather box of photos sitting on the bar, where Tricia had left it. There was the footlocker, standing open, with its stacks of cut-up newspaper inside. There was only one thing wrong. If Mike and Erin were at the bar, who’d opened the door?

She turned to see. What she saw was the barrel of a revolver.

“Don’t even think of running,” O’Malley said. “You’re under arrest.”

There they sat on the scarred wooden table in the drab little interrogation room: the bulging paper grocery sack, the leather box of photos, and the footlocker filled with stacks of cut-up newspaper. They looked lost there, and a little embarrassed. The tabletop was covered with random gouges and scratches, with cigarette burns, and with faintly shiny rings left by countless cups of coffee. A few hardy souls had tried scratching their initials into it. They mostly seemed to have been interrupted before they could finish. Beneath Tricia’s wrist was another vague cloud of scratches. She knew how these had gotten there: from the sharp edges of handcuffs like the ones she was wearing. Her mouth still seemed full of the paperclip taste of Magliocco’s gin. There seemed to be some kind of fine grit under her eyelids. It seemed to cover her skin. She touched her face lightly with her manacled hands; it was abnormally sensitive, as if she were sunburned. She wondered what time it was. She wanted another glass of water, but it seemed too much trouble to ask. She was very, very tired.