by R.J. Ellory
Neumann shakes his head. ‘He couldn’t make it.’
‘A shame . . . the char sui bun is very good indeed.’
Neumann smiles. ‘Another time perhaps.’
‘And McCaffrey?’
Neumann shakes his head. ‘Marie fucking Celeste.’
Marcus is quiet for a moment, and then leans forward, his voice hushed. ‘I said I wanted him found, Sol. I meant just that. I need him found within hours, not days. Tell your guys that the man who finds him is in for a twenty-five bonus.’
‘Ben—’
Marcus shakes his head. ‘I don’t want a discussion. I want McCaffrey. Twenty-five grand to the man who finds him.’
Neumann doesn’t reply.
Marcus reaches for a bottle of sake and then leans back in his chair. ‘So we eat,’ he says, and then fills glasses for them both.
Sol Neumann smiles, unfolds a napkin. Killing people makes him hungry.
TWENTY-NINE
Southside Johnny and the Asbury Dukes singing ‘Love On The Wrong Side Of Town’.
Jukebox back and to the left, like an old Wurlitzer. Coffee shop, quaint but hip, last man standing against the Seattle conglomerates. Tables with red and white-checkered cloths, waitress dressed like some old-time ’50s kind of theme. Button-badge said ‘Angela’.
‘Just straight,’ Duchaunak said. ‘None of this foam or steamed milk or walnut shavings or anything else . . . just straight coffee with cream and sugar.’
Angela smiled beautifully, like she didn’t even have to try and look good, just rolled out of bed like Veronica Lake. She turned to Harper. ‘And you, sir?’
‘Same again but no sugar.’
‘Anything to eat? Cinnamon Danish, Banoffee pie?’
Harper shook his head.
Angela looked at Duchaunak. Duchaunak asked if they did a plain ring donut. They did; he said he’d have one.
She drifted away with a degree of elegance and grace that belonged to a George Petty pin-up, not a coffee shop.
‘Pretty girl,’ Duchaunak said.
‘She is.’
‘You’re not married?’
Harper shook his head. ‘You?’
‘No, not married.’
‘Ever been?’
‘I look like the marrying kind to you?’
Harper smiled. ‘I know some girls that don’t give a rat’s ass what a man looks like.’
‘The kind of girl you pay for, right?’
‘No, not the kind of girl you pay for. What do you take me for? I don’t mean that kind of girl . . . I mean the kind that’s looking for a husband because the idea of having a husband and raising a family is more important than what the guy might look like.’
‘I don’t know any girls like that, and besides I’m not the marrying kind.’
‘How come?’
Duchaunak smiled wryly. ‘Cops are like nuns. They marry the lifestyle, the job. If they’re fortunate enough to find a girl who’ll put up with being second best all the time then good luck to them. I sure as hell haven’t seen a great number of my colleagues make a success of that kind of life.’
Angela returned. She set the cups on the table. A jug of cream, a bowl filled with sachets of sugar, some brown, some white.
Harper looked up at her. She was a very attractive woman; made him think of Cathy Hollander, wondered where she was, what she was doing.
Southside Johnny faded. Tom Waits started up with ‘The Ghosts Of Saturday Night’.
Duchaunak was sorting through the bowl of sugar sachets. He took out one of each, brown and white, and laid them side by side near his coffee cup. He went through a little ritual, picking up a sachet, holding it by the upper edge, flicking it so the sugar settled to the bottom. He tore the top, emptied half the sachet into his cup, and then folded it over neatly and put it on the table. Took a spoon and stirred his coffee – clockwise twice, anticlockwise three times. He did the same with the second sachet – flick, tear, pour, fold, stir – and then he took the first sachet, unfolded the top and emptied the remainder in his cup.
‘What the fuck is that?’ Harper asked.
Duchaunak looked up. ‘What?’ He glanced around the room as if there was something to see.
‘That shit with the sugar sachets.’
Duchaunak frowned.
‘The thing with opening them and putting half in your cup, and then this stirring routine . . . what the fuck are you doing?’
‘Er . . . it’s nothing . . . just a thing I do . . . like for good luck, you know?’
Harper shook his head, his eyes squinted. ‘You what?’
‘It’s nothing. It’s just a thing I do. Half and half, brown and white sugar.’
‘What’s the fucking matter with you? You got OCD or something?’
‘OC what?’
‘OCD. Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. You know, like people who have to turn the lights on and off five times before they can go to sleep. That kind of shit.’
‘No, I haven’t got OCD.’
‘Then what the hell’re you doing all that for?’
Duchaunak looked up at him. ‘Don’t make something out of nothing—’
‘You’re the one who’s making something out of nothing . . . all that opening sugar sachets and closing them up again for good luck. What normal person does that kind of thing?’
‘The company you’re keeping I don’t think you have any right to be making judgements on who’s normal and who’s not.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning that you got yourself into something deeper than—’ Duchaunak shook his head. ‘Christ, I don’t know, I can’t even think of a suitable metaphor for the depth of shit you’re in.’
‘So give me a clue.’
Duchaunak leaned back and sighed. ‘You ever seen The Godfather?’
‘Which one? It’s a trilogy.’
‘Ah fuck, I don’t know. I only ever saw one of them.’
Harper smiled. ‘Then you’re missing a great deal. You should go rent out all three of them and watch them back-to-back. Lot of people have an opinion about the third one—’
Duchaunak raised his hand. ‘I didn’t come here to talk about Godfather movies.’
‘You asked me if I’d seen the movie, right? You started this thing about The Godfather.’
‘I know I did. Hey, I’m sorry. Let’s back up a minute and start over.’
‘Sure, whatever you say.’
‘Right. Okay. So you seen some gangster movies.’
Harper nodded. ‘I’ve seen some gangster movies.’
‘So you know that people like that . . . well, people like that, they steal and kill one another and all that kind of thing.’
‘Sure they do. That’s what being a gangster is all about. That’s their job, isn’t it?’
‘So that’s who you’re dealing with right now.’
Harper didn’t reply.
‘You understand what I’m telling you, Mr Harper? The people you are associating with . . . Walt Freiberg, Cathy Hollander, yes?’
‘They’re gangsters . . . like in The Godfather. Gangsters like in the movies, right?’
Duchaunak smiled, then turned his mouth down at the edges. ‘Gangsters, hell I don’t know. The Godfather? It was just what came to mind. I was simply trying to give you a point of reference.’
‘A point of reference? Marlon Brando or Al Pacino? Or maybe Andy Garcia, eh? And Cathy Hollander? Is she more like Talia Shire or Diane Keaton?’
‘You’re missing the point, Mr Harper—’
‘The point? What point would that be, Detective? You come down here and run this same crap on me? What the hell is it with you?’
‘I’m doing my job—’
‘I don’t understand how this can be part of your job.’
Duchaunak leaned forward. He placed his hands flat on the table. ‘My job, Mr Harper, is to stop people breaking the law—’
‘And you’re here right now, right here in this coffee shop with me,
on official business, yes?’
Duchaunak paused, looked awkward.
Harper slid his coffee cup out of the way and leaned forward. ‘On official business, Detective, working on a case, an active case supported by your department, authorized by your precinct captain, and I am in some way directly or indirectly involved in an ongoing police investigation—’
Duchaunak gestured stop.
Harper fell silent.
The detective reached for his coffee cup. He drank some, set it down, pulled his jacket together and buttoned it in the middle. He started to rise from his chair.
‘What the fuck are you doing now?’ Harper asked. ‘You going to go to the bathroom three times before you can drink any more coffee?’
‘I’m sorry to have wasted your time, Mr Harper—’
‘You’re not leaving.’
Duchaunak frowned. ‘That a question or a statement?’
‘A statement,’ Harper replied. ‘Sit the fuck down for Christ’s sake. Sit down, drink your goddamned coffee, tell me what the fuck is going on here.’
Duchaunak looked uncertain.
‘Sit down,’ Harper repeated.
Duchaunak sat down. ‘You want to hear what I have to say?’
‘No, I don’t want to hear what you have to say, but I feel like I’ve got to at least give you the time of day. I’ve been here . . . what? Four days, give or take? You’ve been wandering around the edges of whatever the fuck is going on here the whole time. Every visit I make to the hospital you seem to be there. You went to see Evelyn, right? You’ve either got some weird compulsion playing out here, or there is something going on.’
Duchaunak leaned forward, almost a mirror-image of Harper. ‘I don’t believe there is something going on,’ he said quietly. ‘I know something is going on.’ His tone of voice and body language had taken on the air of something conspiratorial.
‘And what is it that you know is going on, Detective?’
Duchaunak shook his head. ‘Your father . . . your father is a man with a reputation.’
‘So I understand.’
‘What do you understand?’
Harper shrugged. ‘Hell, anyone who has a tailor has to either be loaded or royalty or something, right?’
‘His tailor,’ Duchaunak stated drily.
‘Sure, his tailor. Where the hell d’you think I got the clothes from?’
Duchaunak smiled. ‘His tailor . . . right. You mean Lawrence Benedict.’
‘Benedict. Mr Benedict. That’s him.’
‘And Walt Freiberg told you he was your father’s tailor?’
‘Sure. Didn’t only tell me. Took me over there and bought me a load of—’
‘Stolen designer suits, right? And before you say anything further, nobody bought anybody anything when you went to see Lawrence Benedict. Lawrence Benedict, or Larry as he’s known, doesn’t sell suits to your father or Walt Freiberg. Larry Benedict runs a business trading stolen designer wear through a storefront, back of which you will find an office where an entirely different business is taking place.’
Harper didn’t say a word. He sat looking at Duchaunak with his unwillingness to face the truth struggling to remain intact.
‘He runs a chain of illegal bookmakers right from the Lower East Side through Bowery, Little Italy, Tribeca, Soho, and as far north as the Manhattan end of Eighth Avenue. And Larry Benedict works for Lenny Bernstein, the conductor, the composer, whatever the hell he wants to call himself.’
Harper shook his head. ‘You’re full of crap. I went to see that guy and he was a fucking tailor, okay? He used all this tailor’s language and he talked about English shoes and the way European people have their clothes different from us . . . Christ, it was a foreign language.’
‘So he knows something about clothes.’
‘Sure, he knows a great deal about clothes, he’s a tailor—’
‘Who’s done two stretches in two different penitentiaries for armed robbery, and has been directly or indirectly involved in at least seven additional heists that we know of.’
‘Heists? What heists?’ Harper shifted uncomfortably in his chair.
‘Heists. You know what a heist is, Mr Harper?’
‘Sure, it’s like a robbery—’
Duchaunak nodded. ‘Sure it is, but it has to involve firearms or violence. That’s the difference between a straightforward robbery and a heist. A heist is an armed robbery, a robbery where people usually lose their lives as well as their money. That’s what a heist is, Mr Harper.’
‘And you’re telling me that the tailor, Mr Benedict, has been involved in these things?’
‘I am.’
Harper was silent for a moment. He looked down at his coffee. It was cooling rapidly, a thin film of skin forming on the top. He felt tight in his lower gut, almost nauseous. He believed his coffee would remain right where it was.
‘And Uncle Walt?’
Duchaunak did the knowing smile thing again.
Harper wanted to smack him.
‘Uncle Walt?’ Duchaunak said. ‘Like Uncle Walt Disney, right?’ He laughed. ‘Your Uncle Walt is possibly the most dangerous of them all.’
‘Them all?’ Harper asked.
‘Yes, of them all. Walt Freiberg, Ben Marcus, Sol Neumann, Micky Levin, Ray Dietz, Johnnie Hoy, Larry Benedict, a few others who you probably haven’t heard of yet.’
‘And Cathy Hollander?’ Harper asked, almost not wanting to ask the question but somehow compelled to.
‘Cathy Hollander?’ Duchaunak asked. ‘Or Diane Sheridan, perhaps Margaret Miller . . . any one of the dozen or more names she’s used over the years.’
Harper was wide-eyed and disbelieving.
‘Oh yes, indeed,’ Duchaunak went on. ‘Your Cathy Hollander, sweetheart though she may seem, has been a busy girl over the years. Solicitation, check fraud, false identities; skipped a bail bondsman in Brooklyn Heights on a two-count felony eighteen months ago. Used to spend all her time with Ben Marcus’s people, but then she got involved with a scam alongside Larry Benedict, and that’s how she met your father.’
Harper frowned.
‘She was the runner on a whole mountain of illegal books on a game at the tail end of last season. The Cardinals slaughtered the Mets, both ends of a Sunday doubleheader, and Cathy Hollander, though she wasn’t using that name then, was instrumental in ensuring that Larry Benedict kept his show on the road. Rumor has it they turned more than a quarter million dollars on that game alone. That’s how she knew your father, and then something happened and she stopped working for Ben Marcus and started working for Edward Bernstein.’
‘A quarter million dollars,’ Harper said, and even as the words came out of his mouth he was uncertain why he’d said them, didn’t even make sense as words, but he was trying to find something as a point of reference.
‘You ever seen quarter of a million dollars, Mr Harper?’ Duchaunak asked.
Harper shook his head.
‘Pocket change.’
‘You what?’
Duchaunak smiled the knowing smile. ‘To these people a quarter of a million dollars is pocket change. Maybe seven or eight years salary for me. They made it on one lousy Sunday game. You believe that?’
Harper shook his head. He had no idea what he believed.
‘So that, Mr Harper, is the kind of thing you’ve got yourself caught in the middle of—’
‘Caught?’ Harper exclaimed. His voice sounded awkward, almost as if he was standing over to the right and listening to himself. ‘I’m not caught in the middle of anything, Detective.’
‘You’re not?’
Harper shook his head. ‘No, I’m here because I wanted to be here.’
‘Is that so?’
Harper hesitated.
‘Evelyn Sawyer called you, remember? And who was back of Evelyn Sawyer? Walt Freiberg, right? Uncle Walt. He was the one who wanted you here. He wanted you here so much that I figure he might have threatened your Aunt Evelyn.’
‘Bullshit,’ Harper said.
‘Maybe not directly, Mr Harper, but Evelyn was the one who said it.’
Harper frowned, shifted in his chair, leaned forward again.
‘She said that Walt Freiberg was not the sort of man you defy.’
Harper shook his head. His throat was dry, his mouth like he’d been touching his tongue to the terminals of a battery. He wanted a glass of water.
‘You’re having a little difficulty with all of this, I understand that,’ Duchaunak said. ‘It isn’t a matter of trust or belief or anything else. I’m not asking you to believe what I say. All I’m asking you to do is open your eyes and look at what’s going on around you . . . ask yourself if all of this doesn’t seem awful strange. You get a call from Evelyn. She insists you come to New York. When you get here she tells you your father, a father you never knew you had, is not only alive but up in St Vincent’s with a potentially fatal gunshot wound. You go over there. You want to see him. You want to find out if the man you thought was dead for the past thirty-something years is in fact alive, is in fact your father, and who do you run into? You find yourself in the company of Walt Freiberg, a man you haven’t seen since you were a kid. With him is a girl, this Cathy Hollander, and she’s all sweetness and light, friendly as hell, and they look after you, put you in a hotel—’ Duchaunak stopped mid-flight. ‘Who’s paying for the hotel?’ he asked suddenly.
Harper looked away towards the window. Felt like his head was a balloon full of smoke.
‘Mr Harper?’
Harper looked back at the Detective.
‘The hotel? You know who’s picking up the tab?’
Harper sighed. ‘Walt is . . . well actually, I figure he is. The room was booked under Cathy Hollander’s name.’
Duchaunak smiled. ‘Walt Freiberg will be paying it then.’
‘What makes you so sure?’
‘Cathy Hollander never paid for anything in her life.’
Harper closed his eyes. He gritted his teeth. He was silent for a few moments, and then he opened his eyes and looked directly at Duchaunak. ‘How do I know what you’re telling me is the truth?’
Duchaunak nodded. ‘You don’t.’
‘So what on earth is the fucking point of me sitting here listening to what you have to say?’