1
The night John Rader took the call from Yvonne Thornwood, he was in the Velvet Room on Sixty-Second Street talking with two men about how best to run things when the manager, Rader’s client, was away. The manager, Albert Berman, being a man who owed a lot of people a lot of money. The manager being dead as from ten p.m. that night. And this was still five to eight. So Rader figured he had time, even if the two men, Jackie James—who some people called Jesse—and Bobby “the Horse” Hayes, only wanted to talk racing tips and cocktail waitresses. Corpses don’t pay, so he’d give it his best shot.
The office—faded green walls and old brown furniture—was Rader’s for tonight. Both men were seated on low upholstered chairs, and Rader was standing by the desk. He had them here because their boss, Walker, who was in the joint, would tell his daughter during her Friday visit if they should ice Albert Berman. That night she’d call Jackie James, probably. Walker could be unpredictable. Waiting until the evening allowed him time to change his mind. He’d done it before, but never with a guy who wouldn’t pay his debts. So it was a formality, but Rader knew they wanted it official. That way no one got hurt—no one except Albert Berman—and this was as close to mob business as Rader would accept.
‘From my end,’ Rader said, ‘I say you go back to your boss, Mr. Walker, and tell him that Berman has agreed to settle up, with interest. Remove the guy, and you end up scrambling for his money along with a bunch of other people. You want a war with his three ex-wives, be my guest.’
‘Look,’ Jackie James said. ‘We know how you feel, and you know how we feel. Not one of us gives a fuck about Albert Berman. But a job’s a job.’ He lifted a bottle of Wild Turkey and topped up his glass. Then he took out his cellphone and laid it on the table. ‘She’s gonna call any minute.’
Hayes looked at his watch. ‘You think we should just call her? I got a date with Lynda tonight. I’d rather shoot myself than stand Lynda up.’
‘Maybe,’ Jackie James said. ‘But Walker won’t like it.’
Hayes rapped his fingers on the table. Another glance at his watch. ‘So, we make our move, or what? I got a big night ahead of me.’
Jackie James scowled at him. ‘Fuck is this, Bobby? Give it another five—which can’t come soon enough—then we call his daughter. That’s how it works.’
His gray eyes found Rader, who was sitting against the front of the desk thinking that he had two choices, or even three: get them back to talking about which cocktail waitress they’d like to bang, and then chip away at a compromise on Berman; get them talking and just chew the clock and hope their cellphone didn’t ring; or else assume that the guy he had working on the other end of this one—Stan Bellows, occasional journalist and full-time gambler—was doing a good job of distracting Walker’s daughter, Barbara, fresh from that visit to Lewisburg Federal.
‘Looks like there’s nothing left to discuss,’ Hayes said, rapping his fingers some more. He emptied his glass. ‘I say make the call, and be done with this shit.’
Rader glanced at the clock just above them, the second hand making a pronounced click with every movement: eight o’clock. The plan was for Bellows to go some place with Barbara, keep her occupied. Bellows meeting her in a store near her home, and spinning a few of his lines. Barbara was keen. So was Bellows: five hundred up front, two large if he stopped the call.
‘Fuck this, Jackie. Phone her up. I’m fuckin’ serious. You want to ruin my night?’
Jackie James sighed and looked at his watch now. ‘Look, give it one more minute,’ he said, ‘then we call Barbara Walker, and you go see Lydia. All right?’
Hayes sighed. ‘I guess it’ll have to be,’ he said. ‘And it’s Lynda. Lydia, I don’t wanna talk about.’
Rader looked at both men as the clock ticked behind him. He took this job because there was nothing else available that week, or the week before—and no good ever came of that policy. He said, ‘Let Barbara make the call, at least.’
‘Okay, I had enough. Time up,’ Hayes said. ‘Jackie, quit fucking around.’
Jackie James glanced at the phone, then at Rader.
Rader said, ‘How will Walker react to the news that you phoned his daughter, pressured her? That your priority was a date with a lady.’
Hayes frowned now, thinking on that. Then he gave a shrug. ‘Jackie, just get it done, will you?’
When James glanced at Rader again, Hayes sighed and grabbed the phone, hitting a button. ‘Ring ring,’ he said.
Bellows opened the glass door, and stood back to let Barbara Walker, who was inches taller, even without heels, move through to the restaurant, all the gold on her fingers and her neck and her Versace purse gleaming in the soft lighting and dark furnishings. Barbara stepped into the booth, shimmying her waist. He took a sniff. Was that alcohol on her breath?
‘That’s okay, sugah,’ Barbara was telling the Puerto Rican waiter, when he started with the drink menu, ‘we’ll get a bottle of your loveliest champagne.’
Bellows reminded himself he had work to do. Get it wrong, a man could lose his life. Get it wrong, Bellows wasn’t getting paid. A headache any way he looked at it. Getting it right was the only way.
‘Very good choice,’ the waiter said, and left.
Barbara stood up, swaying. ‘And I’ll have some of those little parmesan nibbles, you know, those little breadsticks—okay, sugah?’
Bellows looked down, wondering if anyone in the restaurant hadn’t heard her.
‘So, look at you all suited and booted,’ she said to Bellows, and reached under the table towards his inner thigh. ‘I love it when a man goes to a lot of botha with his appearance. What a turn-on. It’s so goddamn fucking attractive.’
Bellows glanced around at nearby diners. ‘Baby, this is dinner, in a nice place. I’m just getting to know you. And I’m a gentleman.’
She studied him and then laughed, reaching into the Versace purse and laying her cellphone on the table. In a taxi-holler Queens twang, she said: ‘And I’m a passionate woman. What can I say?’
Bellows recalled that it was heists of high-end goods that landed her old man in jail. He reached to her hand, edging the cellphone away. ‘Just let’s keep it down, huh?’
‘I will not keep it down, you boring little creep.’ She sat back, a mean look in her eyes now. ‘I was trying to be nice.’
‘And you were nice,’ Bellows said, as he leaned closer, nudging the cellphone with his elbow until it was resting against the side of the booth.
Her eyes were on it, though. ‘I got a phone call to make.’
He didn’t blink. ‘No.’
Then her cellphone began to vibrate. He tried to read the caller name.
‘I gotta take this,’ she said. ‘Screw you.’
Bellows grabbed it, and slipped the phone under the table, onto her banquette, against her crotch. ‘Let them ring,’ he said.
She let her mouth hang open as she watched him. ‘Excuse me?’
Bellows said, ‘Interrupt our date? I don’t think so. Let it ring.’