Hard Case Crime: Fifty to One (14 page)

“Not really,” Tricia said, interrupting her sister at this improbable juncture. “You didn’t really have a baby in the back of a taxicab, did you?”

Coral nodded. “It sounds worse than it was. He got me to St. Vincent’s eventually, and the baby was fine. He’s three now, Artie. Almost four.”

“Artie.”

“He’s the sweetest child, Patty.”

“And that’s the man you live with,” Tricia said. “The one you couldn’t tell me about the day I came to town. The reason you didn’t let me stay with you, not even for one night.”

“I didn’t want you to know,” Coral said. “I didn’t want mama to know.”

“I wouldn’t have told her.”

“You say that now,” Coral said.

“Who watches him while you’re working? Who’s with him now?”

“A couple of other girls who live there. They help me out and I give them a few bucks when I can.”

Tricia nodded slowly. “And you became a boxer how?”

Coral shrugged. “A baby has to eat. His mother, too. I took the work I could get. I’m not eighteen anymore, Patty. I’m not twenty-one. I’ll be twenty-five next year, I’ve had a kid, and there’s a new crop of bright young things each year for the men in this town to look at.”

“Like me, you mean.”

“Like you,” Coral said. “Look at you, blonde as anything. What’d he call you? Trixie?”

“It was your idea, giving a fake name,” Tricia said.
“Colleen.”

“The two of us,” Coral said softly. “If mama could see us now.”

“I still don’t understand how you ended up...like this. I thought you were working as a dancer.”

“I was—I worked at a club called the Moon run by a man named Nicolazzo.”

“Uncle Nick,” Tricia said.

“You know him?”

“I’m sorry to say I do,” Tricia said. “I work for him too. At the Sun.”

“No—really? Doing what? Dancing?” Tricia nodded. “That’s funny. I worked there for a while, but only after hours. Cleaning.” Coral brushed her hair out of her face, uncovering a darkening bruise on one cheek. “Well, I’m sure dancing at the Sun’s a whole other story. At the Moon it was horrible.”

“Worse than getting punched in the face?”

“Oh, yeah,” Coral said. “Much. On your feet for hours at a stretch every night. Every sort of man pressing up against you, thinking you’re his for a handful of dimes. I’d rather take a punch any day.”

“So Nicolazzo made you a fighter,” Tricia said. “And now he thinks you robbed him.”

“He does?”

“Either that or he thinks you know who did. That’s why he’s got you here. It’s why he’s got me. And he just killed a man for less. I saw him do it.”

Coral sank her head into her hands. “Patty,” she said, after a moment, “I need you to promise me something. If you get out of this and I don’t, you’ll take Artie back home to Aberdeen.”

“Don’t even talk like that.”

“I’ve got to,” Coral said.

“No.”

“I do,” Coral said. “You see, Nicolazzo’s right. I did rob him.”

“What are you talking about?” Tricia said. “What do you mean you...Cory, why would you do that?”

“Stella told me about this book she’d seen. That gave me the idea,” Coral said. “I didn’t seriously plan to do it. But all that money—you know what I could do with a tenth part of that much money? You know the clothes and things I could buy for Artie? For me?”

“But stealing from a man like Nicolazzo—”

“I know, I know.” She wiped the back of one hand against her eye. “It was stupid. But you know, it came in baby steps. There was an opening on the cleaning crew at the Sun. So I asked if I could do a couple afternoons a week, and they said yes. And there I am, washing the dishes and cleaning the carpets, and I can’t stop thinking about that book. The big safe in the back, like Stella described it. I didn’t want to think about it, but you spend a couple of hours polishing floors and your mind starts to wander.”

“Cory...”

“No, listen. I was thinking about it but I wasn’t going to do anything—it was just something to daydream about. But then one day I’m working there and I hear some banging. You know, hammering. And my first thought is, It’s maintenance, they’re fixing something. But my second thought is, This is like that book. Maybe someone’s breaking in. And part of me is thinking, I’d better stay away. But the other part’s thinking, Why? Maybe this is my one big chance.” She reached out for Tricia’s hands, held them in her lap. “So I finish up what I’m doing and start hunting around, where I heard the sound coming from, and when I get there what do you think I find? There’s a door standing open with the knob cut out and sure enough the safe’s there, and its door’s open, too. And the thing’s been emptied!”

“Emptied?” Tricia said. “Then someone else robbed him, not you.”

“Well,” Coral said. “Not completely emptied. There was a box in the very back, a flat leather box in the corner. It was dark. Whoever’d been there before me must have missed it.”

“And you took it?”

“It was small,” Coral said, squeezing Tricia’s hands tight enough that it hurt. “I didn’t even look inside till I got it home. I just grabbed it and ran.”

“And what was in it?”

Before Coral could answer, they both heard the key in the lock, then the click of a gun being armed. “Ladies,” Mitch said through the door, “I’m coming in.”

“What was in it?” Tricia whispered. “Coral, quick!”

“Pictures,” Coral whispered back.

“Ladies?” Mitch called. “Make some sound so I know you hear me.”

“We hear you,” Tricia shouted. “And we’re nowhere near the door.” Then in a low voice to Coral, “What sort of pictures? You mean like dirty pictures?”

“Not the way you mean,” Coral whispered, her words all rushing together. “It was dead people, murdered, lying in the street. There was one where they shot a man outside a bar, he was lying in the gutter, must’ve had fifteen bullet holes in him. And you could see who shot him. They were standing over him with their guns out.”

“You recognize who they were?”

“Yeah, one of them was—”

But the door had swung open and Mitch had walked in, gun extended before him in one hand. “What are you girls gossiping about?”

“Nothing,” Tricia said.

“Get over here,” Mitch said, “pick that up,” gesturing toward the sack lying on the floor, “and put it on. He wants to see you again.”

Tricia stood. “It was good to meet you, Colleen,” she said. “I hope to see you fight someday when this is all over.”

Coral didn’t say anything. Tricia pulled the bag on and followed Mitch out the door.

Upstairs, when the bag came off, Tricia found herself looking at Charley Borden. He gave her a wan smile. His hands were tied behind him and his hair was disheveled. He had on a vest and pinstriped pants, but the suit jacket that went with them was nowhere to be seen. Strewn on the ground at his feet were the contents of his pockets: a leather wallet, a comb, some coins, a pack of playing cards, some keys on a metal ring.

Nicolazzo paced in a little circle between them, a few steps forward and a few back, saying nothing, just glaring at each of them in turn. In one hand he held his stiletto, playing idly with the blade, springing it out and pulling it back in. There wasn’t a trace of blood on it that Tricia could see, or on the circular patch of carpet where the throw rug had been.

“So, my dear,” Nicolazzo said, “have you decided to tell me what you know, or shall we have another round of mumblety-peg?”

“You can save your breath,” Borden said. “She doesn’t know anything.”

“My friend, it’s your breath you should be worried about conserving, not mine.” Nicolazzo held the blade up to Borden’s throat and turned to Tricia. “So? What have you got to say?”

“I don’t know where your money is,” Tricia said, “or who took it. That’s the plain truth.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Nicolazzo said.

“But I do know,” Tricia continued, and her voice only trembled a little as she said it, “what else was stolen from your safe.”

Nicolazzo’s eyes narrowed.

“It’s photographs, isn’t it?” Tricia said, her mind clicking along, trying to make sense of what Coral had told her. A man lying in the gutter, dead. Other men standing over him with guns—one of whom Coral had recognized. Coral, who’d worked for Nicolazzo and so would have known some of Uncle Nick’s other employees. “Incriminating photographs,” she said. “The sort you’d keep in your safe in case you ever needed to use them, but that you otherwise wouldn’t want anyone else ever to see. Photos of your own men—something you can hold over their heads to keep them in line, maybe?” Off to one side, she saw Mitch shift uncomfortably.

“Trixie,” Borden said in a strained little voice, trying hard not to touch the blade hovering below his chin. “You’re a very imaginative girl, but maybe this isn’t the time to be dreaming up the plot for your next book—”

“Quiet, you,” Nicolazzo said. Then to Tricia: “Go on.”

“If these pictures wound up in the hands of the police, it would be bad for you. If they wound up in the hands of your rivals, it might be even worse.”

“Never mind that,” Nicolazzo said. “Where are they?”

“If you let us go—all of us—I’ll find them and I’ll bring them to you.”

“I don’t like that idea,” Nicolazzo said. “I don’t like it at all. If I let you all go, what incentive would you have to come back? No. I think maybe it’s better if I do a little work right now on this young fellow here. Perhaps I should take the skin off him one inch at a time, till you tell me what I want to know.”

“May I say something?” Borden said.

“Hush,” Nicolazzo said. “You’re a little apple, waiting to be peeled. Little apples do not talk.”

“If you touch him,” Tricia said, “I’ll never tell you anything.”

“Do you really think so? Do you really think you will be able to stand there and watch him suffer when it’s entirely in your power to put an end to it? When all you have to do is utter a few words—a location, an address—and the man’s pain stops?”

“How do I know you won’t just kill him then? And me, too, while you’re at it.”

“Because, my dear, I always keep my bargains. I am a man of my word. Ask anyone. Salvatore Nicolazzo has never welshed on any deal in his life. Million dollars on a wager? I pay off. If I lose. And collect if I win. That’s the way it works in my world. If you don’t have your word, you’ve got nothing.”

“And I have your word,” Tricia said.

“You have my word. That I will not harm either of you if you return my stolen property to me. The photos
and
the money. And that I will if you do not.”

Tricia looked at Borden, straining to keep his head back, away from the knife, and at Nicolazzo, holding it there carelessly, loosely, but with the same avid look on his face that he’d had before using that very blade to end another man’s life. She thought about her sister down in the cellar, and about Erin—and about herself.

“The money I can’t promise,” she said, “but I’m pretty sure the photos are on Cornelia Street. I don’t know exactly where—but I’m confident I can find them, and when I do I’ll bring them to you. That’s the best I can offer.” She stepped forward bravely, hands on her hips. “Now let him go.”

“Go? No, I won’t do that. He and I will wait here for you. We’ll—” He glanced about, bent down, and picked up the deck of cards from the floor. He closed the stiletto and slipped it into his pocket. “We’ll occupy ourselves with a little game. You play cards, do you, Mr. Borden? A bit of rummy, perhaps? Or canasta? You can play it with two, I’ll show you how.” To Tricia he said, “But come back quickly, my dear. Or I’ll grow impatient with canasta and teach him another game I like. It’s called ‘Fifty-to-One.’ Those are the odds, you see. The odds against.”

“Against winning?” Borden said, clearly relieved no longer to have a switchblade quivering at his neck.

“Against surviving,” Nicolazzo said, and all the blood that had returned to Borden’s cheeks drained away again.

Nicolazzo snapped his fingers at Mitch. “You—go with her. Make sure she doesn’t try anything funny. And get rid of the stiff, while you’re at it.”

“Yes, boss,” Mitch said.

A plump finger rose admonishingly.

“Uncle Nick,” Mitch said. “Excuse me.”

Nicolazzo smiled. “Now Mr. Borden,” he said, “would you like the first deal or shall I?”

Mitch pulled the bag off her head as they crossed the 59th Street Bridge into Manhattan. He left it lying on the front seat between them.

“So we were in Queens?” Tricia asked after taking a few deep breaths to clear her head of the burlap smell. She didn’t turn to look at Mitch. She watched the New York skyline rush toward them through the windshield instead.

“Never mind where we were,” Mitch said. “The less you know, the better.”

“How can you work for a man like that?” Tricia said.

Mitch shrugged, held the wheel steady. “He’s not a bad sort. Most of the time.”

“He just killed a man!”

“So?” Mitch honked and swerved around a station wagon that was going too slowly for his taste. “Guy was no prize. Cheated on his wife. Played lousy music.”

Tricia didn’t answer. It wasn’t lousy music. But that hardly seemed like the point most worth arguing about right now.

“I never did anything to him,” Tricia said finally. “Charley and Erin didn’t, and god knows Cor—Colleen didn’t.”

“Yeah?” Mitch said. “That’s not what it sounded like to me.”

“What do you mean?”

Mitch raised his eyebrows, let them fall, kept his eyes on the road. “Sounded to me like she did plenty. Little leather box, and all.”

“Were you listening? At the door?”

“Could be,” Mitch said.

Tricia pinched the bridge of her nose between her fingers. She could feel the beginnings of a bad headache.

“You heard everything?”

“You think your sister really had her baby in a taxi, or she was just pulling your leg?”

“So why didn’t you say anything to your boss? To Uncle Nick?”

He shrugged again. “I would’ve, if I’d had to. I was waiting to see what you’d do.”

“What I’d do.”

“Would you offer to go get the photos. I knew he wouldn’t let you go alone.”