A block away from Queens Plaza she saw a limo heading toward her, pulling off the lower level of the 59th Street Bridge. Startled, she found herself frozen in place, unable even to turn away, but it passed without slowing, without the man on the other side of the open driver’s-side window even giving her a glance.
She glanced at him, though. Eddie. Sporting what looked, as he sped past, like a black eye.
Charley’s handiwork? she wondered. Or Renata’s?
Tricia heard her train pulling in then and ran for it.
Let Eddie and his passenger discover what she already had, that Nicolazzo was nowhere to be found—that he’d flown the coop, probably as soon as Charley had walked out the door without anything to prevent him from seeing where he was. Let them exercise themselves trying to find him. She had a lead to follow, however tenuous.
Like Gleason used to say, she thought. To the moon, Alice. Straight to the Moon.
Unlike the Sun, which famously crowned a midtown office building, or the Stars, which filled a two-story bunker of its own near the waterfront, the Moon almost invisibly occupied the second story of a squat Garment District tenement, sandwiched between a buttons-and-trimmings wholesaler on the ground floor and a battery of one- and two-man tailoring shops on the third. There was no nightclub banner flapping from a flagpole here, no doorman in livery to usher you inside (or to keep you out, for that matter). There was a front door and a staircase and, in one of the second floor windows, a neon image winking from full moon to crescent and back again, twenty- four hours a day.
On the sidewalk, wiry men heaved wheeled metal racks loaded down with dresses on hangers, one rack in each hand, while others scurried alongside, lettering tags on the run with swipes of a grease pencil. Even on a Sunday morning, the neighborhood was buzzing, in part to make up for the day many houses lost on Saturday (when the Millinery Center Synagogue on 38th was perhaps the busiest building in the neighborhood) and in part to prepare for the onslaught of orders that would roar in Monday morning.
Tricia picked her way through the chaos, stepping up into doorways or down into the gutter as necessary to allow men in an even greater hurry than she was to pass. She knew where the club was—it was no secret. The
It wasn’t prostitution, though of course you heard stories; and many a feel was copped in the name of close dancing. That Coral had passed her first years in New York working here saddened Tricia. She’d pictured her sister headlining in a rooftop revue, or at least enlivening the chorus, not letting herself be tooled around a dance floor by a succession of sweaty-handed romeos with a buck to spare.
But better that than where she was now. Better a lifetime of sweaty embraces under dim lights than the deadly attentions of a man like Nicolazzo.
Tricia climbed to the second floor, where she found the club’s door wedged open with a doorstop. The music playing sounded languorous and soporific, almost as if the record player were set at too slow a speed. Connie Francis’ voice came on, asking who’s sorry now, and the two women working at the moment went round and round with their charges in time to her plaintive query. Two other women seated on chairs against the wall looked up when Tricia walked in, then looked down again when they saw her. No trade here, just competition.
A man in dungarees and a button-down shirt came over, quickly taking Tricia’s measure as he approached. She recognized him from one of Nicolazzo’s photos—this was Paulie Lips, recognizable at a glance from the prominence not just of his lips but the entire lower portion of his face, which culminated in a shovel-shaped jaw with a darkening shadow of stubble just below the skin.
He had the self-confident walk and attitude of a man in charge and gave the impression of being the manager here. Tricia could see his eyes darting about her person, noting her wrinkled dress, the missing buttons, the perspiration on her forehead and under her arms, the circles under her eyes. A job seeker, he must’ve been thinking; and perhaps if there’d been more business to go around he’d have entertained the notion or at least strung her along, but Tricia could see he was getting ready to send her on her way.
She didn’t give him the chance. “Hey, are you Paulie?” she said. He stopped, looked at her more closely. “My sister used to work here, and she left something she asked me to pick up. In her locker.”
“Oh?” he said, taken aback. “Who’s your sister?”
“Colleen King.”
A smile unfolded on his face but it had all the sincerity of a Halloween mask. “Colleen,” he said. “That would make you Patty, right?” He took her hand and squeezed it. “I guess she mentioned me?” He didn’t wait for her to answer. “So, what, you just get into town?” His voice dropped and he edged closer. “Do you need anything? Some money? You look a little...”
“I’m fine,” Tricia said. “I just need to get into my sister’s locker.”
“Actually,” Paulie said, “she doesn’t have a locker here anymore. You have to work here to have a locker, and she doesn’t. Hasn’t for a good long time. Think she’s, ah, boxing now. You know.” He playfully threw a few punches in the air. “Though she still comes by now and again to chew the fat with her old friends. Isn’t that right girls?” The two seated women nodded when he directed the question at them, though it wasn’t clear they knew just what they were agreeing with, or much cared.
“Maybe it’s not her locker, then,” Tricia said, “but it’s
Paulie’s smile grew more strained. “She told you that?” he said. “Locker 22?”
“She left me a note,” Tricia said.
“Can I see it?”
“I’m afraid not,” Tricia said. “I don’t have it with me.”
Paulie shook his head in an unconvincing pantomime of helplessness. His palms turned up and his eyebrows rose along with them. “Sorry to say, you got some wires crossed somewhere. The lockers here only go up to 20. Maybe ask your sister to come by, she and I can figure it out—”
“I can’t,” Tricia said. “She’s...not available.”
“Well, when she’s available again, have her call me. We’ll work it out. Maybe the three of us can get together for a drink sometime—”
He must’ve felt the barrel of the gun poking into his gut then, through the fabric of her dress pocket, because his face fell. He looked confused first and then fear crept into his expression. “Are you serious?” he said, his voice low. “You think you can pull a gun on me in my own place?”
“I don’t think anything,” Tricia said. “I’ve done it. Now take me to locker 22, Paulie, or I swear to god you won’t live to hear the end of this song.”
Connie Francis’ voice drawled on in the sudden silence between them.
Could she really do it? Could she pull the trigger in cold blood, leave this man sprawled and dying on his well-worn parquet? She doubted it—not least of all because it would mean using up her only bullet. But she made an effort to keep this from showing on her face. To look at her, you’d have thought her a hardened jailbird.
Paulie bristled with hostility. He was bigger than she was—but the gun more than evened up the sides. “Follow me,” he said and led her through the long, narrow room to a curtained-off section in the back. The walls were lined with lockers and the numbers on them, Tricia saw, went up to 28.
“Are you even her sister?” Paulie asked.
“I don’t see why you’d believe me,” Tricia said, “but I am.”
“And she really told you to come here.”
“She left word I could find something in locker 22.”
“She didn’t tell you what?”
“She didn’t have the time to go into much detail,” Tricia said.
He stopped in front of 22 with one hand on the lock. “Why didn’t she have the time?”
“Just open the locker.”
