trio and sometimes a female singer. There was a uniformed cop stationed by the men’s room, but he never interfered with the sale of alcohol to minors or bothered the patrons unless someone started a fight or he recognized a parolee.
Saber and I sat in the darkest corner of the room and ordered two bottles of Champale from the waitress. Saber lit a cigarette, bending his face to the cupped match, his eyes tiny with secret knowledge. “Did you see who was in the parking lot at Cook’s?”
“Whoever it was, why did you wait until now to tell me?”
“I didn’t want to stoke you up.”
“Then I don’t want to know.”
“It was Harrelson. With three other guys. They were in his pink convertible.”
“What’s Harrelson doing at Cook’s?”
“Girls from the welfare project are always hanging at the back door. He gets them to blow him, then drops them on a country road.”
“Stop making up lurid tales, Saber. The guy is bad enough as it is.”
“Anyway, I shot him twin bones and double eat-shit signs, plus the Italian up-your-ass salute. I don’t know if he saw me or not. Man, it’s cold in here. Check out those guys in the corner.”
A conversation with Saber was like talking to the driver of a concrete mixer while he was backing his vehicle through a clock shop. “Which guys?”
“In the suits. Tell me they’re not gangsters.”
“Lower your voice,” I said.
“The flight from Palermo must have just landed.”
I turned around slowly, as though looking for the men’s room. The waitress had brought out a tray on wheels and was setting silverware and a battery-powered electric candle on a table. Three men sat around a bottle of champagne wedged into an ice bucket. She served steaks with Irish potatoes wrapped in tinfoil to the two older men, although the club had no kitchen and to my knowledge never served food. The younger man wasn’t served a meal; he sipped from a champagne glass, one arm hanging on the back of the chair. None of the men spoke. When the waitress went away, the oldest of the three men tucked a napkin into his collar and bent to his food.
He was Frankie Carbo, my uncle’s business partner, the man who fixed fights the way Arnold Rothstein fixed the 1919 World Series. I had shaken hands with both him and Benny Siegel, and it would take years before I could acquire the words to describe the peculiarity in both men’s eyes. They saw you but did not see you; or they saw you and dismissed you as not worth seeing; or they saw you and filed you into a category that involved use or self-gratification.
Carbo probably was handsome at one time, but his face had become fleshy, his throat distended, his dark hair curling with gray on the tips. I saw his eyes cut toward me. I looked away.
“Told you,” Saber said.
“That’s Franke Carbo,” I whispered. “Don’t say another word.”
“The gangster you met at the Shamrock? I knew it. See the young guy?”
“No.”
“That’s Vick Atlas. The guy who looks like Mickey Mouse without ears is his old man. He’s supposed to be a nutcase. The son is a half-bubble off, too. They’re hooked up with the cathouses in Galveston.”
“Keep your eyes on me, Saber. Do not look at that table again. Do you hear me? And lower your voice.”
“Don’t get in a panic,” he replied, his fingers drumming the table. “You should go on medication. I won’t always be here to get you out of trouble.”
“Let’s go back to Cook’s,” I said. “Harrelson and his friends have probably left.”
Saber’s gaze shifted sideways and stayed there.
“What is it?” I said.
“Bogies at two o’clock.”
“Who?” I said, not wanting to look, my stomach on fire.
He grinned painfully. “Harrelson left Cook’s, all right. My ram-it-up-your-ass semaphore usually gets their attention when all else fails.”
GRADY AND HIS friends took a table by the jukebox, close to Carbo’s table, and Grady went over to shake hands with Vick Atlas. Then he returned to his table. At first I thought he was going to ignore me. I should have known better. He pointed at me, then said something to his friends.
“Don’t react,” Saber said. “Watch me and go with the flow. Look upon this as an opportunity. It’s time Harrelson got exposed in public.”
“Exposed for what?”
“I don’t know. A guy like that has all kinds of secrets. All you’ve got to do is tap on the right nerve. Relax. I’ve got it under control.”
The waitress brought a