“It’s the smallest,” Toretta told him. “That’s about it.”
Abatangelo nodded. In a sudden reversion to six years old, he found himself liking the name: Mustang. He also realized it was not a criterion.
“The Beretta?”
Toretta picked up the second weapon and cradled it in his palm. “This has the largest magazine, thirteen rounds. It’s a little thick in the hand. It’s accurate, though. How good a shot are you?”
“It’s never really come up,” Abatangelo admitted.
Toretta stared in disbelief. “You’re not serious.”
“The way I did business, things went better if I used my brain, not muscle.”
Toretta’s brow furrowed. “The brain is a muscle.”
“The brain,” Abatangelo said, “is an organ. My point is that in my day, especially compared to now, things were relatively mellow.”
“Not that mellow. Not possible.”
“You’d be surprised.”
“I hit surprise a few miles back. Where there’s money, there’s heat.”
Abatangelo groaned and rubbed his eyes. “I will admit, in the past I’ve resisted the impulse to have weapons around because, to my mind, they carry a distinctly phallic association.”
Toretta laughed. “Exactly.”
They sat like that a moment, staring across a chasm of incomprehension. Finally, Toretta shook his head, put down the Beretta, and held out a black 9 mm.
“This is an Israeli piece, a Sirkis. It aims reasonably straight and you’re likely to stop anything you hit. Go ahead. Hold it.”
Abatangelo took the weapon in his hand and felt an immediate match. It was very light, he could palm it easily. The grip seemed natural and uncomplicated. Like picking a pup from a litter, he thought. You just know. “What are its disadvantages?” he asked, trying not to sound too eager. He still hoped to shave the price.
“It’s a blowback,” Toretta said. “The barrel’s going to return on you to eject the fired round. The site’s not all that hot. It’s double action, the first trigger pull’s harder than the rest. Other than that there’s not much to think about.”
“I like that,” Abatangelo admitted.
“It uses a standard parabellum round. Get them anywhere. Don’t need a permit for ammo. Good news for felons.”
Rowena came back in Shel’s truck an hour after she left. From the sounds of it, she’d brought a man back with her. Shel listened from the cellar. Rowena barked instructions at Duval to leave them alone, go out in the living room. “Play that game of yours with the magazines,” she shouted, slamming the bedroom door.
Through the floorboards Shel heard the drunken tottering steps, the sotted lunge onto the bed, the murmured negotiations. “Hey, call me Roger,” the man slurred, then came the scattering of belts and shoes and clothing around the room and shortly the yawning groans and yelps and the rhythmic knocking of the bed against the wall.
She went out for a trick, Shel realized. She must’ve worked a bar. Otherwise why bring him back here? And she didn’t just want her rate, she wanted every cent he had on him, so a car job wouldn’t cut it. Bring him back here, promise him something special. She’ll make it quick, he was drunk to begin with, she’ll wait till he nods off then roll him. Leave him here to sleep it off. Grab Duval and disappear. In my truck, Shel thought, staring at the ceiling.
She’d been unable to attempt the stairs, too weak, too much in pain, her limbs too soupy from pills. The cinder-block cellar walls smelled clammy and felt cold; a grave vault came to mind. She recoiled from the morbidity. Come on, girl, buck up. The pain does these things, she thought. The pain and the fear, they’re the evil sidekicks in this episode. Which reminded her. She dug the prescription bottle out of her pocket, fought with the cap using first her fingers then her teeth, and swallowed the first three pills that materialized. A Haldol, another Pavulon, one of the green jobs. The pills went down slow and dry.
Come on, she thought. It was time for something to happen.
As things grew quiet in the bedroom above, Shel renewed her search of the junk piled up on a bookshelf against the cellar wall. She’d already ransacked everything within reach, cardboard cartons, suitcases, shoe boxes. The object of interest was the amethyst Danny had given her in San Diego that first week after they met. She wanted to wear it from here on out, whatever happened. If Danny came to ID her body she wanted him to find it among her effects.
She thought it through as best she could, the move to this house, where she’d put what, and finally it came to her. She’d hidden it in a hatbox filled with snapshots, along with Danny’s letters. She’d put the box in the crawl space where Frank wouldn’t go rummaging around for it.
She looked up. Crawl space, dead ahead. Mustering the strength from a reservoir of will she feared was almost empty, she dragged herself up to the low concrete wall. Tongue between her teeth, she propped one knee onto the crawl space ledge, reaching as far as her fingernails could get her. The hatbox tottered from its perch atop a steamer truck, then fell open, spilling pictures. Letters. The black felt box.
Several car doors slammed outside. Withdrawing her hand from the crawl space, she listened. Scurrying down, she shambled to the window well, grabbed a stepladder near the wall and struggled up three rungs so she could peer out. The glass was filthy. She wiped the grime away with her fist, craning to see.
It wasn’t Felix. It wasn’t Dayball or Tully, either, or Roy or his brothers or even Frank.
Six dark men. They wore gray suits. Two of them carried valises. They marched across the gravel toward the house.
She heard the front door splinter off its hinges from one hard kick and Duval screamed in the living room. It sounded less like the scream of a child than the shriek of a bird. Rowena slammed out of the bedroom, running toward the sound and then she was screaming, too, her voice twice as hideous as the boy’s. The sound of blows and angry shouts in Spanish, then the rubbery screech of duct tape and the screams were stifled to whimpers. The men rushed about the house, searching rooms. Duval and Rowena got dragged to the kitchen, thrown to the floor.
She watched the ceiling, trying to swallow and envisioning the footsteps seeping blood through the floor. The Mexicans, she thought. Christ. How’d they find out about this place? They must’ve captured Roy, or Snuff. Or Frank. This wasn’t part of the bargain, she thought. I didn’t come back for this.
Clambering into the crawl space, she scraped her elbows and knees against the concrete. She shoved the letters and snapshots back into the hatbox and stuffed it behind the steamer trunk where it wouldn’t be seen. Then she grabbed the black felt box and scrambled on, wanting the amethyst now more than ever. Reaching the far wall, she tucked her knees to her chest, pressed the felt box to her heart and prayed for luck.
The stairwell stood directly across from the crawl space opening, so Shel could watch as the cellar door eased open. Two men descended slowly in the harsh lamplight. Shel watched them appear, glistening black shoes, neat gray suits. The Tigers of Bacchus. The smaller one had a lithe, wiry, tap-dancer body. A birthmark erupted from his eyebrow like a smear. The other one was huge, dough-faced, cracking his neck as he walked, like a fighter. With the toes of their shoes they nudged the suitcases, boxes, scattered debris, moving it out of their path.
The large one spotted the cubbyhole first. He tugged at the little one’s sleeve and pointed. They eased apart. From different sides of the room they advanced warily. Each man held his weapon against his leg. Their faces in the light, the eyes in particular, glistened from the bare bulb. The eyes were stony and tense and a little afraid. It made Shel like them just a little, a tremble of hope, they were human after all, like her. Afraid.
“I’ve got no beef with you,” she shouted, trying to claw herself further back into the crawl space. Her voice echoed in the cramped surround. The two men stepped closer.
From his pocket, the larger one withdrew a Baggie filled with chalky crystal, lobbing it gently in one hand. Upstairs, to the tune of “Ave Maria,” one of the others crooned the epitaph
The little one reached into his coat pocket and removed a photograph. Studying it briefly, he murmured
