Vito cleared his throat.
The clerk cleared his. After a long pause he finally looked up and said, “We’ve got a lot of important customers, young man. Which one do you represent?”
“The one you owe so many favors to.”
The words were barely out of Vito’s mouth when the old man jumped up and picked up a key from the rack and dashed to the counter and held it out for Vito, saying, “Everything’s been taken care of, sir. Hope you find the facilities to your liking.”
“It’s not my opinion that counts,” Vito said, plucking the key from the clerk’s hand. “Watch it or else those pages will stick together,” he added, turning toward the exit. Briefly he wondered if he should check out the room, but then he remembered that his instructions had been very succinct and to the point. Go to the lobby and bring back the key. Vito had already learned from watching a few fellas learn the hard way, that the boys often didn’t appreciate initiative.
So he went outside into the cool air and put his head down as if walking into a strong wind, although it was barely blowing and his posture allowed his greasy black hair to fall into his eyes. His confidence that things would go his way tonight, based on how things had gone so far, was almost immediately negated by the presence everywhere of men he recognized—on both sides of the street, standing around, sitting at the tables of junk food venues or in parked cars. Usually the only time that many family members and grunts were together in the same area was during a funeral. Now though, rather than being conspicuous in their clothing of mourning, they were trying to blend into their surroundings. Vito didn’t recognize a few of the people accompanying the boys, but something about their cool confidence exuded an air of restrained cruelty that made even the roughest, toughest boys appear a little uneasy.
His mind racing with a hundred questions, Vito walked with a quickened pace to the streetcorner where Ralphy was waiting for him. Ralphy was one of the Man’s most trusted assistants. Rumor had it he had been a hit man of such talent that he once shot a mayoral candidate from two hundred yards and disappeared into a crowd right in front of the television cameras. Vito didn’t doubt it was possible. For him, Ralphy was more of a force than a human being. So when Vito halted a few respectful yards away from Ralphy, he looked up into those cold brown eyes above those pockmarked cheeks and saw a man who would snuff him out as casually as he would step on a bug. Vito held out the key. “Here it is!” he proclaimed, perhaps a trifle too loudly.
“Good,” said Ralphy in his gravelly voice, pointedly not taking the key. “You check out the room?”
“No. I wasn’t told to.”
“Right. Check it out now.”
“What’s going on?” Vito blurted out. “I heard this was supposed to be a peace conference.”
“You ain’t heard nothing. We’re just taking precautions, and you’ve been volunteered.”
“What am I looking for?”
“You’ll know if you find it. Now get.”
Vito got. He didn’t know if he should be elated or worried that he was being trusted with this part of the operation. His musings were interrupted as he accidentally bumped into a hunchbacked joker with a stiff hip shuffling from an alleyway. “Hey—watch it!” he barked, pushing the joker away.
The joker stopped and drooled, nodding fearfully at Vito. Something flickered on in his dull eyes, lasting for only a second, as the joker clenched and unclenched his fist. During that second the joker straightened and Vito got the distinct impression he could crush granite in that massive fist.
Then the joker deflated, another stream of spittle drooled from his mouth, and he shuffled backward into the alley until he bumped into a garbage can. The joker ignored Vito and rummaged about in the garbage. He found a dried, half-eaten chicken and took a big chomp of it with his white, straight teeth, masticating it furiously.
Disgusted, Vito turned away and hastened back to the hotel. Only as he pushed his way through the rotating doors that led into the lobby did Vito note that the joker’s clothing—a lumberjack shirt and blue jeans—had been very clean and tidy. He couldn’t remember having seen before a street person, reduced to scrounging in garbage cans for food, with fresh patches on his jeans at the knees.
Vito put the picture of the man from his mind with a shrug. He walked past the counter where the clerk still had his nose buried in the magazine, and thinking he might be trapped in the elevator with an unsavory sort who could reduce his probability of surviving the peace conference to zero, he instead took the six flights of stairs to the third floor. The hallway was depressingly dark, the dim fluorescents casting as much haze as actual light, light that barely reflected off the grimy tan walls, infusing them with an unpleasant glare.
He found the room. He looked up and down the hall. No one was there. He could hear the muffled sounds of a few TV sets coming through the doors, as well as what seemed to be the sounds of the plumbing working in the room across the hall. All this was pretty normal hotel activity in Vito’s opinion, but he nevertheless felt prickly and uneasy inside, the way he always felt when he believed he was being watched by unseen eyes. He inserted the key with trembling fingers and opened the door.
And found himself staring into the face of one ugly motherfucker. The dude had virtually no jaw, two nostril pits instead of a nose, and a forked tongue that flicked in and out of his mouth. The way the joker grinned and looked at Vito with those predatory yellow eyes was definitely evil. Vito was used to a more banal, businesslike version. This joker savored the knowledge that he had already frightened Vito to the core.
The joker sneered. “I sssee the Calvinos are sending boysss to do their work now. Tell your boss it’sss all right for him to come in. I am quite alone.”
IV
“Maybe you should try taking off your socks next time,” said Belinda May mischievously as the young preacher pulled the door closed. He winced at the playful sting of her words as he twisted the knob to make sure the room was locked. Belinda May giggled and put her arm around him. “Lighten up, Reverend. You take yourself too seriously.” She gave him a squeeze that started his heart pounding, and he attempted a smile. “Just remember what Norman Mailer said,” she whispered seductively into his ear. “‘Sometimes desire just isn’t enough.’ It doesn’t make you any less of a man.”
“I don’t read Mailer,” he replied as they walked toward the elevator.
“His books too dirty for you?”
“That’s what I’ve heard.”
“It’s only life that he writes about. Life is what’s happening to us now.”
“The Bible tells me everything I need to know about life.”
“Bullshit.”
Shocked by her casual profanity, he opened his mouth to reply—
—but she continued before he could get a word in: “It’s a little late to protest your innocence. Leo.”
The young preacher supressed his anger. Normally he only became angry before his congregations, and he wasn’t used to being talked back to. Furthermore he wasn’t used to being in the company of a female who implied his understanding of the moral dilemmas of love, life, and the pursuit of happiness wasn’t beyond questioning. But in this case he was forced to admit, though not aloud to Belinda May, he was in the wrong, because he had indeed read the works of Norman Mailer—in particular The Executioner’s Song, the exhaustive case-study of the tormented young ace who had been executed for turning nine innocent people into pillars of salt. The young preacher still had a copy of the paperback edition, hidden away in a cabinet drawer in his study in his southwestern Virginia home, where it was unlikely to be seen by anybody else. Many other books of dubious moral content were hidden away in the same drawer, and in many others, concealed from the curiosity of his closest associates the way other evangelical preachers might conceal the contents of their liquor cabinets.
So what else could he do except let Belinda May get the better of him? He was satisfied with the prospect of getting the better part of her bod
y later. Besides, he wasn’t all that interested in her mind anyway.
She gave him another squeeze as they stood and waited for the elevator to arrive. The thrill was twice as great as before, because this time she squeezed a buttock. “You have such a cute ass for a possible presidential candidate,” she said. “Most of the current crop looks like a bunch of hound dogs.”
His eyes darted back and forth suspiciously.
“Don’t worry,” she said, giving him a pinch. “There’s nobody here.”
Then the elevator doors opened and they found themselves staring at four men with impassive faces and eyes of steel. The young preacher felt his knees quake, and Belinda May’s squeeze this time conveyed her fear and need for protection, a signal direct and primal.
The two men in the middle were the focus of the young preacher’s attention. One was short and corpulent, red-faced and thick-lipped, with a long patch of white hair combed over the top of his head in a failed attempt to conceal the bald dome glistening beneath the fluorescents. His big eyes looked as if they would pop out of his head if someone slapped him on the back too hard. His fingers were thick and meaty. Despite a well-tailored black suit, with a red carnation in the lapel, and a neat white shirt and a gray vest, his taste in clothing was questionable at best, thanks to a red tie whose shade practically sent it into the Day-Glo category. The man serenely puffed at a big Havana cigar. The tobacco at the end had been darkened by his spittle, making it resemble nothing so much as a dried turd.
The man blew cigar smoke into the young preacher’s face.
The act was deliberately inconsiderate, and the young preacher might have responded had it not been for the cold brown eyes of the tall, pockmarked man beside the fat one. This man had thin, pale lips that looked like scars. His brown hair was pressed so flat against his skull the young preacher imagined he slept with a stocking over his head. He wore a beige trench coat with a decided bulge in the right pocket.
Two beefy men flanked them. They wore the brims of their hats tilted down so that most of their faces were concealed in shadow. One had his arms crossed, while the other, the young preacher belatedly noted, was waving the couple aside.
The couple obeyed. The four men left the elevator and walked down the hall without a backward glance. The young preacher couldn’t help pausing to stare at them, even as Belinda May dashed inside. “Come on, Leo!” she whispered, holding open the closing doors with her body.
The young preacher hastened inside. “Who was that?”
“Not now!” Only when the elevator had begun its downward descent did Belinda May add, “That was the head of the Calvino Family. I saw him on the news once!”
“Who’s the Calvino Family?”
“The mob.”
“Oh, I see. We don’t have the mob where I come from.”
“The mob’s wherever it wants to be. There are five Families in the city, though right now there’re only three heads. Or maybe two. There’ve been a lot of gang murders lately.”
“If that guy’s such a bigwig, what’s he doing here?”
“You can bet it was business. Calvino número uno will probably incinerate his shoes when he gets out of here.” The elevator doors opened at the lobby. Completely oblivious to the fact that several people, including a beefy joker with a rhino face, were standing at the entrance, Belinda May put her hands around the young preacher’s elbow and said, “Did you bring a box of prophylactics, by any chance?”
He felt his face blaze red. But if any of these people recognized him, he got no indication of it. At least he did not hear his name being spoken or the click of a camera. As they made their way through the rotating doors, he realized that his relief at having gotten out without being recognized could be illusionary. If he was being staked out by a muckraker, the young preacher would never know until he saw the proof on the evening news or read it on the front pages of the supermarket rags. “Belinda—why did you say that—?” he demanded.
“What? Do you mean about the prophylactics?” she asked innocently, reaching for a cigarette and lighter from her, pocketbook. “It seems like a reasonable question. I think it’s very important for sexually active people to practice safe sex, don’t you?”
“Yes, but in front of all those people!”
She stopped at the edge of the sidewalk, turned away from him, cupped her hand over the cigarette in her mouth, and lit it. When she turned back to him, puffing smoke, she said, “What do they care? Besides,” she added with a mischievous smile, “I should think you’d approve my inherent optimism.”
The young preacher covered his face. He clenched his other hand into a fist. He felt as if the eyes of every individual on the street were upon him, even though the most casual appraisal of the situation demonstrated he was simply being paranoid. “Where do you want to eat?” he asked.
Belinda May playfully jabbed his ribs. “Brace up. Reverend! I was only kidding. You worry too much. Keep on worrying and we’ll be in that room for weeks. I’m not sure I’ve got that much credit on my plastic.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that. I’ll see that the church reimburses you somehow. Now, where do you want to eat?”
“That place looks good” she said, pointing across the street. “Rudy’s Kosher Sushi.”
“It’s a deal.” He took her by the elbow and walked her to the corner of the intersection. He looked both ways as the light at the crosswalk turned green, not just to make sure all the automobiles were stopping—something no big-city denizen took for granted—but to see if anyone was around whose presence he should be concerned with. The television crew was accosting a young woman at the end of the next block, but that was it. He felt reasonably certain they would be safely seated at a restaurant table in the back if the crew came this way again.
Before they had stepped off the curb, someone coming from his blind side bumped into him. On a usual night the young preacher would have turned the other cheek, but normally he wasn’t so frustrated. He yelled, “Hey! Watch where you’re going!” and then realized with a shock of horror that his harsh words had been spoken to a joker:
An obviously retarded joker with a hunchback and dim eyes. The man had curly red hair and wore a freshly pressed lumberjack shirt and denim jeans. “Sorry,” said the joker, sticking the tip of his forefinger in his nostril, and then, as if thinking better of it, merely wiping his wrist across his nose.
The young preacher for some reason suspected the gesture as an affectation and became certain of it when the joker bowed stiffly and said, “I was just a tad preoccupied—lost in my own world, I suppose. You do forgive me—don’t you?”
Then the joker stepped away from the curb as if he had completely changed his mind about which direction he was headed in. A trickle of drool dropped down his chin almost as an afterthought.
Wide-eyed and confused, the young preacher took a few steps after the man. Belinda May detained him, demanding, “Leo, where do you think you’re going?”
“Uh, after him, of course.”
“Why?”
The young preacher thought about it during a particularly uncomfortable moment. “I thought I would tell him about the mission. See if he couldn’t use a little help. He looked like he could.”
“Nice sentiments, but you can’t. You’re incognito, remember?”
“I am. All right.” He couldn’t see the hunchback anymore anyway. The pitiful creature had already disappeared into the crowd.
“Come on, let’s feed our faces,” she said, again taking him by the elbow. They weaved through a slew of automobiles gridlocked at the intersection.
The young preacher was still looking back, searching for a glimpse of the hunchback, when they came to an abrupt stop. He turned to see a microphone poised before his face. The television news team blocked their path.
“Reverend Leo Barnett,” said the reporter, a clean-cut man with curly black hair, wearing glasses and a three-piece blue suit, “what in the world are you, with your well-known stance on j
okers’ rights, doing here in the Edge?”
The young preacher felt his life passing before his eyes. He managed a weak smile. “Ah, my date and I are simply having a bite to eat.”
“Do you have an announcement for the society pages?” the reporter asked slyly.
The corners of the young preacher’s mouth turned. “I make it a policy never to answer questions of a personal nature. This young lady is my companion for the evening. She works at the new mission my church has opened in Jokertown, and she suggested we sample some of the fine cuisine the Edge has to offer.”
“Some commentators think it strange, peculiar even, that a man who has opposed jokers’ rights so stridently at his pulpit would be so concerned with the day-to-day plight of jokers. Just why did you open the Mission?”
The young preacher decided he didn’t like the reporter’s attitude. “I had a promise to keep, that’s why I did it,” he said curtly, trying to imply the interview was over. That was precisely the opposite of his true intention.
“And what was that promise? Who did you make it to? Your congregation?”
The reporter had taken the bait. Now the young preacher’s major difficulty was in keeping a straight face. The information on his mind hadn’t been made public before, and his instincts guessed these were the right circumstances to do so. “Well, if you insist.”
“There’s been a great deal of speculation on the matter, sir, and I think the people have a right to know.”
“Well, I met a young man once. He had been infected by the wild card virus and had gotten himself in a great deal of trouble as a result. He asked to see me, and I came. We prayed together and he told me he knew I couldn’t do anything for him, but he wanted me to promise to help as many jokers as I could, so maybe they wouldn’t get into the same type of trouble as he did. I was very moved and so I promised. A few hours later he was executed by electrocution. I watched as twenty thousand volts of current shot him in a hot flash and fried him like a piece of bacon, and I knew I would have to keep that promise no matter what anyone else thought.”