“Stop pawing a minute. We got business.”
“Make you nervous?”
“Ya. She might wake up and then what?”
Joe laughed and kept his arm there. He had a laugh like a rock jumping down a hillside, only it never got any faster and then it stopped.
“I know all about it. You lost the whole truckload.”
“Who told you?”
“Vittore was here. He said they ambushed the truck like you wanted to give it to them.”
“Vittore didn’t say that. He wasn’t around long enough to tell.”
“I say it.”
Lenken had his hand on the girl’s hip and Charley moved the pills inside his mouth. Then Charley said, “You made the arrangements, clinker head. They got a thousand gallons of gasoline. There were enough carabinièri in those woods to stop a convoy.”
“Maybe you’re saying I sent ’em?”
“No, but you might just as well. You didn’t check out that greedy bastard enough, that creep who sold us the stuff.”
“He delivered. You lost it.”
“Sure. He highjacked the gas in Trieste where they watch every ship that docks like it had bombs on it. He left a trail—”
“He never goofed before.”
“That was small time. They don’t watch so hard when Swiss watches get lost, or some nylon.”
“Have it your way, Chuck. The creep goofed, I goofed, but not you. You just lose the stuff and get yourself shot.”
“Lenken, stop pawing that girl a minute.”
“Beat it, Chuck, willya? And next time you handle the works. You’re the brains; you handle it.”
Charley had the pill box in his hand and started to rattle it back and forth.
“Maybe there won’t be a next time.”
“Sure,” said Lenken.
“Send out the girl.”
“Ten years in the black market and never a hitch. Maybe a loss here and there, so what. But then Chuck boy gets shot in the skin, there’s blood, and right away there’s a catastrophe.” Lenken shifted his weight. “You’re scared, Chuck.”
“You’re right.”
Charley paused because he saw that Joe was listening now. Joe closed his mouth, then opened it. The way he let it hang gave him a stupid look except that Charley knew better. Joe wasn’t stupid and Joe wasn’t exactly slow. He’d heard about that ambush even before Charley walked into the kitchen. He didn’t rant, didn’t complain about the loss, didn’t apologize because the mess was mostly his fault. He didn’t even hide the way he felt, that maybe one more fluke like that and Charley might not be around to tell about it.
Joe must be thinking it was time to let their combine go to pieces. He didn’t need Charley any more. Ten years ago he did. He needed Charley because Charley had the brains and Joe had just the cunning. He needed Charley because all that Joe was good at were details. They’d gotten in the racket while the Occupation was still on, when things were easy. They made a team and stayed in the black market ever since. They didn’t get into each other’s way because they never tried too hard to make a friendship out of it. They didn’t have to. What kept them close was quite something else.
“So grin a little harder,” said Joe. “Maybe the scare will go away.”
“Send out the girl.”
“Make you nervous?”
“Send her out, Corporal.”
Joe stopped with his hand. He gave the girl a push, told her to beat it. Then he put both arms on the table and talked low.
“Chuck. I don’t want you to say that.”
Charley smiled and started to rattle his pills again. “Now that you’re listening—”
“Don’t say that again, Chuck.”
“Joe,” said Charley, “it’s better I say it than somebody else.”
Joe got up and hitched his pants. The girl was still in the kitchen, at the far end. She was standing there with nothing to do. Joe yelled at her in Italian and watched her run out the door. Then he came around the table.
“Listen here,” he said, and looked down at Charley. “What’s eating you?”
“Trouble,” said Charley.
Joe sucked his teeth and looked out the door where the red sun was almost gone. Then he looked back at Charley, only nothing showed. The bastard looked like he was smiling. He’d smile if he were killing his grandmother, thought Joe. That smile used to confuse him, until he found out that you couldn’t go by Charley’s face. You could always go by what Charley said, though. When Charley said trouble it was trouble, and when he said fine things were fine.
“Let’s go to the osteria,” said Charley and when he walked out the door Joe just followed.
They went down the street, crossed the square, and went uphill a little. Couples were making the circle around the square and old people sat in the small gardens. Somebody greeted them now and then. Charley waved back, but Joe didn’t answer.
They came to the osteria, and since they owned the place they went to the back, down the stairs, and into the basement room which had a fancy cylinder lock on the door. Except for the cylinder lock it wasn’t much of a room, and the trap door in the floor didn’t show. That’s where they kept the high-priced stuff, like German precision tools or the small boxes with hard-to-get medicines.
“Listen to that racket,” said Charley and looked up at the ceiling. “Beats me how they get happy just on that coffee and vino.”
Joe sat down and waited to hear about the trouble.
“Hear that music,” said Charley. “That’s old Silvestro making music. Every time it sounds like the espresso machine blowing its top, that’ll be Silvestro singing a shepherd song.”
“Let’s hear it, Chuck.”
“You will,” and Charley sat down. He put his feet on the safe by the wall, a rusty and beat-up thing, but the mechanism inside was new. “That ambush was worse than just losing the merchandise. It—”
“Ya, I know. They fired guns and it scared you.”
“Worse, Lenken. They got a good look at me. They caught me and in the headlights they got a good look at me.”
That’s when Joe sat back and didn’t seem interested any more: “So maybe you’ll get a couple of years,” he said. “Good riddance.”
For the first time Charley raised his voice. It was sharp and he talked fast.
“Not a couple of years, you dumb bastard. The rope! Or worse, you bastard. Maybe life!”
Joe knew what Charley meant but it didn’t faze him.
“You got a fever, Chuck?”
“I got a fever. I got a fever to stay the way I am, stay left alone, stay so your and my uncle don’t know about it.” And then his voice got so quiet Joe could just hear it. “Or maybe you don’t remember, Corporal. You and me are deserters.”
They didn’t say anything for a while because everything was clear. If they got caught for jaywalking and the police had nothing better to do for the moment and started to look at papers, at dates and names on their papers, then pretty soon the whole rotten underpinnings would start to shake.