“Call a doctor,” Alice said.
“No. Who is she?”
“Call the police, too. I want to press charges against this illegal alien.”
“I’m legal,” Connie said.
“Sure. So’s Mama.”
“Go ahead, tell them,” Larry said, shaking his head again.
“I didn’t tell them anything.”
“You told them Mama’s an illegal alien.”
“No, you just told them.”
“I said Mama’s illegal?”
“An illegal alien, is exactly what you said.”
“Did I say that?” Larry asked, turning to Silvio.
“How come everybody can put their hands down but me?” Silvio asked.
“If I bleed to death here, they’ll deport you,” Alice said to Connie.
“Let’s talk a deal,” Michael said.
“If you had one wish in the whole world, and you could get that wish by telling us who Mama is, what would that wish be?”
“Could I please put my hands down?” Silvio said.
“Yes,” Michael said.
“You just blew your wish, dummy,” Larry said.
“That wasn’t my wish,” Silvio said, shaking his hands out from the wrists. “That was just a polite request.”
“Just get me a doctor,” Alice said.
“Is that your wish?”
“I wish my mother would go back to Palermo,” Silvio said.
“I wish she’d take my mother with her,” Larry said, and both men burst out laughing. Alice laughed, too.
Blood was trickling from her left shoulder, but she suddenly began laughing along with her buddies. Michael was thinking it would be fun to work with these three if only they weren’t killers. He tried to remember if any of it had been fun in Vietnam. Working with the killers there. He guessed maybe some of it had been fun. Before the baby.
Hell she doing out here? Andrew asked.
The baby crying.
Might’ve crawled out from the village, the RTO said. “Who’s Mama?” Michael said.
“You want to get us all killed?” Larry asked.
“I’ll tell you what I’m going to do,” Michael said. “I’m going to make the wish for you, okay? I’m going to wish that I don’t go to that phone on the wall there, and call the police, and tell them to come up here and get you, that’s what I’m going to wish.”
“First Precinct,” Connie said. “I have the number in my book.”
“Go ahead, call them,” Alice said.
“I keep all the precinct numbers handy,” Connie said. “In case I get a weirdo. I know all the desk sergeants down here.”
“Do you know Tony Orso?” Michael asked.
“No. Is he a desk sergeant?”
“No.”
“Then I don’t know him.”
“Tony the Bear Orso.”
“No.”
“I know him,” Silvio said.
“So do I,” Larry said.
“Do you know Detective Daniel Cahill?” Michael asked.
“Go call all these cops, why don’t you?” Alice said. “Tell them your Chink girlfriend tried to kill me.”
“How would you like a punch in the mouth?” Connie asked pleasantly.
“Go ahead, hit me. That’ll look good on your record, too.”
“Detective Cahill?” Michael said.
“Ring a bell?”
“There was a cop up Sing Sing named Cahill,” Larry said.
“No, that was Cromwell,” Silvio said.
“Oh, yeah,” Larry said, and nodded and smiled, as though fondly remembering Sing Sing.
“How about you, Alice?” Michael asked.
“How about me, what? I’m bleeding to death here, that’s how about me.”
“Do you know anybody named Cahill?”
“No.”
“How about Helen Parrish?”
“No.”
“Charlie Nichols?”
“No.”
“Did you kill Charlie Nichols?”
“How could I kill somebody I don’t even know?”
“Charlie Nichols. Mama sent you to kill him, didn’t she?”
“This man is deaf,” Alice said to the air.
“I’m telling you I don’t know anybody by that name.”
“Charlie Nichols. An actor.”
“Is he related to Charlie Belafonte?”
“You mean Harry Belafonte,” Larry said. “I know because his name is almost like mine.”
“Can you sing `Day-O`?” Silvio asked him.
“Charlie Nichols?” Michael said. “Nice little apartment in Knickerbocker Village?”
“Where’s that? Westchester County?”
“The Fifth Precinct,” Connie said.
“Go ahead, call the cops,” Alice said.
“How about Judy Jordan?” Michael asked.
“Call her, too.”
“Do you know her?”
“I don’t know any of these people. Go call the goddamn cops. Just for spite, I’ll be dead when they get here.”
“Good,” Connie said.
“You don’t know any of them, huh?” Michael asked.
“You’re deaf, am I right?” she said, and turned to Larry. “He’s deaf.”
“My uncle in Chicago is deaf, too,” Larry said sympathetically.
“And I suppose you don’t know anything about what happened to me on Christmas Eve, either,” Michael said.
“The first time I laid eyes on you was through a telescopic sight. I was told to put you away because you’d been snooping around Benny’s downtown, and that’s all I know. Mama likes things clean and neat.”
“She’s a neat, clean illegal alien, huh?” Michael said.
Alice said nothing.
“Why would killing me make things clean and neat?” he asked.
“Go ask Mama.”
“I will. Where do I find her?”
Alice shook her head.
“Where is she?”
Alice shook her head again.
“You’re that scared of her, huh?”
Alice said nothing.
“Tell me where to find her.”
She just kept staring at him.
“Then it’s the cops, right?” he said. “You want me to call the cops, right?”
“Sure,” she said. “Call them.”
The last time Michael had stood in this hallway outside the door to Judy Jordan’s apartment, he’d been alone. And someone, either Larry or Silvio, had come up behind him and hit him on the head with one of his own guns. Or rather, guns that had previously belonged to Frankie Zeppelin and Arthur Crandall. This time, Connie was by his side. With Connie by his side, he figured he would not get hit on the head again. The only thing that happened to him when Connie was by his side was that he got shot. Or, at best, shot at.
He wondered if the police had ever before walked into a warehouse full of stolen goods to discover a safe full of a million dollars’ worth of crack, and three thieves swathed in furs and trussed with the electric cords from sundry household appliances. He did not think Alice—despite her dire warnings or perhaps promises—could possibly have bled to death by the time the police arrived. An axiom of the killing and maiming profession was that if a person was feeling good enough to laugh he wasn’t about to die in the next ten minutes. He wished, however, that Alice had chosen to tell him who Mama was. It was a little unsettling to know that somewhere out there in this wonderful city there was a woman who wielded enough power to order Ju Ju Rainey’s murder first and next to order Michael’s own, a woman who could generate such fear that three grown thieves had chosen to face the police rather than reveal who or where she was. Michael wasn’t sure he ever wanted to meet Mama. He knew intuitively, however, that before this was over he would have to look her in the face and demand to know all the whys and wherefores. He tried to visualize her.
She would be fat, he knew that. As Connie had suggested, a woman named Mama had to be fat. Bloated and fat and as pale as a slug, a female with a breath that reeked of gunpowder and piss. She would have breasts like dugs, and she would obscenely expose them to Michael, threatening to suckle him if he did not do as she commanded. Standing before Mama, he would search her slightly crossed eyes for some sign that here was reason, here was cause, here was sanity, but there would be none. The .22 caliber pistols he was now carrying in the pockets of the bomber jacket would be of no use to him. He would be staring into the darkest part of evil, and he would be doomed. He did not want to find Mama, did not want to face what he knew was inescapable if this ever was to be resolved—but he knew that he had to. Mama was fate. If you had an appointment in Samarra, you did not drive instead to Newark, New Jersey.