Уильям Макгиверн - The Darkest Hour

Retnick stared at him in silence. Then he said quietly, “We won’t have any trouble if you tell the truth, Mario. I know you hired Evans to do the job on Ragoni. I got that from the winchman, Grady. Did your uncle tell you to hire Evans? That’s what I want to know.”

“You got no right to accuse me of being a murderer,” Mario said. He was becoming excited now and some of his fear left him. “You’re asking for real trouble, buddy. I’m no punk you can push around.”

He started to get up but Retnick put a hand against his chest and slammed him back into the chair. “I told you to sit down,” he said, smiling unpleasantly. “Why did your uncle want Ragoni killed?”

Mario’s breath came unevenly; he was suddenly close to tears. “I don’t know anything about it,” he said. “Somebody gave you the wrong dope on me.”

Retnick knew he was lying; fear and guilt were stamped on him like a brand. For an instant he debated the wisdom of knocking the truth out of him; it wouldn’t be hard. This was a punk, a pretty boy with soft nervous eyes and skin like a girl’s. He’d be hopping bells or jerking sodas if it weren’t for his uncle. But Retnick decided against force. Amato could toss him to the parole board.

Turning away he took out his cigarettes. “You can beat it,” he said. “We’ll have another talk one of these days.”

Mario stood up and edged nervously past Retnick to the door. “You got me wrong, I’m telling you.”

“You’re in trouble, sonny,” Retnick said. “And your uncle can’t fix it. Tell him a guy by the name of Retnick told you that.”

When Mario had gone Retnick locked the door and sat down on the edge of the bed. The cat curled up beside him and closed its eyes. Retnick stroked her absently and she began to purr. Frowning through the smoke of his cigarette, he tried to guess what was coming. Trouble, of course. Mario would run squealing to his uncle and that would start it. But there was no other way to play it. He had to push until something started to give.

Nick Amato listened to his nephew’s story as he sipped black coffee in the kitchen of his West Side cold-water flat. The kitchen was the only room in which he felt comfortable. His wife had filled the rest of the house with holy pictures, dull heavy furniture, and retouched portraits of her relatives in Naples. And everything smelled of furniture polish.

Amato was in shirtsleeves, with his elbows on the table and a cup of coffee cradled in his hands. He was mad, and getting madder every minute, but he kept the musing little smile on his lips. Joe Lye sat at the end of the table watching Mario, and Hammy, a bandage along his right cheek and jaw, stood in the comer, twisting his hat around in his hands and breathing noisily through his damaged nose.

“So that’s all,” Amato said, staring with cold brown eyes at his coffee cup. “You haven’t forgot nothing, eh?”

“I told you just the way it happened,” Mario said, rubbing his damp forehead. He was frightened by his uncle’s reaction; if Amato had laughed or cursed he would have felt better. Maybe the big guy, Retnick, knew something. You’re in trouble your uncle can’t fix! That’s what he’d said.

“So that’s all,” Amato said. “He asked you about Evans and Ragoni and you told him nothing. Is that it?”

“I swear that’s all,” Mario said. “I told you about him hitting me and the rest of it.”

“Yeah,” Amato said. He looked up at his nephew, staring at him as he would stare at a bug crawling on his plate. “Did you hit him back? I forget.”

“What could I do?” Perspiration shone on Mario’s face, dampened the little curls of hair along his temples. “He might have killed me.”

“Retnick?” Amato laughed softly. “Don’t worry about him.” He turned to Hammy. “He’s not tough. Ain’t that right, Hammy?”

“I was drunk,” Hammy said. He shifted his great weight from one foot to the other, and smiled stupidly at Amato. The beating from Retnick had effected a change in him; the dumb trust in himself was gone, and his eyes were sheepish and puzzled. “I was drunk,” he said again. “He caught me when I was fouled up from drinking.”

“You’ll get him the next time, eh?” Amato said, staring at the shame in his eyes. Like a castrated bull, Amato thought. “Next time, eh.”

Hammy smiled as if this were a joke; he wanted no more of Retnick. The memory of those blows to his body was frighteningly vivid; another one would have killed him, he knew. “Sure, Nick,” he said, laughing nervously.

“Next time he’ll kill you,” Amato said, knowing what was going on in Hammy’s mind. “Remember that.”

A soft knock sounded on the door. Amato looked around irritably and called out, “Yeah?”

His wife entered the room smiling an apology at Amato. She was stout and middle-aged, with a dark complexion and large brown eyes. Her black dress, shapeless and old, fell almost to her ankles, and she wore her gray hair in a large bun at the back of her neck. There was a heavy resignation in her manner, but it didn’t stem from peace of mind or calmness of soul; instead she looked as if she had signed an armistice with life before a shot could be fired.

She stood close to Mario, almost touching him, and said to her husband, “He’s upset and tired, Nick. Can’t he go to bed?”

“Sure, he can go to bed,” Amato said, drumming his fingers on the table. Once he had seen a blasphemous picture of a cow saying a rosary and the image nagged at him when he looked at his wife.

“I did all I could,” Mario said, making a last attempt to alter the ominously hard expression around his uncle’s lips.

“Go to bed,” Amato said. “Don’t worry about it.”

His wife shepherded Mario from the room and before the door closed Amato heard her promising to bring him some warm milk with a little brandy in it. Amato put down his cup and swore softly.

Hammy, guessing at the source of his irritation, nodded solemnly and said, “That kid will turn out spoiled, I bet. Anna’s too good to him.”

“Joe, give Hammy a thousand dollars,” Amato said.

Lye hesitated, smiling uncertainly; the request made no sense but he knew Amato was in one of his dangerous, unpredictable moods.

Amato suddenly pounded his fist on the table. Glaring at Lye, he said, “You want to know what for? You want to vote on things maybe, be democratic?”

“Hell no, Nick,” Lye said hastily. He counted out ten one hundred dollar bills from his wallet and handed them to Hammy.

“What’s this for?” Hammy said, staring in confusion at the money.

“That’s your severance pay,” Amato said, getting to his feet.

“Wait a minute, you can’t—”

“Shut up!” Amato yelled at him. He crouched slightly, as if the weight of his anger was more than he could bear, and Lye moved slowly to the wall and covered Hammy with the gun in his overcoat pocket.

“You killed old man Glencannon,” Amato said, in a low thick voice.

“I didn’t mean to,” Hammy said, shaking his head desperately. “I just cuffed him and he — well, he fell over.”

“You’re lucky I’m letting you quit,” Amato said, pounding a fist on the kitchen table. “What’ll it look like when I take over his local next month? The International can move in and call the election a phony. The papers are going to have a lot to say about hoodlums and killers on the docks. Sure, but that doesn’t mean anything to you.” Amato paused, breathing heavily, bringing his anger under control. “There’s five hundred men in my local who do what I tell ’em to do. I say work, they work; I say strike, they strike. But you got to be different, you got to do things on your own.”