mean… John Wayne.”
They’re both nuts, Joey thought. I’m the only sane guy here.
“I knew John Wayne,” he said, wrapping a big arm around Jack’s shoulder, “back on… Iwo Jima. We was in a foxhole together, surrounded by the enemy. I’m telling you, Jack, Mexicans everywhere. And the Duke said to me, ‘Big Joe, sometimes a man just has to stand up and be a man and do the right thing. Like a man.’ Do you understand, Jack? Do you hear what I’m trying to say to you?”
Jack ducked out from under Foglio’s arm and said, “You want me to eat a shit sandwich and smile.”
“That’s it,” Joey said, relieved he could now get to church.
He was very careful crossing the street.
Kneeling in the pew, Charles Whiting felt as if he was in another country. Most of the worshipers were Hispanic women with their heads covered in black veils, and the painted statues of saints in various stages of martyred agony, their sad eyes shedding tears and blood dripping from their hands, gave the church a foreign atmosphere.
Whiting thought that he would probably be consigned to an eternity in hell just for being in this church, never mind for the horrible sin he hoped to commit soon.
And the entire idea of confession made him uncomfortable, not only for the obvious blasphemy but also because-were he indeed a Catholic-he had so much he would have to confess.
His feelings for Mrs. Landis weighed heavily on his soul. He thought about the betrayal of his wife and nine children and then about the wisdom of the old Mormon elders, who knew that monogamy was not natural for men.
He thought about his admiration for Candy Landis, her commitment to family values, the way she spoke of morality and ethics, the way her golden hair touched the soft skin on her neck, how it would look falling back on a satin pillow as she opened her arms, and he wished that Foglio would hurry up and get into the damn church. He wanted to get this over with.
An old woman came out of the confessional booth he was watching. He crossed himself in imitation of the veiled ladies, slid down the pew, parted the curtain of the confessional, and knelt.
“Bless me, father, for I have sinned,” he recited, knowing that his Mormon ancestors were spinning in their graves. Reaching into his pocket, he found the tiny microphone with the little suction cup.
“It has been… uh… ten years… since my last confession,” Chuck said, promising himself that he would never, ever do another undercover job as long as he lived. Why didn’t the priest say something? “Uh… it’s been so long because… I’ve been in a coma.”
The priest mumbled something incomprehensible.
Chuck attached the suction cup to the underside of a piece of molding, then pressed it to make sure it stuck.
He thought he heard the priest say something about sin.
“I… I’m in love… with a woman who’s not my wife,” Chuck confessed, because he felt he had to say something.
Then it all came tumbling out, how he had come to work for the woman and her husband, how the husband cheated on her, how he had come to see a softer side of her, how…
The priest kept trying to interrupt with some mumbo jumbo, but Charles kept spewing guilt about how he had constant carnal images of the woman that he couldn’t suppress and how he wished that her husband would die and his own wife would run off with a Gentile and then he could persuade the woman to convert and stuff, until he ran out of breath and the priest said something that sounded like “Hentile?”
Charles felt better as he went to the old truck parked around the corner.
“Does it work?” he asked Culver.
Culver took off his headset and asked, “You’ve got a boner for Candy Landis?”
Evidently it works, Chuck thought.
Joey Foglio went back to the car with a shiny new soul and a fresh resolve to take more advantage of Jack Landis’s crumbling empire. He had ridden Jack about as far as he could. It was time to change horses.
“Did you arrange a clean phone?” he asked Harold.
“Joey, don’t you think-” Harold started.
“No, I don’t think,” Joey said without a trace of irony. “Carmine’s been acting like a banker so long, he thinks he is one. That’s the crucial difference between him and me. I know who I am. I’m a criminal. I commit crimes.”
The crucial difference, Harold thought, is that Carmine has several hundred soldiers to do his bidding and you have several.
“Carmine isn’t going to like you messing around in the middle of a deal,” Harold said.
“He’s the one who’s messing,” Joey said.
“You’ll still make money.”
“I don’t want to make money,” Joey answered. “If I wanted to make money, I’d sell insurance. I want to take money. That’s who I am. It’s the me of me.”
Harold took him to a phone booth on Flores Street and handed him the phone number in Rhode Island.
“What is this phone?” Joey asked.
“Another phone booth.”
“Clean?”
“Guy promises it is,” Harold assured him, aware of Joey’s paranoia about wiretaps.
The guy answered on the third ring.
“Hello?” Joey said.
“Hello,” Hathaway answered. “Why am I talking to you?”
“Because you like to make money,” Joey answered. “Because you’re tired of working like a donkey and giving the money to Marc Merolla.”
He outlined his proposal to Hathaway.
Hathaway was definitely interested when he heard the profit margins. Joey let him drool over the potential riches for a minute before he said, “There’s a problem, though.”
“What’s that?”
“That broad that says she was raped?” Joey said. “I was paying her to shag Jack.”
There was a long silence, so long that Joey was afraid he had blown the deal.
“Jesus,” Hathaway said. “You, too?”
24
Are you really afraid of these people?” Karen demanded as Neal packed.
“Do you mean really in the sense of actually, or really in the sense of very?” Neal asked.
Karen looked annoyed.
“First one, then the other,” she said.
“Okay. I am actually very afraid of these people,” he answered. “Really.”
She sat down on the bed.
“I thought they only killed their own,” she said.
“Did you tell that to the guy in the ski mask?” he asked.
“No,” she answered. “I hit him with a bat.”
He turned from his packing.
“You’re saying we should-”
Polly came into the room.
“You guys should see this,” she said.
“What?” Neal asked.
“Jack!”
They followed her back into her room, where Candy sat transfixed, watching Jack standing all by himself,
