He turned to McCarron. “We’ve got a little problem, and here’s what we’re going to do.”
“Problem?” said McCarron. “They’ll have that cleared up in a few minutes.”
Angelo was afraid he was going to break the steering wheel with his bare hands, so he carefully put them in his lap. “I’m going to get out of the car and walk down to that bar with the yellow sign. You slide over, take the wheel—”
“I can’t slide over in this car.”
“You come around, wait for them to clear the exit, drive down to the bar and meet me.”
Angelo’s slow, clear, quiet voice had frightened McCarron more than it would have if he had been screaming and shrieking. He held on to Angelo’s arm with a grip that slowed the circulation. “No. No, you don’t. Tell me first.”
Angelo glared at him. This was when he would have killed him if they hadn’t been stuck here surrounded by people. This was a man who, if left alone, would shortly begin to line his hats with tinfoil to protect his brain from the CIA’s microwaves. But he tried anyway. “There’s a man in that building. Don’t look.
“See?” said McCarron. “He’s after me.”
Angelo sighed. “He’s not after you, for Christ’s sake. He’s after me.”
McCarron wasn’t to be dissuaded. “I came to you tonight to tell you they want me dead, a hit man shows up and you say he’s not after me?”
“Please,” said Angelo. “Just do it. Come around and take the wheel.”
“No,” said McCarron. “Not a chance.”
Now Angelo grabbed McCarron’s wrist and freed himself of the lunatic’s grip. It was much more difficult than he had anticipated; McCarron was as big as he was. “This is not the kind of man the CIA would send—give him a membership card and security clearance and all that shit. He’s a fucking animal.”
“That’s very reassuring. Look, my life depends on you now. Get us out of here.”
Angelo nearly said, “No,
He walked fast, stepping over the high curb and striking out across the shrubbery to the sidewalk. But then he heard a car door slam, and he listened for the other door to slam and let him know that McCarron had gotten into the driver’s seat. Instead, he heard the loud blare of a car horn. Then there were running footsteps, and an unfamiliar voice yelled, “Hey! Get back in the car! Fight it out at home, you old faggots.” He was mortified more deeply than he had been since he was a child. He felt chills in his spine, inside the very bones, but when he touched his face it was hot.
When McCarron caught up with him, Angelo was so angry that patches and bursts of color were floating across his field of vision. “You couldn’t listen, huh?” The man was dead. He might still be walking around, but now the only gratification that Angelo could promise himself was that McCarron was going to know why he was dying while he died.
“You expect me to sit there and let him kill me? My only chance is if I stick with you.”
McCarron obviously didn’t know that he was beyond having chances. His chance had been the chance to do what Angelo had told him to do. “Shut up,” said Angelo. There was no possibility the Butcher’s Boy hadn’t been looking at him, but why would he be looking for him in a university parking lot? If he wanted Angelo, he would look for the Cadillac in the parking lot at the Vesuvio. Of course he had, but he had seen Angelo come out and get into this little Toyota, and had followed him. Tonight, of all nights of the year, he was away from his soldiers, unarmed and alone.
“Where are we going? Shouldn’t we get off the street?” McCarron asked.
Now it occurred to Angelo that the reason he was in this situation was the call from this lunatic who was dogging his steps, practically stepping on his heels. He glanced at McCarron again, but the suspicion dissolved into simple anger. McCarron was too crazy to have knowingly betrayed anyone. He really was frightened. “No,” said Angelo. “We go to the bar and call for help. If that one gets us into the darkness off the street, we don’t come out again.”
Behind them a horn honked again. This time it was a long, loud bleat that ended with what sounded like someone beating his fist on the horn six times.
Wolf drifted out of the building with a crowd of curious students. The bus driver and the owner of the station wagon were out of their vehicles and standing on the street, so the onlookers began to lose interest. There was no tragedy to participate in, or even carnage to see. The event had already been diminished to the dull haggling in which the drivers served only as temporary representatives of the insurance companies and lawyers who were the real principals. The horns started again, the two drivers in the accident climbed back into their vehicles, the bus driver pulled away from the wrecked car and stopped at the bus stop, and then a few young men pushed the station wagon away from the exit and around the corner to the curb.
Now the horns began in earnest, and Wolf looked at the source of the commotion. There was the little Toyota stalled in the narrow drive to the exit, and behind it there were now eight or ten cars, all honking their horns. Two of the young men who had pushed the station wagon were looking into the gray car and shaking their heads at someone inside. When the someone lunged over the back seat into the front and began to bark at the horns, he understood their problem; they wanted to get in and move the car out of the way, but they were afraid of the big dog.
As Wolf stepped to the street, he could see two men walking quickly up the sidewalk toward a lighted yellow sign. The big man with Fratelli, whose face he hadn’t been able to see, was probably a bodyguard. He obviously had the knack. There had been no way for the bodyguard to sense that Fratelli was in danger—as in fact he wasn’t, at least for the moment. Wolf had already decided not to make an attempt tonight. There were too many witnesses. When the gray car had entered the university visitors’ lot, he had followed it on a whim. He regretted it now as he walked back toward his car amid the sound of horns. Somehow he had frightened the bodyguard and a whole series of responses had been triggered, each placing additional obstacles in his path. Now Fratelli would dig in, the bodyguard would marshal reinforcements and in an hour Fratelli would be a very difficult man to kill.
Wolf climbed into his car and started the engine. He backed out of his parking space and joined the line of cars waiting to get past the toll gate to the street. He could see that the two men were just coming under the big yellow sign down the sidewalk. Then something odd happened. The two of them tried to squeeze through the front door at once, and got stuck for a second. Then Fratelli stopped and let the other man go in front. It was puzzling behavior for a bodyguard.
Once inside the Canal, Angelo could see that the place was disgusting. It was full of the kind of people he had seen on television buying cars like the one he had just abandoned or talking about tax-sheltered annuities, and every one of them was drinking white wine. The place was dim but full of living plants with little spotlights on them, and the bartender was dressed up like a neutered poodle, with a high collar that had a little black bow around it.
He could see the telephone in the little alcove just this side of the bathrooms, so he rushed across the room, fishing in his pockets for change. He was almost at the telephone before he admitted to himself that he didn’t have any, so he came back to grab McCarron, who had been headed off by a woman in a little blue suit like a man’s. “I’m afraid we’re all booked up,” she was saying.
Angelo said to McCarron, “Give me your change.”
The woman looked at him doubtfully. “I was just telling your friend—”
“Fine,” said Angelo. “I just want to use your phone.” McCarron placed a little pile of coins in his palm. As an afterthought, Angelo added, “And we’d like a drink. White wine.”
Angelo returned to the telephone to find a young woman dropping a coin into the slot. He leaned close and said, “Are you going to be long?”
As she turned to look at him, he could see that she was about twenty-five years old and the sort of young woman he hated most. She smirked at him. “Probably, but it’s none of your business.” She had light brown, almost blond hair, a big pair of glasses with red frames and lenses that glittered in the light of the little spot on the nearest
