When the Sacred Ginmill Closes (18 page)

The phone rang again.

This time we made less of a thing out of synchronizing our answering, since I'd already made my presence known. When I had the receiver to my ear, Skip said, "Yeah?" and the voice I'd heard before asked what he was supposed to read. Skip told him and the voice began reading ledger entries. Skip had the fake set of books open on his desk and followed along on the page.

After half a minute the reader stopped and asked if we were satisfied. Skip looked as though he wanted to take exception to the word. Instead he shrugged and nodded, and I spoke up to say we were assured we were dealing with the right people.

"Then here's what you do," he said, and we both took up pencils and wrote down the directions.

"TWO cars," Skip was saying. "All they know is me and Mattare coming, so the two ofus'll go in my car. John, you take Billie and Bobby. What do you think, Matt, they'll follow us?"

I shook my head. "Somebody may be watching us leave here," I said. "John, why don't you three go aheadnow. Your car's handy?"

"I'm parked two blocks from here."

"The three of you can drive out there now. Bobby, you and Bill walk on ahead and wait at the car. I'd just as soon you all didn't walk out together, just in case somebody's keeping an eye on the front door. You two wait ahead, and John,give them two, three minutes, and then meet them at the car."

"And then drive out to- where is it, Emmons Avenue?"

"InSheepsheadBay.You know where that is?"

"Vaguely.I know it's the ass end ofBrooklyn. I've gone out on fishing boats there, but somebody else drove and I didn't pay too much attention."

"You can take the Belt, theShore Parkway."

"All right."

"Get off, let me think, probably the best place isOcean Avenue. You'll probably see a sign."

"Hang on," Skip said. "I think I got a map someplace, I saw it the other day."

He found aHagstromstreet map of the borough and the three of us gave it some study. BobbyRuslander leaned in overKasabian's shoulder. Billie Keegan picked up a beer somebody had abandoned earlier and took a sip and made a face. We worked out a route, and Skip told John to take the map along with him.

"I can never fold these things right,"Kasabian said.

Skip said, "Who cares how you fold the fucking thing?" He took the map away from his partner and began tearing it along some of its fold lines, handing a section some eight inches square toKasabian and dropping the rest to the floor. "Here'sSheepsheadBay," he said. "You want to know where to get off the parkway, right? What do you need with all the rest of fuckingBrooklyn?"

"Jesus,"Kasabian said.

"I'm sorry, Johnny. I'mfuckin ' twitchy. Johnny, you got a weapon?"

"I don't want anything."

Skip opened the deskdrawer, put a blue-steel automatic pistol on top of the desk. "We keep it behind the bar," he told me, "case we want to blow our brains out when we count up the night's receipts. You don't want it, John?"Kasabian shook his head. "Matt?"

"I don't think I'll need it."

"You don't want to carry it?"

"I'd just as soon not."

He hefted the gun, looked for a place to put it. It was a.45 and it looked like the kind they issue to officers in the army. A big heavy gun, and what they called a forgiving one- its stopping power could compensate for poor aim, bringing a man down with a shoulder wound.

"Weighs a fucking ton," Skip said. He worked it underneath the waistband of his jeans and frowned at the way it looked. He tugged his shirt free of hisbelt, let it hang out over the gun. It wasn't the sort of shirt you wear out of your pants and it looked all wrong. "Jesus," he complained, "where am Igonna put the thing?"

"You'll work it out,"Kasabian told him. "Meanwhile we ought to get going. Don't you think so, Matt?"

I agreed with him. We went over it one more time while Keegan andRuslander walked on ahead. They would drive toSheepsheadBay and park across the street from the restaurant, but not directly across the street. They would wait there, motor off, lights out, and keep an eye on the place and on us when we arrived.

"Don't try and do anything," I told him. "If you see anything suspicious, just observe it. Write down license numbers, anything like that."

"Should I try and follow them?"

"How would you know who you were following?" He shrugged. "Play it by ear," I said. "Mostly just be around, keep an eye open."

"Got it."

After he'd left Skip put an attache case on top of the desk and popped the catches. Banded stacks of used currency filled the case. "That's what fifty grand looks like," he said. "Doesn't look like much, does it?"

"Just paper."

"Itdo anything for you, looking at it?"

"Not really."

"Me either." He put the.45 on top of the bills, closed the case. It didn't fit right. He rearranged the bills to make a little nest for the gun and closed it again.

"Just until we get in the car," he said. "I don't want to walk down the street like Gary Cooper in High Noon." He tucked his shirt back into his pants. On the way to the car he said, "You'd thinkpeople'd be staring at me. I'm dressed like a grease monkey and carrying a case like a banker. Fucking New Yorkers, I could wear a gorilla suit andnobody'd look twice. Remindme, soon as we get in the car, I want to take the gun out of the case."

"All right."

"Bad enough if they pull something and shoot us. Be worse if they used my gun to do it."

HIS car was garaged onFifty-fifthStreet. He tipped the attendant a buck and drove around the corner, pulled up in front of a hydrant. He opened the attache case and removed the pistol and checked the clip, then put the gun on the seat between us, thought better of it and wedged it down into the space between the cushion and the seat back.

The car was a Chevy Impala a couple of years old, long and low, loosely sprung. It was white, with a beige and white interior, and it looked as though it hadn't been through a car wash since it leftDetroit. The ashtray overflowed with cigarette butts and the floor was deep in litter.

"Car's like my life," he said as we caught a light atTenth Avenue.

"A comfortable mess.What do we do, take the same route we worked out forKasabian?"

"No."

"You know a better way?"

"Not better, just different. Take the West Side Drive for now, but instead of the Belt we'll take local streets throughBrooklyn."

"Be slower, won't it?"

"Probably.Let them get there ahead of us."

"Whatever you say.Any particular reason?"

"Might be easier this way to see if we're being followed."

"You think we are?"

"I don't see the point offhand, not when they know where we're going. But there's no way to know whether we're dealing with one man or an army."

"That's a point."

"Take a right the next corner, pick up the Drive atFifty-sixthStreet."

"Got it.Matt? You want something?"

"What do you mean?"

"You want a pop? Check the glove box, there ought to be something there."

There was a pint of Black amp; White in the glove compartment. Actually it wouldn't have been apint, it would have been a tenth. I remember the bottle, green glass, curved slightly like a hip flask to fit comfortably in a pocket.

"I don't know about you," he said, "but I'm kind of wired. I don't want to get sloppy, but it might not hurt to have something to take the edge off."

"Just a short one," I agreed, and opened the bottle.

WE took the West Side Drive toCanal Street, crossed into Brooklyn via theManhattanBridge, and tookFlatbush Avenue until it crossedOcean Avenue. We kept catching red lights, and several times I noticed his gaze fixing on the glove box. But he didn't say anything, and we left the bottle of Black amp; White untouched after the one short pull each of us had taken earlier.

He drove with his window rolled down all the way and his left elbow out the window, his fingertips resting on the roof, occasionally drumming the metal. Sometimes we made conversation and sometimes we rode along in silence.

At one point he said, "Matt, I want to know who set this up. It'sgotta be inside, don't you think? Somebody saw an opportunity and took it, somebody who took a look at the books and knew what he was looking at. Somebody who used to work for me, except how would they get back in? If I fired some asshole, somedrunk bartender or spastic waitress, how do they wind up prancing into my office and waltzing out with my books? Can you figure that?"

"Your office isn't that hard to get into, Skip. Anybody familiar with the layout could head for the bathroom and slip into your office without anybody paying any attention."

"I suppose. I suppose I'm lucky they didn't piss in the top drawer while they were at it." He drew a cigarette from the pack in his breast pocket, tapped it against the steering wheel. "I owe Johnny five grand," he said.

"How's that?"

"The ransom.He came up with thirty and I put up twenty. His safe-deposit box was in better shape than mine. For all I know he's got another fifty tucked away, or maybe the thirty was enough to tap him." He braked, letting a gypsy cab change lanes in front of us. "Look at that asshole," he said, without rancor. "Do people drive like that everywhere or is it justBrooklyn? I swear everybody starts driving funny the minute you cross the river. What was I talking about?"

"The moneyKasabian put up."

"Yeah.So he'll cut a few bills extra per week until he makes up the five-grand difference. Matt, I had twenty thousand dollars in a bank vault and now it's all packed up and ready for delivery, and in a few minutes I won't have it anymore, and it's got no reality. You know what I mean?"

"I think so."

"I don't mean it's just paper. It's more thanpaper, if it was just paper people wouldn't go so nuts over it. But it wasn't real when it was locked up tight in the bank and it won't be real when it's gone. I have to know who's doing this to me, Matt."

"Maybe we'll find out."

"I fucking have to know. I trustKasabian, you know? This kind of business you're dead if you can't trust your partner. Two guys in the bar business watching each other all the time, they'regonna go flat fucking nuts in six months. Never make itwork, theplace'll have the kind of vibe a Bowery bum wouldn't tolerate. On top of which you could watch your partner twenty-three hours a day and he could steal you blind in the hour he's got open.Kasabian does the buying, for Christ's sake. You know how deep you can stick it in when you're doing the buying for a joint?"

"What's your point, Skip?"

"My point is there's a voice in my head saying maybe this is a nice way for Johnny to take twenty grand off me, and it doesn't make any sense, Matt. He'd have to split it with a partner, he has to put up a lot of his own cash to do it, and why would he pick this way to steal from me? All aside from the fact that I trust him, I got no reason not to trust him, he's always been straight with me and if he wanted to rip me off there's a thousand easier ways that pay better and I'd never even know I was being taken. But I still get this voice, and Ifuckin ' bet he gets it, too, because I caught him looking at me a little different earlier, and I probably been looking at him the same way, and who needs this shit? I mean this is worse than what it's costing us. This is the kind of thing makes a joint close up overnight."

"I think that'sOcean Avenue coming up."

"Yeah?And to think we've only been driving for six days and six nights. I hang a left at Ocean?"

"You want to turn right."

"You sure?"

"Positive."

"I'm always lost inBrooklyn," he said. "I swear this place was settled by the Ten Lost Tribes. They couldn't find their wayback, they broke ground and built houses. Put in sewer lines, ran in electricity. All the comforts of home."

The restaurants onEmmons Avenue specialized in seafood. One of them, Lundy's, was a great barn of a place where serious eaters would tuck themselves in at big tables for enormous shore dinners. The place we were headed for was two blocks away at a corner. Carlo's Clam House was its name, and its red neon sign winked to show a clam opening and closing.

Kasabianwas parked on the other side of the street a few doors up from the restaurant. We pulled up alongside him. Bobby was in the front passenger seat. Billie Keegan sat alone in the back.Kasabian, of course, was behind the wheel. Bobby said, "Took you long enough. If there's anything going on, you can't see it from here."

Skip nodded. We drove a half-block farther and he parked next to a hydrant. "They don't tow you out here," he said. "Do they?"

"I don't think so."

"All we need," he said. He killed the engine and we exchanged glances, and his eyes moved to the glove compartment.

He said, "You see Keegan?In the back seat there?"

"Uh-huh."

"You can bet he's had a couple since they left."

"Probably."

"We'll wait, right? Celebrate after."

"Sure."

He shoved the gun into the waistband of his pants, draped his shirt to conceal it. "Probably the style here," he said, opening the door, hefting the attache case."SheepsheadBay, home of the flapping shirttail.You nervous, Matt?"

"A little."

"Good. I don't want to be the only one."

We walked across the wide street and approached the restaurant. The night was balmy and you could smell the salt water. I wondered for a moment if I should have been the one to take the gun. I wondered if he'd even fire the pistol, or if it was just there for comfort. I wondered if he'd be any good with it. He'd been in the service, but that didn't mean he was proficient with a handgun.

I'd been good with handguns.Barring ricochets, anyway.

"Catch the sign," he said. "Clam opening and closing, it's a goddamned obscenity. 'C'mere, honey, let's see you open your clam.' Place looks empty."