Chapter 2
The Erie was a joint just across the line; it was run by Pop Venizia and it was a kind of a hangout for the young men from around Belleville and North Newark. The young men with nothing much on their minds went there; some of them had money to spend and where the money came from was nobody's business, and some of them had no money at all, but they hung around anyway. Sal Naples had plenty of money always, or most always, and he spent it freely enough, and seldom on himself. That is, not at Pop Venizia's, because Pop Venizia's was a saloon, and Sal drank very, very rarely. He knew that liquor slowed him down and he didn't want any slowing down; he wanted to live fast and be all there, every second in the minute, every minute in the hour.
It was just after opening time and Pop Venizia was behind the bar himself, polishing glasses. He was a big man with a flushed face and jovial eyes, eyes which did not hide their inner craftiness from Sal, for few things of that kind were hidden from Sal because he was very observant, very watchful.
"Hello, Pop," he said.
"Hello, Sal," said Pop. His voice was thick; he was getting to be an old man. He didn't bother to ask Sal what he wanted, because he knew that Sal never wanted anything to drink, especially at this hour of the day.
"Any of the kids around?" Sal asked. "Kids? What kids you mean, Sal?"
"Well, Pete Koscki or PeeWee Schoenfield."
"I ain't seen Shoney for days," said Pop. "Pete Koscki was here last night, but I ain't seen nobody this morning. You're the first one in."
"If any of them shows up," said Sal, "tell 'em I'm over at the diner for breakfast."
Pop Venizia looked at him, and the malice came out from behind the fake geniality in his eyes.
"Don't she feed you? Don't that girl feed you your breakfast, Sal?"
"Go fuck yourself," Sal said. He went out into the amber April sunlight, ducked around a Number 13 bus and crossed to the opposite corner, underneath the Erie tracks. From the corner, looking down the cross street, he could see the dull gleam of the Passaic River, where, in spite of its filth, he had gone swimming on many a hot summer Jersey day.
He had his ham and eggs in the diner, and sat back, almost ready for the best cigarette of the day-the one right after breakfast-when Pete Koscki came in. He was a big guy, big-boned like a farmer, with a hanging lower lip, and he looked twice as big standing beside Sal. But a guy like that didn't do anything to Sal's morale-except put it higher. Sal knew that, although Pete was long on beef he was short on brains, and Sal had made up his mind long ago which of the two was really the bigger man.
Pete Koscki sat down on the stool next to Sal. He had the prison habit of talking out of the corner of his mouth, although as a matter-of-fact he had never served time in anything more remarkable than the State Reformatory.
"You all set, Sal?" he said out of the corner of the mouth.
"I'm always all set. How about you?"
"Everything's o.k.," said Pete. "I saw Shoney a while back and he talked to Joey Kipper last night. Everything will work out all right."
"You damn right it will work out all right," said Sal. "I got it all figured out and when I figure out anything it's going to work out all right."
He saw that Wally Winters was watching and straining his big floppy ears to hear and he shut up. "They got a good movie at the Branch Brook," he said. "You seen it?" He pitched his voice high enough so that he was sure Wally Winters would hear it.
"No, I ain't," said Pete Koscki. "What's it called?"
"Fort Destiny," said Sal. "Kind of a western."
"No. I ain't seen it," said Pete.
Sal paid Wally Winters for the breakfast and left seventy-five cents under the plate. He never tipped like a show-off, but he tipped more than most people. Money came easy to him.
They went out of the diner and strolled along to where the Erie Railroad tracks passed overhead. Then they stopped, standing on the curb. John Sweeney, who had been on a beat in North Newark for a good many more years than Sal had lived, passed them but he didn't even look at them. Sal smiled inwardly. "The dumb oaf," he thought. When you stopped to think of it you didn't really have to be very bright to be brighter than all the cops put together. Except maybe Detective Sergeant Larkey. He had run afoul of Bert Larkey once, and he figured that Larkey was possibly almost as smart as he was. But not quite.
When Sweeney had gone far down toward the Public Service garage, Sal began talking.
"Now, look," he said. "If I don't see Shoney before we pull this off, I want you to tell him: there better be no mistakes."
Pete Koscki's big jaw hung down and he looked at Sal.
"I'll tell him," he said. "I'll tell him just like you said."
"Tell yourself, too," said Sal. "And after it's all over, we scatter. Be sure of that. Scatter. I don't want none of us to be seen together afterwards. I don't want none of us to be seen period."
"I get it."
"Now there's another thing," Sal said. "I told you before and I told Shoney before but I want to tell you again. I got my own getaway figured out, and I got yours, too. I want to be sure you know what you're supposed to do."
"Me?"
"Yeah, you. What do you do afterwards?"
"I duck down the east side of the plant, out the other street, then I start walking along the River Road like nothing ever happened."
"That's right. And you're such a dumb-looking bastard you'll get away with it, too. What do you do next?"
"Hop the first bus and get into downtown Newark."
"That's right. If you do that right you'll be the hell and gone long before the cops start prowling around the neighbor hood. What's Shoney going to do?"
"Jeez, I don't know. I ain't Shoney."
"You got to know what everybody's doing. Everybody's got to know what everybody else's doing. Well, I told you once, and I'll tell you again. Shoney's going to do just like you do, only the other direction. And he's going to hop a bus on Broadway, and while you're riding a bus into Newark he's going to be riding a bus out to Nutley."
"Yeah, I get it, "said Pete.
"All right. I'm glad you get it. Now, after we make the getaway, what are we going to do tonight? Do you remember that?"
Pete Koscki thought a minute, with his heavy lower lip hanging down, and then he said: "We're going to meet tonight in that burned-out house on Broadway. That what you mean?"
"That's what I mean," said Sal. "That's a safe spot. We'll never get caught there. Either of you guys' houses-they're out. But you guys go in from the alley, the back way, the way I told you. If we go in the front we'll be spotted. You got that?"
"Yeah, I got that. In the back way, after dark."
"The ones that get there first, just keep quiet and wait. And if anyone of us gets hurt-the other three will meet anyway. You got that?"
"I got it."
"The other three or the other two or whatever there is left."
"You think somebody's going to get hurt?"
"No, I don't," said Sal. "But you got to figure on everything. That's the trouble with you dumb bastards, you don't figure on anything."
There was no change in Pete's expression; maybe he had been called a dumb bastard so many times that that was what he got to thinking he was. It was all what you thought you were that counted, anyhow. That was something that Sal knew.
"All right," said Sal. "I'll meet you two guys just like we said at ten o'clock."
"Yeah. I get it."
They broke apart, and Sal drifted across the street in the amber sunshine. There was plenty of time, and he wanted to think. He walked north to the bridge across the Second River, and then turned into the little patch of park. Farther up there were cherry trees, with the faintest blooms, and above them was the house with the rickety outside stairs and the rickety landing, and that was where Angela was. Sal turned abruptly the other way.
There was lots of time and he wanted to think. He had all the details worked out, but he wanted to think them over again, checking and rechecking them. Someone had told him once that genius was an infinite capacity for hard work, and he could see the sense of that. You had to have the flash, the spark, the fire, but you had to have the other things too.
He had walked a long way when he found himself in Verona Street, passing Our Lady of Sorrows. Father Callaghan was getting out of his car in the driveway beside the parish house.
"Well, well, well, and a sight for sore eyes you are, Sal. And what have you been doing lately? I don't remember that I ever heard you got started in a trade or anything like that."
"Oh sure," Sal said. "I got started, all right. I took up plumbing, but I'm still an apprentice."
"Plumbing, hey? Just like your old man. Well, that's fine, and it's a good honest trade, too, Sal. To tell you the truth, Sal, I always thought that being a priest was a little like being a plumber. A plumber fixes the drainpipes in people's houses, and a priest fixes them in people's souls."
"I guess you're right," Sal said.
Father Callaghan, who was still holding Sal's hand and pumping it up and down intermittently, gave him a slap on the back and said: "Now why don't you go inside the church for a couple of minutes and say a prayer for me?"
"All right, Father," said Sal.
Father Callaghan went off toward the parish house and Sal mounted the low broad steps of the church.
Inside there was a pleasant gloom and a musty smell of old carpets, which he could remember as long as he could remember anything at all. He figured he would stay just long enough for Father Callaghan to have become busy in the parish house, but after a moment he found himself on his knees, and the old prayers came back to his lips. "Hail Mary, full of Grace ... Please, God, make it all right," he said under his breath. And then, stealing a look around to be sure that no one had come in behind him, he slowly drew the .38 caliber revolver out of the shoulder holster and held it between his hands on the altar rail. The metal made a dull gleam under the red sanctuary light.
"Please, God," he said, "bless this. Please God, make it all right. Make everything all right."
He put the .38 back in the holster, and, looking around once more, did the same thing with the little .32 Mauser. Then he put it back in the pocket of his blue jacket and began whispering the 'Our Father' and then the'llail Mary.'
"Please God," he said," make everything all right."
He got up, knelt before the high altar, and went out the front door into Verona Street, stopping only an instant to cross himself at the holy water fount.
In Verona Street, there was an unpleasant mugginess coming into the atmosphere. He saw that the clock on the service station at the corner said a quarter to ten.
He began walking with an air of unconcern eastward, in the direction of the Passaic River. He caught a glimpse of it at the bottom of the hill, in the dull sunshine.