Hard Case Crime: Fifty to One (25 page)

It wasn’t prostitution, though of course you heard stories; and many a feel was copped in the name of close dancing. That Coral had passed her first years in New York working here saddened Tricia. She’d pictured her sister headlining in a rooftop revue, or at least enlivening the chorus, not letting herself be tooled around a dance floor by a succession of sweaty-handed romeos with a buck to spare.

But better that than where she was now. Better a lifetime of sweaty embraces under dim lights than the deadly attentions of a man like Nicolazzo.

Tricia climbed to the second floor, where she found the club’s door wedged open with a doorstop. The music playing sounded languorous and soporific, almost as if the record player were set at too slow a speed. Connie Francis’ voice came on, asking who’s sorry now, and the two women working at the moment went round and round with their charges in time to her plaintive query. Two other women seated on chairs against the wall looked up when Tricia walked in, then looked down again when they saw her. No trade here, just competition.

A man in dungarees and a button-down shirt came over, quickly taking Tricia’s measure as he approached. She recognized him from one of Nicolazzo’s photos—this was Paulie Lips, recognizable at a glance from the prominence not just of his lips but the entire lower portion of his face, which culminated in a shovel-shaped jaw with a darkening shadow of stubble just below the skin.

He had the self-confident walk and attitude of a man in charge and gave the impression of being the manager here. Tricia could see his eyes darting about her person, noting her wrinkled dress, the missing buttons, the perspiration on her forehead and under her arms, the circles under her eyes. A job seeker, he must’ve been thinking; and perhaps if there’d been more business to go around he’d have entertained the notion or at least strung her along, but Tricia could see he was getting ready to send her on her way.

She didn’t give him the chance. “Hey, are you Paulie?” she said. He stopped, looked at her more closely. “My sister used to work here, and she left something she asked me to pick up. In her locker.”

“Oh?” he said, taken aback. “Who’s your sister?”

“Colleen King.”

A smile unfolded on his face but it had all the sincerity of a Halloween mask. “Colleen,” he said. “That would make you Patty, right?” He took her hand and squeezed it. “I guess she mentioned me?” He didn’t wait for her to answer. “So, what, you just get into town?” His voice dropped and he edged closer. “Do you need anything? Some money? You look a little...”

“I’m fine,” Tricia said. “I just need to get into my sister’s locker.”

“Actually,” Paulie said, “she doesn’t have a locker here anymore. You have to work here to have a locker, and she doesn’t. Hasn’t for a good long time. Think she’s, ah, boxing now. You know.” He playfully threw a few punches in the air. “Though she still comes by now and again to chew the fat with her old friends. Isn’t that right girls?” The two seated women nodded when he directed the question at them, though it wasn’t clear they knew just what they were agreeing with, or much cared.

“Maybe it’s not her locker, then,” Tricia said, “but it’s
a
locker, and she told me to come here and empty it out for her. Locker 22?”

Paulie’s smile grew more strained. “She told you that?” he said. “Locker 22?”

“She left me a note,” Tricia said.

“Can I see it?”

“I’m afraid not,” Tricia said. “I don’t have it with me.”

Paulie shook his head in an unconvincing pantomime of helplessness. His palms turned up and his eyebrows rose along with them. “Sorry to say, you got some wires crossed somewhere. The lockers here only go up to 20. Maybe ask your sister to come by, she and I can figure it out—”

“I can’t,” Tricia said. “She’s...not available.”

“Well, when she’s available again, have her call me. We’ll work it out. Maybe the three of us can get together for a drink sometime—”

He must’ve felt the barrel of the gun poking into his gut then, through the fabric of her dress pocket, because his face fell. He looked confused first and then fear crept into his expression. “Are you serious?” he said, his voice low. “You think you can pull a gun on me in my own place?”

“I don’t think anything,” Tricia said. “I’ve done it. Now take me to locker 22, Paulie, or I swear to god you won’t live to hear the end of this song.”

Connie Francis’ voice drawled on in the sudden silence between them.

Could she really do it? Could she pull the trigger in cold blood, leave this man sprawled and dying on his well-worn parquet? She doubted it—not least of all because it would mean using up her only bullet. But she made an effort to keep this from showing on her face. To look at her, you’d have thought her a hardened jailbird.

Paulie bristled with hostility. He was bigger than she was—but the gun more than evened up the sides. “Follow me,” he said and led her through the long, narrow room to a curtained-off section in the back. The walls were lined with lockers and the numbers on them, Tricia saw, went up to 28.

“Are you even her sister?” Paulie asked.

“I don’t see why you’d believe me,” Tricia said, “but I am.”

“And she really told you to come here.”

“She left word I could find something in locker 22.”

“She didn’t tell you what?”

“She didn’t have the time to go into much detail,” Tricia said.

He stopped in front of 22 with one hand on the lock. “Why didn’t she have the time?”

“Just open the locker.”

“What if I told you I don’t have the key?”

“I’d shoot you,” Tricia said, “and take the key out of your pocket.”

“Just asking,” Paulie said. He pulled out a ring of keys, opened the padlock, and stepped aside.

Tricia drew the gun out of her pocket, leveled it at him, used it to shoo him back a few more steps. She opened the locker door without taking her eyes off him, then swiftly shot a glance inside. There were several stacks of papers—mainly letters, it looked like, along with a pile of photographs and a telegram or two.

“What is all this stuff?” Tricia said. “And don’t say you don’t know.”

“Colleen called it her nest egg,” Paulie said.

Tricia reached in, grabbed the first batch of photos off the top, thumbed through them one by one. A couple slipped onto the floor. She didn’t pick them up.

Coral was in most of the pictures, though not all. She was younger in them—these dated back a few years, clearly, maybe to when she’d first come to New York or a little after. She’d been even prettier then and her figure had looked terrific, even in candid shots like these with their bad lighting and blurred portions where one of the subjects had moved as the shutter closed. There was a man in each of the photos, not the same one every time. By and large their figures didn’t look as fine as Coral’s, but like her they seemed not at all bashful about showing them off, at least in what they’d clearly thought was the privacy of a bedroom. They were the sort of photos you could be arrested for taking, or selling, or sending through the mails, and she felt her cheeks reddening as she looked at them. She stuffed them in her pocket, waved the gun at Paulie. “What are you looking at?” she snarled. “You just stay there and don’t move.”

“Calm down, lady,” he said. “I’m not doing anything.”

She reached into the locker again, grabbed a handful of the letters. They were on onionskin, carbon copies of letters whose originals had been written in ballpoint pen.

The handwriting was Coral’s.

She glanced down at the first letter and up again at Paulie, reading it in snatches so she could keep an eye on him.

Dearest Royal—Artie is growing up so quickly! You’d be proud of him. He’ll be a real Barrone man someday—commanding and virile, like his father. But Royal, he needs so much, and money’s so very tight. Even a small amount would help...

She peeled back the top sheet with her thumb, crumpling it slightly.

Robbie,
the next one down began.
Artie’s growing up so quickly! You’d be proud of him. He’s going to be a real Monge man someday—strong and talented, like his father. He’s a growing boy, though, and needs so much. I hate to ask you to help, but money’s tight...

She waved the letters at Paulie, who looked more miserable than terrified now, like a magician caught with his hand up his sleeve.

“Just how many fathers did this kid have?” Tricia said.

“One,” Paulie said, with a measure of defensiveness in his voice. “And you’re looking at him.”

“You...?”

“Me,” Paulie Lips said. “He’s my kid.” He patted himself on the side of the face and this time the smile that emerged seemed genuine. “If you’d ever seen him, you’d know. He’s got his poppa’s chin. The poor boy.”

“And what was your part in all...this?”

“Someone had to take the pictures,” Paulie said.

“You watched her go to bed with all these other men? With Monge and Barrone?” Tricia said. “The mother of your child?”

“She wasn’t the mother of my child yet. Not in most of them, anyway.”

“How can you live with yourself?” Tricia said. “That’s disgusting.”

His face darkened into a scowl. “Put down the gun and say that.”

“So you’re bigger than me, so what. Doesn’t make it less disgusting.”

“What do you want?” Paulie said. “To stand there and insult me? Well, the gun gives you that privilege. But don’t push me too far. I could take it away from you, you know.”

“You could try,” Tricia said.

They faced each other down. It felt to Tricia like a scene from the circus, the lion tamer in the cage with a tiger on one barrel and a lion on the next and nothing in his hand but a little wooden chair and a whip.

“I’m taking all this stuff with me,” Tricia said. “Colleen wanted me to have it. She’s in bad trouble and must’ve figured it could help. If you care about her at all, you won’t try to stop me.”

“What sort of trouble?”

“Your boss, Nicolazzo,” she said. “You probably heard he was robbed. Hell, maybe you were in on the robbery. Maybe you both were.”

“Uh-uh,” he said. “No way. We’re not thieves.”

“Just blackmailers.”

“That’s right,” Paulie said. “There’s a difference. Being guilty of the one doesn’t mean you’re guilty of the other.”

“Sure,” Tricia said. “You’re the picture of innocence.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Well, someone took three million dollars from Nicolazzo’s safe and he’s decided Colleen knows something about it. Maybe he doesn’t think the distinction between blackmailer and thief is so crystal clear.”

“He wouldn’t know about the blackmail,” Paulie said. “We never tried tapping him.”

“Well, that’s something, anyway. But he’s still holding Colleen.”

“And how will having this stuff help get her out?”

“I don’t know,” Tricia admitted. “But if Colleen thought it would, there must be a reason. Maybe there’s something in here that could be used against Nicolazzo, or something she thinks might point to the real thief. Or at least something that points to where Nicolazzo might have taken her.”

“You don’t even know where she is?”

“Not right this moment, no,” Tricia said. “But I’ll find her.”

Paulie’s stare could’ve cut glass. “You’d better,” he said.

“Does that mean you’re going to help me?”

“It means I’m going to forget you pulled a gun on me,” Paulie said.

“You’ll do more than that,” Tricia said. “Get a bag.”

She left with an old Gladstone bag in one hand, packed with the contents of the locker. The bag shielded the gun in her other hand from view as she walked out, Paulie walking before her. She wasn’t taking any chances.

As soon as she’d reached the sidewalk and sent Paulie back up, she flagged down a cab. Paulie might let her go, as he’d promised—but he might also sneak back down and try to follow her, or think he was being cute by staying put himself but sending someone else after her, maybe one of his dancers; they certainly had time on their hands. Or he might telephone any of a number of people to tell them where she was. There were too many bad possibilities and she was determined to be far away before any of them materialized.

The press of people running back and forth in the street made progress slow for a few blocks, but before long things cleared up and they had a clear run up Sixth Avenue to 44th Street.

She paid the cabbie at the corner, walked the rest of the way only after he’d driven off. She climbed the stairs and knocked on the door and didn’t wait for the panel to slide open before saying, “It’s Trixie, Mike. Are you in there?”

The door opened. Mike stood behind it, apron smeared and stained, looking much as he had the night before. The bar behind him looked much the same as well, except that instead of several solitary drinkers with their backs to her, hunched over their glasses, Tricia only saw one. She wondered if he was a holdover from last night or the sort that liked to get an early start on his drinking Sunday mornings.

“I’m sorry to bother you, Mike, but I need a place to go through some things in private.” She dropped the Gladstone and it landed heavily on the floor, raising a puff of dust. “Any chance I could use the back room? Twenty, thirty minutes should be plenty.”

“In private?” said a familiar voice. “I wouldn’t think you knew the meaning.”

And turning on his barstool, Charley favored her with a baleful stare out of the one of his eyes that wasn’t swollen shut.

“My god, Charley,” Tricia said, her hand leaping to her mouth.

He took a swallow from the tumbler of whiskey in his hand. “You should see the other guy,” he said.

“I think I did,” she said, “if you mean Eddie. But you look a lot worse.”

“Thanks,” Charley said, getting down off his stool and limping toward her. His voice was thick with drink. “That’s what I needed to hear.”

“I didn’t mean for them to—”

“What did you think was going to happen? Eddie’d barge in and we’d have ourselves a merry little
ménage a trois?”

“Charley!”

“If that’s what gets your motor turning, honey, you could’ve just walked in and joined us yourself. Ah, but I forget, you’re a sweet young thing and cannot leave your mother.”