“You don’t need to do a damn thing, girlie,” O’Malley said. “You can call your lawyer, or have us call one for you. We’ve already got a nice cell waiting for you. And at six thirty or so, your sister and your friend get the chop, like you said. But
Tricia looked at him meditatively for a minute. Then she held out her shackled wrists.
She said, “Take these damn things off of me.”
Dawn wouldn’t break for half an hour still, but the piers were already busy with dockworkers walking to and from the ships, deckhands loading supplies and unloading cargo. The few birds that were awake were circling overhead, cawing lustily and diving when they spotted a bit of breakfast swimming near the water’s surface.
Tricia sat on the footlocker, legs crossed at the ankles, and waited. She’d lugged the thing this far, dragging it from where the taxi had left her, and that was far enough. Nicolazzo had promised that two men would pick her up—well, they could pick up the footlocker while they were at it.
She rubbed her wrists where O’Malley’s cuffs had chafed them, or anyway where she imagined they had. You couldn’t see any marks, but it felt to her like she still had them on.
Her first quarry. Jesus Christ. Brooks had made it sound like he was making her a Junior G-Man or some sort of secret double agent out of the movies. When what he really was doing, most likely, was sending her off to get herself killed. What were the odds that she’d be able to bring Nicolazzo back to shore and into their hands? Bad enough when all she’d had to worry about was getting Coral and Charley off his boat alive.
O’Malley had ridden with her back to Mike’s, had turned the leather box of photos back over to her, and had directed the junior cop who was driving them to unload the footlocker from the trunk. The cops had helpfully prepared the money inside, even adding paper bands just like the ones you’d get from a bank to hold the individual stacks closed, and making sure the stacks on the first two layers all had at least two real bills on top and one on the bottom. The driver had proudly described the process, like a hobbyist talking about painting lead soldiers. They’d stayed up all night working on it, he’d said.
When they were out on the street, O’Malley had handed her the radio-cum-makeup case, tucked into a blue, beaded purse that matched her dress only a little better than a feather headdress would have. She’d accepted it. It wasn’t like she had a variety of purses to choose from or any place to get a better one at five in the morning.
She’d made them wait on the sidewalk while she went upstairs. Her stated purpose was to use the bathroom and she did that, but she also stopped by the back room and fished through the pile of old newspapers and pawnshop tickets till she found one of the latter on which the merchandise being pawned wasn’t a set of flatware or a watch but “one (1) valise—large—brown leather.” Taking the ticket into the bathroom, she opened Mike’s safety razor, slid out the blade, and used it to scrape the date and the name and address of the pawnshop off the ticket. She slipped the ticket into her pocket; the razor blade, too, for good measure.
Downstairs again, O’Malley had put her into a cab, loaded the trunk into the trunk, and patted the car’s side the way you would a horse’s when you wanted it to go. The driver had sped off toward Brooklyn and arrived at the Gowanus piers a few minutes before the deadline. There’d been no traffic. Tricia hoped that hadn’t used up her quota of good luck for the day.
She waited, wishing she had worn a watch. It had to be after six, but just how much after, she couldn’t be sure. She felt a little nervous, sitting by herself on a box of money—true, it wasn’t the three million dollars it was pretending to be, but eleven thousand was still more money than she’d ever found herself sitting on before. And if someone wanted to take it, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to prevent—
“Hey,” a voice called. “You Tricia?”
Looking up, she saw two men walking toward her. They ran to type, as if Nicolazzo went to the same casting office Hollywood used when picking heavies. One could’ve been Bruno’s twin brother: same build, same pink dome, same glowering expression. The other—the one that had spoken—was smaller, though not by a lot, and looked very much like pictures she’d seen of the current resident of Gracie Manor, Mayor Wagner: jowly, big ears, receding hairline. But she suspected the resemblance ended there. For one thing, she doubted this one had gone to Yale.
“Yes,” she said. “I’m Tricia.”
“We’ve been waiting for you,” Mayor Wagner said. “Over there.” He pointed at a little launch bobbing at the end of the pier.
“Well, I’ve been waiting for you, right here.”
“Why?”
“Because this thing weighs almost as much as I do,” Tricia said. “Your boss wants it, you can carry it.”
“All right,” he said, “no need to get huffy.” He snapped his fingers at his cohort. “Now, howsabout you get up and put your hands out to the side?”
She stood, lifted her arms, and suffered through her first frisking of the morning. She was getting to be quite an old hand at it, no longer even flinching as a stranger’s hand brushed over her backside.
While the smaller man took care of patting her down, the larger one bent, gripped one of the footlocker’s handles in each hand, and lifted the thing effortlessly into the air.
The smaller one plucked the box of photos out of her pocket. “What’s this?” he said.
“Those are Nicolazzo’s photos,” she said. “Feel free to take a look if you don’t believe me.” But an expression of horror crossed his face and he handed the box back to her.
“No, thanks,” he said.
“Why not?”
“Kagan and me, we’re not allowed to see them,” he said. “Uncle Nick made that very clear. His eyes only.”
Kagan nodded forcefully. He’d given the impression of paying only cursory attention to what was going on around him, but this point he clearly felt was important.
“Okay,” Tricia said. “Suit yourself. How about the money, you want to take a look at that?”
He laughed. “What, to make sure it’s not just a lot of cut-up newspaper? Come on. Nobody’d be that stupid.”
“No, I guess not,” Tricia said.
“Let’s get a move on. We’re already running late.” He gestured for her to walk ahead of them down the pier.
She walked. “What should I call you?” she said as they neared the boat.
“Mr. P,” he said. “It’s short for Pantazonis.”
“Greek?” Tricia said.
“No, Zulu,” he said.
They boarded the boat, Tricia first, then the two men. There wasn’t a huge amount of room, and Tricia found herself sitting on the footlocker again. What the hell, she figured. Maybe it’ll hatch.
Kagan fired up the engine and they cruised out of the dock, heading for open water. As they hooked around toward the mouth of the bay, they passed a large wooden billboard proudly proclaiming this the future home of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, courtesy of a list of public servants that started with City Construction Coordinator Robert Moses.
Where Moses wants a bridge, Tricia thought, he gets a bridge.
Apart from the spray flying in her face and a bit of seasickness that kicked in when the waves got choppy, the ride wasn’t too unpleasant. Neither man spoke to her, nor did they talk much to each other. Pantazonis spent most of the time hunched over, trying to stay dry, while Kagan stood straight and tall in the front like a bald Viking and steered with his eyes on the horizon.
It felt like it had been at least half an hour before Tricia got her first glimpse of Nicolazzo’s yacht. It looked deceptively small until they drew closer, and then suddenly revealed itself to be many times the size of the boat they were in, more like a small cruise ship than like anything one man should have for his own use. Kagan cut the power and they coasted in gently, bumping hulls as they arrived. Several heads appeared at the railing above them and a rope ladder was thrown over the side.
“Go on up,” Pantazonis said. “We’ve got a winch for the box.” And sure enough, while Tricia carefully climbed the ladder, trying hard not to lose either the purse looped around her wrist or her shoes along the way, she saw a
