Fifty-to-One

by Charles Ardai

  “Kidnapping?”

  “You tied me up, didn’t you? But forget it.” He waved a hand airily. “What do I need with chicken feed like that, when I’ve got two, maybe three actual, honest-to-God charges of murder? A Mister Roberto Monge, with a knife. A Mister Mitchell Depuis, gunshot. And we understand Al Magliocco got himself done earlier this evening, and that you were in attendance.”

  “I wasn’t the one who—”

  “No, of course not. What else’ve we got? Illegal possession of a firearm. Four counts of resisting arrest. That was somebody else, too? Breaking and entering, I forget how many counts. Grand larceny—let’s not forget that little item. Three million smackers, which you wrote a whole book about stealing. And of course these very interesting photos. Can I add blackmail to the list?”

  “Do I look stupid enough to try and blackmail Salvatore Nicolazzo?”

  “You’d be surprised, Miss Heverstadt. I don’t look stupid myself, and just look how stupid I’ve been over the past few days.” He leaned across the table, brought his face close to hers. “Listen, girlie. You’re looking at the max.”

  “The hell I am,” Tricia said. “You’re bluffing.”

  The man in the suit looked pained when Tricia said hell. “Miss Heverstadt,” he said, in a smooth, authoritative voice, “I’m afraid your attitude is not helpful. I can assure you that what Captain O’Malley says is correct.” He had a glistening crew cut, a wide, squarish jaw, and a short and very straight nose. He would have been handsome as a movie star if his eyes hadn’t been so close together.

  “You sound like a radio announcer. Who is this guy?” Tricia asked O’Malley.

  “Now that is a question I was asking myself not so very long ago. Miss Heverstadt, may I present Special Agent Houghton Brooks...” He turned to Brooks. “I’m afraid I keep forgetting. Are you Houghton Brooks the Third, or the Fourth?”

  “Just Junior, Captain,” Brooks said with a strained smile.

  “Agent Houghton Brooks, Jr. of the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation. The federal authorities have been kind enough to interest themselves in our little case, Miss Heverstadt. They are very interested in you. And you still don’t think you’re looking at the max?”

  “I don’t know,” Tricia admitted. “What’s the max?”

  “The maximum penalty permitted under New York State sentencing guidelines, Miss Heverstadt. In your case, several consecutive sentences that’ll add up to life without parole.” O’Malley stood, leaned forward on both hands and looked down at her. “How old are you, Miss Heverstadt? Eighteen, nineteen? You haven’t done much living yet, have you? How’d you like to do the rest of the living you’ll ever do, spend the rest of the years you’ve got to spend, in the slam? How’d you like to grow old in a cage?”

  “Right now, Captain, growing old anyplace at all sounds pretty inviting.”

  “And how about your friends? Your bartender friend we don’t have much on except operating illegally after hours—but Miss Erin Galloway, now there’s a piece of work. Of course you’ll probably tell me she didn’t try and fracture my skull, either.” Tricia shrugged. “Well, never mind that. We’re charging her with Murder Two—an employee of Uncle Nick’s named Celestino Manzoni, by means of another firearm she wasn’t legally entitled to possess. Grand larceny again—a racehorse this time. And as an employee in good standing of Madame Helga’s organization, I’m sure she’s been up to a few things that might interest the boys in vice.

  “And your friend Borden, now, where do I begin? He likes to assault cops and impersonate officers and steal cop cars. That’s when he isn’t publishing smut or running Madame Helga’s himself. Some breaking and entering for Mister Borden, too, as well as—”

  “All right,” Tricia said. “All right.”

  “I’m sorry, Miss Heverstadt. Am I boring you?”

  “I’m tired. I’m very tired, and it’s—late. And I would like you to get to the point.”

  O’Malley turned to Agent Brooks. “You see? She’s a pain in my thigh, and she’s rotten straight through, and she lies like a hundred-dollar Persian rug, and she’s keeping company with big piles of newspaper cut up the same size as money, God knows why. But like she says, she’s not stupid. She knows there’s a point.” He turned back to her and his eyes, shadowed by bandages, were suddenly savage. Very softly he said, “I don’t care about any of this crap, girlie, and I don’t care about you. I don’t care about you or your whore friends or your piss-ant smut-peddler boyfriends. You’re not even annoyances to me. You’re gnats. You’re something I’ve got to brush away from time to time so I can go about my business. And my business is Sal Nicolazzo. And you are going to bring him to me.”

  Tricia stared at him.

  “Permit me,” Agent Brooks said. “Captain O’Malley expresses himself a bit—”

  “That’s right,” O’Malley said. “I expressed myself. You’ve got a way about you, sister. You seem to wiggle your little butt into and out of Uncle Nick’s place easier than anybody I’ve ever seen. He’s interested in you.”

  “He’s interested in his three million dollars, Captain O’Malley. He thinks I’ve got it. He’s wrong—but that’s what he thinks. He’s also interested in those photos. And he’s given me until six AM tomorrow—six AM this morning—to get them to him, on that boat of his. That’s why the piles of newspaper. They’re going to pick me up at six at a pier in Brooklyn and I’ve got to have it all with me, or Charley and my sister...he’s got them out there, and he’s said he’ll kill them. They’ll die.”

  “Well then,” O’Malley said. “That gives us something to work with.”

  “To work with?”

  “Yeah. You’re going to go out there to Uncle Nick’s boat. You’re going to bring—” He shouted toward the door. “Nevins!” A balding head appeared. O’Malley pointed to the leather case of photos. “Get Levitas out of bed. Now. Get him to copy these photographs. I want negatives by three this morning, and I want a set of dry prints on my desk at nine, and whatever fingerprints are on these photos and this case better still be on them and nobody else’s. Clear?” Nevins nodded and disappeared, and O’Malley turned back to Tricia. “You’re going to bring these photos, and your case of funny money, to that boat, and you’re going to bring a story with you, and that story, when you tell it, is going to bring Uncle Nick back to dry land where Agent Brooks and I can get at him. That’s what you’ll do, and that’s all you’ll do. And when you’re done, you and your whore friend and your smut-peddler sweetheart and your sister can all walk. The bartender, too. Understand? I’ll wipe the slate. You give me Nicolazzo, and we’re quits.”

  “And what’s this story I’m going to tell him?”

  “That’s up to you,” O’Malley said. “Just as long as it works.”

  There was a moment of silence.

  “Jesus,” Tricia said. “You must be desperate.”

  Agent Brooks said, “It may sound to you like a desperate idea, Miss Heverstadt—”

  “No. The idea sounds loony. You two sound desperate.”

  “Captain O’Malley and I have been reviewing your case, and as he says, you seem an exceptionally resourceful and ingenious young woman. We have a good deal of confidence in your ability.”

  “You may have a good deal of confidence in my ability, Agent Brooks. Captain O’Malley just thinks I’m worth a try. If I succeed, he wins big. If I don’t, I save the City of New York the expense of a trial and a jail term. Hell,” she said, and Agent Brooks winced again, “the city probably won’t even have to pay for a burial since if anything goes wrong Nicolazzo will do the honors himself with a good old-fashioned burial at sea. Do I understand you correctly, Captain?”

  O’Malley smiled beatifically. “You see, Agent Brooks? Not a bit stupid. Yes, Miss Heverstadt. You understand me correctly. I wouldn’t gamble a nickel on you succeeding, but as it happens, a nickel’s about five cents more than you mean to me. So what the hell? Sometimes a long shot comes in. And
Agent Brooks here thinks it’s a dandy idea, don’t you, Agent Brooks?”

  “I understand your skepticism, Captain, but in fact I do think so. Miss Heverstadt, I think I’m a pretty good judge of men—and, ah, women, in this case. And I think you’ve got that certain something it takes to see a highly sensitive and perilous mission through. You also appear to be quite well connected in the underworld, something the Bureau finds most valuable. In fact, if you do well enough with this assignment—with your first quarry, if you will—the Agency might like to talk to you about other assignments.”

  O’Malley was mouthing the word quarry.

  Brooks opened a briefcase and removed a small box covered in pink satin with a brass clasp, crudely embroidered with the initials TH. “Here’s what you’ll use to communicate with us once you’ve brought Nicolazzo back to land. Now, this may look like an ordinary makeup case...”

  “It looks,” Tricia said, “like nothing on earth. Have you ever seen a woman’s makeup case?”

  “I believe Agent Brooks Junior is a bachelor,” O’Malley said to the ceiling.

  Agent Brooks’ eyes seemed to be getting closer together. “But inside,” he said doggedly, “under this hidden panel containing the little pots of powder and so on, there is a Regency TR-1, the most advanced miniature transistor radio on the market today, which my colleagues have modified to send a homing signal with a radius of twenty-five miles. When you’ve succeeded in luring Mr. Nicolazzo to a convenient location, all you need do is switch this beacon on, and our men will be there within minutes.”

  “That’s all I need do, huh?”

  “You don’t need to do a damn thing, girlie,” O’Malley said. “You can call your lawyer, or have us call one for you. We’ve already got a nice cell waiting for you. And at six thirty or so, your sister and your friend get the chop, like you said. But you don’t have to do a damn thing but sit in a nice warm cell, if you don’t want to.”

  Tricia looked at him meditatively for a minute. Then she held out her shackled wrists.

  She said, “Take these damn things off of me.”

  48.

  The First Quarry

  Dawn wouldn’t break for half an hour still, but the piers were already busy with dockworkers walking to and from the ships, deckhands loading supplies and unloading cargo. The few birds that were awake were circling overhead, cawing lustily and diving when they spotted a bit of breakfast swimming near the water’s surface.

  Tricia sat on the footlocker, legs crossed at the ankles, and waited. She’d lugged the thing this far, dragging it from where the taxi had left her, and that was far enough. Nicolazzo had promised that two men would pick her up—well, they could pick up the footlocker while they were at it.

  She rubbed her wrists where O’Malley’s cuffs had chafed them, or anyway where she imagined they had. You couldn’t see any marks, but it felt to her like she still had them on.

  Her first quarry. Jesus Christ. Brooks had made it sound like he was making her a Junior G-Man or some sort of secret double agent out of the movies. When what he really was doing, most likely, was sending her off to get herself killed. What were the odds that she’d be able to bring Nicolazzo back to shore and into their hands? Bad enough when all she’d had to worry about was getting Coral and Charley off his boat alive.

  O’Malley had ridden with her back to Mike’s, had turned the leather box of photos back over to her, and had directed the junior cop who was driving them to unload the footlocker from the trunk. The cops had helpfully prepared the money inside, even adding paper bands just like the ones you’d get from a bank to hold the individual stacks closed, and making sure the stacks on the first two layers all had at least two real bills on top and one on the bottom. The driver had proudly described the process, like a hobbyist talking about painting lead soldiers. They’d stayed up all night working on it, he’d said.

  When they were out on the street, O’Malley had handed her the radio-cum-makeup case, tucked into a blue, beaded purse that matched her dress only a little better than a feather headdress would have. She’d accepted it. It wasn’t like she had a variety of purses to choose from or any place to get a better one at five in the morning.

  She’d made them wait on the sidewalk while she went upstairs. Her stated purpose was to use the bathroom and she did that, but she also stopped by the back room and fished through the pile of old newspapers and pawnshop tickets till she found one of the latter on which the merchandise being pawned wasn’t a set of flatware or a watch but “one (1) valise—large—brown leather.” Taking the ticket into the bathroom, she opened Mike’s safety razor, slid out the blade, and used it to scrape the date and the name and address of the pawnshop off the ticket. She slipped the ticket into her pocket; the razor blade, too, for good measure.

  Downstairs again, O’Malley had put her into a cab, loaded the trunk into the trunk, and patted the car’s side the way you would a horse’s when you wanted it to go. The driver had sped off toward Brooklyn and arrived at the Gowanus piers a few minutes before the deadline. There’d been no traffic. Tricia hoped that hadn’t used up her quota of good luck for the day.

  She waited, wishing she had worn a watch. It had to be after six, but just how much after, she couldn’t be sure. She felt a little nervous, sitting by herself on a box of money—true, it wasn’t the three million dollars it was pretending to be, but eleven thousand was still more money than she’d ever found herself sitting on before. And if someone wanted to take it, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to prevent—

  “Hey,” a voice called. “You Tricia?”

  Looking up, she saw two men walking toward her. They ran to type, as if Nicolazzo went to the same casting office Hollywood used when picking heavies. One could’ve been Bruno’s twin brother: same build, same pink dome, same glowering expression. The other—the one that had spoken—was smaller, though not by a lot, and looked very much like pictures she’d seen of the current resident of Gracie Manor, Mayor Wagner: jowly, big ears, receding hairline. But she suspected the resemblance ended there. For one thing, she doubted this one had gone to Yale.

  “Yes,” she said. “I’m Tricia.”

  “We’ve been waiting for you,” Mayor Wagner said. “Over there.” He pointed at a little launch bobbing at the end of the pier.

  “Well, I’ve been waiting for you, right here.”

  “Why?”

  “Because this thing weighs almost as much as I do,” Tricia said. “Your boss wants it, you can carry it.”

  “All right,” he said, “no need to get huffy.” He snapped his fingers at his cohort. “Now, howsabout you get up and put your hands out to the side?”

  She stood, lifted her arms, and suffered through her first frisking of the morning. She was getting to be quite an old hand at it, no longer even flinching as a stranger’s hand brushed over her backside.

  While the smaller man took care of patting her down, the larger one bent, gripped one of the footlocker’s handles in each hand, and lifted the thing effortlessly into the air.

  The smaller one plucked the box of photos out of her pocket. “What’s this?” he said.

  “Those are Nicolazzo’s photos,” she said. “Feel free to take a look if you don’t believe me.” But an expression of horror crossed his face and he handed the box back to her.

  “No, thanks,” he said.

  “Why not?”

  “Kagan and me, we’re not allowed to see them,” he said. “Uncle Nick made that very clear. His eyes only.”

  Kagan nodded forcefully. He’d given the impression of paying only cursory attention to what was going on around him, but this point he clearly felt was important.

  “Okay,” Tricia said. “Suit yourself. How about the money, you want to take a look at that?”

  He laughed. “What, to make sure it’s not just a lot of cut-up newspaper? Come on. Nobody’d be that stupid.”

  “No, I guess not,” Tricia said.

  “Let’s get a move on. We’re al
ready running late.” He gestured for her to walk ahead of them down the pier.

  She walked. “What should I call you?” she said as they neared the boat.

  “Mr. P,” he said. “It’s short for Pantazonis.”

  “Greek?” Tricia said.

  “No, Zulu,” he said.

  They boarded the boat, Tricia first, then the two men. There wasn’t a huge amount of room, and Tricia found herself sitting on the footlocker again. What the hell, she figured. Maybe it’ll hatch.

  Kagan fired up the engine and they cruised out of the dock, heading for open water. As they hooked around toward the mouth of the bay, they passed a large wooden billboard proudly proclaiming this the future home of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, courtesy of a list of public servants that started with City Construction Coordinator Robert Moses.

  Where Moses wants a bridge, Tricia thought, he gets a bridge.

  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.