“No shit?”
“Costs a fucking fortune, but you’d be surprised how often it gets rented,” Dominic went on.
“Most of our business is funeral homes,” Joey said. “Only the bride, usually, gets a limousine ride for a wedding. But if you don’t get to follow the casket to the cemetery in a limousine for a funeral, people will think you’re the family black sheep.”
“I guess that’s so,” Frankie agreed, and then started to hand the Classic Livery business card back to Joey.
Joey held up his hand to stop him.
“Keep it,” he said. “You may need a limousine someday.”
“Yeah,” Dominic said. “And they’ll probably give you a professional discount.”
Joey laughed in delight.
“I told you shut up, asshole,” he said.
“A professional discount for what?” Frankie asked, overwhelmed by curiosity.
“Shit, you know what for. Increasing business,” Dominic said.
Joey laughed.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Frankie said.
“Right,” Joey said, and laughed, and winked.
“Yeah, right,” Dominic said.
“Actually, Frankie, that’s sort of the reason we’re here.”
“What is?” Frankie asked.
“What you don’t know we’re talking about,” Joey said softly, moving so close to Frankie that Frankie could smell his cologne. “Frankie, there’s a fellow we know wants to talk to you.”
“Talk to me about what?”
Joey winked at Frankie.
“I don’t know,” Joey said. “But what I do know about this fellow is that he admires a job well done.”
“He’s done a job or two himself,” Dominic said. “If you know what I mean.”
“He already told you he don’t know what you’re talking about, asshole,” Joey said.
“Right,” Dominic said.
“What this fellow we know wants to talk to you about, Frankie,” Joey said, “is a job.”
“What kind of a job?”
“Let’s say a job where you could make in an hour about ten times what you make in a month pushing furniture around the Wanamaker’s warehouse.”
“Yeah?”
“Let’s say this fellow we know has a sort of professional admiration for the way you did your last job, and we both know I’m not talking about throwing furniture on the back of some truck.”
“Who is this guy?”
“He’s like you, Frankie, he likes to sort of maintain a low profile, you know what I mean. Have a sort of public job, and then have another job, like a part-time job, every once in a while, a job that not a hell of a lot of other people can do, you know what I mean.”
“Why does he want to talk to me?” Frankie asked.
“Sometimes, what I understand, with his full-time job, he can handle a part-time job, too, when one comes along. But sometimes, you know what I mean, more than one part-time job comes along. Actually, in this case, what I understand is that there’s three, four part-time jobs come along, and this fellow can’t handle all of them himself. I mean, you’d have to keep your mouth shut-you can keep your mouth shut, can’t you, Frankie?”
“Like a fucking clam,” Frankie said.
“I figured you could, a fellow in the part-time job business like you would have to keep his mouth shut. What I’m saying here, Frankie, is that you would be like a subcontractor. I mean, you come to some financial understanding with this fellow, you do the job, and the whole thing would be between you two. I mean, the people who hired him for the particular part-time job I think this fellow has in mind wouldn’t ever find out that this fellow subcontracted it. They might not like that. I mean, they pay this fellow the kind of money they pay, they expect him to do the job himself, not subcontract it. But what they don’t know can’t hurt them, right?”
“Right,” Frankie said.
“So maybe you would be willing to talk to this fellow, Frankie?” Dominic asked. “I mean, he’d appreciate it. And if you can’t come to some sort of mutually satisfactory arrangement, then you walk away, right? No hard feelings. You’d lose nothing, and it might be in your mutual interest to get to know this fellow. You never know what will happen next week.”
“What the hell,” Frankie said. “Why not?”
Frankie had never seen so many Cadillacs in one place in his life as there were lined up in the garage of Classic Livery, Inc.
He thought there must be maybe a hundred of them, most of them black limousines. There were also a dozen Cadillac hearses, and that many or more flower cars. Plus a whole line of regular Cadillacs and Lincolns, and he saw the white Rolls-Royce Dominic had told him they had.
The floor of the garage was all wet. Frankie decided that they washed the limousines every day, and had probably just finished washing the cars that had been used.
He had never really thought about where the limousines at weddings and funerals had come from, but now he could understand that it must be a pretty good business to be in.
I wonder what they charge for a limousine at a funeral. Probably at least a hundred dollars. And they could probably use the same limousine for more than one funeral in a day. Maybe even more than two. Say a funeral at nine o’clock, and another at eleven, and then at say half past one, and one at say four o’clock.
That’s four hundred bucks a day per limousine!
Jesus Christ, somebody around here must be getting rich, even if they had to pay whatever the fuck it costs, thirty thousand bucks or whatever for a limousine. Four hundred bucks a day times five days is two fucking grand a fucking week! After fifteen weeks, you got your money for the limousine back, and all you have to do after that is pay the driver and the gas. How long will a limousine last? Two, three years at least…
Joey Fatalgio stopped the regular Cadillac he had parked around the corner from Meagan’s Bar, and pointed out the window.
“Through that door, Frankie, the one what says ‘No Admittance.’ You’ll understand that this fellow wants to talk to you alone.”
“Yeah, sure,” Frankie said.
“I’ll go park this and get a cup of coffee or something, and when you’re finished, I’ll take you back to Meagan’s. OK?”
“Fine,” Frankie said.
He got out of the car and walked to the door and knocked on it.
“Come in!” a voice said.
Frankie opened the door.
A large, olive-skinned man in a really classy suit was inside, leaning up against what looked like the garage manager’s desk.
He looked at Frankie, looked good, up and down, for a good fifteen seconds.
“No names, right?” he said. “You’re Mr. Smith and I’m Mr. Jones, right?”
“Right, Mr. Jones,” Frankie said.
Jones, my ass. This is Paulo Cassandro. I seen his picture in the papers just a couple of days ago. The cops arrested him for running some big-time whore ring, and bribing some fucking cop captain.
“Thank you for coming to see me, Mr. Smith,” Cassandro said.
“Don’t mention it, Mr. Jones.”
“Look, you’ll understand, Mr. Smith, that what you hear about something isn’t always what really happened,” Cassandro said. “I mean, I understand that you would be reluctant to talk about a job. But on the other hand, for one thing, nobody’s going to hear a thing that’s said in here but you and me, and from what I hear we’re in the same line of business, and for another, you’ll understand that, with what I’ve got riding on this, I have to be damned sure I’m not dealing with no amateur.”
