Sidney Sheldon - If Tomorrow Comes

“Did you find something?” Andre asked anxiously.

“Condenser problem. It's the humidity. We musta had a hundred calls this week. It's shorted out. We'll have to replace the condenser.”

“Oh, my God! Will it take long?”

“Naw. We got a new condenser out in the truck.”

“Please hurry,” Andre begged them. “Mr. Pope is going to be home soon.”

“You leave everything to us,” Al said.

Back in the kitchen, Andre confided, “I must finish preparing my salad dressing. Can you find your way back up to the attic?”

Al raised a hand: “No sweat, pal. You just go on about your business, and we'll go on about ours.”

“Oh, thank you. Thank you.”

Andre watched the men go out to the truck and return with two large canvas bags. “If you need anything,” he told them, “just call me.”

“You betcha!”

The workmen went up the stairs, and Andre returned to his kitchen.

When Ralph and Al reached the attic, they opened their canvas bags and removed a small folding camp chair, a drill with a steel bit, a tray of sandwiches, two cans of beer, a pair of 12 by 40 Zeiss binoculars for viewing distant objects in a dim light, and two live hamsters that had been injected with three quarters of a milligram of acetyl promazine.

The two men went to work.

“Ol Ernestine is gonna be proud of me,” Al chortled as they started.

In the beginning, Al had stubbornly resisted the idea.

“You must be outta your mind, woman. I ain't gonna fuck around with no Perry Pope. That dude'll come down on my ass so hard I'll never see daylight again.”

“You don't gotta worry about him. He won't never be botherin' no one again.”

They were naked on the water bed in Ernestine's apartment.

“What you gettin' out of this deal, anyway, honey” Al demanded.

“He's a prick.”

“Hey, baby, the world's full of pricks, but you don't spend your life goin' around cuttin' off their balls.”

“All right. I'm doin' it for a friend.”

“Tracy?”

“That's right.”

Al liked Tracy. They had all had dinner together the day she got out of prison.

“She's a classy dame,” Al admitted. “But why we stickin' our necks out for her?”

“Because if we don't he'p her, she's gonna have to settle for someone who ain't half as good as you, and if she gets caught, they'll cart her ass right back to the joint.”

Al sat up in bed and looked at Ernestine curiously. “Does it mean that much to you, baby?”

“Yeah, hon.”

She would never be able to make him understand it, but the truth was simply that Ernestine could not stand the thought of Tracy back in prison at the mercy of Big Bertha. It was not only Tracy whom Ernestine was concerned about: It was herself. She had made herself Tracy's protector, and if Big Bertha got her hands on her, it would be a defeat for Ernestine.

So all she said now was, “Yeah. It means a lot to me, honey. You gonna, do it?”

“I damn sure can't do it alone,” Al grumbled.

And Ernestine knew she had won. She started nibbling her way down his long, lean body. And she murmured, “Wasn't ole Ralph due to be released a few days ago…?”

It was 6:30 before the two men returned to Andre's kitchen, grimy with sweat and dust.

“Is it fixed?” Andre asked anxiously.

“It was a real bitch,” Al informed him. “You see, what you got here is a condenser with an AC/DC cutoff that —”

“Never mind that,” Andre interrupted impatiently. “Did you fix it?”

“Yeah. It's all set. In five minutes we'll have it goin' again as good as new.”

“Formidable! If you'll just leave your bill on the kitchen table —”

Ralph shook his head. “Don't worry about it. The company'll bill you.”

“Bless you both. Au 'voir.”

Andre watched the two men leave by the back door, carrying their canvas bags. Out of his sight, they walked around to the yard and opened the casing that housed the outside condenser of the air-conditioning unit. Ralph held the flashlight while Al reconnected the wires he had loosened a couple hours earlier. The air-conditioning unit immediately sprang into life.

Al copied down the telephone number on the service tag attached to the condenser. When he telephoned the number a short time later and reached the recorded voice of the Eskimo Air-Conditioning Company, Al said, “This is Perry Pope's residence at Forty-two Charles Street. Our air-conditioning is workin' fine now. Don't bother to send anyone. Have a nice day.”

The weekly Friday-night poker game at Perry Pope's house was an event to which all the players eagerly looked forward. It was always the same carefully selected group: Anthony Orsatti, Joe Romano, Judge Henry Lawrence, an alderman, a state senator, and of course their host. The stakes were high, the food was great, and the company was raw power.

Perry Pope was in his bedroom changing into white silk slacks and matching sport shirt. He hummed happily, thinking of the evening ahead. He had been on a winning streak lately. In fact, my whole life is just one big winning streak, he thought.

If anyone needed a legal favor in New Orleans, Perry Pope was the attorney to see. His power came from his connections with the Orsatti Family. He was known as The Arranger, and could fix anything from a traffic ticket to a drug-dealing charge to a murder rap. Life was good.

When Anthony Orsatti arrived, he brought a guest with him. “Joe Romano won't be playin' anymore,” Orsatti announced. “You all know Inspector Newhouse.”

The men shook hands all around.

“Drinks are on the sideboard, gentlemen,” Perry Pope said.

“We'll have supper later. Why don't we start a little action going?”

The men took their accustomed chairs around the green felt table in the den. Orsatti pointed to Joe Romano's vacant chair and said to Inspector Newhouse, “That'll be your seat from now on, Mel.”

While one of the men opened fresh decks of cards, Pope began distributing poker chips. He explained to Inspector Newhouse, “The black chips are five dollars, red chips ten dollars, blue chips fifty dollars, white chips a hundred. Each man starts out buying five hundred dollars' worth of chips. We play table stakes, three raises, dealer's choice.”

“Sounds good to me,” the inspector said.

Anthony Orsatti was in a bad mood. “Come on. Let's get started.” His voice was a strangled whisper. Not a good sign.

Perry Pope would have given a great deal to learn what had happened to Joe Romano, but the lawyer knew better than to bring up the subject. Orsatti would discuss it with him when he was ready.

Orsatti's thoughts were black: I been like a father to Joe Romano. I trusted him, made him my chief lieutenant. And the son of a bitch stabbed me in the back. If that dizzy French dame hadn't telephoned, he might have gotten away with it, too. Well, he won't ever get away with nothin' again. Not where he is. If he's so clever, let him fuck around with the fish down there.

“Tony, are you in or out?”

Anthony Orsatti turned his attention back to the game. Huge sums of money had been won and lost at this table. It always upset Anthony Orsatti to lose, and it had nothing to do with money. He could not bear to be on the losing end of anything. He thought of himself as a natural-born winner. Only winners rose to his position in fife. For the last six weeks, Perry Pope had been on some kind of crazy winning streak, and tonight Anthony Orsatti was determined to break it.

Since they played dealer's choice, each dealer chose the game in which he felt the strongest. Hands were dealt for five-card stud, seven-card stud, low ball, draw poker — but tonight, no matter which game was chosen, Anthony Orsatti kept finding himself on the losing end. He began to increase his bets, playing recklessly, trying to recoup his losses. By midnight when they stopped to have the meal Andre had prepared, Orsatti was out $50,000, with Perry Pope the big winner.