When the Sacred Ginmill Closes Read online

Page 22

 

  "All right. "

  "Get off, let me think, probably the best place is Ocean Avenue. Youll probably see a sign. "

  "Hang on," Skip said. "I think I got a map someplace, I saw it the other day. "

  He found a Hagstrom street map of the borough and the three of us gave it some study. Bobby Ruslander leaned in over Kasabians shoulder. Billie Keegan picked up a beer somebody had abandoned earlier and took a sip and made a face. We worked out a route, and Skip told John to take the map along with him.

  "I can never fold these things right," Kasabian said.

  Skip said, "Who cares how you fold the fucking thing?" He took the map away from his partner and began tearing it along some of its fold lines, handing a section some eight inches square to Kasabian and dropping the rest to the floor. "Heres Sheepshead Bay," he said. "You want to know where to get off the parkway, right? What do you need with all the rest of fucking Brooklyn?"

  "Jesus," Kasabian said.

  "Im sorry, Johnny. Im fuckin twitchy. Johnny, you got a weapon?"

  "I dont want anything. "

  Skip opened the desk drawer, put a blue-steel automatic pistol on top of the desk. "We keep it behind the bar," he told me, "case we want to blow our brains out when we count up the nights receipts. You dont want it, John?" Kasabian shook his head. "Matt?"

  "I dont think Ill need it. "

  "You dont want to carry it?"

  "Id just as soon not. "

  He hefted the gun, looked for a place to put it. It was a. 45 and it looked like the kind they issue to officers in the army. A big heavy gun, and what they called a forgiving one- its stopping power could compensate for poor aim, bringing a man down with a shoulder wound.

  "Weighs a fucking ton," Skip said. He worked it underneath the waistband of his jeans and frowned at the way it looked. He tugged his shirt free of his belt, let it hang out over the gun. It wasnt the sort of shirt you wear out of your pants and it looked all wrong. "Jesus," he complained, "where am I gonna put the thing?"

  "Youll work it out," Kasabian told him. "Meanwhile we ought to get going. Dont you think so, Matt?"

  I agreed with him. We went over it one more time while Keegan and Ruslander walked on ahead. They would drive to Sheepshead Bay and park across the street from the restaurant, but not directly across the street. They would wait there, motor off, lights out, and keep an eye on the place and on us when we arrived.

  "Dont try and do anything," I told him. "If you see anything suspicious, just observe it. Write down license numbers, anything like that. "

  "Should I try and follow them?"

  "How would you know who you were following?" He shrugged. "Play it by ear," I said. "Mostly just be around, keep an eye open. "

  "Got it. "

  After hed left Skip put an attach? case on top of the desk and popped the catches. Banded stacks of used currency filled the case. "Thats what fifty grand looks like," he said. "Doesnt look like much, does it?"

  "Just paper. "

  "It do anything for you, looking at it?"

  "Not really. "

  "Me either. " He put the. 45 on top of the bills, closed the case. It didnt fit right. He rearranged the bills to make a little nest for the gun and closed it again.

  "Just until we get in the car," he said. "I dont want to walk down the street like Gary Cooper in High Noon. " He tucked his shirt back into his pants. On the way to the car he said, "Youd think peopled be staring at me. Im dressed like a grease monkey and carrying a case like a banker. Fucking New Yorkers, I could wear a gorilla suit and nobodyd look twice. Remind me, soon as we get in the car, I want to take the gun out of the case. "

  "All right. "

  "Bad enough if they pull something and shoot us. Be worse if they used my gun to do it. "

  HIS car was garaged on Fifty-fifth Street. He tipped the attendant a buck and drove around the corner, pulled up in front of a hydrant. He opened the attach? case and removed the pistol and checked the clip, then put the gun on the seat between us, thought better of it and wedged it down into the space between the cushion and the seat back.

  The car was a Chevy Impala a couple of years old, long and low, loosely sprung. It was white, with a beige and white interior, and it looked as though it hadnt been through a car wash since it left Detroit. The ashtray overflowed with cigarette butts and the floor was deep in litter.

  "Cars like my life," he said as we caught a light at Tenth Avenue.

  "A comfortable mess. What do we do, take the same route we worked out for Kasabian?"

  "No. "

  "You know a better way?"

  "Not better, just different. Take the West Side Drive for now, but instead of the Belt well take local streets through Brooklyn. "

  "Be slower, wont it?"

  "Probably. Let them get there ahead of us. "

  "Whatever you say. Any particular reason?"

  "Might be easier this way to see if were being followed. "

  "You think we are?"

  "I dont see the point offhand, not when they know where were going. But theres no way to know whether were dealing with one man or an army. "

  "Thats a point. "

  "Take a right the next corner, pick up the Drive at Fifty-sixth Street. "

  "Got it. Matt? You want something?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "You want a pop? Check the glove box, there ought to be something there. "

  There was a pint of Black & White in the glove compartment. Actually it wouldnt have been a pint, it would have been a tenth. I remember the bottle, green glass, curved slightly like a hip flask to fit comfortably in a pocket.

  "I dont know about you," he said, "but Im kind of wired. I dont want to get sloppy, but it might not hurt to have something to take the edge off. "

  "Just a short one," I agreed, and opened the bottle.

  WE took the West Side Drive to Canal Street, crossed into Brooklyn via the Manhattan Bridge, and took Flatbush Avenue until it crossed Ocean Avenue. We kept catching red lights, and several times I noticed his gaze fixing on the glove box. But he didnt say anything, and we left the bottle of Black & White untouched after the one short pull each of us had taken earlier.

  He drove with his window rolled down all the way and his left elbow out the window, his fingertips resting on the roof, occasionally drumming the metal. Sometimes we made conversation and sometimes we rode along in silence.

  At one point he said, "Matt, I want to know who set this up. Its gotta be inside, dont you think? Somebody saw an opportunity and took it, somebody who took a look at the books and knew what he was looking at. Somebody who used to work for me, except how would they get back in? If I fired some asshole, some drunk bartender or spastic waitress, how do they wind up prancing into my office and waltzing out with my books? Can you figure that?"

  "Your office isnt that hard to get into, Skip. Anybody familiar with the layout could head for the bathroom and slip into your office without anybody paying any attention. "

  "I suppose. I suppose Im lucky they didnt piss in the top drawer while they were at it. " He drew a cigarette from the pack in his breast pocket, tapped it against the steering wheel. "I owe Johnny five grand," he said.

  "Hows that?"

  "The ransom. He came up with thirty and I put up twenty. His safe-deposit box was in better shape than mine. For all I know hes got another fifty tucked away, or maybe the thirty was enough to tap him. " He braked, letting a gypsy cab change lanes in front of us. "Look at that asshole," he said, without rancor. "Do people drive like that everywhere or is it just Brooklyn? I swear everybody starts driving funny the minute you cross the river. What was I talking about?"

  "The money Kasabian put up. "

  "Yeah. So hell cut a few bills extra per week until he makes up the five-grand difference. Matt, I had twenty thousand dollars in a bank vault and now its all packed up and ready for delivery, and in a few minutes I wont have it anymore, and its got no reality. Y
ou know what I mean?"

  "I think so. "

  "I dont mean its just paper. Its more than paper, if it was just paper people wouldnt go so nuts over it. But it wasnt real when it was locked up tight in the bank and it wont be real when its gone. I have to know whos doing this to me, Matt. "

  "Maybe well find out. "

  "I fucking have to know. I trust Kasabian, you know? This kind of business youre dead if you cant trust your partner. Two guys in the bar business watching each other all the time, theyre gonna go flat fucking nuts in six months. Never make it work, the placell have the kind of vibe a Bowery bum wouldnt tolerate. On top of which you could watch your partner twenty-three hours a day and he could steal you blind in the hour hes got open. Kasabian does the buying, for Christs sake. You know how deep you can stick it in when youre doing the buying for a joint?"

  "Whats your point, Skip?"

  "My point is theres a voice in my head saying maybe this is a nice way for Johnny to take twenty grand off me, and it doesnt make any sense, Matt. Hed have to split it with a partner, he has to put up a lot of his own cash to do it, and why would he pick this way to steal from me? All aside from the fact that I trust him, I got no reason not to trust him, hes always been straight with me and if he wanted to rip me off theres a thousand easier ways that pay better and Id never even know I was being taken. But I still get this voice, and I fuckin bet he gets it, too, because I caught him looking at me a little different earlier, and I probably been looking at him the same way, and who needs this shit? I mean this is worse than what its costing us. This is the kind of thing makes a joint close up overnight. "

  "I think thats Ocean Avenue coming up. "

  "Yeah? And to think weve only been driving for six days and six nights. I hang a left at Ocean?"

  "You want to turn right. "

  "You sure?"

  "Positive. "

  "Im always lost in Brooklyn," he said. "I swear this place was settled by the Ten Lost Tribes. They couldnt find their way back, they broke ground and built houses. Put in sewer lines, ran in electricity. All the comforts of home. "

  The restaurants on Emmons Avenue specialized in seafood. One of them, Lundys, was a great barn of a place where serious eaters would tuck themselves in at big tables for enormous shore dinners. The place we were headed for was two blocks away at a corner. Carlos Clam House was its name, and its red neon sign winked to show a clam opening and closing.

  Kasabian was parked on the other side of the street a few doors up from the restaurant. We pulled up alongside him. Bobby was in the front passenger seat. Billie Keegan sat alone in the back. Kasabian, of course, was behind the wheel. Bobby said, "Took you long enough. If theres anything going on, you cant see it from here. "

  Skip nodded. We drove a half-block farther and he parked next to a hydrant. "They dont tow you out here," he said. "Do they?"

  "I dont think so. "