Parker16 Butcher's Moon (31 page)

Out
at Best's Jewelry, the Vigilant guards touched their
visors in
salute to the customer, got back into the Polara, and
headed
home. The driver took it slow and easy now, with the
blue
light turned off, and chose to head down London Avenue
even
though it was a block of so out of the way.

It was a quiet night, moonless and dark. London Avenue
Was
deserted except for two guys drooling over the pictures outside one of the dirty-movie houses. "They're on line kind of
early,
ain't they?" one of the guards said, and they all laughed.

"Twelve o'clock," Elkins said. "But wait for that car to go

by."

At Vigilant headquarters, Philly Webb and Handy McKay , were playing draw poker with a pinochle deck. "Royal flush," Handy said.

Webb, with a little smirk, spread out his hand. "Five aces."

"Damn it." Handy tossed his hand in with true annoyance. "The cards are dead," he said.

From upstairs came a buzzing sound. Looking up, Webb
said,
"There goes the movie house."

Upstairs, Ducasse stood frowning at the wall display with
its
flashing light and droning buzzer. He called to one of the guards in the corner, "How do I turn that off?"

"Fuck you," said the guard. They were both upset at learning that Ducasse and Handy weren't crazy men, after all.

Ducasse went over and kicked the guard on the shin. "Don't talk dirty," he said. "How do I turn that thing off?"

The guard, wincing with pain, tried to outstare a man with a hood over his face, but when Ducasse drew his foot back again he said, "There's a switch on that desk. Turn it off and then back on again."

"Good," said Ducasse.

Downstairs, Webb and Handy played cards until they heard the garage door lifting. Then they pulled their hoods down over their faces and stood to either side of the dayroom door, their pistols held down at their sides.

The guards came in talking together, taking it easy, and all four were in the room before they saw the strangers. It suddenly got very quiet, and Handy, doing it his way, said, "Okay, gents, just take it easy. We don't want any guns going off."

There were no slot machines. The image they tried for at Tony Florio's Riviera was discreet class, hut not so discreet that the mugs wouldn't recognize it. James Bond elegance, that was the approach. The mugs, seeing maroon-velvet draperies, assumed it Was elegant. The mugs, seeing slot machines and equating slot machines with pinball machines in truck-stop diners, assumed it was cheap. So there were no slot machines.

But there was a lot of maroon velvet. Dalesia and Hurley and Mackey followed the waiter upstairs and through maroon- velvet drapes into the main gaming room, a long low-ceilinged room lined with heavy draperies. All that cloth, plus the thick green carpeting, muffled noises in the room until the place sounded like a stereo system with the bass control up full.

"The cashier to your right, gentlemen," the waiter said, bowing slightly, smiling and gesturing. "And good luck to you."

"Good luck to you, too," Hurley said.

The waiter went away, and the three men took a minute to look over the room. There were six crap tables, only three of them in action. Two roulette wheels, both operating. On the far side of the room, card games at several green-baize tables. The players "were about two-thirds men, and most of the women seemed to be married to the men they were with. It looked to be a professional-class crowd, lawyers, doctors, businessmen, managers, with most of the men in jacket and tie. Very few of the customers appeared to be under thirty-five, and those few mostly emulated their elders in dress, deportment, and hair length. The room wasn't crowded, but it wasn't empty either; it was probably operating at half capacity.

Dalesia said, "Good mob for a Monday night."

"Maybe we ought to invest," Mackey said.

Dalesia grinned. "No, I don't think so. I think they're a bad risk."

The three of them walked over to the cashier's window. It was an oval hole in the wall, flanked by the ever-present maroon drapes. In the center of the grayish bullet-proof glass, at mouth level, was a microphone, and just above the window a speaker brought out the cashier's voice. It was like a drive-in window at a bank; they put money in a metal drawer, which the cashier drew back to her side, then pushed out again with the chips in it.

They each took a hundred dollars in five-dollar blues, and the cashier's metallic voice said over their heads, "Good luck to you."

"And good luck to you, too," Hurley said.

They wandered the room for a few minutes, looking at the action. The crap tables and roulette wheels were run by men, but all the card games were operated by women, showing a lot of breast and a lot of plastic smile. "That's what I call poker tits," Dalesia said. "Harder to read than a poker face."

Mackey said, "Well, if I'm going to throw it away fast, I can't do better than roulette. See you."

Mackey wandered off, and Hurley and Dalesia kibitzed a blackjack game for a few hands. The girl dealing flashed them a couple of smiles while waiting for players to decide whether to hit or stay, and after a minute or two Hurley said, "Think I'll settle in here till spring," and took one of the empty chairs at the table.

Dalesia roamed some more, considered the lone chemin de fer table with its slender black-haired girl dealer, and went on to one of the crap tables. They used the full Las Vegas layout, and most of the female customers were here, betting the field and the hard way. Dalesia, whose one superstition was that he had a mystical relationship with the number nine, made a sensible bet on the Don't Pass Line and a dumb bet on the nine to come. He glanced at his watch while the shooter breathed on the red transparent dice, and saw he had twenty minutes in which to lose the hundred dollars.

Over at one of the roulette wheels, Mackey was frowning like a steam engine and writing numbers in a notebook. He was betting on every other spin, and these were alternating between a square bet somewhere in the second twelve and the line bet at ^ the top, the 1, 2, 3, 0 and 00. He was losing practically every time, but his frown of concentration never changed. He looked exactly like yet another chump with a system, and all the employees in the area became aware of him within five minutes. So did several customers, a couple of whom began to follow his betting even though he was losing.

At the blackjack table, while the other players looked at their cards or the dealer's breasts, Hurley watched her hands.

She was good and smooth, but she didn't seem to be doing anything mechanical. Not that she had to; most of the players here didn't know how to stand on anything less than a twenty. Hurley hung back with his low teens whenever the dealer's up card was low, never hit on sixteen or higher no matter what she had showing, and slowly inched ahead of the odds. But it was a slow way to make money.

Mackey went through his hundred dollars in eight minutes. Still frowning, still checking things off in his notebook, he went back to the cashier's window, absent-mindedly fumbled his wallet out of his pocket, and said, "Better let me have—" He paused, fingered the bills in the wallet, and regretfully drew five twenties. "Just a hundred," he said.

"Thank you, sir."

He seemed to come slowly back to a full awareness of his surroundings. As the girl was sending the drawer back out to him with his twenty chips inside, he said, "Uh, miss."

"Yes, sir?"

"Is there a manager around?"

"Is something wrong, sir?"

"I want to establish a line of credit." He seemed on the verge of dropping his wallet into the drawer, and hadn't yet taken his chips out. "I have identification, I'm fully, uh—" He hesitated, then scooped the chips out and stuffed them distractedly into his jacket pocket.

"Yes, sir," the girl said. "You'll want to talk to Mr. Flynn."

"Thank you," Mackey said, and a second later did a double-take, when he remembered that Flynn was the name
he
was using. Thomas Flynn; he and Parker and a couple of other people all had ID in that name. "Flynn, you said?"

"Yes, sir." Leaning forward so her hair was touching the glass, she looked and pointed down to Mackey's left, saying, "You'll find his door along this wall, sir."

"My name's Flynn," Mackey said.

The girl gave him a blank smile. "Well, isn't that a coincidence," she said.

"It's an omen," Mackey told her. "I have a feeling I'm going to make some money tonight."

"Well, I hope you do, sir. Should I tell Mr. Flynn you're coming to see him?"

He seemed to think about it, then to make a solid decision. "Yes," he said. "I might as well be prepared."

"Thank you, sir." She reached for a phone beside her, and Mackey moved away from her window.

Dalesia, winning most of the time on Don't Pass and losing all of the time on nine, was slowly turning his hundred dollars over to the house. When the dice came around to him, he elected not to shoot but to pass them on to the next player, and while doing so, noticed Mackey walking along the wall toward a brown wooden door.

There was a man in a black suit, black tie, and white shirt standing near the door, watching the action the way a cop on a beat watches cars go by. When Mackey approached he turned and gave him a flat look and said, "Can I help you, sir?"

"I'm supposed to see Mr. Flynn," Mackey said.

"Yes, sir. And your name was?"

Mackey gave a half-apologetic smile. "Flynn," he said.

The man's face wasn't meant for smiling, but he tried. "Well, that's a coincidence," he said.

"I guess it is."

The man reached for a black wall phone next to the door. "Related, by any chance?"

"You never know, do you? I'll have to ask."

"Yes, sir." Into the phone, he said, "There's a Mr. Flynn out here to see you. Fine." Hanging up, he said, "Go right on in."

"Thanks," Mackey said as the door began to buzz. He pushed it open, the buzzing stopped, and he entered an ordinary receptionist's office, ordinary in every way except that it was windowless. Several framed photographs of Tony Florio in his boxing days were on the walls. At a green-metal desk sat an ordinary receptionist, who smiled brightly and said, "Mr. Flynn?"

"That's right. I guess it's some coincidence, huh?"

"I guess so," she said. "Mr. Flynn's on the phone long distance just now, but he'll be with you in a very few minutes."

"Thank you."

She extended a large document toward him. "While you're waiting, would you mind terribly filling this out? It could save you some time."

The document was a four-page credit questionnaire. "Of course," he said. "Of course."

She pointed to a library table on the side wall. "I think you'd be comfortable there, Mr. Flynn."

"I'm sure I would."

The questionnaire wanted to know everything but his attitude about fucking sheep. He filled it out in a tiny crabbed hand, keeping the lies generally realistic, avoiding old gags like having a checking account in the Left Bank of the Mississippi, and when he was finished he gave the questionnaire back to the receptionist, who smiled her gracious thanks and carried it at once inside to her long-distance-telephoning boss.

The magazines available to read were
Forbes
and
Business Week.
Mackey read about businessmen for five minutes or so, until a buzzer sounded on the receptionist's desk. "Mr. Flynn will see you now, Mr. Flynn," the receptionist said, and got to her feet to open the door for him to the inner office.

Mr. Flynn was a short balding man who had put on some weight but who moved as though he were short and skinny. He wore a tan jacket and a blue-and-red bow tie, and he had come around his desk to give Mackey a firm but friendly handshake. The questionnaire was open on the desk, and Mackey could tell by Flynn's outgoing manner that he had called the local phone number Mackey had given—as being his company's "local leased personal premises," as he had put it on the form—and had been told the story by Parker at the other end. Parker, playing butler-caretaker, would have said that yes, this was General Texachron's local leased apartment, where company executives could stay when business brought them to Tyler, and that yes, Mr. Thomas Flynn was currently in residence although not at the moment present in the apartment.

But before they got to General Texachron or the other invented particulars of the questionnaire, they had to get past the coincidence of the last name. Mackey was getting heartily sick of the coincidence by now, and was wishing he'd chosen one of his other available identities instead, but eventually the casino's Mr. Flynn had satisfied himself that the two of them weren't blood relatives in any directly traceable way, and they could get themselves around to the matter at hand.

Downstairs, Mike Carlow and Dan Wycza and Stan Devers had all skipped dessert and were having a cup of coffee. Carlow, glancing at his watch, said, "Time for us to make our move."

Wycza put down his cup. "Right," he said, touched his napkin to his lips, and got to his feet. While Devers and Carlow stayed at the table, Carlow with his hands out of sight on his lap, Wycza crossed the room to where Tony Florio was standing in his usual spot near the headwaiter. "Mr. Florio?"

Florio turned around, his greeter's smile on his face, his hand ready to come out for a brisk shake. "Yes, pal? What can I do for you?"

Wycza moved in close to him, turning his shoulder so as to exclude the nearby headwaiter from the conversation. Pointing into the dining room, he said, "You see those two gents there at my table?"

Florio was expecting to be asked for an autograph, which he would give, or to join these out-of-towners in a drink, which he wouldn't do. "Yes," he said. "I see them."

Wycza said, "Well, the fella with his hands under the table is holding a target pistol down there, aimed at your balls."

Florio stiffened. Wycza's hand was on his elbow in a confidential way, and quietly Wycza said, "Now, don't make a fuss, Mr. Florio, because I've got to tell you something. That guy is with me, and I know about him, and I know he gets very nervous in moments of stress. You follow me?"

Florio said nothing. It never even occurred to him this might be a gag; he believed it was the truth from the instant he heard it.

Wycza said, "For instance, if you were to make any sudden motions, or if you were to shout, anything like that, that nervous son of a bitch over there is just likely to shoot. I hate to use him, he makes me a nervous wreck myself, but the thing is he's a marksman. He can shoot a pimple off a fly's ass at sixty feet, he's just amazing. If only he was calm like you and me, but he doesn't have our size, you know? A big man like us can be calm, but a little guy like him gets nervous."

Florio, in looking now at this soft-spoken baldheaded giant, was invited to notice that although Wycza had spoken of them both as being big men, Wycza was clearly much the bigger and much the stronger of the two of them. Florio, who was used to being the biggest and toughest-looking man in any gathering, wilted a bit more. Half whispering as drops of perspiration appeared on his upper Up, he said, "What do you want?"

"Just come on over to the table," Wycza said. "We'll talk a little." He nudged Florio's arm, and Florio began to walk.

The two of them moved through the mostly empty tables to the one where Devers and Carlow were waiting. Carlow kept his hands under the table, and Devers kept watching the employees behind Wycza's back, none of whom were behaving in any way out of the ordinary.

Crossing the room, Wycza staying next to him, Florio said, "I don't really own this place, you know. I just front it for some people in town."

"Ernie Dulare," Wycza said. Pleased by the startled look he got for that name, he added another: "Adolf Lozini."