“Because now is ten-thirty and not eight o’clock,” Alice said.
“Which, by the way, you fucked up,” the first man said. “On the roof there.”
“No, by the way, I didn’t fuck up, I was ambushed, Silvio.”
So Alice was the blonde who’d been firing from the roof.
“Which it don’t matter,” Silvio said, “so long as we do the job right this time.”
“That’s still saying I did it wrong last time,” Alice said.
“All I know is what Mama told me. Barnes was down Benny’s asking questions about Arthur Crandall. So Barnes had to go. So you got sent to do him and you didn’t do him, which is why he’s tied to the bed in there now and you’re telling me we should wait for Mama, which I don’t know why.”
“Because I say so,” Alice said flatly.
“And I say we do him and leave him here in Ju Ju’s bed,” Silvio said, and they all burst out laughing again.
They were silent for the next few minutes or so.
Eating.
“As far as I’m concerned,” Alice said, “the best combination is sausage and peppers.”
“On a pizza, you mean?” Larry asked.
“No, on a piano,” Alice said.
“Certainly on a pizza. We’re talking about pizza, aren’t we?”
“I thought you were talking about a sandwich,” Larry said.
“If you don’t mind,” Silvio said,
“I’m talking about let’s finish the goddamn pizza here and do the man, okay?”
“A grinder, I thought you meant,” Larry said.
“A sausage and pepper grinder.”
“No, a pizza,” Alice said. “Half sausage, half pepper.”
Michael was hoping the burglar would hurry up and open the window. Then maybe he could talk the man into untying the ropes. Before they finished their pizza and came in here to do him. But the burglar seemed pretty new at the job. He had put the first tool back into the satchel and had taken out another one, but he didn’t seem to be having any better luck with the new one. Meanwhile, in the other room, the pizza seemed to be dwindling. Michael was happy it had been a large one to begin with.
“Who wants this last slice?” Alice asked.
“Go ahead, take it,” Larry said.
“Hey, wait a minute,” Silvio said, “don’t be so fucking generous with my pizza, if you don’t mind.”
“If you want it, take it,” Alice said.
“Go ahead, Silvio, take it,” Larry said.
“If Alice wants it, she can have it,” Silvio said.
“No, this slice is all anchovies,” Alice said.
“That’s why I don’t want it,” Silvio said.
“I thought you did want it,” Alice said.
“No, I only said he shouldn’t be giving it away so fast in case I wanted it.”
“Well, I don’t want it,” Alice said.
“It’s all anchovies.”
“I don’t want it, either,” Larry said.
“Then the hell with it,” Silvio said. “Throw it in the garbage, and let’s go do him.”
No, Michael thought. Somebody eat it. Please.
“Well, if nobody wants it,” Alice said, “I’ll take it.”
“In fact, let’s split it,” Larry said.
“Three ways,” Silvio said.
The window opened a crack. Cold air rushed into the room. And what smelled like fish. The black man all in black pushed the window up higher, letting in more cold air and the very definite stink of fish. He climbed over the sill and came into the room. Came directly to the bed. Pulled the handkerchief off his face, leaned in close to Michael’s ear, and whispered, “Connie sent me.”
“Untie me,” Michael whispered.
In the other room, Silvio said, “It’s a sin to make good food go to waste.”
“This is very hard to cut,” Larry said.
“Hold it with the fork,” Alice said.
The black man began untying the ropes. He was no better at untying than he was at jimmying. In the other room, they were silent now. Michael figured they were concentrating on slicing the slice of pizza into three even slices, which was probably more difficult than untying a man tied to a bed. He hoped. He wished they would say something in there. The silence was somehow ominous. Maybe they had already sliced the slice of pizza and already eaten it. Maybe they were at this very moment loading pistols instead of slicing—
“Listen,” he whispered, “don’t you have a knife in that satchel?”
“This’ll only take a minute,” the black man whispered.
He had finally untied the first wrist. That left two ankles and a wrist to go.
“Get the ankles,” Michael said. “I’ll try the other wrist.”
“Did you hear something just then?” Larry asked. Silence.
Oh, Jesus, Michael thought.
“No,” Silvio said. “What did you hear?”
“Like somebody talking,” Larry said.
“Where?”
“I don’t know. Like next door.”
They all listened again.
The black man had untied Michael’s left ankle and was now working on the right one. Michael was plucking at the knots in the rope holding his left wrist to the headboard. He figured that in about two minutes he would be a dead man.
“I still don’t hear anything,” Silvio said.
“Are you going to finish these Cokes, or what?” Alice asked.
“I’m done,” Larry said.
“Me, too,” Silvio said.
“Me, too,” the black man whispered.
So was Michael.
He yanked his left hand free of the rope, swung his legs over the side of the bed, and went immediately to the window. The black man was right behind him. As they went out onto the fire escape, Michael heard Silvio saying, “Let’s go do him.”
The black man’s name was Gregory Washington.
The name of the club was the Green Garter.
Gregory told him that this was where Connie had said she would meet them. He also told Michael that the club was sometimes known as the Green Farter because it attracted a very old clientele.
Michael looked around the place and did not see anyone who looked older than thirty. But Gregory was only nineteen.
A lot of the women standing at the bar, or sitting in the booths or at the tables, seemed to be wearing only lingerie. Garter belts and panties and seamed silk stockings and teddies and negligees and stiletto-heeled shoes that made them look a lot like either the redheaded detective named O’Brien, who’d mistaken him for a cheap hold-up artist, or the redheaded hooker named Hannah, who’d mistaken him for the man in the Carvel commercials. Michael wondered if Frankie Zeppelin had yet found someone to kill Isadore Onions. He wondered whose thigh Isadore’s girlfriend had her hand on now. He wondered if all the women in New York City walked around in their underwear at Christmastime.
“You have adorable buns,” Gregory said.
“Has anyone ever told you that?”
Which was when Michael began to suspect that both Gregory and the Green Garter were what you might call gay, and that all these underdressed women were in actuality men.
One of them winked at him.
“Oh, look,” Gregory said. “Phyllis has her eye on you.”
He sounded like Eddie Murphy doing his gay bit in Beverly Hills Cop. In fact, he even looked a little like a younger Eddie Murphy, if there was such a thing as a younger Eddie Murphy. It seemed to Michael that nowadays there were no male movie stars who were his age. All the male movie stars up there on the screen were twenty years old. Making love to stark-naked women who had to be at least in their thirties. The only twenty-year-old movie stars Michael believed were the ones in war movies because in Vietnam almost everybody was twenty years old or younger. Even the lieutenants were twenty years old. The only people who weren’t twenty years old were sergeants.
Phyllis winked at him again.
Phyllis was wearing a blonde wig, a red silk blouse, and a green silk skirt with high-heeled pumps to match. Most of the people in the room, Michael noticed, were dressed in either red or green in honor of the yuletide season, except for the ones who were wearing swastikas and chains and jeans and black leather jackets bristling with metal spikes and studs. They looked tougher and meaner than any man Michael had ever seen in his life, but he guessed they were gay, too, otherwise what were they doing here?