Fifty-to-One

Borden pushed the cards toward him. “Then shuffle, big man.”

Nicolazzo snatched up the cards, violently riffled them together. It sounded like a string of firecrackers going off. “All right, Borden,” he said. “All right. But we play my game now. No more straight cut. We play Fifty-to-One, eh?”

“You give your word on the stakes?” Borden said.

“Absolutely. If you win, you walk out of here. But you won’t win. And if you don’t win, you’ll tell me where my money is, and you’ll tell me who took it, or I will cut your hands and feet off, I’ll take your eyes out, I’ll feed you your coglioni, and then, when you beg me on your knees to kill you, I will kindly and lovingly slit your throat. Do we understand each other, Mr. Borden?”

Borden swallowed, nodded.

“So.” Nicolazzo set the cards down gently, squared up the edges of the deck. He flipped the top card face up. It was the four of spades. He set it aside. He looked at Borden, waited with a vicious and self-satisfied smile on his face.

“What do I do?” Borden said.

“It’s very simple, Borden,” Nicolazzo said. He tapped his index finger on the back of the topmost card on the deck. “You just tell me what this card is.”

“What do you mean what that card is?” Borden said. “How am I supposed to know? That’s ridiculous.”

“It’s not ridiculous,” Nicolazzo said. “You’ve got fifty chances to be wrong, one chance to be right. Fifty-to- one. Now name your card.”

Borden stared at the deck.

“I’m waiting,” Nicolazzo said.

Borden stared some more.

“Say something, Borden.”

“Six of diamonds,” Borden said.

Nicolazzo shoved the top card forward, dug a thumbnail under it, flipped it over.

Both men stared at it.

Borden smiled weakly.

“Fare un bidone —” Nicolazzo sputtered.

Borden stood, walked quickly to the door.

22.

Lemons Never Lie

“You just left them there?” Tricia said. “Erin and Coral, with Nicolazzo fuming like that—”

Borden glanced at her in the rear-view mirror. “You think it’d be better if I was still locked up with them?”

“Maybe,” Tricia said.

“And who’s this ‘Coral’?”

“My sister.”

“Your sister,” Borden said.

“Yes. And god only knows what he’s doing to her right now, and to Erin, thanks to you.”

“He’d be doing it to me, too, if I were there,” Borden said. “This way we at least have a chance.”

“You took an awful risk,” Tricia said, “using marked cards. That’s what you did, isn’t it?”

“You don’t believe I just got lucky?”

“No, and Nicolazzo shouldn’t either. You went through how many straight cuts with him and didn’t guess right even once? That’s as improbable as if you’d guessed right every time. He should have been tipped off by that alone.”

Borden thought about it. “You’re right,” he said. “I should’ve given myself one or two.”

“How long till he figures it out? You know he’s not going to feel obliged to keep his word once he does. And now he thinks you know where his money is!”

“All true,” Borden said, “but at least I’m here and not there, and he’s there and not here, and I got you out of the bind you were in, so you know, I’d say we’re not doing too bad.”

“I’m handcuffed in the back seat of a stolen police car,” Tricia said, “driving god knows where, you’re wanted for assaulting two policemen now and impersonating one of them, I’m probably wanted for murder—”

“Murder?”

“Mitch,” Tricia said, “got shot. I didn’t do it. But they think I did—that’s what all the cops were there for. And now one of the most bloodthirsty gangsters on the east coast is gunning for us both. That’s your idea of not doing too bad?”

“Could be worse,” Borden said.

The car’s police-band radio, which had been alternating between static and background chatter all the way from Cornelia Street, broke in on them now with a loud announcement: “All cars, all cars, respond immediately; stolen police vehicle V-J-1-3-9, that’s Victor-Jason-1-3-9, spotted going north on First Avenue, use extreme caution, suspects armed and dangerous—”

“That’s us, isn’t it?” Tricia said.

“Unless someone else stole a cop car and is joyriding right behind us.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know,” Borden said.

“Well, you’d better think of something.”

“Me? I got us this far, why don’t you think of something now?”

Tricia was about to spit back a nasty response when she did, in fact, think of something. “Hold on,” she said, and twisted around in the back seat, trying to get her arms around to her side and her dress shifted over so the pocket was within reach. It felt like her shoulders were coming out of their sockets and when the car bumped over a deep pothole the jolt was excruciating. But she kept straining, groping, reaching till her fingers closed on the key ring.

“What are you doing back there?” Borden said, glancing in the mirror again.

“We need to go to...15th Street and Avenue C,” she said, reading off the little disk. “But not in this car. Pull over somewhere and we’ll go the rest of the way on foot.”

“What’s there?”

“Other cars,” Tricia said, “less conspicuous than this one. Maybe even one we won’t have to steal.”

“Oh, yeah? Whose?”

“Coral’s,” Tricia said. “Now just pull over somewhere. And I hope that uniform you grabbed has a pair of handcuff keys on it.”

Borden made a hard right onto a side street, swerved over to the curb, left the car parked in front of a fire hydrant. He came around to the back, opened the door and helped Tricia out. Her dress was twisted and crumpled and the two top buttons were gone, leaving a fair expanse showing of what would have been cleavage on a bigger woman. Borden politely pretended not to notice. He had a pair of stubby metal keys ready in his fist and used one to release her from the cuffs Lenahan had cinched on her. She rotated her wrists to get the blood flowing again while Borden tossed the cuffs and keys and his cap and jacket through the car window and onto the front seat.

He left the engine running. “Maybe someone else will steal it and drive it away,” he said optimistically, and Tricia breathed a silent prayer that someone would. They needed all the help they could get.

They ran. A couple of blocks east, they spotted the sign for Royal’s. It rose, illuminated, above a fenced-in compound filled end-to-end with automobiles. As they got closer, it became increasingly obvious that the garage doubled as a used car lot. The cars were not, for the most part, in good condition—some had visible dents in their hoods or side doors, some were missing hubcaps or headlights, one had a spiderweb of cracks radiating out from a hole in the windshield. But at least the cardboard signs propped on the hoods asked for commensurately modest prices.

And true to the “24 HOURS” claim, the place was open. Tricia waved to catch the eye of the sullen, pear- shaped man stationed by the gate.

“Can you help us find a car?” Tricia asked him, struggling to catch her breath. Glancing back over her