and maybe this chummy Mr. Flynn here was just stalling him with a lot of credit questions while waiting for the cops to show up. But then the phone did finally ring, and Mackey relaxed and put his hand inside his jacket, closing his fingers around the butt of the pistol there.
“Yes, Mr. Florio.” Flynn nodded and smiled at Mackey, asking him to wait just a second. “Yes, he’s here right now.” A surprised smile toward Mackey: Why, Mr. Florio himself knows about you. Then, a look of bewilderment: “What? What’s that?”
Mackey smiled and took the pistol out. He showed it to Flynn and calmly put it away again.
Flynn was sitting straighter in his chair. “I don’t understand, Mr. Florio.” Listening, blinking, he seemed like a man who didn’t
Mackey couldn’t make out the words, but he could hear the angry buzz of Florio’s voice in Flynn’s ear. Flynn blinked, swallowed, began to nod his head. “Yes, sir,” he said. “Yes, sir, of course, I just wasn’t think— Yes, sir.” His face pale as bread dough, he extended the receiver across the desk to Mackey, saying, “He wants to talk to you.”
“Thanks, cousin.” Mackey took the phone, said into it, “Yeah, I’m here.”
It was Florio’s voice, recognizable and bitter, that said, “One of your friends wants to talk to you.”
Mackey waited, and Dan Wycza came on a few seconds later, saying, “Everything fine?”
“Couldn’t be better,” Mackey said.
“Then we might as well get started,” Wycza said.
“Right. Hold on.” Mackey kept the mouthpiece near his face so Wycza would be able to hear him, and said to Flynn, “I have two friends outside. I want you to bring them in here.”
“You want me to go out and—”
“No no no, Mr. Flynn,” Mackey said. “You call your man on the door out there. Tell him two gents are coming over and he should let them in. And then tell your receptionist to buzz for them.”
“All right,” Flynn said, but there was something in his voice and in his eye that Mackey didn’t like. “Hold it,” he said. Flynn gave him an attentive look.
Mackey said into the phone, “I think this fella here needs a pep talk from Florio. He looks like he’s nerving himself up to something.”
Flynn, all wounded innocence, said, “I wouldn’t—” but Mackey shushed him with a wave of his hand.
Wycza said, “Hold on,” and turned to Florio. He said, “My man Flynn says your man Flynn doesn’t understand the situation. He might have something cute in mind.”
Angrily, Florio said, “Over my—” and stopped.
“That’s right,” Wycza said. Extending the phone toward Florio, he said, “Maybe you ought to tell him that yourself.”
Mackey, hearing Wycza, held his phone out toward Flynn. “Your master’s voice,” he said.
Flynn took the phone doubtfully, held it to his ear as though it might bite him, and said, “Mr. Florio?”
The phone bit him. Looking pained, Flynn tried to break in three or four times with no success, and finally managed to say, “Of course, Mr. Florio. You’re the boss, Mr. Florio, I wouldn’t— No, sir, I won’t.”
Mackey waited, looking around the room. According to Faran’s sketch, that door on the right should lead to the vault room where the money was kept, and the door on the left should lead to the employees’ parlor where the dealers and stickmen took their smoke breaks and where the three armed guards hung out when they weren’t out patrolling the floor. Coming at the joint this way, through Florio and Flynn, they were by-passing all the security devices, the armed guards and the timelocks and the buzzer alarms and all the other protective arrangements that had been set up around here.
It was Parker’s plan, to Faran’s inside information, done without any casing at all, and it was working just beautifully.
Flynn, chastened, finally handed the phone back to Mackey. He was still a trifle mulish, but Mackey didn’t doubt he meant it this time when he said, “I’ll do whatever you want.”
“That’s fine.” Mackey said into the phone, “You there?”
Wycza said, “Right here.”
“Everything’s fine now.”
Flynn said, “I’ll need to use the phone. I can put that call on hold if you want.”
“Good idea.” Into the phone, Mackey said, “You’re going on hold for a minute.”
Flynn took the phone, called his receptionist, and told her. “Call George and tell him there are two men about to come over to the door. He’s to let them in, and then you should let them directly through in here. That’s right. Thank you.” He pressed a button that took Dan Wycza off hold and returned the phone to Mackey. “There.” he said.
Outside, Hurley had quit the blackjack game twenty dollars ahead and was now kibitzing the crap table where Dalesia had so far lost thirty-five dollars. Hurley saw the man on duty at the brown wooden door reach for the wall phone, and tapped Dalesia, saying, “Time to go.”
“Right.” Dalesia left a five-dollar chip riding on the nine, and the two men walked across the room to where the doorman was just hanging up the phone. He said, “You the two gentlemen Mr. Flynn’s expecting?”
They thought he meant Mackey. “That’s right,” Dalesia said, “we’re the ones.”
The door buzzed, and the doorman pushed it open. “Go right on in,” he said.
“Thanks,” Dalesia said.
