The Peddler (6 page)

“Come off it, Maria, What you want me to do? Go into business with you muggin’ guys in alleys? I got to get in someplace where I can move up, really make it. Well, this is it.”

“Please, Tony, I—”

“Look,” he said, “I don’t want to hear no more about it. I got my mind made up.”

She stared at him for a while, then said, “All right, Tony. I don’t want to fight with you.”

In the next few weeks Tony’s life was pretty much the new routine. He slept late, then got up and saw Maria, usually, and at night went around to the houses with Leo. Often he and Leo lunched together or had a few drinks at one of the clubs, and Tony got to know the business well. He learned that the gross from the houses was about eighteen million a year, and from the half that didn’t stay with the girls, Leo and Hamlin and Alterie were paid fifteen hundred a month.

After Tony had been working with Leo for about a month, he met Frank Alterie for the first time. It was a Saturday night, a busy night, and Leo was making his fifth pickup, this one at the big house on Fillmore. When they went in, Frank Alterie was sitting in the parlor.

To Tony, who hadn’t seen him before, he was just another guy talking to one of the gals. But as they went in Leo stopped suddenly and swore beneath his breath. “I been expecting something like this,” he said.

Tony glanced at him, frowning, then Leo walked across the room and stuck out his hand, smiling pleasantly. “Hi, Frank, good to see you. Postman’s holiday, huh?” He laughed.

“Yeah.”

Leo turned to Tony. Watching him closely, he said, “Tony, this is Frank Alterie. About time you two guys met up with each other. Frank, Tony Romero.”

Alterie stood up, smiling. Tony nodded and said, “Hello, Alterie. Glad to meet you.” He stuck out his hand.

Alterie looked at Tony’s hand, then back at his face. He was about Tony’s height, but slimmer, with small black eyes and a dark complexion. He was a sharp-looking guy, ma^be thirty, with deep waves in his slick black hair, and dressed in a draped black suit with a red bow tie.

“Tony Romero,” he said. “Well.” He smiled pleasantly. “A pleasure. A real pleasure. I hear you’re getting to be a real big false alarm, Romero.”

Tony pressed his teeth together, anger leaping into his stomach. Alterie had made no move to shake his hand, but just as Tony was about to drop it back to his side Alterie reached forward quickly, grabbed it, and gave it a halfhearted shake and dropped it.

He rubbed his palm twice against his black coat and then said, still smiling happily, “Yes, sir, a real pleasure, Romero.” He turned to Leo without pausing and added, “You two’re getting thick as thieves I hear.”

“We get along,” Leo said dryly.

“Oh, excuse me a minute,” Alterie said. He turned and took a step away, then stopped. He looked back over his shoulder at Tony and said, “You will excuse me, won’t you, Romero?”

Tony knew that the other man was baiting him, trying to make him look ridiculous, foolish. He didn’t answer.

Alterie walked across the room and out the door into the hall.

Leo said, “Well, what you think of him?”

“I think he’s a jerk. I’ll give odds he’s worked himself up to this thing.”

“Acts like he’s got a load on. I don’t mean he’s plastered, either. He’s in a mean mood, Tony. You want to blow and drop back later?”

Before Tony could answer, Alterie came back in and walked up to them, still smiling.

“That didn’t take long,” he said. “Hey, Romero, what you doing out here? I know Leo’s got work to do. You come out after a little?” He frowned. “Hey,” he added, “didn’t I hear you’re hot for one of these beasts?”

Tony looked at Alterie without answering for a moment, then he said, “You know something, Alterie? You’re a fine fellow. You seem like a real fine fellow. But your tongue don’t appear attached to your brain.”

Some of the others in the room had noticed that tension was building between the three men, that something seemed about to happen, and now eight or ten of the men and women were looking at them. Alterie said, “What you mean, Romero? I don’t understand that. I’m just a simple guy, not no big important shark like you.” He shook his head back and forth. “I guess you’re too deep for me, Romero.”

Tony was coolly deliberating the question of whether he should put the slug on this guy right here in the parlor, or wait till he got him outside. Alterie started to say something else, when Maria Casino came in.

She walked across the room and spotted Tony. “Well, Tony!” she said. “I didn’t know you were here.” • “Hi, baby,” he said.

Alterie said, “Here I am, sweetheart, rarin’ to go. I been waiting for you an hour. Never saw such a popular biscuit.” Then he stopped suddenly, as if he’d just realized something.

He looked at Tony. “Hey,” he said. “Hey, now. This cute little biscuit isn’t the beast we were just talking about, is it? That couldn’t—^well, goddamn.” He started to laugh.

Maria frowned and asked Tony, “What’s the matter? What’s so funny?”

“Nothin’, honey. Unless maybe it’s Alterie. He’s kind of funny.” Tony grinned at her.

Alterie grabbed Maria’s arm and pulled her to him, slid an arm around her waist and fondled her breast. “Come on, sweetheart, I’m anxious to see what makes you so popular.”

Maria glanced at Tony, frowning, but he smiled and winked. Alterie started out with her, then stopped again.

“Oh, pardon me,” he said. “You gentlemen will excuse me? You’ll excuse me, won’t you, Romero?”

Tony knew what he was going to do now. He didn’t want to raise hell in the parlor, though, unless he had to. He squinted, as if considering Alterie’s request. “Well … I don’t know,” he said. “Ye-e-es, Frankie, you’re excused.”

Alterie stopped smiling, started to speak, then pulled Maria with him as he headed for the door. “Come on, sweetheart,” he said, “let’s have us some fun.”

After they left, Leo said, “Uh, Tony, you want to blow?”

“Go get your business done; I’ll wait here in case Alterie comes out in a hurry.”

Tony thought Leo looked relieved, but he also seemed to become suddenly more nervous and tense. He leaned closer and said, “He’s a mean bastard, Tony. I mean it. You got to watch him.”

“Go on, pick up the stuff. You can tell me how mean he is later.”

Leo went out and Tony sat on the gray couch. He lit a cigarette and smoked half of it before Leo returned.

When Leo came back in he sat down by Tony and said, “We got nothin’ more to do here, pal. We can take off if you’re ready.”

“Maybe you got nothin’ more to do here. Go ahead if you want to.”

“You’re gonna wait for him, huh?”

“What you think?”

“O.K. I know it wouldn’t look good if you took off—to Sharkey particular, but I don’t like it. I tell you he’s a mean bastard. He knows you’re after him. He gets a chance, and you jump him, he’d like nothin’ better’n a chance to kill you. Shark’d cover for him, and you’d be no more trouble to him.”

Tony didn’t say anything. There was a tight feeling in his stomach. He stubbed out his cigarette and lit another.

“O.K.,” Leo said. “He wears a gun, just like I do. You want mine?”

Tony shook his head.

“Carries a knife, too, sometimes. You wouldn’t be the first guy he used it on.”

Tony inhaled deeply on the cigarette. He felt sure he could handle Alterie, but there was always a chance some damn thing could go wrong. This had to be handled now, though. Tony knew that everything that happened—and for that matter everything of any importance he’d done since he started going around with Leo—would reach Sharkey’s ears in a matter of hours. And Angelo’s ears.

He turned to Leo. “You sticking around?”

“Hell, yes, I am. Hell, I’m in it as much as you. I ain’t gonna run out on you. Not now.”

“Thanks, Leo. I knew you weren’t anyway. Do one thing, will you. Don’t let him pull the gun on me. I’ll take care of anything else.”

Leo licked his lips and nodded silently.

“Say, Leo,” Tony said after a minute, “you know Alterie’s district, don’t you? About as well as he does?”

“Sure. Why?”

“Nothin’. I was just wondering.” They waited.

Tony was beginning to feel excited. There was a muted roaring in his head that spread through his body, made him seem to tingle all over. This was a break, when you came right down to it, he thought.

He heard Alterie in the hall before he saw him. He was laughing and joking loudly with somebody, then he came through the door into the parlor. He stopped and looked at Leo and Tony.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” he said. “You guys still here? Hey, Romero, you waiting for me to get through, or what?” He laughed. “Worth waiting for.”

He walked across the room and stopped in front of Tony and Leo as they got up from the couch. He didn’t look at Leo, but he said to him, looking at Tony, “This pal of yours, he’s just a kid, huh? Practically a baby. Hey, Romero, you been weaned yet?”

“Alterie, seems like you been on my back since we come in. Seems like you want some trouble with me.”

Alterie dropped his voice and said softly, with no pretense of humor, “You’re goddamn right, you sonofabitch. You keep your nose out of my business, or you’ll get more trouble than you ever heard of. I know what you’re working on, you bastard—”

Tony waved a hand, smiling pleasantly. “Wait a minute, Frank. No sense us talkin’ like this. I don’t want no trouble with you.”

“I didn’t figure you did.”

“Hell, no, Frank. No reason we can’t get along.” Tony looked around the room, at the sober faces, then back at Alterie. “I … don’t like talkin’ about it in here, all these characters. Come on, let’s go out to the car. We can work this out, Frank.”

There was a thin, contemptuous smile on Alterie’s Ups. Tony threw his arm around the other’s shoulders and steered him toward the hall and to the front door, saying, softly, “Hell, Frank, you don’t want to get so riled up. I’m a easy guy to get along with. I never even met you before and you start right in on me. Couldn’t you tell right off I didn’t want no trouble with you? A couple guys can talk, can’t they? Like sensible people? What got you so riled up anyway?”

They reached the front door and stepped outside. Leo came out and shut the door behind them. Tony could feel the muscles in Alterie’s shoulder bunched and tight, and his head was turned to the right, looking at Tony’s face, his expression unsure and thoughtful.

Tony said, “You shouldn’t talk the way you did, Frank. That gets nobody nowhere.” He stopped on the porch and tightened his grip on Alterie’s shoulder and arm, grinning into the other face inches from his own.

Alterie frowned and started to pull away, but Tony squeezed him harder, his strong fingers biting into the other’s arm just beneath the shoulder. “Sure gets you nowhere, Frank,” he said pleasantly. Tony squeezed Alterie’s arm tight and jerked the other toward him as he swung his own body to the left and whipped his right fist into Alterie’s stomach. Alterie gasped and tried to lift his hand, held in Tony’s grip at the bicep, and Tony released him, then swung as hard as he could into the other’s stomach again. Alterie bent over, gasping and Tony planted his feet firmly and smashed his big right fist into the man’s face.

Alterie staggered back against the wall of the house, arms down at his sides, and Tony stepped quickly toward him, reached under his coat and took out the gun that was there.

He tossed the automatic to Leo, then turned back to Alterie. “You had no call to talk that way,” he said softly. He stepped toward Alterie just as Leo said sharply, “Watch it, watch the knife.”

As Alterie lifted his hands he’d pulled from his back pocket a shiny, spring-blade knife. The six inches of steel snapped forward as Tony stopped suddenly, his eyes on the gleaming blade. Alterie held the knife down at his side, the point a few inches in front of his body weaving back and forth slowly like a snake’s head. Blood trickled from the corner of Alterie’s mouth; he crouched slightly, eyes on Tony’s face.

When he moved, it was quick. He stepped a little to the side, then sprang forward, the keen blade ripping upward in a blurred arc toward Tony’s stomach. Tony held his ground, big hands splayed out in front of him, past the knife’s arc, above the man’s wrist. The wrists jarred into Tony’s hands as he felt the point of the knife flick at his coat and then felt the small, sharp pain over his stomach.

He clamped his fingers down on Alterie’s wrist, felt his greater strength beginning to force the other man’s hand back and up. He strained his muscles, lifting that hand and knife, then drove his body forward and slammed the lighter man against the wall. He twisted the arm roughly and watched Alterie’s face contort with the pain, then he slowly slid his right hand down and closed it around Alterie’s fist, trapping the knife there as he moved his left hand suddenly to the other’s elbow. With that leverage he pulled at the elbow as he forced the firmly held hand up and back toward Alterie, the knife point bending slowly toward the man’s chest.

Tony knew he had the other man now; his strength was so much greater that he could easily have broken the arm in his hands. And when Alterie tried to pull away, Tony increased the upward pressure on the elbow. Alterie wasn’t looking at Tony now, but at the point of the thin knife blade as it moved an inch at a time toward him, closer, until, held in his own hand and Tony’s it was touching his chest.

Tony pushed the knife forward until he felt it slide through the black coat and knew it was touching skin beneath. He said softly, grinning, tight-lipped at the other, “Easy now, Alterie. Easy. This sticker will go through you like you were butter. I oughta kill you, you sonofabitch, for talkin’ to me like that.”

Alterie’s eyes were wide and his chin was pulled back against his chest, ripples of flesh bunched under his chin as he rolled his eyes downward to where the knife point touched his chest. His breathing was shallow through his open mouth as he strained to keep his chest away from that lethal point.

Tony looked at Alterie’s face with his own eyes narrowed to bare slits and his lips pressed together. “Look at me, you sonofabitch,” he said. “Now!”

Alterie, without moving any other part of his body, rolled his eyes up to Tony’s. Tony grinned at him and slowly, dehberately, pressed the knife forward. Tony could feel the blade press an inch into the flesh in front of it, easily, almost as if the muscle and ligaments and fat were melting beneath the steel.