“Yeah, she didn’t show for her shift. That’s fucking news? That’s a crisis?” Vic laughed. “Tanya’s probably wherever Sebastian is.”
“It’s funny? It’s funny what he made her do? What’s wrong with you?”
Maureen tightened her grip on the pistol, furious at Vic’s laughter. He doesn’t know, she thought, that Tanya’s dead. Clarence didn’t tell him. When Maureen opened her mouth to say it, using the news for maximum impact leaped to her mind. Tanya’s death is your ace in the hole, she thought. Hang on to it. Work up to it, like Waters had with Clarence.
“No, Maureen, what’s wrong with you?” Vic peeled himself off the wall, his breathing calmer, his color returning. “Where’d you get the idea that Tanya’s doing anything she didn’t volunteer for?”
“From her,” Maureen said.
“Somebody’s been messing with your head. Tanya’s been working for Sebastian since before you got here. They’re a team.”
“That’s bullshit.”
“Who do you think talked Dennis into borrowing his start-up money from Sebastian? She led that poor boy around by his dick, just like she was told.” He shook his head. “I tried warning him.”
Maureen didn’t know why, maybe her arms were tired, but she lowered the gun. Vic was fucking with her. He had to be, didn’t he? Don’t think, she told herself. Act. But she couldn’t decide what to do. Her control of the situation was slipping away. You’re scared, she thought, and you’re in way over your head.
Vic turned and walked down the stairs, hitting the lights for the main room on his way. Maureen didn’t protest.
At the bar, Vic righted two stools. He patted one like a kindly grandpa getting ready for story time. “Come, sit. Let me buy you a drink. You need it.”
Maureen came halfway down the stairs and stopped, the gun hanging at her side. She didn’t need a drink. She didn’t need some bullshit story. What she needed was to leave the Narrows having altered her circumstances. She watched Vic moving around behind the bar, pouring a Goose neat for himself and a Bushmills the same way for her. He took his time doing it, whistling some old soul tune. Gun or no gun, he’d already written her off as a threat. Maureen looked at the pistol in her hand. She couldn’t blame him. She didn’t feel very scary. But who knew a better way, Waters? If his way worked, what was she doing at the Narrows waving around a loaded .38? What was Sebastian doing, walking around not only free but prosperous and on his way to even more power?
Elbows on the bar, Vic grinned at her. “Sit. We’ll work something out.”
She moved down a few more stairs, then stopped, staring at Vic. Don’t do it, she thought. Vic doesn’t give a shit what Sebastian does, to you or anyone else.
“Maybe you should just go home,” Vic said, waving a dismissive hand at her. He set her drink on the bar and sipped his vodka, swirling it in the glass. “I’ll talk to Sebastian. I know he can get overbearing at times. Let ol’ Vic take care of it for you. I know him. Come see me back here tomorrow night. Come work your shift.”
“What’s he got on you, Vic?” Maureen tucked the gun into the back of her jeans. “What do you owe him? You let him use and abuse Tanya, right under your nose. Now you’re trying to give him me.”
Vic, glass in hand, came out from behind the bar. “’Scuse me?”
“Must be something big, this debt,” Maureen said. “He’s got you lying, covering for him. With the cops. With me. I come in tomorrow, and you’ll have him here waiting for me. What’s he offering for that, for selling me out?”
“You’re being paranoid, Maureen. You got me all wrong. And Tanya made her own choices.” Vic sat on the stool he’d set down for Maureen. “You can’t make me feel guilty about her.” He patted his shirt pocket, looking for his cigarettes. He found the pack on the bar and lit a cigarette. Maureen noticed he wouldn’t look at her.
She crossed the barroom in long, easy strides. The closer she got to him, the more Vic shrank into himself. “Dennis was murdered, Vic. Someone strangled him before they put him on the tracks. The cops are looking at Sebastian for it.”
Vic tried, but he couldn’t keep his eyes from the mirror behind the bar. “Nah, you’re lying. Waters was here last night running the same shit on me.” He talked more to his reflection behind the bar than to Maureen. “I know you’re afraid of Sebastian and, like I said, I’ll help with that, but you’re talking crazy. It’s bullshit. Waters is playing you. I know them both from back in the day, from when they worked together. He’s had it out for Sebastian for years. Sebastian warned me about him, right away from when Dennis got killed.
“Waters shot Sebastian, for chrissakes, his own boss, another cop. Over some hooker or stripper or whatever. How’re you gonna trust a man like that? Waters is the one you should be worried about. You know me, Maureen. Listen to reason.”
“It was your place, wasn’t it?” Maureen said. “In Brooklyn, the alley where Sebastian killed that girl. You were running the place. That’s how you know Sebastian. What about the Black Garter? That your place, too?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“The hell you don’t. This has been going on for years, hasn’t it? His cash and your girls.”
“It wasn’t just girls,” Vic said.
“That’s a fucking relief.”
“Oh, please,” Vic said, “you talk like you’ve uncovered some big conspiracy, like this is some big secret plan we sat down and figured out. Like it’s news or the end of the world. Yeah, I ran strip joints. Yeah, some were low-class joints full of low-class people. We all gotta start somewhere. Yeah, I had some girls working for me that knew some guys that did things that might interest a cop or two. Twenty years later, I still do. It’s not exactly a real bizarre coincidence that some of the same girls that worked for me also snitched for Sebastian, he and I drawing from the same employee pool like we did. Believe me, except for the guys that got busted, nobody had a fucking problem.”
Vic held out his hands, pleading as if the logic of his argument was carved into his palms.
“For fuck’s sake, Maureen, you know how this business is. Things happen. I didn’t keep tabs on how Sebastian did his job or on his social life after he quit. You treat me like I invented the fucking rules. I live under them same as you. I was the one that decided that people like power and need money? That shit is ancient. You know this.”
“Tanya’s dead,” Maureen said. “Sebastian killed her, too. Because of things she knew about him and Dennis.”
“Fuck you.”
“No,” Maureen said, “fuck you, Vic. I saw her. I went down to the morgue myself and saw Tanya dead on a slab.”
“Enough,” Vic said, raising his hands. Again, quieter: “Enough.” His Adam’s apple worked overtime, trying to swallow nonexistent spit. “Really?”
“Yes, Vic, she’s really dead. I did the ID. He’s killed someone else.” Hearing the truth about Dennis had shaken him. The news about Tanya rocked him. Maureen knew she had to keep the pressure on, had to keep agitating. “How many do you think there have been, between that girl in the alley and Tanya? How many times have you helped him do it? Gimme a rough guess.”
Vic was silent. He’d started to sway in his chair. Maureen worried again about giving him a heart attack. Too bad if he couldn’t take it. She needed her answers; she needed to find Sebastian.
“Vic, Sebastian killed Dennis. He killed him and threw his body in front of a train. Left nothing but bits and pieces for his family. He killed Tanya. He’s a murderer. He has been for years, and now he’s after me.”
“You got no proof of that,” Vic said. “About Dennis. Or Tanya. Any of it. Nobody’s never proved nothing. Even that girl in the alley. That was always just a rumor that there wasn’t really a pimp there. He just had a bad reputation. People were out to get him. No cops, no lawyers have ever proved a thing. Now I’m supposed to believe you?”
Turning in his seat, he plucked a cocktail straw from a caddy behind the bar,
stuck the straw in his mouth, his hands shaking so badly he nearly took out his eye. Maureen met his eyes in the bar mirror.
“Don’t you turn your back on me,” she said. “Or on Dennis. Or Tanya and Danielle. I won’t allow it.”
Vic turned to face her, twirling the straw between his molars. Waiting. Thinking. Not about her, Maureen thought, or about his murdered employees, or the others like Danielle Price that he surely knew Sebastian had put in the ground. Like he’d always done, Vic was shelving the truth so he could concentrate on saving his own ass.
Fine, Maureen thought, let’s play it that way. “You think I haven’t made friends of my own working here? Friends that do me favors?”
Vic turned her words around in his head, checking the angles. What regulars did she know better than him? Which customers came around only on nights she worked? Maureen decided to help him out. Staten Island crawled with cops. Vic knew they were everywhere. Like Waters had said, everyone on Staten Island knew a cop.
“Maybe I haven’t made the right introductions,” Maureen said. “Sometimes we get busy and my manners go out the window.” She had the perfect face in her mind. Clean cut, but not too much. “I ever introduce you to Jimmy McGrath? ’Bout six foot, short black hair. He likes the corner tables in the back, where he can see the whole place laid out in front of him.”
“The teacher?”
“Teacher, my ass,” Maureen said. “Try New York State Police.”
Knocking back the rest of his vodka, Vic rose from his seat. “No. No way. I’ve seen you put that shit up your nose. Seen you buy it, seen you sell it. Things ain’t like they used to be. Maybe twenty years ago you woulda fit the profile, but now? No cop would use you for nothin’.”
“You think anyone cares what some loser waitress does compared to the leading candidate for a state senate seat? The CI by my name on the paperwork stands for confidential informant, not constant integrity.”
Vic drank down Maureen’s whiskey, tossing the glass on the bar. It rolled off the bar and smashed in the sink. Vic took a step in her direction. She reached her hand behind her back. “Careful, Vic. Jimmy’s taken me shooting. I’m pretty good.”
“You wouldn’t,” Vic said. He laughed, but he stayed where he was. “It’s not in you.”
“You have no idea what I’ve got in me,” Maureen said. “I knock over a couple of chairs, make one hysterical phone call, and presto, you’re a rapist, Vic.” She pulled the gun from her waistband, aimed it at Vic. “A gut-shot rapist bleeding out from the bullet in his soft pink belly. I’m a single girl who works late at night for cash. Why wouldn’t I carry a gun? Thank God I did, with what you had in mind. What choice did I have against a man twice my size? I’m only a little girl. Maybe I call an ambulance for you.” She cocked back the hammer on the pistol. “But maybe I panic, in my rush to get away, and don’t.”
Vic slid his hand through his hair, rubbing the back of his neck under his ponytail. He returned to his stool, rubbing his palms on his thighs. “I been in this business too long.”
She lowered the gun. “Listen, help me out here. I don’t care what you’re into Sebastian for, but you help me and maybe I can help get him off your back.”
Vic crossed his arms. “He and I are old friends. What makes you think I want to get rid of him?”
“Men like him don’t have friends. You know that better than I do. You comped him a couple grand worth of food and bev and service the other night. Why? ’Cause you like how he’s gonna vote on state education policy? It’s not ’cause he’s your friend.”
“Because he mostly owns this place,” Vic said, sagging. “His cash keeps us going.” He stared up at the ceiling. Maureen watched his eyes drift around the room. “Yeah, we do good business, but not good enough. You know what this place costs? You see what’s going on by the ferry: the ballpark, the new stores? You can’t imagine the rent, and every six months the Russian pricks that own this place jack it up. They fuck me every chance they get. Everything I got is tied up in this place. It goes under, I go down with it. He owns me, Maureen.”
Moving behind the bar, Maureen poured Vic another shot. She slid the glass into his hand. “Where’s Sebastian get this cash?”
“I don’t ask,” Vic said. “He does good with the security.”
“That doesn’t mean you don’t know. Why does he keep you afloat?”
“I don’t ask that, either.”
“C’mon, Vic.”
Vic pulled another cigarette from the pack on the bar. “Girls like Tanya. That’s what he gets outta this place. That’s how it’s always been. It only got worse when he wasn’t a cop anymore. He keeps the cash coming; he takes his cut…however he wants. I don’t ask and he don’t tell.”
“But everybody knows anyway.”
“Everybody but you, apparently,” Vic said. “Jesus, I can’t believe Tanya’s fucking dead.”
Why can’t you believe it? Maureen wondered. Because she was so pretty? You think that made her any safer than the rest of us? Shit, if she was ugly, she’d probably be alive.
Vic sucked hard on his smoke. He stared at the floor as he spoke. “C’mon, Maureen. You think she got those clothes, those fancy pills, working here? You broads don’t make that kind of money. And she was the worst goddamn waitress I ever saw.” Vic raised his eyes, grinning at Maureen, mirthless, showing his teeth like a cornered animal. Fear, Maureen realized, like it had made Tanya stupid at Cargo, was making Vic nasty. “These cops you know, do they have any idea how naïve you are?”
“It’s my best asset,” Maureen said. “Stupid people are always telling me things they shouldn’t.”
“Yeah, right. It’s an act. Keep telling yourself that.”
“An act? I’m the one with an act? For chrissakes, Vic, you’re a fucking pimp.”
“You girls make your own choices,” Vic said. “You’re adults. I just order the liquor, open the doors, and count the money.”
“How many people has he destroyed?”
“I count the money,” Vic said, “not how many of you birds flit in and outta here. I’m not your fucking mother hen.”
“You pathetic piece of shit.” Maureen wanted to spit in his face. “You think being broke, high, and half the size of Sebastian gives you fucking choices when someone like him comes knocking?” Maureen raised the gun. “Tell me where that cocksucker is. Right fucking now.”
“You shoot me today,” Vic said, “or Sebastian does worse to me later.”
“Jesus Christ, Vic, what happened to you? What kind of man are you?”
“Life happened to me. Same as everyone else. So I learned how to survive. You could take some lessons from an old man like me.”
“Those girls are somebody’s daughter,” Maureen said. “They’re somebody’s sister. Those girls are me.”
“You think I haven’t thought about that,” Vic said, his glass at his mouth, “a thousand and one fucking times? Whadda you want from me? The man is a horror, okay? I admit it. But I can’t stop him.” He slurped at his vodka. “And you can’t either. Bigger people than you have tried, from both sides of the law. For years.” He set his glass down and surveyed the room. “And I don’t see them around.”
“So you do nothing about the people Sebastian destroys right in front of your eyes? Just ignore them, look the other way, that’s the answer? Not for me. I’m not you.”
“Some things are too big to fight,” Vic said. “They have too many arms and heads, too many teeth. Sebastian is one of those things.”
“So I lay down for him,” Maureen said, “like you did? No way. I won’t do it. I don’t wanna learn that lesson.”
Vic spread his hands. “Then run for it, Maureen. Blow town. I’m telling you this for your own good. Maybe I am done, maybe I made too many mistakes, but a young, pretty girl like you? You got a future. Anywhere you want.”
“I’m not running away anymore. I’m too fucking tired.” She recocked the hammer on the .38. “End of the line, Vic. Te
ll me where he is.”
Maureen knew she was looking at a beaten man. The last of the fight had gone out of him. And it wasn’t her information or her accusations or her gun that had wrecked him. He’d finally hit the point where he couldn’t continue swallowing how he felt every minute of every day: sick, defeated, hollow, and unable to recall a time when he’d felt any different. Running her eyes over the brick walls of the Narrows, Maureen realized she knew that look on Vic’s face, and not from the million and one hours she’d spent working the floor. Of all places, she knew it from the zoo.
As a kid, she’d seen that yellow-eyed death mask haunting the face of the Staten Island zoo’s one lion. The one that hadn’t even had the energy to pace his cage. The one that lay on his side in the corner, his matted mane rife with flies, just breathing, waiting for his heart to stop its pointless, mindless beating. If I blew Vic away right now, Maureen thought, I’d be doing him a favor. And letting him off too easy. The lion was a victim; Vic deserved his cage. She lowered the gun.
“What’re you gonna do, Vic? I’m tired of waiting.”
“Can I have another drink?” Without waiting for an answer, he got up and walked behind the bar. He ran his palms over the mahogany. “You shoulda seen this place a few years ago. It was somethin’ else entirely.” He poured himself another vodka. “So was I.”
“Vic, I don’t give a fuck.”
Vic picked up a pen from beside the register and wrote something on a cocktail napkin. Reaching over the bar, he handed Maureen the note.
“Sunnydale Suites?” she said. “What is that?”
“A motel,” Vic said. “Over in Jersey, on Route Thirty-five.”
I got plans tonight, Sebastian had told her. I’m not even in the state. She stuffed the napkin in her pocket.
“It’s the kinda place,” Vic said, “that rents rooms by the hour and doesn’t ask any questions. Mirrored ceilings, mirrored walls, leather sofas—”
“I get the picture.”
Vic chuckled, lowering his eyes. “No,” he said. “You don’t.”
The Devil She Knows Page 29