by R.J. Ellory
Harper turned and looked at Cathy. Her expression was implacable.
‘But, as I said, Ben Marcus is no fool. He will have made enquiries. He’ll have asked his people to check up on you. Fact is . . . well, fact is that he may already have figured out that you’re not who we’ve told him you are.’
‘And where does that put me? He’s going to find out I’m not what you’ve told him . . . Jesus Christ, Walt, he’s gonna send someone over here to kill me—’
Freiberg didn’t speak. He merely looked steadily back at Harper.
Harper could not look at Freiberg, or at Cathy Hollander. He tried not to think, tried not to show any emotion. He held a glass in his hand and swirled the whisky in it, looking down and watching as his own reflection was caught in a whirlpool and distorted. It seemed disconcertingly analogous to the situation in which he now found himself. Where was Miami, Florida? Where was Harry Ivens and the Herald? Where were the weather reports and small-time news stories about fishing trips and shark tournaments and hurricane warnings? Whatever life he’d imagined was his was gone. Nothing would ever be the same again. Nothing could be the same again no matter how hard he might try.
‘John?’
Harper turned. Cathy was looking at him, her expression allowing some sense of concern.
He shook his head; he was not ready to speak.
A minute passed, perhaps two, and then Harper looked up at Freiberg. ‘Okay,’ he said quietly. ‘You’ve put me in a situation where my life is now in serious fucking danger.’
He paused, looked at Cathy, then back at Freiberg. ‘I want to know what’s in it for me.’
FIFTY-FIVE
‘Who?’
‘Sonnenburg and Sampson.’
‘Jesus fucking Christ,’ Captain McLuhan said. He turned to the window, his head bowed, his hands on his hips.
‘Sampson is sedated,’ Sergeant Oates told him. ‘Guy flipped out . . . you know Sonnenburg was due to be married?’
‘Aw fuck, no . . . don’t tell me that.’ McLuhan walked back to his chair and seemed to fold down into it. ‘They didn’t have back-up?’
Oates raised an eyebrow and looked at McLuhan.
McLuhan raised his hand. ‘Don’t tell me . . . don’t want you to answer that question. Jesus Christ, my ass is in a sling now.’
‘They did call in for back-up but there was no-one available.’
‘And what were they after?’
‘Following up on the Jimmy Nestor thing.’
‘What did they find?’
‘Nestor’s chop-shop and Nestor’s cousin, a guy called Jesus Fernando. He was the one that shot Sonnenburg.’
‘And he’s dead?’
Oates nodded. ‘Yeah, he’s dead as well.’
‘Who shot him?’
‘As far as we can tell it was Sonnenburg . . . preliminary indications suggest they shot one another simultaneously.’
‘And the girl?’
Oates frowned. ‘What girl?’
‘The fucking girl he was going to marry . . . what girl d’you think I mean?’
‘Sampson told her . . . he called her and told her that Yale was killed.’
‘And she’s here?’
‘No, she’s not here, she’s with her family.’
McLuhan inhaled deeply and leaned forward, elbows on the edge of the table, face in his hands. ‘Thank Christ for small mercies . . . last thing I need down here is a hysterical Jewish police widow shrieking like a fire siren.’
‘Whaddya want me to do now?’ Oates asked.
‘Was there anything significant down there? This chop-shop of Jimmy Nestor’s?’
Oates shook his head. ‘Doesn’t seem to have been. We’re checking it out. And we still don’t really have anything significant from Jimmy Nestor’s autopsy.’
‘Go,’ McLuhan said. ‘Leave me alone for a little while. I have to think how the hell I’m going to answer up on this no back-up situation.’
‘Hey, they turned down the money, Captain. There were guys willing to do the overtime but there was no money—’
McLuhan silenced Oates with a gesture. ‘Sergeant, you’re a great sergeant. I couldn’t ask for a better duty sergeant. What you are not, however, is a public relations representative for the mayor’s office. I get called to account on this thing, the last thing in the world anyone is going to want to hear is that it’s down to the money they wouldn’t give us. Fair it may not be, but nothing in this world seems fair to me right now. Let me sort this thing out myself. You get some people on the Nestor thing, see if there isn’t something you can turn up at this shop of his. Follow up on the cousin . . . and get whoever is dealing with Jimmy Nestor’s murder investigation to make some progress, eh? At least if I go there with something the heat will be less.’
‘Sure thing, Captain.’
After a while she would become insensate and numb to all of it.
Evelyn Sawyer had forced herself to believe this.
The truth was different; very different indeed.
The truth? That was an irony and a contradiction in terms. Her life had been a lie, perhaps right from the beginning. Herself and Anne, herself and Garrett, herself and John Harper – the illegitimate nephew. And then there had been Edward, Walt Freiberg, the collection of criminals and thieves they had gathered around themselves; and all the while the threats, the broken promises, the words given which meant nothing at all. Everything had gone to shit. Wasn’t that the truth?
And time, the great healer? The great charlatan perhaps . . .
Time had merely been the ground from which the darkest aspects of her own bitter anger and hate had grown. Her life could have been something. Could have been. Had she not forever been there behind Anne, beside Garrett, standing ahead of John Harper in an effort to soften the blows that the world landed on them.
How had she managed to fool herself for so long? How had she believed that she would keep him away from Edward Bernstein for ever? How stupid could she have been?
Mid-afternoon, the sky clear, the last stripes of snow still clinging to the edges of the sidewalk, the rims of storm drains, the eaves of buildings. Evelyn Sawyer stood at the bottom of the stairwell and looked up towards the landing.
A coolness seemed to fill the house, as if each room had been empty for years – maintained as it had been left, but nevertheless empty. Like the soul had gone.
She started up the stairs, paused on the third riser as if to catch her breath, as if the pressure she felt was almost too intense for her to walk through. She was still for some seconds, and then moved once again.
At the head of the stairs she turned left and stopped at the first door. This had been their room, herself and Garrett; had been their room from the point they took the house until Garrett left for the last time.
She opened the door slowly and stood there. She just looked; didn’t move; didn’t take a step inside.
‘I need the gun,’ she said. ‘I need the gun for a while. I’m going to take the gun because there’s something I have to do.’
‘But—’
Evelyn shook her head. ‘No questions . . . I don’t want to answer any questions. I want you to give me the gun and then I’m going to leave. If I’m not back within a few hours then you’ll have to figure out what to do by yourself.’
Evelyn extended her hand and waited until the gun was passed to her.
Her breathing was shallow, hesitant. She backed up and turned to the right, walked down the hallway to her own room.
Five, six minutes later, standing inside the front door, Evelyn Sawyer looked back towards the kitchen, the narrow hallway alongside the stairs, the door to the right that took her through into the front room, the bay window that looked out onto Carmine. She looked at all the years of her life, the heartbreaks, the sorrows, the laughter, the anger and frustration, the emptiness, the tears . . . everything that had taken place within these four walls for the better part of four decades.
Everything of any wort
h was already gone.
She pulled her coat tight around her neck and opened the front door.
Once on the front steps she glanced over her shoulder, and then pulled the door shut.
She walked down to the corner, hands buried in her overcoat pockets, her face expressionless, inscrutable.
She didn’t turn back; knew that if she did she might lose her will.
Harper walked three blocks before he found a callbox.
Once inside he dialled the number. Had almost memorized it. Never felt so scared in all his life. Had never doubted anything so much.
The phone rang twice before he felt the urge to hang up. He steeled himself, clenched his fist, felt his knuckles whiten as he gripped the receiver.
‘Yes?’ Unmistakably Duchaunak’s voice.
‘It’s me.’
‘Okay . . . you spoke with them?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where?’
‘At the hotel.’
‘Who came?’
‘Freiberg and the girl.’
‘And they’re still there?’
‘No, they left.’
‘And where are you?’
Harper peered out through the glass of the callbox, rubbed a hole in the condensation. ‘I can see the top of the Western Union Building . . . there’s a store across the road called—’
‘It doesn’t matter. No-one followed you?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘You don’t think so?’
‘Fuck, I don’t know. I’m doing what you asked me to do, okay? They came and saw me. I spoke with them. You said to call you . . . you asked me for my help and I’m fucking calling you okay?’
‘Okay, okay . . . I’m sorry, Mr Harper. So tell me what happened?’
‘Freiberg is going to meet with Ben Marcus tomorrow.’
‘You what?’
‘Ben Marcus . . . you know who Ben Marcus is, right?’
‘Yes, sure. Of course I know who Ben Marcus is.’
‘Right . . . so Walt Freiberg is going to see him tomorrow.’
‘Christ almighty . . . they are working together, aren’t they?’
‘Seems that way. They’re going to agree to something that was set up by my father. He was retiring. He was negotiating a deal with Ben Marcus before he was shot. Hell, it’s complicated, Detective. Anyway, bottom line is Walt goes and speaks with Marcus tomorrow. He tells him that I’m standing in for my father, that I have the authority to approve whatever deal is going down, and I make everything kosher for the things they’ve planned for Christmas Eve.’
There was silence at the other end of the line, and then, ‘Fuck! I knew it! I knew there was something. What is it? What are they planning?’
‘They’re going to pull several bank robberies simultaneously . . . several banks at the same time as far as I can figure.’
‘Which ones?’
‘I have no idea, not a clue.’
‘We need to meet,’ Duchaunak said. ‘I need you to come and see my precinct Captain—’
‘You must be outta your mind,’ Harper said. ‘You want to know what I think? I think someone’s watching me right now . . . I think someone has an eye on me right now and is going to tell Walt Freiberg that I went out to a callbox and spoke with someone. Who the hell am I going to call, eh? Fucking ghostbusters, right? Maybe they’ll think it’s you. They’re not going to tell me which banks. You want to know what else I think? I figure they might shoot me in the fucking head anyway. If they know I met with you and we went and spoke with your police captain then I can guarantee they’re going to shoot me in the fucking head.’
‘So what do you want to do, Mr Harper?’
‘I’m going to go do nothing. I’m going to let Walt Freiberg tell Ben Marcus whatever the hell he wants, let them sort out whatever they have planned, and then I’m going to get the fuck out of New York as fast as I can and leave you guys to sort out Christmas Eve. That’s what I’m going to do, Detective . . . unless, of course, you can think of anything better?’
Duchaunak was silent.
‘So, Detective . . . any better ideas?’
‘Call me if you get any word after the meeting tomorrow,’ Duchaunak said. ‘See if there’s any way, any way at all to get some idea of where they’re going to hit, and then call me after the meeting is over, okay?’
‘And what are you going to do?’
‘I don’t know, Mr Harper, I don’t know, but I have to do something, right?’
‘I think that would be a good idea, Detective . . . think it would be a very good idea for you to do something.’
‘Okay, we’ll speak tomorrow. You call me and let me know what happens.’
‘Detective?’
‘Yeah?’
‘The liquor store . . . the one where my father was shot. Where is it?’
‘Why?’
‘I want to know,’ Harper said. ‘I just want to know.’
‘Up near where you are now . . . half a dozen blocks or so north. Corner of Hudson and Vestry.’
‘Thanks,’ Harper said.
‘So call me tomorrow, okay?’
‘I’ll do my best.’
‘Mr Harper—’ Duchaunak said, but the line was already dead.
John Harper stepped out of the callbox and started walking, heading north, hands buried in his pockets, head bowed against the bitter wind that cut east from the river.
FIFTY-SIX
‘Scariest bunch of motherfuckers. . . no . . . no, I take that back,’ Neumann shouted. ‘You lot are the ugliest bunch of motherfuckers I’ve ever seen! Jesus Christ, it should be illegal for more than two or three of you to congregate in a public place. You’d be scaring kids and frightening old people into a lifetime of fucking nightmares!’
The laughter was riotous, good-humored, anarchic. The battle-field of voices; all parties attempting to be heard over everyone else was almost deafening. Seventeen people crammed into a barroom beneath a club on Mulberry, itself a block and a half from the police headquarters building in Little Italy – cornered like a rat between SoHo, Bowery and Chinatown. They were all there: Ben Marcus, Sol Neumann, Walt Freiberg on down. Two families, joined at the hip in some way, and yet the faces still running confrontationals and threatening one another like sandbox psychopaths.
Walt Freiberg stood just inside the doorway. Even as he’d entered, the gathered crews were shouting at one another, throwing jibes and spiked words, all in that half-drunk, couldn’t-give-a-fuck attitude that seemed requisite for such meetings. Maybe they were shouting at Cathy Hollander, the only female present: the way she looked it seemed that none present would have had the cojones to challenge her directly. Had John Harper seen her he would have believed her to be someone else. She had on black jeans, a black sweater, a leather jacket over; her hair was tied back and her face free of cosmetics. Perhaps it was the light, perhaps the angle of her high cheekbones, but it seemed for a moment that she was wearing the shadow of a bruise on the right side of her face. Perhaps not. All in all it didn’t matter; noone would ask, and even if they had they would not have received an answer.
Times were such a gathering could never have happened; times were that people like Ray Dietz and Joe Koenig could not have entered the same room without one of them leaving horizontally. But now things had changed; whatever words and wars and personal vendettas had existed in the past seemed irrelevant in the face of what was to occur. Change had come, and those present would go with that change or leave quietly. Everyone wanted something from this, whether money, reputation, or the credibility to move elsewhere and have folks pay attention to what they had to say. Perhaps this thing was a way of exorcising the ghosts of the past and starting over. A couple of those present knew that they either participated, or there’d come an evening when they’d open a door to unwelcome, but not wholly unexpected, visitors, and their fate would be expedited much the same as Johnnie Hoy, Micky Levin, Mouse Jackson and Jimmy Nestor.
This was a world, i
n and of itself its own thing, and it had a way of dealing its own cards, ranking its own orders and obligations; violation of such agreements carried with it not a sense of shame or self-abnegation, but a justice so swift and thoughtless it appeared too brutal to have been designed by human beings. To complicate this world, to attempt any real depth of understanding of it, was to miss the point entirely. Men such as these lived and died within a life that the vast majority of people could neither have comprehended nor suffered. It was that simple.
Ray Dietz, beside him Albert Reiff and Victor Klein; the drivers – Maurice Rydell and Henry Kossoff, beside them Karl Merrett and Lewis Parselle. At the head of their table was Ben Marcus, standing to his left Sol Neumann, ever the consigliere, ever the Devil’s advocate. On the other side sat Joe Koenig and Charlie Beck, Larry Benedict, Leo Petri, and their drivers – Ricky Wheland and Ron Dearing.
Walt Freiberg and Cathy Hollander had been the last to arrive. Cathy hesitated just inside the doorway, and when Walt walked forward to greet Marcus she went with him, hanging a step and a half behind, almost a shadow.
‘Walter, Walter, Walter,’ Marcus chimed enthusiastically. ‘This is a great day, a special day for all of us. This day, my friend, has been a long time coming.’
Freiberg was grinning from ear to ear, squeezing himself behind the seated man along the edge of the table and finally standing before Marcus at the head.
Freiberg held out his arms and the men hugged. After a moment Freiberg released Marcus and took a moment to shake hands vigorously with Sol Neumann.
‘You look even better than last time I saw you, Sol,’ Freiberg said, and then mock-punched him in the gut. ‘You lose some weight, right? You lost a ton of fucking weight there, Sol . . . you look really good man, really fucking good.’
Neumann smiled like a cat, nodding his head. ‘I did, Walt, I did. I got one of these exercise things, these little gym things you put in your house you know? My wife, she tells me I’m going to get a fucking heart attack if I don’t do something, so what the fuck, eh? You have to make an effort, right?’