Randy drew a long, grating breath like a diver who’s been under too long, then bent over and retched. Phan Lo danced back, disgusted. Demise sat down.
“The meet,” Demise said.
“Bryant Park. Noon tomorrow. She’s supposed to bring a sample. Please don’t kill me.”
“Where is she now?”
“I don’t know. She calls me.”
“You believe him?” Demise asked.
Phan Lo shrugged.
“The buyer’s a Brit. Looking to export. He’s gonna be wearing an Aerosmith t-shirt and reading the Wall Street Journal.”
“Probably won’t be two of those,” Phan said.
“Please,” the joker whined. “That’s all I know. I swear to God that’s all I know.”
“You know, Phan. I think that’s all he knows.”
Phan nodded and crossed his arms.
“You want to kill him, or you want me to?” Demise asked. Randy looked from one to the other, his jaw working silently, then curled up in a ball on the couch and started crying. Phan curled his lip and shook his head. Demise frowned and nodded toward the weeping joker. Phan shook his head again.
“If she’s not there tomorrow, we’ll be back,” Phan said, holstering his pistol. “You understand?”
Randy wailed wordlessly, his shoulders shaking. Demise stood and followed Phan out through the kicked-in front door and up the steps to the midnight-dark street.
“What the fuck was that?” Demise asked.
“It’s better for the mystique if some of them are alive and scared shitless,” Phan said.
“That’s the stupidest shit I’ve ever heard.”
Phan shrugged and walked to the car.
“You felt sorry for him, didn’t you?” Demise accused.
“Fuck you.”
“You did, didn’t you?”
“No. Get in the car.”
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 1987
The morning was warm for February, and the where the city didn’t stink of car fumes and urine, it smelled like the threat of snow.
He’d called Mazzuccheli with his information about the killer ace, and Mazzuchelli had come up with an address that fit with it. It was teamwork. For the first time since it all got fucked up, he was really working with the team.
He hated it.
For weeks, he’d been down. Even after the wounds in his arms were pretty much healed up, he hadn’t been able to focus or sleep through the night. He kept seeing his boys sprouting arrows, watching them die. And every day he couldn’t pull himself together, he felt the respect of the family dropping. No one said anything-not to his face. But he knew. And now Mazzucchelli was helping him out when what he really needed was to show that he could handle it without. He didn’t need a hand doing his work.
He stopped at the corner bakery for a pick-up breakfast before heading south toward Jokertown-the tastes of greasy, sweet pastry and bitter, hot coffee competing pleasantly, the chill of the morning pulling a little at the skin of his face. Joey pictured what it was going to be like.
He’d walk in to a restaurant, go over to Mazzuchelli’s table. He’d sit down. They’d talk a little, then Joey would pass over the satchel with the drugs and the money. And then, in a separate little bag, he’d have the right hands of all the fuckers he’d killed getting the stuff back. Mazzuchelli would grin and welcome him back. And Lapierre, the little fucker, would be somewhere in the background boasting about how he could have done just as good, only no one’s gonna believe him.
It was a pretty good daydream, and it got him to the flop. He dropped the nearly-empty coffee cup and the wax paper still dusted with powdered sugar into the trash and went down the steps to the basement apartment, flakes of rotten concrete scraping under his feet.
The door was open. Joey took the beretta out of its holster and went in. The place had all the marks of being left in a hurry-empty dressers, a half-eaten sandwich in the bathroom. The big stuff-the television, the old stereo-was still there, but anything portable was stripped and gone. The lights were all burning even though there was more then enough leaking through the windows to see by.
So it looked like Demise knew he’d been spotted. He and his Fist buddies had gotten scared and skipped. Joey smiled. It was nice having someone scared of him again. He put away the gun and took the rattling orange bottle out of his pocket and popped a darvon to celebrate.
The phone was one of those little lozenge-shaped ones. Joey guessed it had started out the usual colorless beige, but someone had painted it black. He scooped it up and dialed.
“What?” Mazzuchelli snapped after the second ring.
“Boss. It’s Joey.”
“What’ve you got?”
“I went to check out the place you told me about. Nothing there. I was thinking, though. You remember how you got those phone records on that guy in Soho?”
“How’d you hear about that?”
“I was there when you braced him, boss,” Joey said, trying to keep his voice from sounding hurt. “I helped you break his knees.”
“Oh. Right. Sorry.”
“I was thinking maybe you could do the same for this joint. See who’s been talking to them, see who they been talking to.”
There was a long silence. Joey shifted his weight from one foot to the other.
“Okay,” Mazzuchelli said. “Where can I get hold of you? You’re not calling me from there are you?”
Fuck, Joey thought.
“Of course not, boss. I’m at a payphone. The number, though. It’s all scratched out.”
“Joey. If you’re lying to me, it’s going to be on the records that I’m just about to go get for you. You know that, right?”
“I’m sorry, boss. I’m at the apartment. I wasn’t thinking.”
Mazzucchelli muttered something that Joey couldn’t make out, but the tone of voice alone was enough to make him wince a little.
“Call me back in an hour. I’ll let you know what I find.”
“Okay. Sorry, boss.”
Mazzucchelli sighed. “You’re a good guy, Joey. Just stop being such a fuck-up, all right?”
Gina snuck out a little before eleven. Father Henry watched from the cottage as she slipped out the sacristy door and started down the street. She’d picked out an old black Navy jacket, but she had the same blue wrap-around skirt and a weathered black purse. With her hair pulled back and no makeup, she looked totally different than the young whore he’d taken in off the street.
He watched as she strode calmly to the street, heading north. Once she was out of sight, he leaned back, took off his glasses and pressed the bridge of his nose. Eyes closed, he waited for a moment, giving the Lord one last chance to come to him with the sign or insight he’d prayed for most of last night and a fair part of the morning. All he saw was the dark back of his eyelids.
He sighed, finished his sandwich in two quick bites, and headed over to the church. A flock of pigeons took wing as he walked past. She’d left the door unlocked, and he closed it carefully before going down the stairs.
The cot was neatly made. A towel hung in the bathroom, still wet from her shower. He felt like a nosey parent sneaking into a child’s room to go through her dresser. And if it seemed like a betrayal of trust, well, she wasn’t playing perfectly straight with him either.
He found her bags stowed under the cot. Now there was a question. She’d been borrowing clothes from the donations, so that couldn’t be what she’d brought with her. With a sinking feeling in his belly, Father Henry pulled out the blue athletic duffel bag, its slick plasticized cloth hissing against the concrete of the floor. He crossed himself and undid the zipper.
The money was in rolls a little bigger than his fist-worn hundred dollar bills wrapped by thick red or beige rubber bands. At a guess, there were maybe seventy or a hundred rolls. He sat on the floor and hefted one, trying to estimate the sum, even just roughly, but his mind rebelled. When he put it back and closed the bag, he noticed the black-red stain on the cloth.