When neither Mickey nor Jimmy responded, he said, “Ten percent’s good, but I’m having some trouble getting the money fronted—”
Mickey’s eyes swung in his direction. “Drink your beer.” The words seemed to tumble from Mickey’s mouth and lay solid and wet on the table. Mickey’s eyes remained on him a moment longer, impressing upon John the extent to which Mickey did not wish to discuss business at the moment. Beside him, Jimmy Kahn kept his eyes trained on the basketball game, uninterested in the wave of unease that had just rushed across their table.
John stared back at Mickey, unflinching, until Mickey finally turned back to the television.
He wanted to talk about the money but didn’t want to push it. He ordered another beer for both him and Mickey. John drank his torturously slow. Jimmy and Mickey watched the basketball game and, when he was able, John watched them. There was something so cavalier about them that made him want to crack them both across the teeth. And as the minutes ticked by and the daylight turned to dusk, he grew more and more irritable.
Finally, he pulled some bills from his jacket and threw them on the table. “It’s getting late,” he said. “Think I’m gonna hit the road.”
“Wait,” Jimmy said, standing up. “Hang around for one more drink.”
Jimmy went to the bar and leaned against one of the stools, waiting for Gorky McKean to return from the back room.
There was a moment of awkward, balanced silence between him and Mickey. That disapproving look was back in Mickey’s eyes, but a hint of something else seemed to soften his features. What was it?
Then, finally, Mickey said, “You been having any luck gettin’ those customers lined up?”
“Some.”
“How much longer you think you’ll need?”
He was waiting for Jimmy to leave the table, he realized. This way we could discuss whatever we want without involving his partner.
Jimmy was playing it smart.
“I’m having some trouble getting some of the money up front,” he said. Maybe if he let on that he was having some difficulty lining up the money, Jimmy might be brought in to negotiate another deal.
“Ten percent’s a good deal,” Mickey said.
“It’s not that,” he said. “Just … some of my guys ain’t comfortable fronting that much money. You know what I mean?”
“Eight percent,” Mickey said.
John had been rubbing his hands together while they spoke. Now he stopped and just stared at Mickey. “What?”
“Eight percent,” Mickey repeated. “But you round up your end and we do the deal in two days.”
Apparently they didn’t know the money was missing. It was also apparent that, for whatever reason, they wanted desperately to move it. Eight percent was ridiculously low.
“Can you handle that?” Mickey asked him.
“Eighty grand in two days,” he muttered, considering. “Yeah, I can work that.”
Mickey appeared to relax. “Good,” he said, leaning back in his chair and bringing his beer to his lap. “Good.”
“Let me ask you something,” John said, nodding toward the bar and Jimmy Kahn. “He don’t trust me or what?”
“Jimmy?”
“I didn’t need to waste my whole goddamn day here waiting for him to leave the table …”
Mickey chugged the rest of his beer and said, “Don’t worry about Jimmy.”
Sometime after dark, John left the Cloverleaf and crossed West 57th Street to his car. He turned over the engine and radioed Kersh, who was sitting in his own car farther down the street. Kersh was surprised Mickey had dropped the points so much and was not completely comfortable with Mickey’s sudden burst of generosity. John, on the other hand, was gratified that the deal had finally been set up. In two days, when Mickey discovered the money was missing, Jimmy Kahn would have to get involved. There would be no way around that. Mickey was crazy, but he wasn’t stupid enough to approach John alone. As far as Mickey and Jimmy knew, John had been going around the city collecting money from people expecting to buy counterfeit money. Neither Mickey nor Jimmy would allow that opportunity to pass them by.
Jimmy would get dirty …
Pulling out onto West 57th Street, John forced his mind to switch gears. It was like living a double life, and the past two months had been draining. He felt like a man dangling by a wire, spinning in midair, the weight of his own body stressing the wire more and more. The last day of the year, and he could only hope the New Year would bring with it a sense of serenity.
He would take Katie to the hospital, and they would sit with his father for some time. Then they would go home together and wait out the rest of the year by themselves, in each other’s arms, in the dark.
He never knew he was being followed.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
A DARKENED TENEMENT HALLWAY. THROUGH THE WALLS, soft cries of a baby could be heard. Then after a few moments, the crying stopped.
Mickey O’Shay crept up a narrow bend of stairs, his shadow like a stretched black cloth on the wall beside him. At the second floor, he paused on the stairwell landing before pushing through a large metal door. The hallway reeked of urine and mildew, sour like rotting citrus fruit. His footfalls were muted on the floor. Someone’s television was turned up too loud. At the end of the hall, a cat froze and stared directly at him beneath a darkened window, the feline’s eyes reflecting the bulb in the single light fixture in the middle of the hallway ceiling.
Slinking like a thief along the gloomy corridor, Mickey paused outside an apartment door. Sliding one hand from his coat pocket, he knocked twice—hard—on the door. Slipping his hand back into his coat, he turned his head casually from side to side, examining the length of the hallway. The cat continued to stare at him, its eyes glowing like headlamps.
Bolts turned. The door opened a crack, and Tressa Walker peered out. When she glimpsed Mickey standing on the other side of the door, all life seemed to drain from her face.
“Mickey …”
“How you been, Tressa? You alone?”
“Yes.” The word was out of her mouth before she could avoid saying it. “What do you want?”
“Frankie-balls around?”
“I haven’t seen him. What do you want?”
“Jimmy’s got your money down in the car,” he said. “It took us a while to get around to you.” As part of their deal, Mickey had agreed to pay Tressa 5 percent on any counterfeit deal he worked with Esposito, seeing how she’d introduced them. However, as Mickey was prone to do when he knew he could get away with it, he hadn’t fed her a dime.
Now, at the mention of money, some of the girl’s anxiety was sloughed off. “Why didn’t you just bring it up?”
“Didn’t want Frankie to see it. Come down.”
Greed has a tendency to impede judgment and blind the eyes to truth. Had Tressa Walker been a different person, she might have recognized the absurdity of Mickey’s proposition. But having grown up in an abusive West Side household, having gotten involved with hard drugs and truculent older men at a very young age, Tressa Walker was never going to be a different person.
She grabbed her coat and stepped out into the hallway. “Not too long,” she told Mickey. “My baby’s asleep inside.”
They moved down the stairwell quickly and out into the frigid courtyard beneath the winter moon. Snow covered the ground and reflected the moonlight. It was then, as they walked across the courtyard, that the preposterousness of the situation must have struck Tressa, for she paused briefly in mid-stride and went suddenly still. Turning, Mickey glared at her, his form hunched yet imposing in the darkness.
“What?” he said.
“Where …” She cleared her throat. “Where’s Jimmy?”
“In the car,” he answered, “just like I said. What’s the matter? You want your money or not?”
And for the second time that evening, she forced herself to follow Mickey O’Shay.
Jimmy Kahn’s Cadillac sat idling along Tenth
Avenue, twirling snowflakes dancing in the headlight beams. Mickey moved slightly ahead as they walked and opened the back door of the Cadillac for Tressa.
She stood along the curb, watching the traffic pass along the street, unwilling to get into the car.
“Come on,” Mickey said, “it’s freezing out here.”
He put a hand on her back and urged her into the back seat. It was the strength of his hand that broke her will and allowed her to climb into the Cadillac’s back seat. Mickey climbed in after her, slamming the door.
Jimmy sat in the front by himself, smoking a cigarette and grasping the steering wheel. His dark eyes looked her over in the rearview mirror. Then he took the car out of park and spun the wheel, pulling into the traffic along Tenth Avenue.
“Where are we going?” she said, her voice suddenly trembling.
“Relax,” Mickey told her, pulling a pack of Camels from his coat and shaking a stick into his mouth. He lit it with a frayed book of matches from the Black Box strip club. “Enjoy the sights.”
She brought her knees up to her chest and leaned against the window, as far away from Mickey O’Shay as she could manage. Her face was frozen, expressionless, and wide-eyed. “Mickey …” she managed. Her voice sounded too dry, not her own.
“Tell us about Esposito,” Mickey said. He took a long drag from his Camel and blew the smoke toward the Cadillac’s ceiling. The entire car was filling with dense blue smoke.
A small moan escaped her throat.
“Who is he really?” Jimmy asked from the front seat, again eyeing her up in the rearview.
“I told you already,” she said, leaning forward, her hands suddenly clenched together. “Everything I know, you know.”
“You’re lying,” Mickey said. His voice was serene and mellow, like ice cream melting in the sun. “I’m so goddamn tired of listening to liars.”
“We just want to hear the truth, Tressa,” Jimmy said. “You bring this guy to us, and nobody’s ever heard of him. We just wanna know who the hell he is.”
“I told you!” she screamed, startled by the ferocity and terror in her voice. A single tear spilled down her right cheek, and she began to sob gently.
“Calm down,” Jimmy told her. “Mickey, give her a cigarette—get her to calm down.”
“Good idea,” Mickey said. He leaned over to her, holding out his cigarette. “Try this. Maybe then you’ll talk.”
Like a striking snake, Mickey’s hand shot out and grabbed Tressa’s chin, pushing her face against the Cadillac’s window. She screamed and tried to twist her head away. Struggling, her arms flailed hopelessly against Mickey as he tried to slide the cigarette into her mouth. He was laughing until one of her hands struck his bruised cheek. Howling, he slapped her across the face, gripped her jaw harder, then forced the burning end of the cigarette into her left nostril. She screamed and kicked, the back of her head knocking against the window, while Mickey held the cigarette in place. In his anger, he pinched her nose closed and heard the embers of the cigarette sizzle her flesh. With one final shake of her head, he pushed her back against the door and let go. The cigarette slipped from her nose as she sobbed and moaned. Mickey watched her with little interest as he slid another cigarette from the pack, lit it, inhaled.
“You wanna try this again, Tressa?” Jimmy said from the front seat. “You know something about this guy, you tell us now.”
She cursed at him and began clawing at the door handle. Mickey hit her again in the face.
Jimmy pulled the Caddy down a narrow alley off Tenth Avenue, between clusters of blackened tenements. The front of the car nailed a group of tin trash cans, sending them scattering down the alleyway, and Jimmy Kahn cursed under his breath. A light went on in one of the tenement windows and Mickey stared at it, smoking his Camel down to the filter.
The car came to a jerking halt, and Jimmy pulled himself quickly from the vehicle. Tressa’s door was open, and Jimmy dragged her out, one hand over her mouth. She still had plenty of fight left in her, and as Jimmy carried her around the front of the car, she kicked her legs and beat at Jimmy’s arms with her fists.
Mickey climbed out of the car, grinning, and skulked down the alley.
“Fucking help me,” Jimmy growled at him.
With some difficulty, Mickey grabbed Tressa’s legs and slammed her ankles together. The girl’s body went rigid with pain, her eyes rolling back in their sockets, all her energy suddenly drained.
Behind them, half hidden in the shadows at the rear of the tenement, a dark shape materialized and uttered something in a deep, inarticulate voice.
Jimmy barked something in return and then, with Mickey’s help, swung Tressa around the side of the building. They carried her quickly through a small yard and up a flank of stone steps. The large figure stepped beneath the light of the porch, and Irish’s features came into relief. Wrapped in a bright green windbreaker and a Coors Light mesh baseball hat, Irish flung open his door and waved the boys inside with one meaty hand.
“Come on, come on …”
Tressa administered another strong kick, freeing herself from Mickey’s grasp, and nearly clocked him in the face with her foot. Again, he grabbed her ankles and squeezed down on them, feeling the contours of her bones through her skin.
“Bitch,” he growled. He had little patience with the uncooperative.
Inside, the lights seemed too bright and the strong smell of fresh coffee filled Irish’s kitchen. The second Irish shut and locked his door, Jimmy and Mickey dropped Tressa on the kitchen floor. She hit hard, slamming her head against the tile, but wasted no time in trying to escape. Like a trapped animal, she spun onto her stomach and began scrambling on all fours toward the locked kitchen door. Jimmy lifted one shoe and placed it gently on the top of her head, impeding her progress. Grinning, Mickey just watched.
“Why don’t you make some more goddamn noise?” Irish muttered, unzipping his windbreaker and tossing his Coors Light hat on the counter. There was a small transistor radio beside the sink. Irish turned it on, found a loud rock station, and cranked the volume. Turning to Jimmy, he pointed toward the living room. “Get her out of the kitchen.”
Mickey bent and grabbed Tressa’s legs, pulled her across the kitchen floor. She struggled to turn over on her side, and her shirt came up over her waist, exposing soft, white flesh. She clawed at the tiled floor like a cartoon character getting sucked up into a vacuum cleaner, and the sight made Mickey laugh.
Jimmy followed them into the living room. An armchair stood against one wall, its cushions stained with blood. It had been the chair Ray-Ray Selano had been sitting in the night Jimmy shot him. Now, Mickey managed to hoist Tressa off the floor and into the chair.
She immediately clung to it, the way cats will cling to the lip of a basin of water to avoid taking a bath. Her eyes were wide, her pupils practically nonexistent, and her entire body shook with fear.
Irish poked his head into the room. “You guys want some coffee?”
“Bring me a knife,” Jimmy said.
“Don’t start cuttin’ her up,” Irish told him. “This ain’t no goddamn slaughterhouse, Jimmy.”
Mickey lit another cigarette and leaned against the wall opposite Tressa Walker. He watched her with little appreciation. To him, this entire ordeal was a goddamn waste of time. It didn’t matter to him what this bitch said about Esposito now—the bum was already in the middle of everything. Jimmy, on the other hand, had worries of his own. He liked to play everything out—another skill he’d learned from the Italians, Mickey supposed—and he despised operating without every single bit of information. He’d changed in the past year, Mickey understood. Jimmy had become more calculating, more industrial, more tedious. Mickey had no appreciation for tedium. There was nothing Mickey O’Shay hated more in the world than the slowing down of an operation. And for some reason, this guy Esposito was driving Jimmy crazy … which, in turn, was driving Mickey crazy. A year ago and Jimmy would not have bothered with shaking Tressa Walker
down—they would have moved ahead on the deal with Esposito, and that would be that. If things came to blows, what would it have mattered? But the Italians had brainwashed his partner, had somehow instilled upon him the importance of doing things heedfully, and Mickey had no patience for such bullshit. All the deals they had worked together in the past, and Jimmy Kahn was finally starting to push his buttons.
Irish entered the room holding a six-inch carving knife by the handle. He handed it over to Jimmy without looking at him, his eyes glued to the squirming young girl in the bloodstained armchair.
“Who’s she?”
“Frankie Deveneau’s girl,” Jimmy said, placing the knife on an end table. Its purpose was intimidation, and it seemed to serve that purpose well: the girl’s eyes were drawn to the knife as if by magnetic force, and something deep inside her seemed to give. “She’s the one who brought this Esposito to us.”
“This Esposito smell funny?” Irish asked.
“Could be a snitch,” Jimmy said, staring directly at Tressa. “Is that right?” he asked her, raising his voice a notch. “That fucker a snitch?”
“I’m done with this,” Irish said, licking his lips and sauntering back into the kitchen. From over his shoulder, he called, “Remember—don’t cut her, Jimmy.”
“We won’t need to do shit,” Jimmy said, kneeling down beside the armchair, “as long as you answer our questions.”
Tressa Walker no longer resembled the girl Mickey had picked up. Her face was red and blotchy, her eyes squinting into watery slits. Her teeth rattled in her head as if with feverish chills, and great tracks of sweat ran down her face. In her lap, she twisted her fingers together forcefully enough to crack the knuckles.
“Calm down,” Jimmy told her. Then looking at Mickey, Jimmy said, “Calm her down.”
“The fuck you want me to do?”
“Christ …” Jimmy stood and backed up against the wall. “Tressa … Tressa …” He must have repeated her name twenty times before her sobs subsided. Beside him, Mickey picked up the knife from the table and proceeded to scrape the filth from beneath his fingernails with the blade. Continuing, Jimmy said, “Where’d you meet John, Tressa?”
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