Ed McBain - The Big Bad City

"If it got out.”

"If what got out?”

"If I told you.”

"Told us what?”

"What happened?”

"What did happen, Sal?”

Silence.

"Sal?”

"Tell us, Sal.”

"What happened, Sal?”

"She shoved him over the railing," Roselli said.

"I can't tell you what a great job I think you kids did," Charlie says.

He's been drinking too much and his speech is slurred. A bottle of beer in one hand, he staggers as he walks to the safe, catches his balance, says, "Oops," gives a gurgly little giggle and then grins in broad apology and winks at Katie. He raises the bottle in a belated toast. "Here's to next time," he says, and tilts the bottle to his mouth and drinks again. Sal is hoping he won't pass out before he opens the safe and pays them.

Charlie is wearing a wrinkled white linen suit, he looks as if he's auditioning for the role of Big Daddy in Sweet Bird. Chomping on a cigar, belching around it, he takes it out of his mouth only to swig more beer. He finally sets the bottle down on top of the safe. This is a big old Mosler that sits on the floor, he has some difficulty kneeling down in front of it, first, because he's so fat, and next because he's so drunk. Sal is really beginning to worry now that they'll have to wait till morning to get paid. How's Charlie even going to remember the combination, much less see the numbers on the dial? It is unbearably hot here in the office. The window air conditioner is functioning, but only minimally, and Charlie has thrown open the French doors to the deck, hoping to catch a stray breeze. Outside, there is the sound of insects and wilder things, the cries of animals in the deep dark. Only the alligators are silent.

Katie is slumped in one of the big black leather chairs, exhausted and sweaty, her hair hanging limp, her T-shirt clinging to her. She has her legs stretched out, the mini riding high on her thighs, she looks sort of like a thirteen-year-old who's just come home from the junior high hop. Charlie is kneeling in front of the safe, having difficulty with his balance, reciting the combination out loud as if there's no one in the room with him, three to the right, stop on twenty. Two to the left, past twenty, stop on seven. One to the right, stop on thirty-four but the safe won't open. So he goes through the same routine once again, and then another time after that until he finally hits the right numbers, and boldly yanks down the handle, and flamboyantly flings open the safe door. All grand movements.

Everything big and baroque. Like drunken Charlie himself.

The night's proceeds are in there. Charlie's crowd is composed largely of teenagers, and they pay in cash. He starts counting out the bills, has to count them three times, too, before he gets it right. He puts the rest of the money back in the safe, hurls the door shut, gives the dial a dramatic twist. He's now holding a wad of hundred-dollar bills in his left hand. With his right hand, he braces himself against the safe and pushes himself to his feet. gonna be, He turns to Katie where she's sprawled half-asleep you don't in the black leather chair.

Sal "Now, young missy," he says, and staggers over to boy her, "You want this money?" thinks Katie opens her eyes. others, "Would you like to get paid?" he says.

Charlie "That's why we're here, boss," Sal says, smiling, he is and moves to where Charlie's standing in front of the chair, the way "You want this money?" Charlie asks again, and There shakes the bills in Katie's face. face "Stop doing that," she says sleepily, and flaps her very hands on the air in front of her, trying to wave the band, money away. matter.

"Sweet missy, you want this money, here' what the you got to do," he says, and shoves the wad of bills do into the right-hand pocket of his jacket. They bulge there like a sudden tumor. He unzips his fly. And all at once he,s holding himself in his hand.

"Come on, Charlie, put that away," Sal says. For some reason he is still smiling. He cannot imagine , why he is still smiling, unless it's because the situation is so absurd.

"What you want me to put away, boy?" Charlie says. "The money or my pecker?”

"Come on, Charlie.”

Sal is no longer smiling. ' "You want me to put this money back in the safe? Or you want me to put my pecker in Katie's mouth?”

"Come on, Charlie.”

gonna be, boy. Either the little girl sucks my dick, or you don't get paid.”

Sal doesn't know how to deal with this. He's a city boy unused to the ways of wild land crackers. He thinks for a moment he'll run outside and get the others, all for one and one for all, and all that. But Charlie has grabbed Katie's chin in his hand now, and he is moving in on her with a drunk's bullheaded determination, waving his bulging purple cock at her the way he waved the wad of money only minutes ago.

There is a look of such unutterable horror on Katie's face that Sal knows this is going to be resolved in the very next instant without any help from the rest of the band, without any help from him, either, for that matter. City-boy coward that he is, he stands frozen to the spot, watching, incapable of movement, unable to do anything but repeat, "Come on, Charlie.”

Katie comes out of the chair like a lioness.

She shoves at Charlie's chest, and he staggers backward toward the open French doors.

"Hey," he says, "I was only ...”

But she is on him again, shoving out at him again, a hundred and ten pounds of sweaty blind fury pushing the fat drunken fool out onto the deck, and then lunging at him one last time, her fingers widespread on his chest, a hiss escaping her lips as she pushes him over the railing.

There is a splash when he hits the water, and then, instantly, a terrible thrashing that tells them the alligators are getting to him even before he surfaces.

Katie is breathing very hard. The sweaty T-shirt clings to her, Sal can see her nipples puckering it in "So excitement, she has just killed a man.

Sonny "The money," Katie says.

"I "Katie, you killed him.”

He "The money. It was in his pocket." was "Fuck the money," Sal says.

"Do you remember the combination?”

"No. Let's get out of here. Jesus, Katie, you killed lifting him.”

"The combination. Do you remember it?”

On the river below, there is an appalling stillness.

"He Three to the right, stop on twenty, two to the left, “ past twenty, stop on seven. One to the right, stop on thirty-four, killed He recites the numbers aloud to her as she slowly be turns the dial to the right, and to the left, and then to the right again. She opens the door. From the wad of out money in the safe, she peels off the money due them, him: and returns the rest to the safe, and closes the door, “ and twists the dial to lock it again. Sal watches as she “

wipes the dial and the handle clean. She looks around one last time, and then they leave the office. , "In the van,". Sal says, "Got the bread, let's go," and Katie pulls her T-shirt away from her body, the encouraging the cool flow from the air conditioner.

Rigoberto Mendez was setting up his bar at the Siesta when Ollie Weeks caught up with him at one o'clock that afternoon. Weeks ordered himself a beer, for which he did not offer to pay. Sitting at the bar, Ollie slurped noisily and happily from the Heineken bottle, watching Mendez as he polished glasses and checked whiskey levels.

"'o tell me," Llllle sulu, '***-"*-" '-"-"-'" o-., Sonny Cole live?”

"I got no idea," Mendez said.

He was one of these Dominicans who thought he was handsome as hell, black hair slicked back, little toothbrush mustache under his nose, wearing a tank-top shirt bulging with muscles he probably got lifting weights in the slammer.

"Man comes in your club ...”

"First time I ever saw him.”