“W
e gotta go see him,” Bill O'Toole said. “There's no other way.”
“I'm not going,” Desmond McBride said. “I refuse to have anything to do with it.”
“We're all in this together, Desmond old friend,” Dick O'orman said.
“Stayin' away might be a lot more dangerous than comin',” O'Toole said
“What's the fooker gonna do, kneecap us?” Billy Kilroy said.
O'Toole ignored him. “We'll take Sunny Dan with us. He knew him in the old days. And Mick, for some muscle. And Melody and Leo to let him know how high we go in Washington.”
They were back in the locker room of the Surf Club where the nightmare had begun a week ago. O'Toole had called Nick Perella and told him they were ready to go see Tommy the Top Giordano. Now O'Toole was laying it on the rest of them. Mick's trip to Atlantic City with Kilroy
had produced a lot of expletives on O'Toole's bugging tapes, but O'Gorman had managed to convince the shrimp that he knew nothing about the money.
O'Toole could see Mick was still against going anywhere near Giordano. Was it possible that Mick had the money? For a few seconds, O'Toole thought about throwing him to Giordano. Tommy had ways to make people talk. But O'Toole decided against it. Mick was straight, as straight as you could expect anyone to be after what the marines had done to him in Vietnam. If anyone was guilty, it was the Jewish broad or Tyrone Power.
O'Toole had already gone to Sunny Dan and told him what they were going to do. Sunny Dan had gotten the general idea. That was all he needed to get. He said sure, he'd be glad to go see Giordano. He knew him when he was a numbers runner after World War I. Ho ho ho.
It was like digging up the centuries, talking to Sunny Dan. He was a walking history book. Too bad he was a talking one too. He talked almost as much as his daughter, Mrs. O'Toole, and said about as little.
Nick Perella gave O'Toole a number to call. It went through about six dummy companies and guys in phone booths in Jersey City before he finally got Tommy on the telephone. “What the fuck's happened to Joey?”
“I want to talk to you about it.”
“Is it bad?”
“Very bad.”
“You know who did it?”
“That's what I want to talk to you about.”
“Where's the fuckin' money?”
“I wanna talk to you about that too.”
“You better have a lot to say.”
“Maybe you can tell us somethin' too, Tommy.”
“You bet I can.”
“Where do you want to see us?”
“There's a guy who'll meet you on the corner of Arlington and Carteret in Jersey City. You still know where that is?”
“Sure,” O'Toole said.
“I thought you might have so much fuckin' sand between your ears by now, you forgot.”
“I remember all right. I grew up a block away.”
“Yeah? Nothin' but niggers there now. The guy'll be wearin' a tan coat and readin' a newspaper. The coon can't read but that don't matter. Don't talk to him. Just listen. He'll tell you where to go.”
“Okay. I'm bringin' along the IRA guys. And Sunny Dan. And my nephew Mick. He saw what happened. And our Washington contacts.”
“Bring along the whole fuckin' town if you want to. They probably won't even fill my livin' room. How many people you got down there in the winter? Twenty?”
“A few more than that.”
“Joey's dead?”
“Yeah.”
“Make sure you're here tomorrow.”
They drove north up the Garden State Parkway and the New Jersey Turnpike in Desmond McBride's Cadillac. Leo McBride and his wife rode in the back with Sunny Dan. Mick rode up front with O'Toole and Desmond McBride, their designated driver. O'Gorman and Kilroy occupied the jump seats, which was fine with Billy. It gave him easy access to the bar.
Melody had wanted to know why she and Leo couldn't drive their own car. “Because I say you can't,” O'Toole snarled, barely controlling his hatred. He got the underlying messageâthe WASP bitch was horrified at the thought of spending four or five hours in a car with her Irish in-laws.
As they rolled along, O'Toole could sense every square inch of Melody Faithorne's treacherous flesh. His hands opened and closed in his lap, imagining themselves around her throat. He wanted to do unspeakable things to her while she died.
Sunny Dan told them what a wonderful road system New Jersey had. He told them how much the Big Man,
Frank Hague, got under the table to build it. He told them jokes. Like the line his Irish mother, Lord rest her soul, had unleashed as they passed Moscato's Dump on the outskirts of Newark Airport. “Me nose is in Jersey City.”
Ho ho ho. Sunny Dan laughed alone. He was in his own world most of the time. A wonderful world where being Irish meant something in New Jersey. Where money jumped into people's pockets because they were Irish.
O'Toole debated one last time whether to tell Giordano about Mick and the $1,000 bill. No, he told himself, a thousand times no. But it was tempting.
Soon they were twisting through the westside streets of Jersey City, which still had a few traces of civilization. Over the hill they went to Carteret and Arlington. “By God, it's the old neighborhood,” Sunny Dan said.
That was all he said. That was all anybody said. There wasn't a white face in sight. The porches were falling off half the houses. Blacks hung out windows and yelled messages and insults. There was Sunny Dan's house on the corner. The big bay windows were still intact. But the place had not been painted in twenty years. Someone had sprayed MALCOLM along one wall in six-foot letters. The lawn was littered with beer bottles and milk cartons and broken toys.
“Me noseâand me eyesâis in Belfast,” O'Gorman said.
“You sure these fookers aren't RCs?” Billy said.
On the corner, the big black in the tan coat was pretending to read a newspaper. He opened the back door and jammed onto the jump seat beside Kilroy. “Follow them guys,” he said.
Halfway up the block, a gray Mercedes pulled away from the curb and headed north. In an hour they were in Bergen County. They drove down winding roads lined with budding trees. “There's where shitface Nixon lives,” said their guide.
“Hey, I voted for him twice,” O'Toole said. “First time I ever voted Republican. But not the last.”
“A shame, a shame,” Sunny Dan said as if he were lamenting the fall of Rome. In a way he was.
The Mercedes slowed and the driver blew the horn. A set of gates opened, revealing a winding road that seemed to vanish over the horizon. “Looks like the Oregon Trail,” O'Toole said.
Eventually they reached a house that seemed to be mostly gray fieldstone. It hugged the ground and spread up a hill and down a slope. O'Toole had never seen a house quite like it. He had never been to Saddle Brook before. In the back, Melody Faithorne was telling everyone how many parties she and Leo had attended around here. She claimed Giordano's house was small compared to some of the mansions of the top political moneymen.
The big black took the wheel of Desmond's car and drove it away. Two large guys got out of the Mercedes and waved them into the house.
Giordano was waiting for them beside his indoor swimming pool. He was wearing nothing but a towel. Black hair bristled on his bulky chest. Another big guy with a bald head was giving him a massage. Giordano let them stand there beside the steamy, overheated pool until the job was finished. He got up, put on a bathrobe, and told them to sit down.
“Tommy, remember me?” Sunny Dan said, putting out his hand.
“Siddown,” Tommy said.
Erect, he looked like a bulldog on hind legs. A massive jaw, a wide, scowling mouth, protruding eyes. The body was pure gorilla. He was the old school. He had gotten where he was by breaking legs and arms and killing people. He looked it.
“Tell me what happened.”
O'Toole told him, while Tommy the Top paced up and down beside the pool. O'Toole let Mick supply some of the details. Giordano paced for another minute and a half. Finally he stopped in front of O'Toole and glared down at him. “I don't believe you.”
“It's the truth.”
“Then why'd you bury him in a fuckin' swamp, without a priest, without a mass? How am I gonna tell my sister that?” Giordano roared.
“We were shook, Tommy. We weren't thinkin' straight. We didn't want to blow the whole setup.”
“We wanted to get our fookin' guns,” Billy Kilroy said.
“I'll show you what you're gonna get, you fuckin' Irish midget,” Giordano shouted. He grabbed Billy by the front of the shirt and threw him into the pool.
“Halp,” he spluttered. “I can't swim.”
“Did you hear him?” Giordano shouted. He grabbed Desmond McBride by the collar and slung him into the pool on top of Billy. Whirling, he seized O'Gorman and threw him in headfirst. Next went Sunny Dan, with a croak of terror. He couldn't swim either. Mick jumped in to help him. Leo McBride jumped in to help his father, who was also not exactly Johnny Weissmuller.
Giordano headed for Bill O'Toole. He rose to his full six feet four. “You touch me and I'll kill you,” he said.
The two bozos from the Mercedes drew guns. Giordano swayed in front of O'Toole. Off to the right the chief glimpsed Melody Faithorne's wide-eyed face. He reminded himself of his determination to stay alive until he had the pleasure of killing her. “I mean it, Tommy.”
“They're gonna stay in there till you tell the truth. You're gonna be with them, face down, if you don't tell me the fuckin' truth. Who hit Joey?” Giordano screamed.
“I told you we don't know!” O'Toole roared. “I personally think it was one of your guys.”
Mick was keeping Dan's head out of the water. O'Gorman towed Billy to the side of the pool where he hung on like a water-soaked rat. The Irish matinee idol was trying to look tough, but it wasn't easy to do in a pool with all his clothes on. In spite of Leo's arm around him, Desmond McBride looked as if he might drown from fright.
Mick wanted to climb out of the pool and dismember Tommy the Top. The rage on his face finally convinced
O'Toole. He would not, he could not, throw Mick to this wop slime.
Giordano swayed back and forth, from heels to toes. He still looked like he might try to get his hands around O'Toole's throat. They were not friends. O'Toole had stopped Tommy at the boundaries of Paradise Beach. Tommy had never gotten a single prostitute, a single after-hours club, a single card game, into Paradise Beach while O'Toole was chief of police.
“You were always a fuckin' wise guy. If there's anybody with the balls to try a double cross like this, it's you,” Giordano said.
“You don't have any guys with balls? What kind of a show you runnin' these days? A fuckin' seminary?”
Tommy the Top glared at the waterlogged sextet in the pool. “Get these guys dried off. I'll see you all in my office,” he snarled.
He vanished through a swinging door. The two bodyguards stashed their guns and helped O'Toole haul the others out of the pool. Poor old Dan was in bad shape. He was coughing and choking. His face was purple and blue. The bodyguards led them into a locker room and told them to take off their clothes. They left them sitting there naked until Mick found some robes in a closet. Melody joined them, but she had nothing to say. No one had anything to say.
An hour later, their clothes dried but not pressed, they trooped into Tommy Giordano's office. It was as big as the entire ground floor of the Paradise Beach police headquarters. Bill O'Toole's office could have fit into it about twenty-eight times. Row on row of leather-bound books rose to the ceiling. On the wall was a huge painting of a castle in Italy.
This time, Giordano sat down. Nobody asked them to sit down. Standing beside Tommy's desk was Nick Perella, the consigliere. He never looked happy. Now he was looking unhappy in capital letters ten feet tall.
“Okay,” snarled Giordano. “You come up here to tell
me your story because you want to keep walking around on this fuckin' planet, right?”
There was no need to answer.
“If I found this out from someone else, none of you would have lived another twenty-four hours. Joey was a shit but he was my flesh and blood, you get it? Another reason, that fuckin' money was mine. It wasn't Joey's.”
“I thought you were shootin' people for foolin' around with drugs,” O'Toole said.
“That was five years ago, wise guy. That million and a half was my money. Joey couldn't raise that kind of money without robbin' the fuckin' Federal Reserve. So now you want another million and a half for the fuckin' Cubans?”