The Disappearing Body

by David Grand

  “That there is Boris Lardner’s brother, Sidney.” Benny turned to Sid. “I think you know Victor, Sid. This here, this is Faith Rapaport, your confessor.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Faith said.

  “It means Sid here is gonna take up at least a couple of paragraphs for your piece in the late edition.”

  “All right. I’ll take what I can get.”

  “We’ll get to that right now, as a matter of fact. Sidney?” Benny waved Sid back to his spot behind the counter. “Stand right where you were so I can see you nice and clear.”

  “Mr. Big Shot,” Sid said under his breath. “Always feel like you got the upper hand, don’t you?” He walked back around the counter and stood in front of Benny with his face looking like it was going to melt onto his case full of galoshes.

  “It appears,” Benny said, “that Sid here was palling around with these three dopes before his brother got it.” Benny handed Faith the picture he had just shown Sidney.

  “These are the bureau men?”

  Benny pointed them out. “Collins, Dubrov, Klempt.”

  “You don’t say.”

  “I do say.”

  “Why would you do that?” Victor asked Sid.

  “You want to let me in on what it is you think I know?” Sid said to Benny.

  “Victor,” Benny said.

  Victor with a great deal of satisfaction removed from an envelope the pictures given to him by the two grizzled men. He walked over to Sid’s counter and laid them out. Faith watched Victor’s tired and broken face as he looked Sidney over. “You set up your own brother?” Victor said to Sid. “And then were calling for my head?” Victor stood there in Sid’s face with his brow knit, grinding his teeth together.

  “It wasn’t like that,” Sid said as he looked over the pictures. “It wasn’t like that, I swear it. I honest to God never knew it was them.”

  “Then who did you think it was?” Benny asked.

  “For all I knew it was this bum. It didn’t matter who it was. It just was.”

  “Save it for the afterlife, Sid.”

  “There ain’t no afterlife where I come from.”

  “Then all the more reason to shame you here and now.”

  “What’s this all about?” Faith asked.

  “He gave his brother up to Shortz is what it’s about,” Benny said. “I been thinking about it for all these years—it all started with him, with Sid Lardner’s petty impish ambition. From inside this little man, from inside the little mind and heart of Sid Lardner,” Benny said with the fingers of his right hand pinched together tight, “all this unraveled. Boris got it. Victor got sent away for his murder. I got sent away in a frame. And you, dearest, lost your pop. All because this schmuck wanted a piece of Boris’s dope trade.” Benny laughed. “And look at what he ended up with.” Benny lifted his arms and waved at all the shoes. “Shoes. Smelly, broken shoes.”

  “It’s a living,” Sid said.

  Benny opened his attaché again and handed Faith the letter Sid had written to Boris all those years ago. “Make sure you run this with all the other goodies.” Faith took the letter and put it in her bag.

  “My brother was no angel,” Sid said as he watched Benny hand the letter to Faith.

  “No, he wasn’t. He was a bad character who probably deserved what he got. So it probably brought you a great deal of satisfaction to watch him go down for the fall.”

  “Now what is it you’re going on about?”

  “Don’t you love it how this guy is so persistent?” Benny said to Victor and Faith as he reached back into his attaché.

  “Not again,” Sid said.

  Benny had nothing but a big smile on his face as he produced a photo of Sid standing in the crowd on the el platform as Maurice Klempt attacked Victor with his gun. “How about that, Sid?” Benny showed the picture to Victor, then showed it to Sid.

  “Yeah, all right,” Sid said, sounding defeated, “you win. You got me.” Sidney threw up his hands and sat down on a stool. “I give up.”

  “Good.”

  “What are you gonna do with me?”

  “I’ll think about it. But for now, get.”

  “Get where?”

  “Back there. Get.” Benny walked around the counter and followed Sid into the back room. “Stay in there until I tell you otherwise.”

  Benny shut the door to the back room and locked it. He then handed the photo of Sid on the el platform to Faith. As she looked it over, he said, “Now, as for you, girlie, you seeing this picture full and clear?”

  “I think so.”

  “Why don’t you let Victor here in on it?”

  “Yeah, sure,” she said, looking over to Victor, who was back in his seat by the wall. “I think he deserves that much.”

  Victor leaned forward and listened as Faith’s eyes jumped back and forth between him and Benny.

  “Sid there,” Faith started hesitantly as she pulled a pad and a pen out from her bag and started writing, “he ratted out his brother to Shortz.”

  “That much we got figured out,” Benny said to Victor.

  “Shortz, in turn,” she said, looking to Benny for confirmation, “had Boris hauled in for peddling narcotics.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Shortz then twisted Boris into knots,” Faith said to Victor, “until he turned informant. Because, for the first time since he’d become commissioner, Shortz thought he had a clear shot at getting an indictment on the syndicate. But before Boris gave anything up,” she said, glancing to Benny, “Boris hired Mr. Rudolph to keep an eye on Shortz and his boys, hoping he’d be able to get himself out of his predicament with a little dirt.”

  Benny grunted an affirmation this time.

  “It just so happened,” Faith continued, “Benny here got lucky. He found out that the narcotics cops investigating the Triple Mark—Dubrov, Collins, and Klempt—were on the take, keeping the syndicate in business. Then, to top it off, he found out—from some South End whore—that Shortz, once upon a time, had played a little hanky-panky with a Hungarian prostitute. Before the affair ended, Shortz had knocked her up, and instead of doing the gentlemanly thing, instead of leaving his loaded wife, he bought the whore and the baby a house in the country and said goodbye and good luck.”

  “And good riddance,” Benny added.

  “Right,” Faith said. “It turned out the woman didn’t like the arrangement one bit and that Shortz had bullied her into it. She, being so angry and bitter about the whole thing, told Benny everything he wanted to know when he found her. He let Boris in on it all, and then Boris went to Shortz and let him in on the fact that he knew. To shut Boris up, Shortz let him off the hook, no strings attached. The charges were dropped and Boris was pardoned. But . . .”

  “Enter Mann and Roth,” Benny said to Victor. “You heard of Mann and Roth?”

  Victor nodded.

  “Mann and Roth didn’t buy it,” Faith continued. “They didn’t believe Boris was off the hook for a second. They thought it was some sort of a ruse. They thought Shortz had let him go so that he could inform on them from the inside. So, Mann and Roth, they blackmailed their bureau boys with pictures of them on the take, pictures of them having a little fun of their own, with some of the girls up at the Triple Mark. Thinking it might be the end of the good life, thinking they might get thrown in jail, Collins, Dubrov, and Klempt . . .” Faith paused for a second and turned to Benny. “It was Mann and Roth who had the pictures taken of Boris getting thrown off the el that day, wasn’t it? To keep Dubrov, Collins, and Klempt in line for the future.”

  Benny nodded. “You got it.”

  “Yeah . . .” Faith turned back to Victor. “Anyway, Collins, Dubrov, and Klempt, they threw Boris off the el. But something went wrong that day. Before Boris took the dive down, he reached into Klempt’s pocket and pulled out his wallet. Klempt must have figured out what happened and went down to the street . . . probably to get the wallet off Boris’s body. But when he s
aw you working Boris over yourself, in front of that crowd, he decided to wait. When you ran out of the shop, he followed you up to the el and tried to get the wallet back, but ended up getting himself kicked onto the tracks.”

  “So that’s how it was,” Victor said, looking to Benny.

  “That’s how it was,” Benny said.

  “With Klempt dead,” Faith went on, “Dubrov and Collins figured it was an easy frame job to make a dope fiend out as the killer. They supplied an eyewitness, got you convicted, and sent you upstate for their crime.”

  Victor just sat in his chair rubbing at the side of his face.

  “Sam Rapaport’s little girl, you are,” Benny said with enthusiasm to Faith.

  “Now, let me see if I got this part right,” Faith said, turning to Benny. “That same day, the day Boris got it, when Dubrov and Collins went to Boris’s apartment to arrest Victor, they found some papers that linked Boris to you, notes that you made that linked Dubrov and Collins to Mann and Roth.”

  “That’s right.”

  “When they told Mann and Roth about it, Mann and Roth cooked some books to make it look like you were getting paid by them to bully druggists into taking part in their action?”

  Benny nodded his head.

  “And based on that fabricated evidence, Dubrov and Collins went to a judge for a search warrant and ransacked your office and your apartment, looking for your notes. But you had them locked away in a safe place.”

  “That’s right.”

  “At International Trust Bank.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Where you and Sam shared a safety deposit box.”

  “Right as rain.”

  “And when they caught up with you and shook you down?”

  “I told them I didn’t know what they were talking about. They had a good laugh and then threw the cuffs on me.”

  “And the only one who knew the truth at that point was Sam?”

  Benny turned to Victor. “You remember Sam Rapaport, don’t you, Victor?”

  “Yeah, sure,” Victor said to Faith. “He was the only one who took the time to print my side of things.”

  “What I don’t get,” Faith said to Benny, while nodding at Victor, “is how they knew that my father had your notes.”

  Benny stopped the conversation for a second while he cleared his throat. “That,” he said after a moment, “I’m not sure you want to know.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s going to make you feel a bitterness you probably never felt before.”

  “Thanks for the concern,” Faith said, “but I’d like to hear it all the same if that’s all right with you.”

  “Like I said, you ain’t gonna like it, kid.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “So be it.” Benny took another dramatic pause. “Dubrov and Collins, they knew that your dad and me played at it together. They knew I handed your father stories for a little extra cash in hand.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Things only I could know about he ended up knowing,” Benny said as he tugged on his ear. “Sam gave me names—Bald Archibald, Billy Runyon . . . When I’d see the ANB boys around town, they’d rib me with the names Sam gave me. Anyway, Dubrov and Collins, they suspected that if I’d talked with Sam, the story would be going through Volman. And they suspected right.”

  “Marty?”

  “Marty Volman.”

  That shut Faith up. All of a sudden, Marty’s histrionics that afternoon made sense. That thing he’d said about pointing the finger at his pain made sense. She waited through a few moments of silence to let it sink in, but she still couldn’t believe it. “You don’t know that for sure, do you?”

  Benny looked into Faith’s eyes and slowly nodded his head. Benny opened his attaché again and reached in.

  “How?”

  “Because I know that your pop turned the story in to Volman. He wrote me a note saying so.”

  Faith paushed before she said, “You have that note?”

  “No, but I got something better than the note.” Benny pulled out a handwritten copy of the story itself with a note attached. He handed the note to Faith, and she recognized her father’s handwriting. Marty, Run this in the morning edition. If you need me, I’m keeping my head down at home. SR. And then nearly everything she had just recited to Benny appeared to be there in his story.

  “Sorry, kid.”

  “Why didn’t you ever show this to anyone?”

  “I just found it myself.”

  “Then where did you get it?”

  “Where I got everything else.”

  “Where?”

  “From Mann and Roth’s vault down in the cellar of the Triple Mark.”

  “How’d you manage that?”

  Benny just smiled.

  “You didn’t know they were gunned down this morning?”

  “Yeah, I heard,” Benny said, shaking his head. “Such a shame.”

  “You don’t seem too broken up.”

  “Maybe because I somehow expect people like that to get what they’re good at giving.”

  “I see. . . .” Faith all of a sudden looked a little disturbed by Rudolph, but shrugged it off. “So what you’re saying, then, is that Marty Volman told—”

  “What I’m saying is that when Marty Volman realized that he might go the way of Boris Lardner, he killed the story. He buried the evidence that would have gotten all those bastards—Mann, Roth, Eliopoulos, Dubrov, Collins, and Shortz.”

  Faith took a pause. “Who did it? Who killed Sam?”

  “Mann and Roth got Dubrov and Collins to do the dirty work.”

  “They made my father fire a gun into his own head by telling them they’d kill me if he didn’t?”

  “Pretty sinister, huh, Victor?”

  “I’m sorry,” Victor said to Faith.

  Faith ignored Victor and said to Benny, “And then they did the same to Crown this morning. That’s why you had me go down there.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And you were there when they did it, weren’t you?”

  Benny shrugged his shoulders. “I was around. I was keeping an eye on those two.”

  “Yeah,” Faith said, unnerved by it all. She didn’t know what else to say. She turned her head to Victor and just stared at him.

  “What?” Victor said after a moment.

  “What do you think of all this?”

  “Me?” Victor shook his head. “I think it’s stinking rotten is what I think.”

  Faith smiled at Victor absently. “When did they let you out of jail?”

  Victor looked to Benny.

  “Tell her,” Benny said.

  “Yesterday.”

  “Yesterday.”

  Victor nodded.

  “Kind of funny how it all happened at once, don’t you think? You get out of jail, then Crown gets it . . . Mann . . . Roth . . . Eliopoulos disappears . . . Shortz humiliated . . .”

  “Kinda,” Victor said.

  Faith turned her head back to Benny Rudolph and looked into his eyes again. “Long Meadow explodes?”

  Benny looked at Faith blankly, as if he weren’t following her.

  “It also happens that Victor’s father got killed in that explosion.” Faith looked back at Victor.

  Benny continued looking at Faith the same way Sid Lardner had been looking at Benny earlier, as though wondering what she was getting to.

  Faith stared into Benny’s eyes, waiting for him to say something, but his eyes were a couple of brick walls. “Anyway . . .” Faith said. “What if I can’t get Marty to run the story?”

  “He’ll run it.”

  “Why would he?”

  “He’s already been taken care of.”

  “By who?”

  Benny shrugged.

  “He already knows he’s going to take a fall?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Since when?”

  “Since this afternoon when I told him.”


  Faith thought about it some more. Thought about poor old Marty and his ulcer and that bottle of seltzer on his desk.

  “As soon as you’re finished, he’ll put out an extra. He’s there right now waiting for you.”

  Faith didn’t say anything. Thinking of going back to face Marty knowing what she knew, she put on her coat and hat, and felt a wave of melancholy.

  “Go write your article, sweetheart,” Benny said. “And one last thing . . .”

  “What’s that?” Faith asked, only half interested.

  “Don’t believe in men, Miss Rapaport. Don’t believe in one goddamn one of them. You’ll keep getting your heart broke, over and over again.”

  “Thanks, toots,” Faith said. She turned her back on Benny and Victor, stepped out into the lobby, and walked away.

  When Benny and Victor couldn’t see Faith anymore, Victor quietly said, “Why didn’t you tell me any of this when we were locked up together all those years?”

  Benny took a handkerchief from his jacket pocket and covered his mouth with it. A violent spasm took hold of his chest and he coughed it out. When he removed the handkerchief, a few specks of blood had splattered the already bloodstained cloth. He curiously looked at what had just come up. “I didn’t see any point in getting your hopes up,” Benny said, not trying to hide the handkerchief from Victor. “Getting my hopes up. I didn’t have any evidence, nothing to work with. Doing that kind of time with hope in your thoughts? That wasn’t for me.”

  “Maybe so,” Victor said, recalling the way time had weighed down on him when he was locked up.

  “Besides,” Benny continued, “I always knew when I got out five years ago I’d find a way to have my say about things.”

  “And that would be today, I take it?”

  “That’s right. I wanted to take my shot before it got too late.” Benny raised his brow and pinched his eyes narrow as he said this. He folded up the handkerchief and shoved it back into his pocket. “If you haven’t noticed, Victor, I ain’t sounding too good.”

  “You ain’t looking too good either.”

  “Yeah, thanks. . . . Funny how vengeance creeps up on a man when he feels the lights about to go out. There ain’t nothing worse than thinking that men a lot worse than you get to keep on breathing after they’ve stolen time from you.”