Hard Case Crime: Fifty to One

by Ardai, Charles

  Tricia’s face fell. “Squeezing?”

  “First she wanted the car,” Barrone said. “Then it was money. Then it was introductions to people I know in the fight business. Or else.”

  “I’m sure she didn’t mean to—”

  “Oh, she knew exactly what she was doing, and she meant every word.”

  “I think you’re wrong, Mr. Barrone. My sister’s a good person. She’s not some sort of...blackmailer.”

  “Some sort of blackmailer is exactly what she is.” The gun rotated back to Charley. “And you. Did you really take Sal at Fifty-to-One?”

  “We played a hand,” Charley said. “I got lucky.”

  “I don’t buy that. No one gets lucky at Fifty-to-One.”

  “One in fifty people should,” Charley said. “If you think about it.”

  “You don’t leave something like that to luck,” Barrone said, “not when your life’s at stake. If you beat him at his game, you had a way to beat him. What’s the trick?”

  “No trick,” Charley said.

  “What’s the goddamn trick?”

  “No trick,” Charley insisted.

  “My son,” Barrone said, “hasn’t been seen for a month. Now I find out he’s dead. The man who killed him likes playing an insane little game with his enemies that I’ve never heard of anyone surviving—except you. The way things are going, I may find myself playing that game before too much longer, and if there’s a way to beat it, I want to know what it is.” As he spoke, Barrone dug into a little well in the armrest beside him, dropped one item after another on the seat—a balled-up handkerchief, a couple of cellophane-wrapped hard candies, a corkscrew. Finally he came up with a pack of cards. “Now show me how the hell you did it,” he said.

  “I wish I could,” Charley said. “Believe me, nothing would make me happier. But I can’t.”

  “How about this,” Barrone said, flicking the top card off the pack with his thumb. It landed on the seat next to him. Four of clubs. “Tell me what the next card is or I’ll blow your girlfriend’s brains out.”

  Tricia blanched as Barrone’s gun swung toward her once more. The barrel gaped between her eyes. Such a big opening for such a small fistful of metal. She wanted to run, but where? She couldn’t even make it to the door, never mind through it, before he could pull the trigger.

  “Her?” Charley said, affecting a desperate little laugh. “She’s not my girlfriend. She’s just some girl who came to audition today. We’re casting for the new Comden and Green revue—”

  “—and you take all the girls who come in for auditions to the toilet for a little fun.”

  “Absolutely. Every one I can,” Charley said. “Wouldn’t you? Love ‘em and leave ‘em, that’s me.”

  “Nice try,” Barrone said. “But I saw her face when you kissed her. I see your face now. She’s not just ‘some girl’ to you.” He cocked the gun. “So I say again, name the next card, or I’ll ventilate her.”

  “Charley!” Tricia said.

  “All right,” Charley said. “All right. I’ll tell you. The cards we were playing with were marked—a mechanic’s deck. I had them on me when Nicolazzo grabbed me. I was just lucky he used my cards instead of a deck of his own. That’s the big secret. Now leave her alone. Shoot me if you’ve got to shoot somebody.”

  “Okay,” Barrone said, swinging his gun around.

  “No, wait, wait—I said ‘if.’ If you have to shoot somebody.” Charley put up his hands as though they might repel bullets. “But why would you have to shoot anybody? Least of all us. You could get life for that, if they didn’t put you in the chair. We’re not worth it.”

  “That’s a point,” Barrone said.

  “We’re not even worth the stain on the upholstery,” Charley said.

  “That’s a point, too,” Barrone said.

  “We’re not even worth the bullets it would take,” Charley said.

  “Don’t sell yourself short,” Barrone said. “You’re worth the bullets.”

  “The point is,” Charley said, “the person you really want is Nicolazzo, right? Well, that’s just fine with us—we don’t have any love for the man ourselves. In fact, we were getting ready to go after him—it’s what we got the guns for, the ones you took away from us. If you want to do something smart, why not let us finish what we started? Give us back the guns and we’ll get rid of him for you.”

  Tricia gave him the sort of look you’d give to a relative who’d suddenly proposed skinny-dipping in the fountain in front of the Plaza Hotel.

  “You?” Barrone said. “With your mug shot and your marked cards and your fumbling around in toilets? Sal would eat you for breakfast.”

  “Yeah? Seems to me he had the chance and here we are, still uneaten.”

  “You said yourself, you got lucky.”

  “So maybe we’ll get lucky again,” Charley said. “Or maybe not, maybe we’ll fail, but if so you’re no worse off—if he kills us we’re just as dead as if you did it, and at least that way it’s one less pair of murders you have to answer for.”

  “What if he doesn’t kill you? What if he captures you, makes you talk, and you tell him about me to save your rotten life?”

  “You think he’d believe us?” Charley said. “Or do you think he’d believe we were just making things up to save our rotten lives?”

  Baronne seemed to be mulling it over. His finger was still on the trigger, though.

  “And that’s if we fail,” Charley said. “But maybe we won’t fail. Maybe we’ll succeed. Right? It could happen. And then...”

  “And then what?”

  “And then whatever you want,” Charley said. “You can move up, take his place. You can stop being a lackey, running a tenth-rate used car lot while he’s hobnobbing with stars at swanky nightclubs. You’re the man’s brother-in-law, aren’t you? You’re married to his sister. When do you get what you’re due? Well, we can help you get it. But only,” Charley said, emphasizing the critical point, “if you don’t shoot us.”

  Barrone thought about it for a while, during which time Tricia felt sweat running down her back and sides in rivulets. She’d never been this frightened in her life, not even when she’d been climbing down the rain gutter from twelve stories up. The widening stains on Charley’s shirt suggested he was feeling some anxiety himself.

  After letting them stew a while, Barrone lowered his gun, released the hammer. “You’d have made a good salesman, Borden. If you do things half as well as you talk about them, maybe you’ve got a chance.” He shook his head. “Maybe. But never forget you’re one wrong step away from a bullet in the back.”

  “Trust me,” Charley said, “that’s not the sort of thing I’m likely to forget.”

  In the seat beside him, Tricia started breathing again.

  Barrone sat back, slipped his gun inside his jacket. “Marked cards,” he said. “You little sneak.” He waved the deck at Charley. “Want to see how you would’ve done with a straight deck?”

  Charley said, “Not really.”

  “Come on,” Barrone said. “Just for a lark.”

  “Fine,” Charley said, staring at the back of the topmost card. “Six of diamonds.”

  Barrone thumbed the card in Charley’s direction. “Let’s see.”

  Charley reached out, turned the card over. Two of spades.

  “You’re a lucky man,” Barrone said.

  “Sometimes,” Charley said. “Just not at cards.”

  29.

  Robbie’s Wife

  The car pulled to a stop at Fulton Street, near where the Fish Market would be opening for business in just a few hours. Already there were trucks pulling in and offloading crates that stank of fresh catches and seawater. The driver came around and opened the door. Barrone gestured for them to get out first. He followed, wincing as he got to his feet. He was not a young man and was carrying a lot of weight on those not-young knees.

  “Come upstairs,” he said.

  “If it’s all the same to yo
u,” Charley said, “we’d just as soon be on our way—”

  “I said come upstairs,” Barrone said.

  “Why?”

  “You want your guns back, for one thing, and I’m not handing them to you loaded. Apart from that—have you gotten a look at yourself?” He grabbed hold of the back of Charley’s neck, steered him over to one of the limo’s side-view mirrors. Tricia followed. Charley fingered the stubble on his chin as though surprised to discover it there. “You can’t go after Sal looking like a bum and smelling worse—not if you want to have a serious chance to get close to him. You need a bath, you need a shave. And you need some sleep—look at your eyes. I’ve seen smaller bags on a Pullman car.” He snapped his fingers at the driver, a young man who looked like he’d grow up to be Barrone’s shape if he lived long enough. “Eddie, clear out the room on the top floor.” The driver nodded, headed off.

  “Mr. Barrone,” Tricia said, “it isn’t that I’m not grateful—I’d dearly love a good night’s sleep. But my sister’s in trouble now. We can’t just leave her in Nicolazzo’s hands while we lie down and take a nap. We’ve lost enough time as it is.”

  “All due respect—Trixie, is it?” Barrone said. “If Sal wanted Colleen dead, she’s dead already. If she’s alive now, she’ll still be alive in five, six hours.”

  “You sure it’s not that you’d prefer her dead,” Tricia said, “because she’s been squeezing you?”

  “What, for a few bucks and a car? I don’t like it, but I don’t want her dead for it.” Barrone waved an arm at her. “Anyway, look at you. You’d be no use to her the way you are now. You can barely stand up.”

  It was true enough. She was listing like a tree in loose soil.

  “Now for the last time,” Barrone said. “Come upstairs. Or would you rather do it at gunpoint?”

  “No, no,” Charley said. “We’ll come.”

  Inside, the building was spare, obviously less a home than a headquarters. There was a kitchen on the first floor, but it was full of burly men with empty shoulder holsters, some downing beers as they read the newspaper, some running oil-stained cloths through the pulled-apart mechanisms of their guns. The rooms Tricia and Charley passed as they climbed the stairs were under-furnished—a sectional sofa in one corner, a bare table in another. There was, Tricia thought, no woman’s touch; which made sense, since as far as she could see, there were no women.

  Barrone stopped climbing after two floors. He leaned on the banister and watched as they continued without him. “Go ahead,” he said. “There’s a bathroom on the top floor. Eddie should’ve put out a razor for you. We’ll talk strategy in the morning.”

  When he’d dropped out of sight at last, Tricia leaned in close to Charley and whispered. “What the hell are we doing? We’re working for him now?”

  “We’re breathing,” Charley said. “One thing at a time.”

  “But he expects us to kill Nicolazzo for him. We can’t do that!”

  “You don’t know what you can do till you try,” Charley said.

  Tricia’s feet felt like stones and her head felt even heavier. Just keeping her eyelids open was an effort. “We’re not killers, Charley,” she said. “I’m not, anyway.”

  “The police think you are.”

  “So I might as well be? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “I don’t know what I’m saying. I’m too tired to think.”

  They turned the last corner and made their way up the final half-flight of stairs. The floor they came out on was a little better decorated than downstairs, with floral wallpaper and moldings up by the stamped-tin ceiling. An open door at one end of the short corridor led to a bathroom and Tricia could hear water running into a tub. Through the door at the other end she saw the corner of a bed. Halfway between two bales of hay and unable to choose, the donkey starved to death. That wouldn’t be her fate. Let Charley take the bath; she’d sleep first.

  She staggered into the bedroom. Eddie was there, loaded down with an armful of blankets and stripped-off bed linens, and there was a woman in there, too, loading another few pieces onto the pile. She was tall and thin and looked to be in her middle thirties, with the close-set eyes and narrow axe-blade of a nose that stamped her as one of the Barrone clan. She gave Eddie a little shove toward the door and he headed out with a glance back at her; he seemed a little moony-eyed, Tricia thought.

  “Go on,” the woman said, and a few seconds later they heard him tromping down the stairs.

  Charley came in quietly beside Tricia. The woman, who’d paid Tricia no attention whatsoever, eyed him up and down with considerably more interest.

  “Scruffy, aintcha?” She wet her lips with the tip of her tongue. “You’re papa’s new pet? Eddie told me he’d picked up some strays.”

  “You’re Mr. Barrone’s daughter?” Tricia said.

  “Among other things,” she said, not taking her eyes off Charley.

  Tricia scoured her memory for the daughter’s name, the surviving daughter—the dead one was Adelaide, she remembered that. “Renata,” she said. “Right?”

  “Points to the little lady,” Renata said—to Charley. “She might win herself a kewpie doll yet.”

  “And you’re married to—” Tricia caught herself.

  “Robbie Monge, that’s right,” Renata said, brightening. “The famous bandleader. Read about us in Hedda’s column, did you?”

  “Among other places,” Tricia said. She didn’t like this woman, she decided. Didn’t like her at all, and wouldn’t have liked her even if she hadn’t been sizing Charley up like a dressmaker eyeing a bolt of satin.

  “Why no ring?” Charley said, nodding toward her hand.

  She lifted the hand, stared at it as though noticing for the first time the absence of a wedding band. “I wore one for a while,” she said. “It made my finger itch.”

  And she tilted her face down to give him an up-from-under stare straight off the cover of Real Confessions.

  “Awful nice to have met you,” Tricia said, emphasizing the awful more than the nice. “But we’re pretty tired and we’ve got an early day. Maybe you could let us get some sleep?”

  Renata didn’t take her eyes off Charley. “What is she,” Renata asked, “your kid sister? Or just your kid?”

  Tricia’s mouth dropped open, but Charley put a hand on her arm before she could say anything. “Mrs. Monge, Trixie’s right, we really do need to get some sleep. If you wouldn’t mind...?”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t mind,” Renata said. “I wouldn’t mind at all.” On her way out the door she patted Tricia’s forehead. “Pleasant dreams, honey.”

  The door clicked shut behind her.

  “What a hussy!” Tricia fumed. “She’s a married woman!”

  “Didn’t you tell me she’s a widow?” Charley said.

  “Yeah, but she doesn’t know that,” Tricia said.

  “How do you know she doesn’t?” Charley said.

  “If she does, that’s even worse,” Tricia said. “Her husband’s not even buried yet—”

  “Robbie didn’t sound like a prize himself,” Charley said. “Anyway, that’s not the point.”

  “Oh? What’s the point, then?”

  “The point is she’s Barrone’s daughter, and we might need her help. We certainly don’t need to get into a fight with her.”

  “I wouldn’t say a fight’s what she wants to get into with you,” Tricia said. “You might want to check the tub before you climb in.”

  Charley wearily slid his suspenders off his shoulders, began undoing his cuffs. “Her cozying up to us isn’t the worst thing that could happen, Tricia.”

  “Us? She’s not cozying up to us.”

  “So?” Charley said. “One of us is better than neither. We need every advantage we can get.”

  He was right, of course—she knew he was right. Still. “Go take your bath,” she said. She pulled off her shoes one by one, threw them at the armchair in the corner. She slung herself backwards across the bed, let her
eyes close. “And don’t wake me when you come back.”

  “Then move over,” Charley said, “so I won’t have to.”

  “I think maybe you should take the chair this time,” she said.

  “Swell,” Charley muttered and headed toward the sound of pouring water.

  30.

  The Vengeful Virgin

  When the first rays of sunlight through the blinds prodded her awake, Charley wasn’t in the bed; he wasn’t in the chair either. His shoes were on the floor, next to hers—he’d left the four of them lined up, side by side. She saw his pants draped over the arm of the chair. Her dress, which she’d stripped off and left in a heap on the floor with her underwear, was missing, and in its place was a folded robe. It was too large for her, but she put it on and managed to walk down the hall to the bathroom in it without tripping.

  The hallway lights were off and the house was silent. She rapped gently on the bathroom door and prepared to whisper his name, but it swung open under the impact of her knuckles. There was no one inside—but there were her dress and her intimates, hanging from the shower rod and almost dry. Charley’s shirt and undershirt were hanging beside them. She looked at the seat of the dress. The stain from where she’d landed on Jerry’s roof hadn’t come out, not completely, but it was faint enough now that you wouldn’t notice if you didn’t know to look for it; and the smell, at least, was gone.

  She got washed at the sink like she’d done for years on cold mornings in Aberdeen: a splash of water, a streak of soap, some more water, vigorous toweling. She brushed her hair back, briefly inspecting the dark roots that had started to show at her scalp. Would she dye it again? If she got out of this mess, would she stay blonde? Or would she go back to the old brown of Aberdeen, quiet and unexciting but safe? It was tempting—to not be Trixie any longer, just Patricia Heverstadt once again, attracting glances as she walked down the street but not bullets. Yet she wondered whether this temptation was like the bargains she’d found herself making while climbing down the rain gutter, the sort you might contemplate in a dire moment but that you’d never go through with in the end.