Parker16 Butcher's Moon (32 page)

"You know those people?"

"Does a baby know its mother's breast?"

They'd reached the table. Wycza sat Florio across from Carlow, and took the remaining seat to Florio's right. Florio said, "If you know them, then what the hell is going on?"

"A little heist," Wycza said. "Nothing to worry about."

Devers kept looking around the room. Carlow said, to Wycza, "There won't be any trouble, will there?" He didn't exactly act nervous, he seemed more tense, keyed up, as though at any second the rigid control might let go and he would explode.

Wycza, reassuring him, patted his upper arm and said, "No trouble. Toni's going to cooperate. What the hell's a few bucks? This place manufactures money, he'll make it all back by the end of the week." He turned to Florio. "Isn't that right, Tony?"

"There's no money down here," Florio said. "I'm not out to cross you people, but it's God's own truth, there just isn't any money down here."

"I want to talk to you about that, Tony," Wycza said. "But while we talk, let's get a phone to this table. Will you do that, Tony?"

"A phone?"

Devers was raising one arm, signaling a waiter. When the man came over, being deferential because the boss was sitting at this table, Devers gestured to him to listen to Florio.

Florio hesitated, not out of a spirit of rebellion but simply
out
of bewilderment. Then, feeling the silence, he turned abruptly to the waiter and said, "Paul, get us a phone here, will
you?"

"Sure, Mr. Florio."

The waiter went away, and Wycza said, "Now, about the situation upstairs, Tony. We've got a man in with your manager
up
there right now."

Florio looked at him in open shock. "You what?"

"The manager doesn't know what's going on yet," Wycza said. "When you get the phone now, see, I want you to call his office up there and explain to him how he should do what our man tells him to do."

"Jesus Christ," Florio said. This was the first time in the nine years' existence of Tony Florio's Riviera that the place had been knocked over, and the reality of it was just beginning to hit him. This was a full-blown, big-scale, professional robbery. "How many of you guys are there?"

Wycza gave him a tight grin. "Enough," he said, and the waiter came with the phone. They waited silently at the table as he put the phone down and walked off with the long cord to the nearest wall-jack. He plugged it in, came back to the table, picked up the phone and listened to it, replaced the receiver in the cradle, and said, "There you are, Mr. Florio."

"Thanks, Paul."

The waiter went away, and Stan Devers said, "It occurs to me the waiter's name might not be Paul."

Wycza frowned slightly and said to Florio, "You wouldn't do anything cute like that, would you?"

"Am I crazy?" Florio spread his hands. "How heavy can you hit me for? A Monday night's receipts isn't worth dying for."

Devers, watching the waiter, said, "He seems okay."

Speaking softly, Wycza said to Florio, "How about the forty thousand in the safe? Is that worth dying for?"

Florio stared. "Wha—what forty thousand?"

"You keep forty thousand cash in the safe," Wycza said. "Back-up money, in case anybody hits a streak on you. That's the money we want, Tony."

"You can't walk in off the street and know about that," Florio said. Pale circles of anger showed on his cheekbones. "Some son of a bitch in my shop is in it with you."

Grinning, Wycza said, "I got it from Ernie Dulare." Then, wiping the smile from his face as though it had never existed, he said, "Now, you call your manager upstairs. Our man is in there with him, and he's calling himself Flynn."

"Flynn? My manager's name is Flynn."

"That's some coincidence," Wycza said. "Except your manager's
real
name is Flynn. Call him."

Florio picked up the phone, and hesitated with his finger over the dial. "What do I tell him?"

"Tell him God's simple truth," Wycza said. "You're down here with a gun stuck in your crotch, and your Mr. Flynn should do what our Mr. Flynn tells him to do or you'll start singing soprano."

"What if he doesn't believe me?"

"It's up to you to be convincing," Wycza said. "Dial."

Upstairs, Mackey and Mr. Flynn had gone through the extra support Mackey had in that he'd been recommended to the place by Frank Faran, Mackey telling a couple of stories about himself partying with Frank Faran in Las Vegas, stories that were absolutely true except for the names of the participants. Now they were working their way through the questionnaire Mackey had filled out, and Mackey was beginning to wish he'd kept a carbon copy for himself; it was one thing to fill four pages of stupid questions with on-the-spot lies, and another thing to remember all those lies ten minutes later.

Then the phone rang, at long last, and Mackey relaxed a little. The call was late, and he'd been beginning to wonder if maybe something had gone wrong somewhere, if maybe the casino was onto the whole ploy somehow and maybe this chummy Mr. Flynn here was just stalling him with a lot of credit questions while waiting for the cops to show up. But then the phone did finally ring, and Mackey relaxed and put his hand inside his jacket, closing his fingers around the butt of the pistol there.

"Yes, Mr. Florio." Flynn nodded and smiled at Mackey, asking him to wait just a second. "Yes, he's here right now." A surprised smile toward Mackey: Why, Mr. Florio himself knows about you. Then, a look of bewilderment: "What? What's that?"

Mackey smiled and took the pistol out. He showed it to Flynn and calmly put it away again.

Flynn was sitting straighter in his chair. "I don't understand, Mr. Florio." Listening, blinking, he seemed like a man who didn't
want
to understand. "Do you realize what you're asking me to—"

Mackey couldn't make out the words, but he could hear the angry buzz of Florio's voice in Flynn's ear. Flynn blinked, swallowed, began to nod his head. "Yes, sir," he said. "Yes, sir, of course, I just wasn't think— Yes, sir." His face pale as bread dough, he extended the receiver across the desk to Mackey, Saying, "He wants to talk to you."

"Thanks, cousin." Mackey took the phone, said into it, "Yeah, I'm here."

It was Florio's voice, recognizable and bitter, that said, "One of your friends wants to talk to you." ·

Mackey waited, and Dan Wycza came on a few seconds later, saying, "Everything fine?"

"Couldn't be better," Mackey said.

"Then we might as well get started," Wycza said.

"Right. Hold on." Mackey kept the mouthpiece near his face so Wycza would be able to hear him, and said to Flynn, "I have two friends outside. I want you to bring them in here."

"You want me to go out and—"

"No no no, Mr. Flynn," Mackey said. "You call your man on the door out there. Tell him two gents are coming over and he should let them in. And then tell your receptionist to buzz for them."

"All right," Flynn said, but there was something in his voice and in his eye that Mackey didn't like. "Hold it," he said.

Flynn gave him an attentive look.

Mackey said into the phone, "I think this fella here needs a pep talk from Florio. He looks like he's nerving himself up to something."

Flynn, all wounded innocence, said, "I wouldn't—" but Mackey shushed him with a wave of his hand.

Wycza said, "Hold on," and turned to Florio. He said, "My man Flynn says your man Flynn doesn't understand the situation. He might have something cute in mind."

Angrily, Florio said, "Over my—" and stopped.

"That's right," Wycza said. Extending the phone toward Florio, he said, "Maybe you ought to tell him that yourself."

Mackey, hearing Wycza, held his phone out toward Flynn. "Your master's voice," he said.

Flynn took the phone doubtfully, held it to his ear as though it might bite him, and said, "Mr. Florio?"

The phone bit him. Looking pained, Flynn tried to break in three or four times with no success, and finally managed to say, "Of course, Mr. Florio. You're the boss, Mr. Florio, I wouldn't— No, sir, I won't."

Mackey waited, looking around the room. According to Faran's sketch, that door on the right should lead to the vault room where the money was kept, and the door on the left should lead to the employees' parlor where the dealers and stickmen took their smoke breaks and where the three armed guards hung out when they weren't out patrolling the floor. Coming at the joint this way, through Florio and Flynn, they were by-passing all the security devices, the armed guards and the time locks and the buzzer alarms and all the other protective arrangements that had been set up around here.

It was Parker's plan, to Faran's inside information, done without any casing at all, and it was working just beautifully.

Flynn, chastened, finally handed the phone back to Mackey. He was still a trifle mulish, but Mackey didn't doubt he meant it this time when he said, "I'll do whatever you want."

"That's fine." Mackey said into the phone, "You there?"

Wycza said, "Right here."

"Everything's fine now."

Flynn said, "I'll need to use the phone. I can put that call on hold if you want."

"Good idea." Into the phone, Mackey said, "You're going on hold for a minute."

Flynn took the phone, called his receptionist, and told her, "Call George and tell him there are two men about to come over to the door. He's to let them in, and then you should let them directly through in here. That's right. Thank you." He pressed a button that took Dan Wycza off hold and returned the phone to Mackey. "There," he said.

Outside, Hurley had quit the blackjack game twenty dollars
ahead
and was now kibitzing the crap table where Dalesia had
10 far
lost thirty-five dollars. Hurley saw the man on duty at the
brown
wooden door reach for the wall phone, and tapped
Dalesia,
saying, "Time to go."

"Right." Dalesia left a five-dollar chip riding on the nine,
and
the two men walked across the room to where the doorman
was
just hanging up the phone. He said, "You the two gentle
men
Mr. Flynn's expecting?"

They thought he meant Mackey. "That's right," Dalesia
said,
"we're the ones."

The door buzzed, and the doorman pushed it open. "Go right on in," he said.

"Thanks," Dalesia said.

Dutch Buenadella owned two more dirty-movie palaces in
Tyler
besides the Mature Art. One was called the Cine, and the
other
was the Pussycat. But the Mature Art was the only one of
the
three with a good burglar-alarm system and a solid reliable
safe,
so the skim cash from all three theaters was kept there,
piling
up until once a month it was split into so many pie slices
and
distributed to the partners.

It had been three weeks since the last distribution, and the safe upstairs in the manager's office at the Mature Art held nine thousand two hundred dollars in skim cash from the three theaters. In addition, there was eight hundred fifty dollars cash maintained as a sort of floating fund to help grease the ways should any unexpected problems come up, or to bribe a fire inspector, or pay a fine if it should come to that. And there was also an envelope, sealed and wrapped with two rubber bands, marked
Personal
in Dutch Buenadella's handwriting and underlined, containing four hundred dollars; one of Buenadella's private caches in case it ever turned out to be necessary to leave town in a hurry when the banks were closed, such as at four o'clock in the morning.

Ralph Wiss had breathed on the lobby door and it had opened. Elkins had looked in the cashier's drawer and found it empty, and then the two of them had gone on upstairs, following Elkins' pencil flashlight. The manager's office was next to the men's room, from which came a muted but rancid odor that it seemed impossible to get used to.

Because the manager's office had a window that overlooked the street, they couldn't switch the overhead fluorescent light on, but with the Venetian blinds closed over the window, they could operate by the light of Elkins' flash. The office was a small cluttered room with a sloppy desk piled high with papers, an incredible number of notes and messages taped to the walls, a bulking water cooler next to a scratched metal filing cabinet, and a stack of metal film-carrying cans piled messily in one corner.

In another corner stood the safe, a dark green metal cube twenty inches on a side, with an L-shaped chrome handle and a large combination dial. Elkins gave Wiss the flashlight, and Wiss studied the front and top and sides of the safe, running his fingers over the metal, squinting at the line where the door joined the edge. He made a kind of whistling S sound between his tongue and his upper teeth as he studied the safe, a noise that Elkins had at one time found annoying—it sounded like a tire going flat—but over the years had grown used to, so that he no longer really heard it.