“I’ve never tried anything that way,” the first one said. “I always do it gentle, you know? Reassure everybody they’re not gonna get hurt, take it easy, don’t worry about anything, we’re professionals, we’re not out to spill any blood, all that stuff. Get their first names, talk to them easy and calm.”
“Sure,” the second one said. “I’ve done it that way too. But sometimes this is nice. Come in mean and loud and half-crazy. Then all they want to do is reassure you.”
The two men laughed, and the men sitting with their backs together on the floor looked over their shoulders at one another in anger and humiliation and rue.
Out at Best’s Jewelry, it turned out someone had thrown a brick through the plate-glass window, but didn’t seem to have taken anything. Two police radio cars had arrived by the time the Vigilant car got there. The store’s owner had been informed and was on his way over. The Vigilant guards, according to company policy, waited for his arrival, to demonstrate to him that they were on the job.
Philly Webb parked the anonymous Buick a block from the Vigilant building, walked the block, and knocked on the garage door in the side wall. It slid upward, and Handy McKay, hood off, grinned at him and motioned him to come in. “Only two guys,” he said. “Fred’s upstairs with them.”
“I do kind of like this,” Webb said. “Parker does come up with them, doesn’t he?” He and Handy had worked together in the past, ten or more years ago, but this was the first time they’d both been together on the same score with Parker.
“I was saving my comeback for him,” Handy said. “There’s some cards in the next room.”
Out at Best’s Jewelry, the Vigilant guards touched their visors in salute to the customer, got back into the Polara, and headed home. The driver took it slow and easy now, with the blue light turned off, and chose to head down London Avenue even though it was a block or so out of the way.
It was a quiet night, moonless and dark. London Avenue was deserted except for two guys drooling over the pictures outside one of the dirty-movie houses. “They’re on line kind of early, ain’t they?” one of the guards said, and they all laughed.
“Twelve o’clock,” Elkins said. “But wait for that car to go by.”
At Vigilant headquarters, Philly Webb and Handy McKay were playing draw poker with a pinochle deck. “Royal flush,” Handy said.
Webb, with a little smirk, spread out his hand. “Five aces.”
“Damn it.” Handy tossed his hand in with true annoyance. “The cards are dead,” he said.
From upstairs came a buzzing sound. Looking up, Webb said, “There goes the movie house.”
Upstairs, Ducasse stood frowning at the wall display with its flashing light and droning buzzer. He called to one of the guards in the corner, “How do I turn that off?”
“Fuck you,” said the guard. They were both upset at learning that Ducasse and Handy weren’t crazy men, after all.
Ducasse went over and kicked the guard on the shin. “Don’t talk dirty,” he said. “How do I turn that thing off?”
The guard, wincing with pain, tried to outstare a man with a hood over his face, but when Ducasse drew his foot back again he said, “There’s a switch on that desk. Turn it off and then back on again.”
“Good,” said Ducasse.
Downstairs, Webb and Handy played cards until they heard the garage door lifting. Then they pulled their hoods down over their faces and stood to either side of the dayroom door, their pistols held down at their sides.
The guards came in talking together, taking it easy, and all four were in the room before they saw the strangers. It suddenly got very quiet, and Handy, doing it his way, said, “Okay, gents, just take it easy. We don’t want any guns going off.”
* * *
There were no slot machines. The image they tried for at Tony Florio’s Riviera was discreet class, but not so discreet that the mugs wouldn’t recognize it. James Bond elegance, that was the approach. The mugs, seeing maroon-velvet draperies, assumed it was elegant. The mugs, seeing slot machines and equating slot machines with pinball machines in truck-stop diners, assumed it was cheap. So there were no slot machines.
But there was a lot of maroon velvet. Dalesia and Hurley and Mackey followed the waiter upstairs and through maroon-velvet drapes into the main gaming room, a long low-ceilinged room lined with heavy draperies. All that cloth, plus the thick green carpeting, muffled noises in the room until the place sounded like a stereo system with the bass control up full.
“The cashier to your right, gentlemen,” the waiter said, bowing slightly, smiling and gesturing. “And good luck to you.”
“Good luck to you, too,” Hurley said.
The waiter went away, and the three men took a minute to look over the room. There were six crap tables, only three of them in action. Two roulette wheels, both operating. On the far side of the room, card games at several green-baize tables. The players were about two-thirds men, and most of the women seemed to be married to the men they were with. It looked to be a professional-class crowd, lawyers, doctors, businessmen, managers, with most of the men in jacket and tie. Very few of the customers appeared to be under thirty-five, and those few mostly emulated their elders in dress, deportment, and hair length. The room wasn’t crowded, but it wasn’t empty either; it was probably operating at half capacity.
Dalesia said, “Good mob for a Monday night.”
“Maybe we ought to invest,” Mackey said.
Dalesia grinned. “No, I don’t think so. I think they’re a bad risk.”
The three of them walked over to the cashier’s window. It was an oval hole in the wall, flanked by the ever- present maroon drapes. In the center of the grayish bullet-proof glass, at mouth level, was a microphone, and just above the window a speaker brought out the cashier’s voice. It was like a drive-in window at a bank; they put
