I’m coming, Cory, she thought.
And Charley? She thought of him, too, as she went, thought with a little regret of what he’d be facing now at Eddie’s hands, and Renata’s, and Mr. Barrone’s, if he wasn’t able to talk his way out of it. But hell, he’d be able to talk his way out of it. Maybe not before picking up a few bruises, but—
You made your bed, Charley, Tricia thought. I hope she was worth it.
She rode the train, rattling and shaking and nearly empty, out to Queens Plaza, where she begged a map from the token booth clerk in the station. She unfolded it and took a minute to find Van Dam Street. It looked like half a mile to get there, another mile or so before it crossed Greenpoint Avenue. She thought about splurging and blowing some of Charley’s money on a taxi, but on a Sunday morning in Queens you were as likely to see a circus caravan pass as an empty cab. She didn’t see either and started walking.
She did pass a small grocery store whose owner was letting down the awning with a long metal hand-crank. She stopped inside and picked up a couple of buttered rolls and a coke—not much of a breakfast, but she wolfed it down and kept going.
In the pocket of her dress, the gun—lighter now, with just the one bullet—felt like a brick, weighing her down. She wondered if she’d actually have the guts to use it. To stand in front of a man, the way Heaven had, the way Nicolazzo had, and end his life with a movement of her hand, a flick of a finger.
If her own life depended on it, she supposed she could, or if Coral’s did. But if it didn’t? Or if it wasn’t clear?
She thought with a shiver of the dead men she’d seen since this began—more in one day than she’d seen in her previous 18 years, if you counted the ones in the photos, and a tie even if you just counted the ones slain before her eyes. And there was a big difference between seeing her father or granddad laid out in their best suits, hair carefully brushed and cheeks touched with makeup, a preacher by their side, the church choir singing hymns, and seeing a man’s blood spill out of him onto the floor. Dead was dead—but the polite, quiet death of a funeral ceremony was worlds apart from the loud report of a gunshot, the acrid tang of powder in the air, or the snick of a blade unfolding and the desperate groan when it met flesh.
She wished she could get it out of her mind, but as she made her way toward Nicolazzo’s hideout the images kept coming came back to her, the dead men and their near cousins, the ones who’d survived the recent events but not unscathed: Stella with her branded cheek; O’Malley with his bandaged face; Clohessy in the alley where Charley had left him, bearing who knew what sort of wound. It frightened her to think of the blood that had been shed, the pain suffered, and all because of her—because of the book she’d written, the men she’d spurred into action. And women, too. Her own sister, a thief.
She had to make things right. She had to. Somehow.
She reached Van Dam, followed it south toward the huge green sward of Calvary Cemetery. It wasn’t the same size as the mammoth burial plots down by where the artists lived in Brooklyn, not quite; but it was plenty large and it loomed in the distance, a wholly unneeded reminder of mortality.
She counted blocks, referred to her map, drew near. When she reached the intersection, she didn’t recognize any of the buildings, but why should she? She’d had a bag over her head coming and going. But in this neighborhood of narrow, wedge-shaped blocks, only one corner could properly be called the corner of Van Dam and Greenpoint, and only one building could properly be said to be on that corner. And it looked about right: There was a front way and a back way in, there was gravel in the rear, and there were several stories, enough to require a staircase with 39 steps. The windows were shuttered from the outside and, where she could see between the shutters, curtained on the inside. As you’d expect—a man who had to smuggle himself ashore in a pickle barrel wouldn’t take any chances with his privacy. There were no sounds coming from the building, which might mean anything or nothing. Tricia couldn’t see any lights on inside, but she wasn’t sure she’d be able to in the daytime even if they were on.
She circled the building, trying to divine the best way in. Front door, back door? Neither seemed great. A half-height window into the cellar held more promise. Using a stick she found on the ground for leverage, Tricia forced the shutters open, then squatted and peered inside. There were curtains here, too, but enough space separated them that she could see a sliver of the room. By angling herself this way and that she could make out that there was no one inside. She tried to open the window, straining the way Charley had at the Sun (only without spitting on her hands first—she didn’t see how that would help). When it didn’t budge, she took out the gun and, holding it by the barrel, swung it against the glass.
The pane cracked and pieces tinkled to the floor inside. Tricia ducked out of sight. A few moments later she cautiously crept back, looked in. There was still no one there. She wormed her arm in through the hole, avoiding the jagged edges, and felt around the frame. Sure enough, the window was locked. She unlocked it. It went up smoothly after that and she dropped through it to the cellar floor.
Glass crunching slightly underfoot, she made her way to the door of the room where she and Coral had been held. “Cory,” she whispered. She tried the knob. The door swung open.
“Cory?”
The room was dark. She groped for the cord to the hanging light and switched it on. Coral wasn’t there; no one was. The bunk in the back was empty.
Was she upstairs? Tricia wondered. Were they all upstairs, putting Coral through some horrible ordeal, trying to get out of her some secret she didn’t possess or information she didn’t know? Tricia listened for some sign that this might be going on. She heard nothing, but it gave her little comfort. They might have gagged her. She might be unconscious. She might, as Barrone had said, already be dead.
Tricia knew she had to find out, had to go upstairs, had to face whatever was waiting for her there. But she was glad for any excuse to put it off, even just for a minute. So she went to the far side of the room, to the bunk where Coral had been sitting when Mitch had shoved Tricia in, the bunk where they’d sat together while Coral told her story. She hunted around the foot of the bunk, felt underneath it, looking for she didn’t know what. A message, she supposed. Some sign that Coral had been here. She knew she’d have tried to leave one for Coral if their positions had been reversed.
Conscious of the time slipping away—someone could come downstairs at any moment, and of course Barrone could also show up at any moment, with or without Charley in tow; they must have figured out by now where she’d gone—Tricia pulled the bunk away from the wall. And there, scratched into the brick with a nail or a stone or in any event
Tricia pushed the bunk back. More at Moon, Locker 22. ‘Moon’ had to mean Nicolazzo’s club, of course, the dimea-dance place Coral had worked at before she took up boxing. But more what? More photographs? Of whom?
Tricia backed out of the room, held the gun firmly before her, took off the safety, and climbed the stairs. At each landing she spun left and right, gun before her, solitary bullet at the ready, but no one appeared. The building really was completely silent, and dark, and by the time she made it to the top she knew there was a good reason for it.
The place was empty—abandoned. Nicolazzo had hared off to another location, one she couldn’t even begin to guess at. And he’d taken Erin and Coral with him, in whatever condition his interrogations had left them.
At least that was the hopeful possibility. The alternative was that he’d buried them here. That was the big question, really: Were they among the wounded or the slain?
Don’t you touch them, you bastard, Tricia thought as she headed down to the street. Don’t you dare touch them.
It felt more like a prayer than a threat and she kept repeating it to herself as she raced back toward the subway station, putting out of her mind the possibility that maybe he already had.
