"I can't tell you that."
"Why you no can't tell?"
"I just can't, Eddie. Listen, I need you to do me a favor."
"Name it, Mist' Amaro."
"I want you to call my wife—"
"Your wife, she been calling plenny. I think maybe she been drinking."
"Call her up, tell her Angelina's okay, we're together, no one has to worry. You got that, Eddie?"
Eddie said, "Angelina? You go 'way with someone Angelina, and I'm supposed to tell your wife?"
"She's my niece," said Louie.
"Sure," said Eddie. "Your wife, she gonna ask where you're at."
"You can't tell her. You don't know."
"When you comin' back, Mist' Amaro?"
"I don't know. It isn't up to me."
There was a pause. Louie pictured Eddie leaning over the marred gray counter, shifting his crossed ankles the way he did when he was puzzling something out.
"Mist' Amaro," he said at last, "you been kidnap, something?"
"Don't be ridiculous, Eddie. We doin' any business?"
"Then why it's no up to you, when you come back?"
"It just isn't. How much money's in the till?"
"Nah much," said Eddie. "Hundred'ollars maybe."
"Take it if you need it."
"Take it?" The words scared Eddie, seemed like some crude temptation out of a fable from Sunday school, or like further evidence that something dreadful had happened to his boss. "Mist' Amaro, you tell me never touch that money."
Louie said, "And now I'm telling you take it if you need it." He ran a hand through the sparse bundles of damp hair atop his scorching head, and wished he'd bought a cap instead of a visor. Rose would have made him buy a cap. "And call my wife," he said. "Good talking with you, Eddie."
* * *
Paul Amaro was pacing like a bear among the mismatched tables of the Gatto Bianco Social Club.
Clumsy with fatigue, dizzy now and then, he occasionally bumped a chair back with his hip. He hadn't shaved, he gave off a faint but penetrating smell of rage and worry.
His old friend Funzie Gallo was eating a cannoli, the kind with crushed pistachios garnishing the ends. He watched the other man pace, then said at last, "For your own good, Paul, try to think about somethin' else awhile."
Angelina's father didn't stop lumbering and rocking. He fixed the other man from under tangled brows and said, "Fuck else is there to think about?"
Gallo blinked, pads of semiliquid fat shifted all around his eyes. "Business, Paul. Money. We used to make a lotta money here, remember?"
"And it's turned to shit," said Paul Amaro.
Funzie Gallo wanted to disagree. He found he couldn't. But Amaro seemed to understand that an attempt at help was being offered, he tried to meet Funzie halfway. He resumed without enthusiasm, "Okay, okay, so talk to me."
Gallo said, "These rods for Cuba—"
"Funzie," Amaro interrupted. "You're practically as old as me. Y'oughta remember. Our friends, Trafficante, Lansky, even Luciano, they lost their shirts in Cuba."
Funzie nibbled around the edges of his sweet, licked back oily crumbs of crust. "That was different, Paul. That was heavy-duty investment. This is a one-time cash transaction."
Amaro leaned against the pool table where no one ever shot pool. For a brief time he floated free of his dolorous preoccupation with his daughter, but what took its place was a recollection of the busted car-shipping scam that had sent him to the can. "International," he said, "I don't like it. Customs. Coast Guard. Fucking navy."
"Not our problem," Funzie said. "That's the beauty part. We get the pieces far as Florida. After that, it's Tommy Lucca's problem."
Amaro tightened at the name. "Lucca's an asshole," he said.
"Did I say he's not?" said Funzie. What he left unsaid was that Lucca was active at least, doing deals while they themselves drank coffee. By cunning or good fortune, he'd left New York when the leaving was good, established himself in Miami, a wide-open town where things were happening. He'd prospered as lucky lunatics often prospered: As the world got crazier, it came his way.
Which didn't mean that Paul Amaro had to respect him. "He's a hothead and a whaddyacallit, paranoid, and he's got this bug up his ass, touchy, about how New York doesn't take him serious."
Funzie said, "But it's a sweet deal, Paul."
"Plus which," Paulie said, "I hear he's all hopped up on drugs. Rule one, ya don't do business wit' guys on drugs."
"Then I guess we're outa business," Funzie said. He went back to his pastry.
Paulie walked around the room. In spite of himself he was getting interested, he tasted in his throat the meaty joy of scamming. He said, "You telling me you trust that broke-nosed fuck?"