Pretty Boy drained his drink, gestured with the empty glass. "I said dat from the start."
"Somethin' 'at important."
"Thing is, it didn't have to be that big a deal, we did it my way from the start."
Bert nodded sagely. "De other way, they made it too complicated, people goin' back and fort'."
"Fuckin' A." Pretty Boy lowered his voice a notch, breathed liquor mist in Bert's face. "My way, I tol' 'em, I said first chance we ice the fuckin' writer, and 'at's the end of it. We don't wait. We don't send fuckin' Gino. Am I right?"
Bert the Shirt summoned up a lifetime's practice in the poker face, the voice revealing nothing. "Yeah," he said. "You're right. . . . Listen, Bo's comin' wit' the car. Ya wanna take a leak or somethin' before we staht?"
This struck Pretty Boy as a good idea. He double-checked that his glass was really empty, then woozily slid down from his barstool and lumbered toward the men's room. Bert held his dog like a football and lowered his head like a fullback. He was on the street again in fifteen seconds.
47
"You don't go off on your own like that," Ben Hawkins said. "It's not the way it's done."
Mark Sutton looked down at his plate and sulked. He thought he'd done a pretty good day's work, deserved a pat on the back and not a scolding. "Ben," he insisted, "I'm telling you, the guy is this close to turning."
"So what? Who is he, the under-boss? He's a journalist, Mark. A civilian. What's he gonna have?"
"We'll never know unless we work him, will we?"
Hawkins didn't answer. The two men were finishing a late dinner in the dim and dreary restaurant at the Gulfside Inn. The senior agent went back to trimming gristle from his steak.
But then Mark Sutton, giving in suddenly to a slow-brewed exasperation, pushed the remains of his own meal away from him and clattered down his silverware. "Dammit Ben, I'm trying to get something done down here, and you—I always heard you're like a legendary agent, but you just sit there; everything I do, you're negative, you shrug it off—"
The unflappable Hawkins looked at him mildly, knife and fork in hand. "Mark," he said, "I shrug it off because a shrug is what it's worth. The Bureau—listen. Half the time, probably less, you're on a case that's really a case. The other half you're covering butt for someone. We're covering Manheim's butt. That's all we're doing. As soon as Carbone got killed, Delgatto became a sideshow. Face it, Mark. You're getting your bowels in an uproar over a goddam sideshow."
"I think you're wrong."
"I know you do. Which is why we're getting to hate each other's guts. But lemme tell you something. You got a hard-on for a great career, but you're exactly the kind of guy that burns out. You know which guys burn out? The guys who can't tell the real cases from the bullshit."
Sutton rocked his bullish neck. "Look, I got time and trouble invested in this guy. I believe that one more squeeze, a little more pressure on the girlfriend thing, we're gonna get something from him. I wanna get in his face again. You don't want me going off alone, come with me. You still think there's nothing there, I'll back off. Fair enough?"
Hawkins chewed a final piece of steak and thought it over. He nodded yes, then gestured for the waitress. The hyperactive Sutton was already halfway out of his chair when Hawkins thwarted him yet again by asking not for the check but for a cup of coffee and a slice of Key lime pie.
On freezing Bleecker Street, Bert the Shirt slid his skinny haunches across the cold upholstery of a yellow cab. "Go toward the Holland Tunnel," he told the driver.
The taxi roared away, the old man hugged his dog. Now and then he swiveled around with an ancient paranoia about being followed. But who would figure he was heading for the tunnel, and not the airport like he'd come? The cab slipped unharassed through the narrow streets of the Village, past jazz clubs, step-down restaurants, transvestite hookers in fake fur on the corners.
On Varick Street, two blocks above the tunnel, Bert spotted a pay phone under a defunct streetlight. "Stop here," he said. "Wait for me a minute."
The old man left the cab door open so he could look in on his dog. He picked up the icy handset and held it to his ear. Steam came off him as he dialed a number in Key West.
Joey Goldman picked up on the second ring. "Hello?"
"Joey? Bert. I need your father, he around?"
"Bert, where are ya? What's goin'—"
"Joey, please, I ain't got time. Put Vincente on."
The line went silent. Bert shifted his feet, the cold came up through his shoes. Traffic poured by, taillights leaving red streamers in the misty air. After a moment, Vincente's voice said, "Bert."