Slayground p-13 Page 6

“No, sir, Mr. Caliato, he said you’d fill us in.”

  Caliato said, “Benny, get on the window again for a minute.”

  Benniggio raised his eyes to heaven, but grinned to show it was just a gag. He went back over to the window, but this time didn’t sit down. He stood there with one forearm on the window sill and looked out.

  Caliato said, “There was an armored-car robbery this afternoon.”

  “Yeah,” said Chaka. “We heard about it on the car radio.” The other two nodded.

  Caliato was interested. He said, “Do they know how much?”

  “Seventy-three grand, they said.”

  Benniggio glanced around, then looked out the window again.

  Caliato didn’t show anything. He said, “There’s a guy across the way in the park with some of the dough. I don’t know how much. We’re supposed to take it away from him and give it to Mr. Lozini.”

  They all looked willing, but not enlightened.

  “He hid out in there when their car tipped over,” Caliato said. “We know he’s in there, we know he can’t get out anywhere except that gate. We’ve got two cops working with us, as soon as they get off duty they’ll come back here and see can they take him the quiet way. If they can’t, we go in there and find him.”

  Pulsone said, “We keep him alive?”

  “No.”

  They all nodded. Abadandi said, “Any chance of us getting sticky fingers, Mr. Caliato?”

  Caliato shook his head. “No. The money goes to Mr. Lozini. You’ll get your hundred each out of the bag when we get it, and the rest goes to Mr. Lozini.”

  Benniggio glanced around again, and looked again out the window.

  Caliato understood the principles of leadership, and one of them was never to let your troops know the full disparity between what they were getting and what you were getting. So long as Chaka and Pulsone and Abadandi thought everybody present was working on salary, they’d be happy with their C-note. But if they found out they were only getting a hundred bucks each while some of the others present were sharing the seventy-three-thousand-dollar pot among themselves, they’d be unhappy. And unhappy troops don’t function well. So Caliato told them a little white lie, and they would stay happy.

  Now Caliato said, “Abadandi, take Benny’s place at the window for a while. Watch for anything happening over at the gate. You other two sit down, take it easy. And if any cops wander by, don’t show yourselves in the windows.”

  They all organized themselves, Benniggio stretching and grunting again as he came away from the window, then sitting on a folding chair in a corner, his feet sticking out.

  Caliato reluctantly put out his cigar, the butt as neat and compact as when he’d first lit up. He smoked patiently, too, clean and patient and with full enjoyment. Full enjoyment came from taking your time, always taking your time.

  Time. Twenty after four. O’Hara and Dunstan should be back in less than two hours, a little after six. Around him, the others were beginning to talk together, low-voiced conversation, mostly about professional football. Abadandi was perched where Benniggio had been, watching the gate across the way. Everything was ready.

  Caliato put his hands in his overcoat pockets and sat back in the swivel chair to wait.

  Six

  AT QUARTER to six Benniggio was ahead fifty-seven bucks. He’d opened his overcoat and settled into the game, almost forgetting what they were really here for. Poker called to him in a voice louder than almost anything in the world. Except Caliato’s voice, of course, that was louder to Benniggio even than poker.

  Benniggio was a young guy, but he understood things, and one of the things he understood was that he was an also-ran. He was going to be an also-ran all his life, he was never going to be on top of the heap, and by Alfred Benniggio that was just fine. At the top was the gravy, true enough, but at the top also were the decisions, the responsibilities and the cold winds. And the danger, the trouble, the problems of taking care of all the Benniggios down below. In a lot of ways, an also-ran was a very nice thing to be.

  If, that, is you picked the right guy to run behind. Nobody exists without being connected to other people somewhere along the line, and if you made a mistake and connected yourself to a guy who was going to come to a bad end, then maybe you would come to a bad end too. But that wasn’t going to happen to Benniggio, no, sir. He had tied himself to a fellow named Caliato, and he’d never had a moment’s doubt or a moment’s regret. Caliato was safe, and he was going to be important, and his buddy Benniggio was going to be one step behind him all the way.

  “Benny.”

  Benniggio looked up at his master’s voice. He’d just been dealt the beginning of a seven-card stud hand — seven of diamonds and nine of spades down, queen of clubs up — and he turned away from it, saying, “Yeah?”

  “The phone’s ringing,” Caliato told him.

  Benniggio looked blank. There was a phone on the other desk, not the one where he and Tony Chaka and Mike Abadandi and Artie Pulsone were playing poker, but it wasn’t ringing. Benniggio couldn’t hear it ringing. He said, “The phone?”

  “In the car,” Caliato said. He was over at the desk nearest the tollbooth window so he would be able to hear it. The others were at the desk where they could look out through the front window and see the Fun Island gates across the way.

  “Oh,” Benniggio said, and got to his feet. “Fold me,” he said to the others — he would have said that even if the down cards had also been queens — and went outside and around to the Lincoln.

  It was funny to hear a phone ringing in an automobile, Benniggio never got used to it. Feeling Caliato’s presence just the other side of the window behind him, he got into the back seat of the Lincoln now, opened the compartment, and took out the phone. “Hello?”

  “Caliato?” The voice sounded in a hurry.

  “Who’s calling?”

  “Is this Caliato?”

  “Mr. Caliato would like to know who’s calling,” Benny said.

  There was a little hesitation, and then the voice said, reluctantly, “Tell him Mr. O’Hara.”

  “Oh! Why didn’t you say so! This is Benny.”

  “I wasn’t sure who you were,” O’Hara said.

  “Hold on a second.”

  Benniggio cupped a hand over the phone’s mouthpiece and leaned out the open window to call to Caliato, “It’s O’Hara.”

  There was clear glass in the tollbooth window, with a long opening at the bottom. Benniggio saw Caliato nod and heard him say, “Ask him what he wants.” The glass made his voice sound far away.

  Benniggio nodded, and leaned back in, and said into the phone, “Cal wants to know what you want.”

  “I’m hung up here,” O’Hara said angrily. “They’ve got us on a roadblock. Tell him I don’t know when the hell we can get away from here, I just got away for a minute, I told them I had to go to the John.”

  “Hold on.”

  Benniggio cupped the phone again, leaned out again, and called, “He ain’t getting off at six. They got him on a roadblock.”

  “Ask him when he’s getting off.”

  “He says he don’t know.”

  Caliato frowned. Benniggio, watching him, felt colder in the car than he’d been inside the building, though there was no reason for it, the building wasn’t heated. Or maybe the presence of five people in there had warmed it up. Anyway, he wished now he’d buttoned his overcoat again before coming out.

  Caliato said, finally, “Tell him there’s a watchman comes on at ten. Tell him he’s straight, it’d be better if we could get this done with before he gets here.”

  “Right.” Benniggio put the phone to his ear again and repeated Caliato’s message.

  “Damn it,” O’Hara said. “I’ll try to get off. I’ll do what I can.”

  “Okay.”

  “Tell Caliato — ” A little silence. “Tell him he shouldn’t go in without us.”

  “He knows that,” Benniggio said.

  “Ye
ah. All right. Tell him I’ll call again later on when I find out for sure what’s happening.”

  “I’ll do that,” Benniggio said, and hung up, and got out of the car. He glanced across at Fun Island, and there was nothing happening there, no movement, nothing. There hadn’t been, not since they’d seen the guy go in.

  It would be a funny thing if the guy was gone. If they were all waiting around out here to charge in and gobble him up, and he was gone already, out some other hole, like a mouse getting away from a cat.

  Except that Cal had said there wasn’t any other way out, and Cal never said things he wasn’t sure about. He never did. So the guy was still in there. And he’d keep.

  Benniggio walked back into the building and shut the door behind him. Leaning against the wall near the door was Tony Chaka’s rifle, its pink blanket sagging down around it, showing a bit of the stock. When he’d mentioned it, a while ago, Cal had made him go get it out of the car. Just in case cops did get nosy, just in case any of them came by and took a look inside the two cars parked there, it would be a good idea not to have a rifle wrapped in a blanket lying on the back seat. It would be a good idea not to call attention to themselves, just in case. Which was Cal being careful again, careful and thorough, doing the kind of thing Benniggio admired him for.

  Caliato looked across at him as he came in now, and said, “Anything else?”

  “Naw, that was it. He’ll call again if he finds out anything.” Benniggio grinned. “He’s really worried we’ll go in without him,” he said.

  Caliato frowned at him and gave a tiny headshake. Benniggio understood at once that he’d done something wrong, and felt very nervous, but he didn’t know what it was. He stood there blinking.

  Caliato made a small head movement at the three guys sitting around with Tony Chaka’s playing cards in their hands, and Benniggio suddenly realized what he’d done. Those guys weren’t supposed to know that anybody was in this on shares.

  Benniggio made a small nod of his own, to show he understood, and a sheepish little smile to show he was sorry and hoped there were no hard feelings. Caliato nodded back, but didn’t smile, and turned his head to look out the window, Mike Abadandi, shuffling the cards, said, “You in now! Benny?”

  “Naturally,” Benniggio said, very hearty and loud. He went over and sat down in his place. “When am I not in?”

  Seven

  NINE-THIRTY. Caliato took another cigar out of his jacket pocket, then paused, considered, turned the rocket-shaped metal container in his hand, and finally put it back again in his pocket. He’d already smoked three cigars, his mouth was tasting brackish from the last one, it would just be a waste to light up another. He wouldn’t enjoy it. He’d be smoking it just to kill time, and that was a wasteful thing to do to a good cigar. Almost criminal.

  But Christ, it was slow. By six-thirty it had been too dark in here for the others to see their cards, and they’d had to quit the poker game and find some other way to occupy their minds. They’d talked together, Abadandi and Pulsone in particular were storytellers by nature, Abadandi with recountals of seductions and near-seductions in his own past and Pulsone a teller of movie plots and third-hand war anecdotes, but as it had gotten darker and darker, to the point where they couldn’t see each other’s faces any more, the talk had died down, and now they were all just sitting there, one or two of them always with a cigarette going, sitting there in the dark like soldiers in a troopship waiting to land on some island somewhere. Waiting to land on Fun Island. When?

  Caliato’s stomach rumbled. Around eight he’d sent Chaka out for pizza and coffee for everybody, and the smell of it was still in the air now, mixing with the stale smell of Caliato’s old cigars and the new smell of cigarette smoke and the faint smell of five heavy human beings wrapped up in thick clothing and stuck together in a small cold room with little ventilation for three hours. The smells all together were not terrible, but they were unpleasant. And the pizza and coffee weren’t sitting right in Caliato’s stomach. And above all, they were still here and waiting.

  O’Hara had called again at quarter to nine, and that time Caliato had talked to him himself, but O’Hara hadn’t known when he’d get free. He’d sounded enraged and impatient and on the verge of foolishness, all of which had helped to cool Caliato’s own growing restlessness, reassert his belief in patience, but that booster shot, too, was fading now. He’d been sitting too long in one place, in the cold, with the same clothing on, eating bad pizza, drinking bad coffee, smoking too much, getting the first rumbling twinges of heartburn. Patience was one thing, self-torture was another. Could he offer up the discomfort of waiting to commit a crime for the souls in Purgatory? You could offer up your own discomforts, lop a day or two off some poor bastard’s sentence, but would this kind of discomfort count? He almost grinned to think about it, think about putting the question to his mother, a very religious woman. The thought made him feel good for a second, humorous, and that seemed to relieve a little of the tightness across his shoulders and the uncomfortable feeling in his stomach.

  But it was getting late. Aside from anything else, aside from any question of personal comfort, there was the question of the watchman, due at ten o’clock. He’d wanted to get this thing done and out of the way before that watchman showed up, but if O’Hara didn’t get here within the next few minutes, it wasn’t going to happen. And then what?

  Abruptly he got to his feet, his movement causing a stirring among the others, a shifting of position as they all roused from half-dozing to look at his dim form in the darkness.

  If only they could have a light, that would help a lot. Sitting in the dark wasn’t good for a man, not for the most patient of men even. But they couldn’t risk a light, there was still movement of cops in the neighborhood. When Chaka had come back with the pizza he’d said the armored car was still down there on Abelard Road, lying on its side. The cops had a mobile power truck there, they had big lights shining on everything like a night game in the ball park across the way. There were cops and cop cars all over the place down there.

  So they couldn’t take a chance on a light in this building here, and that was just one more element to add to the discomfort, to turn the screw just a little tighter.

  Caliato picked his way carefully in the darkness toward the door, touching here a desk, there a shoulder, moving slowly.

  Benniggio, his voice surprisingly close and loud in the darkness, said, “Anything you want me to do?”

  “Just keep your eye on the gate,” Caliato told him, though they all knew by now that the guy wasn’t coming out. Not tonight anyway.

  Caliato opened the door. “I’ll be right back,” he said, and went out, shutting the door behind him.

  He looked across at Fun Island. Once or twice they’d seemed to see faint lights in there, and hear sounds like summertime’s music, but they hadn’t been sure, and in any case it had all stopped by now.

  What was the guy doing over there? Sitting holed up in a corner someplace? Caliato wondered if he had any suspicion over there what was happening, what was going to happen. He’d seen them, of course, just as they’d seen him. Would he figure it out? Would he even question it?

  They’d know that once they got inside. If they ever did.

  Caliato walked around the building to the Lincoln, got into the back seat, and opened the phone compartment. He dialed Lozini’s home number, and waited.

  It was Lozini’s daughter who answered in the evenings. Caliato identified himself, and a minute later Lozini came on to say, pleasantly, “I’m sorry, you’re too late for dinner.”

  “We still haven’t moved,” Caliato told him. “We’re still waiting for our cops.” He told about O’Hara and Dunstan having to work overtime.

  “That’s a pity,” Lozini said. “So you’re just waiting there?”

  “So far.”

  “You wouldn’t want to do anything without the police,” Lozini cautioned him. “We wouldn’t want this to get noisy, Cal.”

>   “I know that. The only question is, the night watchman.”

  “What’s that?”

  “They’ve got a night watchman comes on at ten o’clock at the park,” Caliato said. “What do we do when he gets here?” I “I’m afraid you’ll have to give it up, Gal.”

  “That still leaves us with a problem,” Caliato said.

  “I don’t see it,” Lozini said.

  “Our two cops, they reported the guy got into another car and took off, and they chased him and lost him. So what happens if the night watchman at Fun Island finds him? Or even if he kills the watchman and takes off, but it later on gets out that he was the one did the killing? What if the official law finds out any way at all that their bird is in Fun Island and two of their cops lied about it?”

  “Complicated,” Lozini said.

  “Sure complicated. O’Hara and Dunstan get called in. One or the other of them breaks down, you can count on that. Then we’ve got trouble all the way around.”

  “I don’t like this, Cal,” Lozini said. “When it was going to be a simple matter, I agreed to it. It isn’t like you to let things get complicated.”

  “This got out of hand,” Caliato said. “I’ve got an idea.”

  “I thought you would,” Lozini said. He might have been chuckling.

  “When the watchman gets here,” Caliato said, “we take him. We don’t let him see our faces, and we don’t hurt him. We just tie him up and put him on ice someplace where he won’t see or hear anything that goes on. Then when our cops get here, we run it the way we planned, clean up afterwards, and let the watchman go again. He calls the cops, they look around, they don’t find anything, they never figure out what happened or why.”

  “That sounds risky, Cal,” Lozini said carefully.

  “I think it’s less risky than letting it go,” Caliato said. “But that’s up to you, of course. If you say pull out, I’ll pull out.”

  There was silence on the line. The clear cold air outside was doing wonders for Caliato’s mouth and nose and stomach. That, and having a plan at last, a deadline at last. No more just waiting and waiting. If Lozini said yes, they would be waiting for a specific moment in time. Ten o’clock, no later.