I got to admit, though, when I hit the casino at Yin’s Peking Palace, it was hard to keep up the dance. The minute I walked in, I remembered seeing Vic there for the first time, winning and losing everything down to the lint in his pockets. But I tried to put it out of my head.
I let Larry, the manager, buy me a gin swizzle before I left.
“Word among the stickmen is it’s been a slow week.”
“Not too,” Larry said, lighting a cigarette. “Some of our regs haven’t been in. There’s a hot poker game over at the Mutual Federated Building on Sixth. Your bosses somehow got themselves the whole third floor, the old book depository. Vic Riordan hasn’t darkened this doorstep all week, so I figured he was losing his shirt there. But looks like not.”
I stared straight down into the glass and didn’t even twitch. Something scraped inside me, a razory feeling up my back, but not for long. I wouldn’t let it. I let the gin nip at me, licked my lower lip and raised my eyes and there was nothing there for Larry to see but my Pan-Cake and long lashes. I was proud I’d done it.
“Riordan?”
“Yeah, you know. Classic case: fish who thinks he’s a shark,” he said, shaking his head. “But he ain’t been swimming anywhere lately.”
“So maybe he finally hit it.”
“It ain’t like that. He’s not just in absentia. There’s more to it. The boys in blue were sniffing around. We thought they came to bust us. But I guess you know that’s all covered,” he said, looking at me meaningfully. Sure, it was true. We paid down every last billy club that mattered in that precinct every week.
“So what were they here for?”
“Seems they think Riordan’s gone invisible.”
“Probably trying to beat a vig.”
“Maybe,” he said. “But how’s that get the cops so interested?”
“So what kinds of questions were they asking? Who he owed?” I said, treading carefully.
“Yeah, but not just that. They were bothering all my dealers, the cocktail waitresses, everyone. Wanted to know who his friends and not-so-friends were.”
“Huh,” I said.
That was all I said. But I knew where to go next.
“Poor sap,” Larry said, sighing. “He was a lousy gambler and a lousy cheat. Once, he even tried to roll shaved dice like we were running some two-bit crap game. But I still kinda liked the guy. You know?”
Sergeant Pulaski wasn’t hard to find, parked in the corner pocket of Fahey’s Bar on Sutton Street. Everyone knew: you buy him three short glasses at the nearest cop bar, he’d hand over his firstborn on a serving fork. That night, I was buying.
“I always liked you, kid,” he said, eyes shining over his rye. “Always thought it was a crying shame such a sweet-faced filly got knotted up with such rotten trade.”
“You mean the trade that pays your mortgage, your bar tab, and your daughter’s tuition at Saint Lucy’s?”
“Yeah, they’re the ones.” He grinned. “Listen, I never said I was a clean liver. But I got rules to live by. As a for-instance, soft as I might find your skin, I’d never try to lay down my hand.” He took a quick nip and then his eyes turned still more soulful. “I don’t like to see it. You know, I got a daughter. At Saint Lucy’s.”
“That so?”
“Dancing eye and freckles on the nose and never anything but grins for Pops. I tell you, I—”
“Sarge, I got this pin money in my purse and it’s a little heavy,” I said, flashing him a twenty spot. “I’m inclined to pass it over to our fine barkeep and call it a night. It’s long past a Saint Lucy’s girl’s bedtime. What do you think? Can you help me with that?”
“My dear, I believe I can,” he said, straightening up on the bar stool.
“If only I could get a bedtime story first, to send me on my way.”
“Just call me Aesop. Pick your tale.”
“How ’bout the one about the card player, the wheel spinner, the bounder who went poof.”
“I just might know the magic man of whom you speak. No end yet, though there is a moral.”
“Okay, Sarge, lay it out for me.”
Pulaski shook his head. “He’s nowhere to be found, honey. His landlady called. Rolled it out like this: she hadn’t seen hide nor hair of him for a couple days and wanted to see what’s what. And then there was the little matter of a box spring of hers that had fallen into his possession. So she lets herself into the place and it’s cleaned out. Then she remembers, all of a sudden like, she’d heard some funny noises coming from the joint a few days back.”
“What kinds of noises?”
“Bang-bang noises, what else?”
“Someone got tired of waiting to collect?”
“Could be. But those boys don’t usually do such a full cleanup. Maybe the shylocks are getting more thorough. Or maybe they came meaning business, but our fella made it out the fire escape in time.”
I knew what she’d say. There’s nothing to worry about, even less than before. The cops had been to Vic’s and hadn’t found a thing. What could be better?
But I didn’t like it. There was something out there, something hanging in the air. I could feel it. It was like the stories you read when you’re a kid, the Saturday matinees about the couple on the run, the tough guys pulling one last job. They all taught you how it would end up. You don’t get out of this kind of snare so easy.
And sleeping on the sofa that night, thinking of how I might’ve played it different. How I might have played it smarter. If only Vic hadn’t tagged me an easy mark. Didn’t he know he could square-deal me, that I took him for what he was and he didn’t need to do his dance for me? God help me, Vic, the things you could do to me, I would’ve given it over to you without all the pink lights and music, the whole carnival show you put on. Couldn’t you feel it on me? Couldn’t you see it in my eyes, behind the black enamel, metal lashes clicking shut? The things I did for you in there, when we were all alone, didn’t they show you I didn’t need to be played like a country girl in petticoats waiting for your traveling show? Didn’t they show I was ready from the start?
It was close to midnight when she came home. Even before she turned on the floor lamp, I knew there was trouble. You could feel the nerves shooting off her.
“What’s going on?” I asked, throwing the blanket off me.
“We’re moving the body,” she said briskly, as if she’d just given me tomorrow’s weather report.
“What? Why?” The cops. The cops must know. My heart was clanging like a trolley car as I jumped to my feet.
“Take it easy, kid,” she said, setting her purse, hat, and gloves down. “I got shovels in the car. Just get dressed. Wear something discreet.”
I just stared at her. I half wondered if she expected me to pull out some kind of grave robber’s getup. I wanted to laugh. And then I did. I started to laugh. It was terrible laugh, like out of some kids’ cartoon, loud and rhythmless and shrill.
The slap that came was hard. It radiated through me. And it was so fast that by the time I finished blinking, her hand was at her side again.
“Don’t give me a hysterical scene, sugar,” she said. “Nothing’s underfoot. It’s just easier if we move it.”
“Easier because the cops know where the body is?” I followed her as she headed toward her bedroom and the closet.
“You used to be so much smarter, kid,” she said, pulling out a pair of low-heel pumps. “No one knows a goddamned thing except another heel grifter blew town. No one’s going to hang black crepe for your boy, honey. When you gonna get that through your head?”
“So why do we have to—”
“I decided only we should know where the body is,” she said, sliding on the shoes. “Now are you gonna get out of that nightgown yourself or do I have to unpeel you like a grape?”
We were in the car when I started in again. My days of flying blind were over.
“I told you,” I said. “I told you Mackey was gonna put the screws in.”
“Mackey’s fine,” she said, punching the cigarette lighter. She didn’t usually smoke. I took this as a bad sign. “It’s Upstairs,” she continued. “Mackey’s doing a little poaching, buying up their land, building a new track to compete with Casa Mar. They think he’s moving in on them. I don’t want us to be Mackey’s cat’s-paw.”
I was surprised she told me that much. She lit the cigarette. Her hands were still. She was edgy but under control. She was doing business, cleaning up.
“I told you,” I repeated, not too wisely.
“Don’t mouth me, little girl,” she said, sharply but quietly. “Mackey served his purpose and this is just insurance. And it gives us a tip-off. If Mackey tries to parlay our situation with Upstairs, we’ll know it because he’ll come up empty-handed.”
It was the biggest glimpse behind the curtain she’d ever given me and it was quite an eye-opener. In the end, we were so much grease to work bigger deals, to oil the gears for setups we couldn’t even see, couldn’t even catch a glimmer of.
“Has Mackey got a shot? Could he—”
“No,” she replied, then sealed herself up. I could see her face close before my eyes and I knew I’d gotten the most I could. She looked at me. “Now let’s can the big noise and get this done.”
We drove about fifteen miles out of town, her talking the whole way about how I needed to shape up, get wise, stop being such a rabbit, and get my steel back. What good was all her work if, on the first big test, I turned back into some tiddlywink? She laid it on me hard.
But I wasn’t listening. I was thinking about what we were going to be doing. I was thinking about what we would be moving. I didn’t want to feel that weight, didn’t want to go through it all again. I’d finally started distracting myself from the blood and gristle of it, the terrifying red-on-bone pictures in my head. And now I had to sink right back into it. My lily whites would really be in it this time.
We drove up a long, windy bluff until we reached a tangle of dark trees. She stopped the car and stepped out. I thought I wouldn’t be able to move. My teeth were grinding together, my whole body felt like dry wood, stiff and brittle. But I did move. There was something in me that made me move. I opened the door, felt a rush of mist collapse down my throat.
She opened the trunk and handed me a flashlight and shovel and took a pair for herself too. I didn’t ask where she’d gotten them. Instead, I was eyeing a mound of wet leaves under one of the swooping trees. My beam rested on it. With the air so unsettled, the whole mound seemed to be moving, shivering.
“A long way away,” a voice, my voice, shuddered out.
“Mackey doesn’t want ’em too close to home anymore,” she said, and I thought I caught a little relief in her voice, like she hadn’t been so sure the body was where they’d told her it would be.
She walked over to the knot of low-hanging trees and set her flashlight down. She stopped right in front of the pile and kicked her foot straight in, sending leaves everywhere. Swinging the shovel around her like a sword, she plunged it in.
As I walked slowly, carefully toward her, I thought I could smell it already. I knew that smell. When I was little, my sister’s tabby disappeared. We thought she’d run away until the musty, meaty odor started from under the porch. I remember my old man holding a washcloth to his face as he dug the thing out, my sister bawling in our bedroom. The next year, the lady down the street, the one who wore leg braces, put a bullet into her brain. She lived alone in her half of the duplex and no one knew until the stench started coming through the walls. The stench, just like now.
I was right behind her, the smell hot and close in my face. I was holding the shovel and standing behind her.
“You gonna stand there like a clothes rack or start digging?” She didn’t seem to notice the smell at all. She just kept shoveling.
So I started shoveling too.
And the smell got stronger and there were blowflies and the smell was like a living thing thick in the air as we dug deeper.
It didn’t take long. Mackey’s boys hadn’t bothered to go too deep. Seeing the first piece of the canvas there, lit by the flashlights resting on the ground, I felt my mouth go dry. I didn’t dare inhale. I didn’t dare look at her even as I could hear her breathing.
“Here we go,” she said, as we cleared away the last shovelfuls of wet dirt.
I looked down at the long duffel bag, so sure it would be open and I’d have to see. What would it be like to see, to see that?
I pictured him curled up in there, like a baby in the womb, curling upon himself. And I could picture the bag opening, loosening, dilating out. And then I would see him, and that careless smile. He’d still be smiling at me.
“Let’s go,” I heard her say. I looked over and saw she’d already opened the trunk. She was ready. She was ready. She was so easy. It was like she was about to move sacks of jewels, like any swag. Was that how it could get? Could it get like that?
And she was tugging the bag, heaving her shoulders.
And there I was lifting it with her, my breath short, my arms straining, the wet, heavy air filling my half-open mouth, the wind lifting bits of dirt and grime into it. My whole body feeling coated with the stench, the sumpy thickness that had been covering him, all that had been slipping from him, seeping into everything that I was now ankle deep in, everything I was taking in with each foul breath. It was all Vic and it was all what we’d done and it was in my skin, my lungs, everything.
She was strong and she carried the heavier end and then we were heaving it into the trunk and it was Vic in our hands. And I thought about it as the canvas burned my fingers, as my nails dug in. It was Vic.
Oh, Vic, even you deserved better than this. Even a lousy snake like you.
She slammed the trunk shut.
“Not bad, kid,” she said, and it was that near-smile of hers. “Halfway there.”
We drove about ten miles back towards town, stopping at a salvage yard. She navigated it with such ease I figured she’d been there a hundred times or more, weaving through the towering piles of rotting fenders and crushed car doors, twisted steering columns, rusted engines, and burned-out sleeper cars.
She pulled up beside a long stretch of oil drums stacked fat for twenty yards or more. We got out and I followed her, the headlights hitting her like a spotlight.
She was ahead of me and I was watching her walk in that swaying fishtail way of hers, the cool, precise undulations that nearly hypnotized. The walk was so easy, so measured, and those legs, even streaked with dirt, were worthy of any spotlight.
And it was like she wasn’t even real, a shimmer-struck illusion, a hard flash of glamour against the creaking stacks of drums, rolling against each other, furry with rust, grimy with oil and soot, perfumed with old gasoline and singing emptily as each gust of air whistled through every rutted hole and crevice.
She, lit all through, filled with light, sparking with it… even in her spattered pumps, even with that shovel in her un-gloved hand, she was a star. And I cursed her for it. Because she was solid gold, fourteen-carat, barely burnished despite twenty years of hard molling. But beneath it, I knew, beneath that gold and stardust, she was all grit and sharp teeth gnashing, head twisting, talons out, tearing flesh. She was all open mouth, tunneling into an awful nothing.
I hated her.
And I felt closer to her than ever.
Goddamn her.
We dragged the body to the newly dug grave, shallow but wedged between the tightly packed drums and a fifteen-foot-high barbed wire fence. It didn’t have to be deep. No one would find him.
In the car driving home, I looked down at my hands, cold, scraped, nails torn to red ribbons fluttering loose.
I’d had him in my hands one last time. My hands on him through thick canvas. My hands on him. Even after everything—how ashamed I was to feel this now—because even after everything I still felt my hips burning at the memory of him, what he’d done to me in that dark room. In his dark room in
the middle of the night. Hands moving, making my eyelids flutter back. Feeling it now, remembering it, all I could think of was knees on hard floors and this is what sin is all about.
“You really redeemed yourself, kid boots,” she was saying as the waiter brought us our strip steaks leaking red over the plate’s edge. It was nearly three A.M., but Googie’s stayed open for her.
She lifted her highball glass to her mouth and took a long, snug sip. Then, leaning back in her chair, she nodded at me, which was her version of beaming with pride.
I realized she thought this whole thing had brought us together. And sure, it did. Goddammit, it did. Our hands on Vic together. Our hands in that dirt, that dirt under our nails, the wetness in the air lifting that dirt onto our skin—like some ancient ritual, like it was before anything, before words, even.
It hit me: she thought we were celebrating.
Hell, maybe we were.
When we got back to her place, I took some of the Tuinal the doc had given me and slept dreamlessly for ten hours. She’d left me a note, listing my stops for that day. I was back on the circuit.
I’d made three pickups around town when I started to get the itchy feeling. At first, I thought it was my head playing tricks on me, but enough looks in the rearview told me different.
I didn’t recognize the car and it was too far away for me to see the driver’s face, but I knew I’d seen it before. I thought maybe it’d been idling outside the betting parlor I’d hit earlier that day, but I wasn’t sure.
My first thought was Gloria put a tail on me. Well, let her. I was doing exactly what I was supposed to. She had a lot of brass after what we’d done together the night before.
But it was kind of a bum-looking Dodge Coronet, nothing one of her boys would be caught dead in.
Which is when I started thinking about the cops. It sure looked like the kind of car a cop might drive.
Then I began imagining bad scenarios again. Had we been followed the night before? Nah. If we had, they’d’ve just hauled us in on the spot with the dirt still on our hands, in every line of our palms.