CHAPTER NINE
THE MEN IN BLACK
The Pontiac sedan had been parked across the street for forty minutes. Danny knew that, because he had been watching that car for thirty-nine of those forty minutes.
It was black, four-door, clean enough to belong to somebody who didn’t park on the street very often. Two men sat in front. Dark suits. Dark hats. Neither had gotten out.
Danny finished his coffee.
“You expecting somebody?” the counterman asked.
“No.”
“You keep looking out the window.”
“I like Pontiacs.”
The counterman looked at the car.
“What’s to like? Fuhgetaboutit!”
Danny put a dime beside his cup and walked out into the street. He very deliberately did not look at the Pontiac. That was the first rule about somebody watching you. Don’t let them know you’ve noticed. The second rule was harder.
Find out why.
Danny walked south. The Pontiac stayed where it was. That bothered him. He turned west at the next corner, stopped at a newsstand, bought a paper he didn’t want and continued toward Third Avenue. Halfway down the block a man stepped out of a doorway.
“Danny Marino?”
Danny stopped.
The man was perhaps forty-five, heavy without being fat, wearing a camel-hair coat that cost more than Danny had earned in the last six months.
“Depends.”
“On what?”
“Who’s asking.”
The man smiled.
“Mr. Bellomo wants to see you.”
Danny folded the newspaper under his arm.
“Which Bellomo?”
The smile disappeared.
That had apparently been the wrong question.
Or the right one.
“Get in.”
A gray Buick waited at the curb.
Danny looked back toward the corner.
No Pontiac.
Interesting.
He got into the Buick.
They drove downtown without conversation.
The man beside Danny smelled faintly of Mennen’s aftershave, with more than a hint of Havana cigars. The driver smelled like garlic. They stopped in front of a wholesale produce company near the market. Danny followed them inside.
Crates of lettuce and tomatoes were stacked almost to the ceiling. Men in aprons moved hand trucks through narrow aisles. Nobody looked at Danny. At the rear was a little office with frosted glass. Inside sat three men. Danny recognized Nicky Bellomo immediately.
Nicky was eating.
Danny had never seen Nicky when he wasn’t eating. This time it was spaghetti. He had somehow managed to get sauce on his shirt, his tie and the back of his left hand.
Danny watched him for a moment. Nicky ate like dinner was a contact sport.
“Sit down,” said the older man behind the desk.
Danny sat. The older man was perhaps sixty. Silver hair. Beautiful suit. Soft voice. That was generally a dangerous combination.
“My name is Salvatore Rizzo.”
Danny nodded.
“You know who I am?”
“No.”
Rizzo seemed pleased.
“Good answer.”
Nicky looked up from his spaghetti.
“He’s a wiseass.”
Rizzo looked at Nicky.
Nicky went back to eating.
Rizzo turned to Danny.
“You’ve been asking questions.”
“I have?”
“About the dead man.”
Danny said nothing.
“About Spada.”
Still nothing.
“About certain other people.”
Danny waited.
Rizzo leaned back.
“That’s another good answer.”
Nobody spoke for several seconds.
Then Rizzo said, “You ever hear of Oak Ridge?”
Danny looked at him.
“Yes.”
That changed the room.
Not much.
But enough.
Rizzo noticed.
“So you know what they do there.”
“I read newspapers.”
Nicky laughed.
“He reads newspapers.”
Nobody joined him.
Rizzo’s eyes stayed on Danny.
“Somebody’s talking about something that shouldn’t be talked about.”
“What?”
Rizzo studied him.
“That’s what we’d like to know.”
Danny leaned back.
For the first time since entering the office, he noticed that the man standing beside the door wasn’t watching him. He was watching Rizzo.
Interesting.
Rizzo continued. “There’s a story going around. Maybe it’s nonsense. Maybe somebody’s trying to scare somebody. Maybe somebody wants money.”
“How much?”
“Enough.”
“For what?”
Rizzo didn’t answer. Nicky did. “A bomb.”
The room went silent.
Rizzo slowly turned his head.
Nicky froze with a fork halfway to his mouth.
“You mamaluke,” Rizzo said quietly.
Nicky lowered the fork.
Rizzo looked back at Danny.
“Nicky talks too much.”
Danny glanced at Nicky.
“I hadn’t noticed.”
The man beside the door laughed once.
Rizzo didn’t.
“This isn’t our business,” Rizzo said. “Understand?”
“No.”
“Good. Because neither do I.”
That was the first thing Rizzo had said that Danny believed completely.
Rizzo stood and walked to the window.
“People think they know what the life is. Gambling. Trucks. Construction. Unions. Somebody needs a favor, somebody else does a favor. Somebody fixes a ticket. Everybody eats abbondanza.”
Nicky kept eating. Rizzo glanced at him. “Some more than others.” Nicky stopped again.
Rizzo turned toward Danny. “But this?” He shook his head. “This isn’t business.”
Danny remembered something an old bookmaker had once told him. “Gangsters make trouble, racketeers make money.”
Whoever had started this was making the wrong kind of trouble.
“What does it have to do with me?” Danny asked.
“We don’t know.”
“Then why am I here?”
“Because somebody else thinks it has something to do with you.”
That wasn’t the answer Danny wanted.
“Who?”
Rizzo walked back to the desk.
“Two men came around yesterday asking about you.”
Danny felt something cold move through his stomach.
“What men?”
“Didn’t give names.”
“Police?”
“No.”
“Federal?”
“Maybe.”
“What did they look like?”
Rizzo smiled faintly.
“Like undertakers.”
Dark suits.
Danny looked toward the frosted glass.
“Black Pontiac?”
This time everybody in the room became very still.
Rizzo said, “You saw them?”
“They were outside the coffee shop.”
“When?”
“Forty minutes ago.”
Rizzo immediately looked at the man beside the door.
The man opened it and disappeared.
That told Danny more than anything Rizzo had said.
Rizzo was frightened.
Not panicked.
Not nervous.
Frightened.
Danny stood.
“Sit down.”
“I think I’m finished, Danny said.”
“You’re finished when I tell you you’re finished,” Rizzo growled. Nicky pushed his chair back. Danny heard it scrape against the floor. Then Nicky made the mistake of putting a hand on him.
What happened next took perhaps two seconds.
Danny caught the wrist, turned, shifted his weight and Nicky hit the floor hard enough to shake the dishes on the desk.
Nobody moved.
Danny released him immediately.
Nicky stared up from the floor.
So did everybody else.
Danny looked down at his own hands.
That had been stupid.
Very stupid.
Rizzo stared at him.
“Where’d you learn that?”
Danny looked at Nicky.
“Learn what?”
The man beside the door came back into the office.
“They’re outside.”
Nobody asked who.
Rizzo walked to the window but stayed to one side of it.
Danny could hear traffic outside. A truck changing gears. Somebody shouting about onions. Ordinary Manhattan sounds.
Rizzo said, “You came here alone?”
“I came in your Buick.”
Rizzo nodded.
He seemed to be thinking very quickly.
Then he opened a desk drawer and took out an envelope.
He handed it to Danny.
Danny didn’t take it.
“What’s that?”
“Five hundred dollars.”
“I already got five hundred dollars.”
“This is another five hundred.”
“For what?”
Rizzo looked toward the window.
“Find out who those men are.”
Danny finally took the envelope.
“And the bomb?”
Rizzo’s expression changed.
“What bomb?”
Danny smiled.
Rizzo smiled back.
Nicky was still on the floor.
Danny put the envelope inside his coat.
“Where’s the back door?”
The man beside the door pointed.
Danny started toward it.
Rizzo called after him.
“Marino.”
Danny turned.
“If anybody asks, you were never here.”
Danny looked around the crowded little office.
“Where?”
Rizzo smiled.
This time he meant it.
Danny went out through the warehouse.
Nobody looked at him.
He passed the lettuce, the tomatoes and three men arguing over a crate of oranges. He found the rear door and stepped into an alley.
He had gone perhaps twenty feet when a voice behind him said:
“Mr. Marino.”
Danny stopped.
He knew before he turned around.
Dark suit.
Dark tie.
Dark hat.
There were two of them.
Of course there were.
The taller one smiled pleasantly.
“We’d like to ask you a few questions.”
Danny looked from one man to the other.
“Everybody does.”
The shorter man opened his coat just enough for Danny to see what might have been a badge. Not long enough to read it. Danny looked at him. “What kind of badge was that?”
The man closed his coat. “The kind you saw.”
Danny considered this. Behind the men, at the mouth of the alley, the black Pontiac waited with its engine running.
Danny smiled. “I like your car.” Neither man smiled back. The taller one said, “Get in.”
Danny looked at the Pontiac.Then at the two men. He had started the week broke, hungry and homeless. Things were definitely improving.
He got in.
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CHAPTER NINE — BREAKDOWN
Chapter Nine is an escalation chapter. The story has been operating on a neighborhood level—money, favors, mob connections and murder. Now Danny discovers that something much larger may be moving underneath it all.
1. Open with surveillance.
The black Pontiac immediately tells us Danny is being watched. Nothing happens, but tension begins before we know why.
2. Show that Danny knows more than he should.
He recognizes surveillance and knows how to behave when followed. This quietly supports the suspicion that Danny isn’t simply the broke drifter he appears to be.
3. Keep the mob ordinary.
The meeting takes place in a produce warehouse. Lettuce, tomatoes, hand trucks, spaghetti. Organized crime is presented as business rather than theatrical villainy.
4. Use humor to release pressure.
Nicky eating “like dinner was a contact sport” gives the reader a laugh just before the story becomes considerably darker.
5. Introduce the threat indirectly.
Nobody produces a bomb. Nobody even proves one exists. We hear a rumor involving Oak Ridge, extortion and something that shouldn’t exist. The uncertainty is more useful than confirmation.
6. Raise the stakes for everybody.
Rizzo makes an important distinction: ordinary rackets make money. This new scheme threatens the entire structure. Even the mob wants no part of it.
7. Reveal Danny through action.
Nicky grabs Danny. Two seconds later Nicky is on the floor. Danny’s response is automatic and unexpectedly professional.
“Where’d you learn that?”
“Learn what?”
No explanation is given.
8. Introduce the Men in Black without calling them Men in Black.
Dark suits, dark hats, an unreadable badge and a black Pontiac. They might be federal agents. They might be something else entirely—but nothing requires a supernatural explanation.
9. Give Danny another job.
Rizzo’s second five hundred dollars turns curiosity into employment: find out who the two men are.
10. End by reversing the opening.
At the beginning Danny watches the Pontiac. At the end he gets into it.
That closes the chapter while opening the next one.
WRITING LESSON
Escalation doesn’t necessarily mean explosions, gunfights or bodies.
Sometimes the strongest escalation is simply discovering that the problem is much bigger than you thought it was.
Chapter Nine begins with a parked car and ends with Danny climbing into it.
Between those two moments, his entire understanding of the case changes.
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Here’s the Bardo bus now!!!
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See You At The Top!!!
gorby