Fifty-to-One

“Do I look stupid enough to try and blackmail Salvatore Nicolazzo?”

“You’d be surprised, Miss Heverstadt. I don’t look stupid myself, and just look how stupid I’ve been over the past few days.” He leaned across the table, brought his face close to hers. “Listen, girlie. You’re looking at the max.”

“The hell I am,” Tricia said. “You’re bluffing.”

The man in the suit looked pained when Tricia said hell. “Miss Heverstadt,” he said, in a smooth, authoritative voice, “I’m afraid your attitude is not helpful. I can assure you that what Captain O’Malley says is correct.” He had a glistening crew cut, a wide, squarish jaw, and a short and very straight nose. He would have been handsome as a movie star if his eyes hadn’t been so close together.

“You sound like a radio announcer. Who is this guy?” Tricia asked O’Malley.

“Now that is a question I was asking myself not so very long ago. Miss Heverstadt, may I present Special Agent Houghton Brooks...” He turned to Brooks. “I’m afraid I keep forgetting. Are you Houghton Brooks the Third, or the Fourth?”

“Just Junior, Captain,” Brooks said with a strained smile.

“Agent Houghton Brooks, Jr. of the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation. The federal authorities have been kind enough to interest themselves in our little case, Miss Heverstadt. They are very interested in you. And you still don’t think you’re looking at the max?”

“I don’t know,” Tricia admitted. “What’s the max?”

“The maximum penalty permitted under New York State sentencing guidelines, Miss Heverstadt. In your case, several consecutive sentences that’ll add up to life without parole.” O’Malley stood, leaned forward on both hands and looked down at her. “How old are you, Miss Heverstadt? Eighteen, nineteen? You haven’t done much living yet, have you? How’d you like to do the rest of the living you’ll ever do, spend the rest of the years you’ve got to spend, in the slam? How’d you like to grow old in a cage?”

“Right now, Captain, growing old anyplace at all sounds pretty inviting.”

“And how about your friends? Your bartender friend we don’t have much on except operating illegally after hours—but Miss Erin Galloway, now there’s a piece of work. Of course you’ll probably tell me she didn’t try and fracture my skull, either.” Tricia shrugged. “Well, never mind that. We’re charging her with Murder Two—an employee of Uncle Nick’s named Celestino Manzoni, by means of another firearm she wasn’t legally entitled to possess. Grand larceny again—a racehorse this time. And as an employee in good standing of Madame Helga’s organization, I’m sure she’s been up to a few things that might interest the boys in vice.

“And your friend Borden, now, where do I begin? He likes to assault cops and impersonate officers and steal cop cars. That’s when he isn’t publishing smut or running Madame Helga’s himself. Some breaking and entering for Mister Borden, too, as well as—”

“All right,” Tricia said. “All right.”

“I’m sorry, Miss Heverstadt. Am I boring you?”

“I’m tired. I’m very tired, and it’s—late. And I would like you to get to the point.”

O’Malley turned to Agent Brooks. “You see? She’s a pain in my thigh, and she’s rotten straight through, and she lies like a hundred-dollar Persian rug, and she’s keeping company with big piles of newspaper cut up the same size as money, God knows why. But like she says, she’s not stupid. She knows there’s a point.” He turned back to her and his eyes, shadowed by bandages, were suddenly savage. Very softly he said, “I don’t care about any of this crap, girlie, and I don’t care about you. I don’t care about you or your whore friends or your piss-ant smut-peddler boyfriends. You’re not even annoyances to me. You’re gnats. You’re something I’ve got to brush away from time to time so I can go about my business. And my business is Sal Nicolazzo. And you are going to bring him to me.”

Tricia stared at him.

“Permit me,” Agent Brooks said. “Captain O’Malley expresses himself a bit—”

“That’s right,” O’Malley said. “I expressed myself. You’ve got a way about you, sister. You seem to wiggle your little butt into and out of Uncle Nick’s place easier than anybody I’ve ever seen. He’s interested in you.”

“He’s interested in his three million dollars, Captain O’Malley. He thinks I’ve got it. He’s wrong—but that’s what he thinks. He’s also interested in those photos. And he’s given me until six AM tomorrow—six AM this morning—to get them to him, on that boat of his. That’s why the piles of newspaper. They’re going to pick me up at six at a pier in Brooklyn and I’ve got to have it all with me, or Charley and my sister...he’s got them out there, and he’s said he’ll kill them. They’ll die.”

“Well then,” O’Malley said. “That gives us something to work with.”

“To work with?”

“Yeah. You’re going to go out there to Uncle Nick’s boat. You’re going to bring—” He shouted toward the door. “Nevins!” A balding head appeared. O’Malley pointed to the leather case of photos. “Get Levitas out of bed. Now. Get him to copy these photographs. I want negatives by three this morning, and I want a set of dry prints on my desk at nine, and whatever fingerprints are on these photos and this case better still be on them and nobody else’s. Clear?” Nevins nodded and disappeared, and O’Malley turned back to Tricia. “You’re going to bring these photos, and your case of funny money, to that boat, and you’re going to bring a story with you, and that story, when you tell it, is going to bring Uncle Nick back to dry land where Agent Brooks and I can get at him. That’s what you’ll do, and that’s all you’ll do. And when you’re done, you and your whore friend and your smut-peddler sweetheart and your sister can all walk. The bartender, too. Understand? I’ll wipe the slate. You give me Nicolazzo, and we’re quits.”

“And what’s this story I’m going to tell him?”

“That’s up to you,” O’Malley said. “Just as long as it works.”

There was a moment of silence.

“Jesus,” Tricia said. “You must be desperate.”

Agent Brooks said, “It may sound to you like a desperate idea, Miss Heverstadt—”

“No. The idea sounds loony. You two sound desperate.”

“Captain O’Malley and I have been reviewing your case, and as he says, you seem an exceptionally resourceful and ingenious young woman. We have a good deal of confidence in your ability.”

“You may have a good deal of confidence in my ability, Agent Brooks. Captain O’Malley just thinks I’m worth a try. If I succeed, he wins big. If I don’t, I save the City of New York the expense of a trial and a jail term. Hell,” she said, and Agent Brooks winced again, “the city probably won’t even have to pay for a burial since if anything goes wrong Nicolazzo will do the honors himself with a good old-fashioned burial at sea. Do I understand you correctly, Captain?”

O’Malley smiled beatifically. “You see, Agent Brooks? Not a bit stupid. Yes, Miss Heverstadt. You understand me correctly. I wouldn’t gamble a nickel on you succeeding, but as it happens, a nickel’s about five cents more than you mean to me. So what the hell? Sometimes a long shot comes in. And Agent Brooks here thinks it’s a dandy idea, don’t you, Agent Brooks?”

“I understand your skepticism, Captain, but in fact I do think so. Miss Heverstadt, I think I’m a pretty good judge of men—and, ah, women, in this case. And I think you’ve got that certain something it takes to see a highly sensitive and perilous mission through. You also appear to be quite well connected in the underworld, something the Bureau finds most valuable. In fact, if you do well enough with this assignment—with your first quarry, if you will—the Agency might like to talk to you about other assignments.”

O’Malley was mouthing the word quarry.

Brooks opened a briefcase and removed a small box covered in pink satin with a brass clasp, crudely embroidered with the initials TH. “Here’s what you’ll use to communicate with us once you’ve brought Nicolazzo back to land. Now, this may look like an ordinary makeup case...”

“It looks,” Tricia said, “like nothing on earth. Have you ever seen a woman’s makeup case?”

“I believe Agent Brooks Junior is a bachelor,” O’Malley said to the ceiling.

Agent Brooks’ eyes seemed to be getting closer together. “But inside,” he said doggedly, “under this hidden panel containing the little pots of powder and so on, there is a Regency TR-1, the most advanced miniature transistor radio on the market today, which my colleagues have modified to send a homing signal with a radius of twenty-five miles. When you’ve succeeded in luring Mr. Nicolazzo to a convenient location, all you need do is switch this beacon on, and our men will be there within minutes.”

“That’s all I need do, huh?”