Butcher's Moon

Seven

Frankie Faran had indigestion. He figured it was probably that Chinese food at Mr. Lozini’s house last night; not that there was anything wrong with Mr. Lozini’s cooking, but just that Chinese food never did seem to sit right in Frankie Faran’s stomach. But of course when you were invited to Mr. Lozini’s house for dinner, you couldn’t show up and then not eat, no matter what kind of food Mr. Lozini was cooking that night.

But boy, had he paid for it all day today. Lived on nothing but Alka-Seltzer and bread until he came down to the club around eight-thirty in the evening, when he had two bowls of the soup du jour, which happened to be onion tonight. Onion soup was supposed to be good for the digestion.

Angie, the waitress he’d been shtupping lately, came back to the office around ten, but he just couldn’t get in the mood tonight. “I’m under the weather, honey,” he said.

“Gee, that’s too bad.” She was tough, but a good girl. Although she was thirty-seven, she was so skinny and bony, it was like being in bed with a teen-ager. She had twin sons, around twelve years of age, both in the custody of their father, an Army man who’d married again and was now stationed in Germany with his family. Sometimes when she’d had too little to drink Angie would get maudlin about those two boys, so far away across the ocean. Faran could live without that kind of crap, but otherwise she was a very, very satisfactory girl, and all in all it was a small price to pay.

”It was something I ate,” he said.

”You want anything from the bar?”

“Jesus, no. How’s it doing out there?”

She shrugged. “It’s a Friday night,” she said.

Good, in other words. The New York Room was closed Mondays, did a steady and unspectacular business Tuesdays through Thursdays with live entertainment from two fat strippers, and did great Friday-Saturday business with a live jazz group that also played a lot of rock music. Sunday there was no live entertainment, just family dining and later on recorded schmaltz music for the Geritol crowd to dance to. But Friday and Saturday paid the rent and made the profit.

Angie said, “You want anything else?”

“I guess not,” Faran said. “I’ll see you later.”

“Hope you feel better.”

He watched her go out, and felt worse.

Legal closing in Tyler was midnight during the week, one a.m. on Friday and Saturday. At twenty after one, with a few customers still finishing up at the tables outside, Faran sat at his desk with the night’s receipts and an adding machine and did a little work. He was totaling the Master Charge slips when the door opened and Angie came in again, looking scared. “These men—” she said, and made a nervous hand gesture at the two guys walking in behind her.

Faran looked at them and knew exactly what they were here for, and couldn’t believe it. Knock over one of Mr. Lozini’s operations? Nobody could be that crazy.

But Jesus, they had the look. Both tall, mean-faced, dressed in dark clothing, cold eyes scanning the room as they came in. And they had their left hands in their jacket side pockets.

And only Angie was scared. Through the open doorway, before one of the guys closed it, Faran could see the crew working away out there the same as always: putting chairs upside down on tables, closing up the bar. So the two of them had come in like sheepdogs cutting one lamb out of the flock, taking Angie, having her lead them back here to the money without disturbing anybody else. Calm, quiet, fast, and professional.

But didn’t they realize what kind of place they’d hit? Angie, moving to one side and leaving a clear sight line between Faran and the two heisters, was showing her fright more and more now that she was in private. “These men,” she said again, and her voice was skittering all up and down the scale like some kind of crazy opera exercise, “these men wanted me to—they’ve got—I couldn’t—”

“Okay, honey,” he said. He felt he shouldn’t stand up from behind the desk, but he patted the air toward her with both hands, trying to calm her down. “Don’t worry,” he said. “They’re not gonna hurt anybody.”

“That’s right,” one of them said. “You know what we want.”

The other one said to Angie, “Dear, you’re perfectly safe. Think of all this as a great story to tell next week.”

“Boys,” Faran said, “you’re making a mistake here.”

“Just leave your hands flat on the desk,” the first one said.

“I’m not stupid,” Faran told him, and pressed his palms down on the desk to prove it. “But maybe you don’t realize whose money this is. Maybe you don’t know the local situation.”

The first one had come over close to the desk, and now he reached out and picked up the thin stack of rubber-banded twenties that Faran had already counted. “We know the local situation, Frank,” he said.

Faran frowned at him. Did this guy know him? Both men were wearing hats and mustaches and horn-rim glasses with clear lenses; Faran tried to squint past all that veneer to see the faces. The one nearest him, scooping up the tens and the fives and the ones and putting them away in his jacket pockets, had a broad craggy face with dark wide-set eyes and a thin-lipped mouth. The other one, his back leaning against the door as he kept saying soothing amiable things to Angie, was more slender and easygoing in his looks, with a sort of dark actorish face beneath the disguise, the features sharp and self-confident, but without the first man’s stony meanness.

Faran had never seen either of them before in his life, he was sure of it. He said, “Listen, you can take the whole joint, for all of me. But if you really know who owns this place and what the local story is, you’re sure as hell going out of your way to find grief.”

The big man paid no attention. He finished stuffing the night’s cash receipts into his pockets—less than nine hundred, already totaled on the adding machine by Faran, and surely not worth a house call by professional robbers—and then he reached out for the credit-card slips.

Faran was so startled he actually made a move to grab the slips back, saying, “Hey! What are you—”

The edge of the big man’s hand came down hard on the back of Faran’s wrist, thudding it against the desk top. “Don’t be stupid,” he said.

Faran pulled his hand back, astounded at his own actions even more than by the big man’s reaching for the credit-card slips. “I’m sorry,” he said, bewildered into babbling. “I thought—they’re no good to you, what do you—”

Diners Club. The big man picked up the slips, tucked them into his pocket, reached for the Bankamericard stack.

Faran watched him, so baffled he couldn’t think. “You can’t—you can’t use them. You can’t turn them into money.”

And credit cards were seventy-five percent of the club’s business. If there was nine hundred in cash tonight, that meant probably around three thousand in credit-card slips. It would cost the New York Room that much if the big man took the slips away, yet there was no way any robber could convert the slips into cash. The only result, if the slips were stolen, would be that a lot of tonight’s customers would have been feeding themselves free food and drink.

American Express. Master Charge. Carte Blanche. Faran watched the slips disappear into the big man’s pocket. On the other side of the room, the other guy was still talking to Angie, soothing and friendly things with even a hint of flirtation in them, and Angie was much calmer now, standing there watching it all happen, wide-eyed but no longer in a panic.

But Faran was in a panic, a panic of bewilderment. He said, “That stuff’s no use to you. You’re costing us, and you’re not getting anything for yourself. Jesus Christ, man, what’s the point?”

The big man had finished putting everything away in his pockets. Now he took a short mean-looking pistol out of his jacket side pocket, turned it around so he was holding it by the barrel, and leaned forward over the desk. Suddenly really scared, suddenly believing these people were crazy after all and not the professionals they looked like, Faran cowered back in his chair and put his trembling forearms up in front of his face.

The big man lifted the gun and smashed it into the desk top three times, making deep gouges in the walnut. Faran blinked at the sound of each stroke, and across the room Angie made a tiny startled sound like a mouse.

Faran lowered his arms. He looked at the gouges and the splinters in his expensive desk top, while the big man stood over him and said, “You call Lozini after we leave here, and you tell him this is interest on what he owes me. We don’t subtract this from the principal. You got that, Frank?”

Faran looked up. “Yes,” he said.

“Say it back to me.”

“What you took is interest on what he owes you. You don’t subtract it from the principal.”

“That’s right, Frank.” The big man stepped back a pace, put the pistol away again, and gestured toward Angie without looking at her. “We’ll take the young lady with us as far as the sidewalk,” he said. “You don’t make any moves until she gets back here.”

“No,” Angie said in a tiny voice, like the squeaking sound she’d made earlier.

The guy by the door said, casually, “Nothing’s going to happen, dear. Just another walk through the club together, like before.”

The big man was still looking at Faran. He said, “You got that, Frank?”

“I’ve got it,” Faran said. He was thinking that this was some kind of vendetta between these two and Mr. Lozini, or more likely between Mr. Lozini and some big shot who’d hired these two, and he was very glad all they’d wanted was the night’s receipts. Sometimes, in Mr. Lozini’s world, big shots showed they were mad at each other by killing off each other’s people. Faran was suddenly thinking he’d been a lot closer to major trouble than he’d realized.

The big man nodded at him, and turned to Angie. “Let’s go,” he said.

Angie stared toward Faran, as though needing him to help her start. He said, “It’s okay, Angie. They’re not out to hurt any people.”

“That’s right,” said the one by the door. “Absolutely right. We just don’t hurt people, and that’s all there is to it. Come on, Angie, take a walk down me alley and tell me who do you love.” He said the last in a deep Bo Diddley voice, and Angie even managed a shaky grin toward him as the three of them walked out of the office, the big man going last and closing the door behind him.

Faran slapped his hand out immediately onto the phone, but he didn’t lift the receiver. He could have, it didn’t make any real difference whether he waited for Angie to come back or not, but he didn’t. For some reason he just felt better doing it the way the big man wanted.

With his free hand he tapped the gouge marks in the desk top. Ruined, absolutely ruined. And a goddam expensive desk too, solid walnut. Deep bad gouges, rough splinters; no way to patch that up.

Angie came in, running, loud with relief. “Oh, Frank! Oh, my God!”

Faran lifted the receiver, started to dial.

“They had a car,” she was saying. She was panting, out of breath as though she’d run a mile. “There was dirt all over the license plate, but it was a dark green Chevrolet.”

“Rented,” he said. “Under a phony name. Forget it.” He finished dialing and listened for the ringing to start.

Angie came around the desk, leaning toward him, putting her hand on his shoulder for support. “God, Frank,” she said, “I was so scared.”

“Later,” he said. For the first time in the last five minutes his stomach growled and rolled. He had to break wind, he couldn’t help it; something he hated to do in the presence of a woman. If only it would be quiet; squeezing it out, he heard a horrible long muffled Bronx cheer from behind him. “Jesus,” he said, embarrassed and angry and upset and frightened and relieved and hungry and worried and wishing he didn’t have this goddam phone call to make. “Jesus Jesus Jesus.”

“Frank?”

“Later, for Christ’s sake!” With a wild arm movement, he flung her hand away from his shoulder. The phone was ringing at last.

Angie backed away from him, looking at him as though he’d betrayed her. He knew what it was, he knew he was supposed to comfort her, put his arms around her, that whole number, but good Christ, first things first!

A voice came on the line.

“Yeah,” Faran said. “This is Frank Faran, down at the New York Room. I have to talk to Mr. Lozini. Yeah, well, you better wake him up, this is important. Yeah, I know, I know, but do it anyway. It’s my responsibility. He’ll want to hear this.”