“I agree,” the dispatcher said. “Anybody I should call?”
“No!” O’Hara said angrily, and slammed the microphone back into its clamp. He glared at Dunstan, saying, “What the hell are you grinning about?”
“Me? I’m not grinning.”
But he had been. He’d been grinning because all of a sudden a possible way out had appeared. He and O’Hara would be stuck on roadblock duty all night long, they wouldn’t ever get back to Caliato. If Caliato did anything, it would be on his own hook, Dunstan and O’Hara would have no part of it. The robber might even get away, given enough time.
But he managed to make a troubled face, for O’Hara’s benefit. “Maybe I was grinning about the way you got mad at Floyd,” he said. “He doesn’t know what it’s all about.”
“It’s nothing to grin over,” O’Hara said angrily, and slammed the car into gear and made a U-turn in the teeth of oncoming traffic.
Dunstan didn’t grin any more.
Three
CALIATO SAID, “You got your keys?”
“Sure,” Benniggio said. “What’s up?”
Caliato poked a thumb at the tollbooth building beside them. “See can you get us in there,” he said. “Without breaking any doors down.”
“A snap,” Benniggio said, and walked away, his left hand shoving his overcoat tail out of the way so he could dig down into his trouser pocket.
Caliato stood by the front bumper of the Lincoln, looking across the road at the entrance to Fun Island. He knew what the yegg inside was doing now, he was making his way around the fence, he was looking for another way out. He didn’t know yet, that guy over there, what Caliato knew, that there was no other way out. He was in a sack, that guy, all wrapped up in a sack and ready to be gathered in.
The reason Caliato knew about the winter arrangements at Fun Island was that several years ago he’d spent some time working there, in,the office. Sort of liaison with Lozini.
Lozini had summed it up one time, when he’d grinned and said, “If it’s got neon on it, we own a piece of it.” Meaning by “we” not just himself, but the whole loose-knit group that ran this town and of whom Lozini was at the moment leader. Of whom some day Caliato would be the leader.
And what Lozini had said that time was basically true. Bars, restaurants, vending machines, movie houses, almost everything in town; if it was big enough, a piece of it belonged to the boys. And that definitely meant Fun Island, a place that was tied in with the boys a hundred different ways. The vending machines, the liquor licenses in the restaurants, the linen service and garbage collection, the strippers in the Voodoo Island theater, and the printing of tickets and maps and souvenir programs — up and down and crossways, it all connected with the same group of boys.
So Fun Island was an old stamping ground for Caliato. He knew the place well, from the administrative side. And he knew that in the wintertime there was only one way to get into Fun Island and only one way to get out again, and he was looking at it. The artist running around in there now didn’t know it yet, but he was on ice. Just waiting to be picked up.
Benniggio came back, swaggering a little. “It’s open,” he said. “Nothing to it.”
“Good. Go roll down the car windows on this side, and then come in.”
Benniggio looked a little confused, but all he said was, “Sure, Cal.” That was all he was supposed to say.
Caliato went over to the open door and up the step and inside into a square office with pale yellow walls and old wooden desks and round green wastebaskets. The toll windows were covered with shutters on both sides of the room, but in the middle on the road side was a small window through which the gates of Fun Island could be seen. Caliato went over to the window and stood there looking out, his hands in his overcoat pockets, until Benniggio came in. Then, without turning his head, he said, “Shut the door. Open the shutters over there so we can see our car.”
“Sure, Cal.”
Caliato watched the Fun Island gates and listened to Benniggio moving around behind him. When he heard that Benniggio was done, he said, “Come here and watch the gates. You can sit on the edge of the desk here.”
“Okay.”
Caliato stepped away from the window, and Benniggio took his place. It was just as cold in here as it was outside, and they were both keeping their overcoats buttoned. Benniggio’s bunched around his waist when he sat on the edge of the desk. He pushed his hands into his overcoat pockets and looked uncomfortable but willing.
Caliato sat in a swivel chair at another desk, near the now-open toll window on the left. Cold air came through the opening in the glass where people were supposed to shove their money in. Just outside was the Lincoln, the windows on this side rolled down. Caliato sat there and lit a cigar and waited. A patient man, in everything.
Benniggio, not looking around from the window, said, “Cal?”
“Mm?”
“How come we’re in here? How come we don’t sit in the car? We could turn the heater on, we could be comfortable.”
Caliato took the cigar from his mouth and considered the back of Benniggio’s head. Being a patient man in all things, he didn’t mind explaining himself when there was nothing else going on. “Around the corner, Benny,” he said, “are a million cops. If they’re not all there yet, they soon will be. Some of them might go past here, their minds all excited about the armored-car robbery. And there they see two guys sitting in a parked car out in the middle of nowhere, just sitting there, no apparent reason for it. Right around the corner from a big armored-car robbery.”
“Oh, yeah,” said Benniggio. “Yeah, I see that.”
