He was shaking his head side to side, face slick with tears and snot, lips pulled back, teeth showing, and it was not a smile. “I don’t even know Guzik. I never even met the son of a bitch.”
“Give me that fucking thing,” I said to Lou, and held out my hand, and Lou filled it with the hose, and Tendlar cried out, “Don’t! I can’t take any more of it. I don’t know anything, Christ! Honest!”
“Honest?” I said. “Swear to God?”
“Don’t hit me again….”
I hit him again. In the chest.
He coughed and wheezed and moaned.
I turned to Lou, casually. “Did you know we’re only four or five blocks south of the Nitti family deli, Lou? You can spit from Bill’s doorstep and, if the wind is with you, hit an Italian.”
“Really,” Lou said, interested.
I finished my beer, handed the empty to Lou, paced about Tendlar, slapping the rubber hose gently into my palm. “Nice place you got here, Bill. Just you and the rest of the rats.”
“It’s…I know it’s a dump, but I got divorced last year. You know that. Alimony. You know.”
“I pay you better than this. Alimony or not, why are you living in such a goddamn dump?”
“It’s…it’s hard to find a place…”
I went over to one rickety end table where today’s Green Sheet, a racing publication, sat under an empty Pabst bottle; various horses were checked off, various notations had been made.
“One of our client’s publications,” I said, picking up the tip sheet, taking it over and holding it front of him. “He’ll be glad to hear you’re supporting him.”
He sucked some snot up inside him. Tried to pull himself together. Tried to keep his chin from trembling. Couldn’t.
“I knew you gambled some, Bill. I didn’t know it was this serious.”
He swallowed. “You know how it is.”
“Got in a little deep, did you?”
He nodded.
“Not anymore you aren’t. You got out, didn’t you?”
He swallowed again. “I don’t have anything to tell. Honest to Christ I don’t.”
“You’re thinking they’ll kill you if you tell. Well, I’ll kill you if you don’t.”
“You’re no killer.”
“Ask the Japs.”
He looked like he was going to start crying again. “But I really don’t have anything to tell you.”
“Let’s start with the obvious. You did sell me out. Just tell me that much. Never mind who.”
“If…if I said that I did sell you out…I’m not saying I did, Heller…but if I did say that, you wouldn’t make me tell who?”
“I wouldn’t make you tell who, Bill. Just tell me you sold me out.”
He swallowed. He cast his eyes toward the floor. He began to nod.
“You sold me out?”
He kept nodding.
“Say it, Bill.”
“I sold you out, Heller.” He looked up, with a pleading expression. “It was big dough. You’d’ve done it in my place, and I wouldn’t blame you.”
“How much, Bill?”
He coughed. “Damn summer cold,” he said.
“How much, Bill?”
“Five gees.”
I glanced at Lou. He raised his eyebrows. That was a lot of dough.
“It got you out of the hole,” I said.
He nodded frantically. “And then some.”
“Why didn’t you take off? You had to know I’d come around.”
“I didn’t figure you for this…the goddamn rubber hose treatment. You just don’t seem the type.”
“You’d be surprised how testy I get when people try to kill me.”
“No, I wouldn’t.”
“Did they tell you not to run, Bill?”
He nodded again, not frantically. “Yeah…they said if I held up under whatever came…cops or you or whatever…there’d be another gee in it for me.”
“Six thousand to play finger man,” I said. And to Lou: “I wonder what the hell the shooters got paid?”
“Whatever it was,” Lou said, working on a bottle of Pabst, “I bet they have to give it back. They screwed up. Ragen’s alive, after all.”
“That’s true.” I smiled at Bill. “Now. Who?”