Pronto (17 page)

"You gonna say something?"

"As we going toward him, yeah, keep him busy."

"What're you gonna say?"

"Don't worry about it. It's not important what I say. But you keep quiet. And don't shoot till I do, when I see we close enough. You understand? Then you can shoot all you want."

"He's an expert with a gun," Nicky said, "a dead shot."

"Yeah, who told you that," Fabrizio said, getting out of the car, "him?"

Raylan watched them come out of the red car, both with pistols in their hands, making their intentions fairly clear. Fine. If they didn't have them out now they would soon enough, the fat guy having decided, Raylan believed, to have this business done.

See? You could tell by the way he moved. Confident, running the show now, Nicky along to help out. Pick up the body after and chuck it down the slope. Raylan asked himself if he was sure of that, the fat guy running the show. Yes, he was. He slid out of the Fiat and stepped one stride away from the door, leaving it open. The fat guy, the real Italian, was almost directly in front of him but moving a little to his right, while Nicky was over to the left. Their plan, to spread out as they came for him. What other way was there, outside of stay in the car and drive up to him?

When they were about eighty feet away Raylan said, "That's good, right there."

He saw Nicky look over at the fat guy, who kept coming, so Nicky did, too, until Raylan raised his left hand to point it at Nicky. He said, "I'll take you first," and Nicky stopped. The fat guy, looking over, stopped too.

He said to Nicky, "You listen to him or me?"

It seemed a hard question. Raylan saw the boy didn't know what to do, even with those big arms and shoulders on him and a pistol in his hand.

Now the fat guy waved his pistol at Nicky, saying, "Come on," and started toward Raylan again, getting a sincere look on his face as he said, "We want to talk to you, man. Get a little closer, that's all, so I don't have to shout."

"I can hear you," Raylan said.

The fat guy said, "Listen, it's okay. I don't mean real close. Just a little closer, uh? It's okay?"

Getting within his range, Raylan thought. If he knows what it is. The guy was confident, you could say that for him. Raylan raised his left hand, this time toward the fat guy.

Then lowered it saying, "I wouldn't come any closer'n right there. You want to talk, go ahead and talk."

The fat guy kept coming anyway, saying, "It's okay. Don't worry about it."

"You take one more step," Raylan said, "I'll shoot you. That's all I'm gonna say."

This time the fat guy stopped and grinned, shaking his head, about sixty feet away now. He said, "Listen, I want to tell you something, okay? That you should know." He took a step. He started to take another one.

And Raylan shot him. Put the 357 Mag on him, fired once, and hit him high in the gut. Raylan glanced at Nicky standing way over to his left, Nicky with his pistol about waist high. Raylan put the Mag on the fat guy again, the guy with his hand on his gut now, looking down like he couldn't believe there was a hole in him before looking at Raylan again, saying something in Italian that had a surprised sound to it. When the guy raised his pistol and had it out in front of him, Raylan shot him again, higher this time, in the chest, and this one put him down.

The sound echoed and faded.

Raylan turned his head.

Nicky stood facing him, holding his pistol in both hands in a stiff-armed pose the way Raylan used to teach it -- sort of; his feet weren't right -- and the way they did it in movies. He looked frozen, like a plastic toy figure, G. I. Joe. There were G. I. Joes all over the house in Brunswick.

Raylan said, "Use it or throw it away." Watched and saw the boy didn't want options, he needed to be told what to do. So Raylan told him to toss his gun aside; go on, do it. Then go over and kick the fat guy's out of the way. He said, "Then I want you to pick him up -- you can do that, huh? You're a weight lifter, aren't you? Think of your friend there as a big dumbbell, 'cause that's what he was. Wouldn't listen. Okay, so pick him up and put him in your car. Take him to where you all're staying and ask Mr. Zip what he wants done with him. Can you remember all that?"

Raylan had his supper at the hotel, went back to his room, and called Buck Torres. Torres said he was waiting to hear from a cop friend of his in Rome who was checking with the Rapallo police for him.

"You tell them it's urgent?"

"Call me tomorrow," Torres said.

"I'm checking out in the next ten minutes," Raylan said. "If all goes well I'll call you from Harry's villa."

Chapter
Seventeen.

Benno and some others hanging around the apartment came down to look in the car at Fabrizio sitting in the front seat, his head against the window. They'd hunch down and stare at his eyes and ask Nicky why he hadn't closed them. He said, "You want to, go ahead." But no one did. They'd hunch in close with their hands in their pockets. It was getting cold again as the sun went down. Benno asked what happened. Nicky told him the version he'd made up and Benno said not to bother Tommy, he was in his room with a woman, relaxing.

Nicky stood by the car to wait. He didn't know what else to do.

On his twenty-first birthday he drew two years at La Tuna Correctional in Texas on a drug-related concealed weapon charge. This was while he was trying to work his way into the Atlantic City crew, hanging out at the social club, packing a gun for somebody when he was asked to. A guy he met at La Tuna was with Jimmy Cap's crew in Miami Beach. Nicky looked him up after doing his time and that was how he got to meet Jimmy Cap and went to work for him: picking up Chinese takeout, lighting his cigars, getting him young girls, generally serving on an ass-kissing basis at first. Until one time: Jimmy Cap in the backseat of his Cadillac, Nicky in front with the driver, at a service station getting the tank filled with free gas, Jimmy said, "The schmuck owns this place is two weeks behind in his payments." He said to Nicky, "How would you get him to pay up?" Nicky said, "You mean the guy pumping gas?" A Cuban. Jimmy said no, the Cuban worked for the guy owned the station. Nicky got out of the car, took the gas nozzle away from the Cuban guy, and hosed him down with super unleaded. Jimmy liked it, his eyes lighting up as Nicky took out his Bic, the one he lit Jimmy's cigars with, and held it ready to flick and set the Cuban guy on fire. Jimmy asked him, "You'd do it?" Nicky said, "You want me to?" He said, "You can't do it to the guy owns the place. How's he gonna pay you if he's dead? But you light this guy up, the one owes you money will see what can happen to him." He said, "You want this guy lit up or not?" Jimmy Cap hesitated, then shook his head and told Nicky, "Not this time." His smoke-glass window slid closed and the show was over. Later on Nicky asked himself if he would've set the guy on fire if Jimmy wanted him to. The answer was yes, without giving it another thought. You saw a chance to step up, you took it.

What happened, he became Jimmy Cap's bodyguard as the tough kid from Atlantic City without ever having beat up, set on fire, or shot anybody. All he had to do was get a certain look in his eyes and walk around with his shirt off.

It worked, except with the Zip.

The Zip said to him, after that time at the gas station, "You were going to set this guy on fire? Standing between the pumps and the car, crowded in there, gas fumes in the air, you're going to light your lighter?" Nicky didn't say anything. "Everybody around there and also the car and anybody in it," the Zip said, "would've gone up in a ball of fire." Nicky said, "Jimmy liked the idea." The Zip said, "Then you should've done it."

Nicky had always wanted to shoot somebody, see what it would be like. He still did, and he wanted to shoot that fucking cowboy. What he shouldn't have done was talk about it, give the Zip and the genuine Italians something to needle him with. So now the Zip would give him a hard time as usual, ask him a lot of questions. Where was he when Fabrizio was getting shot? And so on.

Nicky's story was the cowboy surprised them: said he wanted to talk and shot Fabrizio as he got out of the car; then made him bring Fabrizio's body here so everybody could see the two bullet holes in him. Like a warning, what can happen if they come after the cowboy. Nicky told it to Benno and then to the Zip standing on the sidewalk, after he came downstairs with his whore, a woman who looked to Nicky like she took in washing. The woman went off down the street in a ratty yellow fur jacket and white shoes. The Zip told them to get rid of Fabrizio and took Nicky to a trattoria around the corner.

"I don't give a shit what you think," Nicky told him. "It was how I said. He was waiting for us and came over to the car."

"Up in the hills."

"Yeah."

"Fabrizio, he let him walk up to the car?"

Nicky hesitated. "He didn't come real close, no. He yelled out he wanted to talk."

"Fabrizio got out of the car..."

"Yeah, and walked toward him."

"And you walked toward him?"

Nicky used the salt and pepper shakers on the table. "Fabrizio's here and I'm here. Fabrizio told me not to shoot till he did. I could've, but that's what he said so I didn't. It looked like we were gonna have a talk. He said to Fabrizio, 'Take one more step and I'll shoot.'"

"Yes?"

"Fabrizio took a step and he shot him."

"How many times?"

Nicky hesitated. "I guess twice."

"From how far away was he?"

Nicky paused again. "I don't know -- twenty yards?"

"What did he have? What kind of gun?"

"Revolver, with a stainless finish."

"Cowboy hat and a six-shooter," the Zip said. "Why didn't you shoot?"

Nicky hadn't said if he did or not. The Zip surprised him, speaking so quietly. They were the only ones in the place; waiters setting tables around them, rattling dishes and silverware.

"I told you, Fabrizio said don't shoot."

"I mean while he was shooting Fabrizio. It would be okay then, wouldn't it?"

"What would?"

"To shoot him."

"I didn't have time. I'm about to, he's already aiming at me. What'm I supposed to do?"

"But he didn't shoot."

Nicky shook his head.

"Why not?"

"He told me, drop the gun."

"So, it's in your hand? He sees that, why didn't he shoot?"

"He wanted me to put Fabrizio in the car and bring him down here, show him to you. That's what he said."

"What did you say to him?"

"Nothing."

"I mean when he was pointing his gun at you."

"I didn't say nothing."

"You didn't ask him not to shoot you?"

"No."

"Beg for your life?"

"I'm telling you I never said a fucking word to him. If I had seen any chance at all to shoot him, I fucking would've. Jesus -- okay?"

The Zip wouldn't let it go.

He said, "You both have a gun in your hand looking at each other?" Still speaking quietly and taking his time, maybe picturing the situation.

Nicky shook his head. "It wasn't like what you're thinking, like either one of us could've fired and let's see what happens. It wasn't like that."

"No? What was it like?"

"He had me. If I moved I was fucking dead."

Now the Zip began to nod, maybe still picturing it, Nicky wanting him to hurry up and get this over with. The Zip was different than at any time before, here or at home. Nicky wondered if his getting laid had anything to do with it, if it actually had relaxed him. The Zip was quiet for about a minute. He nodded again.

"You have your gun in your hand..."

Jesus Christ. He would not let it go.

"I explained it to you. Didn't I explain it?"

The Zip waved his hand in front of his face as he shook his head. "What I want to ask you, where's your gun now?"

"Where do you think it is?" Nicky said, wanting to reach over, take the Zip by his hair, and smash his face down on the table, bust his fucking nose. "It's up there on the fucking mountain. He said drop it, I dropped it. What would you have done?"

The Zip said, "You mean the guy has your gun. The same as he took it from you." He nodded a few times before saying, "I get you another gun, testa di cazzo, you think you can hang on to it, not give it away?"

Was he smiling a little, thinking he was funny? Nicky wasn't sure. He was different, though, since being with the whore.

Then surprised Nicky again, saying, "We'll have something to eat."

He had told Benno he wasn't going in a room where the girls were sitting around waiting for him to choose one of them. So Benno spoke to the woman who kept the girls and for twelve thousand lire had the five of them put on their coats and walk past Vesuvio's one at a time. The Zip picked the one who seemed most like a girl from the country -- though probably all of them were at one time -- the one he judged to be the least professional, not putting on too much of an act, and arranged for her to come to the apartment. Her name was Rossana. She was twenty-one and did not speak a word of English; her breath smelled faintly of garlic. The Zip didn't care. He rode her hard, sweating, and it was over in less than a minute. That was okay: he didn't have to impress her and he'd ride her again before too long. He told her he was from Palermo and now lived in Miami Beach. He asked Rossana if she knew about Miami Beach, where it was. She nodded, lying in bed with her arms at her sides, waiting for him. He rested higher, against the headboard.