“Yes, sir.” Into the phone, he said. “There’s a Mr. Flynn out here to see you. Fine.” Hanging up, he said, “Go right on in.”
“Thanks.” Mackey said as the door began to buzz. He pushed it open, the buzzing stopped, and he entered an ordinary receptionist’s office, ordinary in every way except that it was windowless. Several framed photographs of Tony Florio in his boxing days were on the walls. At a green-metal desk sat an ordinary receptionist, who smiled brightly and said, “Mr. Flynn?”
“That’s right. I guess it’s some coincidence, huh?”
“I guess so,” she said. “Mr. Flynn’s on the phone long-distance just now, but he’ll be with you in a very few minutes.”
“Thank you.”
She extended a large document toward him. “While you’re waiting, would you mind terribly filling this out? It could save you some time.”
The document was a four-page credit questionnaire. “Of course,” he said. “Of course.”
She pointed to a library table on the side wall. “I think you’d be comfortable there, Mr. Flynn.”
“I’m sure I would.”
The questionnaire wanted to know everything but his attitude about fucking sheep. He filled it out in a tiny crabbed hand, keeping the lies generally realistic, avoiding old gags like having a checking account in the Left Bank of the Mississippi, and when he was finished he gave the questionnaire back to the receptionist, who smiled her gracious thanks and carried it at once inside to her long-distance-telephoning boss.
The magazines available to read were
Mr. Flynn was a short balding man who had put on some weight but who moved as though he were short and skinny. He wore a tan jacket and a blue-and-red bow tie, and he had come around his desk to give Mackey a firm but friendly handshake. The questionnaire was open on the desk, and Mackey could tell by Flynn’s outgoing manner that he had called the local phone number Mackey had given—as being his company’s “local leased personal premises,” as he had put it on the form—and had been told the story by Parker at the other end. Parker, playing butler-caretaker, would have said that yes, this was General Texachron’s local leased apartment, where company executives could stay when business brought them to Tyler, and that yes, Mr. Thomas Flynn was currently in residence although not at the moment present in the apartment.
But before they got to General Texachron or the other invented particulars of the questionnaire, they had to get past the coincidence of the last name. Mackey was getting heartily sick of the coincidence by now, and was wishing he’d chosen one of his other available identities instead, but eventually the casino’s Mr. Flynn had satisfied himself that the two of them weren’t blood relatives in any directly traceable way, and they could get themselves around to the matter at hand.
* * *
Downstairs, Mike Carlow and Dan Wycza and Stan Devers had all skipped dessert and were having a cup of coffee. Carlow, glancing at his watch, said, “Time for us to make our move.”
Wycza put down his cup. “Right,” he said, touched his napkin to his lips, and got to his feet. While Devers and Carlow stayed at the table, Carlow with his hands out of sight on his lap, Wycza crossed the room to where Tony Florio was standing in his usual spot near the headwaiter. “Mr. Florio?”
Florio turned around, his greeter’s smile on his face, his hand ready to come out for a brisk shake. “Yes, pal? What can I do for you?”
Wycza moved in close to him, turning his shoulder so as to exclude the nearby headwaiter from the conversation. Pointing into the dining room, he said, “You see those two gents there at my table?”
Florio was expecting to be asked for an autograph, which he would give, or to join these out-of-towners in a drink, which he wouldn’t do. “Yes,” he said. “I see them.”
Wycza said, “Well, the fella with his hands under the table is holding a target pistol down there, aimed at your balls.”
Florio stiffened. Wycza’s hand was on his elbow in a confidential way, and quietly Wycza said, “Now, don’t make a fuss, Mr. Florio, because I’ve got to tell you something. That guy is with me, and I know about him, and I know he gets very nervous in moments of stress. You follow me?”
Florio said nothing. It never even occurred to him this might be a gag; he believed it was the truth from the instant he heard it.
Wycza said, “For instance, if you were to make any sudden motions, or if you were to shout, anything like that, that nervous son of a bitch over there is just likely to shoot. I hate to use him, he makes me a nervous wreck myself, but the thing is he’s a marksman. He can shoot a pimple off a fly’s ass at sixty feet, he’s just amazing. If only he was calm like you and me, but he doesn’t have our size, you know? A big man like us can be calm, but a little guy like him gets nervous.”
Florio, in looking now at this soft-spoken baldheaded giant, was invited to notice that although Wycza had spoken of them both as being big men, Wycza was clearly much the bigger and much the stronger of the two of them. Florio, who was used to being the biggest and toughest-looking man in any gathering, wilted a bit more. Half whispering as drops of perspiration appeared on his upper lip, he said, “What do you want?”
“Just come on over to the table,” Wycza said. “We’ll talk a little.” He nudged Florio’s arm, and Florio began to walk.
The two of them moved through the mostly empty tables to the one where Devers and Carlow were waiting. Carlow kept his hands under the table, and Devers kept watching the employees behind Wycza’s back, none of whom were behaving in any way out of the ordinary.
Crossing the room, Wycza staying next to him, Florio said, “I don’t really own this place, you know. I just front it for some people in town.”
“Ernie Dulare,” Wycza said. Pleased by the startled look he got for that name, he added another: “Adolf
