They came with the physical sensation of restriction and with a sudden jolt I felt the ropes that bit into my ankles and wrists. I was sitting up, hands and legs tied to a chair, my mouth open slackly and my head hanging forward limply. For a while I stayed like that, watching my feet and thinking. Just thinking.
From behind me the girl said, “Why did you bring him here, Fly? You crazy?”
A nervous, slimey voice said, “Maybe you got a better idea? Why you think Big Step made me stay back there. He figured this guy might pull something and he sure did. That he sure did.”
“Big Step didn’t want him here. He wasn’t going to bring him here. They was supposed to go someplace in Jersey.”
“Sure they was, but who knew this punk had guns around? Outside he had two guys and a broad who started shooting up then Carl and Moe figured they was part of this guy’s bunch and cut loose at ’em. Then them two cops come outa the joint and everything goes to hell, like. Man, ain’t nothing like that since that business in Havana before Castro.”
“I don’t care,” the girl insisted, “you better take him someplace else.”
“Not me, Lisa, not me. You think Big Step won’t want him even more now? First Penny dead, now Little Step and Carl and Moe. Big Step, he’s gonna wanta carve on this here punk now for sure and whoever puts him outa reach is in for it.”
“Listen, Fly, first thing the fuzz does is look around Big Step’s places and that means the first thing they come here. This looks good with him here? Big Step wants a kidnapping rap besides? Maybe he can cover for the shooting... he woulda been somewhere else while it was going on, but this he won’t hold still for.”
The one called Fly pushed back a chair and walked around the room. I knew the guy. He was a cheap hood from the east side who did errands for the Stipetto brothers and lived off the white Horse he peddled around the neighborhood. He was his own best customer.
“So what’ll I do?”
Lisa said, “Go bring up a car. We can get him over back of the store until we hear from Big Step.”
Fly was glad to have somebody else make the decision. He grunted an acknowledgment, came over to me and yanked my head up. I kept my eyes closed and played it cute.
He said “You awake, Ryan? Come on, punk. Up. Wake up.” He gave me a backhand across the jaw that didn’t do much except make me put down another mental mark in his dead book. “Quit stallin’, Ryan. You hear me?”
“Let him be,” Lisa cut in. “You sapped him pretty hard.”
“Damn’ right I did. This boy carries a big piece. You see that .45 I took off’n him?”
“I saw it,” Lisa said, her tone bored.
“He had a cap of H on him too. You know that?”
This time Lisa sounded more interested. “Him? I didn’t know this big coot blasted any?”
“He carried it. In his watch pocket.”
“Well, he always was a nervy guy. So now we know. He’s like all the rest. Got to get his nerve up a vein.”
“He won’t get this one. I’m running short myself and I won’t have time to get to Ike South if we gotta drag him around.” He let my head go and deliberately, I let it slump back down.
Now everything was screwed up proper. Real snafu. The one thing that broke me out of the big bind in the restaurant winds up in a hype’s pocket and I’m worse off than I ever was.
Think, boy, I told myself. Think awfully hard. Life in college those two years way back so long ago. Show your book learning. You got going against you only one scrawny doped up punk and a broad Big Stipetto kept on his side. How formidable could they be?
Pretty formidable. Before I could think Fly swung at the back of my head and that far off sound of metal on bone, quieted by a small layer of flesh in between, reached me from far off and the black was with me again.
When sense and sound and sight came back, it flushed a searing pain down the back of my skull into my spine. It lasted a few minutes before settling down to a steady throbbing at the base of my head. This time I was on the floor, my hands behind me, my ankles tied and drawn up so they touched my fingers. In the old days they used to throw a loop around your neck too so that any movement would mean you choked yourself to death.
Fly said, “He’s okay now. You okay, Ryan?”
I swore at him.
“See, I told you he was all right. I don’t know why the hell you was worried about him. Big Step is only gonna knock him off anyway. Now you wait here and don’t leave, you hear?”
“I’m not staying...”
“Maybe you’d like for me to pass that on to Big Step. He’d flatten your face agin, you give him any trouble now. Maybe nobody’ll come in, but if’n they do, somebody better be here to steer ’em off.”
“You hurry,” Lisa sulked.
“Nuts, baby. Nobody’s hurryin’ Big Step. First I gotta find him. He ain’t gonna be a happy one when I do. With Little Step dead he’s liable to come over here running. Maybe he’ll want to wait to enjoy what he’s gonna do even more. You just stay put.”
Fly left without saying anything further. I lay there staring at the dark, until the line of light that marked the door suddenly blossomed and the switch clicked the room into a bright, painful glare.
Lisa said, “You’re sure a trouble maker, Ryan.”
A long time ago Lisa Williams had been a beautiful doll. She had soloed at the Copa, done two musicals on Broadway and seemed headed for Hollywood. She was still beautiful in one way. There weren’t many girls who were built like her. She was one full breasted, heavy-thighed bundle of sex that was a marvel to look at.
Then you reached her face. Something had happened to it. A car accident could have done it. So could a pair of brutal fists. Big Primo Stipetto didn’t like his sex machines playing around in other back yards. In his own with his kid brother Penny, it was even worse.
I said, “Hello, Lisa. It’s been pretty long.”
“Hasn’t it though.” She paused, looked quickly at her hands, then said absently, “What’d you want to get messed up with Big Step for?”
“I didn’t know I was.”
“He’s real old fashioned, Ryan. Anyone who touches his kid brother goes face to face with him. You shouldn’t’ve killed the kid.”
“Look... I didn’t kill the kid.”
“Oh Ryan...”
I sucked my breath in, held it and shook my head to clear it. “Penny Stipetto was a cinch to get bumped one day. So he came after me and if he had tried it I would have taken him apart. Somebody else did it, though. Not me.”
“Ryan... I...”
“Forget it, kid.”
She watched me a moment, biting her lower lip between her teeth. “I can’t forget it. I remember... other things.”
“Well don’t then.”
“That’s not easy to do.”
“Give it a hard try.”
“Don’t be so damn tough, Irish. Maybe I just don’t like to be in somebody’s debt. Ever think of it that way? Just because you kept that crazy Doe Wenzel from shooting me and took the slug yourself... oh, hell.”
“Listen,” I told her, “forget the bit. You don’t owe me anything.”
A cramp caught at the muscles in my lower back and I arched against the ropes. I could feel the tendons pull taut from my neck down and for a full minute the paralyzing agony of the thing held me rigid.
Before I could stop her she was on her knees crying softly, her fingers tearing at the knots on the rope and then suddenly I was free to move and the relief of it was almost too much to take. I lay there and tried to come back to normal slowly and when I made it I said, “Thanks.”
“Who was I fooling anyway,” Lisa said.
We both heard the door slam out front at the same time. I waved her out quickly, shut the door and put my ear to it. Fly came back in the other room, breathing hard, his voice tight with excitement. “I got Big Step right off on the phone. By damn, he’s coming over now. You hear that... now. Well have a real party, by damn. That wise punk’ll get his good for sure now. We’re gonna do it right here in about five minutes. Boy, I’m gonna enjoy tellin’ that punk!”