Deacon King Kong(19)

“No you don’t,” the Governor said. “Your poppa bragged on you in prison. Said you would run his business good someday. Said you could keep a secret.”

“Sure can. Wanna hear one? My poppa’s dead, and he ain’t paying my bills now.”

“What you getting hepped for, son? Your poppa gifted you. He put this thing up. Stored it for me years ago. And you got the key to it.”

“How do you know I didn’t use the key and sell the thing already, whatever it is?” Elefante asked.

“If you’d done that, you wouldn’t be making a bag of it in this blessed boxcar in the wee hours, moving this shit you call goods, which, if I’m remembering right from the old days, let’s see . . . twelve-foot box truck, thirty-four crates, at forty-eight dollars a crate, if it’s cigarettes and maybe a few cases of booze, you’re looking at . . . maybe five thousand gross and fifteen hundred clams in your pocket after everybody’s paid, including Gorvino, who runs these docks—which if your father knew you were still working for him, he’d probably marmalade ya. He’d be shook, that’s for sure.”

Elefante blanched. The old guy had balls. And smarts. And maybe a point. “So you can add figures,” he said. “Where’s this thing that you can’t name?”

“I just named it for you. It’s in a storage box probably.”

Elefante ignored that. He hadn’t heard any name of anything. Instead he asked, “You got a slip?”

“A what?”

“A receipt? A storage slip. Showing the box is yours?”

The Irishman frowned. “Guido Elefante didn’t give receipts. His word was good enough.”

He was silent as Elefante took that in. Finally Elefante spoke. “I got fifty-nine storage lockers. All padlocked by whoever rents them. Only the owners got the keys.”

The Irishman laughed. “Be a good lad. Maybe it’s not in a storage box.”

“Where is it then? Buried in a lot someplace?”

“If you want to relax with your slippers, I’m not your man. It’s got to be clean, son. Clean as a bar of Palmolive soap. Your poppa would see to it.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Pull your socks up, lad. I just told you. Wherever it is, it’s got to be clean. It might just be a bar of soap, or be in a bar of soap. That’s how small it is. That’ll keep it clean, I suppose, if you put it in a big bar of soap. It’s about that size.”

“Mister, you come in here singing riddles. You say this junk—whatever it is—needs a truck ride to the airport even though it’s the size of a bar of soap. That it’s got to be clean like soap, that it might even be soap. Do I look stupid enough to run around for a bar of soap?”

“You could buy three million dollars’ worth of suds with it. Give or take a few dollars. If it’s in good shape,” the Irishman said.

Elefante watched the worker closest to him lug a crate from the door of the boxcar to the waiting truck outside. He watched him shove the crate into the truck without saying a word or changing his expression, and decided the man hadn’t overheard.

“I’d let you talk pretty to me like that all night if I could,” he said. “But I’d hate myself in the morning. I’ll get one of my guys to take you back to the Bronx. The subway ain’t what it used to be. I’ll do that for my poppa’s sake.”

Sturgess held up an old, wrinkled hand. “I’m not having you on. I got no muscle to move this thing. I know somebody who might want to buy it in Europe. That’s why I want to get it to Kennedy. But now, talking to you, you’re a smart laddie, I think it’s better if you take it. Sell it if you want, give me a small piece if you can. If you don’t, that’s okay. I got nothing except a lass at home. I don’t want no trouble for her. She runs my business good. I just don’t want to waste the thing, is all.”

“What is it, Governor? Coins? Jewels? Gold? What’s worth that much?”

The Irishman stood up. “It’s worth a lot of crisps,” he said.

“Crisps?”

“Chips. Money. Dollars. Guido said he’d keep it, so I know it’s been kept. Where, I don’t know. But your pop never went back on his word.”

He dropped his card on the Elephant’s desk. “Come see me in the Bronx. We’ll talk about it. I can even tell you what to do with it. You can throw me a bone afterward if you want.”

“What if I don’t know where it is?”

“For three million biscuits, you’ll know.”

“For that kind of money, old man, anything but murder is a parlor trick. A guy can stop paying taxes for good, chasing that kind of money around,” Elefante said.

“I ain’t paid taxes in years,” the old man said.

“Come on up to street level, would ya? How do I know you’re square? What am I looking for?”

“Check your load. See what you got.”

“How do I know you’re not a bartender somebody floated out here just to mix drinks and box me in?”

“You think I’m some tosser who came all the way out here at this hour for exercise?” The Governor rose and stepped to the open back door, leaning on the door edge, looking out onto the dock, where two of Elefante’s men could be seen several yards away, struggling to lift a huge, heavy box into the truck. He nodded at them. “You’d have ended up just like them if your father was like the rest of the gobshits we knew in prison, following the Five Families around. The thing is called the Venus, by the way. The Venus of Willendorf. She’s in God’s hands. That’s what your poppa said to me. In a letter.”