He slapped the desk, walked up close to Joey, and spit in his face. The warm saliva trickled down his cheek and Joey was sure he would vomit if he didn't wipe it off before it reached the corner of his mouth. He started to lift his hand. "Touch your face and I'll break your fucking arm," said Ponte. "Now talk. What the fuck you doin' with your brother's car, and where's my fucking emeralds?"
Joey tried to speak but couldn't, and Ponte nodded at Bruno. Bruno grabbed Joey by the hair and pulled back as if to yank off his scalp. Then he put the muzzle of his gun in the soft hollow behind Joey's ear.
Joey tried desperately to say something, and when he heard a voice he thought he had succeeded, but in fact it was Bert who was talking.
"Come on, Charlie, the kid don't know shit. He don't know nothin'. He's a loser. He's a nobody."
"Yeah?" said Ponte. "Well then, what about you, old lady? You ain't a nobody. A fucking limp-dick has-been maybe, but not a nobody. You got connections. So what the fuck is what?"
Bert cradled his dog and shook his head. "Charlie, I swear on my mother, we ain't involved. I don't know any more than what we already told ya."
"I think ya do," said Ponte. "And I ain't got all fucking night." He glanced over at his troops. "Tony, take his fucking dog."
"No," said Bert.
"Shut up, old woman. Tony, take his fucking dog, put it onna desk, and get ready to blow its fucking rains out. Enougha this shit."
Almost apologetically, the thug with the scarred lip and bad toupee approached Bert and held his hands out to take the dog. The Shirt held his ground. "I'll fucking kill ya, Charlie. I swear I'll fucking kill ya."
Ponte snorted. "That's good, Bert. Very brave. But you're still an old lady, so shut the fuck up and give 'im the dog."
Bert stood there. Ponte nodded for reinforcements. Another goon came up behind the old man and jerked back hard on his arms.
The tiny dog flew out of his hands and seemed to hover in the dimness, its legs splayed out like the limbs of a defrosting chicken, its paws kicking as though trying to climb the empty air. Tony caught the animal and put it on the desk. Quivering and all alone in the circle of yellow light, the chihuahua looked like it was about to be the victim of some unspeakable experiment in a Nazi operating room. It whined and its whiskers twitched like the antennae of a dying insect. Tony cocked his gun and pointed it between the animal's bulging glassy eyes.
"Charlie, for Christ's sake," said Bert, and he started to cry. Two hot tears, no more, squeezed out of his rheumy eyes and ran down his gray cheeks.
"Look at 'im," said Charlie Ponte, pointing at Bert with his chin. "Look at 'im. Bert, you look like a fucking fool. If I wasn't so pissed off, I'd be embarrassed for you."
"Be embarrassed for yourself, ya stupid dago. Be embarrassed that a fuckin' idiot like Gino Delgatto is less of an idiot than you are."
"Ah," said Ponte, "you trying to insult me? A pathetic old fuck like you, trying to insult me? Well, you know what, Bert, I ain't insulted. At least now you're saying something. Tony, get ready to splatter the dog. Dog brains all over the place, then he goes inna gahbidge. So come on, old lady, insult me some more. Come on."
Tony's trigger hand poked obscenely into the cone of yellow light, and Don Giovanni looked up curiously at the muzzle of the gun. Joey had gone limp in Bruno's murderous embrace. The fumes from Vicki's toiletries were winding through the air in almost visible curls of sickening sweetness.
"Charlie," Bert said, "ain't it fucking obvious? He decoyed you, man. He's makin' you look stupid. You're out here fuckin' around with a nobody, an old man, and a dog, and he's getting away with your emeralds."
Ponte put his hands into the pockets of his pale gray suit jacket, and considered. Then he took them out again and tugged an earlobe. The thug called Tony took the opportunity to turn a queasy glance on his employer. "Boss, I ain't never shot a dog before. A dog, it's, like, different. I kinda like dogs."
"Fucking stinks in here," said Ponte, as if he'd just now noticed.
"Charlie, lissena me," Bert pressed. "I don't give a fuck if you get your stones back or not. But if I was you, I'd be wondering where Gino is right now."
Ponte shuffled his dainty shoes on the cement floor, then absently kicked at a scrap of the cosmetics case. Chinese newspaper came out.
"So really, boss," said Tony, "I gotta shoot the fucking dog, or what? Come on, it's making me, like, uncomfortable."
— 25 —
"You O.K.?' asked Bert the Shirt.
Joey straightened up slowly and tried to work a kink out of his neck. His right ear was ringing from the press of the gun muzzle behind it, and his scalp felt as if he were wearing a very tight hat. He found a handkerchief and wiped his face. That was the only part of the episode that would really stay with him and rankle: that he'd been spit on. Pain, people didn't remember, not really; humiliation, they did. Humiliation changed people, for better or for worse. Either it beat them down so that they stayed down, pathetic but weirdly grateful to have their spirits killed and their hopes ended, or it whipped them into a froth of defiance, sent them skittering into realms of resource they didn't know they had. "Me, I'm all right," said Joey. "How 'bout you?"