Fifty-to-One

by Charles Ardai

  “I don’t think so,” Tricia called over her shoulder.

  “That lady’s sure in a hurry,” the saxophonist said to no one in particular.

  They burst through the door to the storeroom, rushed down the crowded aisle between two tall metal shelves. The window at the end was closed; the glass was unbroken. Tricia tried to open it but couldn’t. “Charley, you try,” Tricia said.

  “I’m not climbing eleven stories down the side of a building,” Charley said.

  “Then open the window so I can,” Tricia said. “And when he gets here, say hello to Uncle Nick for me.”

  Charley gave her a murderous stare, spat on each of his palms, planted his feet and tried to wrench the window up. When his first try failed, he gave two more heaves, grimacing furiously each time. The third, true to form, was the charm. Tricia, meanwhile, slipped the gun into the pocket of her dress, next to the box of photos. It was a tight fit, even though she’d kept the smaller of the guns for herself.

  “Okay.” She stuck her head out the window, looked down, wished she hadn’t. Not that she could see much in the dead of night, but the little she could see didn’t make her want to climb out on the window ledge.

  She climbed out on the window ledge.

  Charley gripped her legs with both hands. Holding on tight to the window frame with her left hand, she fished for the rain gutter with her right. Her fingertips brushed it twice before she was able to get a good grip.

  “Okay,” she said. “Let go.”

  “You sure?” Charley said. He sounded dubious.

  “Yes.” Stretching out one leg to the side, she found the nearest of the metal brackets that anchored the pipe to the wall and when she felt reasonably secure putting her weight on it, she brought her other hand and leg over.

  “Nothing to it,” she said, or tried to, but her teeth were chattering too much and she gave up.

  “You think it can hold both of us at once?” Charley said.

  She would’ve shrugged but didn’t want to chance it. Instead, she started carefully inching her right leg along the pipe, feeling for the next bracket down. It was too far beneath her, especially with her legs constrained by the way she was dressed. (Slacks, she thought. Why couldn’t I have worn a nice pair of slacks?) But she knew the bracket was there, just inches below her toes. So holding tight to the pipe with both hands and both knees and thinking of all the trees she’d climbed as young girl in Aberdeen, she let herself slide slowly—slowly!—down to the bracket. She rested there for a moment, flexed her fingers slightly, then tightened her grip and let herself down to the next one.

  As she went, she kept her eyes focused on the bricks immediately before her. This was about feeling her way, not seeing where she was going. Slide; stop. Slide; stop.

  Down had to be easier than up, at least. That’s what she kept telling herself. But her hands had already started to hurt. Her chest, too, from tension and the drumbeat of her racing heart. She chanced a look up, saw Charley’s legs and posterior a few feet above her. He was on the pipe too, now. Once again she found herself with nowhere to go but down.

  I’ll never tell another lie as long as I live. I swear it. I’ll never write another book about gangsters. Only friendly, happy subjects, like trips to the beach and picking flowers. I promise. Just let me not die here in this airshaft. Let me make it down. Please.

  Slide. Stop. Deep breath. Slide. Stop.

  “You know something?” Charley’s voice was weak; she imagined she could hear his teeth chattering too. “It’s not eleven floors.” He let himself down to the next bracket above her head, made sure of his footing. “It’s only ten.”

  “What?” Tricia managed to say.

  “We only have to make it to the roof of that news peddler’s place,” Charley said. “That’s the second floor. So we’re only going ten floors, not eleven. And,” he added with a hopeful tone, “a fall from just one floor up probably wouldn’t kill us. So it’s really only nine that we have to worry about. And,” he said, “we must be at least halfway there already.”

  “Charley,” she said.

  “Yes?”

  “Shut up and climb.”

  Two stories later, Tricia lost her grip. Her left hand, sweaty and tired, slipped off the pipe. She felt herself tilting backwards, her feet losing their purchase on the bracket. Desperately, she tried to wedge her entire right arm between the pipe and the wall, but thin as it was, it wouldn’t fit. She scrabbled with her feet, tried to hold on with just one hand, but found herself falling. She meant to scream, but somehow nothing came out, and as she fell she only had time to think, So, this is it.

  Then she hit, and though the breath was badly knocked out of her, she was somewhat astonished to find that the life wasn’t. She lay where she’d landed, flat on her back, just eight or nine feet below where she’d lost hold of the pipe.

  “Tricia!” Charley called. “What happened? Are you okay?” When she didn’t answer, he looked down. “Oh, thank god.” He quickly slid the rest of the way to the bottom. “You see? We were more than halfway.”

  Looking up at him from where she lay, she nodded very slightly and concentrated on breathing in and out.

  “Come on,” Charley said, inching over to the chicken wire-laced window above the toilet. “It looks like there’s a light on.”

  27.

  The Peddler

  Tricia forced herself to get up, brushed off her hands and the seat of her dress, which was smeared now with god only knew what. The smell here was dismal, and though she’d made up the rat for the chapter in the book, she didn’t doubt that there were various sorts of vermin here, biding their time in the darkness.

  While Charley pried open the window and let himself down, Tricia checked her pocket. The gun and the photos were still there. The gun hadn’t even gone off and shot her in the thigh, and for that small miracle she was thankful. She limped over to the skylight, where Charley’s arms were sticking out, reaching up for her. She let him lower her down, and they stood together in the tiny bathroom.

  There was a light on, not here in this little closet of a room, but outside—you could see it leaking through around the door. Tricia tried to remember, from her many nights at the Sun, whether she’d ever seen this place open at 2AM—she didn’t think so. How many people could possibly want a newspaper or a coffee at 2AM?

  There was nothing to do about it, though. They couldn’t stay in here much longer. For one thing, their entrance had probably been heard. And even if it hadn’t, if there were people outside someone would eventually come in to use the toilet, and then what would they say?

  Charley grabbed a handful of the coarse brown paper towels the owner had set out and, wiping his hands, pushed the door open.

  “Gentlemen,” he said. Tricia followed him out. There were two men in the small space, a heavyset character, gray at the temples, sitting at the counter with a mug in front of him, and a skinny one standing behind it, wearing his usual canvas apron, the pocket in front loaded down with coins. The door to the street was closed, a shade drawn over the glass. Charley seemed to be deciding, for a moment, whether to bolt or stay—were they safer in here or out on the sidewalk? Finally he went to one of the two empty stools, motioned Tricia to the other.

  The men stared at them. They both seemed to have been caught in mid-sentence.

  “Jerry,” Tricia said to the man in the apron, “this is my friend Charley. Charley, Jerry. Jerry’s always very nice to me any time I come in.”

  “How’d you get in there, Trixie?” Jerry said nervously. “You weren’t there ten minutes ago.”

  Tricia shrugged. There was no good answer, and why give a bad one?

  “You don’t mind,” Charley said, “we’d both do well with a cup of coffee.” He dug a few coins out of his pocket, dropped them on the counter.

  “Actually,” Jerry said, his eyes darting toward his other customer.

  “Actually,” the customer said, turning on his stool to face them, “we we
re transacting some private business, and I don’t like being interrupted.” He reached inside his suit jacket as though to pull out a wallet or change purse, but what he came out with was a gun. And here they were, Tricia and Charley, both of them with their hard-won armament tucked away safely in their pockets.

  “Now who are you,” the heavyset man said, “and what were you doing spying on us?”

  “Spying?” Charley said. “Nothing of the sort. We were just...well, you know. Using the room.” He bent toward Tricia, kissed her lightly on the neck. Startled, she jumped a little. She felt a blush shoot up her cheeks.

  “But how did you get in there?” Jerry said, still stuck on the logistics like a kid working out a magic trick.

  “I work next door, on the third floor,” Charley said. “At the big theatrical agency, you know the one I mean. And we just...climbed out the window, came down.”

  “Why?” Jerry said. “Why would you want to do it in my bathroom? If you like bathrooms, don’t you have one in your office?”

  “It’s not as private,” Charley began, but the man with the gun waved him to silence.

  “That’s all right, Jerry,” the man said, “they’re just lying to you. There’s only one reason they’d be here, and you know what it is. Sal’s always liked to keep an eye on me, and I guess he’s gotten suspicious of you, too.”

  “She does work for him,” Jerry said. “Told me she’s a dancer.”

  “I am a dancer,” Tricia said.

  “Sure,” the man with the gun said. “And he’s your partner, and you do your best dancing in toilets. Don’t play me for a sap. What’s Sal paying you to be his eyes and ears?”

  “Nothing!” Tricia said.

  “So you do it for free? Jerry here charges Sal seventy bucks a month, and half the information he sells him you could get for nothing on the street.” And when Tricia registered surprise, he said, “What? You thought Jerry pays his rent peddling candy and papers at a nickel a throw? You can peddle information for a lot more. More than it’s worth, sometimes.”

  “Don’t say that, Mr. B,” Jerry said, “I give good value—”

  “We don’t work for Nicolazzo,” Charley said. “We never met him before today.”

  “Shut up,” Mr. B said. “The lot of you.” To Charley he said, “Of course you never met him before, the man lives on a goddamn boat. Doesn’t mean you don’t work for him. I work for him. Jerry works for him. We all work for Uncle Nick.” He said it with unconcealed disgust—something Tricia feared meant he had no intention of letting them leave the room alive.

  She looked more closely at his face. She’d never seen him before—she was certain of that. But there was something familiar about him and she suddenly realized what it was. “Mr. B,” she said. “Does that stand for Barrone?”

  The big man looked over at Jerry. “Listen to that. ‘Does it stand for Barrone?’ You do a fine innocent act, sister. You should be an actress, not a dancer.”

  “No, really,” Tricia said, “does it?”

  “Why? What are you going to tell me if I say yes?”

  “That I’ve got something you’re going to want to see. Or maybe you won’t want to see it, but you ought to.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “Some pictures,” Tricia said. “Out of Mr. Nicolazzo’s safe.”

  The bluff, hectoring expression vanished from the big man’s face. He was deadly serious now. “Where are these pictures?”

  “In my pocket,” Tricia said. “I’ll give them to you.”

  “Slowly,” he said, and she eased the leather box out of her pocket, slid it to him across the counter.

  “You can look at all of them,” Tricia said, “but the one you’ll want to see is the last one.”

  “Open it,” he told Jerry, and he kept his gun trained on Tricia and Charley while Jerry lifted off the lid of the box and spread its contents out over the counter.

  “Aw, jeez,” Jerry said when he got to the last picture. Mr. B looked down at it. He didn’t say anything, but his hand shook and Tricia wondered whether he was going to shoot them all.

  “Mr. Barrone,” Tricia said, “I’m so sorry about Royal. Was he your brother?”

  “What are you talking about? I’m Royal Barrone. That’s Frankie. That’s my son.”

  “You say you got these from Sal’s safe?” Barrone said.

  “I didn’t,” Tricia said, “my sister did. I think you know her—Colleen King?” His eyes narrowed and he nodded as though, bit by bit, he was putting things together. “She told me she found them in the safe after someone else broke in and stole all the money. But Nicolazzo thinks she took the money, too, or at least knows who did, and he’s holding her somewhere in Queens, along with a friend of ours. Charley just got away a few hours ago. I barely got away myself.”

  “I see,” Barrone said. He turned to Jerry. “And what do you know about all this?”

  Jerry was backing away from the counter, although in the narrow space there wasn’t far for him to go. He was shaking his head, the loose skin under his chin quivering. “Nothing, Mr. B, honest.”

  “Don’t give me that, Jerry. You hear everything. You must’ve heard something about this.”

  “Sure, I hear things, but half of it’s just talk—”

  “How about the other half?”

  “Like I was saying before—I hear Sal’s rounding up everyone who might’ve had anything to do with the robbery, no matter how remote. He even grabbed the guy published that book, you know, the one talked about the robbery...” He looked over at Charley. “Word is, this guy took him at Fifty-to-One, walked out the front door. This was a couple of hours ago.”

  Charley smiled weakly.

  “What about Frankie?” Barrone said. “What do you hear about Frankie?”

  “Nothing,” Jerry mumbled.

  “Jerry, how much do I pay you? Not Sal—me. How much? Now answer my goddamn question.”

  Jerry sounded like the words were being pulled out of him with pincers. “Frankie was asking for more,” he said, “that’s what I hear. More money. And when Sal said no, he threatened to walk. Pictures or no pictures. Said he’d take what he knew to the cops. If he went down, he’d take Sal with him.”

  “And why didn’t you tell me this before?”

  “I didn’t want—I didn’t want you to be mad at me,” Jerry said.

  “Goddamn Frankie,” Barrone whispered. “Never listened. Never knew how to keep his mouth shut.” He waved the gun at Charley. “You. Take that gun out of your pocket, slide it over here. Yes, I can see it, I’m not blind. You, too, sister. I’m keeping them and we’re going for a little ride.” Tricia and Charley reluctantly handed over the guns they’d gone to such trouble to obtain.

  “You,” Barrone said to Jerry, as he packed the photos back into the box one-handed. “If you ever lie to me again—no, listen. If you ever lie to me again, or hold out on me, I’m going to kill you. Do we understand each other? Right through the head, with this gun here, I’m going to shoot you. If you lie to me. Is that okay with you, Jerry? Yeah?” Jerry was nodding wildly. Yes, absolutely, Mr. B, shoot me, that’s fine.

  Barrone dropped the box of photos into his jacket pocket.

  “You’re lucky that they’re not spies for Sal, because if they were I’d have to kill all three of you. You’re no use to me, Jerry, if Sal knows about you.”

  “He doesn’t,” Jerry said. “I’d never tell no one. Only people know are you, me...and now them, I guess.”

  “Oh, we’d never tell anyone either,” Charley said, and Tricia shook her head in agreement. “Why would we? You want it in writing, we’ll—”

  “Get up,” Barrone said. He grabbed their guns, waved them toward the door.

  Charley and Tricia got up. She glanced back at Jerry, who had a half-apologetic look on his face. Sorry, it said, but better you than me.

  Outside, there was a long black limo waiting at the curb.

  “Open the door.”

 
; Charley complied.

  “Now get in.”

  They climbed into the car, found seats along what seemed to be a six-foot-long banquette while Barrone climbed in after them, sat on the shorter crosswise seat at the end. He slammed the door shut. “Eddie,” he called, “take us to Fulton Street.” The car started up.

  “Now,” Barrone said, “let’s hear what you know about my brother-in-law.”

  28.

  Lucky At Cards

  It didn’t take long, since Charley didn’t know much and Tricia had decided she’d be a better listener than Frankie and keep her mouth shut.

  “You’ve seen the book, right?” Charley said. “Well, that’s what I know. Nothing more, nothing less, just what I read in there.”

  “You working with the cops?” Barrone said.

  “Pfff.” Charley blew a half-hearted raspberry. “Only if by ‘working with’ you mean ‘wanted for assault and battery by.’ There are two cops wearing bandages because of me, and that’s just the past day’s worth. I have a police record going back to 1950.”

  “He does,” Tricia said. “I saw the mug shot.”

  “Oh, a mug shot,” Barrone said. “You must be some sort of big-time criminal.”

  “I wouldn’t say big time,” Charley said. “But then I wouldn’t say criminal either. I’d just say the cops don’t see the merit in everything I do.”

  “Well, that’s the cops for you,” Barrone said. He rotated his gun to point at Tricia. “And you’re Colleen’s sister?” She nodded hopefully. “You know your sister’s been squeezing me for months now?”

  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?”