Getting into trouble all on his own, without any help from me.
20
“There’s nothing to worry about,” Joey said.
Frank knew better than that. There was always something to worry about. That’s what life added up to: worry. “Just tell me the scheme,” he said.
Joey was a big heavy slob who always smelled of tomato sauce. He had some kind of teamster job out at Scott Field, the huge air force base just a few miles out of East St. Louis, but what he mainly did was muscle for some of the heavy guys around the area. He wasn’t a mob soldier, not a made guy, just another bulked-up goon they called on sometimes when bones had to be broken or a little demonstration of power had to be made on the street. Between times, Joey got along as a small-time break-and-enter guy, a lot like Frank himself, except not as fastidious about avoiding violence.
Normally, Frank would keep away from a guy like Joey. People who saw violence as just one more tool of the trade always scared Frank a little, because he didn’t believe violence could be contained with absolute control; it tended to slop over, like a drunk’s soup.
But Frank had been stuck here in this nothing town for weeks now, never scoring any more than just enough to keep himself fed and housed, and the time had come to accomplish something. Joey was a guy Frank knew from Mindle’s, the bar a block and a half from the shitty little furnished room he was staying in. A couple of times, Joey had hinted over beers that he might have a score he’d like to count Frank in on, but Frank had always played it stupid, not getting the hints. But enough was enough; he’d been stuck in this town too long. East St. Louis! Jesus!
“Tell me the scheme,” Frank said.
They were at a side booth in Mindle’s, three in the afternoon, Ralph on the stick, a few loners at the bar, traffic going by past the dusty windows out front. Joey had bought a round of beers, that’s how much he wanted to do this thing, whatever it was. And now he leaned forward over the table, holding the beer in both his scarred fat hands, fat lips barely moving, tomato sauce-scented breath floating the words like little ghosts across the black Formica: “It’s a courier.”
Frank couldn’t quite do that ghost-speech trick; he leaned his cheek against his left hand, to hide his mouth and direct his words toward Joey and away from the people at the bar: “What courier?”
Joey’s lips twitched. “Ganolese,” floated the name, into Frank’s ear.
Frank dropped his hand and stared at Joey. “Are you crazy?”
Leo Ganolese was one of the capos around this part of the country, maybe the capo. He’d let everybody else go drive themselves crazy dealing drugs, dealing women, while he stayed with what he knew. Leo Ganolese was in the gambling business, had been in the gambling business for forty years, and would stay in the gambling business forever. Over on the Missouri side, and here in southwestern Illinois, he was the man in charge, in so solid the Federals never even bothered to try to make a case against him.
And nobody ever was stupid or loco enough to try to take Leo Ganolese’s money away from him. “Forget it,” Frank said. “I gotta be outta my own mind to even sit here with you.”
“Wait for it,” Joey advised. He was still doing the silent-voice thing. “I got it figured. Lemme splain.”
Frank was drinking Joey’s beer; until it was gone, he’d let Joey splain. Then he’d walk out and have nothing more to do with this idiot. “Go ahead.”
“The courier’s an old guy,” came the little word-puffs. “It’s like his retirement job. Every morning he goes around in a car, he picks up cash from the action the night before. All by himself. By lunchtime, he’s got it all, he takes it to the Evanston Social Club. It’s usually around eighty grand, every day, sometimes more.”
“No,” Frank said, his hand up to his cheek again. “Doesn’t make sense. One old guy in a car? Eighty grand every day?”
“He’s some kinda cousin of Leo Ganolese,” Joey explained. “Safest courier there is. Everybody knows don’t touch him.”
“Including you and me, Joey,” Frank said.
“You know why that’s a no?” Joey was getting excited, the words stronger, turning almost into solid speech in the air. “That’s a no, because over in St. Louis, right now, they got a big horse show going on.”
“And?”
“And the city’s full of punks from all over the country,” Joey said. “They follow the horses. They don’t have the kinda respect for the local situation that the local guys do. We take down the courier, we don’t let him see our faces, everybody’s got to know it can’t be anyone from around here did it. Leo Ganolese is gonna be sure it has to be some out-of-town punk just came to St. Louis.”
“I just came to St. Louis. East St. Louis.”
“Nah,” Joey said. “You been around a while now, you’re like a native citizen, Frank, believe me.”
Frank believed him. On that much, he believed him. He, Frank Hillfen, was becoming a local. Here. The knowledge of that reality is what made him say, “I’ll look at this guy. I don’t promise anything.”
“Sure, Frank! We’ll follow him around, and—”
“No!” Frank couldn’t believe he was contemplating a partnership with a guy this simple. “Somebody sees us driving around behind your man, they’ll remember it later on. You tell me a couple of his pickup places, that’s what we’ll take a look at.”
“Sure, Frank. Whatever you say.” Joey’s excitement made him bounce around on the bench, fat fingers clutching at the beer glass. “I’ll pick a couple spots, but I won’t follow him around. Okay, Frank?”
He admires me, Frank thought. He looks up to me, this asshole, he respects me. This is what I’m reduced to, getting a score from a dirtbag that shouldn’t even have the right to speak to me. I gotta get out of this town. I gotta get someplace where the scores make sense and the dirtbags don’t know me and I’m not like a native citizen. “We’ll look at it, Joey,” he said, judicious, like an elder statesman.
Of course, it wasn’t as simple as Joey thought; it couldn’t be. The old guy was there, all right, and he made his collections every day, and he drove his car alone around his route, but he wasn’t without security, not at all. There was always another car trailing around behind him, with two bulky guys inside. Different cars on different days, different guys taking the duty, but always there, hanging a block or so back on the road, parking nearby when the old man made his stops.
The old man himself was — what? seventy? eighty? — old, but spry. Skinny old guy, always wearing a gray topcoat and a nicely blocked gray fedora hat, no matter what the weather. He drove at a normal pace, maybe a little cautious, and he always moved in a dignified way, like he was the messenger of the king; which in a way he was. His stops were bowling alleys, delicatessens, bars, private homes; anywhere that one of Leo Ganolese’s books or numbers drops or tables operated. At every stop, the old man would get out of the car (that other car discretely stopped just up or down the street), enter the place with a calm and measured tread, and come out a few minutes later with usually two or three other guys. (More security, that.) One of the guys would carry a package of some kind, a paper bag or a shoe box or something else equally nondescript. The guys would stand looking this way and that while the old man opened the trunk and the package was put in there with all the other packages. Then the old man would shake hands with one or two of the other guys, get into his car, and drive away. The people from the establishment would wait on the sidewalk until he was a couple blocks off and the other car had moved after him.