“I was thinking of the nineteenth century,” Kitteredge said as he walked out the door.
20
The light came on over the confessional booth and Joey politely waved an old lady in front of him. She smiled and tottered over to confess her sins.
Joey smiled back. He didn’t give a shit about the old lady, but he was trying to maneuver the situation so that he could get the priest in the other booth. Joey liked to confess to Mexican priests who didn’t understand a single word he was saying. This Catholic thing was the best deal in the world if you worked it right.
The other booth opened up and Joey hustled over. He knelt down, the window slid open, and he fought the urge to order a double cheeseburger, fries, and a large diet soda. Instead, he mumbled, “Bless me, father, for I have sinned. It has been one day since my last confession.”
He went on to relate the usual litany of fraud, larceny, extortion, blackmail, and fornication, got sentenced to three Hail Marys and a Sincere Act of Contrition, went out and did them, then met Harold at the back of the church.
“If I died right now, Harold,” he boasted, “I’d go straight to heaven.”
Joey was always trying to get Harold to go to confession but insisted that he do it in another jurisdiction, like Guatemala or someplace like that. He didn’t fully trust Harold to confess his own sins and keep him out of it, and the nuns had never been really clear-despite Joey’s constant questions-on what happened if someone dropped a dime on you instead of you doing it yourself.
“God send you a long life, boss,” Harold said.
Joey wasn’t entirely happy that his bodyguard seemed to be leaving this matter to God, but he had other things on his mind. “Have you located that one-armed midget yet?”
“Get this, Joey. Yesterday, it’s like he drops off the face of the earth. This morning, he’s sitting out on the River Walk eating breakfast like he doesn’t have a care in the world.”
“I’ll give him a care,” Joey said as he got into the car.
This worried Harold.
“Joey,” he said, sliding into the driver’s seat, “you remember Carmine said you were supposed to keep a low profile here. I don’t think he’d like you trashing some guy on the River Walk on a Sunday morning.”
“I’m just gonna talk to him.”
This didn’t do much to soothe Harold. He’d been present at one of Joey’s conversations, when his boss smacked the listener in the face with a tire iron and then peed into the guy’s shattered mouth. True, that conversation had been in the back of a warehouse, but Harold had also tried to restrain Joey the night he’d made the late Sammy Black take his clothes off, stroll through a shocked crowd of theatergoers on Times Square, and recite, “I will never hold back on Joey Foglio. I will never hold back on Joey Foglio.” Both those evenings had started off by Joey saying that he just wanted to talk.
Harold thought he owed it to Joey to try again, because Carmine “The Banker” Bascaglia wasn’t going to put up with this kind of shit. The reason Don Carmine was called “The Banker” instead of “The Butcher,” even though the latter sounded better, was because he was all business. He had warned Joey in no uncertain terms that he was there to make money, not headlines.
So Harold said, “Joey, you know this is going to end in an ass kicking. I’m just saying, let me do it. I’ll get the guy under a bridge, then give him a couple of shots. You can stand on the bridge and watch.”
Joey thought this over. In normal times, he’d make the smart-mouth son of a bitch beg to die, but these weren’t normal times. Despite going to confession, Joey had an anxiety. Some smart bastard had sandbagged Overtime last night-which meant they were on to Gloria-and the assassin was highly pissed off. It had taken an hour to settle him down, and even then it meant causing some trouble in New York. Too bad about Gloria, but she had it coming.
He needed something to make him feel better.
“How about it, huh, Joey?” Harold was saying.
“Okay,” Joey said, “but you have to throw him in the river.”
“Aw, Joey!”
“If you won’t, I will,” Joey warned.
“Come on, Joey.”
“In the river.”
Rip off his fake arm, throw him in the river, and don’t give him back the arm until he repeats “Mr. Foglio, Mr. Foglio” a hundred times.
Harold saw that Joey’s imagination was slipping into high gear, so he said, “Okay. I’ll throw him in the river.”
Satisfied, Joey Beans went back to worrying what the hell was going on in Nevada.
Joe Graham was wondering the same thing as he finished his breakfast at an outdoor table on the River Walk.
The whole Polly Paget operation had been undertaken in haste and executed in ignorance. Friends should never have taken Polly over until they had thoroughly scouted the opposition. And Eddie and Kitteredge blowing a safe house was beyond explanation. And it wasn’t even our safe house-it was Neal’s. The kid finally finds a home and we blow it up on him.
We’re getting sloppy, Graham thought. We have some success and start to think we’re better than we are.
He leaned back and let the morning sun hit his face. He glanced over to his right at a footbridge to see whether the goon was still there. He was. Graham wondered what the hell was keeping Joey Beans.
The room-service guy must have fingered me, Graham thought, because Joey’s goon picked me up at the hotel and followed me down here. Maybe the waiter was getting back at me for taking silverware. And I’ve been sitting here like a signpost for an hour and a half. If Joey Beans wants me, he’s taking his sweet time. Maybe he’s too smart. I hope not.
Graham opened his newspaper to the sports section and was disappointed to find that there was very little interest in the New York Giants in San Antonio. This was to be expected, however, from a city where the food squirts at you.
Foglio’s head goon, Harold, walked onto the bridge.
Don’t go away, Graham thought. It’s time to play. He set his newspaper down, signed the credit-card slip, got up, and walked south toward the bridge. He looked up, pretended to see them for the first time, then tentatively kept walking.
Let’s see what you want me to do, Graham thought. If you want me to walk south, you’ll let me pass the base of the bridge and fall in behind me. If you want me to head north, you’ll block my path and let me turn around. If you want my ugly Irish butt now, you’ll meet me at the base of the bridge.
Graham watched as Harold slipped down to the base of the bridge and let himself be seen in the middle of the sidewalk. So he “spotted” Harold, turned around, and started to walk north.
This means that Joey Beans is in front of me somewhere, thought Graham. If they just wanted to give me a beating, both of them would be coming. But they’re taking this seriously, and Harold is herding me toward his boss, because mob guys never do anything alone, so it’s going to be Harold and Joey. And it’s going to be a beating, not a killing, because even Joey Beans isn’t crazy enough to do a hit in downtown San Antonio on a Sunday morning. So this is good.
Joe Graham had assigned himself the task of cooling out Joey Beans.
He’d made a point of scouting the River Walk a few dozen times, so he was getting to know it pretty well. About three blocks north, the river made a big bend under the Convent Street Bridge. So the north side of Convent would be the place to do it. Graham figured he had nothing to worry about until Convent Street.
Graham looked back over his shoulder at Harold, then picked up his pace to let the bodyguard think he was doing the chasing. Harold matched his pace, which made Graham think he was right about Joey being up ahead somewhere, because Harold wasn’t trying to shorten the gap, just stay even.
