“Don’t plead your case to me, pal,” I said. “My ribs are still sore.”
“Jesus, Jesus …” Davis was mumbling.
“Shut the fuck up!” Ravisi shouted at him.
“Look,” Jerry said, “we’re real sorry to interrupt your little fuckfest, here. If you just answer our questions we’ll move along and you an yer boyfriend can finish.”
“We ain’t no faggots!” Ravisi said, anxiously. Then, suddenly, a look of recognition came over his face. “Hey, you’re that big guy from the club, what pushed Catalina’s face in, ain’t ya?”
“That’s me.”
Ravisi looked from one of us to the other, slowly getting it. “You were lookin’ for us?”
“And we found you,” Jerry said. “Like my friend said, his ribs are still sore, and he’s real pissed. He wanted me to come in here shootin’ but I said no, that you guys would cooperate. After all, you was just doin’ a job.”
“Right, right,” Ravisi said, “we was just doin’ a job.”
“And that’s what I’m doin’ now,” Jerry said. “A job. And I come all the way from New York to do it.”
Ravisi’s eyes bugged.
“He imported you from New York?”
“That’s right.”
The man looked at me with renewed respect.
“You got them kind of connections? You brung in a … a pro?”
“That’s right,” I said, trying to sound tough. “You fucked with the wrong guy.”
“Hey, hey,” Davis whined, “we didn’t know you was connected.”
“Yeah,” Ravisi said, “all we knew was-”
“You knew he worked at the Sands, didn’t ya?” Jerry asked.
“Well, yeah-”
“And who runs the Sands?”
“Well-”
“Look,” Jerry said, “you guys made a mistake. It happens. We’re willin’ to overlook it.”
“You are?” Ravisi asked. He looked directly at me.
“Well … yeah,” I was, grudgingly, “but I need some answers.”
Iris still had her head in the pillow, but I could tell she was crying because her dangling tits were jiggling.
“Let her go,” I said.
“What?” Jerry asked, without looking at me.
“Let the girl go.”
She lifted her head from the pillow and turned her tear streaked face towards me.
“Okay,” Jerry said, “get up, sweetheart. Get dressed and get out of here.”
Without hesitation Iris leaped from the bed, ample flesh jiggling everywhere now as she got dressed in a hurry. No underwear, she just pulled on her top and her skirt and slipped into her high heels.
“Hey, sister,” Jerry said.
“W-what?”
“No cops.”
“I ain’t callin’ the cops,” she said. “I swear.”
“Go on,” I said. “Get lost.”
She put her hand on my arm and said, “Thanks, Mister. You come by the club some night and I’ll pay ya back.”
“Sure.”
She turned to look at Ravisi then and spat, “And don’t you come by no more-and don’t ever call me.”
“Hey, what’d I do?” he demanded.
“You almost got me killed!”
“Iris-”
She turned and stormed out of the room, high heels clacking down the hall.
“Goddamn it,” Lenny Davis said, and he was almost crying as the sound of Iris’s heels faded away.
“Shut up!” Ravisi said. He looked at Jerry. “How about us? Can we get dressed?”
“Naw,” Jerry said. “You guys stay just like you are. We’re gonna have us a talk.”
Thirty-five
The situation was strange, to say the least. Four men in the room, two naked on the bed and one holding a gun. The fourth one-me-wasn’t sure what was going to happen next.
“This ain’t right,” Davis said.
“Shut up!” That came from both Ravisi and Jerry.
“You guys can walk away from this real easy,” Jerry told them. “Just tell my friend who hired you to work him over and warn him off.
“Warn him off of what?” Ravisi asked. “We don’t even know what we was warning him off of.”
“How’s that?” I asked.
“Look,” Ravisi said, “we got hired over the phone, and we picked up our pay at a drop. That’s it.”
“And what were you told to do?” Jerry asked.
“Work this guy over,” Ravisi said, indicating me with an impatient wave.
Jerry looked at me, the first time he took his eyes off the two men. Ravisi took the opportunity to move. He lunged for the top of the bed, sliding his hand beneath one of the pillows. I could only think that he was going for a hidden gun.
“Jerry!”
The big man’s head snapped back around as Ravisi’s hand was coming out from under the pillow. Jerry squeezed the trigger of the big.45. The bullet struck Ravisi in the chest and splattered the wall behind him with blood and guts. The gun in the hood’s right hand went off and a.38 slug hit Davis in the left temple and splashed his brains all over the sheets.
“Jesus!” I shouted. “Christ!”
“Take it easy,” Jerry said.
He stepped to the bed and swept the snub-nosed.38 to the floor, then checked both men before holstering his own gun.
“Are they dead?” I asked.
“Can’t get any deader.”
“Christ,” I said, again. My chest felt tight, like I was having a heart attack, and I’d broken out in a sweat. Jerry looked over at me, then got right in my face and slapped me-not hard, but hard enough.
“Breathe,” he said.
“Huh?”
“Come on,” he said, “Deep breaths.”
I took a deep breath and let it out.
“Another one.”
I did it again, and again. Suddenly, the steel band around my chest was gone. I still felt hot, but at least I could breathe.
“Okay?” he asked. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” I said, “yeah. I think so.”
“We have to look around,” he said, “but don’t leave your fingerprints anywhere.”
“What?”
“We have to search the place and then get outta here before the cops come.”
“W-what are we lookin’ for?”
“Anythin’ that will tell us who these two were workin’ for. Come on, Mr. G. The place ain’t that big.”
We went through the place as thoroughly as we could and as fast as we could. The clerk might have called the cops, or maybe the girl had, before the shooting. Certainly someone must have called themafter the shots, but I still didn’t hear any sirens. I was careful to keep my eyes averted from the bed, which was soaking through with the blood of both men. I’d had enough of dead bodies in the past couple of days to last me a lifetime. Watching the lead rip through these two right in front of me was more than enough.
“Find anything?” Jerry asked.
“No.” I’d picked up a pen from somewhere and was using it to open drawers and go through things, even underwear. “You?”
“I got a phone book and calendar,” he said.
“Anythin’ on it?”
“I don’t know.” He shoved it into his pocket. “Let’s get out of here.
I started to put down the pen I was using, then thought better of it and shoved it in my pocket.
“You touch anything?” he asked.
“I don’t think so.”
“Ya gotta be sure,” Jerry said. “From the minute we came in, did you touch anything?”
“No,” I said, “no. You kicked open the door, so … no.”
“Then let’s get out of here.”
As we went through the lobby I noticed that the clerk still had his head down on the desk. He’d either stayed that way the whole time, or had assumed the position when he heard us coming down the stairs.
In the car Jerry got behind the wheel again.
“What about the clerk?” I asked. “Or the girl?”
“What about them?”
“Either one can identify us.”
“They won’t say a word.”
“Why not?”
“Fear,” he answered. “In my business, it’s my best friend. Come on, gimme some directions.”
“Where to?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “We might as well go back to your place. I think we’re done for the night, don’t you?”
“More than done,” I agreed.
When we got to my place we approached it slowly, carefully. I didn’t know if we were expecting more goons, or the cops. I didn’t want anyone to be there because I needed to sit quietly, have a beer and think.