Wiseguys In Love (10 page)

He did another line and stared for the longest time at a zigzagged chair that absolutely looked too dangerous to sit on. This room had actually been featured in
Architectural Digest.
He could not recall the name of the designer who'd done this, but if he ever did remember …

*   *   *

“C'mon on, C'mon. I ain't got all night.” Tony was standing over her as she tried key after key in Henry's lower desk drawer.

Michael was standing at the door, looking out, just to make sure they weren't interrupted by janitors or a night cleaning woman. That was all he needed to turn this entire night into one big bloodbath.

“I'm going as fast as I can!” she snapped at him.

Tony glanced over at Michael, who shrugged. Tony was just turning his head back when the clock radio on the desk snapped on, blasting the room with noise.

Tony shot it.

It flew off the desk as Lisa gave a yelp. Michael glared at him and bent down to pick it up. He'd gotten it clean. It was stopped at quarter to eight. Jeez, they were behind schedule with all this craziness. He heard the desk drawer click open and he dropped the clock into the wastepaper basket, then thought better of it and picked it up, shoving it into the pocket of his raincoat.

She shakily handed the book to Tony, who opened it and began tearing through the pages.

“What the hell is this here?” Tony asked, staring down at the date.

“What?” Michael asked, taking the book from him. There were twenty entries.

“I can't go running all around lookin' for this fruitcake!” Tony began to complain.

“He goes to all these places each night?” Michael interrupted.

“No. It's for accounting. And to keep the press off his back. He usually picks a couple and goes there.”

“Mikey, whadda we gonna do? We gotta go, you know, for Solly,” Tony said, motioning with his gun, which was something Michael wished he wouldn't do.

He looked down at Lisa.

“You have any idea which ones he'd go to?”

She shook her head automatically.

Michael looked up at Tony. “I don't know. He's got four cocktail parties he's supposed to be at right now—”

“Oh, he won't be there,” she offered, then shut her mouth so fast, she could hear her teeth knock together as Michael looked down at her.

“Why not?”

She shook her head, and he shook her by the arms.

“Because he never goes anywhere before eight-thirty,” she blurted out. Michael looked at Tony.

“Okay, so where is he now?”

“Home,” she whispered.

Michael straightened up as Tony came over.

“Okay, let's go,” he said, picking her off the chair.

“Wait, wait,” Michael said, and motioned him over to the corner of the office.

Tony dropped her back down onto the chair as if he was dropping a package and walked over to Michael. Michael exhaled.

“Whadda you doing?” Michael began.

“We take the girl to the house, and then wees can clip 'em both and still get to Giuseppe Geddone's by eight-fifteen and back to meet up with Solly by nine.”

“Naw, naw, why waste a bullet on the girl?” Michael said, slipping into his heaviest street accent.

“But, Mikey, she knows who we are. She knows the plan.”

“She don't know nothin'. Look at her. Looky there. She ain't gonna talk to nobody. She don't even come from this city. Lissena this,” Michael said, and broke huddle.

“Aay, honey. Where you from?”

“Michigan.”

Back to the huddle. “There, you see, she's from Michigan.”

“Where?”

“It's one of them cold places up near the Canadian border.”

“She's
foreign?
”

“No, no. Our side of the border. Lissen, Tony, she's not gonna say nothin'. Look at the way she's shaking. We leave her here, what's she gonna do?”

“She goes to the cops.”

It was time to bring out the ammo.

“Tony,” he began, lowering his voice, “remember the hit at Freddo's restaurant on the Upper East Side?”

“Yeah.”

“You did the guy on a Wednesday night, in fronta one hundred people. Did anybody say anything to the cops?”

“Naw…”

“Not even the guys saw you walk into the kitchen and back out, right? Not even an entire dining room of customers? Not even the guys who left the back door open for you in the kitchen, right?”

Michael waited for, and finally got, the reaction he'd wanted from Tony. Tony's eyes got unfocused and began to cross slightly, and he squinted, wrinkling up his mouth and nose in pain.

Tony was
thinking.

“Nobody said nothing,” he said after a minute.

“And why not?”

“They was scared.”

“That's right. You made 'em so scared, they didn't talk. Look at the way she's shaking.”

Tony's eyes slid over to the girl, then back to Michael.

“Yeah, but she's from outta town—”

“So she's double-scared. We do a number on Michigan over there—you know, tie her up loose, shake her around, tell her she's dead, and I guarantee she ain't gonna do nothing. And, it's less of a trace if we don't leave bodies laying all over New York tonight. We don't want the boss hit where it looks planned, right? We just want him to disappear after we get Rosa's stuff straightened out.”

“Yeah?” Tony said, unfurling his face. There was a glint in his eyes as he stared at Mike. “Solly said you was to call the shots tonight.… So this is the way you wanna go with it?”

“Aayyy.”

It took them ten minutes to tie up Michigan, most of it spent finding something to tie her up with. They bound her with a roll of masking tape to the swivel chair in the office and stuffed a wad of cheap paper towels into her mouth.

Tony Mac waved his gun around at her, told her she'd be shot and her thumbs would be cut off and sent to her family as a warning to other presumptuous out-of-towners.

Michael discreetly cut a slit in the masking tape over her hands as Tony did his number.

He didn't want Michigan stuck here all weekend.

It wasn't her fault she'd gotten mixed up in this. She should've gone to her barbecue in Connecticut. But no, she'd come to offer Rosa what she could spare—a lousy five hundred dollars. Jeez, they must work for slave wages in magazines, Michael thought as he wiped down the desk and the door.

She was a good woman. She had nice eyes, he thought as Tony walked out of the room. He liked her face, too. She was pretty. Nordic-looking, though. She had a nice figure and …

He snapped back together as he looked down at her frightened eyes. Yeah, she was a good-looking woman, all right. She'd look real good on the stand in court, fingering him for all this. 'Cause Michael knew, when it came right down to it, if she talked, she would not look upon him as the one who got her off the hook.

“C'mon, Mikey!” Tony's voice boomed from the hall.

He leaned down, and she pulled away, as if he was going to hit her.

“Count to one hundred slowly, then pull your hands free and get out of here. Don't ever tell anyone about this, 'cause if you do, we'll tell them you hired us. Don't forget, you gave us his book and your fingerprints are all over it,” he whispered. Then he stood up and walked to the door.

He turned and gave one last look, just to make sure it had sunk in. She nodded to him, and he closed the door.

He walked over to the elevator banks, where Tony was holding the door. They rode down in silence.

He'd won this round. He'd convinced Tony to spare Michigan. His eyes slid over to him and he saw Tony watch the floor numbers light up as the elevator descended.

If he could save Michigan, what about her boss?

That would take more careful planning, and it would be one less murder he'd be in on.…

His stomach suddenly went cold.

Giuseppe Geddone. He couldn't get out of that. But how could he do it? He wasn't a killer. Not only wasn't he a killer but to get payment for it—that's what Solly had thrown in, more for Tony than for him. If Tony was in on it and he didn't get his usual “bonus,” he'd get all confused, and Solly didn't want that.

Michael didn't want that.

Tony was more likely to go off half-cocked when he was confused.

Jesus Christ! Why had Giuseppe done this? Michael couldn't imagine he'd been skimming so much. Knowing Solly, it probably wouldn't even buy him a suit each month, but it was “the principle of the thing.”

Still, Geddone should've known better.

Michael caught himself wincing. Two years with these guys and he was already beginning to think like them. They were talking about a human life here. This was something that seemed to elude these people. He needed a plan.

They walked silently through the lobby. The guard was off somewhere.

They walked out to the car and got in.

“We're going to SoHo,” he said, and Tony grunted as he started the car.

“How you wanna do this?”

“It's up to you.”

“Look, you gotta call it. You wanna get him in his apartment or on the street?”

*   *   *

It was ten past eight. Henry walked into his closet and sorted through a rack of clothes he'd never worn. He selected a Bijan outfit, with a matching shirt that had never even been out of the bag it came in.

Once he had realized that if he continually bought new clothes, he would never have to do laundry, life became a pleasure. God! Expense accounts were great!

He stood, adjusting his tie and combing his hair, which dramatically fell into the same place every time. He should get it trimmed, but just a tiny bit. He liked the overgrown look. It read, Henry felt, like a man who was too dedicated and busy to get a haircut. Of course, he had to pay his stylist one hundred bucks a visit to maintain this degree of sloppiness, but he looked so devoted on Page Six.

He rummaged through a box with eyeglasses in it. This was another affectation of which he was fond: the hardworking head of a magazine so staunch, his eyes were going on him. It added to the aura.

He chose a large pair with Calvin Klein frames. He couldn't remember who'd taught him the trick about plain glass in the frames. A lot of his memory seemed faulty these days. Even though he suspected it was his night-prowling schedule—a schedule he'd perfected at twenty-one and not changed even though he'd aged a decade—he preferred to think it was because he worked for a living.

He left his hair loose—it wouldn't do to have another picture of him with it pulled back, in case he ran into the press again—and stared at his reflection in the floor-to-ceiling mirror in the closet. This would be fine. And he could really let loose because, after all, this was Friday night.

*   *   *

Forty-five.

Forty-six.

Lisa squirmed and tried to concentrate on the count. The paper in her mouth was making her gag and the tape on her wrists was slightly pulling some hair on her arm, so it felt as if she was removing a Band-Aid horribly slowly. Her shoulders were all hunched up and pulled back by the chair. It was frighteningly uncomfortable.

Forty-seven.

Forty-eight. She continued counting in her head as she coughed on the towels.

*   *   *

“Okay, so we wait for him to come outta the building and we grab him, and, if we need to, we take him back to that office to do the paperwork, right?” Tony asked.

Michael nodded and they both looked up at the third-floor window of a large loft on Grand Street in SoHo.

Michael's stomach began to gurgle and Tony shot him a glance.

“I'm hungry.”

“You shoulda had some of my Ring-Dings.”

“Well, I didn't think we were going to be out all night,” Michael said, and they listened to his stomach gurgle again.

“I saw a deli around the corner on West Broadway,” Michael insisted.

Tony shook his head.

“I can't go all night without anything in my stomach.”

“All right already! So go get a sandwich. I'll grab the guy as he comes out.”

Michael opened the door and the bell-like door warning went off, sounding like a department-store sale.

“You have the picture of him from the office?”

Tony held up the fuzzy photo they'd ripped out of the newspaper after Michigan pointed it out to them.

“Good. I'll be back in a minute,” Michael said, and walked toward West Broadway.

“Eh, get me some Cheez Doodles?” Tony's voice echoed back to him.

*   *   *

Seventy-seven.

Seventy-eight.

Seventy-nine.

Lisa spit out the wad of paper towels in her mouth. She froze and looked at the door.… Oh God, she'd lost count!

She sat still for two minutes, shaking.

One.

Two.

Three.

This is ridiculous.

She stopped.

The fact of the matter was that Henry, thanks to her, was going to die tonight. All right. He was not a nice man. She certainly didn't merit the abuse she took from this spoiled, illiterate brat. But did he really deserve to die for it? Did any human being deserve to die for cutting off a sixty-four-year-old's pension? There was a snap, and she felt the tape holding her hands together break apart.

It was close but … no. No one deserved that, even if it was obvious that Mrs. Morelli was hardly the sweet little old lady Lisa'd thought she was. What could she do, though?

She put her hands up to her chin and rested her head on them. Her eyes focused on her right thumb and a chill went through her.

That was it. She was going to call the police.

She put her hand on the phone and Michael's words came into her head. They had the appointment book. Her fingerprints were all over it. They were going to tell them that she had organized this whole thing. Would they believe two thugs over her?