“Not sure. They winter in Florida, y’know, but I never saw ’em go down this early, before. You could ask that girl who lives with Rocco. She’s back.”
The corner of my left eye twitched. “Is she?”
“If you can get past Pete, she is,” he said, with a shrug.
“Pete?”
George nodded toward the lobby. “The elevator operator. He’s sort of the guardian at the gate. I work for the Barry Apartments; but Pete works for the Fischettis.”
“I appreciate the information, George.”
“Any time, Mr. Lincoln.”
I had a clear head and I had that cool, detached limbo state of mind that I’d experienced in combat on the Island — Guadalcanal, that is. A distancing that keeps men under fire from going mad.
I clopped across the marble floor of the narrow, mirrored, fern-flung lobby. Over my arm the London Fog was draped, which hid the nine millimeter in my fist; I wasn’t wearing a hat — it was somewhere in Little Hell, having blown off my head when I was running down the street, trying to help Bas, fucking up yet another bodyguard assignment.
Nice thing about bodyguard work is, the clients who survive will write letters of reference; and the dead ones never complain.
Stepping on the elevator, I said, “Ten, please.”
This was the same blue-uniformed, blue-five-o’clock-shadowed thug as before — with the same bulge under his left arm. He glanced at me — maybe he recognized me, maybe he didn’t — but he just did as I asked him. After all, I wasn’t going up to the penthouse.
When the doors slid shut, I pretended to drop my London Fog, and as I was coming up, I slapped the bastard along the side of his head with the Browning barrel. He stumbled into the side wall of the elevator, his ear bleeding, his eyes doing a slot-machine roll; I reached into his coat, withdrew Pete’s .38 revolver from its holster, and stuck it in my waistband.
He lurched at me, grabbing at me like I was a ladder he was trying to climb, and I slapped his other ear with the Browning; now he went down on his knees, like he was praying, or preparing to blow me — neither image appealed to me, so I pushed him all the way to the floor with my left foot, and — now that he was unconscious, or pretending to be — tied his hands behind him with my necktie.
The door opened on ten and, when nobody got on or off, the doors closed again, and I drove myself up to the seventeenth floor. Pete had come groggily around; he was on his side, looking up at me — he seemed puzzled and like maybe his feelings were a little hurt.
“What did
“Nothing,” I said. “Which is what you’re going to keep doing. You got a passkey?”
“Fuck you!”
That meant he did. I searched him and found it in a shallow slanty pocket of his blue uniform’s jacket.
“Are they here?” I asked. “The three Fish brothers?”
“Fuck you,” he said, with no enthusiasm.
That meant they probably weren’t — that George the doorman had been right... goddamnit. At that moment, fresh from the murders of my two clients, I would have loved to return the favor to Rocky and Charley — slowly... Rocky because he was a sadistic son of a bitch, and Charley because he was the brains, and undoubtedly had ordered these hits.
I parked the elevator, flicking the OUT OF SERVICE switch, stepped past Pete, who was on his side, scowling at me, and got off at the entryway, where the golden Egyptian settee and sunburst clock awaited. Using the passkey, I went in, nine millimeter still an extra appendage growing out of my fist — I didn’t think the Fischettis were here, but I might be wrong. My track record tonight wasn’t that great, after all.
Or some other watchdog or two might be present, more competent than the McCarthy-jowled elevator operator.
But I was barely inside when I heard music, coming from the living room.
Someone was playing the piano — “They Say It’s Wonderful,” Irving Berlin,
Jackie Payne was sitting at the grand piano in the spacious living room, near the terrace-style balcony, the curtains open, revealing the sky with its stars and the moon with its glow that was turning the endless lake shimmering silver. Accompanying herself (she played fairly well), Jackie sang with delicacy and feeling, and she looked fine — no black eyes, just those lovely big brown ones; she wore a white short-sleeve blouse and sky-blue pedal pushers, her feet bare, toenails painted blood red.
Nine millimeter still in hand, I began to clap; the first of the claps — echoing off the slate floor — made her jump, and stop in midnote, hands frozen over the keys.
“Please,” I said, the gun lowered, “don’t stop on my account. You sound fine.”
She just sat there and looked at me, her face as expressionless as a Kewpie doll; then her lip began to tremble and tears rolled down her face. No sound of sobbing, though.
I sighed, walked over, sat next to her on the piano bench, gun in my lap, in my hand, limply now.
“Why?” I asked her.
“I’m not going with you, Nate.”
“Why?”
