Silence.
The sound of metal rings scraping along a shower rod as the curtain was thrown back.
More silence.
“So?” Alice asked.
“Nobody in there.”
“Check out the whole floor,” Alice said.
And suddenly there were more voices. A man said, “All this stuff has to go, huh?”
“All of it,” Alice said.
“The piano, too?” a second man said.
“‘Cause we ain’t piano movers, you know.”
“That’s good,” Silvio said, “‘cause it ain’t a piano.”
“Then what is it, it ain’t a piano?”
“It’s an organ.”
“Take this organ,” the man said.
“If you don’t mind,” Larry said, “there’s a lady present here.”
“So?”
“So stop grabbing your balls and telling us what’s an organ.”
“I’m telling you we ain’t piano movers.”
“And I’m telling you it’s an organ.”
“And I’m telling you take this organ.”
“Just shoot him in the balls,” Alice said calmly.
“Some lady,” the man said, but presumably he let go of his balls.
A third man said, “Okay, where’s all this stuff has to go?”
A fourth man said, “Look at this joint, willya? What’s this, a discount store?”
A fifth man said, “You want this stuff boxed?”
“What’s breakable,” Alice said. “And wrapped, too.”
“What’s that?” the third man asked. “A piano?”
“I already told them,” the second man said.
“‘Cause we don’t move pianos,” the third man said.
“It’s an organ,” Silvio said, “and don’t reach for your balls.”
“My father used to play drums,” the fifth man said.
The first man said, “Why don’t Mama move in the daytime, like a normal human being?”
Larry said, “Whyn’t you go take that up with Mama, okay?”
“No, thank you,” the man said.
“Then get to work,” Larry said.
“Where’s that combo?” Alice asked somebody.
“I got it,” Silvio said.
“If he was gonna give you the combo, anyway,” Larry said, “why you suppose he wet the bed?”
They all began laughing.
Even the moving men.
“‘Cause if you wet the bed,” Silvio said, laughing, “then a person won’t shoot you.”
“It’s a magic charm,” Alice said, laughing. “You wet the bed, the bad guys’ll go away.”
“First time I ever had a man wet the bed before I shot him,” Silvio said, still laughing.
“Give me the combo,” Alice said.
“I tell you,” one of the moving men said, “this wasn’t Mama, I wouldn’t go near that piano.”
“You could get a hernia from that piano,” another one of the men said.
“It’s an organ,” Silvio said, but his voice was muffled and Michael guessed he was standing at the safe with his back turned. From where Michael crouched behind the furs with Connie, he felt like Cary Grant in Gunga Din, the scene where the three of them are hiding in the temple and all the lunatics are yelling “Kali!”
“Read it to me,” Alice said.
“Four left to twenty-eight,” Silvio said.
“Look at this, willya?” one of the moving men said. “Roller skates, ice skates, dart boards, a pool table …”
“I ain’t lifting that pool table, I can tell you that.”
“That’s heavier than the piano.”
“It’s an organ,” Silvio said over his shoulder. “Three right to seventy-three.”
“What’s this thing?”
“A toboggan.”
“What do you do with it?”
“Two left to thirty-five,” Silvio said.
“I never seen so much stuff in my life.”
“And this is what’s left after Christmas, don’t forget.”
“Slowly to the right till it opens,” Silvio said.
Silence.
Then:
“Holy shit!”
This from Larry.
More silence.
“That’s got to be at least a million dollars’ worth of dope,” Alice said. Yep, Michael thought. A dope plot.
“I thought Mama said Ju Ju was only small-time,” Silvio said.
“Mama was wrong,” Larry said.
“Or lying,” Alice said, and there was another silence.
A longer one this time. A contemplative one.
A pregnant one. The silence of thieves considering whether another thief had screwed them. It was an interesting silence, laden with possibilities. Michael waited. Connie squeezed his hand. She had understood the silence, too.
“Maybe Mama didn’t know there’d be so much stuff in the box,” Larry said.
“Maybe,” Alice said.
She did not sound convinced.
Silence again.
All three of them were trying to figure it out.
“Listen, we ain’t touching that pool table,” one of the moving men said. “There’s slate in that table, it weighs a ton.”
“Fine,” Alice said.
“Damn straight,” the moving man said.
Silence except for the sound of newspapers being crumpled, cartons being snapped open, work shoes moving across the floor, men grunting as they lifted heavy objects.
“We got paid,” Larry said.
A shrug in his voice.
“But did we get paid enough?”
This from Alice.
“The deal was to deliver Ju Ju,” Larry said. “That’s what we done.”
Trying to make peace.
But he was standing with the rest of them at that safe, and he was looking in at what Alice had described as at least a million dollars’ worth of dope.
“That was the original deal,” Larry said.
“The deal changed yesterday,” Alice said.
“The deal changed to doing Barnes, too.”
“And cleaning out Ju Ju’s store.”
“Was what the deal changed to.”
“But did Mama know there’d be all this stuff in Ju Ju’s box?”
They were all silent again.
“The answer is no,” Alice said.
Silence.
“Because I’ll tell you why.”
Michael was extremely interested in hearing why.
“Because if you were Mama,” Alice said, “would you trust the three of us with a million dollars’ worth of dope?”
They all began laughing.
Michael nodded in agreement.
“Sure, laugh,” one of the moving men said. “It ain’t you three gonna get the hernia.”
“What I think,” Alice said, “I think the trucks can deliver all this fine merchandise to Mama …”
“As agreed,” Silvio said.
“But us three will take what’s in the box here, how does that sound to you?”
“It sounds only fair to me,” Silvio said.
“More than,” Larry said.
“But who left on the lights?” Alice asked.
14
Michael thought it was a bad idea to be standing here behind all these dead animal skins. He should have been standing at the table with the weapons instead. Because Alice and her two chums were now fanning out over the warehouse floor, earnestly trying to determine who had left the lights on.
He guessed this was going to be a process of elimination.
This was going to be Gee, it wasn’t us who left the lights on, and it couldn’t have been the moving men, so it had to have been someone else. And maybe the someone else is still in here. Like maybe hiding behind the counter over there, upon which were displayed six Tandberg FM tuners, three Nakamichi cassette decks, and a Denon direct-drive turntable.
A woman came around that counter now.
Alice.
For sure.
The same woman who’d been firing at them from the rooftop.
The long blonde hair and slitted blue eyes, the delicate Michael Jackson nose, the pale ivory oval of her face. In her hand, a gun that looked foreign. She could have been playing a Russian assassin in a James Bond movie. It was bad enough, however, that she was an American assassin in a real-life drama starring Michael Barnes and Connie—