And she nodded, and smiled again, the young woman smiling, not the twelve-year-old.
So once again I sat in a booth at Sambo’s, this time with one of the top mob bosses in Chicago. I had a Coke and he had coffee with lots of cream and sugar. In the bright glare of the relentlessly illuminated pancake house, I could see every freckle and age spot and wrinkle and stray facial hair on that too-tan puss, every blackhead and tiny red vein and enlarged pore on that hooked honker. His eyebrows were out of control with lots of white twisting around black, and his teeth were too white, too big, probably purchased.
“Do you smoke?” he asked.
It was the first thing he’d said since we left his daughter’s apartment. We’d nodded to his boys in the Thunderbird (both weasels were in the front seat now) and just walked quickly over. I had my corduroy jacket on, but he hadn’t put his topcoat on, and it was bitter.
Now, in the warmth of Sambo’s, in a world of orange and brown and white and stainless steel and glass and faux-leather, the Chicago mob boss was seemingly asking for my permission to smoke.
But I’d misread him, because when I said I didn’t smoke, he said, “Good. I don’t, either. I gave it up, three years ago. Causes cancer, you know, that’s no joke. I can see you’re a clean-cut boy. Vietnam?”
I nodded.
“Your Broker, he likes ex-GIs. I don’t blame him. You’re dependable. You don’t scare easy. You can think on your feet.”
Right now I was on my ass in a Sambo’s booth, but I was thinking, all right. I was thinking that those dark eyes behind the green-framed glasses were like a shark’s.
We had good privacy, nobody in an adjacent booth, and we spoke softly but clearly.
He said, “What happened to that fucking prick?”
“If you mean Professor Byron,” I said, “his wife murdered him this evening. Sick of him cheating on her with this coed and that. Then she killed herself.”
The eyes suddenly got lively, gleaming, like water pearling off gun metal. “Excellent. Nicely done.”
Was it my fault he jumped to the wrong conclusion?
He was saying, “Sure you wouldn’t like to work for me, Jack? Maybe you didn’t want to say so, in front of Annette.”
I said, “I’m happy working for the Broker. But I do apologize for…well, I know you like being insulated from people like me. And with all due respect, sir, I prefer insulation from people like you. From any client-that’s our mutual protection, after all.”
He nodded. He was smiling but not showing his expensive teeth. That tan was damn near black; fuck cigarettes, he’d get skin cancer if he kept that up.
I asked, “How are we with the trash I dumped on I-80?”
That meant the two black kidnappers.
He said, “Right now it’s still classified a robbery. I believe within twenty-four hours, it’ll be a gangland killing. But that doesn’t mean it’ll come to my doorstep.”
“Good.”
“I mean, these niggers are always killing each other. They got more factions than the fucking communists. And, like I said, my people are busy killing black asses even as we speak.”
I nodded. “I was improvising, sir. I certainly didn’t mean-”
He raised a benedictory hand. “No. You did well. You saved my daughter. Nothing’s more precious to me than my little girl.” Then he sat forward. “What about the prick’s book? That fucking manuscript?”
“Assuming he didn’t send a copy to an editor in New York or somewhere, it’s gone, all of it. I had plenty of time in his study and I burned every goddamn page, every scrap, every note.”
He sighed. “Wonderful to hear-excellent work, first-class, Jack. But that bastard was close to Annette. Could she have a copy?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
He sipped his coffee, thought for a few moments, then shrugged and said, “You must understand, Jack, that Annette and I have had our differences.”
“That’s hard to believe. You seem so close.”
Another shrug, more elaborate. “It’s these times. These fucking draft dodgers, these dirty damn hippies, and that’s just the start of it. Think of that professor, and the trust he betrayed! I’m paying that university for my child’s education, and one of their staff is… is…I can’t say it. It’s disgusting.”
“Yeah. Kind of turns your stomach.”
The wild eyebrows climbed high, even above the goggle glasses. “Problem is, Jack, my generation, we had it tough. We survived the Depression. We survived World War Two, you know?”
What I knew was, Girardelli had gotten rich in the Depression off bootleg booze and brothels, and spent the war stateside and out of uniform, getting richer, selling black-market meat and tires and counterfeit ration stamps.
“Yeah,” I said. “Moral decline. It’s a pisser.”
He nodded vigorously. “Well, our problem was, we spoiled our kids. Wanted to give them what we couldn’t have, wanted them not to have to live through any of the tough times we suffered through.”
I was drinking Coke. Somehow I managed not to do a spit take.
Girardelli was saying, “So I don’t blame Annette. She can’t help it that, when she was little, I spoiled her little ass. I gave her everything a father could, and more.”
That was for sure.
“Anyway, she’s a wonderful girl, and very talented, really gifted, you should see the poetry she wrote in finishing school.” He shook his head and let out a weight-of-the-world sigh. “But she’s of her times, it’s these times, she’s one of these kids, wild and free and rejecting the old values, rejecting her own father, sometimes.”
“Kids today.”
He leaned forward. His sandpapery voice got a little rougher. “So it’s possible she was helping that prick with his book. Possible. Possible. And maybe, just maybe, she has a carbon copy or some shit.”
“I guess that’s not beyond the realm of possibility.”
He was almost purring now despite that rough-edged voice. “She likes you. She trusts you. Jack, I don’t mean to get personal, but did you have relations with her?”
“I won’t lie to you, sir. I kissed her.”
He threw up his hands. “She’s a beautiful girl. I don’t blame you.” Then he leaned in again, buddy buddy. “What I’m asking is, could you stay on and get closer to her? Just for a day or so? You can search her room. Or you can get her out of that apartment, and my guys can toss the place.”
“Well…maybe. I guess.”
“I can offer you ten thousand on top of all the other money, and it goes straight to you. Never mind your Broker. And if you turn up a copy of that manuscript, well, I’ll double it.”
“Well…I could do that, I guess. Who couldn’t use ten grand? Or twenty?”
“Good. Good!”
“But, sir-one thing does concern me. As I mentioned, normally I would be in the dark about all this-I wouldn’t know you, the client; I wouldn’t know about manuscripts and…it does worry me.”
“Why? How?”
“You maintain a degree of safety by requiring those levels of insulation we talked about. I don’t want to be a threat to you. I don’t want to be seen as a loose end. Or the Broker, either. You need to know I’m loyal. I’m discreet.”
I watched his eyes carefully as he responded.
“Jack, I know how to reward loyalty.”
His smile was winning, almost charismatic. The smile wrinkles around his eyes were convincing, too. But those eyes. Those black-button eyes. Those shark eyes.
He left a ten on the table on top of the check, and we headed outside. The night had grown colder and darker, the moon lurking behind cloud cover, and I put on my gloves. We came along the side of the restaurant, and I went ahead a few steps and pointed.
“That’s where they grabbed her, sir,” I said.
And I walked over to the spot. Only a few cars in the lot, and no people but us.
