But to Ozzie, Gino was a punk, now, always and forever. Ozzie had no use for ambitious kids, though he was willing enough to make money off them. The only reason he was allowed to operate in the City was because the big shots insisted on it. Sometimes, when they hit town, they had hot items to dispose of fast. Ozzie was the answer. He never sold in the City what he purchased there. The stuff he picked up went to syndicate outlets in other cities, just as his stock came from them in return. It was safe as houses. And Ozzie was a rich man, getting richer. No crook dared touch him, not with his syndicate protection. Having them on your tail was worse than G-heat.
Gino would have enjoyed parking a knife in his guts.
He had another beer and sipped it slowly. All at once he discovered he was hungry, hungry as hell, but this was no time to eat. When twenty-five minutes were up, Gino tossed a crumpled dollar bill, on the bar and went outside. Three doors down the block, he turned into an alley, passed through a dilapidated wooden door in a high fence and picked his way among ashcans and cartons of other refuse until he reached the back door of Ozzie’s discount store. He rapped twice, and then three times fast, and after a moment the fat little man with the glasses opened up for him. He led the way without talking into a shadowy basement, lit by a single globe hanging from the ceiling.
There he stopped and said, “What the hell do you want?”
“I want to buy a radio,” said Gino. “A portable, with batteries, maybe one with a police band. And a good electric lantern.”
Ozzie mopped a streaming brow with a silk handkerchief. “ ‘I want to buy a radio,’ ” he mimicked, “ ‘and a good electric lantern.’ Hey, kid, you brought me over here for that?”
“I’ve got to have them,” said Gino. He pulled a small, sweat-stained roll of bills from his pocket. “Cash,” he said.
Ozzie raised his hands to heaven — or, more literally, to the pipelined ceiling. He said, “God have mercy on my soul. The City’s hot as a pistol, I’m up to my ears in trouble, and you punks keep bothering me. First your pal Mike, this afternoon, tries to sell me a gold table lighter. Then you want to buy a radio. Why don’t you guys get together and leave me alone?”
“You make money off us,” said Gino. Then, as realization swept over him, “You know Mike and I ain’t friends. Not since that trouble we had last spring.”
“Friends, enemies, who can keep up with you schlemiels? As for money, you’re all peanut operators.”
“Money’s money to you, Ozzie,” Gino told him, getting angry because he was scared. “You’d take a penny profit as long as it was profit. That’s the way your old man raised you.” Inside, he was remembering the only gold table lighter he’d seen recently. It had stood in the living room of the Fellowes mansion. He remembered Mike noticing it, saying, “Hey, that smoke-pot must be worth a coupla hundred bucks.” He remembered himself telling Mike to forget it till they’d tried the safe. Good old Mike — always wrong!
Interpreting Gino’s silence as determination, Ozzie grumbled and said, “Wait here a minute — I’ll see what I got.”
Gino waited, his fears crowding in around him with the shadows cast by the irregular stacks of crates and cartons that all but filled the basement. In the raw dimness of the light, he saw the stenciling on one of the biggest. It read Electric Trains in lampblack letters. He thought back to his own childhood, a childhood of fear and misery at home. He had never had an electric train, except for a cheap one his mother had bought him one Christmas. He’d laid it out under the tree and then his old man had come in loaded and stepped all over it and broken it to bits.
Ozzie came back in the wake of his footsteps, carrying a couple of cardboard boxes. He said, “Here’s your lousy radio,” and pulled it out of the larger box. It looked like a good one. Gino turned it on. There was a brief hum, then it was working. He tuned it, heard an announcer’s voice say, “...are following every possible lead but are not expecting an immediate break in the Fellowes murder.”
He switched it off, noted the short-wave police band, tested it, then turned to the lantern. It was okay.
He said, “How much for this junk, Ozzie?”
Ozzie said, “To you, fifty bucks the pair.”
Gino laid down a twenty and two fives — which left him a ten, three ones and some silver. He said, “Take it or leave it — thirty bucks.” Without waiting for Ozzie’s reply, he picked them up, stuck them back in their boxes and walked out. Ozzie was still screaming at him when he kicked the door shut be him. Something about staying away from Mike if he wanted to be smart.
I’m smart, okay, he thought.
8
Arne let him in. Gino looked around, saw the big dope was alone. He put down the radio, got the lantern out and turned it on. Then he said, “Where’s Mike?”
Arne said, “Mike went out. He got thirsty.”
Gino sat down and looked for the money and counted it in the light of the lantern. It was all there — thirty-two grand. Then he turned the lantern on Arne and said, “When you and Mike went out today — did he sell something to Ozzie?”
Arne nodded. He said, “We had no dough for beer. Mike sold a lighter — a gold lighter.”
“You ever see that lighter before?” Gino asked. Arne nodded. Gino said, sharply, “Where’d you see it?”
“Fellowes’ house,” was the reply. “Mike got ten for it.”
“If the damned fool hadn’t played the ponies, he’d never have had to sell it. If he’d had the brains of a gnat, he’d never have stolen it. I told him not to take anything out of the Fellowes house.”
Arne shrugged, nodded at the radio, said, “This one’s better than the old one.”
“Maybe you think I should have got a hi-fi set?” snapped Gino. Sudden awareness that they hadn’t gotten away clean with the big score, thanks to Mike’s dumbness and greed, frightened him. Frightened, he was sore and getting sorer. He wondered what the big jerk was up to now? All they needed was for him to get drunk and start bragging — or get into a fight and get picked up. Gino cursed Mike, Ozzie, all of them.
Arne said nothing. He just sat there in his chair by the window and listened. Gino tried to eat some cold canned chili, gave it up when his stomach began heaving. The sweat on his forehead was cold.
After a while, Mike came in. He had a bag with a bottle in it under one arm and a silly, drunken grin of triumph on his face. The grin stayed when he saw Gino and the portable and the lantern. He said, “Well, well, look what you brought back! Mam-bo — mam-bo!” He snapped his fingers and rotated his hips in time to the music.
“Why’d you steal that lighter, Mike?” Gino asked.
“What’s it to you?” Mike countered. “I did it, didn’t I? And I got paid off for it, too. What the hell!” He pulled the bottle of whiskey from the bag, uncapped it and took a long swig.
Gino’s first impulse was to give him a going over, try to beat some sense into him. But he didn’t want a row — not in a warren like the tenement, especially not in hot weather with all the windows open. He said, “Go ahead — get stewed. You’re more use passed out than you are conscious.”
Mike glowered at him and lifted the bottle as if to swing at Gino with it. He gave no sign of noticing the spring-blade that had suddenly appeared in Gino’s hand. He returned the bottle to his lips and took another swig. He had to fight to keep it down. Finally, he collapsed across the cot and, minutes later, murmured, “Wake me up when Dora darlin’ gets back. Wake me up when Dora dar—”