Slayground p-13 Read online

  He sat there and thought about things for about five minutes, until O’Hara finally slowed the patrol car and switched off the siren, saying, “That’s far enough. We just lost him.” He glanced at Dunstan. “You want to call in sick?”

  Dunstan reluctantly shook his head. “I’m in it,” he said. “I guess I have to stay in it.”

  “Good man,” O’Hara said, and Dunstan had the strange feeling O’Hara was relieved, as though he’d been troubled at the thought of going on with it without Dunstan. The impression had to be wrong, but for a few seconds Dunstan was baffled by it, as though a door had suddenly opened in an invisible wall of the world, giving him a quick glimpse of an entirely different world on the other side. Different colors, different shapes, different everything. The impression faded almost immediately, like a ghost on a television screen, and left Dunstan only vaguely uneasy. He assumed he felt that way because of the decision he’d just made.

  O’Hara pulled the patrol car off the road and came to a stop. He called in, announcing their position and saying they’d lost the bandit in his second car, he must have turned off somewhere along the way. They were told to hold on there a minute, and during the wait O’Hara told Dunstan, “You can’t say for sure how this thing is going to work. Maybe there’ll be a nice simple way to handle it without anybody getting hurt.”

  “How?” Dunstan asked.

  “How do I know?” O’Hara was impatient and irritable. “How do I know till we get there and we’re actually in the situation? It’s possible, that’s all, it’s just possible things will work out. You don’t always have to take if for granted the worst is going to happen.”

  The dispatcher came back on and told them to go join a roadblock being set up over on Western Avenue. Then he said, “You want me to notify anybody?”

  O’Hara said, “Of what?”

  “You boys are due to get off at six.”

  Dunstan looked up.

  O’Hara said, “So what?” Guarded, as though already knowing what was coming.

  “It ain’t gonna happen,” the dispatcher said. “Not unless somebody grabs that guy by then. The way it looks, you boys can look forward to a long night. You want me to notify anybody?”

  “God damn ill”

  “I agree,” the dispatcher said. “Anybody I should call?”

  “No!” O’Hara said angrily, and slammed the microphone back into its clamp. He glared at Dunstan, saying, “What the hell are you grinning about?”

  “Me? I’m not grinning.”

  But he had been. He’d been grinning because all of a sudden a possible way out had appeared. He and O’Hara would be stuck on roadblock duty all night long, they wouldn’t ever get back to Caliato. If Caliato did anything, it would be on his own hook, Dunstan and O’Hara would have no part of it. The robber might even get away, given enough time.

  But he managed to make a troubled face, for O’Hara’s benefit. “Maybe I was grinning about the way you got mad at Floyd,” he said. “He doesn’t know what it’s all about.”

  “It’s nothing to grin over,” O’Hara said angrily, and slammed the car into gear and made a U-turn in the teeth of oncoming traffic.

  Dunstan didn’t grin any more.

  Three

  CALIATO SAID, “You got your keys?”

  “Sure,” Benniggio said. “What’s up?”

  Caliato poked a thumb at the tollbooth building beside them. “See can you get us in there,” he said. “Without breaking any doors down.”

  “A snap,” Benniggio said, and walked away, his left hand shoving his overcoat tail out of the way so he could dig down into his trouser pocket.

  Caliato stood by the front bumper of the Lincoln, looking across the road at the entrance to Fun Island. He knew what the yegg inside was doing now, he was making his way around the fence, he was looking for another way out. He didn’t know yet, that guy over there, what Caliato knew, that there was no other way out. He was in a sack, that guy, all wrapped up in a sack and ready to be gathered in.

  The reason Caliato knew about the winter arrangements at Fun Island was that several years ago he’d spent some time working there, in,the office. Sort of liaison with Lozini.

  Lozini had summed it up one time, when he’d grinned and said, “If it’s got neon on it, we own a piece of it.” Meaning by “we” not just himself, but the whole loose-knit group that ran this town and of whom Lozini was at the moment leader. Of whom some day Caliato would be the leader.

  And what Lozini had said that time was basically true. Bars, restaurants, vending machines, movie houses, almost everything in town; if it was big enough, a piece of it belonged to the boys. And that definitely meant Fun Island, a place that was tied in with the boys a hundred different ways. The vending machines, the liquor licenses in the restaurants, the linen service and garbage collection, the strippers in the Voodoo Island theater, and the printing of tickets and maps and souvenir programs — up and down and crossways, it all connected with the same group of boys.

  So Fun Island was an old stamping ground for Caliato. He knew the place well, from the administrative side. And he knew that in the wintertime there was only one way to get into Fun Island and only one way to get out again, and he was looking at it. The artist running around in there now didn’t know it yet, but he was on ice. Just waiting to be picked up.

  Benniggio came back, swaggering a little. “It’s open,” he said. “Nothing to it.”

  “Good. Go roll down the car windows on this side, and then come in.”

  Benniggio looked a little confused, but all he said was, “Sure, Cal.” That was all he was supposed to say.

  Caliato went over to the open door and up the step and inside into a square office with pale yellow walls and old wooden desks and round green wastebaskets. The toll windows were covered with shutters on both sides of the room, but in the middle on the road side was a small window through which the gates of Fun Island could be seen. Caliato went over to the window and stood there looking out, his hands in his overcoat pockets, until Benniggio came in. Then, without turning his head, he said, “Shut the door. Open the shutters over there so we can see our car.”

  “Sure, Cal.”

  Caliato watched the Fun Island gates and listened to Benniggio moving around behind him. When he heard that Benniggio was done, he said, “Come here and watch the gates. You can sit on the edge of the desk here.”

  “Okay.”

  Caliato stepped away from the window, and Benniggio took his place. It was just as cold in here as it was outside, and they were both keeping their overcoats buttoned. Benniggio’s bunched around his waist when he sat on the edge of the desk. He pushed his hands into his overcoat pockets and looked uncomfortable but willing.

  Caliato sat in a swivel chair at another desk, near the now-open toll window on the left. Cold air came through the opening in the glass where people were supposed to shove their money in. Just outside was the Lincoln, the windows on this side rolled down. Caliato sat there and lit a cigar and waited. A patient man, in everything.

  Benniggio, not looking around from the window, said, “Cal?”

  “Mm?”

  “How come we’re in here? How come we don’t sit in the car? We could turn the heater on, we could be comfortable.”

  Caliato took the cigar from his mouth and considered the back of Benniggio’s head. Being a patient man in all things, he didn’t mind explaining himself when there was nothing else going on. “Around the corner, Benny,” he said, “are a million cops. If they’re not all there yet, they soon will be. Some of them might go past here, their minds all excited about the armored-car robbery. And there they see two guys sitting in a parked car out in the middle of nowhere, just sitting there, no apparent reason for it. Right around the corner from a big armored-car robbery.”

  “Oh, yeah,” said Benniggio. “Yeah, I see that.”

  “They might wonder how come we’re here,” Caliato said. “They might stop and ask us. And they might not be any
of our own.”

  “Yeah, I got it,” Benniggio said, and glanced around at Caliato to say, “I don’t have that kind of mind, you know? I don’t think about things like that.”

  “Keep your eye on the gate.”

  “Sure.” Benniggio looked out the window again. “And I rolled the car windows down so we could hear the phone if it rings.”

  “That’s right.”

  Benniggio nodded, still facing the window. “Now everything’s set up,” he said. “All set.”

  “All set,” Caliato agreed.

  Four

  TONY CHAKA sat in front of the television set and watched cartoons. He liked cartoons, they were his favorite kind of television, they were the reason he’d sprung for a color set. Rose thought he’d sprung for the color set on account of her, to be a nice thing for her, and he let her go on thinking that, it didn’t hurt her to think that, but the fact of the matter was that he bought the color set so he could see the cartoons in color.

  When the phone rang beside his left elbow he frowned and squinted at the set, as though it had just gotten more difficult to see. He always squinted like that when there was a danger he was going to be forced away from the set during the cartoons, and now as the phone went on ringing he scrunched his whole face up, squinting so tight he could hardly see Bugs Bunny at all. He hunched his shoulders, too, and moved his left arm in close to his body, moving it as far as possible from the telephone.

  Rose came into the room, finally, and gave him a look but didn’t say anything. They’d had it out a long time ago, about who was going to answer the phone when he was watching television, and now she could give him all the looks she wanted, but she wouldn’t say anything and she would answer the phone. It was probably for her anyway, it always was. Her mother, or one of her sisters, or one of her friends from the sodality, some gabby broad or another. At which point Rose would cup her hand around the mouthpiece of the phone, so as not to disturb him, and would say, “I’ll call you back.” Right. When the cartoons were done.

  She went around the sofa now behind him and picked up the phone and said a low-voiced hello into it and then said, “Hold on a second.”

  Chaka frowned twice as hard, glaring at the screen from under his eyebrows as though nothing else in the world existed.

  Rose leaned down close to him, still talking low as though not to disturb him, and held the phone to her breast as she said, “Tony, it’s Mr. Lozini.”

  The frown and the squint disappeared. Looking startled, he turned and snatched for the phone, saying, “Turn the sound down! Move it, will ya?”

  She moved it, though still making looks, and when the sound was off and Bugs Bunny ran through a bowl of silence Chaka put the phone to his ear and gently said, “Mr. Lozini?”

  A woman’s voice with a faint English accent said, “One moment for Mr. Lozini, please.”

  “Sure,” he said. Rose had given him one last look and was walking heavy-footed back to the kitchen again. Chaka sat on the sofa, phone to his ear, and watched Bugs Bunny run. He’d seen this cartoon before, plenty of times before, so he didn’t really need the sound to follow the story.

  “Tony?”

  “Yes, Mr. Lozini!” Chaka sat up straighter and took his eyes away from the screen.

  “You busy this afternoon, Tony?”

  “No, sir. Everything quiet.”

  “Care to make a hundred dollars?”

  “You know me, Mr. Lozini.”

  “It’s a simple matter. Caliato is in charge.”

  “Oh, sure. Okay.”

  “He’ll tell you what it’s all about.”

  “Okay, Mr. Lozini.”

  “Bring two more of the boys with you. Anybody who’s free. There’ll be a hundred in it for each of them, too.”

  Chaka started names flipping through his head. “Will do,” he said.

  “Not Rigno,” Lozini told him. “And not Taliamaze. But anyone else.”

  Chaka nodded at the phone. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll pick two good boys.” On the screen, a talking-doll commercial was on, pointless without sound. But Chaka had seen the commercial before, too, he could almost have said the copy along with the pictures on the screen.

  Lozini was saying, “You know where the Fun Island parking lot is? Right across from the main gate.”

  “Sure, Mr. Lozini.”

  “That’s where you’ll find Cal. Get there as soon as you can.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  They both hung up, and Chaka went over to turn off the television set. He stood there thinking for a minute, and then went back and made two phone calls, one to Mike Abadandi and the other to Artie Pulsone. Both were free, and he told them he’d be right by to pick them up.

  He went to the kitchen next and said, “I got to go out for a while. On business.”

  Rose looked around at him. “You’ll be home for dinner?”

  “I’ll call you. If I can.”

  She shrugged. “Okay.”

  He went back through the house to the front hall and opened the closet door there. He put on his black-and-white-checked hunting jacket and his brown-billed cap. Leaning against the back wall was his rifle, a lever-action .30-30 carbine, a weapon he was proud of. Thirty-eight inches and six and a half pounds, adjustable open rear sight, tapered post front sight, seven-shot capacity, a good reliable weapon. He had a Firearms International .22-caliber automatic in his jacket pocket, but should he take the rifle, too? Maybe he should have asked Mr. Lozini what was the situation, except he was always tongue-tied on those rare occasions when Mr. Lozini himself called, and besides, if Mr. Lozini had wanted to tell him the situation he would have told him.

  So he’d take the rifle. Be on the safe side, take it along in the car.

  There was an old pink blanket on the shelf, small and tattered. He took it down and wrapped the rifle in it, disguising it slightly, and carried it out to his car, a pale green Dodge station wagon. He put it on the back seat, got behind the wheel, and backed out the driveway to the street. Then he drove away to pick up Mike and Artie.

  Five

  CALIATO’S CIGAR was nearly done. The perfect round lengths of gray-white ash lay like tiny barrels in the glass ashtray on the desk, and the whole room was full now of the warm aroma of cigar smoke. Caliato carefully eased another length of ash from the tip, put the cigar back in his mouth, and glanced out the side tollbooth window again.

  Three police cars had gone by in the last fifteen minutes, two out Brower Road in the direction O’Hara and Dunstan had taken and one back this way, toward Abelard Road. None of the cops had so much as glanced at the Lincoln parked beside the building here.

  Benniggio was still perched on the edge of the other desk, looking out the window at the gates across the way. He’d been there over half an hour now. At first he’d tried to keep a conversation going, but Caliato hadn’t felt much like talking, and it couldn’t have been easy for Benniggio anyway, having to talk to somebody while keeping his back turned, so for the last quarter-hour they’d waited in silence.

  Nothing had happened across the way yet, but that was only natural. It would take the guy in there a while to find out what kind of a box he was in. Would he then try to get out again? That would be the easiest, from Caliato’s point of view. Wait till he’d tossed his suitcase back over the gate and was climbing over after it. Then step outside and pot him. Pick up the suitcase, get into the car, drive away. Leave the body there. If it ever was connected to the robbery, it would just be a fourth man, not the one O’Hara and Dunstan had reported getting away with the swag.

  But Caliato doubted it would happen that way. It depended on how much of an amateur he was, that guy over there, and Caliato had the feeling he hadn’t been an amateur for a long time. If he was a pro, that guy, he wouldn’t try to leave the park at all. He’d find a cozy place in there to hole up for a day or two until the outside world cooled, and then be out and on his way.

  Was there any food in there now? Maybe in the kitch
ens of the restaurants, some staples, some canned stuff. Not much, though, if anything. The guy probably had a two-day limit before he’d have to come out.

  Not that he’d be around for two days.

  He wondered if the guy was pro enough to walk out when O’Hara called him. That was Caliato’s plan, to have O’Hara and Dunstan make themselves plain in their police uniforms, have them call to the guy to surrender himself. They had a loud-hailer in their patrol car, they could make themselves heard wherever he was hiding in the park.

  A pro would come out. There hadn’t been any killings, just the robbery. A pro would know enough to come out and take a prison sentence rather than stay holed up and have to be shot.

  But you could never be sure. The guy might panic, having his robbery go haywire might make him act stupid and unprofessional. Or he might be wanted for murder somewhere else, it might be pointless for him to give himself up. Which was why Caliato had said yes to Lozini’s offer of three men. He could spare three hundred dollars to have three men in reserve, just in case O’Hara and Dunstan failed.

  Motion made him look out of his side window, and a pale green Dodge station wagon was just arriving. It stopped out in the street, and then backed around and in beside the Lincoln, where O’Hara’s patrol car had been. Caliato watched, wondering who Lozini had sent him, and looked at the three bulky men who got out of the car.

  Tony Chaka. Good. Mike Abadandi. Fair. Artie Pulsone. Good.

  Caliato said, “Open the door, Benny, we’ve got company.”

  Benniggio started as though he’d been asleep. “Oh! Right.” He got up from the desk and stretched, groaning, then shook his shoulders inside his overcoat and rubbed the back of his neck.

  “Let me put one of them to work on the window here, okay?”

  “Naturally,” Caliato said.

  Benniggio went over and opened the door and they trooped in, their breath steaming. Chaka came first, Pulsone second, Abadandi third. “Hi, Benny,” Chaka said. “Hello, Mr. Caliato.”

  Caliato nodded hello. He waited till Benniggio had shut the door again and then said, “Did Lozini tell you the story?”