“You hadn’t fucking better be lying.”
“Two days ago,” Tommy reasserted, more forcefully this time. “And before that it’d been months. Maybe almost a year.”
“Maybe, huh?” Al said. “Maybe almost?”
“You want to take someone else in to do this job, you want to do it yourself, whatever you want, y’know? Anything you want me to do to prove I’m not high on junk, tell me, and I’ll do it.”
Al didn’t say anything for a while. Maybe he was reading too much into things. Al really didn’t want to do this job, and maybe that was clouding his judgment. “Just drive,” he said.
Tommy turned on the radio. Who’s gonna jump, Buck Owens sang, when you say frog? Tommy improvised a credible harmony line.
“Turn that peckerwood shit off,” Al said.
Tommy snickered, but he did it.
“What’s so funny?” Al said.
“Nothing,” Tommy said.
“I asked you a question. What’s so funny?”
“The guy in the song sings who’s gonna jump, when you say frog, and then you tell me to turn off the radio.”
“What the fuck does that have to do with saying frog?”
“Nothing.”
“You want to listen to the radio, listen,” Al said. “Sing along if you want. Just not that peckerwood shit.”
“Forget it.” Tommy stared out at the dusty road ahead. “Out here, what else you think there is?”
This would be Tommy Neri’s third trip to Tucson to speak with Fausto Geraci.
“You’re telling me you like that shit?” Al said.
“I was just turning on the radio to turn it on,” Tommy said. Absently, he touched the gun at his hip. It was probably unconscious, Al knew. A lot of guys did that. There were cops who touched their piece every thirty seconds for thirty years. Al himself had not brought a gun. His heavy steel cop-issue flashlight was tucked inside his small suitcase.
Again, Tommy touched the pistol. It was a newish 9mm Walther: a beauty, Al thought. A weapon that no right-minded individual would want to use once and then dump. If it was Al, he’d have brought some cheap strunz good only for close-in work, but Al tried his best to keep from second-guessing his nephew’s every move. It was what Al’s own father had done to him—beaten him almost to death, in fact, more than a few times, for not doing things by the old man’s arbitrary, contradictory code of conduct. With Al’s big sister, Tommy’s mother, his father had been even more ruthless about telling her everything she did that was wrong and then punctuating it with his fists. So fuck it. All that really mattered was that Tommy’s gun was clean and untraceable, and it was. If today’s job went at all well, Tommy wouldn’t need to fire the thing anyway and thus wouldn’t need to shitcan it. If he did, so be it. It was just a goddamned gun. The good Germans at Walther would make more.
The ghost planes they were passing now were nearly all decorated with fading paintings of busty women in stockings or bathing suits or both.
“You sure you know where you’re going?” Al asked.
“Relax.”
“Let’s swing by the airport real quick on the way.”
“We just came from it.”
“Not the airstrip. The airport. It’s—”
“I know where the airport is.”
“Right,” Al said. He pulled a map from his jacket pocket and followed along anyway.
AS HE APPARENTLY DID EVERY MORNING, FAUSTO Geraci returned home from driving his wife, Conchita, to her job at the cannery on the other side of town, which he did dressed in a ratty old bathrobe and an undershirt, and took a seat in a webbed lawn chair on his back patio, smoking Chesterfield Kings and staring out at his swimming pool.
“Why don’t he just get her a car?” Al said. “She don’t drive?”
He and Tommy were parked the next street over, situated so they could see a judicious sliver of Fausto’s backyard.
“She drives,” Tommy said. “But he likes to drive her. Like I told you, he likes to drive, period.”
Every Sunday, Fausto Geraci took his car out in the middle of nowhere and opened it up, well past 100. It was one of the things Al planned to ask him about.
“The Mexican wife,” Al said. “Why don’t she quit that job, then? She’s married now. All of our money this old fuck’s probably sittin’ on, I can’t imagine she needs it.”
“Maybe she likes to work. How the fuck should I know? She’s a Mexican. Who knows what they think?”
Al took out his binoculars.
“What’d I tell you, huh?” said Tommy. “Have you ever in your whole life seen a stronzo vecchio who looked more like he was just waitin’ to die?”
“To be honest with you, he looks like he’s been that way awhile,” Al said. “Like that’s just who he is.” Appearances could be deceiving. The man was, after all, practically a newlywed. He was by all accounts enjoying the attention his son’s disappearance had brought his way. “I thought you said he kept it empty, the pool.”
“He does. He did.”
“Full now.” That ruled out one of the ideas Al had come up with, which was to handcuff Fausto Geraci to the bottom and turn on the water. He’d seen it work before. He had a pair of cuffs in the pocket of his Windbreaker. Al probably wouldn’t have done it that way anyway. Too many neighbors around to hear the old man if he started yelling—and getting the old man yelling was key, Al figured, to getting the information they wanted. But the way Al liked to do jobs—hits or muscle, either one—was to come in with a few options swirling around in his head and then size up the situation quickly and go with what felt right. Like a basketball guard bringing the ball down the court, or a jazz horn player soloing off a simple melody everybody already knew, or a gunslinger riding into a town where men were waiting for him.
“Maybe it suddenly occurred to the old bastard that it’s hotter out here than the devil’s morning piss,” Tommy said. “Figured it’d be nice to be able to take a dip now and then.”
“Could be,” Al said, raising the binoculars again.
“Or maybe it was the Mexican’s idea.”
“Possible,” Al said, though Fausto had married Conchita a little more than a year ago.
The story on the pool—which Nick Geraci himself had often told—was that Fausto and his first wife had moved down here from Cleveland after she was diagnosed with the Big C. Her people were from Milazzo, fishermen and sponge divers, and she herself swam in meets as a girl. Loved the water, never had a pool, always wanted one, finally got it, used it all the time. She was in that pool when her weakened heart gave out. Fausto found her there, pulled her out himself. Before she was even in the ground, he drained the pool and never refilled it. Maybe out of grief, maybe because he was a cheap son of a bitch—who knew? Nick would refill it whenever he visited, but the old man would drain it the minute he left. At least that was the story.
Suddenly, a metal screen door slammed. Fausto Geraci sat up straight in his lawn chair, beaming. “More likely,” Al said, handing Tommy the binoculars, “doting grand-pop that he is, our man here did it for her. Filled the pool.”
There was the sound of a splash and then the distant laughter of a young woman.
The information they’d gotten was good. Bev Geraci, Nick’s younger daughter, had finished her sophomore year of college at Berkeley and had come to spend the summer with her grandfather. The poor kid took after her father. Even from the sound of the splash, Al Neri would have guessed, correctly, that she was a big hulk of a girl.
AL AND TOMMY NERI DROVE AROUND THE BLOCK and pulled their rental car into the driveway of Fausto Geraci’s stucco-clad ranch style, coasting in with the engine already killed, blocking the red-and-white Olds Starfire in the garage. The old man was supposedly a fancy driver and prided himself on it. There wasn’t much chance of his getting to the car—or of his granddaughter getting that far, either—but Al wanted it blocked anyway. When he was a kid and certainly when he was on the force, he’d expected to die youn
g and in a blaze of glory, like a mysterious hero in one of the Westerns he loved so much. He even courted it, that stupid boy’s stupid dream. Things had changed. He still loved Westerns (movies, TV, even books), and he still thought of himself as a young man (he’d turn forty next year but could pass as the brother of his gray-haired, balding nephew). But the older he got, the more attached he became to the idea of getting even older yet. And getting older—as any fan of Westerns could tell you—meant paying attention to all the little things that could go wrong.
They put on gloves, got out, and pressed the car doors shut. The garage, a converted carport, was open. They hurried inside, but not so fast that a neighbor or a person driving by would think anything of it. The garage smelled of machine oil and pine cleaner. Its floor was painted. Hoses, cords, and well-maintained tools hung on pegboards, silhouetted by black Magic Marker. Al took a roll of duct tape and a coil of clothesline rope. They crouched on either side of the door to the backyard.
Even through the pebbled glass, Al could see that the girl was still swimming, and Fausto was still smoking and watching her. The sound of a whiny-voiced man with a guitar came from what must have been the girl’s tinny radio. Beatnik music, Al thought. Some guy singing about a clown crying in the alley. Al chuckled. Grow up, kid. Look around. Good luck finding an alley without some goddamned clown in it, crying about something.
Al jerked a thumb toward the interior of the house to indicate that they’d be taking Fausto and the girl inside to talk to them, and Tommy nodded. Al set the rope and the duct tape down, held up his index fingers side by side, then moved them apart: put them in separate parts of the house. Tommy nodded again.
Tommy stuffed his hat in his pocket and drew his gun. The look on his face was one of almost carnal relief.
Al hit him in the shoulder and shook his head. Not unless or until they needed it. This was an old man and a girl. Al had left his flashlight in the car. Overkill. He didn’t regret bringing it, though. For him, the flashlight was as much a good-luck charm as a weapon.
What’ll you do now, my blue-eyed son? What’ll you do now, my darling young one?
Al motioned with both palms out for Tommy to slow down, take it easy. Tommy put the gun away. Al picked up the rope and the tape, counted to three, and they strode through the door.
“Gentlemen,” Fausto said, as if he’d been expecting them. Though he did not stand up. “Can I get yuz coffee and a bun or some such? Cigarettes, I’m running low on. Food, coffee, we got. Kind of warm out for them gloves, don’t you think?”
“We need to talk,” Tommy said.
Bev was swimming laps, her head in a white rubber bathing cap with rubber flowers on the side.
“I bet you that’s right,” Fausto said. “Like I always say, life is short. Important men like you, come all this way just to see me, what you want to waste your time with the simple courtesies for, am I right?” He jerked a thumb at Al. “Who’s your ugly friend in the funny hat?” he asked Tommy. “He looks like a cop in a costume.”
“Get up,” Al said, resisting the temptation both to knock the old guy’s teeth out and to take off the tam. “I said, get up.”
“Fausto Geraci,” he said, finally and slowly standing. Jair-AH-chee, not Juh-RAY-see. He did not extend his hand. Fausto pointed at the rope and the tape. “Hey, y’know, in my garage there, I got some rope just like that, new roll of tape just like that, too. With all we got in common, we ought to be able to figure out how to be friends.”
Bev must have caught sight of something. She stopped in the middle of the deep end of the pool and, treading water, called to her grandfather. She was squinting. Her cat-eye glasses were upside down on the table beside her grandfather.
“It’s all right, nipotina.”
“We’re just friends of your grandpa, all right?” said Tommy Neri, walking toward her on the deck of the pool.
For a moment, the girl’s eyes widened, then she spun around in the water and sprinted for the opposite side of the pool. Her kicking feet made that thumping sound only good swimmers can make.
Tommy ran to the other side of the pool. He was not a speedy man.
Fausto thrust his hand into the pocket of his bathrobe.
As he did, the heel of Al Neri’s right hand slammed into Fausto’s breastbone.
The old man’s gun went flying, and he fell down into his lawn chair so hard it toppled over backward. His slippers sailed a good fifteen feet in the air.
Bev got to the side but saw Tommy coming. Before he could grab her, she pushed off the side and started sprinting the other way. Tommy, already winded, cursed and started running back around to where he’d started.
“She don’t know nothing,” Fausto muttered, then lapsed into what Al presumed was Sicilian dialect. All Al knew in that was how to ask for a kiss and how to cuss. Al hurried over and fished the gun out of the oleander bush where it landed. It was a Smith & Wesson .38, an old one but in good shape. The safety was still on. He tucked it in his jacket pocket. The old man was gasping for air a little but not moaning. Al had felt the soggy give of the old man’s chest, and he knew there were a few broken ribs. Broken ribs were good. They hurt like hell, but they weren’t usually serious. A person would suffer from pain like that but probably not pass out or die.
Bev Geraci dove underwater and turned around again and went a different direction.
“I may need your help here,” Tommy said.
“I’m busy.” Al heaved Fausto into a nearby undamaged lawn chair. “Dive in and get her.”
“I can’t swim.”
“You what?”
Al picked up the tape, started it with his teeth so he wouldn’t have to take off the gloves, and ripped off a long strip. Fausto flinched. The terrible ripping noise duct tape made was always good for jobs like this, too.
“I can swim a little,” Tommy said, “but not like this here. Fucking Aquagirl or something—what’s-her-face, with those water movies.” He circled the pool yet again with his hand on his gun. “I should have brought the silencer.”
At this, Fausto perked up.
Al Neri slapped the tape on his face and bound it tightly around his head. The old man’s hands rose to fend him off, but Al was already done. He pushed the old man against the back of the house, his knee in the small of Fausto’s back, and grabbed his hands and lashed them together at the wrists with clothesline rope.
“Get her inside before you use the piece,” Al called, but bluffing. The last thing in the world he was going to OK was shooting that girl.
Al considered tying or duct-taping Fausto to the chair as well, but the questioning needed to be done inside, and he didn’t want to have to carry him. If Al marched him inside now and tied him up or taped him to something in there, he’d have to trust Tommy not to shoot the girl and also to keep the girl from eluding him and running away. Tommy was red-faced from the exertion of trotting around the pool. If she did get out now and wasn’t totally gassed herself, she could probably outrun him. Tommy would shoot her then for sure.
“C’mere,” Al said. “Hurry up. Watch this one, see to it he don’t move.”
Relieved, Tommy did as he was told. Al ran over and grabbed the leaf skimmer. The pole was about eight feet long. He pulled it back, the way a person would a sledgehammer. He hit her in the head with it, hard.
Harder than he’d meant to. He’d misjudged it, maybe because she was swimming so fast. He’d only been trying to make a point.
She went under.
Al Neri cursed and flung the skimmer aside. Fucking Scootch. Al had managed to go this long without ever hitting a woman, not even a whore. Even when he’d been ordered to kill one, at one of the legal cathouses Fredo used to have, out in the desert near Vegas, he’d given the job to a younger associate.
She was at the bottom of the pool and didn’t seem to be moving. If he killed her, he reasoned, she’d float. He waited her out.
Sure enough, the girl suddenly shot to the surface, dead-bang in the
middle of the pool, bleeding from her temple but apparently all right otherwise. She stared at him, treading water and terrified, then she put her bleeding head down and again started sprinting to the farthest corner of the pool.
“Maybe you should dive in and get her,” Tommy said.
Al ran to the other side. He ran three miles almost every day, so, unlike Tommy, he wasn’t going to wear down before the poor girl did. He would deal later with his nephew’s show of disrespect. Tommy Neri was a made guy, which meant that even his uncle couldn’t lay a hand on him, but there were always other things that could be done.
On her next trip across the pool, Bev Geraci got to the wall and pulled herself out of the pool in one smooth motion. She made a run toward the back of the yard, wailing in what could only be called hysterics. There was a fence. Al Neri grabbed her as she was almost over it.
She was awfully strong for a girl. He managed to hold on to her, wrapping his arms around her in a bear hug, dragging her back across the deck of the pool, past her madly grunting grandfather, and into the house through the patio door. In the first bedroom he found, the master, he threw her down on the bed.
All the roadwork, all the time he spent at the weight bench he had at home: people made jokes about it, but in a line of work that sometimes got physical, what sense did it make to let yourself go?
One of the straps on Bev Geraci’s bathing suit had broken. Al caught a glimpse of her breast and averted his eyes, looking for a towel for her. On the wall there was a three-foot-wide jigsaw puzzle of The Last Supper, assembled, glued down, framed, and hung over the bed. The bathroom door was across the room and he didn’t want to leave her even for a moment. He was soaked himself, he realized. And his shirt was smeared with her blood. He grabbed a pink bathrobe from a hook on the back of the bedroom door and wiped himself with it.
She sat up, tugging at the strap, sobbing quietly now, blood and tears streaming down her already wet face.
“We don’t want to hurt you,” Al said, tossing her the robe. “I swear on my mother’s grave, all we want is information.”
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