Caliato listened. “Close,” he said. “Coming this way.”
“We better blow,” Benniggio said.
Caliato could hear the nervousness in Benniggio’s voice. He’s supposed to protect me, he thought, but he didn’t say anything. Not in front of the cops.
O’Hara was showing nervousness, too, standing there looking at the envelope in his hand as though wishing there was a drawer handy to shove it in. “If it’s for us — ” he started.
Caliato was impatient when he met nervousness, because it was never the right response to anything. “It isn’t for us,” he said. “If it was for us, they’d come with sneakers on. It’s for that bird just went into Fun Island. Get on your beeper and see what’s up.”
“Right,” O’Hara said, and ran around to get into his patrol car. The other cop, Dunstan, went along with him. Caliato noticed O’Hara stashed the envelope in the glove compartment before getting on the radio.
The siren went by, very close. Going along Abelard Road. It went on a ways farther, and then stopped. When it stopped, more sirens could be heard, coming this way.
Benniggio said, “I don’t like this, Cal.”
“I don’t like you wetting your pants in front of cops,” Caliato told him. “Get hold of yourself.”
“I’m the one that’s heeled,” Benniggio said. He thumped his chest. “You know what happens if I get picked up with this thing?”
“A boy like you, without a record? They’ll slap your wrist. That’s why you’re along, you can afford to carry heat. I can’t. Just hold tight, Benny, nothing’s happened yet.”
Caliato walked out in front of the toll building and looked down to the right, where the guy with the suitcase had come from. There was a car lying on its side against the fence down there by the intersection. Nobody moving around it.
He heard the patrol-car door open, and he walked back as O’Hara stepped out of the car. O’Hara looked excited. He said, “A bunch knocked over an armored car! Right over by the ball park. That must be one of them.”
“Their car didn’t make the corner,” Caliato said. “It’s tipped over down there. You didn’t report him, did you?”
“Not yet.”
“Tell them you saw him,” Caliato said. “Tell them you saw him get out of the wrecked car and commandeer another. He took off down Brower Road here, and you lost him.”
O’Hara didn’t get it. “How come?”
Caliato said, “What do you think he had in that suitcase, dirty laundry?”
O’Hara looked startled. “Son of a bitch,” he said.
“Move,” Caliato told him.
O’Hara moved. People always did move when Caliato told them to, he had a natural talent for leadership. He was thirty-eight years old, and he knew for a certainty he’d be running this city before he was fifty. Lozini was top man now, but he was getting old, and already he deferred to Caliato on some issue. Caliato still had to handle the payoffs, that had to be done personally by an executive, but within a couple of years he’d be too important for this kind of thing. And when he moved up, he knew Lozini would go along with whoever Caliato recommended as his own replacement.
In the meantime, he was patient. He’d learned early that the one thing a man with leadership qualities has to look out for is making the current leaders nervous. Leaders don’t like to be nervous, they don’t like to be around a guy who looks like he’s in a hurry to take over. More than one guy with perfectly good leadership potential had had an unexpectedly short career because he’d forgotten not to make the current top men nervous. It was a mistake Caliato never made. He was patient, he was truly patient. He was in no hurry to get to where he knew he was going, and the men above him — especially Lozini — saw that quality of patience in him and were therefore not made nervous.
Now, as O’Hara sat in the patrol car talking again into his microphone, Caliato said, “Benny, get me Lozini on the phone.”
“Sure, Gal,” Benniggio said. He was young and excitable, but he was basically all right. He’d season. He went over to the Lincoln, got into the back seat, and began to dial the telephone there.
O’Hara came over from the patrol car, looking unhappy. “They want us to give chase,” he said.
“So give chase.”
“What about him?” O’Hara nodded his head toward the entrance to Fun Island.
“He’ll keep,” Caliato said. “He can’t get out of there, you know that.”
“You won’t go in after him without us?” O’Hara was worried about his piece of pie, that was obvious.
“I wouldn’t take a step in there without law,” Caliato told him. “That uniform of yours can save us a lot of aggravation.”
“We get off at six,” O’Hara said.
“We’ll be here.”
O’Hara still hesitated, glancing worriedly over at the amusement park, then shrugged and said, “If there’s any hangup, I’ll phone you.”
“Sure. You better get on the stick.”
“Right.”
