by Ann Aptaker
“Sure, sure, okay, Cantor. A minute either way won’t matter. You’re crackin’ me up. Okay, look, with my plan gone sour, I had to get rid of the body. I didn’t plan to toss her, but I couldn’t take the time to bury her here—”
“In the basement?” That explains all the hardware down here in this chicken coop, all those shovels and saws making those weird shadows on the walls. My toes curl in my shoes just thinking about how many layers of body parts might be inches under my feet.
“Yeah, this basement’s one of my good spots for it,” Pep says, “but I couldn’t linger down here any longer so I figured I’d drive over to a vacant lot I sometimes use just over the bridge, down by the Fulton Fish Market.”
“And then you manhandled Celeste into getting rid of Opal’s car. That bruise on her arm is as red as cheap jewelry.”
He smiles like he just sold me a high-mileage lemon. “Let’s just say she needed a little convincing to do as she’s told, which I guess you know by now she’s not much good at.”
I’m tempted to tell him I’m not crazy about women who only do what they’re told, but I guess it’s not really the time or place. And under the circumstances, I’d rather let Pep do the talking while I just listen, and watch.
“Anyway, after Celeste scrams I carry Opal up the stairs,” he says. “I’m gonna put her in the trunk of my car, but just my luck, a nosy neighbor’s taking his garbage out to the alley. He sees me carrying Opal. Well, with my arms full, I can’t get to my gun to knock the guy off and get rid of him, and I can’t just put Opal in the trunk like she’s dead. He might call the cops. You know what I’m talking about, Gold.”
“Yeah, cops can really be a distraction, Pep,” I say, friendly-like. Just two outlaws talking shop. Except he’s planning to kill me, and I’m twitching for any chance to stop him.
He says, “You said it. Cops always seem to be underfoot. So anyway, with this guy there in the alley I have to put Opal into the car like I’m taking a sick woman to the hospital or something, which the guy figures is none of his business and he walks away. Only thing though, I didn’t think about Celeste running off with Opal’s mink. And without the mink, Opal was bleeding on my front seat. Not a helluva lot anymore—she spurted plenty when Celeste got her in the neck—but she’s bleeding enough, and I shelled out a small fortune for my custom upholstery, a very classy black-and-gray houndstooth. Even paid extra for the black piping across the top. I know you can appreciate that, Gold.”
“Sure.”
“I was afraid a big bloodstain would never wash outta the weave, so instead of letting her bleed some more, I gave up on the vacant lot at the fish market, and when I was driving across the bridge, I dumped her.”
“That’s it?”
“Yeah, that’s it. You were expecting a big opera?”
The story can’t end on an idea so small. The story can’t end at all, not yet, or Celeste and I are dead. So I press the conversation. “You took a helluva chance. Didn’t you think you’d be seen, maybe someone would call the cops? And you must’ve tied up traffic. There’s heavy traffic on the bridge at that hour with the late-show supper-club crowd driving in and the after-theater crowd going home.”
“Nah. Let me give you a tip. You can shoot a guy in the head in the middle of Times Square, but if you just walk away no one will remember what you look like or that you were even there because they don’t want to. Did you know that? Works every time,” he says, grinning that syrupy salesman’s grin. It’s starting to give me an upset stomach. “But who the hell knew you’d be on the goddamn river, Gold, or that the whole thing would turn into a circus? I figured Opal would just drown. Sig would never be the wiser. He might wonder where she was for the rest of his life, but who cares?”
I’d care, because I’d hate having anything as intimate as heartbreak in common with a monster like Sig Loreale. I’d hate knowing exactly what he’s going through, the torture of trying to outrun, outdrink, outthink the endless mystery that will drive him crazy. “You know Sig won’t rest,” I say, “until he finds out what happened to his sweetheart.”
“Like I said, who cares? He could look forever. He’ll never find an answer. The answer dies with you two.”
“Then I guess you’re sitting pretty.”
“Looks that way.” He gives me his best slick salesman’s grin. “You know, I always liked you, Cantor, even though you’re a pervert, one of those, uh, bull types I suppose is what you call it—”
“It’s not what I’d call it.”
“—but you have class. You run a classy operation. Too bad you fell into the gutter when you took up with Celeste here.” That grin has twisted from slick to stomach turning.
I let Pep’s pervert remark slide—how far would I get with a belly torn up by a .45 slug?—and throw him a grin of my own instead. We toss grins back and forth. Pep’s grin is trying to be smart-alecky, taunting me about seeing me and Celeste in the clutch when he came in. My grin is just my end of the seesaw, another stall to keep Pep from pulling the trigger.
“Listen, Pep,” I say, starting another line of chitchat, “you know—”
“I know a lotta things, now shut up. You’re done.”
I’m still locked on him, looking into his eyes for the slightest lag in his intention to fire that gun. I don’t see one. All I see in his eyes is that rising fire that terrified Celeste. That fire’s blazing at me as he raises his gun, aims right for my heart. He’s grinning like a madman. I have less than a second to make a move.
A red blur flashes in front of me. Celeste’s red-gloved hand comes down on Pep’s, throwing his aim. “Bitch!” he yells, turning his gun toward Celeste.
But I grab his wrist, twist it to try to shake the gun loose, try to pry his hand open. Celeste’s screaming, pulling at Pep’s gun. He fights like a rabid dog, tries to lift his gun hand, aim up at Celeste, but I keep pulling his aim off, twisting his wrist. We’re all wrestling, struggling for control of the gun, when there’s a blast as loud as thunder followed by a shower of blood and brains and bone. Pep’s head is blown to bits.
Chapter Fourteen
I never knew my heart could stop beating but I’d still be alive. If my heart was beating, it would pump blood to my muscles and sinews, allow them to feel, force them to move, which would disturb the air, which is completely still.
My heart’s not beating but I’m alive. No doubt about it. Otherwise my face wouldn’t sting where flying shards of Pep’s skull nicked me. My eyes wouldn’t burn from the spray of Pep’s blood.
Celeste is alive, too. In the dead quiet of the basement I hear her breath fight its way up her throat, hiss through its tightening cords until it finally bursts out in a long, shrill scream that kick-starts my heart, triggers my muscles to move. My hand rushes up to Celeste’s mouth. “Quiet!” I say. “You’ll bring the whole goddamn neighborhood down here, and the cops won’t be far behind.”
Celeste gags on her scream. It congeals into sobs. Her shoulders sag and her spine gives way as she sinks to the floor, kneels beside Pep, her shadow falling across his mutilated head.
The mink coat she’d hoped would give her some class, provide a few bucks for her new life, is sticky with Pep’s brains, soaked with his blood. It’s the second time tonight that death sprayed itself all over Celeste like a tomcat marking its territory, and ruining two coats to boot. The gore will never come out of the mink. The coat’s worth about as much now as Celeste’s future in New York: nothing.
So she really loved Pep, just like she said, which might be the only thing she’s told me that isn’t a lie. Those tears she’s crying over Pep’s body aren’t fake juice for my benefit. I doubt she’s even aware I’m standing next to her. Every nerve in Celeste’s body is stretched out to Pep. She’s alone with him.
They say life isn’t fair. Well, neither is death. Just listen to the radio or read the daily papers. They’re full of stories of lonely souls who kick the bucket with nobody to give a damn about them. But the vicious ki
ller Leon “Pep” Green, who doesn’t deserve a single tear from anybody, leaves this life with a beautiful woman crying for him.
I won’t send flowers to the funeral.
I’ve got to get us away from here. Hanging around while Celeste has her cry could attract nosy neighbors and itchy cops who’ll see us with a dead body and won’t bother about explanations. Pep is the second dead body around my neck tonight. Cops don’t like those kinds of coincidences, and cops don’t like me, either.
I pick up Pep’s .45 from the floor, then kneel down and rifle through his pockets for any extra clips and rounds. He has one full clip besides the one that’s in the gun. The clip and the .45 go into my coat pocket.
Here’s a laugh: it was Mom Sheinbaum who taught me years ago to pick up and stow any hardware lying around at a job site. And now I’m cleaning up after the louse of a guy and the lying dame who were responsible for Mom’s daughter’s death.
The way Celeste is looking at me kills the joke. She glares at me through that blood-spattered hat veil, accusing me of desecrating the dead. I doubt it’s possible to desecrate a guy whose soul was rotten to the core, but the accusation twists into me just the same. So I find what’s left of Pep’s hat, tidy his coat and straighten his arms, make him look a little less broken. I can’t do anything about the blood all over him or the frays on his sleeve where powder burns from the gun blast must’ve singed the fabric.
Celeste is fingering Pep’s sleeve, sliding her fingers back and forth along the frays, her red leather glove blurring into the globs of blood. “See?” she says in a whisper that’s threadbare and exhausted but with something else under it, too, the tiniest bit of spark, a pinprick of sass. “See these frays? They’re from the pin on my brooch. Didn’t I tell you I kept trying to jab Pep with the pin? You believe me now, Cantor?”
I don’t bother telling her that the frays look like powder burns to me. She might argue and we don’t have time. “C’mon,” I say. “We have to go.”
“We can’t…we can’t just leave him here.”
“We’ve got to, for now anyway. C’mon, Celeste. Staying here is a sure ticket to the police lockup. Take it from me, you don’t want to go there.”
She gives me a weak nod, then takes the mink coat off and covers Pep with it, hiding his destroyed face.
That coat sure gets around.
Celeste holds out her hand, says, “Help me up, will you? I’m kind of shaky,” so I take her hand and help her to her feet. Her gloves are slippery with Pep’s blood, smearing my fingers. “Where are we going?” she says. The question starts out fine but ends up ragged. I guess she’s scared about what I might have in mind for her. “Are we going to Loreale’s place? You’re taking me to Loreale? God, no.”
“It’s a long ride back into town. You’ll have lots of time to convince me not to.” She’s shivering, maybe from fear that I’ll take her to Sig, fear of what Sig will do to her. Or maybe Celeste’s just cold, now that she’s not wearing the mink. Either way, the sight of her gets to me, this shivering woman whose tears roll through blood spatters on her face. I take off my overcoat—it was mostly spared of Pep’s spraying blood—and wrap Celeste in the coat. She almost smiles. Her almost smile shrinks up when I take Pep’s gun and extra clip out of the coat pocket.
I say, “You still have my handkerchief?”
She fumbles for it in her handbag, finds it, and hands it over. The handkerchief’s smeared with her mascara. I find a clean spot—there aren’t many—then I lift her hat veil and wipe the blood from her face. Her eyes almost do me in. She looks at me like she doesn’t know whether to cling to me and trust me with her life, or run from me to save it.
I don’t have an answer for her except to wipe the blood from my own face, then offer her my arm and walk with her up the stairs and out of the basement.
*
I’m driving back across Brooklyn. Pep’s .45 is stowed in the trunk. Celeste is surprisingly quiet for someone who’s supposed to be trying to talk me out of handing her to her executioner, but I suppose the shock of blasting your ex-boyfriend’s face to smithereens could put a gag on chatter.
She looks lost inside my overcoat, just a head and a hat and a beautiful face sticking out above the tweed. There’s no expression on that face, no clue to what she’s feeling. In the light of street lamps sliding by she doesn’t even look real. She looks like a painted doll. Painted dolls feel nothing.
What gives with this woman? She tells lies with the ease of a City Hall pol, kisses like she wants to taste everyone who ever loved you and swallow everything you ever did, she was wild for a guy who threw her out like spoiled meat, and to top it all off, she killed her best friend. And now I’m stuck trying to sort out whether she’s a murderer who killed in a jealous rage or was just on the wrong end of a dirty scheme and a lousy accident.
Celeste’s jealousy over Opal’s play for Pep doesn’t help her case, but if you ask me, Pep’s story that Celeste intentionally jabbed Opal in the neck is about as dicey a murder tale as you get. I can think of easier ways Celeste could’ve killed Opal than jab a jewelry pin into an artery while Opal thrashed around in terror and struggled with every ounce of strength. But I might buy it as a freakish accident, as freakish as Pep tossing Opal a hundred feet off a bridge and having her land on my boat, which he didn’t plan on, either.
My mind’s running in goddamn circles. I’m spinning one crummy thought after another about the woman who’s sitting next to me and what I’m going to do about her, do with her, and wondering how she fits in with getting Rosie free of Loreale’s grip. If I take Celeste to Loreale, it won’t matter if he buys the accident story or not; he’ll kill her. If I don’t, and he finds out, which he will, he’ll kill me. He’ll kill Rosie, too, just because he won’t need her anymore.
I’m caught in this crazy, endless loop until Celeste throws a rock into my spinning thoughts and stops them dead. “What did Pep mean when he said you run a classy operation? What’s your racket that you can afford that silk suit and a sweet car like this?”
“Is that all that’s bothering you? I figured you’d knock yourself out trying to talk me out of taking you to Loreale.”
The mention of Loreale tightens her up, though she tries to hide it. “No,” she says, “I want to know your racket.”
“All right. I’m in import-export.” I give it no more emphasis than a legit operator might say insurance or shoelace manufacturer.
“Oh, you’re a smuggler.”
I’d smile at that—women who are wise to my ways tend to make me smile, especially if they’re as knockout gorgeous as Celeste—but I don’t want her to know any more than she already knows, and she already knows too much for my taste. The woman’s as trustworthy as a busted lock.
She goes quiet again, just looks out the window, gazing with no particular interest at Borough Hall and the Brooklyn courthouses as we drive onto the approach ramp to the Brooklyn Bridge. Celeste’s silence gives me room to think about my next moves, but it also gives me the creeps. She’s not even trying to stop me from taking her to Loreale.
And then she says, “You owe me.”
“I what?”
“I saved your life, didn’t I? As a matter of fact, I saved both our lives. If I hadn’t made my move—”
“Your boyfriend might still be alive.”
“Well la-di-dah, aren’t we spiteful.”
“Listen, you jumped the gun on me, girlie, did you know that? I’d been keeping my eye on Pep, looking for a chance to get the drop on him and take him alive. He’d be useful to me alive, but then you make a grandstand play and we all wind up dancing a tarantella with a forty-five auto.”
“What am I?” she spits at me. “A mind reader? Or maybe you’re just rattled because I took away your chance to be a hero. You always gotta be the hero, don’t you.”
I don’t answer. I don’t want to talk about it, don’t want Celeste rummaging around in my old daydreams. I don’t want Celeste to talk, either, not no
w, not when we’re passing the spot on the bridge where Pep Green tossed Opal Shaw and where I remember the miserable sight of that scrap of Opal’s red dress flapping in the wind.
My reverence for Opal’s memory is snagged by a flash of light in my rearview mirror. Headlights are fifty feet or so behind my Buick but gaining fast. Soon I see the headlights are on the front of a dark sedan, a big DeSoto whose wide chrome grille glitters like a toothy grin. I can’t make out the driver, just a silhouette of a guy in a hat. He doesn’t try to pass me even though he’s got plenty of room.
If Ortine’s found me, he’s smarter than I thought, which could be trouble. It’ll be even more trouble if it’s one of Sig’s thugs who’s behind me. It’s a good bet Sig could already know about Celeste and about what happened to Pep, and he’s not happy about it. If that DeSoto stays on my tail, it could run me into the East River the minute I drive off the bridge.
Or it could be nothing, just another car on its way back into town.
But it’s not just another car. Its mouthful of chrome is still grinning at the back of my head when I drive off the bridge and make a right turn onto Centre Street. The DeSoto lingers behind me as I skirt City Hall Park, stays with me when I make another right onto New Chambers Street. I don’t know if the guy driving the DeSoto is an angry Gregory Ortine or an assassin from Sig’s outfit, but I know I have to lose that sedan or Celeste and I could end up dead.
“Hold on tight,” I tell Celeste.
“What for?”
I floor the accelerator, gun the Buick. Celeste snaps back against the seat. The guy behind me guns the DeSoto, but there’s a good chance he doesn’t know the waterfront like I do, doesn’t know the alleys and hole-in-the-wall slits between the warehouses and flop joints. He’s not ready for it when I make a sharp, fast left into the loading bay of a marine-supply place on Oak Street, corkscrew out the other side, hook a right onto Roosevelt Street, then make a near-hairpin left into the sliver of an alley called Batavia Street.