"That's what worries me," said Messina. He put his hand on the stained and moisture-fattened notebook, ran a delicate finger across the page as though it were written in Braille. "Could be some kind of code. Look the way he prints one line, a heading like, then scrawls all this other bullshit underneath it."
"Code, no code, who gives a shit," said Pretty Boy, "long's we got the books?"
"We got the books, yeah," Aldo Messina said. "But so what? The problem with writers is it's hard to stop 'em writing. And we still don't have the writer."
"No fault a mine," said Pretty Boy, a note of whining resentment in his voice. He got up from the table and started pacing, it was like the amphetamines pinched him on the scrotum if he sat still more than a few moments at a time. He went to a pool table where no one ever shot pool and rolled the cue ball off three cushions. "I still say we shoulda clipped 'im. Shit. I'm gettin' frustrated, like. I keep gettin' sent ta do a job, then I don't get ta do the fuckin' job."
"Bo did right," Aldo Messina said with finality.
The philosophic thug modestly lowered his eyes. The table they were sitting at had a gutter for poker chips and change; Bo quietly swept lint into it.
Now Messina started pacing, circled wide of Pretty Boy; they were like planes around an airport. The dour boss made a circuit or two, then moved to the table and sat down again. Next to the stacked up notebooks that had been stolen from Arty Magnus was a small piece of cardboard. He toyed with it; it was a business card. It said Mark J. Sutton, Special Agent, Federal Bureau of Investigation. It had shaken out of the back of Arty's Rolodex when the thugs had rifled his office.
Pretty Boy watched his boss fondling the card and said, "The fuck's workin' both sides a da street, I say dat's alla more reason—"
"Look," said Bo, "he's workin' wit' the Feds, the Feds are gonna be protecting 'im. He coulda been wired. He coulda had a whaddyacallit, one of those things, they know exactly where he is. We take 'im out, boom, they got us."
"OK, OK," said Pretty Boy. "But inna meantime, the skinny fuck has gotta go."
"Yeah, he does," agreed Messina. "But in the meantime, Bo did right."
This grated on Pretty Boy's nerves. "Bo did right," he said. "Bo did right. So give Bo a fuckin' medal. But there's still this scumbag writer—"
"The situation's a little more complicated than we thought," Messina said. He pursed his lips, furrowed his bleak tense forehead into a map of perfect pessimism. "But hey—isn't that the way fuckin' life is?"
———
Arty Magnus had not had time or inclination to straighten up his trashed bedroom. A lamp still lay on the floor and seemed to be groping after its shade, like a man who had lost his hat. Dresser drawers still stood half open; shirt and sweater sleeves hung out at urgent angles, waving mutely, frantically, for help.
The ghostwriter was sprawled across his bed now, his head and his ankle up on pillows, a bag of ice hanging down on both sides of his foot like a cocker spaniel's ears. He lay there and he thought. He thought about Debbi: the shock of finding her face next to his, the salt taste of her mouth. His hands, however briefly, had held her jawbone, his fingers reached behind her ears; such intimacy, felt fresh, was astonishing, uncanny. He closed his eyes and imagined he was her lover.
The idyll didn't last long. It was shattered by other preoccupations, by thoughts and worries ruder than slaps and as frightening as a scream in the night. Someone was after Arty. After him. It was an odd phrase, primitive; it suggested a ritual hunt, a ceaseless stalking. Which was precisely how Arty felt: like his steps were being dogged, his range of movement shrinking. He was running out of room, and Key West, this tiny island that had never seemed too small before, suddenly felt confining as a rowboat and as devoid of hiding places.
He lay there on his bed. A mild breeze puffed through the screens, moonlight dusted the tangled foliage outside. He remembered when he'd agreed to become the Godfather's ghost, the earnest charade he'd gone through, telling himself he was free to say no. He should have said no, he knew that now; probably he'd known it all along. Yet regret was strangely absent from the mix of fear and anger he was feeling. He'd known from the start there'd be some crazy thrall to this business of harboring someone else's story, some lunatic pull into the mad logic and morbid righteousness of gangsters. He'd accepted the danger, in a distant, abstract sort of way, and he'd expected a strict and brittle fairness in return. Vincente's eyes had promised him that, had led him to believe he was entering a realm where justice was severe but simple, ruthless but unerring, a realm where, if you told the truth, and kept up your end of the bargain, you would be safe. What had gone wrong?