“What were you trying to pull?” Gennaro demanded.
A crease appeared on Pinkie’s brow. “Pull? I don’t know what you mean.”
“I’m talking about my money.” He shot a glance at the bills Miguel had tossed down. “That’s not mine. Miguel…Miguel had those hidden on him, didn’t he? You guys were trying to convince me it was from the briefcase.”
“Why would we do that?”
“I don’t know. Some kind of plan to trick me out of what was mine.”
“Ricky, Miguel wasn’t tricking you.”
“You’re lying!”
“Check for yourself,” Pinkie said, motioning to the open briefcase with his eyes.
Gennaro stared at him for a long moment, then twisted the briefcase around with his free hand so that the cash was facing him.
“Don’t you move!” he ordered.
“I won’t. I promise.”
Gennaro took a quick look at the briefcase. As expected, it was full of money, all one-hundred-dollar bills.
“Nice try,” he said to Pinkie. “It’s all there.”
Pinkie frowned as if he were disappointed, then shook his head. “If you’re that easily deceived, it’s a wonder you’ve gotten as far as you have.”
Gennaro thrusted the gun toward him a few inches. “Shut up!”
“Check the bills.”
“I said shut up!”
Pinkie shrugged and leaned back, saying nothing.
Gennaro held out for exactly five seconds before heblindly grabbed one of the packets and lifted it high enough so he could see it while keeping an eye on Pinkie.
He thumbed through them. The only hundred was the bill on top. The rest were ones.
“What the fuck?”
As he picked up another packet, the room seemed to momentarily spin. He ignored the sensation as best he could and checked the new bills.
More ones. He looked down and he could now see that the packets below the top layer didn’t even have a hundred-dollar bill on top.
His first thought was that Fratelli had played him.
But then another thought hit him. More an image, really, of the two duffel bags Rosa had been carrying when she’d brought him the case.
“No,” he whispered to himself, not wanting to believe she’d betray him like that. “It couldn’t be—”
He heard the floor creak, and he jerked his head up.
Pinkie was no longer in his chair but was lifting the gun that had been on the floor next to Toomey.
The room swam again as Gennaro pulled his trigger. Pinkie let off a shot as he stumbled backward.
Then both men fired again for the last time.
