Hard Case Crime: Fifty to One (10 page)

“Do we look unaccompanied?” Erin said. “I’m with her. And she’s with me.”

“But—”

Erin stepped forward, walked her index and middle fingers gently up the front of his too-tight jacket. “Or you could say we’re both with you. If anyone asks. And no one’s going to ask, will they?”

“I don’t know—”

“Mister,” Tricia said, “we’re old friends of one of the fighters.”

“Oh, yeah? Which one?”

“Stella Dane,” Tricia said. “She and I used to live together. We...shared a room.” It was true, Tricia told herself, only slightly ashamed of the deception. It wasn’t her fault if the man leapt to conclusions.

Which he seemed to be doing, judging by the blush that reddened his ravaged cheeks. “You and she...”

“They were very close,” Erin said. “Like family. You’d let a fighter’s wife in, wouldn’t you?”

“Sure,” the boxer said. “But...”

“Well,” Erin said, pulling the door beside him open, “then you should let my friend in.”

The man shoved the door shut again, firmly, wagged an index finger at the two of them. “If anybody asks, I’m gonna say I didn’t see you. You snuck by me. If there’s any trouble, I’m not taking the fall for, for, for a coupla...”

“A couple of what?” Erin said, hands on hips.

“You know what,” the boxer grumbled. “I don’t need to say it.”

“All right, then,” Erin said.

Inside, a narrow staircase led down and a wide one led up. The wide one was better lit. From upstairs came the sound of feet slapping canvas, of wooden chairs sliding against a concrete floor, of men and women hooting and gasping. And of punches landing. Then a bell rang and you could hear a collective sigh—of relief, of despair, Tricia couldn’t tell.

“Ladies and gentlemen...”
came the amplified voice of a ring announcer.
“The winnah and still champeen...Jerry, the Jackhammer...”

The voice faded as they began picking their way downstairs. Tricia held onto the railing and took care not to trip. She heard Erin’s steps behind her. The basement ceiling was low and the lights hanging from it were all trained on the ring in the center of the room. There was an announcer here, too, and a microphone dangling at the level of his mouth, but the ring was empty otherwise, except for a stool in each corner and a metal pail beside it.

They made their way around the room, hugging the wall, murmuring apologies to the people they had to step past. The place was packed, all the rows of folding chairs filled and much of the standing room besides.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” the announcer said, and the crowd hushed.

“You’re about to witness something few have seen.” His words echoed before fading out and he allowed them time to do so. “A battle in the squared circle unlike any you’ll find anywhere else in this fair city. Now, some of you may have heard of fights down Texas way where ladies box like men—Buttrick and Kugler and all that jazz. And you’ve dismissed it as a passing fad. A bit of gulf madness. Like cockroach races, or those wrestling matches where a man goes up against a bear. But anyone who thinks that is mistaken. I’m here to tell you, it’s nothing less than the future of this sweet science of ours.

“And we have here for you this afternoon two of the finest figures in the field...two fierce young fighters of the feminine fashion...in short, two women who will wow you with a demonstration of the distaff brand of brutal battery! Are you ready, I say are you ready, to meet the contenders?”

The crowd roared back in the affirmative, and a door opened just a few feet to Tricia’s left. Three figures came out, a woman in a hooded satin robe followed close behind by two stocky cornermen. Stitched on the back of the robe in sequined letters half a foot high were the words
HOUSTON HURRICANE
. The woman held up her gloved fists as she passed and pushed the hood back. Her shoulder-length black hair was coiled up and pinned to the top of her head and there were some sort of marks on the side of her face—in the second before the three of them moved past, Tricia couldn’t make out what they were. But it was Stella, all right. No question.

Stella made her way down a cleared path between the rows of chairs and then pulled herself up to the apron and climbed between the ropes. She shrugged the robe off her shoulders and took a few casual practice punches at an invisible opponent. Somewhere in the crowd someone whistled loudly. Stella had on gray trunks and black canvas shoes with white laces up the front and white athletic socks; on top she was wearing a tight sleeveless jersey with her substantial bosom strapped down beneath it. In place of the placid expression Tricia was used to seeing from her when she was lounging around in her pajamas, Stella wore a steely, determined stare, and the narrow muscles of her arms stood out as she flexed them.

“Can you believe it,” Tricia whispered to Erin, but turning, she saw that Erin was no longer standing beside her. She felt a tug on her shirt from behind her.

“Come on,” Erin said, pulling her out into the aisle toward the still-open door.

“We can’t go in there,” Tricia whispered.

“Sure we can. We’re like family.” They ducked inside and took a hard right just as another robed and hooded fighter marched by, a trainer and a cutman trailing in her wake. The back of her robe said
THE COLORADO KID.
She was past before they could get a look at her face.

“What are we doing?” Tricia said.

“You’re following me.” Erin led her down the backstage corridor, peeking in open doorways as they went, hurrying past one small office in which a radio was broadcasting the sixth inning of a ballgame out at Yankee Stadium.

At the end of the hall was a door labeled
FIGHTERS ONLY.
Erin turned the knob and went in.

There were two tables, one on either side of the room, each with a wide mirror against the wall surrounded by a border of bare light bulbs. A bank of lockers—four up, four down—stood on the far wall between the tables and a small older man with a tattoo of an anchor on his forearm stood before the lockers, a push-broom in one hand and a dustpan in the other. He’d swept together a small pile of cigarette butts on the floor and had a new one in the making between his lips.

“Hey,” he said, looking up with the myopic stare of a man who needed glasses but was too embarrassed or stubborn to get them. “Who let you back here? This ain’t Grand Central Station.”

“Damn,” Erin said, “and here’s us looking for the train to Poughkeepsie. What’s the matter, squinty? You don’t recognize one of the greatest female fighters of our time?”

“Who? Her?”

“Yeah, her,” Erin said. “This is Barbara Buttrick, the Mighty Atom of the Ring. Just flew in from Texas.”

The guy walked up to them, gave Tricia a quick up-and-down glance. “Her?” he said again.

“She could punch you into next Tuesday,” Erin said. “Want to show him, honey?”

“That’s all right,” Tricia mumbled. “Wouldn’t want any sort of trouble.”

“I thought Buttrick was a Brit. You don’t sound like a Brit.”

“She’s tired,” Erin said. “It was a long trip.”

He narrowed his eyes, peered closely at Tricia. “She looks awful young.”

“They all do in her family,” Erin said. “Now, you want to leave us alone so she can change? Or were you hoping for a free peep show?”

He headed for the door, leaving his sweepings where they lay. As he went, he pitched his new butt onto the pile. “Ain’t got much to show, has she?”

“Never mind him, honey,” Erin said. “Probably prefers watching the men anyway.”

“Some of ’em got bigger tits than her,” the guy called over his shoulder.

“And bigger pricks than you,” Erin said, but he’d swung the door shut, muttering.

“Do you think he believed you?” Tricia said, after a second.

“Sure,” Erin said. “Why not? What else would we be doing here?”

“What
are
we doing here? Why not wait for her outside?”

“Where outside? There have got to be at least three exits from this building, maybe more. Besides, how long do you think we could stand on the sidewalk before somebody noticed?”

“So we’re just going to wait here,” Tricia said.

“No,” Erin said, “we’re not just going to wait. We’re going to look through her things, see if we can find anything that—” Erin had been sifting through the various cans and jars on the nearer tabletop as she spoke, moving rolls of gauze and tape out of the way. She grabbed something from under one pile, held it up triumphantly. It was a copy of
I Robbed the Mob!,
the tassel of a bookmark lodged about three-quarters of the way in. Erin tossed it to Tricia. “How about that? She bought her own copy.”

Tricia opened the book to the marked page. It was the start of Chapter 10. Her heart began to race. With a mixture of pride and dismay she read her own words on the page:
The afternoon of the heist was hot, as hot as hell, but I was wearing gloves and had my collar up...

The afternoon of the heist was hot, as hot as hell, but I was wearing gloves and had my collar up.

It was easier to keep my collar up than my spirits.

I’d done many bad things in my career, to many people, but never anything like this. Today I’d be a rich man or a dead man—there was no in-between.

Mr. N kept his hands clean when it came to goings on at the Sun. You could walk around the place all day and if you didn’t know where the secret rooms were you’d never find them. Entrance to his private suite was by invitation only. Money did change hands on the premises, but only between trusted old friends. If you were a member of the general public and wanted to play a hand of poker or put your paycheck down on a roll of the dice, or put a little something in your nose that didn’t belong there, you had to go to one of Mr. N’s other clubs. The Moon. The Stars. There were others. I don’t think any of us knew what all of them were. Except maybe his accountants. Maybe.

Anyway, those other clubs were where the big bucks were made and lost. Made by Mr. N—lost by everybody else. That’s where the cash flowed like water, and all in one direction. And once each day, after everyone closed up, each of those little streams flowed back to the main river. One by one, each of the clubs made a delivery to the Sun, handing over the lion’s share of any ill-gotten gains they’d collected, minus only the thin sliver they were permitted to keep for themselves. Then, once each month, on the last Thursday of the month, the contents of the big safe at the Sun were trucked out to a secret spot where Mr. N kept his private stash. Except this month that wouldn’t happen because when the truck showed up, the big safe would already have been emptied.

By me.

I pulled my coat tighter around myself, tugged my hat down lower on my brow.

All I had to do was get in, get out, and live to tell about it.

Which was like saying all I had to do was fly to the moon, drink the ocean and catch a bullet in my teeth.

But, hell. I had to try. After what he’d done to me, I owed him. I owed him big. He deserved to have this happen to him—and damn it, I deserved it, too.

I went over the plan in my mind as I turned onto 49th Street.

The first delivery of money each night took place at
2AM,
and they kept coming until 9 or 10. The men on duty stayed in the counting room till noon, sometimes 1
PM
. By then they were tired and eager to call it a day, so they shut the safe, spun the big dial on the front to lock it, shut off the lights, locked the door of the counting room, and left the Sun in the care of the afternoon cleaning crew. Around 4
PM
the rest of the staff would start filtering in and at 6 the place would open for business and the whole cycle would start over again. But between 1 and 4, the only protection the place had was the cleaning crew. That and a pair of security guards sitting outside the locked front door, and one more in a little wooden booth on the street downstairs.

Three men. Mr. N figured he didn’t need more security than that, and for all these years he’d been right. Because who in his right mind would try to rob Salvatore Nicolazzo?

Who.

Me.

I saw the security booth from half a block away, saw Roy Tucci sitting inside it, trying to look vigilant when, in fact, he was always on the point of nodding off. It wasn’t an exciting job and the man was in his sixties. Besides which, the booth had no ventilation and the heat was brutal. Even with the door propped open, you’d cook in there.

But for once I didn’t walk over and commiserate, the way I had so often before. Instead, I walked past on the far sidewalk, my pulled-up collar and pulled-down hat leaving little of my face for him to see or recognize. At the corner I crossed the street. The Sun occupied the top two floors of a twelve-story gray stone building and there was another building just like it next door—but not right next door. Wedged in between them was a narrow one-story building occupying the ground floor space of what was, above it, the airshaft that provided ventilation to the buildings on either side. All over town they rented out these little ground-floor spaces to one-man operations catering to the drop-in trade: shoe repair shops, locksmiths, places like that. This one was the shop of a glorified news peddler, offering candy out of a wooden tray and papers and magazines from a rack on the wall. There was a tiny counter inside with three wooden stools crammed in front of it, where you could get a soda on a hot day or a coffee on a cold one. For a nickel extra Jerry’d put a slug of something he called bourbon in the coffee, but it wasn’t bourbon really and you were better off blowing the nickel on one of the dirty books he kept behind the counter.

When the coffee ran its course you could hold it till you got back to your office, wherever that was, or you could use the little toilet in a closet at the back. Jerry could be counted on to have his hands full opening coke bottles, breaking dollar bills for parking meters, and—this time of day—watching all the cute secretaries going by on their way back from lunch. So he didn’t pay much attention when you went to use the can. Or when you came back.