Nolan went to the lounge chair where he’d left his towel and dried off. There was a small round metal table next to the chair, a canopied table with a pitcher of martinis and ice on it. Nolan poured three glasses from the pitcher and gave one to Sherry and one to Felix and kept the third.
“Thank you,” Felix said. His tone was almost friendly now; evidently he was dropping the reproving manner, having gotten nowhere with it. He sipped the drink and said, “What sort of martini is this?”
“Vodka,” Nolan said.
“Oh,” Felix nodded, and took a seat beside Nolan’s lounge chair, checking it first for moisture.
“How’s Joey doing?” Nolan asked.
Sherry had finished her drink already and was diving back into the pool.
Felix said, “Pretty girl. We should do something for her for helping out.”
“I’ll do something for her,” Nolan said. “What about Joey?”
“Well, he’s not pleased that you’ve taken his clothes away from him.”
“It’s one way to keep him in his room.”
“And he doesn’t like my sending Greer in to watch him all the time, either.”
“That’s another way.” Nolan was beginning to get quietly pissed off at this smug little lawyer.
Earlier, Nolan had assured Joey that the Family would hear nothing of their conversation, and Joey had talked easier that way, but after Nolan was finished with him, Felix and the two bodyguards had shouldered into the room to find things out for themselves. Nolan hadn’t stayed around to watch, as redundant violence irritated him, but it wasn’t his show anymore, so he’d let it pass.
“Other than that,” Felix was saying, “Joey Metrano’s turned into a humble, quiet little guy. He’s full of apologies and bowing and scraping. He knows that his life is hanging by the slenderest of threads now that he’s admitted helping Charlie hoax the Family.” Felix said the word “Charlie” as though he were spitting out a seed. “He’ll be taken back to the city tomorrow morning and kept under close watch. I don’t need to go over what Joey told us, do I? He probably told you much the same. Says all he was doing was keeping some of his cousin’s money in a bank account, and knows he’s one of several doing that for Charlie, though he insists he doesn’t know who any of the others are. Claims he had nothing to do with helping Charlie pull off the phony death, other than knowledge of the fact, and says he doesn’t know who did. Well, what do you think, Nolan? Is he lying or not? You think there’s any chance he knows where Charlie is?”
“No,” Nolan said. Charlie was too smart to tell Joey much, and it figured he wouldn’t let his different co-conspirators know each other either. Less you know, less you can tell under duress. “I figure Joey’s telling the truth. I questioned him pretty thorough.”
Felix said, “I questioned him rather thoroughly myself, or I should say Greer and Angelo did. So I have to agree with you. It would seem Joey’s told us everything he knows.”
Nolan said, “No wonder he’s a humble, quiet little guy. It’s been a bitch of a night for him.”
Felix leaned close, like a quarterback giving the signals. “We better come to some kind of mutual understanding, Nolan, about how we’re going about handling this affair. I can’t be sure how many people were involved in helping Charlie put over his little charade, but I think it should be obvious to you that there is going to be some, shall we say, extensive inter-Family housecleaning.”
“Give me two days.”
“What can you do in two days?”
“Try me.”
“What are you asking?”
“Leave me alone for two days. Give me that long before you start weeding out your bad stock.”
“Where will you start?”
“I have some people in mind to see.”
“What sort of people?”
“Family people. Some people who seem likely bedfellows for Charlie.”
“Such as?”
Nolan told him.
Felix nodded. “They’re well insulated, you know. Not that easy to get at.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“You’ll be needing some information from me, addresses, telephone numbers, that sort of thing.”
“Yes.”
Felix thought for a moment. Then he said, “Is there a phone I could use?”
Nolan pointed across the pool, where there was a snack bar, closed now, of course, but with a phone on the counter. Felix got up and walked over to the counter and used the phone. Nolan watched Sherry swim. She was graceful.
Ten minutes later Felix was back. “Two days,” he said.
“Thanks,” Nolan said.
“You know, I still don’t understand how you guessed Charlie.” Felix laughed, “I mean a dead man, my God. I would have assumed it was someone from
They’d been over that this afternoon and Nolan didn’t want to go into it again.
“Call it a hunch,” Nolan said.
