Free Westlake, Donald E - Novel 32 by Cops (and) Robbers (missing pg 22-23) (v1.1) Page A

possibility Mr. Vigano might decide to kill me.
I couldn’t think of any reason for him to do it, but I couldn’t discount the
possibility. I admired the kitchen rather than think about that.
                 The
frisker came back and said to the other two, “We take him to Mr. Vigano.”
                 “Fine,”
I said. I said it partly because I wanted to be sure my voice was still
working.
                 The
frisker led the way. The other two took my arms again, and we left the kitchen
in a group.
                 It
was a weird sort of stop-and-go method we had, the four of us, traveling
through the house. First the frisker would go on ahead through a doorway or
around a comer, and then he’d come back and nod to us, and the rest of us would
move forward and catch up with him. At which point we’d stop again, and he’d go
on to the next phase of the trip. It was like being a piece on a board game, something
like Monopoly or Sorry, moving one square at a time. I don’t know if the idea
was that they didn’t want me to be seen by members of Vigano’s family who
weren’t a part of the mob operation, or if he had Mafia people staying with him
that I wasn’t supposed to see and maybe identify. But whatever their intention
the result was that I got a slow-paced guided tour of the first floor of
Vigano’s house.
                 It
was a strange house. Either Vigano had bought it furnished from the previous
owner, who had been somebody with a lot of good taste, or he’d had the thing
done for him by an expensive decorator. We went through rooms filled with
obviously valuable antiques, graceful furniture, flocked wallpaper, crystal
chandeliers, heavy draperies, all sorts of tasteful and quietly expensive
things; just the kind of surroundings Fm happiest among. But then on the wall
there’d be hanging some lousy painting of a crying clown, with real rhinestones
sprinkled on his hat. Or a lovely marble-topped table would have one of those
ashtrays on it made of a flattened gin bottle. Or a modern black parson’s table
would have a lamp on it composed of a fake brass statue of two lions trying to
climb up the trank of a tree and the shade would be cream-colored with purple
fringe. Or a room with a beautiful wallpaper would
have one of those porcelain light-switch plates in a free-form star shape.
Absolutely the most amateurishly done bust of President Kennedy I’ve ever seen
was sitting on a huge gleaming grand piano, next to a green glass vase with
pussy willows in it.
                 And
finally, at the end of the guided tour, they took me through another door and
down a flight of stairs and into a bowling alley.
                 It
was amazing. A one-lane bowling alley in the basement, a long
narrow brightly lighted room like a pistol- practice range . There was
the normal kind of curved leatherette settee behind the lane, and Vigano
himself was sitting there alone. He was wearing a gray sweatsuit and black
sneakers and a white towel around his neck, and he was drinking beer from a
Pilsner glass. A bottle of Michelob was on the score table.
                 Down
at the far end of the lane, a heavy thirtyish guy in a black suit was setting
up the pins. He was another hood, like the two who’d brought me in and who now
stood back by the door, waiting to be called on.
                 I
moved forward to the settee. Vigano turned his head around and gave me a heavy
smile. He had heavy-lidded eyes; it was as though he only allowed the dead part
of his eyes to show, the living parts were hidden away behind the lids. He
looked at me for a few seconds, and then put the smile away and nodded at the
settee. “Sit down,” he said. It was a command, not hospitality.
                 I
stepped through the central opening in the settee and sat on the side opposite
Vigano. Down at the other end of the lane, the hood in the black suit