Chris hadn’t anticipated a time when he’d want to pull his gun and not be able to. Still, the incident wasn’t terribly serious—the girl had only a superficial wound. But Chris couldn’t help thinking that the episode illustrated the widening gap between his regular life and instincts, and his undercover life. Perhaps because the gap was growing, he tried hard to maintain both lives as fully as possible. On nights when he stayed in Astoria, he tended to stay all night, both at the Grotto and at other neighborhood bars and clubs, when the mothers with toddlers and the fragile white-haired old women of daylight were replaced with what Chris termed “night crawlers.” Many of them were Greek, but there was a sizable smattering of Italians, too. Chris met an Italian, Jimmy, whom he didn’t like, but who became a good source. Sometimes Chris would end up at Jimmy’s joint, help him close the place, then go out to breakfast with him, usually with Jimmy’s gofer, Dominic, tagging along.
Then, on other nights, Chris would try to get home to Forest Hills reasonably early, to be able to spend at least part of the night in a normal way. He was wary of calling friends, who were sure to ask what he was doing. But if anybody called him, he almost always got on the phone and chatted, just to stay in touch.
When an old friend called him at home one night and asked him to drop by—he and his wife wanted some advice about adopting a child—Chris said sure, he’d drive out to Great Neck the next night. He spent part of that night at the Grotto with Gene and some other people, then drove out to visit his friends. When he got into their neighborhood, he stopped at an all-night diner to say he was running late but he was nearly there, did they want him to bring over some sandwiches, or a chunk of pie? He reached their house about midnight, and stayed about two hours before driving home to Forest Hills.
He saw Gene the next night, and the next. Then he took another night off. He and Liz were stretched out on their bed, watching a movie, eating popcorn, when the phone in the den rang.
“I need to see you,” Gene said abruptly. “I’m in your neighborhood. C’mon over and meet me at the diner.”
Chris stalled. “Well, where exactly are you?” he asked.
“I told you, out by your place,” Gene said impatiently. “I’m calling from the diner on Little Neck Parkway. I was going to just come by your house, but I’m hungry, so I came here. Hey, I need to talk, Curley, c’mon over.”
Chris made up the best excuse he could think of, instantly—he had a girl with him, they were drinking, having a good time—“You know how it is, pal? I just can’t get away now, you know?” Gene laughed knowingly and accepted it. But when Chris hung up the phone, he was chilly with sweat. Thank God the night they followed me wasn’t the night I went straight home, he thought. When he’d gone inside his friends’ house, and hadn’t come out right away, they’d apparently been satisfied that he lived there. He wasn’t sorry that they thought so; it worked to his advantage that they thought he lived so far from his real place. But it scared him. What if Gene hadn’t been hungry, and had just turned up on the doorstep?
“I need another place,” he told Harry. “I’m jeopardizing my wife, and myself, and my friends, and this whole operation, by living at home.” Harry was dubious. “That’ll cost money,” he said.
“Harry, I’m telling you, I’ve got to have another place,” Chris insisted. “Besides, I’ve been to Gene’s apartment, and Bennie’s place—they’re going to wonder why I don’t ask them to stop by my place sometime.”
Harry nodded. “Okay, I’ll see what I can do.”
Chris was annoyed at Harry for not giving the immediate go-ahead; hadn’t the inspector said he’d have carte blanche? But he was even more annoyed at himself. He’d been careless for driving out to Great Neck without checking his rearview mirror. The casual days and friendly nights had lulled him into a sense of security that he now saw was unfounded and dangerous. If he was going to make any headway in this operation, he would have to disassociate himself more clearly from his former life. No more visiting old friends. No more spending so many nights at home, pretending life was normal when it wasn’t.
But was he making any headway? He had to admit he doubted it. The ninety days had come and gone, and although he felt he’d done his best, about all he had to show for it was evidence of some drug deals and the hustling of merchandise that guys thought was swag. The highlight of his life in deep cover had been meeting Kostos and, he recalled wryly, getting the Big G’s plate number. Instead of spinning his wheels, maybe he should drop out now and head back to the 4-oh. No questions asked.
All this was running through his mind when he saw Gene again. Gene grabbed him by the arm, talking fast and enthusiastically. He had decided he could make the money he needed by opening an after-hours joint. But he didn’t have the cash. He needed a partner.
Chris tried to look doubtful. “For that kind of joint to make it, you need to be able to pull in a lot of people,” he pointed out. “You know the people?”
“I know a ton of people, but I haven’t got the money,” Gene said.
Chris grinned. “If you’ve got the people, I’ve got the money,” he said.
He got twenty-five hundred dollars from Harry and went on a shopping spree down in the Bowery with Gene, buying bar stools, fixtures, glassware. Gene liked working with his hands, and built a beautiful curving bar of mahogany. They set up shop on the second floor of a nondescript little building, cream-colored stucco in front, red brick on the sides, on 23rd Road in Astoria, about four blocks from the Grotto. They had to give a percentage to the guy who owned the building and who operated a bar on the first floor, a dingy little place with a tacky awning over the sidewalk entrance. Their place upstairs could be reached either by going through the downstairs bar, or directly from the sidewalk, through a side door. Chris preferred using the outside entrance, because he didn’t like the owner; Gene called him a weasel. The weasel didn’t want them to open their place until two A.M., so as not to cut into his business. When Gene told Chris he’d persuaded him to let them open at one o’clock, Chris didn’t ask how.
They called their place the C&G Club, using their initials, which looked good on the cards they had printed, and sounded good when they said it: the Cee-Gee Club. They had a grand opening. Then, to drum up business, they spent a lot of time in the evenings “making a drop”—dropping cards and conversation, along with their money, at other bars and clubs.
Their work paid off, as their place became popular, sometimes filled with customers from opening time till daybreak, or even beyond. Some of the guys who came were smalltime hustlers; some were waiters who just came by to relax after a night’s work. Pretty girls came, drawn to places where men with money and power might be found, and some of those men came, too. “Johnny the Gent” always had his overcoat draped over his shoulder, continental style, when he sauntered in, always smoking a cigarette in a silver holder, always with a couple of flunkies trailing in his wake. Johnny was tall and pencil-thin, with long, straight, oily hair that he wore combed down to one side over his forehead, nearly into his eye. Chris felt especially good when he was able to finger Johnny as a major heroin dealer, because he hated the way the guy swaggered, boasting about the deals he was making, the money he was raking in through some diners he had going. Chris thought of his father and the coffee shops he’d worked so hard to buy and then keep going, without having time to enjoy his money.
“The Gent” became such a regular that Chris knew, sooner or later, the information Harry funneled to the DEA—Drug Enforcement Administration—would attract some federal people. From the way some strangers in the club walked and acted and looked around, he pegged them for feds. Chris and Gene had hired a bouncer to stand down at the door and screen people, but he wasn’t very good at his job, perhaps because he usually had a girlfriend or two hanging around to keep him company. Chris couldn’t blame the kid; he knew from experience that if the law wanted to get in a place, the law would find a way to get in. He assumed that he himself would turn up in s
urveillance photographs, and one night, when he left, he was sure the feds were on his tail.
Keeping an eye in the rearview mirror, he gunned the car past ninety and, just past an exit ramp, swerved sharply around as their car sped by. He drove almost sideways down the ramp, managing somehow to make it down without hurtling over. He pulled off the service road and parked under the ramp. Then he realized he should have kept going; if they got off the parkway now, they’d nab him readily. How ludicrous it would be to be hauled in for speeding. But no cars came down the ramp. He felt a little sorry for them, knowing how frustrated they must be feeling, having lost him. On the other hand, if he’d taken them home, he’d have had them parked outside his house forever. He hoped it would be a consolation to them when they got “The Gent,” as he heard they eventually did. He heard that Johnny was on his way to Greece, which had no extradition treaty with the United States, when the DEA forced his private plane down over Switzerland, which did.
Gene had been right when he said he knew “a ton of people.” He knew a short man who came in one night and motioned to Gene to move from behind the bar to their little office in back. Gene owed the guy’s boss a lot of money.
Chris had been standing beyond the main door. When he saw the guy whip out a gun, Chris walked up behind him and stuck his little automatic in his back. “Put it away,” Chris said calmly. “If you hurt him, you are going to get killed. My partner needs a little more time. You’ll get your money. In the meantime, just get the hell out.”
Except for being stared at by the occasional federal agent, Chris wasn’t bothered by the law, as he had thought he might be. He’d always been a little worried about being recognized by a cop from the one-fourteen. He’d checked the precinct roster when he went under, and hadn’t recognized any names. But you never knew when someone might be transferred there, someone who might know him. Harry was keeping an eye on transfers, but a guy might slip through without Harry noticing. Even if nobody from the precinct recognized him, Chris had expected some kind of crackdown, even a raid. With half a dozen Cadillacs sometimes double-parked on the narrow street at three, four o’clock in the morning, all the lights on upstairs, people coming and going, how could the cops not notice? He was always prepared for an official visit, but the only two visits he had from cops, as far as he knew, were on their own initiative.
The first time, he knew the man was undercover without knowing for sure how he knew. Maybe he’d seen him in the hall at Intel, slipping in or out of a windowless room. Or maybe it just takes one to know one, he thought, as the guy took a seat at the bar. He had a drink. As he ordered his second drink, he said quietly to Chris that he wanted to buy some stuff. “I don’t deal in drugs,” Chris said, as sternly as a scoutmaster. “But I can steer you to somebody who does.”
The other two cops who came in were in uniform.
“Whose place is this?” one demanded.
“It’s mine,” Chris said. “What can I do for you, Officer?”
The cop didn’t answer. He walked around the room, then came back to the bar, where his partner was standing with Chris. He pointed out some building-code violations, including the lack of a banister at the top of the stairs. “You’ll have to take care of that,” the cop said. “We’ll be back to make sure you take care of it.”
Chris knew then why they had come, and he tried to tip them off. “You’re better off leaving this alone,” he said. Looking a little confused, they left. Chris felt bad about it, but he had to report them to Harry. He never asked what had happened, and he really didn’t want to know. He hoped they’d just gotten off with a warning. They were young, with their whole careers ahead of them. They needed a warning. Chris could never figure out why a cop would take a few bucks’ bribe and then, maybe within the hour, bust into an apartment where he knew a killer with a shotgun was waiting, or venture out onto a tenth-story ledge to try to stop a suicide. And even now that he was on the other side of the fence, he still couldn’t figure it out.
Not that he had much time for philosophical musing. Once the C&G Club got going, he rarely got home before sunrise. Sometimes he didn’t get home at all, and just napped for a couple of hours on the sofa in the back office. His life was centered around the place. He came to know just about everybody who came and went, except for the two men who came in, just before dawn, when the place was nearly empty.
They looked as though they had stepped right off the screen, from the cast of every gangster movie Chris had ever seen on those Saturday afternoons when Mr. Zuckerman let him in free. They wore hats slouched down over their foreheads and long black overcoats. Chris could hardly believe his eyes. They were truly Damon Runyon characters.
The man who did the talking had a deep, gravelly voice. The other man had a punched-in face, like an old prizefighter’s, with a wide, thick scar running down one cheek. He kept his right hand in his overcoat pocket, moving it around under the heavy clothes as though he were fingering a gun, which Chris assumed he was. The man who spoke seemed to have memorized a script, too.
“Who gave you permission to open this place?” he growled. “You guys must be crazy! You gotta have permission!”
Neither Chris nor Gene spoke.
“Who you with?” the man demanded. “The Big G wants to know who you’re with. And if you’re not with anybody, you’re gonna be with us.”
Gene shrugged. “Well, who are you with?” he countered.
“Listen, pal,” the man said. “I know I’m with people, but I don’t know about you. How much you make here?”
Chris spoke up. “Oh, a couple hundred a week.”
The man frowned. “Listen, we’ve clocked you, and we know you’re doin’ good. From now on, you gotta give us five hundred a week.”
Chris grinned at them. “Five hundred a week? Tell you what. You give us five a week, and you take the joint.”
“What are you, a smart guy?” the man growled. The other man moved his hand restlessly in his pocket, and for a moment Chris thought he’d gone too far.
“No, no, he’s okay,” Gene cut in hastily. “We have to think about it. Give us a little time to think about it, okay?”
“Okay,” the man said. “You got time. You got one week.”
The two men turned and strode out, shoulder to shoulder.
“Jesus, what is this?” Chris asked Gene. “Is it the jukebox?”
“Naw, I took care of the jukebox guys, and the vending,” Gene said. “These belong to Kostos.”
“But they didn’t look Greek,” Chris said.
“They’re not. They’re Italian,” Gene said. “But they’re from Kostos.” He clapped Chris on the shoulder. “I’ll take care of it, Curley. I’ll call my pal Frankie.”
“But they said they’d be back in a week,” Chris said, trying to sound worried. In fact, he was delighted. He’d wanted to attract attention, to get to the higher-ups, and now they had attention, even though the one with his hand in his pocket had made Chris a little jittery.
“It’ll be okay,” Gene assured him. “I’ll take care of it.”
Chris’s instincts had been right: The small-timers were the way to go. Gene’s friend Frankie was the nephew of a Mafia figure who’d had an interesting, active career. His résumé included a position as chauffeur for the boss of the Luchese crime family at the famous crime convention in Apalachin, New York, when some five dozen high-ranking mobsters were rounded up by the law. Although he appeared to be semiretired now—“My uncle’s out on Long Island, feeding the pigeons,” Frankie told Gene—he liked keeping a hand in, keeping up with things.
He told Frankie to tell the boys—Chris and Gene—that he’d set up a meeting for them with a man named Solly, at the restaurant and cocktail lounge of the Kew Motor Inn, farther out in Queens. “My uncle will take care of it,” Frankie assured Gene, who passed the word to Chris, who couldn’t help thinking that the operating principle in OC seemed like that in any business anywhere: It wasn’t so much what you knew, as who.
She pushed her food around on her plate with the tip of her fork. “I hardly ever see you, and I don’t even know where to get in touch with you, if I need you.” She sounded tired and cross.
Chris was tired, too. “Have you needed to get in touch with me?” he countered.
“That’s not the point,” Liz said. She paused. “No, as a matter of fact, I haven’t needed to, and I haven’t even wanted to. Because I know you wouldn’t have anything to say to me.”
She got up from the table and took her plate to the sink. She scraped the food into the trash, put the plate in the sink and turned on the tap.
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