Dirt

Chapter 52

Tommy and Charlie Bruce checked into the Mansfield Hotel on West 44th Street. It was a small hostelry, originally designed as an apartment hotel for well-to-do bachelors, as was its larger counterpart, the Royalton, farther down the block toward 6th Avenue, and It had recently been remodeled.

“I just don’t get it,” Charlie said. “How the fuck could he find us? How could he know who we are?”

This annoyed Tommy, who was accustomed to knowing everything. “He knows Louise, too.”

“You should have let me kill him, talking like that about Louise.”

Tommy whipped out a cell phone and called Rahway.

“Hello?” Sleepy voice.

“Hi, Sis,” Tommy said. “You sound as though you’ve been well fucked.”

“What?” She was awake now.

“You told him where to find us.”

“I most certainly did not. I told him nothing.”

“Tell me the truth.”

“I am telling you the truth. He asked; I didn’t tell him.”

Tommy thought for a minute. “Did you write anything down?”

Her silence answered the question.

“Did you fall asleep after he fucked you?”

More silence.

“He looked around the house, didn’t he?”

Still silence.

“You still meticulously keep your address book, don’t you?”

“All right,” she said, “he looked around the house; I caught him at it.”

“How did he find you?”

“I have no idea.”

“Come on, Louise, think. He must have said something about why he was there.”

“He said he was a lawyer, but he wasn’t there as a lawyer. He was looking for you for personal reasons.”

“Did he say what he meant about that?”

“He said you stole his watch. Also, that you’d stolen things from other people. Is that true, Tommy?”

Tommy’s turn to be silent.

“Speak to me.”

“I had reasons to do what I did,” he said finally. “We’re right on the verge of something really big.”

“What is it? What are you up to?”

“Let’s just say that Charlie and I possess some very valuable information, and it’s going to make us a lot of money.”

“You’re going to end up in jail, Tommy, just like Charlie. You two are more alike than I ever knew.”

“Listen, if he turns up there again, I want you to call me.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m going to give you a telephone number, and I don’t want you to write it down; memorize it. It’s a cellular phone.”

“All right.”

He gave her the number. “Have you got that?”

She repeated it to him. “Listen, I want you to understand something.”

“What’s that?”

“I live on alimony and child support; I have no other funds.”

“So?”

“So I don’t want you to expect me to raise bail or money for lawyers for either of you. I did that once, when I was married, and it was thrown up to me for years by my husband, who had to come up with the money. I’m not going to do it again. So if you two get yourselves arrested, I’ll read about it in the papers, but I don’t want to hear from you. Got that?”

“I got it, Louise. You’re a great sister.”

“Better than you deserve,” she said, then she hung up.

“I’m hungry,” Charlie said. “We didn’t get any lunch.”

“There’s an Italian place down the block,” Tommy replied. “I saw it from the cab. Come on.”

Gaetano Calabrese checked his tie in the mirror, then turned to his boss. “Take a picture of me, okay?” He fished the Instamatic out of his locker and handed it to his headwaiter, who laughed and took his picture.

Gaetano had been in the country for seven months, and he had worked every day of it as a busboy. This was his first day as a waiter, and he was enjoying the tips. He worked days, and in the evenings, he ran numbers for a guy in his neighborhood. Gaetano fished a photograph out of his wallet and looked at it again; his boss had given it to him the night before. Five hundred bucks, that was what it was worth; he memorized the face and put it back in his wallet.

“Let’s go, Gaetano,” his boss said. “Break’s over; customers in the restaurant.”

Gaetano strode into the dining room, a smile on his face.

Tommy and Charlie Bruce walked into Figaro and asked for a table. It was late for lunch, and there were plenty. A waiter brought them a menu.

“Did you see that?” Charlie asked.

“What?”

“That waiter.”

“What about him?”

“The way he looked at me. At you, too.”

“Charlie, don’t get paranoid on me.”

“Tommy, a guy just busted into our hotel room that nobody was supposed to know about, looking for two guys whose names he didn’t know, but he knew about the hotel, and he knew our names. Now you’re telling me I’m paranoid?”

“Okay, now we’re in another hotel under new names, and we’ve got ID to back them up, right?”

“Right.”

“So how could anybody know about us?”

“I still think he looked at us funny.”

“Shut up and order.” The waiter was coming back.

“Gentlemen,” he said in a heavy accent, “what is your pleasure?”

“I’ll have the spaghetti bolognese, Tommy said.

“Pizza margharita,” Charlie said.

“And a bottle of the chianti classico.”

“Of course, sirs, and welcome to our restaurant.”

“Thanks,” Tommy said as the man walked away. “He’s new on the job; he’s just trying too hard, that’s all.”

“Maybe.”

The waiter was back in a moment, and he was holding a camera. “Excuse me, gentlemen,” he said, “but I have a new camera, and I wonder if I could take your pictures, you are both so very handsome.”

Tommy started to speak, and then the flashbulb went off in his face. When he could see again, the waiter was gone.

“Jesus,” Charlie said. “What the hell is going on?”

“I’ll admit, this is very screwy,” Tommy mumbled. “I think we ought to get out of here.”

Gaetano was on the phone to his night boss. “I got them,” he said.

“What are you talking about, Gaetano?” the boss asked. “You’re not on until tonight.”

“The two men you want for five hundred dollars. I got them.”

“Where?”

“At Figaro, where I work, on West Forty-fourth Street.”

“Keep an eye on those guys, Gaetano. Somebody’ll be there very quickly.”

“Don’t worry, I took their photograph, too.”

“You what?”

“I took their picture with my camera.”

“Did they see you do it?”

“Of course. My camera has a flash.”

“Holy shit, are they still there?”

“Hold on, please, I’ll see.” Gaetano let the receiver fall, then stepped into the dining room again. The two men had vanished. He ran back to the phone. “They are gone!” he screamed.

“No fucking kidding!” his boss yelled. “Go after them; don’t let them out of your sight! We’re on the way!”

Gaetano hung up the phone and sprinted for the street. He ran out the door, nearly knocking down two customers, and looked left and right. Nothing, nothing but traffic. He ran to the corner of 6th Avenue and looked up and down. Still nothing. He ran back to 5th Avenue. Still nothing. His heart sank. Not only was he not going to get the five hundred dollars, he was, as his boss liked to say, going to get his ass kicked.

Tommy and Charlie Bruce burst out of the Mansfield Hotel less than a minute after the waiter had disappeared back into his restaurant and dove into a cab.

“What now?” Charlie asked.

“We’ve got to find a hole long enough to get the computer out of storage and get off one more issue of DIRT. That’s all it’s going to take; the groundwork has been done.”

“But where? I don’t want anybody else taking pictures of us.”

“I know just the place,” Tommy said. “It belongs to a friend who’s not using it at the moment.” He gave the driver an address, then sat back in the seat. “Just one more issue,” he said, “delivered to just one customer.”