Fifty-to-One

They watched each other in the window. Tricia held the gun without wavering. Steadiest hands in the east.

“No,” Renata said briskly. “I’m not.” She dropped the cigarette butt on the ground, where it continued to smolder. Nothing else happened. “Let’s you and I sit down, why don’t we.”

They sat across from one another at a cafeteria on the corner of Dutch Street. The nearest other patron was five tables away and engrossed in a paperback novel, so Tricia was able to keep her gun aimed at Renata behind a menu without anyone noticing or complaining. Except Renata herself, and her complaints fell on deaf ears.

“Why don’t you put that thing away?”

“Why don’t you start talking,” Tricia said, “so I don’t have to use it?”

“As if you’d really shoot me in a public place,” Renata said.

“It’s been a long couple of days, Renata,” Tricia said. “Don’t bet on me making good decisions.”

Renata poured some sugar in her coffee, stirred it. “You know my uncle thinks you have his money. That’s what Eddie told him.”

“Yes, I know. It’s not true—but I don’t expect to be able to convince him of that unless I can find out who does have it.”

“Well, don’t look at me,” Renata said.

Tricia pulled back the hammer of her gun.

“I didn’t take his money,” Renata insisted. “I wish I knew who did.”

“If you didn’t, why do you care who did?”

Renata seemed to make a decision. “I’m going to tell you something that could make my life a lot more difficult if you repeated it. I’m not just doing it because you’ve got a gun on me. I’m doing it because if you’re serious about finding out who took the money, you might be in a position to make my life a lot easier than it’s been for the past month.”

“How’s that?”

“I didn’t steal my uncle’s money,” Renata said, “but not for lack of trying.”

“Go on.”

“I took a shot at it,” Renata said. “I arranged to get into the Sun after hours, went in all set to open the safe and clean it out. Had an escape route planned and everything. But there was no money for me to get. By the time I got there, the safe was already empty.”

Tricia had a powerful feeling of deja vu. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about an empty safe. Nothing in it. Someone else had already been there, broken in, and emptied the thing out.”

“You expect me to believe that? That you tried to rob the Sun but some other thief got there first?”

“You see why I’ve been lying low?” Renata said. “You see? It’s the truth, but you don’t believe it. Why would Uncle Nick?”

“Why, indeed.”

“I’m not worried that he could have found my fingerprints—I wore gloves, I’m not a complete idiot. But who knows what else he might have found that could lead back to me? And someone might have seen me going in or coming out of the building—I can’t swear no one did.” Renata gulped some coffee. “So ever since, I’ve been cooped up in that place on Fulton Street, waiting for the old bastard to catch whoever robbed him and put an end to it. But a month’s gone by, he hasn’t caught anybody, and according to my father he’s been getting crazier and angrier about it by the day, rounding everyone up with the slightest possible connection—”

“Tell me about it,” Tricia said.

“Eventually, one way or another, he’d get to me. I had to feed him someone. And then Eddie walked through my door.”

“It wasn’t Eddie’s fault. He thought you’d asked him to come,” Tricia said. “You know that, right?”

“Yeah, that’s what he said. That you told him I’d sent for him. As he stood there gawping at us. It was awful.”

“Well, you certainly paid him back for it.”

“That’s right,” Renata said. “I did.”

“Let’s get back to the robbery,” Tricia said, trying hard to push aside her feelings of guilt over her own role in Eddie’s death. “You’re saying you just happened to decide to rob your uncle on the same day someone else happened to do the same thing?”

“Not exactly,” Renata said. “I didn’t choose that day out of thin air.”

“Oh?” Tricia said.

“Look, I’ve been thinking about Sal’s safe for years now. I grew up thinking about it—about all the money he kept in there, about what the combination might be. I’d made up lists of possible combinations—I know something about how the man thinks, so I was pretty sure one of my guesses would be right. And I knew I could get into the room, I’d just copy my father’s keys. But I’d never gotten myself over the hump and actually decided to do it. Because what if I did and something went wrong? If I got caught? He’d kill me. I mean, he loves me, I’m his niece, but if I stole from him? He’d kill me without thinking twice. That’s the kind of man he is.”

Seeing how he’d treated her husband for a lesser offense, Tricia was not inclined to disagree.

“Then about a month ago I’m sitting in one of the bars my father runs—you know he runs all sorts of businesses for my uncle, right? Bars, a garage downtown, couple of motels in Jersey. Anyway, I’m sitting there, middle of the day, having some lunch and a couple of drinks, minding my own business, and I hear these two guys in the booth behind me talking. And what they’re talking about is this robbery they’re planning. I mean, they were being quiet, but I was sitting right on the other side of the divider, I could hear every word. And after I’d listened for a few minutes I realized it was Sal’s place they were talking about robbing. There was this whole complicated scheme—up a wall, through a window, I mean crazy stuff. But I started thinking: This is my chance. All I have to do is go in first, clean the place out, then let these two clowns take their stab at it. They’re the ones who’d get caught—no one would ever look twice at me.

“So I waited to hear when they were planning to do it. And they said it very clearly: the eighteenth at 3:30. They said it twice.

“So, fine—I got everything ready for the eighteenth, only I went in at 2:00. Plenty of time, right? Figured it shouldn’t take me more than 45 minutes, and I allowed myself twice that.” Renata shook her head sadly. “They must have changed the plan. When I got to the counting room, they’d already been. The safe was cleaned out. And I was the one left holding the bag.”

“You’ll pardon me for saying so,” Tricia said, “but what a load of crap.”

“I swear to god,” Renata said, “it’s true. May I be struck dead if I’m lying.”

“You overheard two guys in a bar. Talking about robbing Sal Nicolazzo.”

“Yes.”

“A bar run by one of Nicolazzo’s main deputies. By his brother-in-law.”

“Yes.”

“And you decided you’d beat them to the punch, take your shot at the money, only they beat you instead.”

“Yes!”

“Christ, Renata,” Tricia said. “Do you see any hay stuck in my hair? Do I look like some hick you can bamboozle with a crazy yarn about two mysterious crooks who are stupid enough to discuss their cockamamie plot in a place owned by the man they plan to rob, but slick enough to pull it off and vanish without a trace?”

“All I can tell you is what happened,” Renata said. “Whether you believe it or not, that’s your business.”

“So what did these two men look like?”

“I didn’t get a good look at them.”

“Of course not,” Tricia said.

“They were sitting behind me!”

“Naturally,” Tricia said. “So what bar was it?”

“Why does that matter?”

“Because we can go there and see if we can find anyone else who remembers these guys.”

“It was a month ago!”