O’Hara trotted over to the patrol car, and Benniggio got out of the Lincoln, calling, “Okay, Cal.”
Caliato went over to the Lincoln. “Watch over there that he doesn’t come out,” he said, and got into the back seat and shut the door. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the patrol car pull out onto Brower Road and turn left. He picked up the phone and said, “Caliato here.”
“One moment for Mr. Lozini, please.” It was a woman’s voice with a faint English accent. But that was all right, Lozini was an old man and a successful man, and if an old and successful man wanted to put on airs with English secretaries, that was his privilege. Maybe some day Caliato would want to spread himself the same way.
Not when he first took over, though. For the first year or so, a new leader should be humble, one of the troops, modest and mild. A patient man doesn’t show off until it’s time.
“Cal?” You couldn’t tell from Lozini’s voice that he was old, he sounded tough and strong. Which he was. “Something wrong there?”
“No. Something good.” He gave Lozini a quick summary of what had happened, finishing, “I figure we’ll stick around here till O’Hara and the other one get back. Then we go in, they make a legal pinch, and the guy tries to escape.”
“How much is in it?”
“I don’t know. It was an armored car he hit, it can’t be nickels and dimes.”
There was a little silence, and then Lozini said, “If you can’t do it quiet, you don’t do it.”
“Naturally.”
“The situation’s a little tricky right now, you know that. We got to keep our heads down.”
“I know,” Caliato said. “Believe me, I know what comes first. If it looks like there’s going to be trouble, I’ll come right the hell away from it.”
“Good man. You want any help down there?”
“Not for slices. It’s only one suitcase he carried in with him.”
“You can afford a C-note a man.”
“Sure.”
“I’ll send you three. Any preference?”
“Not Rigno, and not Taliamaze. Other than that, anybody you got free.”
Lozini chuckled. “You got a good head on your shoulders, Cal,” he said. “Give me a call when it’s over. If it ain’t too late, we’ll have dinner, you can tell me about it.”
Caliato knew how proud Lozini was of his cooking, though actually what he cooked was ordinary, neither terrible nor great. Still, the old man thought it was great, and it was an honor to be invited, so Caliato said, “In that case, I guarantee we’ll be done early. And I’ll work up an appetite.”
“You do that, Cal. I’ll send you some boys.”
Two
DUNSTAN WAS terrified. “Joe,” he said, “this is different, this isn’t the same thing at all.”
“It’s more dough,” O’Hara told him, “that’s what it is. Our piece alone will be more than that whole envelope Caliato gave me.” The siren was whining above their heads, O’Hara had both hands on the steering wheel, they were tearing after a fantasy down Brower Road.
Dunstan said, “Joe, we’ll have to kill him. Don’t you realize that?”
“Who said anything about kill? You don’t think he’ll give up when he sees he’s trapped?”
“Joe, we couldn’t bring him in. Don’t try and tell me dumb lies, I can think as good as the next man. We take his money away and bring him downtown and all he has to do is open his mouth once.”
O’Hara looked troubled, as though he didn’t want to hear what Dunstan was saying. “So we’ll work something out,” he said. “We don’t have to bring him downtown. We trade him, we take the suitcase and let him go.”
“We couldn’t take the chance, and you know it.” Dunstan shook his head, blinking at the roadway in front of them. “Besides, Caliato won’t let him go. He wouldn’t stand for it.”
“Caliato isn’t running us,” O’Hara said angrily.
Dunstan looked at him, but he had sense enough not to tell O’Hara the truth. O’Hara had to know it anyway, just as much as Dunstan did. Caliato ran O’Hara exactly the way O’Hara ran Dunstan, which had nothing to do with seniority in grade or time on the force or age or anything else. It was pecking order, that’s all, pure pecking order. O’Hara was dominant over Duns tan, and they both knew it. And Caliato was dominant over O’Hara, and they both knew it.
In point of fact, O’Hara did have age and seniority on the force over Dunstan. Dunstan was twenty-seven years old, four years on the force. The Army had made him an MP during his three-year enlistment — they’d trained him in the field of his choice, as a refrigeration engineer, but after tech school they’d made him an MP — and when none of the other jobs he’d gotten after the Army had worked out, he’d just naturally drifted into the police force. He didn’t expect to be commissioner ever, he didn’t expect even to be a precinct captain at any time in his future. All he expected was a quiet life on the force, fairly decent pay with under-the-counter bonuses, and no trouble.
This armored-car robber struck Dunstan as trouble, huge threatening trouble. Being in on the grease that lubricated the day-to-day affairs of the police department was pleasant, and since nearly a quarter of the force was in on it to some extent or other — including a lot of higher-ups — it wasn’t really dangerous, Dunstan had no objections there. But this armored-car robber, that was something else again.
He tried once more. “I’ve never killed anybody in my life, Joe,” he said. “I couldn’t just shoot a man down like that. Make him surrender, and then just shoot him down. Christ, Joe, I don’t think you could do a thing like that either.”
