Apart from the spray flying in her face and a bit of seasickness that kicked in when the waves got choppy, the ride wasn’t too unpleasant. Neither man spoke to her, nor did they talk much to each other. Pantazonis spent most of the time hunched over, trying to stay dry, while Kagan stood straight and tall in the front like a bald Viking and steered with his eyes on the horizon.
It felt like it had been at least half an hour before Tricia got her first glimpse of Nicolazzo’s yacht. It looked deceptively small until they drew closer, and then suddenly revealed itself to be many times the size of the boat they were in, more like a small cruise ship than like anything one man should have for his own use. Kagan cut the power and they coasted in gently, bumping hulls as they arrived. Several heads appeared at the railing above them and a rope ladder was thrown over the side.
“Go on up,” Pantazonis said. “We’ve got a winch for the box.” And sure enough, while Tricia carefully climbed the ladder, trying hard not to lose either the purse looped around her wrist or her shoes along the way, she saw a cable being lowered beside her toward the launch. As she stepped off the ladder onto the deck of the ship, she saw the cable begin retracting, hauling the footlocker on board.
She looked around. There were five men there, all of them unfamiliar. “Where’s Uncle Nick?” she said.
“Right here,” Nicolazzo said. She turned around. He was standing at the midpoint of the deck, one hand on an open door. “Won’t you join me?” he said. “I’ve got some people downstairs who are dying to see you again.”
Two of the men pushed her forward, gripping her tightly by the arms. A third pulled her purse out of her hands, and turning she saw it was Pantazonis.
“Wait, I need that—” she said, but it was already gone, and he with it.
So much for the plan, she thought. Now what?
At Nicolazzo’s insistence, she preceded him down a narrow staircase and along a low-ceilinged hall to an open doorway. She ran inside when she saw Coral, her arms tied behind her around the back of a wooden chair. Her face was bruised, but that could have been a remnant of her fight with Stella; she didn’t seem to have any new monograms on her cheeks. But her hair was tangled and there were pouches under her eyes and even when she saw Tricia she was slow to respond. The last few days clearly hadn’t been good ones for her.
“Cory,” Tricia said, hugging her tightly, “are you okay?”
Coral didn’t say anything, just nodded as Tricia stepped back.
“I’m going to get you out of here,” Tricia said.
“You shouldn’t have come,” Coral said softly. “You should’ve taken Artie back home.”
“Don’t talk like that. The only one going home is you.”
“I hope you don’t mean that,” Charley said from behind her.
She turned. His black eye was as richly colored as it had been the last time she’d seen it, though the swelling had gone down a bit. Otherwise he seemed not too much the worse for wear—except, of course, for the tape wrapped around his right index finger. It looked like they’d splinted it with a Popsicle stick.
“Oh, Charley, I’m so sorry. I wish I’d never—”
“Sure,” Charley said. “We both do. But you can still make it up to me by giving this guy what he wants.”
“That is excellent advice, Mr. Borden,” Nicolazzo said. “I am glad you’ve come around to my way of thinking. You, too, Miss Heverstadt.”
At a gesture from Nicolazzo, Kagan carried the foot-locker in and deposited it heavily on a fold-down counter bolted to the wall.
“You want me to open it?” Kagan said.
“One thing at a time,” Nicolazzo said. “My pictures...?”
Tricia handed over the leather box. He slid the cover off and flipped through the photographs one by one. He nodded when he reached the last one. “Very good.” The box vanished inside his jacket pocket.
“Now the money.” Nicolazzo shooed Kagan away and lifted the two spring latches holding the footlocker closed. He eyed the money inside with a combination of satisfaction and wariness. Choosing a stack of bills from the middle, he riffled through it. His expression didn’t change, but even from where she was standing Tricia could see at a glance when the real bills ended and the newspaper began. Without saying anything, he picked up another stack and riffled through that one, then a third. He put them back in place.
“Kill the sister,” he said.
“Wait!” Tricia shouted. She yanked the pawnshop ticket out of her pocket, waved it overhead.
“What’s that supposed to be, Miss Heverstadt?”
“The rest of your money,” Tricia said. “You didn’t really think I’d bring it all here, did you?”
“I did expect that, yes. It’s what I told you to do.”
“If I had, what would have prevented you from killing all three of us and just dumping our bodies over the side?” She walked up to Nicolazzo, handed the ticket over. “I needed a way to ensure you’d let us go. You’ll get your money, every penny of it—but only once we’re safe on land.”
“You left my money at...a pawnshop?”
“Some of it,” Tricia said. “Some is in that footlocker. I’m afraid most of it is at the pawnshop, though.”
“And how am I supposed to find this pawnshop? The name’s been scratched off.”
“Oh, has it?” Tricia said. “It’s a good thing I remember which one it is, then. Or I suppose you could try going to every pawnshop in New York one at a time asking to see every brown valise they’ve got—that shouldn’t take more than a month or two, if you work hard at it.”
She could see him struggling with conflicting emotions, the hunger to lash out warring with his own self-interest. Before he could settle the matter, Pantazonis rushed in, knocking on the doorframe as he entered. He had the beaded purse in one hand, the pink satin makeup case in the other.
“Sorry to interrupt, boss—”
“Uncle Nick,” Nicolazzo growled.
“I’m sorry, Uncle Nick.” Pantazonis started over again. “I thought you’d want to see this.”
“Why would I want to see a purse?”
“Not the purse,” Pantazonis said. “This thing. Look what I found in it.” He swung open the hinged top of the makeup kit and lifted the false panel, revealing the transistor radio inside. “It’s a radio,” he said unnecessarily. “Only when I turn it on, it doesn’t play any music. It doesn’t play anything—but the little light goes on.”
Nicolazzo snatched it out of his hands, turned it over to look at the back, then waved it in Tricia’s face. “You think I don’t know what this is? After I’ve had the federal boys on my back for seven years?” His eyes blazed. “Pawnshop, my eye. This is a set-up. They want you to lure me back to land, don’t they? And when you get me there you’re supposed to flip the switch on this thing and it’ll send out a signal: Here’s Nicolazzo, here’s Nicolazzo. Come and get him. Well. Here’s what I think of that.” He strode to a porthole in the wall, opened it, and pitched the radio out. They could all hear the splash a moment later.
He slammed the porthole cover shut.
“Now, Miss Heverstadt, you are going to tell me where my money really is. And then you’re going to take me to it, or I swear I will kill all three of you. For now, one will do.” He turned back to Kagan. “Like I said. Kill the sister.”
“No, don’t—” Tricia said.
“You’re not taking me seriously, young lady, and you won’t unless I give you a reason to.”
Kagan pulled out a gun.
“Please,” Tricia said to Kagan, “don’t do it.”
“Oh? You’d rather he kill your boyfriend here?” Nicolazzo grabbed Charley’s chin in one hand, shook it roughly. “That’s fine with me. Your choice. Which one?”
“Neither,” Tricia said.
“That sounds good to me,” Charley said.
“You shut up,” Nicolazzo said, wheeling on him. “You, you imbroglione, with your goddamn cheating cards—you know what, I
think maybe you should choose, how about that? Huh?”
“I’d rather not,” Charley said.
“Ah, but you will,” Nicolazzo said. He snapped his fingers at Pantazonis. “Get me a deck of cards. Now!” Pantazonis scurried out of the room.
“I’ve wanted to do this ever since you walked out my door,” Nicolazzo said. “A little rematch. A hand of Fifty-to-One—only with my deck this time, not yours. You want to know what the stakes are?”
“I doubt it,” Charley said.
“If I win, my man here shoots you—in the head eventually, but not right away, he’ll take his time. He’s got plenty of bullets and you’ve got plenty of other places to get shot in first. Painful places.”
“And if I win?”
“If you win, I spare your life—for now,” Nicolazzo said. “And kill her instead.” He jabbed a finger in Coral’s direction.
“You’re insane,” Charley said, and it earned him a punch in the head.
Pantazonis came back through the door, a deck of cards in his hand. Nicolazzo peeled the top card off, threw it in Charley’s face. It bounced off and landed on the floor. Eight of hearts.
“What’s the next one, Borden?” Nicolazzo said. “Think hard. There’s a lot riding on it.” He waved Kagan over. The big man positioned himself at Charley’s side and pressed the barrel of his gun against Charley’s neck.
Charley looked over at Tricia, past the gun. There was something in his eyes—sadness? Regret? Resignation? Maybe a little of all three.
“Name a card,” Nicolazzo said. “Or I tell him to start pulling the trigger right now.”
Charley closed his eyes. “I don’t know,” he said. “Queen of spades.”
“There you go,” Nicolazzo said. “Was that so difficult? La donna nero. Well, let’s see if this fickle lady, she comes to your rescue.”
With a nasty flourish, Nicolazzo turned over the top card. His face paled, and he looked from the card to Charley and back again. It was the queen of spades.
“What did you...?” Nicolazzo threw the cards down, scattering them everywhere. He grabbed Charley’s throat in both hands and started throttling him. “How did you do that? I demand that you tell me!”
“I didn’t do anything,” Charley croaked. “It was just a guess—”
Tricia ran to Nicolazzo, started battering his back with her fists, but it had no effect.
“You lie!” Nicolazzo roared. With one arm he swatted Tricia away from him and she went sprawling among the cards. “You,” he said to Kagan, “kill the sister—now! How many times do I have to tell you?”
“Yes, sir,” Kagan said. He crossed to the other side of the room, pointed his gun at Coral.
What happened next Tricia didn’t see clearly. There was a blur of motion as Coral stood up from the chair and slapped Kagan’s arm aside; his gunshot went wide, punching a hole in the wall. The rope that had bound her hands and legs fell to the ground, neatly sliced through.
Coral swung at the big man’s chin, a bare-knuckled uppercut that cracked, bone against bone, like a second gunshot. Kagan staggered back. Coral closed again and gave him another brutal right, then slashed at his arm with her left hand. A spray of blood shot into the air and his gun tumbled to the floor, just inches from Tricia’s face. A moment later a razor blade landed beside it—the one Tricia had passed Coral when she’d hugged her, the one Coral had just used to draw blood.
Tricia grabbed the gun and got to her feet. She also—carefully—picked up the blade. Above her, Coral was raining jabs and body blows on Kagan. He had his hands up protectively, but she kept sneaking punches in below his guard and to either side, vicious kidney punches and below-the-belt combinations.
Nicolazzo looked on, furious, shouting something in Italian to Pantazonis, who looked like he only understood every third word.
But he understood enough to whip out a gun of his own.
He leveled his at Coral and Tricia leveled Kagan’s at him. They both pulled the trigger at the same time.
49.
Gun Work
The dual explosion in the small room deafened everyone and the choking cloud of gunsmoke added to the confusion. Pantazonis lay at Charley’s feet, leaking blood like a punctured water bottle. Kagan and Coral were both upright; Pantazonis’ bullet had missed them.
Nicolazzo released Charley’s neck as Tricia swept her gun up toward him. He jumped over Pantazonis’ body and shoved her aside, continuing on through the door. Tricia heard him running down the hallway, shouting for his men.
She raced to Charley’s side. Her hands were shaking; her breath was coming rapidly. She fought the nauseous feeling rising in her gut. Had she just killed a man? She pushed the question from her mind. She could think about that later. If there was a later.
She started working on the ropes around Charley’s hands with the razor blade, trying not to slit his wrists in the process. At the other end of the room, Kagan and Coral were still standing toe to toe, fists raised like contenders in a boxing match. They looked at each other, smiled. He shrugged his shoulders; she stretched her neck, bending it this way and that; he cracked the knuckles on both his fists. Then she drove a right cross into his face. He swayed for a moment and fell like a tree. He didn’t get up.
“My goodness,” Tricia said.
“I don’t mean to be selfish here,” Charley said after a moment, “but do you think you could...?”
“Oh, yes—sorry.” Tricia finished slicing through the rope.
Coral, meanwhile, bent to grab Pantazonis’ gun.
“Is there any other way out?” Tricia said.
“Not unless you can fit through that porthole.”
Tricia thought she might—it wasn’t that much smaller than the bathroom window at the Satellite Club. But there was no way Coral or Charley could, and anyway none of them could swim to safety from wherever they were, somewhere outside U.S. coastal waters. The nearest land was probably miles away.
“Then let’s get out of here,” she said, just as a pair of Nicolazzo’s men burst through the door with guns in hand.
Before Tricia could react, Coral had dropped them both, one with a bullet to the gut, the other with a pair in his leg, the second shot blowing out his kneecap. Both fell to the ground moaning. Coral threw away the gun she’d used and pried theirs out of their hands. “Here,” she said, handing one to Tricia. “These’ll be fully loaded.” Tricia had only used one bullet from Kagan’s gun; she held onto both.
They went cautiously out into the hall. There was no one there at the moment, but halfway to the stairs they saw a pair of legs coming down. Coral didn’t wait, just took aim and fired, and the possessor of the legs slid to the bottom in a heap.
“Where’d you learn to shoot like that?” Tricia said.
“You pick things up,” Coral said.
“Sure,” Tricia said, following her up the steps to the deck, “but not things like that.”
“You do if you have to,” Coral said.
A bullet caromed off a metal railing beside them and they dropped to their hands and knees, crawled behind the nearest bulkhead. Coral poked one arm around the side to blindly squeeze off a shot, then fell back.
“How many of these guys are there?” Tricia said.
“I’m not sure. Fewer than ten, I think. Maybe it’s ten with the ones that brought you.”
“Then we’ve already gotten rid of half of them,” Tricia said.
“You always were an optimist,” Coral said, and rose from her crouch to take another shot.
Behind them, Tricia heard Charley crawling away. “Where are you going?” Tricia said.
“I have an idea.”
“How about not getting shot? I’d think you’d like that idea.”
“I love that idea,” Charley said, “but I’m not convinced sitting here waiting to run out of bullets is the best way to accomplish it.”
“We should stick together,” Tricia said.
“With Annie Oakley there on your side
? You don’t need me.”
“At least take a gun,” Tricia said, and tried to hand him one.
He held up his taped hand. “Broken trigger finger. Thanks, anyway.”
“Be careful, Charley,” she said.
“Always.” He hesitated a moment, then leaned in and kissed her. “In case I don’t get another chance,” he said. Then he scurried away, around the corner, chased by gunfire.
Someone patted her roughly on the shoulder.
“Hey,” Coral said, “are you listening? I said give me that gun.”
“Sorry,” Tricia said, and passed Kagan’s gun to her.
Coral pointed across the way, the opposite direction from the one Charley had gone. “When I say go—”
Tricia nodded.
“Go!”
Tricia scuttered through a wide open No Man’s Land while Coral laid down protective fire and followed her. Return fire plowed up the wooden deck at their feet and one splinter caught Tricia in the calf. She could feel the bite and the blood running down her leg.
“You okay?”
“Yeah,” she said, grimacing. She hunched behind a broad wooden bitt with a hawser coiled around it. Coral crammed in beside her.
“Ladies,” came a booming voice, Nicolazzo’s, “if you put your guns down right now, I won’t kill you.”
“You think we’d fall for that?” Coral shouted back.
“Your sister’s got a lot of money that belongs to me,” Nicolazzo said. “Much as I would enjoy killing you both, I wouldn’t pay millions of dollars for the pleasure.”
“ ‘Kill the sister,’ ” Coral said. “I heard you three times.”
“Clearly the situation has changed.”
“Yeah,” Coral said, “it’s changed because I’ve got a gun. How about you put your guns—”
The boat lurched before she could get the rest of her thought out. Tricia felt the engines turn on belowdeck and over the side she saw the water churning as they got underway.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Coral said.
The men on the other side of the deck seemed confused as well, judging by the argument being carried out in yelled Italian. Tricia glanced up, over the side, toward the horizon. “Look!”
Hard Case Crime: Fifty to One Page 29