by Ray Celestin
Costello nodded, took a sip from the espresso cup in front of him. Part of Gabriel’s role as manager of the Copa was to keep his boss appraised on the comings and goings of the city’s elite. Nightspots were often where powerful men slipped up.
‘I saw Jack Warner outside,’ Gabriel said. ‘And there’ve been a few movie-men from LA in the Copa the last few days. Any idea what’s going on?’
Costello shrugged in that way of his. ‘These government hearings into the commies,’ he said. ‘There’s a meeting next week at the Waldorf to figure out what the plan is. I guess a few of them are trickling in early. You know how movie folks are.’
Gabriel nodded and looked over at his boss. Costello was a swarthy man in his fifties, with a generous nose, a lined face, and olive-black hair combed straight back. He wore an impeccably cut drape suit, its navy-blue fabric making his sunlamp tan look all the more unnatural.
‘So what did you call me in for?’ Gabriel asked, drumming his fingers on the brim of his hat to the incessant conga rhythm in his head. He wanted to get things over with as soon as possible. Discover his fate. A ditch upstate or the beach in Acapulco.
Adonis and Costello shared a look. Gabriel tensed, waited for the inevitable. He swallowed panic, pushed it down into the bottom of his stomach, where a whole rhythm section had struck up.
‘Vernon Hintz,’ said Costello, finally. ‘We caught him on the take.’
Gabriel nodded. Relief flooded through him but he tried not to show it. It wasn’t about the race track. It was something to do with Hintz, a money launderer who cleaned cash for all New York’s five crime families.
‘And?’ Gabriel asked.
‘And he isn’t on the take anymore,’ said Adonis.
Meaning Hintz was now in a ditch somewhere.
‘Poor Vern,’ Gabriel said. ‘I liked the guy.’
‘Sure,’ said Adonis. ‘He was nice. Apart from being a thief.’
‘What’s the world coming to when your money launderer cooks his books,’ Gabriel quipped.
Adonis glared at him. Costello suppressed a smile.
‘Anyway,’ said Costello, ‘before Hintz departed our presence he told us a few things to ingratiate himself, stave off the inevitable.’
Gabriel nodded, wondering, as he had done for months now, where Costello was getting his vocabulary from.
‘Hintz told us a story,’ said Adonis. ‘About this Benny Siegel business.’
‘Which business?’ Gabriel asked, for Benny Siegel left a lot of business in his wake.
Costello leaned forward. ‘Hintz told us that when Benny was in New York last summer, he approached Hintz and asked him to launder two million dollars for him. Cash.’
‘Cash?’ Gabriel repeated.
Adonis and Costello both nodded wearily and things started to make sense.
Benjamin Siegel was the New York Mob’s representative out in Los Angeles. A few years previously, Siegel had had a hare-brained scheme to build a luxury hotel and casino in Las Vegas, a backwater town in the middle of the Nevada Desert. He drummed up three million in financing from his mobster friends back in New York. Spent it all before he’d even started construction. Put the bite on for another three million. Spent that. Then came to New York looking to borrow yet more money. Ended up borrowing another two million, much of it from Costello. Eventually the casino – named The Flamingo, after Siegel’s long-legged girlfriend – opened its doors, way behind schedule, and way over budget. It was a flop. It hemorrhaged yet more money. Someone got fed up and gunned Siegel down with a 30-30 military carbine while he sat drinking coffee on the girlfriend’s sofa in Beverly Hills.
Now Costello, via the dearly departed Hintz, was suggesting Siegel had never planned to put the last two million of borrowed money into his Las Vegas pipe-dream.
‘So Benny borrowed money from everyone in town for the casino,’ said Gabriel. ‘And then tried to steal it?’
Costello leaned back in his seat. ‘That’s about the size of it,’ he said.
‘It’s an OK scam,’ Gabriel said. ‘Benny knows the casino’s going bust, so he asks everyone for money, pretends he’s putting it into the casino, then when the place closes down he tells them all the money got lost in the bankruptcy. Except it didn’t.’
From the lounge, a round of laughter rose up. Gabriel thought he could hear Bova’s cackle rising up above the fray.
Costello let the laughter subside. Gabriel looked through the window at the washed-out image of Central Park.
‘Benny arranged to deliver the money to Hintz, in cash, but he never did,’ said Costello. ‘We had Joe Katz fly out to the Flamingo a few weeks ago. Look the books over. Can you guess what he found?’
‘Accounting irregularities?’ said Gabriel.
Costello nodded. ‘The two million never entered the corporation bank accounts, or any of Benny’s personal accounts. It wasn’t in the safe at the Flamingo, or at his house, or at that whore of a girlfriend’s house. It wasn’t in any of her accounts either. Not even the Swiss ones Lansky set up.’
‘He didn’t have the money when he got off the plane from New York,’ Adonis interjected.
‘How’d you know?’ Gabriel asked.
‘We spoke to his driver, and that Polak accountant him and Dragna use, and a customs agent at the airport who runs frisks for us,’ said Adonis. ‘Unless he threw the money out the plane halfway between here and California, it’s still in New York.’
‘Our two million bucks is out there somewhere,’ said Costello, waving a hand in the air, gesturing to the window, to Central Park, to New York, to the ether.
This was why Gabriel had been asked here. He and Benny were old friends, fellow yids. Gabriel knew Benny’s pals, possibly knew his stash spots. Plus Gabriel had money-laundering experience, had done jobs like this in the past. In Gabriel’s head, the congas beat their panic rhythm once more.
‘So Benny left two million dollars of your stolen money in New York,’ said Gabriel, ‘and you want me to find it?’
Costello nodded. Took a last sip of his espresso. ‘That’s about the size of it.’
There was no way Gabriel could get it done in the ten days he had before leaving town. If at all. And he had to get it done before he left or he’d never escape. And he couldn’t refuse because that would look just as suspicious. He was trapped. He wanted to light a cigarette but didn’t have enough confidence in his hands just yet, so kept them tapping away that conga rhythm on the felt of his Stetson.
‘There’s something else,’ said Costello.
He turned to look at Adonis, gestured for him to take up the thread.
‘When Benny came to see Hintz asking to launder the money, Hintz started telling him about all the fake companies he’d have to set up, all the accounts, giving him a breakdown of how much it would all cost. Benny told him he didn’t have to set up any accounts, he could move the money through some companies Hintz had already set up for one of the other families.’
Adonis raised his eyebrows, let Gabriel do the sums on what that meant. All the city’s crime families used Hintz. If what Hintz had said was true, Benny had conspired with one of the other four families to steal the money.
‘Did Hintz say which family?’ Gabriel asked.
Adonis shook his head grimly.
‘Hintz said Benny never mentioned the other family,’ Adonis explained. ‘He was supposed to come back to New York to arrange all the details but he ended up splattered all over Virginia Hill’s sofa before he could.’
Gabriel looked at them both. ‘What about Genovese?’ he said. ‘He must have an account with Hintz.’
Costello’s face soured at the mention of his traitorous underboss.
‘Benny and Genovese got sore with each other last year sometime,’ Costello said. ‘They hated each other. There’s no way they’d work together on this.’
‘You sure?’ Gabriel asked.
‘Sure, I’m sure. Don’t even think about it,’ said Costello.
Gabriel eyed his boss, wondering why he was so quick to brush aside the Genovese angle.
‘You see Benny when he was out here?’ Costello asked.
‘Sure,’ said Gabriel. ‘He popped by the Copa to say hello.’
Gabriel thought back to the previous summer, to Benny’s last trip to New York, making the rounds of the city’s Mafia families trying to scrape together the ill-fated two million. Benny had come by the Copa with his usual entourage of movie stars and ingénues and mobsters. They’d talked, in private, and Gabriel got the sense there was something on Benny’s mind, something beyond his money problems and the hole he’d dug for himself in the Nevada desert. Gabriel had got the sense that Benny wanted to tell him something, but didn’t have the heart. At the time Gabriel had dwelled on it, but as the days passed he’d forgotten all about it.
‘Did he seem himself to you?’ Costello asked.
Gabriel frowned, wondered if there was more to all this than Costello was letting on.
‘Sure,’ said Gabriel, lying. ‘Why wouldn’t he?’
Costello shrugged. Adonis cleared his throat. Gabriel got the feeling it might be a good idea to change the subject.
‘He might’ve banked it somewhere,’ Gabriel said. ‘With another launderer. If he did, it’s going to be hard to trace.’
‘Hintz said he was bringing it in cash,’ said Adonis. ‘Why would he risk banking it for the week he was back in California? And if he was stupid enough to bank it, then we want to know the name of the bank.’
‘So I’m gonna be looking for what?’ said Gabriel. ‘An attaché case stuffed with dollar bills stashed somewhere or other in the greater New York city area? He could have stashed it with one of his girls and she’s spent it all. Or dumped it in a locker in a train station. He could’ve taken a long-lease on an apartment and stuffed the money under the mattress. This is needle-in-a-haystack stuff.’
He looked at Costello, who met his gaze with an inscrutable expression.
‘Not an attaché case, Gabby,’ Adonis said. ‘Too small for a couple of mill. You’d be looking for a knapsack. Maybe a pair of ’em. Those big military ones.’
Adonis grinned, all teeth, no warmth. Costello glared at him. Gabriel sweated.
‘You’re good at this kind of thing,’ said Costello, turning to Gabriel. He took a linen napkin from the desktop, wrapped it round his forefinger and commenced massaging his gums and teeth. ‘Ask around,’ he said. ‘See what you can find. I need this money, Gabby.’
There was a hint of desperation in Costello’s voice. The man had urged all the other families to invest in Benny’s Las Vegas pipe-dream, and when Benny had lost all their money, Costello was made liable for their losses. Frank Costello, prime minister of the underworld, boss of all bosses, was in hock to the tune of millions to all the city’s other crime families. And now it turned out one of those families had helped steal the borrowed money. If the investigation wasn’t handled sensibly, it could lead to New York’s first Mafia war in nearly two decades.
‘No one else knows that the money’s still on the loose?’ asked Gabriel.
‘Just us,’ said Costello. ‘And it needs to stay that way.’
Gabriel nodded. If any of the other families found out, they’d go searching for the money themselves, find it, pretend they hadn’t, and still press Costello on the debts.
‘Find the money,’ said Costello.
‘And find out which of the families was involved,’ said Adonis.
Gabriel thought about his slim chances of success, the fact that he was supposed to be skipping town the next week, the fact that he had to find the money before he left or he’d never be free of them, about all his years of careful planning unraveled at the eleventh hour. ‘Sure thing,’ he said, steadily, over the sound of the congas pounding away in his head.
7
Monday 3rd, 8.32 a.m.
Gabriel caught a cab back to his flat on East 64th, a classic seven on the tenth floor of a Gilded Age apartment block. He floated up in the elevator, unlocked his door and stepped through the hallway into the lounge. He’d rented the place fully furnished – flocked wallpaper, fusty old paintings, a smattering of ancient sofas and chaise-longues – and could only guess at the identity of its previous tenant.
He could hear the shower going in the bathroom, and Mrs Hirsch pottering about in the kitchen. He headed over to the drinks trolley to pour himself a ‘nightcap’, and nearly slipped on the carpet of comic books strewn across the parquet. He sighed and leaned down to pick them up. Adventure Comics, Marvel Mystery Comics, All-Star Comics. In amongst them he found Sarah’s sketchbook and a few loose pencils. He laid the lot next to the decanters on the drinks trolley, poured himself a Glenlivet, downed it, poured another, and stared out of the window into the streets below, the corner of 64th and 4th. A trio of Negro nannies were pushing prams towards Central Park, a white woman in a neck fur was hailing a cab, a delivery van idled at the lights.
Gabriel looked at all this and then at the rooftops stretching north. He lost himself in the view, and as he always did when he was standing at a height, he day-dreamed of jumping off. For some reason he always imagined it to be an elegant act, a graceful swoop into nothingness, the wings on his back unfurling to save him. Though he knew from bitter experience that a death from a height was anything but serene.
So he thought instead about Benny’s missing millions and how the hell he was supposed to find the money in the next ten days. He thought about Benny coming to the Copa the previous summer, leaning against the bar, something he wanted to say, that haunted look in his eyes.
On the other side of the building, a train rumbled down the Third Avenue El tracks, sending a dull clattering into the air. Gabriel put the tumbler down, lit a cigarette and his gaze landed on Sarah’s sketchbook. He picked it up, flicked through it. Batman, Superman, The Shadow, Dick Tracy, a female figure Gabriel didn’t recognize with a cleavage that strained both the top of her dress and the laws of biology. Villains in an assortment of get-ups. All of them flying, punching, kicking, jumping. Sarah was talented; the figures rippled with life, even though most of them were only half-finished, trailing off at the edges into shading blocks, armatures, perspective lines, and then disappearing altogether into the misty white of the sketch pad.
He carried on flicking through the pad and came to other images that made him stop – Mexican images. Day of the Dead. Skeletons holding guitars and trumpets, wearing garlands and sombreros. Gangster skeletons dressed in suits, smoking cigars, holding tommy-guns hosing fire, which Sarah had colored in zigzagging orange and red.
‘Little early, isn’t it?’ said a nasal voice behind him.
He turned to see Mrs Hirsch standing in the doorway of the kitchen, hand on hip, an apron over a brushed-wool sweater.
‘You seen these?’ he asked, holding up Sarah’s Mexican sketches.
Mrs Hirsch frowned and limped over, her house slippers slapping on the parquet. She was past sixty and heavy in the hips. She took the sketches in hand, held them close to her eyes, squinted, focused.
Only three people knew about Gabriel’s plan. Gabriel, Sarah, and Mrs Hirsch, who, along with Gabriel, had raised Sarah since she was a baby, when Gabriel’s sister had been murdered.
‘This is not good,’ said Mrs Hirsch, looking up at him. ‘This is anxiety.’
‘You think?’ said Gabriel sarcastically.
Mrs Hirsch gave him a look. ‘Talk to her,’ she said. ‘You want a coffee to go with that whisky?’
Gabriel nodded. She turned around and limped back across the lounge.
‘You spend any longer perched in front of that window, you’ll turn into a gargoyle,’ she said as she disappeared into the kitchen.
It was a favorite saying of hers, maybe because Gabriel did spend so much time at the window. He turned, rubbed his temples and looked around the room. He’d made a few additions to the apartment – the police radio scanner, the strongbox, the pigeon coop on the roof, the drip
painting, which sat propped up against the wall next to the windows, unhung. He’d won it months ago from an art collector in a poker game. The man assured him it would be the next big thing, painted by a drunk from Wyoming who was set to be the new Picasso.
It depicted nothing but spots and splashes, made by the painter dripping paint directly onto it. The splashes looped around each other, through each other, all different colors and thicknesses. When Gabriel was drunk or tired or had taken a few Bennies, the thing came to life, moved, shifted, danced. Gabriel could see the painter throwing the paint down, could see the movement the man’s arm had made all those months ago, the energy of it, the performance, recorded forever in the shape of the thing.
‘A man throws paint on a canvas and calls it art,’ said Mrs Hirsch, who was standing next to Gabriel holding out a cup of coffee. ‘I mean, actually throws paint. You got all these lovely paintings here and you stick that monstrosity up. Sarah could do better.’
Gabriel took the coffee, took a sip, felt sick. They both stared at the painting. He should hang it up, it would add more credence to the story he was going to ask the world to buy, that he and Sarah were happily settled in the apartment when intruders broke in and killed them.
Gabriel and Mrs Hirsch both turned to see Sarah standing behind them, staring at them as they stared at the painting.
‘I’ll get your food,’ Mrs Hirsch said to Sarah. She threw a knowing look Gabriel’s way then headed off into the kitchen.
Gabriel turned to look at his niece. She was dressed in a plaid skirt and a baggy brown sweater which set off her red hair. She had her mother’s face, the freckles, the milky skin, the rosy cheeks, as if newly scrubbed, an air of Alpine freshness. She was almost fourteen and the older she got, the more Gabriel saw his long-dead sister whenever he looked at her.
‘What?’ she asked.
He had to confront her over the sketches, but he didn’t have the heart. He was tired enough. He’d talk to her after he’d had some sleep, whenever that might be.
‘Nothing,’ he said.
They met like this twice a day – when he was returning home from work, she was leaving for school. In the evenings they passed each other coming the other way, their lives revolving in opposite orbits.