“No!” Smutt’s voice falters and he clears his throat.
“I heard you won more than this at the Fairgrounds.”
“Well, you heard wrong.”
Gordon waits.
Smutt won’t look up.
So Gordon asks, “Why deny it? You cleared over 20,000.”
“I had other bills to pay.”
“Before Mr Happer?” Gordon’s voice is deep and icy.
“I told you this has been going on awhile. I need time.”
“You shoulda thought of that before. Now look at me.” Gordon closes his left eye again.
Smutt looks up and Gordon squeezes off a round that strikes just to the left of the mole. Smutt shudders and bats his eyes. Gordon squeezes off another shot, this one just to the right of the mole. Smutt’s mouth opens and he falls slowly forward, face first, in his lap.
Gordon steps forward and puts two more in the back of the man’s head.
Then he carefully picks up the spent casings, all five of them, and puts them in his coat pocket. The air smells of gunpowder now and faintly of blood. He searches the body and finds another 400 in Smutt’s coat pocket. Still on his haunches, Gordon looks inside the hole in the floor, but there’s nothing else there.
He ransacks the room before leaving.
The night air feels damp on his face as he walks around the corner to where he’d squirrelled away his low-riding Cadillac.
Gordon checks his watch as he ascends the exterior stairs outside the Governor Nicholls Street Wharf. It’s 9.00 a.m., sharp. He looks across the river at the unpainted Algiers Wharf. Shielding his eyes from the morning sun glittering off the river, he can almost make out the window of Smutt’s room.
At the top of the stairs, he enters a narrow hall and moves to the first door. He knocks twice and waits, looking up at the surveillance camera. He straightens his ice-blue tie. This morning Gordon wears his tan suit with a dark blue shirt. Before leaving home, he told himself in his bathroom mirror that he looked “spiffy”.
The door buzzes and he pulls it open.
Mr Happer sits behind his wide desk. Facing the TV at the far edge of his desk, next to the black videocassette recorder, the old man doesn’t look up as Gordon crosses the long office. Happer looks small, hunkered down in the large captain’s chair behind the desk.
The office smells of cigar smoke and old beer. The carpet is so old it’s worn in spots. Gordon takes a chair in front of Mr Happer’s desk and pulls out an envelope, which he places on the desk.
Raising a hand like a traffic cop, Mr Happer leans forward to pay close attention to the scene on his TV. Gordon doesn’t have to look to know what’s on the screen. It’s Peter Ustinov again and that damn movie Mr Happer watches over and over. By the sound of it, Ustinov and David Niven are slowly working their way through the murder on the riverboat. What was the name of that French detective Ustinov plays? Hercules something-or-another.
Mr Happer suddenly turns his deep-set black eyes to Gordon.
Pushing 70, Mr Happer is a skeleton of a man with razor-sharp cheekbones, sunken cheeks, and arms that always remind Gordon of the films of those refugees from Dachau. Mr Happer reaches with his left hand for the envelope on his desk, picks it up with his spider’s fingers, and opens it.
“That’s all Smutt had on him,” Gordon volunteers.
Mr Happer nods and says, “400?” He focuses those black eyes on Gordon and says, “What about the twenty grand from the Fairgrounds.”
Gordon is careful as he looks back into the man’s eyes. He shrugs. “He said he had other bills to pay.”
“Before me?”
“That’s what I said to him.”
“So?”
“So I took care of him. Tossed the room and that’s it.”
Mr Happer shakes his head. Gordon watches him and remembers the man’s name isn’t Happer either. The old bastard was born Sam Gallizzio and tried for most of his life to become a made man, working at the periphery of La Cosa Nostra. Trying to be a goomba, Happer failed. He did, however, manage to remain alive, which isn’t easy for an Italian gangster who’s not LCN, even if he’s only a semi-gangster.
Shoving the envelope into a drawer, Mr Happer pulls out another envelope, which he slides across the desk to Gordon.
Gordon picks it up and slips it into his coat pocket. He doesn’t have to count it. He knows there’s a thousand in there – the old bastard’s cut-rate hit fee.
Mr Happer picks up a stogie from an overflowing ashtray and sticks it in his mouth. He sucks on it and its tip glows red. He shakes his head again.
“It’s worth it,” Mr Happer says, as if he needs convincing. “The word’ll get out. Make it easier later on. That’s what the big boys do.”
Gordon nods.
“He woulda never come up with the fifteen,” Mr Happer says, and Gordon wonders if the old man is baiting him. “He woulda never paid me.”
Fanning away the smoke from between them Mr Happer says, “You sure you tossed the place right, huh? You weren’t in no hurry.”
“No hurry at all.” Gordon feels the old man squeezing him.
Mr Happer raises a hand suddenly, leans to the side to catch something Ustinov says. He nods, as if he’s approving, then props his elbows on the desk. He looks at Gordon.
“You sure?” And there it is. The question.
“I’m sure, Mr Happer.” Gordon likes the way his voice is deep and smooth.
“I gotta ask you straight up, you know that, don’t you?” The old coot’s face is expressionless.
Deny. Deny. Deny. Gordon doesn’t even blink. He feels good.
Finally, the old man blinks and Gordon says, “Mr Happer. I’ve always been straight with you. You know that.”
Mr Happer waves his hand again as he falls back in his chair.
“Son-of-a-bitch dumped the money awfully fast.” Mr Happer looks again at the TV.
Gordon stops himself from reminding the old bastard that their agreement was simple. Find Smutt, get as much as you can from him, then whack him and leave him where he’ll be found. He did his job. A contract is a contract.
Gordon waits. He wants to say, “Well, if that’s all -” but knows better. He waits for Mr Happer to dismiss him.
The old man turns around and looks at the windows that face the river. He takes another puff of his cigar, lets out a long trail of smoke, and then says, “That’s what I get for dealing with bums like Smutt. At least he got his.”
Turning to Gordon, the old man smiles, and it sends a chill up Gordon’s back.
“I was thinking of asking you if you happen to know where Smutt used to hang out. Maybe he had another place. But the money’s long gone.”
When the old man looks back at his TV, Gordon casually looks at the windows. A gunshot rings out and excited voices, including Ustinov’s, rise on the TV. Gordon waits.
Finally, after the commotion on the riverboat calms down, Mr Happer looks at Gordon and says, “I know where to get you.”
Gordon stands and nods at the old man and leaves, Mr Happer’s dismissal echoing in his mind. He knows where to get me. Goodbye and hello at the same time.
Stepping out into the sunlight again, Gordon squints and stretches, then walks down the stairs. He looks at the brown, swirling river water and laughs to himself. Ustinov is still on the riverboat, floating on his own brown water, trying to solve the murder with Mr Happer watching intently. It strikes Gordon as very, very funny.
Before pulling away in his Caddy, he slips on his sunglasses and looks around. He spots the tail two minutes later, a black Chevy.
Gordon Urquhart’s bedroom smells of cheap aftershave and faintly of mildew. Waiting in the darkness, Stella Dauphine sits on Gordon’s double bed, her.22 Beretta next to her hand.
She wears a lightweight, tan trench coat and matching tan high heels, a pair of skin-tight gloves on her hands. A young-looking 30, Stella has curly hair that touches her shoulders. For a thin woman, she’s buxom, which made her popular in high school but proved a hindrance in the mundane office jobs she held throughout her twenties.