The Last Gig

by Norman Green

  “Agreed.” He hung up without another word.

  Twenty-three

  Caughlan climbed the stairs ahead of Tomasino. The Englishman, Wallace Parker, was last. “I don’t like it,” Tomasino was saying. “Why did she want to meet here, of all places? And why do you gotta be here?”

  Caughlan stopped at the landing and groped for the doorknob in the dark. “What happened to that hard-on you had for her this morning?” he said. “Change your mind?” He had expected Tomasino to bitch, it was the man’s nature. Fucking little prick, he thought, loves to play the tough guy, but all he does is whine.

  “No, I didn’t change my mind, but I can think of a million places better than this.”

  “Look, this is where she wanted to meet, and you have to do this part of it her way. This bitch is gonna be hard enough to take down as it is. You get her thinking, you only make things worse. You try to persuade her to do it someplace else, she’ll smell a rat.” He opened the door, stepped through. “We ain’t turning on any lights in here, I don’t want anything visible from the street.”

  “All right, all right,” Tomasino groused. “I just wish we could do her someplace remote. You know what I’m saying? Just for security. You don’t think anyone will hear her screaming and shit?”

  Caughlan stopped and turned. He could just make out Tomasino’s shape in the darkness. “Look,” he said, “I already told you, you ain’t doing her here. You got that? She steps through the door, okay, your guy hits her with the Taser. When she’s out of it, you take her anywhere you want. You do whatever you want, but you do it away from me. Are we clear? I don’t wanna know nothing about it. I’m here for one reason only, and that’s because I need your help with some zoning variances in Jersey.”

  “Whatsamatter? You going soft? We was gonna let you have her first.”

  Caughlan was careful to keep the distaste out of his voice. “You wanna keep shit like this nice and clean,” he said. “If I didn’t see anything, I can’t say anything, can I?”

  Tomasino seemed unconcerned. “Yeah, whatever,” he said. “Is there any place around here that I can sit down?”

  “Stay where you are, I’ll go find something.” He walked farther into the darkened room, trying not to listen to Tomasino talking to the fucking Brit, telling him how they’d use Alessandra’s clothes to tie her up, then throw her in the trunk of the car.

  It was a little past midnight when Alessandra Martillo drifted down Lafayette, headed for Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn. She’d taken a cab instead of driving her uncle’s van, because parking in that neighborhood was not always easy, and maybe not a great idea. It seemed like a long ride in the cab, and she felt tired, but even so, she’d had the cab driver drop her some distance from her destination. Maybe, she thought, a little walk will give me a little more spirit . . . And maybe I’m just delaying.

  Most of the streets had been repaved since she was a child. Back then, the rectangular pattern of the cobblestones showed through the asphalt in places, along with the buried streetcar rails like veins under the skin of an old man’s forearm. They were gone now, or maybe just buried deeper, but the rest of the neighborhood hadn’t changed much. She looked at the buildings as she passed, remembering her life as it had been. A homeless brat, she thought, a runaway, a truant, a burglar. A liar and a thief, those were the words her Aunt Magdelena had used, in English and in Spanish, and her father had believed them.

  I did what I had to do, a small inner voice protested.

  And how have you changed, she asked herself. Are you any different now, or have you just buried those bones a little deeper? Like the rails under the street, you can’t see them unless you dig, but that doesn’t mean they’re gone.

  You’re overtired, Al told herself. You wouldn’t be thinking this way if you hadn’t had to deal with Stiles last night, and with Tomasino’s trucks after that. She got to the corner, finally, stood looking across Bedford Avenue at Armando’s. It was Friday night, she’d almost forgotten about that. They’d have live music at Armando’s tonight. She could hear the muffled thump of bass and drums, the sound leaked out through the restaurant walls along with the smell of Southern cooking, competing with the odors coming out of the Popeyes chicken joint behind her and with the normal racket of a downtown Brooklyn night. She took a moment to stretch, felt the ache in her neck, some lingering soreness in her ribs. Are you ready for this, she asked herself.

  No, she thought. I’m not.

  The light changed and she stepped off the curb. She felt his hand on her elbow before she saw him. “Hssst. Al. It’s a setup. Caughlan sold you out to Tomasino.” He tried to talk without moving his lips.

  “What I figured,” she said. “Hello, Gearoid.”

  “Then what are you doing here?” He kept pace with her as she crossed the street. His put his hand on her shoulder, stopped her when they reached the opposite sidewalk. “Are you crazy? How you gonna run in high heels? And I’m not saying that dress isn’t short enough, but Jaysus, how you gonna, you know, do what you do?”

  She turned to look up into his mournful face. “Doing what I do hasn’t worked in a while, Gearoid. And I’m too tired to run.”

  “Come with me, then. I know a guy up in Boston, he could put you up for a while . . .”

  “You’re taking a hell of a chance, talking to me out in public,” she said, cutting him off. “What if Caughlan sees us?”

  “Never mind that.” He finally looked away from her chest. It was freer than she liked it behind the black silk dress Sarah Waters had bullied her into buying earlier in the day. Why don’t you just buy a fucking muumuu? Sarah had yelled, after her patience had finally run out. Christ, if I had your figure . . . Why don’t you just dress up in a potato sack with a bag over your head, like in the Middle East? What the hell are you afraid of? Al shook the black hair back out of her eyes. She was overly conscious of the silver heart-shaped pendant that hung on a chain down between her breasts, warm against her skin. So was Gearoid. “Don’t go up there, Al,” he said. “Please. For God’s sake listen to me.”

  “Tell you what,” Al told him. “We’ll stop downstairs first. You can buy me a beer.”

  “You are one hardheaded woman, do you know that?”

  “So I’m told. Come on in, it’s a nice joint, you’ll like it.”

  “Ain’t it just like a woman,” Tomasino said. “Bitch be late for her own goddamn funeral.” He laughed at his joke.

  Caughlan sighed. “Might wanna keep it down just a touch,” he said. “And sit the fuck down, will you? Relax. You’re gonna hear her before you see her anyhow. You want her to see your goddamn face in the window?”

  “So goddamn dark in here, she won’t see shit,” Tomasino said, but he returned to the chair and sat down. “How are we gonna know she’s coming?”

  “Got it covered,” Caughlan said. “You never did tell me what got you so hot for her.”

  It was a minute before Tomasino responded. “She fucked me,” he said. “She cost me money, and I can’t let that happen. Bitch. When I get my hands on her . . .”

  “Oh,” Caughlan said, keeping his voice neutral. “Messing with your business?”

  Again, Tomasino paused just a blink too long before answering. “Something like that.”

  “I hate that,” Caughlan said. “Get so sick of watching my back all the fucking time. You think you got your shit covered, some son of a bitch finds a new way to fuck you up.”

  “Yeah,” Tomasino said. “This bitch is done fucking me up, I can tell you that.”

  “I got a piece of this club down near Giant’s Stadium,” Caughlan said. “Place is a real gold mine, most of the year. Got the ponies, got the football, got some college games and shit. We been there a while, right, so we know what the take’s gonna be, most weekends. But then we start coming up short, right, but only like one weekend out of five or six. We don’t got anybody just working one weekend out of six, so we didn’t know what to do. Anyhow, we hired this private dick, gu
y worked me for two weeks. I mean, I’m pretty sure he had the shit nailed right away, but he worked me a little bit. I guess you gotta expect that. I guess I didn’t mind.”

  “So what happened?” Tomasino said.

  “What happened to what? Oh. Sorry. Yeah, it was one of the dancers. She was going with this guy, fucking idiot couldn’t stay out of the joint. He was supposed to be doing weekends, right, but he’d miss one and then they’d toss him for thirty days and then let him back out. He’d get fucked up and miss the next one. But he didn’t have the money to handle his shit, right, so every time he gets out, some of my money winds up going up his nose.”

  “How’d your investigator find this out?”

  “Beats me. It’s his business, right? It’s what he does.”

  “What happened to them?”

  “The dancer? Drowned her in the toilet, right there in the club.”

  “Jesus. And her boyfriend?”

  “What about him?”

  “What’d you do to him?”

  “Nothing. You gotta understand, Jerry, it’s just business. I didn’t do the dancer because I was pissed off. I mean, it was only money, right? And not a hell of a lot of that. I did her because you can’t have someone putting their hands in your pocket. You know what I’m saying? You let that go on, everyone’s gonna want some. The guy wasn’t my problem, what do I give a fuck what happens to him?”

  “But he was the guy she was stealing it for!”

  “I ain’t God, Jerry. I ain’t a cop, and I ain’t the guy’s mother. I’m a businessman.”

  Tomasino hauled a big shiny pistol out of his jacket pocket and began fiddling with it. “Yeah,” he said. “I got you.”

  “Check this out,” she told him. She almost had to yell to be heard over the music. “Booth in the corner. We got lucky tonight.” The place was packed, and he was jammed up close to her. She could feel his hip next to hers, smell his faint cologne. She tried to concentrate on sitting with her knees together.

  “Al,” he shouted back, leaning over to stare into her face. “Al, they’re in the pool hall right upstairs. Why don’t we get the hell out of here? I’ll come away with you. Please, Al, don’t do this.”

  A waitress came, stood by their table, mute.

  “You hungry, Gro? My treat.”

  He just looked at her.

  Al looked up at the waitress. “You got Guinness?”

  O’Hagan shook his head, irritated. “Just make it two Budweisers, okay?”

  The waitress looked at him for a second, then back at Al, shrugged, turned on her heel and left. “Friendly bunch in here,” he said, and he glared in the direction of the band on the far side of the room. It was a trio, and the bassist and guitar player faced each other, ripped into an old Hendrix riff. There was no vocalist, but that didn’t matter, everybody knew the words. “Actin’ funny, and I don’t know why . . .” Both musicians turned back to face the crowd, suddenly silent as half of the restaurant shouted the next line. O’Hagan didn’t, though, he just stared at the guitar player. Or rather, at his instrument. It was a beat-up old Strat, had the initials SRV glued to the body. It was instantly recognizable from a dozen Stevie Ray Vaughn videos. Gearoid turned back to look at Alessandra, the sorrow and concern draining from his face, leaving him looking sour and mean. Al felt the barrel of his pistol in her ribs. “I knew I shoulda got rid of that goddamn thing,” he said. “How long have you known?”

  She spoke softly, so he had to lean in to hear. “For an Irishman,” she said, “you’re a terrible liar. You told me you didn’t do e-mail, you remember that? ‘Computers are the work of the divil,’ that’s what you said. My father told me you were working in IT for a bank in Dublin when your girlfriend went missing. The Dublin cops liked you for it, but they couldn’t make a case. And it made me wonder when you never told Caughlan about that night those three mutts came after us in the Bronx. But I wasn’t sure until my father found out who you really are. Did Willy know you were brothers?”

  “Half-brothers,” he snarled back. “Yeah, he knew.”

  “What about Caughlan? Did he know he was your father?”

  “Don’t call him that!” he snapped. A thin black man sitting adjacent turned to look at them, then turned away again. “He was no fadder, he was nothing more than a stallion covering a mare, went home to Ireland on holiday, got drunk, got his nut off, and then just walked away when he was done.” He lowered his voice. “He was nothing to me.”

  “Did he know?”

  “Did he care? Why don’t you ask that? Did he fookin’ care?” He jabbed her in the side with his pistol. “Come on, we’re going.”

  Alessandra didn’t move. “Can I ask you one question, first?”

  He gritted his teeth. “Go on, then.”

  “At Caughlan’s party, when Helen Caughlan and I were standing up on that balcony, and you looked up. It was her, wasn’t it? It was never me.”

  “You don’t know what he puts her through!” he said. “Even the dogs on the street have it better than her!” He looked at her face. “I’m sorry, Al, I like my girls white. Nothing personal.”

  Ah.

  “And then later on that night, those guys that followed us, they were yours, right? You called them ‘three good men,’ and I kinda wondered how you knew that.”

  “They were good men, all right, but they were Tomasino’s, not mine.”

  “Tomasino. Your partner.”

  “Yeah, my partner.” He prodded her with the pistol again. “You’ve had your one question, and then some.”

  Again, she didn’t move. “Were you gonna kill me that night?”

  “No,” he said, his voice growing loud again. “That was back before we knew how goddamn stubborn you are. We thought we could scare you off.”

  “And those guys outside of my apartment. Did you tell them what to do to me, Gearoid? Was that your idea?”

  “Goddammit!” he exploded, the other diners forgotten. “This isn’t about you! This was never about you! Don’t you get it? You’ve gotten yerself into something way bigger than you are!”

  “Money,” she said. “Tomasino’s drug operation. You were his inside guy at Penn Transfer.”

  O’Hagan’s eyes glittered with anger. “How did you tumble to that?”

  “Was it you?”

  “Yes, goddammit, it was me. The whole bloody scheme was my idea, if you must know. How did you find out?”

  “Marty called me last night, after he was shot. He told me what he’d found. I was the woman who called the cops and told them I’d heard gunfire.” She watched his face as he calmed himself. “He thought he was gonna die. Just your hard luck he didn’t.” The lights of the bar reflected in his eyes. If Marty dies, she told herself, that’s what he’s thinking, if Marty dies, he can kill me and nobody will know. He thinks he might still be able to save it.

  “Well, here’s your consolation, then,” he said. “Stiles did for Ramon, put two rounds through his chest. He’s laying dead in that warehouse right now, not fifty feet from where they found Stiles.” He jabbed her with the gun again, more insistently this time. “Come on, Martillo. Mova la culo.”

  “How long we known each other,” Caughlan said. “Twenty-five years?”

  “Something like that.” Tomasino was still fondling his pistol, feeling the weight of it in his hands.

  “All this time,” Caughlan said, “you been a true conservative.”

  “No fuckin’ way,” Tomasino said. “I was born a Democrat, and by God—”

  “No, I don’t mean it like that. I mean conservative in the real world, not in politics.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You been a real conservative. Just like me. I take care of meself first, you know what I’m saying?”

  “Of course,” Tomasino said. “Nobody gonna do it for you.” He sounded a bit defensive.

  “Absolutely not,” Caughlan said. “I mean, think of all the guys you seen fall by the wayside. What did they do
wrong? How come you’re here and they’re not?”

  “Usually they trusted the wrong guys,” Tomasino said. “Or else they get too brave. You win an election or two, the money starts rolling in, you start thinking you can’t put a foot wrong. Next thing you know, you get caught with your dick where it don’t belong, your picture’s in the papers, it’s over. Or else you get too greedy, someone thinks you’re gouging them, they rat you out, it’s over.”

  “That’s what I’m saying,” Caughlan said. “Look at all the Jersey politicians went to jail. Never happened to you.”

  “I see where you’re going. I’m conservative, meaning I’m careful. I don’t take chances, I take care’a business.”

  “A true conservative,” Caughlan said. “Hooray for me and fuck you.”

  “Hey,” Tomasino said, “plenty’a nice guys in the cemetery.”

  “Or in prison,” Caughlan said. “An entire personal and political philosophy in six words. Pretty highly evolved.”

  “Six words?” Tomasino said. “What are you talking about?”

  Caughlan repeated himself. “Hooray for me and fuck you,” he said. “You know, I used to think it was just me. Saw guys like you on television, I thought you were really doing something. Thought I was a louse because I had to take care of myself.”

  “Yeah, we were doing something all right,” Tomasino said. “We were doing the same shit you were, just in a different place.”

  “Probably learned the same lessons I did.”

  “Keep your hand on your wallet,” Tomasino said. “Watch your back. Watch the guy watching your back.”

  “Never give a schmuck a break,” Caughlan said.

  Tomasino laughed. “That’s a good one,” he said. A moment passed. “What do you mean?”

  “Oh, you know how it is,” Caughlan said. “You feel sorry for some schmuck, you know you should really put him in the ground, but you decide to let him walk. You’ll pay for that one every time.”