West 47th (41 page)

“What are you doing up here?” Mitch asked Fat Angelo.

“Nothing. Just looking around.”

“Sightseeing,” Mitch said.

“Yeah, that's it. We already saw the sights, didn't we?”

“Enough,” Little Mike replied.

“So now you're headed back to the city,” Mitch said.

“They got good donuts here but the coffee tastes like shit,” Fat Angelo said.

“You should know,” Mitch said but Fat Angelo wasn't fazed, maybe didn't get it.

Little Mike was eating potato salad out of a half-pound plastic container. He appeared as conspicuously out of place as Fat Angelo. A pair of midtown lowlifes in white short-sleeve polo shirts that displayed their respective fat and muscles. Unbuttoned to exhibit swag gold chains and crosses that were nearly lost among their chest hairs.

“How about me and you having a private word?” Fat Angelo said.

Mitch moved with him beyond the hearing range of Little Mike, who understood and paid more attention to the potato salad.

“We can do a little business,” Fat Angelo said confidentially. “You interested?”

“Maybe.”

“You got those two emeralds?”

“Another maybe.”

“What we do is you give them to me and I go back to Riccio and tell him you weren't up here like he figured.”

“You'd do that?”

“Sure, what the fuck.”

Mitch did a considering expression, some blinks. “What if I was to let Riccio know you tried to get between on him?”

“No problem. I just tell him I saw you but nothing else, just saw. Who's he going to believe, me or some guy he wants taken out?”

Mitch turned and pushed his cart towards the checkout.

Fat Angelo flung six Sicilian obscenities at his back.

That he had run into two of Riccio's have-arounds at the supermarket was yet another thing Mitch decided was best left unmentioned to Maddie. No use making her edgier. He imagined how unstrung he would be if he was in the black, dependent upon someone else's eyes under such threatening circumstances.

All along he had believed Riccio would catch on and show up. Now that was not only imminent but soon. Perhaps tomorrow, possibly before, Mitch thought. He couldn't put anything off.

On the way home there was a short section of road where construction was under way. Marked off by striped orange and white barriers, battery-powered blinking amber lights on them. Mitch didn't care who saw him stop and toss a couple of the barriers into the back of the pickup.

It was early dusk when he went to the bramble patch. After completing things there he went all the way out to the bluff. The river motionless as a deserted road. The hills to the west black and humped like resting beasts. The going sun skulking behind them.

Chapter 31

Wait.

Never had Mitch disliked it more, having to sit there in the recess of a dormer, watching for them. Too much time to think, to not be able to put out of mind that everything had come down to this, all he'd ever done or been, hoped to do or be, compacted to grim wait in this niche above the roof line of Straw's three-story house.

A few hours ago, when there'd still been daylight, this high vantage had provided Mitch with a fairly clear view far down the gravel drive, beyond its twists, nearly to the point where the orchard began. What he'd kept watch for then was any interruption their car would cause on the pale, motionless drive. However, now that night had taken over, the first sign of their arrival would be headlights.

Might they park outside the grounds and approach unseen and quietly? No, that wasn't them. Probably it wouldn't even be suggested. Why should they be unnecessarily inconvenienced? They'd drive in like expected guests, turn off the loud car radio at the last moment, slam the car doors shut.

Maddie had tried to make the dormer niche comfortable. She'd layered it with two down comforters and piles of pillows. Plump European squares and tiny silk-covered rounds. She had also laundered the camouflaged combat fatigues Mitch had bought. To remove the scratchy stiffness from them. She'd washed hers separately in hottest water, given them a long hot cycle and double hot rinse, hoping to accomplish a three- or four-size shrink. But they hadn't shrunk an inch and she was having to make the best of what she thought of as their monstrous fighting man size. She turned the legs and sleeves up several folds.

“Does nothing for me,” she complained.

“Put on something else, some jeans or something.”

She pretended not to hear. She was wearing the Beretta in its shoulder rig. Extra clips in her most reachable upper pockets. Mitch had on the Glock. The shotgun was propped close at hand. Mitch had discovered a sling for it in the back of a drawer of Straw's gun cabinet.

So, there they sat. Low light coming from the third-floor hallway. The dormer window entirely open. Mitch close to the sill of it, Maddie across from him.

To vary and temper and help pass the wait, she played the guitar. Started out with some Wes Montgomery and without missing a pick or strum, went to the third movement,
Recitativo
, of Mompou's
Compostelana Suite
, and, from that, some vigorous Van Halen. Then on to Mitch's favorite favorite,
Spanish Romances
. She gave him a lengthy dose of the latter, repeated its melodic theme numerous times.

Normally the piece evoked within Mitch a sort of sensuous sway, but this time it hollowed his upper chest and lumped his throat and Maddie, with her finely honed sentience, stopped playing abruptly, laid the guitar aside and told him: “Look at it this way, precious, not everyone gets a chance to accumulate such exciting recollections for their recliner chair years.”

She went down to the kitchen and returned with a silver tablespoon and a pint carton of ice cream. Ben and Jerry's Chunky Monkey. She resumed her place opposite Mitch on the comforter and dug into it. She extended the first generous spoonful. Mitch brought his mouth to it. The rich, frivolous treat hitched him up a couple of minor notches.

“Two for you, one for me,” she said, as though it should apply to all things, then thought to add: “Except, of course, when it comes to comes.” She held out another helping. Within ten minutes she was noisily scraping the sides and bottom of the cardboard carton, licking the spoon.

She saw to Mitch's pillows. Plumped and re-situated them behind his back and shoulders. That done, she stretched out face up, perpendicular to him with her head resting on his thigh. The house a silent container of possessions. Squirrel claws scuttling the rain gutter. The night laying siege beyond the sill.

“Tell me one,” Maddie said.

“You've heard them all.”

“Surely not all.”

“I'd have to make one up.”

“Have you ever?”

“No.”

“Probably have, a fibber like you.”

“I could rehash an old one, if you'd settle for that,” he told her. “A real old one that you may have forgotten by now.”

“Save me.”

“Okay then, you'll just have to accept that as of now I'm all out.”

“Don't give me that, you with your extravagant repertoire. Are you going to deprive me of your riches?”

My riches, Mitch thought. Well, yes, perhaps that was what they were, all those mainly nefarious West 47 incidents and special little melodramas accumulated firsthand over the years, along with the headful of others of the same ilk he'd acquired second- or third-hand or more. She was demanding a fresh one and he doubted he could come up with it, his frame of mind being what it was. Her motive was obviously well-intentioned. She was trying to normalize things. He should cooperate. However, he felt in need of some good quiet, to just be, be there with her, to observe her and, again, as he had so often, marvel that she existed. And that she loved him. And he loved her. And they were attached. Not attached in the ordinary sense, not merely together for convenience or distraction or to bodyfill the chasm of human separateness, but somehow, miraculously, spiritually overlapped, Mitch felt.

The trouble was if he reflected upon such romantic assets they would soon remind him that they were what he stood to lose, and, as immediate as a shift of thought he would be overcome by gloomy prospect, his and Maddie's slim to no chance against the onslaught of Riccio's heartless have-arounds.

Maddie wasn't going to have any such negative wallowing if she could help it. She did a decisive little grunt. “If you put your mind to it you could,” she said.

“Could what?”

“Find them. As resourceful as you are. It's one of the zillion things I adore about you, your resourcefulness. Granted it's not foremost. There are any number of more pleasurable aspects ahead of it, but it's right up there.”

Mitch did some silence.

Maddie answered it. “Those emeralds.”

“Which emeralds?” Mitch joked, going along with her but thinking
those fucking emeralds
. They were entirely to blame. Had it not been for those fucking emeralds he'd now have little more to cope with than his usual problems, like making ends meet and deciding each night how to get out of having dinner at home. As for recovering those emeralds and being the recipient of twenty-five extra large, forget it. Nothing mattered but survival.

“How much do you buy that story the Iranian what's-his-name Djam told us?” Maddie asked.

“What part?”

“The pious poet who gazed through the emeralds and got back his eyesight.”

“Things like that are usually bullshit.”

“Usually?”

“Maybe not always,” Mitch conceded.

“Anyway, if you did recover those emeralds I probably wouldn't give them a try.”

Which Mitch knowingly interpreted to mean she might. He imagined her bringing the emeralds up to her eyes. Holding them there. The verdancy of paradise. When she took them away, instantaneous vision! And he would be the very first thing she would see. That old notion.

“Of course,” she went on, “I might if you insisted on it. Would you insist?”

Test question, Mitch thought. How not to fail it? It really asked had her handicap become a burden on him? Had he wearied of her dependence?

At times, not frequently, just every now and then, she had brought up the possibility of regaining her sight. What it would mean to them. It always started out as something she desired and ended up as something she'd just as soon would never happen. She was, she declared, quite comfortable with her condition, in fact, she probably preferred it. While it made her vulnerable it also provided protection of a sort, kept her from having to directly witness sleaze and suffering, the apathy and deliberate madnesses of these times.

Would he insist that, given the opportunity, she have a go with those wonder-working emeralds? He decided against a yes or no, told her: “I wouldn't push it.”

She yawned genuinely. The yawn turned into an exaggerated grimace. She sat up and drooped her head. “I've a crook in my neck,” she said with only slight complaint. She rotated her head twice counterclockwise and twice the other way and that seemed to do the trick. She raised her left shoulder and, as though she had perfect articulate vision, vamped at Mitch over it. “Jimmy Comforti,” she said.

“What about him?”

“Tell me one of those.”

“You're weird, know that?”

“Not any more so than you.”

“You've got a crook in your head.”

“Always,” she admitted. “You don't I suppose. Come on precious, stop being stingy, give a girl a fix.”

“What if I refuse?”

“You won't.”

Mitch was hooked and being pulled up to her lighter level. He did a skeptical grunt.

“Refusal,” she warned, “would call for retribution. I'd have to get back at you some suitable punitive way.”

“Such as?”

She hardly gave it a thought. “Like never again giving you a massage and so forth while wearing a pair of my antelope skin gloves.”

“I don't believe never.”

“You'd go begging,” she vowed, “believe me.”

“You really are weird.”

“Everything you say is true,” she arched.

How fortunate he'd been, he thought. He had other riches. All the sensational, shame-free-loving times he'd shared with her. Maybe, in a way, it was beyond reasonableness to expect a whole, long life span of it. They'd already had far more than most.

Maddie lay back, returned her head to his thigh and waited while Mitch sorted through his mental Comforti file for one he possibly hadn't told her. From the numerous Comforti exploits both Mitch and Hurley had fed her over the years she more or less enjoyed the illusion that, though she'd never met Comforti, he was a personal acquaintance.

Actually, not even those few upscale West 47 dealers who were the favored buyers of Comforti's pricey swag knew the man well. He was seldom seen on the street, never walked it just to walk it, never socialized along it. When, for some unavoidable reason, he showed up on West 47 it was like the sighting of some colorful rare bird and like such a bird he was quickly gone. As a rule, to do business with him a dealer had to venture out of the district to wherever Comforti stipulated, which might be anywhere from the rear seat of a hired limo to a suite at the Ritz-Carlton.

A swift he was, however no one's swift but his own. Early on, some twenty years ago, he had belonged to a crew, but before he was nineteen he'd outclassed it and defected. He didn't need any such protection or direction. He didn't have anyone who'd need caring for while he did time. He also didn't get enough kick out of doing houses. They were too hit or miss. The city, on the other hand, was a surer thing, a veritable treasure trove. All one had to do was learn how to get to it.

Comforti hung around the entrances and lobbies of the better hotels. Watching the high-grade goods come and go on the necks, ears, wrists and fingers of the visiting well-offs. He took particular notice of how many failed to deposit their valuables into the hotel's vault when they came in late at night all high and happy or tired or anxious to get up to their rooms for some improved, away-from-home sex.