Дэймон Найт - Orbit 8

“ ‘Thou shalt not muzzle the ox, when that he treadeth out the grain,’ ” said Roseboom, through his teeth. “What do you mean by ‘significant’?”

“I mean that two places have changed hands on that strip this year. Nothing to do with the Family. They just couldn’t hack it. If I was being milked the way you seem to think I am, I’d be in the street myself. As it is, I was asked to bid on one of them. By the owner’s lawyer, not by the Family. And as far as being under any thumbs,” Harry continued, “I went to Martinique last spring to visit my son’s grave. To Miami to visit my wife’s. I visited my uncle in Chicago, he’s a surgeon. I went to St. Petersburg to look into some real estate stuff I got into in the fifties. I could’ve run out any time, if I wanted to. Your point eludes me.”

“Listen to me,” said Roseboom. “Joe the Nuts, born Giuseppe Nucci, known as Joseph Nucci, is a capo don. He is a big, big gangster, if I may use an old-hat word.” He sneered just the slightest bit. “He has operated all over the country as a special representative of the Mafia, gouging small businessmen into signing over their livelihoods to his...organization.”

“Did you ever hear of the Supreme Protective Agency in New York?” asked Harry. “They go around hitting shopkeepers for ten bucks a month, for ‘protection.’ Now, that is really old hat. And all they do for that ten is to string tape around the edges of the shopwindows, you know, like a burglar alarm, but without alarm wires in it.”

“Well?” said Roseboom.

“But it works,” said Harry. “That green tape is like a danger signal. Joe described it to me once in very memorable terms. He said, ‘Those storefronts are Territory. ’“ He paused. “Maybe what you’re saying is that I’m Territory, too.”

“Yes,” said Roseboom, between his teeth, “I guess you are.”

“And there’s another thing,” said Harry. “Joe Nucci is my friend. Now, I’ve had friends who were drunks. Queers. Cruel people, both men and women, and that’s the worst of all. Joe is just a nice little guy who loves singing and booze and screwing and who takes pleasure keeping his house in order. That could be me, except I can’t sing. When I compare him to some of the other friends I’ve had, he comes out pretty good.

“And now you come in here and tell me that I’ve got to chuck away my livelihood, my friend, and put myself in criminal suspicion, just because somebody sent you a report or a memo or what the hell to that effect. ‘Casino owner’—these places like mine are always ‘casinos’ in your language—’with Mafia connections,’ that’s what I’ll be for the rest of my life.”

“Wait a minute,” said Roseboom.

“No. Let me finish with the most cogent argument I’ve got, again, so as not to stretch this interview out unduly. Now, suppose I am a Mafia patsy. What happens? I’m caught between them and you, remember. They come to me and they threaten to cut off my balls, pull out my tongue, kill me, sink me in a block of cement into the bottom of New York Harbor. Kill a few of my friends, burn my house—and my business, they’re in the same building—poison my cats, sink my boat...and so on.

“Now, what do you threaten? You threaten to put me in jail.” Harry looked at Roseboom for a long time. Roseboom was looking at the floor. “I’m afraid, Mr. Roseboom, that the Mafia is leading in the bidding for my ass.”

“Don’t you know we can protect you?” asked Roseboom, but Harry could see that he was tired, and he himself knew that he spoke without conviction.

“Thirty years?” asked Harry. “I might live thirty years. But the chances are against it if I listen to you.”

Roseboom stood up and automatically brushed a cloud of cement dust off the seat of his pants. He moved toward the doorway, turned and faced Harry, then stepped gingerly down onto the ladder.

Harry took one-last look at the sea, sighed deeply, and followed him down.

Sleet and snow were racketing at the front windows of Decline And Fall, and Harry looked up, and then curled closer to the blaze in the new fireplace in the empty cocktail lounge. He guessed that he had another hour before the first of the wintertime regulars pulled in—if they came out at all on a night like this. The floodlit pillar Joe the Nuts had sent from Leptis Magna was sheathed in ice. Harry looked out at it and grinned to himself. “Good for the image,” Joe had said. God knew it was phallic and classic and Roman enough for anybody. Harry had his sixth gin-gin of the evening at hand and was feeling no pain, literally. The small of his back had begun to bother him late in the fall. He pulled out the letter that had arrived with the pillar and read it again.

Dear Harry:

Thanks for the news about Uncle Freddie once again. Everybody needs a vacation. But you know them bastards wouldnt even let me in to SICILY? Then when I left Palermo I couldnt get into Rome. Anyway I got the pillar for you then, dont ask me how, you keep your nose clean like always. Beirut was nice but I like Spain much better. This is just a little fishing village Harry the name of which I will divulge when you call at Wagon-Lits Internationales, Barcelona. There are lots of Swede college girls here, made me think of my man the DUTCHMAN. Im making out OK with the wife of the local boss of guardia civil, thats state cops. Harry the wine here is as good as real Vino Rosso and is thirtyfive cents a quart. Oops thats a leter here in the old country. I never was as happy traveling for the family as I am here. To tell you the truth Harry I think them bastards are just as happy if I stay over here indefinitely. I didnt mention I get to sing in the local bar, what they call a bodega! And for money! Its’ the greatest moment of my life, more fun than when I was a kid. You know I love to sing. All I really need to die happy is to get paid to sing in your place Harry with Corelli beside me. But its real good here too. When are you coming over Harry? It isnt going to be too cool for you now that theres been all that noise around there. Frankie Buttons was pulled in to a special grand jury they convened just for him. You remember Frank. Come over here Harry, well have a ball. Between the two of us theres nothing we cant do.

Joe (The Nuts)

Harry refolded the letter and put it back in his breast pocket. He was glad Joe had gotten out. Of course, he thought, it would be easy anywhere for Joe. He was like a cat, always landed on his feet. Now, he, Harry...But that was water under the bridge. Harry drained the gin-gin. He got up—it took him a distressingly long time—and walked to the bar. The barman came to him, but he continued around behind it. “Never mind,” he said. “I’ll build my own.”

He sat oil the high stool—his high stool—as he worked. He could not feel the rung of the stool under his feet, and knew that his ankles and feet must be swelling again. Sitting there reminded him of the previous summer, when Inspector Roseboom had finally appeared, as Harry had known he, or some other, would.

Roseboom had been blown to tatters by the bomb under the floorboards of his car two days after the interview with Harry. Then an anonymous call had sent FBI men from the local office after one Angelo Christofori, known as Christmas Angel, who was suspected of killing an agent. The Angel might have gotten clear if he hadn’t locked his car. As he stood there, panting, trying to work the lock on his Lincoln Continental, two agents had come up on him and shot him eleven times, as he attempted to escape and/or resist arrest. The coroner noted that no single one of these bullets lodged in a vital spot.

After that, it had gone back and forth, for five months or more. An agent here, two or three torpedoes there, killed, bombed, wounded, taken into custody. A file of documents confiscated. An informer made to disappear. A little war, up and down the Jersey coast from the storm center at Decline And Fall. Harry thought that what he had done was better than what Roseboom had wanted him to do. First Harry had warned the Family, through Joe, that the FBI was interested in Decline And Fall. Joe had escaped, Roseboom was murdered, and Harry had blown the whistle on Christmas Angel. By then both sides were at each other, and Harry saw in each day’s papers how the battle raged around him. Each morning’s edition was delivered by special courier to Decline And Fall at eleven fifteen the previous night. Harry liked a head start on the news.