Hard Case Crime: Fifty to One (38 page)

What are you going to do?
she’d asked Coral, who’d had to think about it.

I’m going to go home,
she’d said finally.
Not for good—but for now.

“Yes, mama,” Tricia said. “Coral. And she’s bringing someone with her.”

“A man?” her mother said coldly.

“After a fashion,” Tricia said.

Charley got up then, waved at Erin to do the same. “We’ll be outside,” he said. “Take your time.”

When her call with her mother was finished, Tricia didn’t hang up the phone, just depressed the hooks with her forefinger and then released them. She placed another call, to a number written in a neat, straight hand on the back of a business card whose front only contained a man’s name, not the name of his employer.

“Brooks here,” the man answered. Over the phone he sounded, if anything, even more stiff and formal than in person.

“This is Tricia Heverstadt.”

“Oh, Miss Heverstadt,” he said, warming up just a little. “I want to express our thanks once more. You did an outstanding job this morning. And now with Royal Barrone turning state’s evidence against Nicolazzo—”

“I can’t take credit for that.”

“You put us in touch with him,” Brooks said.

“I made one phone call,” Tricia said.

“You did an
outstanding
job,” he repeated. “And that is the reason I asked you to call me. So that we might discuss in private the matter I alluded to in our first conversation.”

“What matter is that?”

“Your skills, Miss Heverstadt, could be of considerable service to your government. Salvatore Nicolazzo is not the only criminal who has eluded us for years. If you were able to get close to him and his confidants, perhaps you could do the same with others.”

“I don’t think—”

“Simply by way of example,” Brooks said, and she heard some pages flipping on his end of the phone, “there is a mister Jorge Famosa, living in New York now but a native of Cuba originally. He peddles narcotics in the northeast, smuggled in from his homeland. His operations have been disrupted recently by the fighting down there—you have heard of this rebel, Castro, and his guerilla forces?”

“I think I’ve seen the name,” Tricia said, “but—”

“Well, Miss Heverstadt, we have word that Famosa is recruiting criminals from New York’s Cuban community to travel to Cuba and kill Fidel Castro. And once they’ve done that, they intend to back a bid for power by the dead man’s brother, Raul Castro, whom they believe will be more sympathetic to their operations.”

“What does this have to do with me, Agent Brooks?”

“We thought you could infiltrate Famosa’s organization and help us bring these men to justice before they create an international incident.”

“Do I look to you like I could pass for Cuban?”

“No, ma’am,” Brooks said, “but then you don’t look Italian, either.”

“I’m sorry,” Tricia said, “I’m just not comfortable—”

“That’s all right,” Brooks said, and she heard some more pages flipping. “If you’re more comfortable with our Sicilian friends, we have no shortage of assignments there, especially now, with Nicolazzo and Barrone out of commission. That creates a power vacuum and we have already heard this morning—on the QT, you understand—that certain men at the next level down are trying to fill it. There’s one fellow, for instance, who has been operating a brothel out of the Statler Hotel—he’s employed there as their house detective, if you can believe that.”

“Agent Brooks—”

“Then there’s another gentleman, Paulie Cusumano, a.k.a. ‘Paulie Lips.’ He runs a club called the Moon and word is he intends to turn it into a casino—”

“Agent Brooks!” Tricia had to shout to get his attention. “Agent Brooks. I appreciate what you’ve done for me, you and Captain O’Malley. You’ve given me a second chance and I won’t forget it. But I’ve had my fill of this sort of thing. I just want to lead a simple, quiet life from here on in. No criminals, no gunfights, no undercover assignments. Just working in the book publishing business with Charley—where at least in principle all the danger stays on the page.”

“I’m sorry to hear it,” Brooks said. “You have the makings of an excellent field asset.”

“Thank you,” Tricia said, “I think. But I assure you, my mind’s made up.”

“Very well. The government does not pressure its citizens. I’d like to think you might reconsider someday—but that’s entirely up to you. In the meantime,” Brooks said, “there are just a few loose ends I’d be grateful if you could help us tie up. For example, the matter of the stolen three million dollars. Are you quite certain, Miss Heverstadt, that you don’t have any idea who took it?”

“Quite certain,” Tricia said. And before he could say anything else she added, “Would you look at that? I’m so sorry, Agent Brooks, I just realized it’s almost noon and I have to be somewhere.”

“But Miss Heverstadt—” Brooks said.

“Goodbye, Agent Brooks.” She hung up.

Outside, Erin was seated at her desk, going through the mail that had piled up. She said, “Everything okay?”

“Fine,” Tricia said.

“Want to get some lunch?”

“Actually,” Tricia said, “all I want to get right now is some sleep. Could you let Charley know I’ll see him a little later?”

“Sure,” Erin said.

And Tricia headed out. But instead of going across the hall to her cot, she took the elevator downstairs.

Down the block, where it had once said “Red Baron” in Gothic letters, the sign now said “O.J.’s Bar and Grill.” Inside, the propellers and framed aviation pictures had been removed from the walls. The place looked unchanged otherwise, though, and was every bit as barren of customers at noon as it had been any of the previous times she’d come here. She ordered a coke from the bartender, who served it to her unenthusiastically. She carried it to one of the dark, anonymous booths against the back wall. Renata was right, she thought. These places did all look pretty much the same.

She didn’t have to wait long—maybe ten minutes. Don was the first to show up, coming in through a doorway labeled
EMPLOYEES ONLY
behind the bar. Larry appeared a few minutes later, walking in off the street. Larry’s beard had come in a bit more in the months since she’d seen him last. Otherwise, the two looked much the way they had, though she thought maybe their clothing seemed a little improved.

“Boys,” Tricia said, raising her glass and waving at them with it. “Want to come over here for a minute?”

“Why, it’s our authoress,” Larry said. “Our mystery writrix. What brings you here? Are you working on another book?”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you,” Tricia said, and there was something in her voice that stopped them dead.

Larry exchanged a glance with Don, who shrugged expressively. Without another word they came over to her table, Don drawing two glasses of beer along the way.

“You want another drink?” Don said, pointing at the finger of coke left in her glass.

“I still have some,” Tricia said.

“You know what they say, Don,” Larry said, “some people look at a glass as ninety percent empty, while others prefer to see it as ten percent full.”

“How did you know you’d find us here?” Don said.

“I didn’t,” Tricia said, “but I figured it was worth a try. This is the time we always used to meet when we were working on the book. Remember? Ten past noon.”

Larry took a long swallow of his beer. “Some people see it as ten past noon,” he said, “while others prefer to see it as fifty to one.”

She gave him a funny look.

“What?” he said.

“Nothing,” Tricia said. She turned back to Don. “You seem very much at home there behind the bar. You get a job here?”

“Not exactly a
job,”
Don said.

“What my friend is too modest to say,” Larry said, “is that he owns this place now. Bought it fair and square from the previous owner. Tore down that wretched bric-a-brac from the walls, turned it into a proper establishment one isn’t embarrassed to be seen in.”

“Really,” Tricia said. “And where, might I ask, did you get the money to buy a bar? You’d have to write a lot of travel guides to make that kind of dough.”

“My beloved aunt,” Don said, “passed away.”

“Ah,” Tricia said. “I’m sorry to hear it. And you, Larry? What are you doing these days? Still writing?”

“Of course—we both are,” Larry said. “We’re writers through and through. We will never stop.”

“That’s so,” Don said. “But what
he’s
too modest to tell you is that he has also opened a bookstore. Down in the Village. Sells used books. Some rare, some not so rare. A real addition to the neighborhood.”

“And where’d you get the money to do that?” Tricia asked.

“My beloved uncle,” Larry said.

“Dead?”

“The poor man.”

They all took a drink in silence.

“One of you want to tell me about it?” Tricia said.

“Not particularly,” Larry said.

“You know,” Tricia said, “all along we kept asking ourselves, who could possibly have read the book before it was published? It never occurred to me to ask, what about the guys who helped come up with the plot in the first place.”

“What finally made you think of it?” Larry said.

“You were overheard,” Tricia said. “Making your plans. This woman said she’d seen two men, one with a beard, one without, both New Yorkers by their voices, around noon in a back booth in one of her father’s bars. At first I thought she was just making it up to save her skin. But then it dawned on me about the names of the bars.”

“The names?” Don said.

“Her father’s name is Royal Barrone, and he’s in the habit of naming all his bars after himself: Royal’s Brew, the Rusty Bucket. The same initials. And then I thought about where we’d met to do all our plotting. The Red Baron.”

“I see,” Larry said.

“Why did you do it?” Tricia said, and she couldn’t keep her voice from quavering as she did. “Do you have any idea what sort of trouble you caused me? I almost got killed. My sister, too. Quite a few people did get killed. And for what? So you could run a bar?”

“And a bookstore,” Larry said.

“You risked your own lives, too,” Tricia said, “and on the basis of what, a crazy plot cooked up for a crime novel?”

“Not a crazy plot,” Larry said. “A brilliant plot. You remember I asked you at the time, why should we come up with a perfectly good plot and hand it over to you, when we could use it ourselves?”

“For a book! Not in real life!”

“And why not? After you left that day, when we finally put the last pieces in place, Don and I sat here a while longer, talking, and it dawned on us that this was much too good a premise to waste on mere fiction.”

“But the combination to the safe—that was just a guess on my part! Didn’t you realize that? It could’ve been completely wrong!”

Larry shrugged. “But it wasn’t. And I had a feeling it wasn’t going to be. It just made too much sense.”

“You climbed up the side of a building, broke in through a window, sawed and chiseled through a door, and braved angry mobsters on the way out, all on the basis of a
guess,
just because you thought it made sense?”

“Well, when you put it that way, it sounds foolish,” Larry admitted. “But here we are, owners of a bar.”

“And a bookstore,” Don said.

“Aren’t you afraid the man you robbed will figure it out?”

“Why? He hasn’t yet.”

“Well, for one thing, directly or indirectly, he’s the man you bought the bar from. Royal Barrone works for Salvatore Nicolazzo. He used to until today, anyway.”

“You’re kidding,” Don said.

Tricia shook her head.

“You mean I used the man’s own money to buy his bar from him?”

“That’s what it looks like.”

The smile that broke out on Don’s face was a thing of beauty. “That’s just perfect. You couldn’t make something like that up. You put that in a book, no one would believe it.”

“Not in a million years,” Larry agreed.

“Just be glad that Nicolazzo got arrested today,” Tricia said, “and that the people under him are going to be too busy fighting for control of his empire to bother paying attention to the two of you.”

“That does sound good,” Larry said.

“I’m sure it does,” Tricia said. “But remember, there’s one person who does know what you did.”

“Oh?” Don said. “Who’s that?”

“Me.”

They all took another swallow. It was the last one for Tricia. She pushed her empty glass aside.

The two men eyed her balefully.

“You wouldn’t turn us in, would you?” Larry said.

“You mean to the cops? Or to the gangsters?”

“Either.”

“Of course I wouldn’t,” Tricia said, and instantly the atmosphere around the table lightened noticeably. “But,” she continued, “there’s something I want in return.”

“What’s that?” Don said.

“I’m going to be working for Charley now,” she said. “I’ll be working with him on his books.”

“Presumably not the pornography,” Larry said.

“No, Hard Case Crime,” Tricia said. “And it occurs to me that the day may come when Hard Case Crime might need to ask one of you for a favor. Maybe it’ll happen tomorrow, maybe it won’t be for a year. Maybe ten years. Maybe
fifty
years. But when that time comes, and we ask for your help in some way—maybe we’ll want to publish one of your books, or maybe we’ll ask you to make a personal appearance somewhere to help us out—I want you to do it, no questions asked.”

“No questions?” Larry said.

“No questions.”

“And if we agree to this, you won’t tell anyone about...?”

“About anything. Hell,” Tricia said, “I’d rather see the money in your hands than the bad guys’.”

“I’ll drink to that,” Larry said.

“So,” Tricia said, “do we have a deal?”

The two men nodded and they shook hands three ways.

With that behind them, Don said, “But Trixie, tell me honestly—it’s great that you’re going to be working there, but what do you think the odds are that Hard Case Crime will be around in fifty years? Seriously. A hundred to one?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Tricia said, and she reached over, picked up Don’s glass and downed the rest of his beer. Then she did the same with Larry’s, wiped her mouth on the back of her hand and spread a companionable arm over each man’s shoulders. “I bet it’s no worse than half that.”