Michael dying.
There.
Up ahead there.
A black Cadillac limousine.
A China Doll car, he thought.
Connie, he thought.
But no, it was only Arthur Crandall stepping out of the car with a gun in his hand. And suddenly the limo resembled a hearse.
“Join us,” Crandall said.
Michael figured he still didn’t know how to use a gun. But as he moved toward him, Mama suddenly appeared again out of the night, and the knife was still in his hand, and besides, Michael could now see that Connie was inside the car.
Mama grinned.
“Yes?” he said.
Michael nodded.
The limo was quite cozy.
Mama and Michael on jump seats facing Connie on the left, Crandall in the middle, and Jessica on the right. Crandall still had the gun in his hand. Mama had the knife pressed into Michael’s side between the third and fourth rib on the left. About where his heart was, he guessed. Jessica looked somewhat bewildered. He wondered if she knew what was going on here. Did she still think he’d murdered someone? How big a story had Crandall sold her? Her eyes kept snapping from the gun in Crandall’s hand to the knife in Mama’s.
“This is Mama Rodriguez,” Crandall said.
“Yes, we’ve had the pleasure,” Michael said, and then realized that Crandall was introducing Mama to Jessica. Which meant she’d never met him before tonight. Again, he wondered how much she knew about what was going on. He also wondered how much he himself knew about what was going on.
“How do you do?” Jessica said.
She seemed even more bewildered now that she knew this man’s name was Mama. A man with a thick black mustache? Mama? Her eyes now snapped from the knife in his hand to the mustache under his nose. Michael was more worried about the knife than he was about the mustache.
“You did say Mama?” Jessica said.
“For Mario Mateo,” Mama said, and smiled at her like one of the bandidos in Treasure of the Sierra Madre.
“I see,” she said.
She did not look as if she saw anything at all. She looked as confused as Goldie Hawn in a hot air balloon over the city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Mama’s fingers were dancing all over the handle of the knife, as if he simply could not wait to use it. This was a good movie back here in the backseat of the limousine.
Beautiful Chinese girl looking gorgeous and alert. Beautiful blonde girl looking like a dumb bimbo, which she probably was, Albetha had been right. Fat motion-picture director with a Phi Beta Kappa key across his belly and a gun that looked like a Luger in his hand. Little Mexican bandido holding an open switchblade knife in his hand, coveting either Humphrey Bogart’s high-topped shoes or the blonde’s sparkly red ones. And sitting on one of the jump seats, the hayseed from Sarasota, Florida, the death-defying orange-grower who after the Tet Offensive in the year 1968, when he was but a mere eighteen years old—
“Let me tell you what I think happened,” he said.
“No, let me tell you what’s going to happen,” Crandall said. “Jessica and I are going to get out of this car on St. Luke’s Place, and then Mama is going to take you and your lovely little friend …”
“I’m five-nine,” Connie said.
“… out to Long Island someplace …”
“And I don’t want to go to Long Island,” she said.
“The ocean breezes are very nice at this time of the year,” Mama said. “You’ll enjoy Jones Beach.”
“Why are you sending them to Long Island?” Jessica asked, puzzled. “Why don’t we take them to the police instead? This man’s a murderer!”
“Don’t worry,” Crandall said.
“What does that mean, don’t worry? This person killed a person!”
“There are police on Long Island,” Crandall said. “Don’t worry.”
“Why did you do that, Mr. Barnes?” she asked, turning to him. “I’m an actress, as you know …”
“Yes.”
“So I keep wondering about your motivation. Are you a crazy person? Is that it?”
“Ask your director,” Michael said.
“Ask him why he went to Charlie Nichols and asked him to hire two other actors …”
“Are you casting another movie?” Jessica asked.
“No, this wasn’t a movie,” Michael said.
“This was Christmas Eve in a bar on—why’d Nichols give me your card?” he asked, turning suddenly to Crandall, who sat smiling and shaking his head as if Michael were certifiable. Jessica, however, was not smiling.
Jessica was trying to understand what the hell was happening here.
Maybe she wasn’t such a dumb bimbo after all.
“You expected me to go to the police, didn’t you?” Michael said.
“He already knows the whole fucking thing,” Mama said suddenly.
Jessica looked at him.
Michael did, in fact, think he already knew the whole fucking thing.
But this wasn’t a movie. This wasn’t the scene where the bad guys said, All right, Charlie, since we’re going to kill you in the next five minutes, anyway, it won’t do any harm telling you all about the terrible things we did. Nor was this the scene where the hero was playing for time waiting for the police to kick in the door, during which suspenseful moments he could explain to the bad guys exactly why they had committed all those gruesome murders. This was real life, such as it was, here in the backseat of this limousine, and the way Michael figured it, Mama was ready to make his move.
Dumb blonde bimbo notwithstanding, Mama was ready. Even if it meant throwing away the blonde with the bathwater. The blonde meant nothing to Mama. Mama wanted home free. Mama had gone into this to kill two birds with one stone. Get paid for ridding himself of a competitor and take over his business besides. Now he had both stones in his back pocket and a switchblade knife in his hand and the only thing standing between him and prosperity was a dumb fuck from Sarasota, Florida. And his Chink girlfriend. So naturally, they both had to go. That was the way Rodriguez thought. That was the way to become successful in America. And if the blonde accidentally happened to become a witness to something she shouldn’t have seen, why then the blonde would have to go, too, and Mama would later give her red shoes to his own mama. The way Michael figured it, Mama was a businessman. And business was business. And ‘twas the season to be jolly.
On the other hand, Crandall was now in over his head. Michael guessed that Mama was supposed to have done his job and then disappear into the woodwork again. Supply Crandall with a body, that was all. Charlie Nichols must have told him that he knew someone who could pick up a body for them. His crack dealer. A man named Mario Mateo Rodriguez, familiarly called Mama. No questions asked. Six thousand big ones and he’d deliver a corpse. Crandall was the sort of man who wouldn’t want to know where the corpse was coming from. This was commerce. He needed a dead body. Period. He did not want to know about murder. He preferred believing that Mama would find a dead derelict in a Bowery hallway. Or in a garbage can behind McDonald’s. No great loss to the city. Here’s the money Charlie promised you, six thousand bucks out of the nine I safely drew from the bank, no questions asked, the other three already gone to Charlie and his fellow thespians for their contribution to the scheme. It was nice not knowing you, Mama, good-bye and good luck.