“They might wonder how come we’re here,” Caliato said. “They might stop and ask us. And they might not be any of our own.”
“Yeah, I got it,” Benniggio said, and glanced around at Caliato to say, “I don’t have that kind of mind, you know? I don’t think about things like that.”
“Keep your eye on the gate.”
“Sure.” Benniggio looked out the window again. “And I rolled the car windows down so we could hear the phone if it rings.”
“That’s right.”
Benniggio nodded, still facing the window. “Now everything’s set up,” he said. “All set.”
“All set,” Caliato agreed.
Four
TONY CHAKA sat in front of the television set and watched cartoons. He liked cartoons, they were his favorite kind of television, they were the reason he’d sprung for a color set. Rose thought he’d sprung for the color set on account of her, to be a nice thing for her, and he let her go on thinking that, it didn’t hurt her to think that, but the fact of the matter was that he bought the color set so he could see the cartoons in color.
When the phone rang beside his left elbow he frowned and squinted at the set, as though it had just gotten more difficult to see. He always squinted like that when there was a danger he was going to be forced away from the set during the cartoons, and now as the phone went on ringing he scrunched his whole face up, squinting so tight he could hardly see Bugs Bunny at all. He hunched his shoulders, too, and moved his left arm in close to his body, moving it as far as possible from the telephone.
Rose came into the room, finally, and gave him a look but didn’t say anything. They’d had it out a long time ago, about who was going to answer the phone when he was watching television, and now she could give him all the looks she wanted, but she wouldn’t say anything and she would answer the phone. It was probably for her anyway, it always was. Her mother, or one of her sisters, or one of her friends from the sodality, some gabby broad or another. At which point Rose would cup her hand around the mouthpiece of the phone, so as not to disturb him, and would say, “I’ll call you back.” Right. When the cartoons were done.
She went around the sofa now behind him and picked up the phone and said a low-voiced hello into it and then said, “Hold on a second.”
Chaka frowned twice as hard, glaring at the screen from under his eyebrows as though nothing else in the world existed.
Rose leaned down close to him, still talking low as though not to disturb him, and held the phone to her breast as she said, “Tony, it’s Mr. Lozini.”
The frown and the squint disappeared. Looking startled, he turned and snatched for the phone, saying, “Turn the sound down! Move it, will ya?”
She moved it, though still making looks, and when the sound was off and Bugs Bunny ran through a bowl of silence Chaka put the phone to his ear and gently said, “Mr. Lozini?”
A woman’s voice with a faint English accent said, “One moment for Mr. Lozini, please.”
“Sure,” he said. Rose had given him one last look and was walking heavy-footed back to the kitchen again. Chaka sat on the sofa, phone to his ear, and watched Bugs Bunny run. He’d seen this cartoon before, plenty of times before, so he didn’t really need the sound to follow the story.
“Tony?”
“Yes, Mr. Lozini!” Chaka sat up straighter and took his eyes away from the screen.
“You busy this afternoon, Tony?”
“No, sir. Everything quiet.”
“Care to make a hundred dollars?”
“You know me, Mr. Lozini.”
“It’s a simple matter. Caliato is in charge.”
“Oh, sure. Okay.”
“He’ll tell you what it’s all about.”
“Okay, Mr. Lozini.”
“Bring two more of the boys with you. Anybody who’s free. There’ll be a hundred in it for each of them, too.”
Chaka started names flipping through his head. “Will do,” he said.
“Not Rigno,” Lozini told him. “And not Taliamaze. But anyone else.”
Chaka nodded at the phone. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll pick two good boys.” On the screen, a talking-doll commercial was on, pointless without sound. But Chaka had seen the commercial before, too, he could almost have said the copy along with the pictures on the screen.
Lozini was saying, “You know where the Fun Island parking lot is? Right across from the main gate.”
“Sure, Mr. Lozini.”
“That’s where you’ll find Cal. Get there as soon as you can.”
“Yes, sir.”
They both hung up, and Chaka went over to turn off the television set. He stood there thinking for a minute,
