Criminal Gold

by Ann Aptaker

  “Your man is driving us around in circles, Gregory. Where are we going?”

  “You tell me. Where do you have my ten-thousand deposit? In your apartment? Your office? Do you even have an office? All I have for you is a telephone number.”

  “Look, Gregory, we can deal with this tomorrow. Right now, the lady and I are in a hurry.”

  “Yesss”—if anyone can hiss and leer at the same time, it’s Gregory Ortine—“I’d be in a hurry for bed, too, if I was accompanied by such a pretty young lady. By the way, I’m sorry, miss,” he says to Celeste, “I hope I didn’t hurt you too badly. Your screaming was getting on my nerves, that’s all. Oh, and I see Cantor’s done the, um, gentlemanly thing on this chilly night and given you her coat.” He flashes us a tongue-y smile that makes me want to smash that flapping, fleshy organ between his teeth. “Well, you two,” he says, “playtime will have to wait until I get my cash. And, Cantor, it’s already tomorrow.”

  “Sorry, I don’t have my checkbook on me.”

  “Checkbook? You slay me, you really do! Maybe I should feature you as the warm-up comedian at one of my supper clubs.” Ortine’s laughter tangles up with the snickers of the mountainous thug sitting next to him. Their combined giggling is weirdly repulsive, like lunatics in a horror picture.

  “Okay, Cantor,” Ortine says, losing his laugh, “you’ve had your fun. It’s time to go get my cash.”

  “What if I already put it in the bank?”

  “What if you did? I’m sure you have that much lying around. Yours is a cash business. Same as mine. Only mine’s legal.”

  “You don’t say? When did the State of New York legalize backroom gambling? I must’ve missed it. And how about your shakedown operations? Or your girlie rackets? Yeah, you run a cash business, a bunch of ’em, the ones the Law and the tax men don’t see.”

  He shrugs that off, says, “I want my ten thousand now, Cantor. Since you and this woman are in such a hurry, we can make the evening short. Give me my cash and I’ll be on my way.”

  “We’ll talk about it later.”

  “Dammit, I paid you to do a job for me. Have you forgotten that in this matter you work for me?”

  “No!” cracks from Celeste like a rock crashing through a window. “We’re working for Sig Loreale. That’s right, Sig Loreale. He wants us to find out what happened to Opal Shaw. You want to get in his way?”

  The woman sure knows how to knock me silly with surprises. She’s making a brilliant play by scolding Ortine like he’s a naughty child, and I’d be a dope to spoil it. It’s a smart, gutsy move, complete with the magic words: Sig Loreale. The threat behind his name stops Ortine’s chatter as if Celeste had ripped out his tongue.

  Celeste Copley. Possible murderer. Possible victim. Gorgeous creature, with sass and brains to boot. Not the sort of dame who gets swallowed up by the night. No wonder I’m a sucker for her.

  Ortine cringes at the mention of Loreale. He shifts his attention from Celeste to me. He says nothing, but it’s obvious he wants me to either corroborate or dismiss Celeste’s story, and he hopes to hell it’s the latter. I keep my mouth shut, just let Sig’s name hang in the air, let it scare Ortine the way it scares Celeste, the way it scares everybody.

  But Ortine’s no bush leaguer in the rackets. He may be a dull thinker and a social-climbing weasel, but he’s risen high by making sure things add up. Right now, something’s not adding up. Squinting through his glasses as if he’s trying to see a puzzle in the dark, he says, “Loreale has his own outfit, the best anywhere. He doesn’t need you two to get the goods on the dead girl.”

  “Believe me, Gregory,” I say, “I didn’t want any part of this thing. I have enough aggravation between losing your brooch and the loss of my boat. But Loreale has his reasons, and only an idiot with a death wish argues with Loreale’s reasons.”

  “What reasons?”

  “Well, my connection to Esther Sheinbaum for one. You pegged that right.” Maybe flattery will get me somewhere, hurry him up. I need to get to Rosie and outrun Sig.

  But Ortine drags on, asks more questions. “What about Missy here? What’s she got to do with Loreale and his woman?”

  Celeste fires back, “I was Opal’s best friend, that’s what. I know things. Things that could be helpful.”

  “Is that so? What things?”

  “You think I’m stupid enough to talk behind Loreale’s back? Huh, Mr. Supper Club? Mr. Clip Joint?” The woman’s on a roll, playing the game as good as the best grifters I’ve seen. I don’t know if it’s natural talent or years of twisting the truth, but the performance is as dazzling as the woman.

  Ortine doesn’t answer. The thug beside him coughs, either from boredom or nerves, while his boss mulls things over.

  I push deeper into the crack Celeste so expertly pried open in Ortine. “Loreale will come looking if I don’t show up, Gregory. And you know how good he is at looking in the right places. He already knows about our botched doings on the river. Oh yeah, he knows, and he’ll piece it together that you have something to do with me getting sidetracked from his business. You want Sig Loreale looking for you? He will, unless you turn this heavy heap around and take us back to my car.”

  Ortine stays quiet, doesn’t move a muscle. The Rocky Mountain next to him is getting fidgety. So is Celeste. And if any more sweat rolls down my back I’ll flood the car. Between the four of us, there’s enough tension in the backseat of the Caddy to explode the windows.

  “Shorty,” Ortine finally says to the other mountain, the one driving the car, “take us back to the Sheinbaum place.” I draw my first full breath since being thrown in the Caddy.

  During the quick drive back to Second Avenue, Ortine doesn’t bother with conversation, so I don’t bother with him, which leaves me free to think about how I’m going to grab Rosie. And I wonder how bad Celeste’s smacked lip still hurts.

  The Sheinbaum house is dark when we pull up. The old folks must’ve finally gone to bed. My car is still in one piece even though it’s sticking out from the curb and the doors are still open, but if someone inside the house saw me getting hijacked by Ortine and took the opportunity to jack the keys to keep me from going after Rosie, I’ll have to hot-wire it. I never got the chance to grab the keys before Ortine’s galoot dragged me to the Cadillac.

  Ortine says, “You can expect to hear from me later, Cantor. We aren’t finished until you hand over my ten thousand.”

  “First hand over my gun.”

  “Let’s consider it collateral, shall we? You’ll get it back when you give me my cash. Good night, Cantor.” He nods to the thug beside him to open the door.

  I have to crawl over the lug’s big feet to get out of the car. He doesn’t even budge for Celeste. I help her out.

  The guy slams the door. The Caddy takes off.

  First thing I do is look in the driver’s side of my car, check the ignition. The keys are gone. “I’ll have to spark it,” I tell Celeste as I back out. “So stay put. It’ll only take—” But she grabs my hand and slaps my keys into my palm.

  I don’t know which rocks me back more: my surprise or the drop-dead-satisfied smile on her face. She says, “In case you got free of that gorilla, I didn’t want you coming after me when I tried to make a run for it. So I pulled your car keys.”

  Now it’s me who’s smiling. The dame’s brains are as gorgeous as the rest of her.

  She comes close to me, looks at me like she might start to cry but isn’t sure. “I have to tell you something but it’s hard for me to say it.”

  “Yeah, your lip probably stings like hell from that wallop Ortine gave you. Here, let me have a look at it.”

  “No, that’s not it.” She laughs and brushes my hand away. “It really doesn’t hurt so bad now. What I’m trying to say is, I think…well, maybe I…what I mean is, I think I’m starting to trust you. The way you handled yourself getting us out of there”—she nods toward Mom’s brownstone—“and then after Ortine smacked me, and you gave me
your sleeve to wipe the blood away. I knew it was tough for you, I saw the pain on your face from that kick to the ribs.”

  “Anybody would—”

  “Shhh,” she says, her fingers at my mouth, tracing the scar above my lip. Her gloved fingertip is smooth and warm as it stalks me. Celeste brings her face close, those incredible glistening eyes, her red mouth a blur and then soft when I feel it on mine. Her mouth brushes me, doesn’t linger, now it’s gone.

  Speaking so softly I feel it more than hear it, she says, “I trust you now even though you don’t need me anymore. You know where your girl is, you can rescue her yourself. But you said you want me along, so I figure it’s for another reason. Must be a good reason. All right, I’ll take that ride.”

  I pull her gently back to me. “Yeah, it’s a good reason. You’ll like it even more than you like this.” I take her in my arms and kiss her, but my kiss isn’t a brush-by, it’s a search, a probe to find her heart, to find it and explore what’s in it, explore what’s strong and gutsy, the Celeste Copley who outsmarted Gregory Ortine—and what’s rotten, the Celeste who lies to get what she wants. This may be my only chance to know her, this woman I’ve run through the night with, who I’ve killed a man with.

  I open my eyes to take in more of her, her creamy skin, her hair dark and glowing as a Manhattan night.

  A wrong light suddenly glints on Celeste’s hair.

  A light’s been turned on in an upstairs window in the Sheinbaum house. It’s Mom Sheinbaum’s bedroom window. She’s silhouetted against the light.

  I pull away from Celeste. “We have to go,” I say. “We’re being watched from the house. Don’t look.”

  “Oh,” is all she says. I walk her around to the passenger’s side, help her into the car. On my way back to the driver’s side I open the trunk and grab Pep’s .45. It’s too big for my .38’s holster, so I slip it into the waistband of my trousers.

  I close the trunk, get into the car, and drive out of Mom Sheinbaum’s sight.

  “Cantor?” Celeste says. “Don’t you think it’s time you told me where we’re going?”

  “Paradise.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  I pull over to a phone booth outside an all-night drugstore on Canal Street. A green neon Drugs sign hangs over the street, throws a spooky glow on the sidewalk, reflects off the plate-glass windows of the spaghetti parlor and chop-suey joint on either side of the drugstore, and creeps up the face of the five-story brick tenement that sits above all three storefronts. The eerie light gives Canal Street’s usual mom-and-pop atmosphere a hold-your-breath unease that clashes with my rarin’-to-go mood. Two lives are on the line tonight, and I have to save them both if I hope to make this lousy night right, and I don’t want any bad juju screwing me up.

  “Sit tight for a minute,” I tell Celeste as I get out of the car. If she’s wondering why I’ve interrupted my ride to Rosie’s rescue she doesn’t say. She just lights a cigarette.

  I step into the phone booth, drop a dime into the slot, and dial a number. After two rings, a voice ragged as splintered wood says, “Drogan.”

  “Red, it’s Cantor. How’d you like to make back some of the dough you lost on the Ortine deal?”

  “Sure I’d like it, and I hope it’s comin’ outta Ortine’s hide. Believe me, my tug woulda gotten to you before that cop boat showed up if it wasn’t for Ortine fussin’ around when he gets aboard. And then he tells me in that highfalutin way he’s got, Have to make sure everything’s secure and up-and-up with you. Guy’s got a helluva nerve.”

  “Yeah, it’ll come out of Ortine’s hide,” I say. The ten-grand deposit Ortine knocked me around for just became a late fee. A cut of the cash, say two and a half G’s, will go to Drogan as a carrying charge. “You’ll have your dough soon, Red.”

  “I know you’re good for it. I’m just glad you’re okay. I was gonna come pull you outta the water, but that cop boat got there first. Anyway, whaddya got in mind?”

  “Get your tug to Paradise Pier fast, Red. Be ready to make one of your special trips with all the trimmings.”

  “Sure, I got it. Okay, Paradise Pier.” He hangs up.

  I get back in the car and drive, get the hell away from the bad light on Canal Street.

  Celeste says, “Everything all right?” and stubs out her smoke in the ashtray.

  “Everything’s in place,” I say.

  “And you’re taking me to Paradise?” She’s finally able to relax a little bit, now that her ordeal is almost over. There’s even a lilt of humor in her voice that tickles the word Paradise.

  “Next stop,” I say. We’re coming up on the toll booths to the Holland Tunnel. In a few minutes we’ll be across the river.

  “In New Jersey?” she says, part laughing, part disappointed.

  “You’d be surprised what turns up in Jersey.”

  “Or who. Your girl’s stashed there, isn’t she. So what’s my part in it?”

  I give the toll guy my fifty cents and drive into the tunnel. We’re under the Hudson River, alone in the white-tiled tube, talking through the tunnel’s muffled, under-the-world drone that wraps around the car and makes everything sound as if Celeste and I are the only two people in the world. There were times tonight when I wished we were the only two people in the world, but those moments kept blowing up in my face. Sometimes Celeste blew them up. Sometimes I did. And sometimes it was everything the night threw at us. “You don’t have any part in it,” I say. “I’m getting you out of here, away from the Law and Loreale.”

  “And you think I’ll be safe in New Jersey? What are you planning to do? Pass me off as a dairy cow?”

  “Don’t worry, I’m not dragging you off to farmland. We’re only going as far as the border between Jersey City and Hoboken.”

  “Jersey City and Hoboken? But they’re up to their necks in gangsters! Pep said he used to take care of business there.” Celeste says “take care of business” like she’s afraid the words alone could slash her throat.

  “You mean where he’d kill people,” I say.

  “Yeah, that’s what I mean. And you think I’ll be safe there? The whole place is a graveyard.”

  “You said you trust me now, Celeste, so just be quiet and listen. I don’t know if you killed Opal by accident or murdered her when you saw your chance, and I’ll never know.”

  “But I told you—”

  “I said be quiet and listen. I’m talking about saving your life, understand? I can’t turn you over to Loreale and let him kill you. And I don’t turn people over to the Law. The Law takes orders from the likes of Loreale and Mom Sheinbaum anyway, so after a flashy trial and a crummy defense, the Law will fire up Ol’ Sparky and fry that beautiful body of yours, which would be a great loss to the world of pleasure, not to mention the loss to my imagination. My only out—your only out—is to give you the benefit of the doubt. And believe me, honey, I have enough doubt to sink every goddamn ship in New York Harbor.”

  She’s trying not to twitch inside my coat, trying to squash an anger she knows won’t do her any good anymore.

  “You look like you could tear my throat out,” I say. “Yeah, you’ve got it in you to kill, Celeste. We both know you do. There’s a lioness inside you with great big claws, so don’t give me any more poor-weak-little-me stories. But just because you can kill doesn’t mean you committed murder, and an iffy death sentence from either the Law or Loreale would keep me awake nights, so I’m getting you to safety. I’m setting you up with a guy named Red Drogan.”

  “And what’s his racket? Another one of your shady acquaintances, like that creep Ortine?”

  “Listen, I’m trying to save your life here,” I say. “Though with an attitude like yours, I’m starting to wonder why.”

  She doesn’t answer that. Just fidgets inside my coat like a brat tamed by a scolding.

  “Drogan’s a tug boater with the kind of connections that help people disappear,” I say, now that she’s behaving herself. “He’ll get you a passpo
rt with a new name and put you on a ship to Europe or maybe South America, no questions asked. You’ll be sailing away by dawn. Loreale and the cops won’t even know you’re gone. And by the time they do, if they ever do, Celeste Copley will have vanished into thin air. No trail, no trace. Look, so it’s not a heart-shaped pool in Hollywood. But it’s a chance to see the world. You’ll like that.”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “Why the cheap enthusiasm? You’re getting your second chance, a clean slate and all that. Isn’t that what you’ve been angling for all night?”

  “Well, yes, but—Cantor, come with me. We’re a natural. We’d make a great team. I’ve seen the way you handle yourself, better than Pep ever did.”

  “Uh-huh. And what’s your contribution to this great team?”

  She’s suddenly close to me, pressing against my side, one gloved hand around my neck, the other moving up my thigh, moving so close to my joy engine it starts to throb, sets off pictures in my mind of a naked Celeste with me all over her. I can even feel myself against her, imagine myself mounting her. I almost lose control of the car, nearly slam us into the wall of the tunnel before I veer the car out of the way.

  The smashup could’ve killed us both, which would’ve been one way, I guess, to solve everyone’s dilemmas. Everyone’s except Rosie’s. “Celeste, take it easy! This isn’t a joyride!”

  “But…back there, the way you kissed me, the way you touched me, it was wonderful. I thought you…I mean, I thought maybe we—”

  “Don’t,” I cut her off. “Don’t stroke that idea. Listen, I’d be a liar if I said running with you didn’t cross my mind. It made a nice daydream, rolling around with you on silk sheets in a hotel in Paris or sipping rum under a palm tree in Brazil. Sure, I’m a sucker for you, a sucker for everything you’ve got, inside and out. Your outside dazzles like a full moon. And inside, what’s deep inside that gorgeous, dark place that’s your liar’s soul could wrap me in blissful oblivion. And that’s the problem.”

  “I don’t understand,” she says in that baffled way beautiful women have when their charms don’t win over their mark.