by R.J. Ellory
Dietz laughed. ‘Fuck, Sol, I only asked if you knew his name.’
‘He was some guy,’ Neumann said. ‘He was some guy that sprayed cars for a fucking living. He was given a job, he did the job, and then he came to get his money. That’s all I fuckin’ know, okay?’
‘Hey, take it easy, would you? What the fuck you doin’ bustin’ my balls here? So it’s just some fucking guy, okay. Just some fucking guy who’s got a biro sticking out the front of his face. Fuck man, couldn’t you have shot him, maybe strangled him or something . . . you have to stick a biro through his eye? Jesus, we aren’t animals, Sol.’
‘Now who’s bustin’ whose balls, eh? Shut the fuck up, Raymond. Just shut the fuck up and help me get him in a gunny sack.’
‘Where’s he goin’?’
‘Maurice is going with the Parselle kid. Down to Pier 46 and put him in the Hudson River.’ Neumann indicated the slumped form of the dead paintsprayer with a nod of his head.
Dietz took a step closer to the table. He looked down at the guy, the way his head was lolled to one side, the way that nothing more than an inch of biro now protruded from his right eye. His left eye stared vacantly back at Dietz. Dietz shuddered involuntarily. ‘It’s fucking brutal, Sol. Seriously . . . I mean this is just fucking brutal what you did to the poor bastard. There’s got to have been a more humane way to do this.’
‘Humane? What in fuck’s name are you talking about, humane? The guy was going to blab. The guy was all ready to be a fucking radio station. It is what it is, Raymond. He knows the deal. He knows how things work. He’s all grown up now, Raymond. He pulls a fucked-up stunt like that . . . hell, he was up for the big time, he was up for a good bundle of money. He knew what might happen when he started in on this thing.’
Dietz backed up, raised both his hands. ‘Enough already. The guy’s fucking dead, okay? We get him in the bag and take him outside, end of fucking story okay?’
‘Okay. Good. Don’t know what the fuck that was all about. Jesus, anyone’d think we were on a Girl fucking Guide outing.’
Dietz shook his head. He figured it would have been best to take the biro out of the guy’s eye before they folded him into the gunny sack, but he couldn’t do it. Just the thought made him nauseous.
Eight minutes later the guy in the sack was edging out of an alleyway in the trunk of a beat-up Plymouth Valiant. Name was Jimmy Nestor. Used to spray cars for a living, sometimes went out on a boost, sometimes smoked too much weed and got high and mighty ideas about stinging some dumbass motherfucker for a ten grand bonus and disappearing to California.
Jimmy Nestor, hophead that he was, didn’t know where the edge was. Not exactly. Went over it, as was always the case with those who were unrealistic about their own limitations.
Next place he would see would be the cool depths of the Hudson River – black, almost without end, and real fucking lonely. Much the same as the rest of his life, loser that he was.
FORTY-NINE
‘But that’s not possible, Mr Harper.’
Harper shook his head. He glanced towards the window. The snow had come down thick and fast during the night. New York looked clean, perhaps for the first time in a year.
He turned back and looked at Frank Duchaunak. Duchaunak carried the shadows and ghosts of a man who had not slept for a very long time. He’d arrived early, called from down in the lobby, and Harper – without thinking – had lifted the receiver.
Seven minutes it had taken Duchaunak to persuade him; seven minutes and finally Harper had conceded defeat.
‘Okay,’ he’d said. ‘Come on up.’
And here they were – the lost one from Miami, the crazy one from Chicago.
‘I don’t see how you can be certain about any of this,’ Harper said.
‘Why d’you say that?’
‘The stuff I’ve heard.’ Harper once again turned towards the window. He closed his eyes for a moment and shook his head. ‘I hear one thing I think is true. An hour later I hear something else which sounds just as plausible.’ Harper directed his gaze towards Duchaunak and said nothing for some seconds.
Duchaunak was neither unsettled nor awkward in that silence. It seemed for a small while that neither of them breathed.
‘I don’t know what is true, Detective, and I am quite sure that no-one else does.’
Duchaunak smiled. ‘Are you saying that you’d take the word of someone like Walter Freiberg over a New York police detective?’
Harper tilted his head to one side and raised his eyebrows questioningly. ‘What you are is irrelevant, Detective, it’s who you are that matters.’
‘Who I am?’
‘Let’s be brutally honest with one another,’ Harper said. ‘From what I have heard and seen so far I don’t know who is the more crazy, you or Walt Freiberg.’
‘The Marilyn Monroe thing?’
Harper shrugged. ‘The Marilyn Monroe thing. The thing with the sugar sachets. The fact that you turn up here looking like a beat-to-shit wino—’
Duchaunak instinctively ran his fingers through his hair in a vague attempt to straighten it. His hand then gravitated towards his chin where he ran it across the rough stubble of his chin. ‘I didn’t have a great deal of time—’
‘It doesn’t matter, Detective . . . this is not a personal issue. You seem to me to be a very driven—’
‘I am Mr—’
Harper raised his hand. ‘Let me finish, Detective.’
Duchaunak nodded awkwardly. ‘Yes, sorry . . . please go on.’
‘As I was saying, you seem to be a very driven man. You seem very focused about what you’re trying to achieve here. I’m still trying to come to terms with the fact that I have a father, a father I have been unaware of for more than thirty years.’ Harper paused, inhaled deeply. ‘A father that is a criminal, possibly a murderer . . . and the truth, Detective, the truth is that I have reached a point where I am having great difficulty finding a reason to stay.’
‘I need you to stay, Mr Harper.’
‘You need me to stay? You’ve spent most of your time trying to convince me to leave.’
‘Yes, I know. But now I need you to stay.’
‘For what purpose?’
‘To help me end this thing, to help me find sufficient reason to put these people away.’
‘Walt Freiberg?’
‘Walt Freiberg, your father, Neumann, Ben Marcus, all of them.’
‘But especially my father, right?’
Duchaunak nodded.
‘And why the change of heart?’
‘Because right now you seem to be the only link I have with these people.’
Harper frowned. He shook his head. ‘I don’t understand . . . this is your job, right?’
Duchaunak glanced to the left, a split-second reaction, perhaps involuntary.
‘You got canned,’ Harper said matter-of-factly. ‘You got fucking canned, didn’t you?’
‘I didn’t get canned, Mr Harper, as you so elegantly put it.’
‘So what’s the deal here? You’re not on this officially, are you? You’ve come here without a warrant, without any official sanction, haven’t you?’
‘I’ve come here to ask for your assistance . . . to appeal to your sense of civic duty.’
Harper sneered. ‘You’re telling me I should do what you want out of civic duty?’
Duchaunak nodded.
‘And why the hell should I do anything you want me to do?’
‘Because helping me would be the right thing.’
Harper laughed coarsely. ‘The right thing? According to whom? According to you? Walt Freiberg? Or maybe Evelyn Sawyer?’
‘According to the law, Mr Harper.’
‘Oh, come on! You’re going to have to do an awful lot better than that to get my vote, Detective. You want me to do anything you’re going to have to give me one helluva good reason.’
‘Because these are bad people—’
Harper cut in. ‘And I’m supposed to
have a conscience about what other people have done?’
Duchaunak shook his head. ‘I’m wasting my time, Mr Harper. I came here because I thought you might have some degree of common sense, some vague semblance of responsibility—’
‘What d’you mean, responsibility? I haven’t done anything.’
‘But your father has. People in your family have. That carries with it some sense of responsibility.’
‘That’s your viewpoint,’ Harper said. ‘That is your viewpoint and your viewpoint alone. What these people have done is their business, not mine.’
‘It’s your business when you can do something to help stop it and you choose not to.’
‘And what makes you such an expert on this thing? Why are you so driven when it comes to my father and Walt Freiberg?’
Duchaunak shook his head. ‘I have my reasons.’
‘Because of Lauren Sachs?’
Duchaunak inhaled suddenly. His eyes widened and he looked at Harper as if Harper had shot him.
‘Walt Freiberg told me,’ Harper said.
Duchaunak did not respond.
‘I spoke to Walt and he told me that Lauren Sachs was killed, but that the robbery was organized and perpetrated by Ben Marcus and his people.’
‘He would tell you that,’ Duchaunak said. ‘Of course he would tell you that . . . you think he would admit to having been involved in something like that?’
‘You see what I mean, though?’ Harper asked. ‘What I said about being told one thing, and then being told something else which sounds just as plausible. My father’s dead. No, he’s not dead. He’s alive and well and living in New York. Oh fuck, no he’s not. Someone just shot him in a liquor store robbery. My mother died of pneumonia. Did she, fuck . . . she committed suicide in the Carmine Street house and my Aunt Evelyn found her and never told me. Then I’m told about this girl, the one you were going to marry. Evelyn implied that someone had died, and that was the reason you were so obsessive about my father. She said that you attributed all your unhappiness to something my father had done. Then I find out from Walt that it was your fiancée Evelyn was talking about, but he said that Ben Marcus was responsible for her death.’ Harper smiled. His expression was bitter and filled with resentment.
‘I understand, Mr Harper—’
Harper laughed. ‘No you don’t. You haven’t got a clue what I’m talking about.’
Duchaunak didn’t reply.
‘Go on, Detective, tell me one more time how you understand.’ Harper leaned forward in the chair. His movement was meant as nothing but a challenge.
Duchaunak shook his head and looked down. ‘I don’t understand. You’re right. I don’t understand.’
Harper leaned back, reached for the cigarettes he’d ordered from room service and lit one. ‘I quit smoking,’ he said. ‘I’d quit for the best part of three months before I came here, and now I’m smoking again. I am so fucking pissed off with you people.’
‘You people?’
‘Yes, Detective, you people. You and Evelyn Sawyer, Walt Freiberg, this Cathy Hollander or whatever her name is. I’m even pissed off with people I don’t know and people who are already dead . . . that’s how mightily fucking pissed off I am.’
Duchaunak rested his elbows on his knees and placed the palms of his hands together. He moved his hands as he spoke to emphasize what he was saying. ‘I’m not going to tell you that I understand how you feel, Mr Harper. I don’t, and I’m not going to pretend to. I have been working on these people for seven years. What they have done, the things that have happened around them . . . this is the stuff of nightmares. These are crazy, evil, destructive people. I am sorry to speak to you like this, sorry that this is your father we’re talking about, but the truth is the truth Mr Harper. Edward Bernstein, Lenny as they call him, has been one of the most prominent New York criminal underworld figures for the past thirty or forty years—’
‘I don’t want to know, Detective.’ Harper started to rise from his chair. ‘I want you to leave now—’
‘Sit down, Mr Harper!’ Duchaunak snapped.
Harper dropped back into the chair as if he’d been forcibly pushed.
‘You sit back down and hear me out,’ Duchaunak said, his tone just as direct. ‘You listen to what I have to say, and then you make a decision. This isn’t something you can run away from. This is the truth, goddammit. This is the truth and you’re going to listen to it whether you like it or not. I could have you arrested—’
‘Arrested?’ Harper said. ‘Have me arrested? What in God’s name are you talking about?’
‘Aiding and abetting a known felon. Withholding information directly related to an ongoing criminal investigation. Obstructing justice. You want me to go on?’
Once again Duchaunak and Harper stared at one another in silence.
‘Right then,’ Duchaunak said. ‘You listen to what I have to say, and then you make a decision about what you want to do, okay?’
Harper did not reply.
Duchaunak nodded. ‘So, like I said, this is what it is, Mr Harper. These are the facts. Your father, Edward Bernstein, has been involved, directly and indirectly, with many of the most lucrative armed robberies in New York during the last thirty or forty years. It has been estimated, and there’s no way in the world this could ever be accurately determined because he’s probably been involved in a great deal more than even we know about . . . but conservative estimates put the total financial damage somewhere in the region of a hundred to a hundred and twenty-five million dollars. Like I said, that’s just the stuff we know about. The body count is somewhere in the region of forty-five people. Once again, those are just the ones we know about. No doubt there are a number of good citizens and assorted criminals weighted down and sunk in both the East and Hudson Rivers. We don’t know for sure, and in all honesty we probably will never know. Your father has also spent a considerable number of years in the care of the state at two different times in his life. Walt Freiberg has also done two terms of imprisonment, one for aggravated assault, another for possession of a concealed weapon with intent. Third time we get him he gets the deep six.’ Duchaunak looked up at Harper. ‘That’s the expression we use for—’
‘I know what it means,’ Harper said. ‘Third strike he gets life without parole.’
Duchaunak nodded. ‘Your father is a clever man, exceptionally so, and his cleverness is matched only by his ruthless nature and his seemingly limitless greed. Walter Freiberg is his right-hand man, his consigliere, the one who organizes things when someone needs to disappear.’ Duchaunak leaned back in the chair. He seemed to relax a little, perhaps because he believed Harper was listening, perhaps because there was something reassuring in the sound of his own voice as he reiterated the reasons for his own tenacity. ‘When your father and Walt Freiberg have set their minds on something there has been nothing sufficient to stop them. The law is irrelevant, a mere inconvenience they pay lip service to every once in a while. They want something, they go and take it. As far as they’re concerned it’s as simple as that.’
Harper slid back in the chair. He felt smaller, like he’d been crushed.
‘There have been killings, Mr Harper, killings that really warrant the term “executions”. People have died because they disagreed with your father, because they said some word that upset Walt Freiberg. Lives have been used up as if they had no value at all. This is what we’re dealing with here . . . these are the kind of people we are involved with.’
Harper sat up a little; he edged forward and rested his elbows on his knees. The smoke from the cigarette curled up around his face and made his eyes water. He did nothing to stop it.
‘There have been gangland shoot-outs over streets, blocks, parts of New York that your father believed he controlled, and those who challenged that ownership.’
‘Marcus,’ Harper said, his voice strained. ‘You’re talking about Ben Marcus, right?’
‘Ben Marcus, yes,’ Duchaunak replied. ‘You know ab
out Ben Marcus?’
Harper looked up at Duchaunak and shook his head. ‘No, not really. Like I said before, Walt told me that the robbery where your fiancée was killed was carried out by Ben Marcus, and that Marcus was the one who had my father shot.’
Duchaunak opened his mouth to say something, and then closed it. He shook his head, seemed puzzled.
‘What?’ Harper asked.
‘Ben Marcus . . . Walt Freiberg told you that Ben Marcus arranged to have your father shot?’
‘Yeah, that’s right,’ Harper replied. ‘Hell, let’s be blunt eh? Walt told me that Marcus put a tap on my father.’
Duchaunak smiled knowingly and shook his head slowly.
‘What?’ Harper asked.
‘Cannot be, Mr Harper. I’m afraid that Walt Freiberg did not tell you the truth.’
‘You what?’
‘There is no way Ben Marcus ordered the shooting of your father.’
‘What’re you talking about? Of course he did. That’s what all this is about isn’t it? A battle over the territories. Ben Marcus wants my father’s territory . . .’ Harper stopped suddenly, sort of half laughed, but it was a strange and humorless sound. ‘Jesus, listen to me. I cannot believe I’m sitting here saying these things.’
‘Go on, Mr Harper.’
‘Right, yes . . . a battle over the territories. Ben Marcus ordered the shooting of my father because he wants to take his territory.’
‘Not possible,’ Duchaunak said. ‘Like I said, that’s just not possible.’
‘How so?’ Harper said. ‘How is that not possible?’
‘I’ll tell you exactly how it’s not possible, Mr Harper . . . and then maybe, just maybe you’ll listen to what I have to say.’
FIFTY
Nine-sixteen a.m. Longshoreman called Danny Fricker stands on the edge of the steps near one of the Pier 42 loading platforms and lights a cigarette. Leans on the railing, rusted and wet, smells the all-too-familiar odor of garbage and hopelessness that comes up from the river. Back and to his left is the Christopher Street Station, ahead of him and across the water he can see Castle Point, Elysian Park and Hoboken. Once went with a girl from Hoboken, name of Sally Tomczak; Polish girl with a voice like an angel, used to sing in a club called The Rosa Maria until her parents found out the kind of men who went there. That was ten years before, and as far as Danny Fricker knew she married some dumb Polack and now the only singing she did was lullabies for her babies. Helluva shame. Helluva waste. Life seemed to have such things down cold, the way it could give you something grand and then snatch it right away.