Jig (26 page)

‘Tell me your name,' he said.

‘Elva.'

‘Elva.' McInnes moved her long fair hair between his fingers. It was a moment that took his breath away. Here, in this shabby room, touching this delightful yellow-haired girl, he could pretend. Pretend he was elsewhere in another room at another time and that he held Somebody else in his arms, and then there wouldn't be any sense of shame or treachery.

‘Elva,' he said again. It was the wrong name and it had the wrong number of syllables, but he could still pretend anyhow. He closed his eyes and lowered his mouth to her nipples, lost in the pungent scent of her perfume and her supple young flesh.

The girl held on to the big man tightly. She couldn't know that this same man who whimpered in her ear and pretended that she was another woman altogether had set in motion a sequence of events she'd read about in the newspapers in the days ahead. She thought he was just another weirdo who liked to fuck with a dog collar around his neck.

If Joseph Tumulty knew there was a big green car tracking him a block away, he gave no indication of it. He walked slowly, calmly, pausing every now and then to study menus in the windows of Chinese restaurants along Mott Street. Frank Pagan, who had to concentrate on a variety of driving problems – stop lights, impatient drivers behind him, kamikaze pedestrians in front, and the fact he was driving on the wrong side of the road – found the Cadillac as unresponsive as a broken-down horse. Something clanked under the hood and the vehicle had a tendency to stray to the left. There was also an ominous smell of burning oil.

Zuboric said, ‘You should've let me drive.'

‘Why should you get all the fun, Artie?'

‘Fun?'

Zuboric leaned out of the window and flipped his middle finger at the honking car immediately behind. It was a standard sign of the road in New York City. Pagan hunched over the wheel and tried to keep an eye on Tumulty, who was lingering too long this time outside a place called Yang. Was he going inside to eat? Was this outing nothing more than an innocent Chinese dinner? Frank Pagan braked as a couple of teenage Chinese boys walked directly in front of the Cadillac. Ahead, almost a block away, Tumulty was moving again. Pagan let the car roll slowly forward, knowing it was only a matter of time before Tumulty would become aware of the vehicle, if he hadn't done so already.

Tumulty kept walking. He had begun to move a little faster. Then, quite suddenly, he disappeared. It was almost as if he'd vaporised right there on the street. Pagan pressed his foot down hard on the gas and drove to the place where the Irishman had vanished. It was a narrow alley, a crevice between two buildings. Even if he'd wanted to, he couldn't have taken the Cadillac into that tiny space. There was only one thing to do.

Bye-bye, Arthur.

He pushed his door open and stepped out into the street. He said to Zuboric, ‘You wanted to drive, Artie. She's all yours,' and he headed towards the alley, ignoring Zuboric, who was shouting at him to get back in the car. Behind the Cadillac there was a knot of cars occupied by impatient drivers, every one of them hammering on horns. Pagan smiled and felt a pleasant sense of liberation as he went into the alley and saw Joe Tumulty turning a corner at the far end.

Pagan made his way past piles of garbage in plastic bags, trash cans, old cardboard boxes jettisoned by restaurants and stores. He reached the corner where Tumulty had turned, and he saw Joe moving along the street about a block ahead, his black coat flapping around his ankles. Tumulty hesitated, looked back. Pagan stepped into the doorway of a store that sold electronic gadgets. Fuzz-busters. Listening devices. There was, as yet, no gadgetry that could render you invisible. Tumulty, on the move again, went around a corner. Pagan followed. If he had his geography correct, the Irishman was heading towards Mulberry Street.

On Mulberry, Tumulty didn't head for Kenmare Street and Santacroce's store as Pagan had expected. Instead, he went inside a tenement whose ground floor was occupied by an Italian restaurant and whose upper floors appeared to be apartments. The restaurant called Il Tevere, was one of those chintzy places with red-checked tablecloths and candles stuck in Chianti bottles, a whole style Pagan thought had gone out of fashion. A smell of garlic and tomato sauce poured out into the cold air. Pagan gazed up at the windows over the restaurant, wondering how many apartments were in the building and which one Joe Tumulty might have entered.

He moved towards the door through which Tumulty had gone. It wasn't locked. It opened into a long very narrow hallway covered with faded black-and-white lino, like some ancient, cracked chessboard. There was a flight of stairs at the end. They faded up into gloom at the top. Pagan went quietly along the corridor. At the foot of the stairs he stopped, tilting his head and listening, but the building was quiet save for music coming through the wall from the next-door restaurant.
O Sole Mio
. Accordion music yet. There was something intrinsically absurd about any instrument you had to squeeze. He climbed the stairs, pausing only when he reached a landing.

A single closed door faced him. At the end of the landing there was a second flight of stairs. Pagan ignored the door for the moment and climbed upwards. He reached another landing, another door. This one was halfway open, revealing an unlit apartment beyond. Removing his gun from the holster he wore in the small of his back, he went inside cautiously. He saw total disarray – bags of cement, bricks, stacks of wood, step-ladders, all kinds of building materials. He noticed that the walls of the apartment had been ripped out, exposing old beams. Somebody was renovating this place. Room after room had been tom apart. Windows were covered with sheets of thick plastic, and there was the smell of fresh paint in the air.

He turned, went back to the stairs, descended slowly. When he reached the first landing again he looked at the closed door. There were only two apartments in the building, and if one of them was empty, then Tumulty had to be in the other.

He waited. He had no way of knowing how many people were inside the place. He glanced down the stairway into the hall. The music from the Italian restaurant was louder now.
Funiculi, Funicula
. It was a song he particularly disliked. If that kind of music continued to assail him, he wasn't sure how long he could stand it before he took a chance and kicked the door down. Screw waiting. Screw the torture of Italian opera. The only thing worse than Italian opera was probably Vic Damone or Al Martino. It was a toss-up.

He heard a sound from behind the door. The creak of a floorboard, it was hard to say. Then there was silence again. What the hell was Tumulty doing in there? What if he was simply visiting a friend? Pagan frowned. He wished Tumulty had gone back to Santacroce's little shop, because then at least he'd have guessed that a gun transaction was under way. Here, it could be anything.

He wasn't very good at waiting. His concentration slackened. He moved a little, back to the stairs going upwards. He had the protection of shadows there. If somebody were to open the door quite suddenly, he wouldn't see Frank Pagan. There was another sound now from the apartment, and he brought his gun up again. He tensed, filled with a sense of expectancy. He saw the door open a little way. A bar of pale light from the room caused him to blink.

A figure appeared. Pagan made out the shape of a fat man in a navy-blue three-piece suit. A jewelled tie-pin glinted against the man's white shirt, and his cuff links sparkled. He went to the edge of the landing and looked down into the hallway. Then he turned and stood on the threshold of the apartment. He made a curious grinding noise with his teeth, and he wheezed as he moved, as if his bulk were a little too much for his lungs. His eyes were tiny, surrounded by mounds of pallid flesh. Pagan, hidden by shadow, watched him.

The fat man called back into the apartment, ‘Thought I heard something.' Whoever he'd spoken to inside didn't answer. The fat man waddled back to the top of the stairs again.

Pagan felt perspiration form between his skin and the surface of his pistol. Fattie took a handkerchief out of his pocket and pressed it between his plump hands as he peered down into the hallway. There was an expression of doubt on his face. He turned towards the apartment.

‘Say, did you lock that door down there when you came in?'

Again there was no answer from inside. The fat man shook his head.

Irritated by the lack of response from inside, the fat man pushed the door wide open. Pagan had a glimpse of the interior. A lamp, a coffee table, and an armchair occupied by Joseph X. Tumulty, who looked white and rather unhappy.

The fat man turned to shut the door behind him. Pagan moved. In four quick steps he was across the landing before Fattie had a chance to react. The fat man swore in surprise and tried to slam the door but Pagan kicked it back and heard the wood strike the man's head. It was a satisfying noise, like the whack of a cricket bat on a ball. The fat man slumped against the wall, holding a hand to his forehead. Joe Tumulty, whose astonishment had frozen him into the armchair, made a small moaning sound. He stared at Pagan blankly.

The fat man, bleeding from his brow, managed a mirthless smile. ‘You the law?'

‘Joe knows who I am. Don't you, Joe?' Pagan said.

Tumulty nodded. There was no colour in his face.

The fat man looked at Tumulty with disgust. ‘Fucking Irish,' he said. ‘I always get problems when it comes to the fucking Irish. Goddam.'

‘Welcome to the club,' Pagan said. ‘Are you Santacroce?'

The fat man nodded and wiped his brow with his handkerchief. ‘You let this fucker follow you, Joey? Not smart. Not at all smart.'

Pagan moved towards Tumulty's armchair. There was a leather attaché case on the floor. ‘Open it,' he said to Tumulty, jerking the hand that held the gun.

Trembling, Tumulty set the case on his lap and flipped it open. It contained a pistol, a rifle with a collapsible stock and three sets of sights. Everything had been neatly packed inside the case, fitted into compartments that had been specially made to hold the weapons. They were handcrafted weapons, tailored for the needs of a professional killer.

‘Very nice, Joe,' Pagan said. ‘Jig would love them.'

‘What happens to me now?' Tumulty asked in a hoarse voice.

‘You oughta have your fucking head blown off,' Santacroce said.

‘It's a consideration,' Pagan said. He looked across the room at Santacroce. The man was calm, unreasonably so in the circumstances. But he knew the score. He knew the jeopardies of his trade. He'd been here before. Even so, he was too acquiescent, and Pagan didn't like it.

‘So,' Santacroce said. ‘They sending the English in these days to help out?'

‘Something like that,' Pagan said.

Tumulty asked his question again. ‘What happens to me?'

‘You're going to fucking jail,' Santacroce said.

‘Is that right?' Tumulty asked Pagan.

Pagan said, ‘It doesn't look too good, Joe.'

Santacroce laughed. ‘Amateurs. Jesus. I shoulda known better. I gotta call my fucking lawyer. Awright with you?'

The fat man walked calmly across the room to the telephone, which was located on a small desk beneath the window. Pagan, suddenly uncertain about the legality of criminals making phone calls in this country, saw him apply the handkerchief to his forehead as he moved. Santacroce picked up the receiver and started to punch in numbers. Without really thinking, Pagan was mentally counting the digits the fat man pressed on the push buttons. The count wasn't right. It came only to six. On a level of awareness that was instinctive more than anything else, Pagan realised the Saint was talking into a dead phone.

Santacroce said, ‘Sam? I got a problem.'

Pagan saw the fat man turn away so that he was facing the window with his back to the room.

‘Yeah,' Santacroce mumbled. ‘I'll hold.'

Pagan tightened his grip on his pistol. What the hell was the fat man doing? Did he take Pagan for a complete fool?

‘Yeah, I'm still holding,' Santacroce said. ‘Don't leave me hanging too long, Sam.'

‘Put the phone down,' Pagan said. ‘Put the fucking phone down.'

Santacroce turned with a cold smile on his face.

Pagan didn't know where it came from, but there was a gun in the fat man's hand, a weapon that must have been concealed somewhere in his clothing. It caught the light, flared as Santacroce started to go into a defensive crouch, his big body bending at the hips, the gun hand held out in front of him, his other arm raised in the air for balance. For a fat man he seemed almost dainty right then, his whole body coordinated delicately as if in some dance.

Frank Pagan fired one shot.

Santacroce clutched his arm and cried out in pain, dropping his gun and falling backwards, the drapes at the window coming loose from their clips in a series of harsh little
clicks
and folding all around him like a collapsed tent. And then he was gone in a confusion of shattered glass and buckled frames. Pagan rushed to the window and looked down. The fat man lay on the sidewalk, the curtains still covering his body in the fashion of a shroud. People were emerging from the restaurant, crowding around the corpse, then staring up and pointing at the broken window.

Joe Tumulty asked, ‘Is he dead?'

Pagan said nothing. He backed away from the window.

‘Oh, God.' Tumulty got up from the armchair.

Pagan wondered what Artie Zuboric was going to say about all this. He speculated on the depths of Artie's wrath. What was he supposed to have done anyway? Let Santacroce shoot him?

Tumulty said, ‘I can't go to jail, Pagan.'

Frank Pagan stared a moment at the broken glass, feeling the cold wind blow in off Mulberry Street. The curtain rings rattled on the brass rod. The idea of Santacroce lying down there on the concrete depressed him. He turned his gun over in his hand. The death-maker. The eliminator. He had no rapport with guns the way some cops had, cleaning them endlessly, refining them, always reading gun literature, even naming their guns as if they were pets. He put the weapon back inside his holster and looked at Tumulty.