routine, wasn’t going to play.
His voice boomed hollowly: “You know what I’m talkin’ about, Heller—I’m talkin’ about you picking up my castoffs…. You gonna go through my garbage, too? See if there’s any sandwiches I didn’t fucking finish?”
Still washing up, I turned my head and said, “She’s not garbage, Rocky. She’s a nice kid. She’s still a nice kid, even after your beatings.”
More echoing footsteps—he was within arm’s reach of me, now. The close-set eyes under the black slashes of eyebrow were fixed on me like twin revolver barrels.
He grinned—a grin as terrible as he was. “Maybe you don’t know it yet, Heller—but that ‘nice kid’ is a goddamn ad—a fuckin’ jabber!”
He meant an addict who used a hypo.
I soaped my hands, a regular Lady Macbeth. “Rocky, you’re the one who turned her into a junkie. I’m the one who’s gonna help her.” I shot him another sideways glance. “I’m asking you as a friend, Rock—back off. She’s not your property, anymore.”
The black-slash eyebrows leapt up his forehead; his lip peeled back over white store-bought teeth. “Her ass will always be mine, you dumb fuck! All I gotta do is snap my fingers…” He snapped them. “…and she’ll come crawlin’ on her hands and knees, beggin’ for—”
I didn’t know whether he was going to say dope, or make some filthy sexual reference, but I didn’t care to hear it, in either case.
Which is why I threw a handful of soapy water in his wide-open eyes.
His hands came up to his face, like I’d splashed him with acid, not harmless sudsy water, and I swung a hard right (wet) hand into his balls.
His yowl of pain echoed as he folded up and went down, and now he was the one on the floor, crawling. While he was still helpless, I frisked him, found no firearms, and then I leaned over and hit him in the face—in the right eye, in his burning eye.
And then I slugged him in his other eye, his burning left. Two shiners for one seemed a fair exchange to me. Finally rage fueled him—and perhaps the stinging in his eyes abated— enough for him to rise up off the floor and come at me.
But I’d had plenty of time to get my nine millimeter out. He hadn’t seen me pull it, but he saw the gun now, and he froze— hands clawed before him, a werewolf in a tuxedo.
That was the tableau Charley Fischetti witnessed when he came in the John, looking for his brother, no doubt.
“No, Heller,” Charley said, approaching tentatively, hands up and out, sending a nonthreatening message. He too was in a tux, his dyed-blond hair combed perfectly back. His elevator shoes clip-clopped, echoing. “Don’t do it— let him go.”
I cocked the automatic; the click echoed, too, like another footstep.
“Doesn’t he know who he’s dealing with?” Rocky asked his brother, flabbergasted, astounded, frustrated by my actions. Then to me: “Don’t you fucking
I smiled at him, but my gun hand was trembling—just a little. “You’re a tough man, Rock. A killer. I’d be impressed, only I killed more Japs in one afternoon than your goombah career total.”
Rocco was trembling, too—whether with fear or rage or both, I couldn’t say. At the same time, he seemed coiled to spring; and part of me welcomed that.
Charley stood next to us—had he moved forward two steps, he’d have been between us. “Come on, Heller— back off…. Rocky, back off…back off!” Charley swallowed, eyes flicking from me to his brother and back again. “I know what this is about—it’s that girl, isn’t it? That goddamn girl….”
“Her ass is mine!” Rocco snarled.
I backhanded the son of a bitch.
He couldn’t believe it. Rocco just stood there with his red eyes and touched the red in the corner of his mouth and couldn’t believe it.
“You touch her again, you come near her again,” I told him, “I will kill you so fucking slow you’ll be begging me to finish you. I’ll shoot your toes off and let you bleed to death out your fuckin’ feet.”
Rocco didn’t know what to say. The skunk-haired gangster looked afraid; it did not seem to be a state he was terribly familiar with. People were, after all, supposed to be afraid of him.
“Rocky,” Charley said, gently, “you put the girl out on the street with her bags—you sent her away. If Nate wants to take up with her, that’s his business.”
Rocco looked at Charley in amazement, searching his brother’s face for some sign that these were just words meant to fool me. If he found that, I didn’t sense it.
Charley turned my way, his voice gentle, reasonable. “Nate— can Rocky go now? Could you and I speak, alone, for a few moments—just the two of us?”
I shrugged. “Sure. Rock, did you need to use the facilities before you leave? Maybe you want to throw some water on your face.”
Rocco’s upper lip curled back, like a Doberman about to growl—or attack.
“Go, Rock,” Charley said, and he took his brother’s arm and tugged him away from where he’d stood facing me. “Go sit at the table and enjoy Frankie and stay away from our friend, Mr. Heller here…and stay away from the girl.”
Rocco swallowed, nodded, and hurried out.
