Irregular Verbs by Matthew Johnson Page B

had gone slack. After a minute he shook his head slowly, stepped aside. “Go in, then,” he said. “You tell Falcone those lumps were from me.”
    “Sure,” I said. “Thanks for the comp.” The way my jaw was rattling, though, I don’t know if he understood me.
    Falcone’s was a classy place, the kind where they spray the girls with a mister instead of just letting them sweat. Nina Simone was on the speakers, singing “Please Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” good and slow, and there was a girl at each end of the T-shaped stage following her rhythm. It was a little bit like the Stations of the Cross: you could get up and walk from clothed to undies to nude if you didn’t feel like waiting.
    I let my gaze drift from the stage and looked around the room. It was full of the same guys I had seen outside, slouched and embarrassed. They sat at the stage if they could, or else close to it, staring at the girls without blinking. A few of them chatted up the waitresses, dancers on their off-shifts, and every now and then one would slip the girl a bill and the two would vanish up the back stairs.
    Fratelli Falcone was sitting at a table near the back. Unlike his customers he faced away from the stage: he knew the dancers were there. A girl sat on either side of him. One of them was buttoned up in a shirt, jacket and tie, like a Catholic schoolgirl. The other was dressed about the same but the effect was different, with the tie loosened, the shirt halfway undone and the skirt about six inches further north.
    “Buddy,” Falcone said, spreading his arms wide as I came near him. He had a sharp face, with a nose you could use to climb mountains. A walking stick leaned against his knee and he wore a brown cape with a fringe like feathers. “So long since we’ve seen you.”
    I looked at one girl then the other, and finally tried to stare Falcone in the face. “Not my scene anymore,” I said.
    “Oh? And what are you into now?”
    I raised my hand to my still-aching jaw. “Being beaten up,” I said, “but to tell you the truth I’m getting tired of it. So how about we get right to business: what does the name Roger Adams say to you?”
    Falcone gave a slow, wide shake of the head, taking in a good look at each girl. “That is not a name I know,” he said. His voice was oilier than the grill at the Jackal’s. “Buddy my friend, I think you have been working too hard. How would you find a visit to the Champagne Room? On the house of course.”
    Despite myself I looked at the two girls: the first looked away demurely, while the second locked eyes with me and ran her tongue across her lips. I shook my head. “Another time,” I said.
    “These are my best girls, Buddy,” Falcone said. He sounded disappointed. “It’s never just business to them, they are very talented at making it seem natural.” He took his hand off the girl to his right and waved it in the air, looking for the right word. “Genuine.”
    “Is that what happened to Roger?” I asked. “Did he get too tight with one of these girls? Is that what he can’t let go?”
    “Please, Buddy. You know as well as I that, in my business, discretion is—”
    Before he could finish speaking his eyes went wide. I congrat-ulated myself for watching them, instead of the many more interesting things in the room: they gave me just enough warning to dive out of the way. Falcone had a few more seconds than I did but nowhere to go, and when the shot came a big red splotch opened up on his chest.
    I prayed the shooter was as distracted as I was and turned around, staying low. He was in the doorway, a dark shape in a long coat and hat turning away.
    “Hey!” I shouted. “You’re gonna shoot me, make it stick!”
    He didn’t slow. Swearing under my breath I stood up, checked on Falcone. He was dead. His two girls were comforting each other, and it took me a minute before I remembered why I had come.
    To my relief Zoe was still in the car. She looked startled when I