“Everything’s jake,” I said. I put the valise on the table and worked the snaps and opened it and he looked inside.
“It’s all he had with him,” I said. “Said he could get more from the bank tomorrow, but you said let it go, so I—”
“Fuck the money,” Rose said. “He down?”
“He’s down.”
“I don’t mean are his hands and knees busted. Not for a bastard I warned.”
“He’s down,” I said. “Two other guys were there. I gave them the word for Dallas.”
He nodded and smiled. His best smile couldn’t hold a candle to Sam’s, but then Rose rarely smiled with the intention of making someone feel warmly regarded. His usual smile was the one he showed now. The smile he wore when he won.
“There was a piece in the money bag too,” I said. “I took it.”
“Let’s see.”
I unzipped the briefcase and took out the .380 and laid it on the table. He picked it up and thumbed off the safety and pulled the slide back just far enough to see the round snugged in the chamber, then eased the slide forward again and reset the safety. He turned it over this way and that, regarding it from every angle. A .380 was the second kind of pistol I’d ever fired and I liked the model a lot. It didn’t have the punch of the army .45 automatic but was generally more accurate. Still, everybody knew an automatic could jam on you and a revolver never would. This piece was in mint condition, though, and I couldn’t resist it.
“Nice,” Rose said. He set it on the table and pushed it back to me. “Had supper?”
“I was about to.”
“Good.” He dropped the butt on the floor and stepped on it, then picked up a fresh towel and slung it over his shoulder. “I’ll take a shower and we’ll go for clams.”
“Don’t you have a party or something?”
“Because New Year’s? Hell, Kid, it don’t mean nothing but another year closer to the grave. What’s to celebrate?”
Forty minutes later we were in his private corner booth in Mama Carmela’s, a small Italian place on Seawall Boulevard. A picture window looked out on the gulf. The faint lights of shrimp trawlers moved slowly across the black horizon. I’d brought the briefcase with me, both pistols in it, so I wouldn’t have a gun digging into my belly while I ate.
The grayhaired waiter brought a basket of breadsticks and poured glasses of Chianti. Rose waved off his suggestion of minestrone and salad and ordered clams in pesto over capellini for both of us.
“Molto bene, Don Rosario,” the waiter said with a bow, and retreated to the kitchen. A Victrola behind the front counter was softly playing Italian songs.
As always, Rose wanted every detail, so I told him exactly how it had gone in Houston. And as always, he listened intently and without interruption.
F
When I was finished, he raised his glass and said, “Salute.”
The clams and pasta arrived and Rose ordered another bottle of Chianti. We tucked our napkins over our shirtfronts and dug in, twirling pasta on our forks, spearing fat clams dripping with pesto, sopping up sauce with chunks of warm buttered bread. Rose wasn’t one for conversation while he dined. He broke the silence only to ask how my clams were. “Damn good,” I said. He nodded and refilled our glasses and gave his attention back to his food.
When we were done and the waiter cleared away the dishware and poured coffee and bowed at Rose’s dismissal of dessert and left us again, Rose said he wanted me to stick around town for the next week or so.
It took me by surprise. He knew I liked making out-of-town collection runs, that I hated hanging around the Club with nothing to do.
“I’m supposed to make the pickups in Victoria tomorrow,” I said. “Then there’s the pickups across the bay in a couple of days.”
“I already put another man on the Victoria run. And your partners can handle the eastern collections. I want you close by for a little while.”
“How come?”
“I got a hunch about those Dallas guys. They might just be dumb enough to try something. If they do, they’ll probably try it pretty soon, and I want you here to deal with it.”
He read the question on my face. “I got a phone call,” he said. “One of the other two guys must’ve called Dallas as soon as you left the hotel room. Then Dallas called me, some guy named Healy—fucken mick. Says he represents the organization that owns the machines Ragsdale was pushing on this side of the line. Organization—like he’s talking about Standard Oil. Says he wanted me to know his organization had nothing to do with Ragsdale putting the slots in Galveston County, that it was strictly Ragsdale’s doing. Says the organization only contracted the machines to him. Says Ragsdale deserved what we gave him.”
“So what’s the problem?” I said. “Sounds like he was saying they got your message and they want no trouble.”
“That’s what I thought. He’s telling me it was all Ragsdale, his outfit’s hands are clean, right? So I tell the harp no hard feelings, Ragsdale crossed the line but the account’s all settled.”
“So? What’s the problem?”
“I’m getting to that. You know, that’s your problem, Kid, I told you before—you get in too big a hurry. The man in a big hurry is the man who misses something important. Always be sure you know what’s what before you make a move. You listening to me?”
“Yes, Daddy. So…what’s the problem?”
He gave me a look of mock reprimand and pointed a warning finger at me. A lot of people referred to him as “Papa Rose,” though never to his face—they didn’t dare get that familiar with him. The truth was, he didn’t mind the “Papa Rose” at all. He took it as a show of respect toward him as the head of a sort of business family. Calling him “Daddy” was my sarcastic way of ribbing him about it, especially when he’d lecture me like I was some schoolkid. I didn’t do it often, and rarely in front of anybody else, but one day I’d called him Daddy when Artie the bookkeeper was in the room, and Artie’s eyes got big as cue balls. He must’ve expected Rose to blow his top at my insolence. But all Rose did was roll his eyes and shake his head and say to Artie, “Young people today got no respect. My old man woulda taken a belt to my ass if I’d been so disrespectful, believe you me, no matter how old I was.”
LQ heard me one time too, and later that night when we were in a waterfront beer bar he said I was the only guy he knew besides Sam who could chivvy Rose like that. LQ was thirty years old and had been Rose’s main Ghost until I came along, but he swore he wasn’t jealous about me replacing him.
“I never was all that much at ease around the man,” he said. “Truth to tell, I never seen nobody at ease around him but you and Big Sam. I figure it’s on account of you and him are two peas in a pod.”
The idea that Rose and I were alike had never crossed my mind. “How so?” I said.
“Well, lots of ways. Like how the both you sometimes look at somebody you know like you never seen him before in your whole entire life and you aint decided yet whether you even like him or not. There’s never no telling what’s going on in you-all’s head, either of you. You and him both got this way of…aw, hell, you both can be creepy as a graveyard is how so.”
I gave him the two-fingered “up yours” sign, and he just laughed.
“The problem,” Rose said, “is this Healy guy said his organization wants fifty percent of what their slots in Galveston County bring in.” He signaled the waiter for a refill on our coffee.