Queenpin (11 page)

I walked straight back to the kitchen, where I found the guy with the cap from the night before. Seeing him reminded me of everything all at once, but I tried to steel myself from it. I didn’t want him to see it on me. I thought about how he’d spent his night— had he been shovel-to-dirt out on the far end of town or tying cement bags to Vic’s ankles for a quick drive to the waterfront?

As I approached him, he was pawing through a large crate he’d propped up on the counter, dozens of Waterford crystal figurines, ring holders and drooping angels, seahorses and conch shells, picking each one up and brushing off the sawdust with surprising care. When he saw me, I thought he might drop one.

“Is the big man around?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said slowly, putting the crystal bunny-with-egg back in the box and closing it. “I’ll tell him you’re here.” He hesitated, and I

thought he might say something.

“Look, I’m in a hurry,” I said.

He looked at me for a second longer, lifting his cap above his eyes, like he’d done the night before.

“If you don’t mind my asking,” he said, “how does a little cupcake like you get her lily whites stuck in something like that? Like last night? You should be going to dances.” He tilted his head, then added, a soft, brotherly burr in his voice, “You should be dancing with boys.”

What he said, it rubbed me wrong. I knew I should feel relieved that he thought I was some poor kid along for the ride. But I didn’t. The fear that had been quaking through me for ten hours gave over to something hard, spiky, still.

“My lily whites,” I said, raising my gloved fingers, “have been in far worse than that, chump.” I don’t know where it came from, but there I was, mouthing off like nothing had happened. I was just a hard girl making her rounds.

I walked over and picked up a crystal Cross-of-the-Faithful and turned it in. my hand. “And I don’t dance for anybody” I added, echoing something she’d once said. Hadn’t she? I couldn’t keep track anymore. I couldn’t keep track.

Before I could get to Amos Mackey himself, I had to talk to one of his suits, a greasy-faced fella with thick eyebrows and French cuffs and an unclean air about him. He looked like he’d just graduated one step above muscle but hadn’t figured out yet how to wear the new wardrobe. He was standing in front of the leather-padded office door like a sentinel.

“Look,” I said. “I’m just delivering something. Mr. Mackey’s expecting it. But I need to make sure he gets it.”

He hooked his thumbs in his vest and looked at me. “You’re Gloria

Denton’s girl?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s all you needed to say, baby,” he said, real singsongy. “He’s expecting you.” He moved aside, but as he did he gave me a quick up-and-down look and I didn’t like it. It was a knowing look and it made me feel like my slip was showing. What had this goon heard, and if a goon like this knew something, who knew how many goons like him might know?

Trying to shake it off, I walked into the office, which was nearly the size of the main dining room, with heavy tapestries hanging from the ceiling and more gold columns built into the walls. I half expected a roaring fireplace in the corner.

Mackey was on the phone, a big brass and marble number. He was speaking softly into the receiver with his eyes on me.

I stood before him, not bothering to sink into the massive leather chair in front of his desk.

He spoke a few more words, in low tones, into the receiver, then hung up.

I’d never seen him up close before, and boy, was he a groomed and fragrant figure, as if a hundred hands had been on him already that day. Freshly barbered and shaved, smelling of fine cologne, skin pink and smooth like a cherub’s, he sure didn’t look like the fellows I usually delivered to, all of whom had the gray sheen of men who’d never seen sunlight, who spent their whole lives in dim-lit casinos, absorbing smoke and midshelf liquor.

“So Miss Denton didn’t come herself,” he said.

“No, she sent me instead.”

He nodded. “Why don’t you have a seat?”

“That’s all right,” I said. I didn’t want to be there any longer than I had to. I kept thinking about what he had on us, on me. With a word to our bosses, those men on Gloria’s phone, the ones whose ringed hands everything that passed through mine landed in, we could suddenly become not worth the trouble. Wasn’t that right? And wouldn’t they be none too happy that we’d gone to this local overseer and not them for help?

“I’m just dropping this off,” I said, holding the envelope out towards him. He looked at it without moving.

“We met before,” he said.

“I don’t think so,” I replied, even as I remembered our exchange months before at the While-a-Way Cocktail Lounge, after my Gloria routine, my tough-guy number with the owner. “I like it,” he’d said, with a ghost of a smile. “I like it.”

“Well, not formally. But I wouldn’t forget you,” he said, but without a flicker of flirtation in his voice. It was serene, relaxed. “You know, you could sit down. We could talk over some things. We might have some topics of mutual interest, if you were so inclined.”

The patter was smooth, sticky, tupelo honey. But you could feel there was something solid behind it, like oak. Like he was one of those sober-faced men behind the big desks in the movies. The ones who played the judges or bank presidents or Abraham Lincoln. I could see what people meant when they said he wasn’t long for shark business. That was a way to fill coffers in the first stretch. The things I’d heard about him, they were making sense.

But if so, he was taking quite a risk still dipping his cashmere toe into mop-ups like last night. He must’ve seen a major rake-off to take that chance. What was the payoff?

“I really have to get back,” I said.

He was looking up at me, eyes squinting slightly, looking so closely I almost backed up a step. “I don’t want to keep you,” he said. “But it’s a standing offer.”

He picked up the phone as if to make another call. I set the envelope down on his desk.

“So long, Mr. Mackey.” I said, as softly as him. Something about him called for hushed tones and meaningful stares and polite nods, followed by brief phone calls where everything is taken care of without anyone ever raising a voice.

“Give my regards to Miss Denton,” he said. “And tell her to come here to dine. I promise her the white-glove treatment.”

“Right,” I said, trying to read him. Trying and failing. You can’t read a top dog’s face. That’s why they’re top dog.

After I closed the door behind me, I stood there. Mackey’s goon was watching me, picking his nails with a crystal-handled nail file. He smiled, gums gleaming.

I walked past him without saying anything. I wanted to get out of there. I wanted to get out of everywhere, all these places and their back rooms and back offices and back alleys. All these whispers and winks and knowing glances and everybody knowing, or maybe knowing, everything you’d done, everything you were. I didn’t want them to know what I was.

On the way back to her place, I stopped and picked up an afternoon paper. I’d been avoiding it. Hadn’t glanced at the morning edition, didn’t want to see if anything was in there. Sitting in my car, I read the news, local news, and crime beat sections. Not a word about Vic. Not that there should be.

It struck me suddenly. How long could a guy like that go missing before someone reported him missing? Days, months, more? Besides his girlfriend and his shark, who would notice?

That was when I started to cry. But it was only a few seconds. It was fast and then it was done. I wouldn’t even tell you, but it happened. I was weak and I cried in three fast, soundless jags and then I stopped, powdered my face, and started the car again. I tossed the newspaper out the window the minute I hit the boulevard.

Oh, Vic, remember when you came home with those miniature roulette wheels you’d pinched from the casino promotion office? You’d passed me the key to your place earlier that night and you came in late, you were tight from whiskey sours and you came in and I was in your bed, not a stitch on like you liked it and you were so lit you’d boosted a whole box of those novelty miniature roulette wheels. Remember how you laid me down and set one on my belly and spun it? How you blew on it to make it spin? Remember that? You said I was lucky for you, that it was only straight-up bets for you and me. But I knew. I knew what you really had in mind was a skin game. That’s what you had in mind all along, even as you spun the roulette wheel, chin resting on my stomach, razor bristle on my skin. The whirring of the wheel.

∞◊∞

That night, I waited for her in that gloomy chromium-trimmed apartment of hers. I mixed myself seven and sevens, slinking around the place, running my fingertips over the plush surfaces, the high-class statuary, the objets, that’s what they called them in the deep-pocket stores that sold them to her.

By the second drink, the slinking had turned to sauntering. The way the whiskey was tingling behind my eyes, I started to get ideas. Who did she think she was anyway, putting us both in the bull’s eye? And now she thought she could keep me prisoner here, locked up in her silver-decked tower, sent out only at her pleasure?

By the third drink, though, the swagger started to wane. The panicky feeling from earlier in the day was coming back. Everywhere I turned I thought of things we’d forgotten to do, things that could trap us. When I looked at the satin moire drapes on her windows, I thought about the half-drawn blinds in Vic’s apartment. What if someone had seen us through the window? When I leaned against the far wall and could hear a neighbor’s warbling radio, I thought about the two gunshots, the struggle on the floor. Anyone could have heard and it would be over for us.

And Mackey. If Mackey was as big as his spread looked, as his spending looked, building new restaurants every week and, if the rumblings about him turned out to be true, buying acres and acres of land on the waterfront for a rumored new high-class racetrack, buying interests in welterweights, in shipping companies, in importing companies with fat government contracts—if he were doing half these thing, he could be a very dangerous man. How could we be sure what he’d do, what his motives might be?

So I poured myself one more drink, a short one. And as the booze kicked in, I drummed up some of the bluster again. Before I knew it, I was sashaying around her bedroom, deep into her treasure chest of jewels, dangling her diamond fan earrings, her South Sea pearl drops from my ears, donning the favored aquamarine and citrine fringe necklace, then the diamond sautoir, followed by the angel-skin coral choker.

As I pulled each piece out, expecting to find anything from the Hope diamond to a necklace made of human tongues, I felt tougher and tougher. A few months before I wouldn’t have dared to set foot in her bedroom without permission, but now everything had changed. She’d shown me something and everything had changed.

Not that I was a fool, not that kind of fool at least. I returned each piece to its place, nestled in individual fabric pouches.

After I’d made my way through the sparkly wampum, though, I was primed for more. My balance slightly off from the last drink, my heel catching in the thick carpet, I tripped over to her long-mirrored, walk-in closet and waded through its soft treasures. Digging my hands deeper and deeper, through the brocades, boucle, and nubby wool, I felt my fingers touch something slippery and familiar. A sickly feeling rushed through me, wiping out all four drinks in an instant.

Quickly, I shoved everything along the closet rod to get a look, hoping it was a mistake, that I was just tight. But sure enough, there it was, at the far, far end of the closet, almost completely concealed by a peacock-green beaded evening coat.

The red dress I’d worn the night before, through it all. Through everything. The dress I’d finally peeled off at three A.M., shivering and shaken to the core. She’d asked me to hand it to her through the partially open bathroom door. She was going to take it down to the incinerator, along with her own suit, brittle brown from collar to knee. She’d draped it over her arm. Hadn’t I seen her walk out of the apartment with them?

But no, there it was hanging in the far back corner of her closet, the jeweled front tugging down the padded hanger. There it was with the fresh rip in the back slit from one of the many times I’d hit the floor. I pulled it out and held it up to the smoked glass sconce, looking frantically for any stains. And there were stains. A rusty scatter along the bottom hem, just visible against the red. A plum-sized smear just under the neckline. I remembered that one. Pulling her back against me, against my chest, pulling her off with all I had in me. I did do that, Vic. I didn’t let it go on forever. She might have gone on forever. I did do that, Vic.

So here it was. She was holding this. She was holding this to have something on me. She was biding her time, waiting to see if she’d need to use it. Or planning on using it, the time just hadn’t come yet.

I probably should have stuffed the thing in a grocery bag first, but it felt like there was no time at all. Dress wrapped around my fists and forearms, nearly sliding from my grasp like some enormous tongue, I tore down the back stairway’s seven flights.

In the bleach-soaked basement, it took me a long, sweaty minute and a half to find the incinerator hatch. Pushing my hair out of my eyes, off my wet forehead, I jerked open the heavy door and tossed the dress in, letting the blast hit me square in the face, hearing the awful red thing sizzling for a second then disappearing into flames. I slammed the trap shut without a second glance.

Who did she think she was making? She’d taught me herself and she thought I’d roll over so easy?

“So how’d the drop-off go?” she asked when she finally got home, near one o’clock. “Mackey catechize you?”

“No,” I said, thinking hard. Thinking about what I was going to say to her and which chips I’d hold on to.

“Did he pull anything raw?”

I leaned back, surprised. “Raw? No. Why?”

She shrugged, unpinning her hat. “I kinda had an idea he might like a touch of your downy silks.”

“Is that why you sent me?”