If Tomorrow Comes (13 page)

“Yeah? Who’s this?”

“Is thees Mr. Anthony Orsatti?” She had a French accent.

“So?”

“Oh, thank God I get hold of you, Meester Orsatti!”

Lucy was right. The dame was hysterical. Anthony Orsatti
was not interested. He started to hang up, when her voice went on.

“You must stop him, please!”

“Lady, I don’t know who you’re talkin’ about, and I’m a busy—”

“My Joe. Joe Romano. He promised to take me with him,
comprenez-vous?”

“Hey, you got a beef with Joe, take it up with him. I ain’t his nursemaid.”

“He lie to me! I just found out he is leave for Brazil without me. Half of that three hundred thousand dollars is mine.”

Anthony Orsatti suddenly found he was interested, after all. “What three hundred thousand you talkin’ about?”

“The money Joe is hiding in his checking account. The money he—how you say?—
skimmed
.”

Anthony Orsatti was
very
interested.

“Please tell Joe he must take me to Brazil with him. Please! Weel you do thees?”

“Yeah,” Anthony Orsatti promised. “I’ll take care of it.”

Joe Romano’s office was modern, all white and chrome, done by one of New Orleans’s most fashionable decorators. The only touches of color were the three expensive French Impressionist paintings on the walls. Romano prided himself on his good taste. He had fought his way up from the slums of New Orleans, and on the way he had educated himself. He had an eye for paintings and an ear for music. When he dined out, he had long, knowledgeable discussions with the sommelier about wines. Yes, Joe Romano had every reason to be proud. While his contemporaries had survived by using their fists, he had succeeded by using his brains. If it was true that Anthony Orsatti owned New Orleans, it was also true that it was Joe Romano who ran it for him.

His secretary walked into his office. “Mr. Romano, there’s a messenger here with an airplane ticket for Rio de Janeiro. Shall I write out a check? It’s COD.”

“Rio de Janeiro?”
Romano shook his head. “Tell him there’s some mistake.”

The uniformed messenger was in the doorway. “I was told to deliver this to Joseph Romano at this address.”

“Well, you were told wrong. What is this, some kind of a new airline promotion gimmick?”

“No, sir. I—”

“Let me see that.” Romano took the ticket from the messenger’s hand and looked at it. “Friday. Why would I be going to Rio on Friday?”

“That’s a good question,” Anthony Orsatti said. He was standing behind the messenger. “Why would you, Joe?”

“It’s some kind of dumb mistake, Tony.” Romano handed the ticket back to the messenger. “Take this back where it came from and—”

“Not so fast.” Anthony Orsatti took the ticket and examined it. “It says here one first-class ticket, aisle seat, smoking, to Rio de Janeiro for Friday. One way.”

Joe Romano laughed. “Someone made a mistake.” He turned to his secretary. “Madge, call the travel agency and tell them they goofed. Some poor slob is going to be missing his plane ticket.”

Joleen, the assistant secretary, walked in. “Excuse me, Mr. Romano. The luggage has arrived. Do you want me to sign for it?”

Joe Romano stared at her. “What luggage? I didn’t order any luggage.”

“Have them bring it in,” Anthony Orsatti commanded.

“Jesus!” Joe Romano said. “Has everyone gone nuts?”

A messenger walked in carrying three Vuitton suitcases.

“What’s all this? I never ordered those.”

The messenger checked his delivery slip. “It says Mr. Joseph Romano, Two-seventeen Poydras Street, Suite four-zero-eight?”

Joe Romano was losing his temper. “I don’t care what the fuck it says. I didn’t order them. Now get them out of here.”

Orsatti was examining the luggage. “They have your initials on them, Joe.”

“What? Oh. Wait a minute! It’s probably some kind of present.”

“Is it your birthday?”

“No. But you know how broads are, Tony. They’re always givin’ you gifts.”

“Have you got somethin’ going in Brazil?” Anthony Orsatti inquired.

“Brazil?”
Joe Romano laughed. “This must be someone’s idea of a joke, Tony.”

Orsatti smiled gently, then turned to the secretaries and the two messengers. “Out.”

When the door was closed behind them, Anthony Orsatti spoke. “How much money you got in your bank account, Joe?”

Joe Romano looked at him, puzzled. “I don’t know. Fifteen hundred, I guess, maybe a couple of grand. Why?”

“Just for fun, why don’t you call your bank and check it out?”

“What for? I—”

“Check it out, Joe.”

“Sure. If it’ll make you happy.” He buzzed his secretary. “Get me the head bookkeeper over at First Merchants.”

A minute later she was on the line.

“Hello, honey. Joseph Romano. Would you give me the current balance in my checking account? My birth date is October fourteenth.”

Anthony Orsatti picked up the extension phone. A few moments later the bookkeeper was back on the line.

“Sorry to keep you waiting, Mr. Romano. As of this morning, your checking account balance is three hundred ten thousand nine hundred five dollars and thirty-five cents.”

Romano could feel the blood draining from his face. “It’s
what?”

“Three hundred ten thousand nine hundred five—”

“You stupid bitch!” he yelled. “I don’t have that kind of money in my account. You made a mistake. Let me talk to the—”

He felt the telephone being taken out of his hand, as Anthony Orsatti replaced the receiver. “Where’d that money come from, Joe?”

Joe Romano’s face was pale. “I swear to God, Tony, I don’t know anything about that money.”

“No?”

“Hey, you’ve got to believe me! You know what’s happening? Someone is setting me up.”

“It must be someone who likes you a lot. He gave you a going-away present of three hundred ten thousand dollars.” Orsatti sat down heavily on the Scalamander silk-covered armchair and looked at Joe Romano for a long moment, then spoke very quietly. “Everything was all set, huh? A one-way ticket to Rio, new luggage…Like you was planning a whole new life.”

“No!” There was panic in Joe Romano’s voice. “Jesus, you know me better than that, Tony. I’ve always been on the level with you. You’re like a father to me.”

He was sweating now. There was a knock at the door, and Madge poked her head in. She held an envelope.

“I’m sorry to interrupt, Mr. Romano. There’s a cable for you, but you have to sign for it yourself.”

With the instincts of a trapped animal, Joe Romano said, “Not now. I’m busy.”

“I’ll take it,” Anthony Orsatti said, and he was out of the chair before the woman could close the door. He took his time reading the cable, then he focused his eyes on Joe Romano.

In a voice so low that Romano could barely hear him, Anthony Orsatti said, “I’ll read it to you, Joe. ‘Pleased to confirm your reservation for our Princess Suite for two months this Friday, September first.’ It’s signed, ‘S. Montalband, manager, Rio Othon Palace, Copacabana Beach, Rio de Janeiro.’ It’s your reservation, Joe. You won’t be needin’ it, will you?”

Andre Gillian was in the kitchen making preparations for
spaghetti alla carbonara
, a large Italian salad, and a pear torte when he heard a loud, ominous popping sound, and a moment later the comfortable hum of the central air conditioner trailed off into silence.

Andre stamped his foot and said,
“Merde!
Not the night of the
game.”

He hurried to the utility closet where the breaker box was located and flicked the electrical switches, one by one. Nothing happened.

Oh, Mr. Pope was going to be furious. Simply
furious!
Andre knew how much his employer looked forward to his weekly Friday-night poker game. It was a tradition that had been going on for years, and it was always with the same elite group of players. Without air-conditioning, the house would be unbearable.
Simply unbearable!
New Orleans in September was only for the uncivilized. Even after the sun went down, there was no relief from the heat and humidity.

Andre returned to the kitchen and consulted the kitchen clock. Four o’clock. The guests would be arriving at 8:00.
Andre thought about telephoning Mr. Pope and telling him the problem, but then he remembered that the lawyer had said he was going to be tied up in court all day.
The dear man was so busy. He needed his relaxation. And now this!

Andre took a small black telephone book from a kitchen drawer, looked up a number, and dialed.

After three rings, a metallic voice intoned, “You have reached the Eskimo Air-Conditioning Service. Our technicians are not available at this time. If you will leave your name and number and a brief message, we will get back to you as soon as possible. Please wait for the beep.”

Foutre!
Only in America were you forced to hold a conversation with a machine.

A shrill, annoying beep sounded in Andre’s ear. He spoke into the mouthpiece: “This is the residence of Monsieur Perry Pope, Forty-two Charles Street. Our air-conditioning has ceased to function. You must send someone here as quickly as possible.
Vite!”

He slammed down the receiver.
Of course no one was available. Air-conditioning was probably going off all over this dreadful city. It was impossible for air conditioners to cope with the damnable heat and humidity. Well, someone had better come soon
. Mr. Pope had a temper. A nasty temper.

In the three years Andre Gillian had worked as a cook for the attorney, he had learned how influential his employer was.
It was amazing. All that brilliance in one so young
. Perry Pope knew simply everybody. When he snapped his fingers, people jumped.

It seemed to Andre Gillian that the house was already feeling warmer.
Ça va chier dur. If something is not done quickly, the shit’s going to hit the fan
.

As Andre went back to cutting paper-thin slices of salami and provolone cheese for the salad, he could not shake the terrible feeling that the evening was fated to be a disaster.

When the doorbell rang thirty minutes later, Andre’s clothes were soaked with perspiration, and the kitchen was like an oven. Gillian hurried to open the back door.

Two workmen in overalls stood in the doorway, carrying toolboxes. One of them was a tall black man. His companion
was white, several inches shorter, with a sleepy, bored look on his face. In the rear driveway stood their service truck.

“Gotta problem with your air-conditioning?” the black man asked.

“Oui!
Thank heaven you’re here. You’ve just got to get it working right away. There’ll be guests arriving soon.”

The black man walked over to the oven, sniffed the baking torte, and said, “Smells good.”

“Please!” Gillian urged. “
Do
something!”

“Let’s take a look in the furnace room,” the short man said. “Where is it?”

“This way.”

Andre hurried them down a corridor to a utility room, where the air-conditioning unit stood.

“This is a good unit, Ralph,” the black man said to his companion.

“Yeah, Al. They don’t make ‘em like this anymore.”

“Then for heaven’s sake why isn’t it
working?”
Gillian demanded.

They both turned to stare at him.

“We just got here,” Ralph said reprovingly. He knelt down and opened a small door at the bottom of the unit, took out a flashlight, got down on his stomach, and peered inside. After a moment, he rose to his feet. “The problem’s not here.”

“Where is it, then?” Andre asked.

“Must be a short in one of the outlets. Probably shorted out the whole system. How many air-conditioning vents do you have?”

“Each room has one. Let’s see. That must be at least nine.”

“That’s probably the problem. Transduction overload. Let’s go take a look.”

The three of them trooped back down the hall. As they passed the living room, Al said, “This is sure a beautiful place Mr. Pope has got here.”

The living room was exquisitely furnished, filled with signed antiques worth a fortune. The floors were covered with muted-colored Persian rugs. To the left of the living room was a large, formal dining room, and to the right a den, with a large green baize-covered gaming table in the center. In one corner of the
room was a round table, already set up for supper. The two servicemen walked into the den, and Al shone his flashlight into the air-conditioning vent high on the wall.

“Hmm,” he muttered. He looked up at the ceiling over the card table. “What’s above this room?”

“The attic.”

“Let’s take a look.”

The workmen followed Andre up to the attic, a long, low-ceilinged room, dusty and spattered with cobwebs.

Al walked over to an electrical box set in the wall. He inspected the tangle of wires. “Ha!”

“Did you find something?” Andre asked anxiously.

“Condenser problem. It’s the humidity. We musta had a hundred calls this week. It’s shorted out. We’ll have to replace the condenser.”

“Oh, my God! Will it take long?”

“Naw. We got a new condenser out in the truck.”

“Please hurry,” Andre begged them. “Mr. Pope is going to be home soon.”

“You leave everything to us,” Al said.

Back in the kitchen, Andre confided, “I must finish preparing my salad dressing. Can you find your way back up to the attic?”

Al raised a hand. “No sweat, pal. You just go on about your business, and we’ll go on about ours.”

“Oh, thank you.
Thank
you.”

Andre watched the men go out to the truck and return with two large canvas bags. “If you need anything,” he told them, “just call me.”

“You betcha!”

The workmen went up the stairs, and Andre returned to his kitchen.

When Ralph and Al reached the attic, they opened their canvas bags and removed a small folding camp chair, a drill with a steel bit, a tray of sandwiches, two cans of beer, a pair of 12 by 40 Zeiss binoculars for viewing distant objects in a dim light, and two live hamsters that had been injected with three quarters of a milligram of acetyl promazine.

The two men went to work.

“Ol Ernestine is gonna be proud of me,” Al chortled as they started.

In the beginning, Al had stubbornly resisted the idea.

“You must be outta your mind, woman. I ain’t gonna fuck around with no Perry Pope. That dude’ll come down on my ass so hard I’ll never see daylight again.”

“You don’t gotta worry about him. He won’t never be botherin’
no one
again.”

They were naked on the water bed in Ernestine’s apartment.

“What you gettin’ out of this deal, anyway, honey?” Al demanded.

“He’s a prick.”

“Hey, baby, the world’s full of pricks, but you don’t spend your life goin’ around cuttin’ off their balls.”

“All right. I’m doin’ it for a friend.”

“Tracy?”

“That’s right.”

Al liked Tracy. They had all had dinner together the day she got out of prison.

“She’s a classy dame,” Al admitted. “But why we stickin’ our necks out for her?”

“Because if we don’t he’p her, she’s gonna have to settle for someone who ain’t half as good as you, and if she gets caught, they’ll cart her ass right back to the joint.”

Al sat up in bed and looked at Ernestine curiously. “Does it mean that much to you, baby?”

“Yeah, hon.”

She would never be able to make him understand it, but the truth was simply that Ernestine could not stand the thought of Tracy back in prison at the mercy of Big Bertha. It was not only Tracy whom Ernestine was concerned about: It was herself. She had made herself Tracy’s protector, and if Big Bertha got her hands on her, it would be a defeat for Ernestine.

So all she said now was, “Yeah. It means a lot to me, honey. You gonna do it?”

“I damn sure can’t do it alone,” Al grumbled.

And Ernestine knew she had won. She started nibbling her
way down his long, lean body. And she murmured, “Wasn’t ole Ralph due to be released a few days ago…?”

It was 6:30 before the two men returned to Andre’s kitchen, grimy with sweat and dust.

“Is it fixed?” Andre asked anxiously.

“It was a real bitch,” Al informed him. “You see, what you got here is a condenser with an AC/DC cutoff that—”

“Never mind that,” Andre interrupted impatiently. “Did you
fix
it?”

“Yeah. It’s all set. In five minutes we’ll have it goin’ again as good as new.”

“Formidable!
If you’ll just leave your bill on the kitchen table—”

Ralph shook his head. “Don’t worry about it. The company’ll bill you.”

“Bless you both.
Au ‘voir.”

Andre watched the two men leave by the back door, carrying their canvas bags. Out of his sight, they walked around to the yard and opened the casing that housed the outside condenser of the air-conditioning unit. Ralph held the flashlight while Al reconnected the wires he had loosened a couple hours earlier. The air-conditioning unit immediately sprang into life.

Al copied down the telephone number on the service tag attached to the condenser. When he telephoned the number a short time later and reached the recorded voice of the Eskimo Air-Conditioning Company, Al said, “This is Perry Pope’s residence at Forty-two Charles Street. Our air-conditioning is workin’ fine now. Don’t bother to send anyone. Have a nice day.”

The weekly Friday-night poker game at Perry Pope’s house was an event to which all the players eagerly looked forward. It was always the same carefully selected group: Anthony Or-satti, Joe Romano, Judge Henry Lawrence, an alderman, a state senator, and of course their host. The stakes were high, the food was great, and the company was raw power.

Perry Pope was in his bedroom changing into white silk
slacks and matching sport shirt. He hummed happily, thinking of the evening ahead. He had been on a winning streak lately.
In fact, my whole life is just one big winning streak
, he thought.

If anyone needed a legal favor in New Orleans, Perry Pope was the attorney to see. His power came from his connections with the Orsatti Family. He was known as The Arranger, and could fix anything from a traffic ticket to a drug-dealing charge to a murder rap. Life was good.

When Anthony Orsatti arrived, he brought a guest with him. “Joe Romano won’t be playin’ anymore,” Orsatti announced. “You all know Inspector Newhouse.”

The men shook hands all around.

“Drinks are on the sideboard, gentlemen,” Perry Pope said. ‘We’ll have supper later. Why don’t we start a little action going?”

The men took their accustomed chairs around the green felt table in the den. Orsatti pointed to Joe Romano’s vacant chair and said to Inspector Newhouse, “That’ll be your seat from now on, Mel.”

While one of the men opened fresh decks of cards, Pope began distributing poker chips. He explained to Inspector Newhouse, “The black chips are five dollars, red chips ten dollars, blue chips fifty dollars, white chips a hundred. Each man starts out buying five hundred dollars’ worth of chips. We play table stakes, three raises, dealer’s choice.”

“Sounds good to me,” the inspector said.

Anthony Orsatti was in a bad mood. “Come on. Let’s get started.” His voice was a strangled whisper. Not a good sign.

Perry Pope would have given a great deal to learn what had happened to Joe Romano, but the lawyer knew better than to bring up the subject. Orsatti would discuss it with him when he was ready.

Orsatti’s thoughts were black:
I been like a father to Joe Romano. I trusted him, made him my chief lieutenant. And the son of a bitch stabbed me in the back. If that dizzy French dame hadn’t telephoned, he might have gotten away with it, too. Well, he won’t ever get away with nothin’ again. Not where he is. If he’s so clever, let him fuck around with the fish down there
.

“Tony, are you in or out?”

Anthony Orsatti turned his attention back to the game. Huge sums of money had been won and lost at this table. It always upset Anthony Orsatti to lose, and it had nothing to do with money. He could not bear to be on the losing end of anything. He thought of himself as a natural-born winner. Only winners rose to his position in life. For the last six weeks, Perry Pope had been on some kind of crazy winning streak, and tonight Anthony Orsatti was determined to break it.

Since they played dealer’s choice, each dealer chose the game in which he felt the strongest. Hands were dealt for five-card stud, seven-card stud, low ball, draw poker—but tonight, no matter which game was chosen, Anthony Orsatti kept finding himself on the losing end. He began to increase his bets, playing recklessly, trying to recoup his losses. By midnight when they stopped to have the meal Andre had prepared, Orsatti was out $50,000, with Perry Pope the big winner.

The food was delicious. Usually Orsatti enjoyed the free midnight snack, but this evening he was impatient to get back to the table.

“You’re not eating, Tony,” Perry Pope said.

“I’m not hungry.” Orsatti reached for the silver coffee urn at his side, poured coffee into a Victoria-patterned Herend-china cup, and sat down at the poker table. He watched the others eat and wished they would hurry. He was impatient to win his money back. As he started to stir his coffee, a small particle fell into his cup. Distastefully, Orsatti removed the particle with a spoon and examined it. It appeared to be a piece of plaster. He looked up at the ceiling, and something hit him on the forehead. He suddenly became aware of a scurrying noise overhead.