THE CLUNY INN, NEW YORK

THE CLUNY INN, NEW YORK

He read the e-mail message and got up, stamping the floor nervously and pacing from bare cracked wall to bare cracked  wall in front of his crinkle-sheeted cot, which was shoved up under the window that looked out onto the building next door.  Finally, impulsively, he reached for his jacket on the back of the chair in front of the monitor and stepped out into the hall.  The first floor of the old, decrepit hotel was occupied by offices—a deadbeat attorney, a tax accountant, a half-starved literary agent, and several, even, like himself: lowlifes engaged in shady business.  He locked his office door, and instead of waiting for the slow-boat elevator, he took the stairs and breathed a sigh of relief when he came into the lobby.  He headed straight across the dim, cluttered space, past the desk clerk, who ignored him, and out through the revolving doors onto Thirty-Second Street.  It was bright and cool but not cold, and the walk to the bus stop was calming.  Afterwards, he wondered how he could have been calm.

     Don Renzo was not a down-and-outer; he was an exemplary member of the wastes of humanity.  Short of murder, there was hardly a crime he hadn’t committed to put money in his pocket.  But even of murder one could say he was guilty, although he never had blood on his hands.  Guilty by default.  Guilty by omission.  Guilty by lie.  Don Renzo, however, was never guilty by conscience.  He had one principle of conscience which he stuck to like a crab sticks to bait: Whatever enriches me is good; whatever doesn’t is bad.  But Don Renzo was never good enough in his sham dealings with his fellow men to actually enrich himself.  Enriching himself was the goal that eluded him.

     But there was always a scheme, a plan, some plot by which he was going to hit paydirt.  Don Renzo never thought about what he might do afterward, after hitting paydirt.  Sometimes he would lie on his cot under the window in his office, where he lived, and try to add up the dollars he lost on worthless tips at Roosevelt and Aqueduct over just the last five years.  They added up to a lot of money, and he was sure he wasn’t remembering it all.  If he had all that money now in one lump sum, he would regard himself as having finally hit it.  It was thoughts like these that drove him crazy and put him in a vindictive mood.

     It was not, however, a vindictive mood that drove him as he rushed out of the shabby Saxon Hotel into the cool, bright afternoon.  It was a mood of near hysterical fear.  Don Renzo had finally committed the fatal error: he had been involved in a scam selling names and phone numbers of people whom he had identified through his own hard labors as both well-to-do and charitable to a group of con-artists working out of Nigeria; for every thousand they extracted from these suckers, he got an additional fifty bucks, which was amounting in the last several months to an unexpected windfall—his error consisting in unknowingly setting up for the touch the mother of San Battista, the single-most ruthless man Don Renzo had ever known to exist.  And now, San Battista knew of him. 

     The e-mail that sent him voyaging into the city came from his insider in Nigeria.  San Battista paid high for the information fingering him.  The message was a goodbye, made all the more chilling by its not having even a “good luck” at the sign off.  He got on the bus and stood in the aisle, hanging onto the bar.  He felt safe and warm, but he nonetheless stooped every few moments to look out the windows and scan the sidewalks, as though he expected to see at every moment his unknown pursuers.

     When he left the hotel, he had in mind only quitting the premises—getting as far away as quickly as possible.  He was wearing only a slept-in tee-shirt under his jacket, his thick reddish blond hair was matted this way and that from sleeping, and his face was unshaved.  Short, thin, and wiry, he was at best an unattractive man.  But now, in this condition, he gave some thought to where he should go.  He looked at his watch and saw it was nearing two o’clock.  “Good,” he thought, “I have most of the afternoon left.”  But what to do? and where to go? and what about tomorrow? and then after that?  Instinctively, his hand reached to his right back pocket, and when he felt his wallet, he sighed.  He ran out without thinking, and it would have been a disaster if he had left it on the desk, where he usually emptied his pockets before turning in.  There was no going back there.

     There was no going, either, to the bank where his Nigeria money was automatically deposited.  If he acted quickly, he thought, he might be able to have his account transferred to another bank, where he could convert it to cash.  Then he would be free.  “Let San Battista do his stuff, I’ll be gone,” he thought. 

But his bankbook and all his statements were in the file cabinet in the office.  He never gave them a thought after he read the message.  As he hung from the bar in the bus aisle, he imagined trying to get around this detail at some other bank, showing them his driver’s license, his social security card, and whatever else he had that might serve as ID.  No matter how he demanded or how he pleaded, it wasn’t going to work.  Too many suspicions would be aroused: why didn’t he just go to his own bank and do what he wanted there?  He had to have the bankbook to get the money, and he knew there was no going back to get it.  He patted his right back pocket again.  He felt miserable and stupid.  “Stupid, stupid, stupid,” he said to himself.  “Everything would be easy if I’d only thought.”  But whenever he reproached himself for doing something stupid or for saying something that got him into trouble, he never took it to heart.  He spent his energies getting out of trouble, not reproaching himself for getting into it.

So!  He was broke.  So!  He had nowhere to go.  So?  It wasn’t the first time.  Let San Battista look for him.  He would melt into the crowds.  Not even the eyes of God would spot him then.  And San Battista, ruthless though he was, was no God.  Let him bust his ass and get an ulcer.  Don Renzo, stooping and looking out the window with a prickly, uncertain smile, felt safe and warm.  The bus was going uptown and he was now in the Seventies.  Far enough, he thought.  He hit the pavement at 78^th Street.  Manhattan was a fine place to disappear into.  He seldom came uptown, and its unfamiliarity made him feel safely anonymous. 

But he had to duck in somewhere and get off the streets.  He checked his wallet to see what he had and frowned.  Not much in cash—two hundred.  But he had two credit cards he was confident he could still use, at least once each.  He wouldn’t want to push his luck with them.  He legged it to Third Avenue and looked around for a cafe or deli, someplace where he could sit and think.  Seeing nothing, he turned south and walked a block, then another, and another.  Eventually, he came to a bar that looked cozy enough.

It was called The Cluny Inn and had a false stone front with a long, narrow window covered on the inside with a white Venetian blind that was half closed.  If that front had been real stone, Don Renzo would have instinctively walked past.  What made him feel the place was cozy was the look of chintzy cheapness about it.  But what also stopped him and lured him in was the look of the stained-black door to the right of the window—a thick, iron-hinged, plank affair whose sturdiness made him feel secure.

It was dim inside, as he expected, and not roomy, which was OK with him.  The walls all around, except behind the bar, were dressed with imitation planking, stained the same blackness as the door.  On them were hung several small shade-covered lamps which, except for the window, provided the only illumination.  There were about a dozen round, backless stools at the bar, a few tables with menus and napkins and salt and pepper shakers scattered across the middle space, and booths made of black vinyl along the wall opposite the bar.  In the back wall were two doors, one with Rest Rooms and Exit signs above it; the other, by the end of the bar, a double wide most likely leading to the kitchen and the storeroom.

It was somewhat after two-thirty, and Don Renzo was surprised to see no one inside.  No clientele, that is.  No regulars.  No neighborhood types.  No other drop-ins like himself.  The place looked unused, as though it never had had people in it.  There were, however, a man behind the bar and a woman, thin and unattractive, who looked like a waitress, in front talking with him.  They had both clammed up and stared at him as he stood in the entryway, looking around.  Neither moved or said anything, so he walked over to them, took a stool near the woman, and asked the bartender for a beer.

The bartender, in a white long-sleeved shirt with rolled-up cuffs exposing hairy forearms, placed the foamy beer on a coaster and put a small, square white napkin beside it.  He took Don Renzo’s twenty dollar bill and put the change on the bar beside the white napkin—all without saying a word.

“The first of the day,” Don Renzo said, cheerfully, lifting the beer up.  “Breakfast.”

Neither of the two responded.  The woman on his side of the bar just looked at him, and the bartender had turned his back, as though tending to the inventory on the shelves behind. 

Don Renzo took a long pull at the glass, unperturbed. 

“Here’s to Happy Hour,” he said, holding it up, half empty, now, and gesturing at the waitress as though he were toasting her health.  Then, with a big smile, he emptied the glass in a second long pull. 

“Huh,” the woman said, “breakfast!  Where’d you say you crawled outa bed?”

Her tone startled him, and he reddened. 

“Hey, be nice,” Don Renzo retorted, “I’m a paying customer.  From what I can see, you don’t have too many of them.”

“I’ll bet he crawled outa the river,” she said to the bartender, ignoring Don Renzo’s observation.  Her voice was low-pitched, almost like a man’s.  She was inelegant and unfeminine, though more than a bit top heavy.  Don Renzo could see the pendulous curve of a bra-covered breast through the wide gap between the buttons of her flower-printed blouse.  He despised women who let their tits be seen like that, even though they wore bras.  He shifted his gaze with obvious contempt to her hips, or where her hips would have been if she had them.  He smiled nastily.

He looked at the bartender, then, whose face showed no sign he cared one way or the other what the two of them looked like.  The man was leaning against the back of the bar trying not to seem unfriendly.

“Want another?”

“Sure,” Don Renzo said, grateful the man was being amiable.

“Sure!” the woman said.  “Breakfast!  In half an hour we’ll have to roll him onto the sidewalk.”

The bartender had a pained expression on his face but kept his silence.  Don Renzo, looking back and forth between them, realized he had come in in the middle of something.  He felt suddenly relaxed, thinking that whatever the cause of this woman’s ill temper, he was just a momentary diversion of it.

The man put the refilled glass back on the coaster and helped himself to money from the change of the twenty beside it. 

“What the hell, I don’t mind,” Don Renzo said, sipping from the refilled glass, feeling safe from the searching eyes of San Battista, and loathing the idea of going back on the street.

“Don’t mind what?” the woman said offensively. “Looking homeless?  Someone put a twenty in your pocket and suddenly you’re a ‘Member of Society’?”

“I said, I don’t mind you’re a crabby bitch, because I feel just fine.”  He raised the glass towards her and took another sip, not gulping anymore.

“Slow down,” the bartender said.  “You,” he said to the woman, “lighten up.  And you,” he said to Don Renzo, “Don’t provoke.”

“Hey,” Don Renzo said, “Don’t blame me.  I just came in looking for a place to sip a beer.  What the hell.  Never mind.  Maybe you can make me a sandwich, huh?” he said expansively to the woman, trying to change the tone they had started with.  “Or bring me something to eat, anything?  I wasn’t kidding when I said that first beer was breakfast.”

“Go make him something,” the bartender said to the woman. 

“What?” she asked Don Renzo. 

“I don’t care,” he said,  “anything.  Use your judgment.”

The woman walked away and went through the wide door to the kitchen.

“What’s eating her?” Don Renzo said to the bartender.

The man didn’t respond, staring instead silently at the empty doorway, as though he was making sure she was out of earshot.  Then he stared across the room at the wall behind Don Renzo.  He was leaning with both hands on the bartop, looking like he was wrestling with a weighty decision and, maybe, was about to hit the mat.

“Look,” Don Renzo said, concerned by the man’s deep silence, “ain’t none of my business.  Forget about it.”

He wanted to show some sympathy for the man, so he added, “Buy you a beer.  No one likes to drink alone, hey?”  whereupon he chug-a-lugged his second draft and put the empty glass on the coaster.  The bartender reached for it and for a second glass below and filled them.  They clinked glasses and drank.  For Don Renzo it was a little ceremony of companionship, and, feeling good, he rubbed his unshaven face, scratched his head, and tried to smoothe his matted hair, all the while smiling at the silent man.

“She’s having a hard time,” the bartender said, “and I feel sorry for her.”

By comparison with his near muteness since Don Renzo came in, this little speech seemed like an explanation freighted with meaning.  

“Yea, I know about hard times,” he responded in a genuine imitation of sympathy.

“She’s a good person,” the bartender said, a note of sadness in his voice.  “Doesn’t deserve it.”

“Who does?” Don Renzo commiserated, nodding his head, and sipping lightly from the beer, thinking about himself.  “Who does?”

“When things pile up, they pile up.”

“I know about things piling up,” Don Renzo replied, feeling, well into his third beer now, a familiar burn of self pity rise into the place behind his eyes that made the tears flow.  He sipped more beer and suppressed the feeling.

The bartender leaned into him and said in a low, urgent voice, as though he were afraid she’d hear, “She’s lost her kids and been evicted and’s now living in that shelter on Second Avenue.”

“Shelter?” Don Renzo said, as though the idea of it were a horror. 

But he couldn’t care less about the woman.  She wasn’t even good to look at.  He did feel good about the bartender, however, about the beer, and about the bartender’s taking him into his confidence, all of which made him feel safe.  The fear of San Battista had permeated him, his hands and his feet and his gut, and he struggled to keep it out of his mind, but every time he touched it with even the edge of his awareness, he felt a thrill of panic, which aroused his impulse to run.

“What kind of place is that?” he asked, a thought occurring to him.

“Don’t ask.  You don’t want to know about it.  From what she tells, I’d rather shoot myself than go there.  Poor thing.”

“How bad can a place be?” Don Renzo asked, thinking about the Saxon Arms and his cot under the window. 

“Don’t talk about it when she comes back,” the bartender said, pleadingly.  “Don’t set her off.  I can’t stand it when she gets that way.”

“If it’s church people that make it bad, I can give her some advice.  They’ll leave you alone if you yes them to death.  As soon as they come at you, just make the sign of the cross, you know, and smile and say, ‘Hello brother’ or ‘Hello sister’ and they’ll stuff you with food and give you the best pillow in the place.  I’ve been through that.”

“It’s not like that.  Where’ve you been?  Besides, she had her own place, you know, a good life.  It’s the losing of everything you had.  She’s been bombed.  Poor thing.  Her husband that’s dead three years in an accident left her with insurance that the company’s found seventeen reasons not to pay, and then the kids being taken, and losing her apartment. . . .”

He stopped talking when he saw her come through the door and grabbed the towel and began wiping his hands, as though he had just had them in the sudsy water below, washing glasses.  She had come through the door with a large plate in one hand and a bowl in the other.  She put them on the bar in front of Don Renzo—a ham and cheese sandwich with pickles and fries and a bowl of vegetable soup with a spoon in it.  She went back to the kitchen and returned with a bottle of ketchup and put that in front of him, too.  Then she leaned on the bar exactly as she had when he first came in, and again he could see her bra and the round of her breast through the gap between the buttons in her blouse. 

Don Renzo took out another twenty and put it on the bar and told the bartender to pour three.  The man behind the bar looked pleased as he took the last of the bills from the first twenty and the second one, rang up the register, and brought no change.  Then he poured the beers.  The woman took the offered glass and, saying nothing, leaned on the bar and sipped lightly. 

“Hey, how come there’s no one here?” Don Renzo asked with a mouthful of sandwich.  “Is it always like this?”

“We’re between times.  Till about four,” the bartender replied.  “Then they start comin’ in.  We get slow right now.  Lunch business dies about one thirty, two o’clock.  Then we get a couple hours before it starts again.”

“Look,” Don Renzo said to the bartender, glancing at his watch and seeing it was just after three, “If I could send what’s her name on an errand for me, I’d make it worth her while, and yours.”

“Like what?” he said.

Don Renzo fetched his office key from his pocket and held it out to the woman.

“If you go to my office and get some things for me,” he said to her, “I’ll pay you a hundred dollars.”  Then, to the bartender, “A hundred each.”

They looked at each other and then at him, the woman saying skeptically, “You got an office?”

“Yea, I got an office,” he shot back woundedly.

“Whyn't you go yourself?” she said.

“Because I’m comfortable,” he said, sarcastically.  “Because if you don’t want the cash, I’ll go myself and keep it in my own pocket.  No sweat off my nose.  I guess you're rich enough you don’t need the money.”

“OK, OK,” the bartender said.  “No need to talk like that.  She can go if she wants to.  If she can be back by four.”

Don Renzo took out his wallet and gave the woman a twenty. 

“Take a taxi,” he said.  “Go to the Saxon Arms on Thirty Second Street.  Take the stairs up to the first floor.  My office is number twenty-two.  Let yourself in.  Across the room is a file cabinet.  In the top drawer there’s one folder with some things in it, and on the desk beside the computer there’s a big envelope.  Put the stuff in the folder from the drawer in the envelope and bring it back here.  That’s all you gotta do.”

If Don Renzo had acted on his first impulse—to hide out in the shelter where the woman stayed—he might have lived to see another day, though his prospects after that were never good.  The woman saw no one when she let herself into Don Renzo’s office.  And she saw no one as she locked the door behind her when she left.  She did not, while she was there, resist the impulse to look through the bank book and the statements she gathered, and she breathed heavily when she saw the numbers, knew no good was going to come of what she was doing, and trembled. 

She despised the man who sent her, with his ingratiating demeanor towards the bartender, his sarcasm towards her and his rattiness.  He did look like a dried-out water rat, even to the beady eyes and whiskers.  She despised him—yet she knew from what she grasped in her hand that he was in trouble, and she feared for him.  She feared for him because she did not resist the impulse to look through the bank book; and when she saw the yellow fish swim across the monitor on the desk and touched the mouse to see what the screensaver hid, she couldn’t resist reading the e-mail, which was still there, that had sent Don Renzo into his flight for life.  Even she knew the name San Battista, knew, as she held her breath, what seeing it here, in this room, meant for her.  She trembled as she took the steps down to the lobby, she shook as she stepped onto the sidewalk, and she held her breath as she felt eyes stabbing at her back.  She had never been so afraid. 

She thought in the taxi what she would say to him.  Run!  Take your things and Run!  As far away as you can! She thought what he would say to her, how he would condemn her for looking, and knowing.   And she thought what it meant—for her.  Knowing.  Her breath came in thick pants from the fear, and she couldn’t control the trembling. 

She wanted the taxi ride to last forever, to last long enough at least for her to think what to do.  But long before she was ready to quit the cab, she was there.  She sat for a moment undecided whether to get out when the cabby bitched at her, so she paid him and opened the door and crouched through onto the street.  Her head was filled with the buzz of fear and panic.  “This man,” she thought, “this river rat, he comes in, just like that! sits down, and I’m gonna die!  We’re both gonna die!  Oh, God!  Oh, God!”  She kept saying—“Oh, God!”—as she trotted across the sun-blazoned asphalt to the sidewalk, stepped across into the shade of the building, and pulled on the heavy door, and even the familiar smells of inside didn’t calm her.

When she came in, Don Renzo spun on his stool, and said, “The lady’s back!”  But the sight of her face stopped him.  All the while she was gone—as though she were the one who filled the place—the emptiness of the inn made him feel uneasy, like someone was there, someone he couldn’t see but who could see him.  It made him nervous, and he kept turning and looking over his shoulder at the otherwise silent and dim spaces that seemed to loom menacingly behind him, and when the bartender spoke, he looked carefully into his face to make sure the bartender was speaking to him.  The man on the other side of the bar noticed his customer’s uneasiness but refrained from saying anything about it.  After Don Renzo finished his meal, however, the bartender refilled his glass and didn’t ask to be paid.  He hoped the gesture would calm the man.  And it seemed to, until the waitress returned.  But now, seeing the panic in her face, Don Renzo lost all semblance of calmness.  He leaped to his feet, his heart pounding, and said, “What? What? What’s the matter?”

She rushed between the tables and threw the large envelope at him, which he fumbled and dropped to the floor.  As he stooped to pick it up, she ranted, “You miserable bastard, you son of a bitch. . . .”

“Hold on, lady,” Don Renzo interrupted, feeling weak.  “Calm down, calm down,” he said whiningly, trying to calm himself.  “What happened?  Was anyone there?  Did anyone follow you?”  He clutched the envelope to his chest and opened the flap to look in.  He saw the bank book and the sheaf of statements and breathed heavily, clutching the envelope greedily again his chest.

“Look, don’t be afraid,” he said to her, “we’re in the money now.  Look, I can give you more than a hundred bucks.  A lot more.  This is a lot of dough,” he said, lifting the envelope towards her.

“Big deal,” she shouted, slapping it away.  “It ain’t gonna do you no good, nor me, nor ANYbody,” she shrieked, approaching hysteria.  She tried to calm herself and turned her back on him, going over to the window and looking out.  Then she looked over to the bartender and said, a touch of panic still in her voice, “San Battista’s after him.  After HIM, and now I’m mixed up in it, and now you.”

The bartender’s eyes widened as what she said became real to him.  “San Battista!” he whispered, making the sign of the cross.  The name caused his hands to shake, and for a moment he stared into the room, imagining the quick death exploding from the anonymous hand of someone mixed in the evening crowd.

“Hold on,” Don Renzo said, trying to keep down the panic that was pushing on him, too.  “She’s right.  She’s right.  But you don’t have to worry.  You’re nobody.  Nobody’s gonna do anything to you.  The thing is, lady, did anyone see you at my place?  Did anyone?”

“How should I know,” she said angrily.  “You think I walked around and asked?  I don’t know anybody there.  I saw other people, yes.  What do I know?”

“You have to get outa here,” the bartender said, finally, decisively.  “You gotta go.”

Don Renzo paused and looked at the bartender.  For the briefest of moments the thought crossed his mind that he owed the man something, and the woman, but it didn’t last.  The bartender’s advice was his excuse to drop it and to run.  But now he had the money, or access to it!  All he needed to do now was get out of Manhattan, get to anywhere at all, and find a bank.  Within days, he’d be free.  He could go anywhere.  He felt a hot flow of joy rise up in place of the panic.  “Here,” he said, putting the envelope on the bar, “write your names and addresses on this, and I’ll send you some bucks.  Really.  I will.”  He was feeling expansive and generous, though he knew in his heart he wouldn’t do it.

“Nah,” the bartender said, “not gonna do it.  Best not.  Don’t want my name, nor hers, on that.  You get to somewhere safe, just send it to the bar here.  I get the mail, I’ll know who it’s from.”  He felt too nervous to put the thought to himself explicitly, but it came half formed and full of feeling, anyway—“Safe?  Safe?  I don’t want any part of that money. . . .  No one’s safe.”

Don Renzo stepped over to the long blind-covered window that looked onto the sidewalk, drew the slats apart, and peered out.  Seeing nothing unusual, he felt stirred by confidence.  But his sense of caution, instinctive and on more than one occasion life-saving, prompted him to ask about the back exit, the one indicated by the sign near the restrooms.  The bartender told him there was an alley for the garbage trucks with parking along the backs of the two buildings, and that his car was there. 

“Hmmm,” Don Renzo thought, “his car.”  As he crossed between the tables, he wondered how he might induce the bartender to let him have it.  “Wouldn’t that be perfect?” he thought.  “A car, just what’s needed.  It’s like there’s an angel looking after me.”  He felt that way, he felt a sense of being gifted, somehow.  First, the bankbook comes into his hands, and then a car.  He came to this place desperate, and now he had everything, even access to a car!  A car!  A car meant escape, for real.  Over the Triboro and away. 

It was a heavy, steel-framed door with a push bar lock.  He leaned on the heel of the bar and shoved it back, twisted the knob, and pulled.  The door creaked open and the grainy light of the alley came in.  He stood for a moment before looking out; then, holding onto the jamb, he leaned into the alley and scanned both directions.  There were two men, leaning against the other building, just beyond the dark green dumpster a few feet to the right of the door.  They looked at him and immediately stood up.  Don Renzo pulled himself in and slammed the door shut, shoving the bar back into its socket in the jamb.  They were young, the two men, in their twenties, both clean shaven and nice looking in faded jeans and worn-out Nikes, one in a sweatshirt, the other a leather jacket.  He knew why they were there.  No mistaking.  The woman had been followed.  If they were in the back, they would be out front, too.  His hair was tingling on the back of his neck, and the sense of panic made his ears ring.  He could hardly breathe.

He floated back into the bar.  The waitress, seeing his face, moaned dolefully, “Oh, God, oh, God,” and said, “They’re out there, aren’t they?”

“Trapped,” Don Renzo said.  “There’s no way out.  I shouldn’a stayed here, shouldn’a stayed.  What was I thinking?”  He was looking at the bartender pleadingly for something, anything, he might say—another way out, getting to the roof, the basement, another way, but the bartender only shrugged. 

“They followed me, didn’t they?” the woman said, almost hysterically.  “They think I’m part of whatever you’re doing.  They’re going to kill me too, aren’t they?  Aren’t they?” she shouted, her hysteria now full blown.  She ran to the bar as though it were a place of safety and the bartender someone who could rescue her.

“No, no,” Don Renzo said, his ears buzzing with panic, his body shaking.  “Why you?  You’re nothing, nothing to them.”  He was too excited to explain, to say anything to calm her down.  But he wanted to, for her fear was so palpable it made him feel his own a little less.

The bartender had gone to the long window and raised a slat and peered out.  He raised it barely enough to see through, keeping his head behind the lighted Budweiser fixture to make it harder for anyone outside to see him looking.  He dropped the slat and came back to the taps behind the bar. 

“There’s someone standing by the door,” he said.  “Dressed in black.  That’s all I can see.”

“Run and lock it,” the woman said urgently.  “Hurry, run and lock it!”

“What good’s that gonna do?” the bartender said as he came round the bar and started to cross between the tables.

“We can call the police,” she said.  “If we keep them out until they come . . . . ,” she didn’t finish.

“That’s the worst thing you can do,” the bartender said, locking the door and leaving the key in the lock.  He went and sat at one of the tables, putting his head in his hands.

“Why?  When they come, they’ll get us out of here, we’ll be OK.”

“No,” the bartender said.  “You won’t be OK.  If you call the police, you’ll be OK today, tonight, maybe tomorrow.  But San Battista will be pissed off, and worse, he’ll think we’re involved with him,” he said, nodding at Don Renzo.  “And that’ll be the end for us.  We gotta find another way.”

“Why hasn’t he come in yet?  Why are they just waiting out there?” the woman said, thoughtfully, feeling, for the moment, safer with the door locked.  “If they followed me, they have to have been there ever since I got back.  What are they waiting for?”

“I don’t know,” Don Renzo said. 

“They’re waiting for you to come out, that’s what they’re doing,” the bartender said, his voice a bit shaky.  “No witnesses.  They’ll grab you off the street and take you somewhere.  Who will know?  Maybe San Battista will do it himself.”

Comforting thoughts—who will know!  San Battista himself!  Don Renzo became calm and very attentive, now, attentive and sensitive to the bartender and the waitress.  He felt it was odd that he should have been calm.  It was a different calmness than the one he felt when he left the hotel and walked to the bus stop.  The one was produced by distraction, the other by concentration.  The bartender and the waitress were still trembling.  He was street smart and she had her problems.  Both were pale and full of fear.  All three were now sitting at the table.  Don Renzo fiddled with a menu, like he was going to place an order.  Instead, he placed his big envelope in the woman’s hands.  But he was thinking about something else. 

These two strangers, people he had known for only two hours, maybe not even that, being threatened by the same peril that menaced him, had suddenly become a part of him, of his life—they trembled while he was calm!  He saw the fear in their faces and recognized it.  The bartender was right, they—San Battista, his men—were waiting for him to walk out.  They weren’t going to force their way in here. His disappearance would be neat.  No one would know, no one but these two.  He felt calmed by that. 

He felt calmed knowing that if he did disappear, when he did disappear, it would be all over.  And these would be witnesses.  For some reason this calmed him.  He didn’t know why, but he felt it.  They wouldn’t be witnesses to his death—like the bartender said, no one was going to witness that; and not to San Battista’s involvement in it, for that isn’t how he worked.  They would be witnesses because they would know.  And this calmed him, mysteriously.  Their knowing.  It made him feel brotherly toward them—they were so frightened.  It was something he never felt before, this feeling of brotherliness.  He had brothers, a sister, but he only ever felt contempt for them, as far back as he could remember.  He thought about the bartender and the waitress, about their white-faced and palpable fear.  He knew nothing about them, except what the bartender told him about why the woman was living in a shelter.  He didn’t even know their names.

“Come to think of it,” the waitress said, numbly, as though she were dreaming, “there was a man in black right beside the door when I left, and he was there when I came back."