just sitting there, one or two of them always with a cigarette going, sitting there in the dark like soldiers in a troopship waiting to land on some island somewhere. Waiting to land on Fun Island. When?
Caliato’s stomach rumbled. Around eight he’d sent Chaka out for pizza and coffee for everybody, and the smell of it was still in the air now, mixing with the stale smell of Caliato’s old cigars and the new smell of cigarette smoke and the faint smell of five heavy human beings wrapped up in thick clothing and stuck together in a small cold room with little ventilation for three hours. The smells all together were not terrible, but they were unpleasant. And the pizza and coffee weren’t sitting right in Caliato’s stomach. And above all, they were still here and waiting.
O’Hara had called again at quarter to nine, and that time Caliato had talked to him himself, but O’Hara hadn’t known when he’d get free. He’d sounded enraged and impatient and on the verge of foolishness, all of which had helped to cool Caliato’s own growing restlessness, reassert his belief in patience, but that booster shot, too, was fading now. He’d been sitting too long in one place, in the cold, with the same clothing on, eating bad pizza, drinking bad coffee, smoking too much, getting the first rumbling twinges of heartburn. Patience was one thing, self-torture was another. Could he offer up the discomfort of waiting to commit a crime for the souls in Purgatory? You could offer up your own discomforts, lop a day or two off some poor bastard’s sentence, but would this kind of discomfort count? He almost grinned to think about it, think about putting the question to his mother, a very religious woman. The thought made him feel good for a second, humorous, and that seemed to relieve a little of the tightness across his shoulders and the uncomfortable feeling in his stomach.
But it was getting late. Aside from anything else, aside from any question of personal comfort, there was the question of the watchman, due at ten o’clock. He’d wanted to get this thing done and out of the way before that watchman showed up, but if O’Hara didn’t get here within the next few minutes, it wasn’t going to happen. And then what?
Abruptly he got to his feet, his movement causing a stirring among the others, a shifting of position as they all roused from half-dozing to look at his dim form in the darkness.
If only they could have a light, that would help a lot. Sitting in the dark wasn’t good for a man, not for the most patient of men even. But they couldn’t risk a light, there was still movement of cops in the neighborhood. When Chaka had come back with the pizza he’d said the armored car was still down there on Abelard Road, lying on its side. The cops had a mobile power truck there, they had big lights shining on everything like a night game in the ball park across the way. There were cops and cop cars all over the place down there.
So they couldn’t take a chance on a light in this building here, and that was just one more element to add to the discomfort, to turn the screw just a little tighter.
Caliato picked his way carefully in the darkness toward the door, touching here a desk, there a shoulder, moving slowly.
Benniggio, his voice surprisingly close and loud in the darkness, said, “Anything you want me to do?”
“Just keep your eye on the gate,” Caliato told him, though they all knew by now that the guy wasn’t coming out. Not tonight anyway.
Caliato opened the door. “I’ll be right back,” he said, and went out, shutting the door behind him.
He looked across at Fun Island. Once or twice they’d seemed to see faint lights in there, and hear sounds like summertime’s music, but they hadn’t been sure, and in any case it had all stopped by now.
What was the guy doing over there? Sitting holed up in a corner someplace? Caliato wondered if he had any suspicion over there what was happening, what was going to happen. He’d seen them, of course, just as they’d seen him. Would he figure it out? Would he even question it?
They’d know that once they got inside. If they ever did.
Caliato walked around the building to the Lincoln, got into the back seat, and opened the phone compartment. He dialed Lozini’s home number, and waited.
It was Lozini’s daughter who answered in the evenings. Caliato identified himself, and a minute later Lozini came on to say, pleasantly, “I’m sorry, you’re too late for dinner.”
“We still haven’t moved,” Caliato told him. “We’re still waiting for our cops.” He told about O’Hara and Dunstan having to work overtime.
“That’s a pity,” Lozini said. “So you’re just waiting there?”
“So far.”
“You wouldn’t want to do anything without the police,” Lozini cautioned him. “We wouldn’t want this to get noisy, Cal.”
“I know that. The only question is, the night watchman.”
“What’s that?”
“They’ve got a night watchman comes on at ten o’clock at the park,” Caliato said. “What do we do when he gets here?” I “I’m afraid you’ll have to give it up, Gal.”
“That still leaves us with a problem,” Caliato said.
“I don’t see it,” Lozini said.
“Our two cops, they reported the guy got into another car and took off, and they chased him and lost him. So what happens if the night watchman at Fun Island finds him? Or even if he kills the watchman and takes off, but it later on gets out that he was the one did the killing? What if the official law finds out any way at all that their bird is in Fun Island and two of their cops lied about it?”
“Complicated,” Lozini said.
“Sure complicated. O’Hara and Dunstan get called in. One or the other of them breaks down, you can count on that. Then we’ve got trouble all the way around.”
“I don’t like this, Cal,” Lozini said. “When it was going to be a simple matter, I agreed to it. It isn’t like you to let things get complicated.”
“This got out of hand,” Caliato said. “I’ve got an idea.”
“I thought you would,” Lozini said. He might have been chuckling.
