Fifty-to-One

by Charles Ardai

  She needn’t have bothered. She heard a throaty chuckle from within, a creaking of springs. Then a woman’s voice, coaxing: “C’mon, beautiful. Ain’t you slept enough?” More creaking followed. The people inside weren’t listening to anything going on in the hall.

  Tricia moved on. Then stopped dead when she heard a voice, muffled by the door, say, “I really need to go.” It was Charley’s voice.

  “What’s the hurry?” Renata asked. “It’s early still.”

  “We’ve got a long day coming up,” Charley said.

  “That’s not all you’ve got coming up,” she said.

  “Renata, let go. Please. Stop that.”

  “Oh, but you like it,” she said. “I can tell.”

  “I like it fine,” Charley said, “but I need to go.”

  “I’ll show you what you need,” Renata said, and whatever response Charley had been about to give was stifled under a barrage of laughter and kisses.

  There was a keyhole in the door, but Tricia didn’t stoop to looking through it. She continued on to the bedroom, grabbed her shoes, hesitated, then dug a handful of money out of the pocket of Charley’s pants, transferred it to her own.

  You need every advantage you can get? Well, Charley, so do I.

  Holding her shoes in one hand, she slipped silently down the stairs. She put the shoes on when she reached the ground floor.

  Love ‘em and leave ‘em, that’s me. Every one I can. You certainly couldn’t say the man hadn’t been up front; he told you right out what a creep he was. The problem was, even when he made it clear he was lying you couldn’t believe him.

  She remembered Barrone denying it, saying, She’s not just ‘some girl’ to you.

  Yeah, well.

  She entered the kitchen, empty now except for Eddie, who either was the earliest riser in the house or had stayed up all night. He sat at a circular table with a cardboard cereal box and an empty bowl, plus the pair of guns Barrone had taken from them, the Luger and Heaven’s smaller gun, the one Tricia had been carrying. Two piles of bullets were lying on the tabletop between them.

  “Miss,” he said.

  “It’s Trixie, Eddie. You can call me Trixie. We’re going to be working together, after all.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Trixie.”

  “Listen,” she said, thinking, all right, I’ve found Charley, I’ve found the guns, now it’s time to get on with it. She had a brief twinge of remorse, but she stifled it. Coral wasn’t going to have to wait till mister love ’em and leave ’em got around to leaving this one.

  “Listen,” she said again. “Renata was asking for you just now.”

  “Really?” The poor boy’s eyes lit up.

  “Mm-hm. She said to ask you to come up. Just go quietly. And,” Tricia said, “don’t knock. Just let yourself in.”

  “Really?”

  “Mm-hm.”

  He was halfway out of his seat before he looked back at the table. “I don’t know...I don’t think Mr. Barrone would want me to leave you here with the guns, Trixie.”

  “Well, I don’t think Renata would want me coming up to the room with you. It sounded like she was looking forward to having some privacy with you.”

  “Privacy,” he said.

  “Look, the guns are empty, right?” He nodded. “Fine. Then here—” Tricia swept the bullets up in her hands and held them out to Eddie, who cupped his palms to receive them. “Now I can’t do anything. And you can go enjoy yourself.”

  Eddie jammed the bullets in his pockets and hastened to the door. “Thanks, Trixie. You’re a pal.”

  “Have fun, Eddie,” she said.

  When she heard his step on the stairs, Tricia picked up the Luger. She tried loading it with the one bullet she’d managed to hold out, clamped between her palm and the base of her thumb. It didn’t fit, so she grabbed the other gun, tried loading it into that one. It clicked neatly into place.

  One bullet wasn’t much. But it would have to be enough.

  From upstairs she heard a commotion. Someone was shouting. Doors were opening on other floors. It was time to go.

  She hustled to the front door and down the five stone steps to the street.

  Subway...subway...she looked around hastily to orient herself then headed off to the west.

  I’m coming, Cory, she thought.

  And Charley? She thought of him, too, as she went, thought with a little regret of what he’d be facing now at Eddie’s hands, and Renata’s, and Mr. Barrone’s, if he wasn’t able to talk his way out of it. But hell, he’d be able to talk his way out of it. Maybe not before picking up a few bruises, but—

  You made your bed, Charley, Tricia thought. I hope she was worth it.

  31.

  The Wounded and the Slain

  She rode the train, rattling and shaking and nearly empty, out to Queens Plaza, where she begged a map from the token booth clerk in the station. She unfolded it and took a minute to find Van Dam Street. It looked like half a mile to get there, another mile or so before it crossed Greenpoint Avenue. She thought about splurging and blowing some of Charley’s money on a taxi, but on a Sunday morning in Queens you were as likely to see a circus caravan pass as an empty cab. She didn’t see either and started walking.

  She did pass a small grocery store whose owner was letting down the awning with a long metal hand-crank. She stopped inside and picked up a couple of buttered rolls and a coke—not much of a breakfast, but she wolfed it down and kept going.

  In the pocket of her dress, the gun—lighter now, with just the one bullet—felt like a brick, weighing her down. She wondered if she’d actually have the guts to use it. To stand in front of a man, the way Heaven had, the way Nicolazzo had, and end his life with a movement of her hand, a flick of a finger.

  If her own life depended on it, she supposed she could, or if Coral’s did. But if it didn’t? Or if it wasn’t clear?

  She thought with a shiver of the dead men she’d seen since this began—more in one day than she’d seen in her previous 18 years, if you counted the ones in the photos, and a tie even if you just counted the ones slain before her eyes. And there was a big difference between seeing her father or granddad laid out in their best suits, hair carefully brushed and cheeks touched with makeup, a preacher by their side, the church choir singing hymns, and seeing a man’s blood spill out of him onto the floor. Dead was dead—but the polite, quiet death of a funeral ceremony was worlds apart from the loud report of a gunshot, the acrid tang of powder in the air, or the snick of a blade unfolding and the desperate groan when it met flesh.

  She wished she could get it out of her mind, but as she made her way toward Nicolazzo’s hideout the images kept coming came back to her, the dead men and their near cousins, the ones who’d survived the recent events but not unscathed: Stella with her branded cheek; O’Malley with his bandaged face; Clohessy in the alley where Charley had left him, bearing who knew what sort of wound. It frightened her to think of the blood that had been shed, the pain suffered, and all because of her—because of the book she’d written, the men she’d spurred into action. And women, too. Her own sister, a thief. Stella told me about this book she’d seen, Coral had said. That gave me the idea.

  She had to make things right. She had to. Somehow.

  She reached Van Dam, followed it south toward the huge green sward of Calvary Cemetery. It wasn’t the same size as the mammoth burial plots down by where the artists lived in Brooklyn, not quite; but it was plenty large and it loomed in the distance, a wholly unneeded reminder of mortality. Bring me your dead, it seemed to Tricia to be saying. Bring all you want. We’ve got room for more.

  She counted blocks, referred to her map, drew near. When she reached the intersection, she didn’t recognize any of the buildings, but why should she? She’d had a bag over her head coming and going. But in this neighborhood of narrow, wedge-shaped blocks, only one corner could properly be called the corner of Van Dam and Greenpoint, and only one building could properly be sai
d to be on that corner. And it looked about right: There was a front way and a back way in, there was gravel in the rear, and there were several stories, enough to require a staircase with 39 steps. The windows were shuttered from the outside and, where she could see between the shutters, curtained on the inside. As you’d expect—a man who had to smuggle himself ashore in a pickle barrel wouldn’t take any chances with his privacy. There were no sounds coming from the building, which might mean anything or nothing. Tricia couldn’t see any lights on inside, but she wasn’t sure she’d be able to in the daytime even if they were on.

  She circled the building, trying to divine the best way in. Front door, back door? Neither seemed great. A half-height window into the cellar held more promise. Using a stick she found on the ground for leverage, Tricia forced the shutters open, then squatted and peered inside. There were curtains here, too, but enough space separated them that she could see a sliver of the room. By angling herself this way and that she could make out that there was no one inside. She tried to open the window, straining the way Charley had at the Sun (only without spitting on her hands first—she didn’t see how that would help). When it didn’t budge, she took out the gun and, holding it by the barrel, swung it against the glass.

  The pane cracked and pieces tinkled to the floor inside. Tricia ducked out of sight. A few moments later she cautiously crept back, looked in. There was still no one there. She wormed her arm in through the hole, avoiding the jagged edges, and felt around the frame. Sure enough, the window was locked. She unlocked it. It went up smoothly after that and she dropped through it to the cellar floor.

  Glass crunching slightly underfoot, she made her way to the door of the room where she and Coral had been held. “Cory,” she whispered. She tried the knob. The door swung open.

  “Cory?”

  The room was dark. She groped for the cord to the hanging light and switched it on. Coral wasn’t there; no one was. The bunk in the back was empty.

  Was she upstairs? Tricia wondered. Were they all upstairs, putting Coral through some horrible ordeal, trying to get out of her some secret she didn’t possess or information she didn’t know? Tricia listened for some sign that this might be going on. She heard nothing, but it gave her little comfort. They might have gagged her. She might be unconscious. She might, as Barrone had said, already be dead.

  Tricia knew she had to find out, had to go upstairs, had to face whatever was waiting for her there. But she was glad for any excuse to put it off, even just for a minute. So she went to the far side of the room, to the bunk where Coral had been sitting when Mitch had shoved Tricia in, the bunk where they’d sat together while Coral told her story. She hunted around the foot of the bunk, felt underneath it, looking for she didn’t know what. A message, she supposed. Some sign that Coral had been here. She knew she’d have tried to leave one for Coral if their positions had been reversed.

  Conscious of the time slipping away—someone could come downstairs at any moment, and of course Barrone could also show up at any moment, with or without Charley in tow; they must have figured out by now where she’d gone—Tricia pulled the bunk away from the wall. And there, scratched into the brick with a nail or a stone or in any event something with a sharp edge, were a dozen words made up of ragged, angular, hastily formed letters:

  GARAGE 15 ST AVE C

  19H GLOVE COMPMT

  MORE AT MOON, LCKR22

  Tricia pushed the bunk back. More at Moon, Locker 22. ‘Moon’ had to mean Nicolazzo’s club, of course, the dimea-dance place Coral had worked at before she took up boxing. But more what? More photographs? Of whom?

  Tricia backed out of the room, held the gun firmly before her, took off the safety, and climbed the stairs. At each landing she spun left and right, gun before her, solitary bullet at the ready, but no one appeared. The building really was completely silent, and dark, and by the time she made it to the top she knew there was a good reason for it.

  The place was empty—abandoned. Nicolazzo had hared off to another location, one she couldn’t even begin to guess at. And he’d taken Erin and Coral with him, in whatever condition his interrogations had left them.

  At least that was the hopeful possibility. The alternative was that he’d buried them here. That was the big question, really: Were they among the wounded or the slain?

  Don’t you touch them, you bastard, Tricia thought as she headed down to the street. Don’t you dare touch them.

  It felt more like a prayer than a threat and she kept repeating it to herself as she raced back toward the subway station, putting out of her mind the possibility that maybe he already had.

  A block away from Queens Plaza she saw a limo heading toward her, pulling off the lower level of the 59th Street Bridge. Startled, she found herself frozen in place, unable even to turn away, but it passed without slowing, without the man on the other side of the open driver’s-side window even giving her a glance.

  She glanced at him, though. Eddie. Sporting what looked, as he sped past, like a black eye.

  Charley’s handiwork? she wondered. Or Renata’s?

  Tricia heard her train pulling in then and ran for it.

  Let Eddie and his passenger discover what she already had, that Nicolazzo was nowhere to be found—that he’d flown the coop, probably as soon as Charley had walked out the door without anything to prevent him from seeing where he was. Let them exercise themselves trying to find him. She had a lead to follow, however tenuous.

  Like Gleason used to say, she thought. To the moon, Alice. Straight to the Moon.

  32.

  Blackmailer

  Unlike the Sun, which famously crowned a midtown office building, or the Stars, which filled a two-story bunker of its own near the waterfront, the Moon almost invisibly occupied the second story of a squat Garment District tenement, sandwiched between a buttons-and-trimmings wholesaler on the ground floor and a battery of one- and two-man tailoring shops on the third. There was no nightclub banner flapping from a flagpole here, no doorman in livery to usher you inside (or to keep you out, for that matter). There was a front door and a staircase and, in one of the second floor windows, a neon image winking from full moon to crescent and back again, twenty-four hours a day.

  On the sidewalk, wiry men heaved wheeled metal racks loaded down with dresses on hangers, one rack in each hand, while others scurried alongside, lettering tags on the run with swipes of a grease pencil. Even on a Sunday morning, the neighborhood was buzzing, in part to make up for the day many houses lost on Saturday (when the Millinery Center Synagogue on 38th was perhaps the busiest building in the neighborhood) and in part to prepare for the onslaught of orders that would roar in Monday morning.

  Tricia picked her way through the chaos, stepping up into doorways or down into the gutter as necessary to allow men in an even greater hurry than she was to pass. She knew where the club was—it was no secret. The Times and the News had both written about it. But she’d never had reason to go herself. It was widely known to be a place only men frequented, and mostly a certain type of man: an older man, perhaps, or one burdened with some minor deformity; the halt, the lame; the shy, the scared, the slow of tongue, the foreign accented; those men whose appetite for female company, in short, exceeded their ability to procure any for themselves absent a fistful of tickets and a roster of women whose job it was to not notice the defects in their dancing partners.

  It wasn’t prostitution, though of course you heard stories; and many a feel was copped in the name of close dancing. That Coral had passed her first years in New York working here saddened Tricia. She’d pictured her sister headlining in a rooftop revue, or at least enlivening the chorus, not letting herself be tooled around a dance floor by a succession of sweaty-handed romeos with a buck to spare.

  But better that than where she was now. Better a lifetime of sweaty embraces under dim lights than the deadly attentions of a man like Nicolazzo.

  Tricia climbed to the second floor, where she found the club’s door we
dged open with a doorstop. The music playing sounded languorous and soporific, almost as if the record player were set at too slow a speed. Connie Francis’ voice came on, asking who’s sorry now, and the two women working at the moment went round and round with their charges in time to her plaintive query. Two other women seated on chairs against the wall looked up when Tricia walked in, then looked down again when they saw her. No trade here, just competition.

  A man in dungarees and a button-down shirt came over, quickly taking Tricia’s measure as he approached. She recognized him from one of Nicolazzo’s photos—this was Paulie Lips, recognizable at a glance from the prominence not just of his lips but the entire lower portion of his face, which culminated in a shovel-shaped jaw with a darkening shadow of stubble just below the skin.

  He had the self-confident walk and attitude of a man in charge and gave the impression of being the manager here. Tricia could see his eyes darting about her person, noting her wrinkled dress, the missing buttons, the perspiration on her forehead and under her arms, the circles under her eyes. A job seeker, he must’ve been thinking; and perhaps if there’d been more business to go around he’d have entertained the notion or at least strung her along, but Tricia could see he was getting ready to send her on her way.

  She didn’t give him the chance. “Hey, are you Paulie?” she said. He stopped, looked at her more closely. “My sister used to work here, and she left something she asked me to pick up. In her locker.”

  “Oh?” he said, taken aback. “Who’s your sister?”

  “Colleen King.”

  A smile unfolded on his face but it had all the sincerity of a Halloween mask. “Colleen,” he said. “That would make you Patty, right?” He took her hand and squeezed it. “I guess she mentioned me?” He didn’t wait for her to answer. “So, what, you just get into town?” His voice dropped and he edged closer. “Do you need anything? Some money? You look a little...”