Love or Honor

by Barthel, Joan;

  It seemed to him that the best way to develop this friendship was to do it as normally as he could, getting to know this girl and letting her get to know him, at least as far as he could allow her to get to know him. So they talked of ordinary things—the opera, movies, where they’d gone to school. Chris talked of his elementary school, where he’d enjoyed the art classes best. “We didn’t wear uniforms in my public school,” he said, “but once a week, when we had assembly, the boys had to wear a white shirt and a red tie. I don’t know if the girls had to wear anything special. I wasn’t paying much attention to girls in those days.”

  Marty grinned. “I’m glad you know better now,” she said.

  Marty said she’d gone to parochial school, then to a convent school—all girls—for high school, with uniforms every step of the way. Then her father insisted she go to Marymount for college—more women—where she studied art. When she graduated, her parents rewarded her with the year in Paris. “I guess they spoiled me,” she admitted. “But I didn’t mind. They even gave me a car for high school graduation.”

  “Hey, me too.” Chris said. “Bright red. Boy, did I love that car!

  “I had a great childhood,” he went on, enthusiastically. “I wouldn’t trade my neighborhood, the one I grew up in, for anybody’s neighborhood in the whole world. It was such a mixed bag, where I grew up and I learned so much.”

  Marty seemed genuinely interested. “What did you learn?”

  “Well, I learned how to box, and how to play stickball, and how to make wallets from leather scraps,” Chris recalled. He felt a little foolish, then, having just heard about her privileged background. “I guess that doesn’t sound like a lot, probably. But it was terrific. What I really learned, I guess, was that there are all kinds of people in this world, you know, and I think I learned a lot of things you don’t get in school. I really didn’t like school, after the early grades.”

  “I think it sounds like a lot,” Marty said. “Some people get very good educations and never learn anything they ought to know. Why didn’t you like school?”

  “I just found it boring,” Chris said. “My Pop thought I was just lazy. I liked it all right, up to a point.” He grinned. “Up to the point where I got thrown out.”

  Marty looked surprised. “You don’t sound like somebody who got thrown out of school. You must read a lot.”

  “I do,” Chris said. “Not as much as I used to, though.” That was certainly true. It was all he could do, on this job, to scan the headlines; it was hard to concentrate on anything else. He couldn’t remember when he’d last read a book.

  They talked about books. Marty liked history, though she admitted she’d never come across one of Chris’s favorite publications, The Civil War Times. “Bulfinch’s Mythology is my favorite book of all time,” Chris said. “There’s always a lesson there. And I liked biographies, especially stories about inventors. I could tell you the names of the guys who invented the X ray, and the paper clip, and the zipper.”

  “Who did invent the zipper?” Marty wondered.

  “Well, to tell you the truth, I don’t remember,” Chris said. “Maybe Edison. He was the greatest inventor of all time. A little eccentric, but a brilliant man. Maybe even Thomas Jefferson, because he got involved in everything. Especially architecture—he was great at that. Someday I’m going to drive down and take a look at Monticello. He was so knowledgeable—I mean, his train of thought was unreal. He opened up the whole wide USA, you know, with the Louisiana Purchase, and Lewis and Clark. He wasn’t afraid to take chances!”

  Marty was smiling, and Chris realized he’d been rambling. “Hey, sorry, I didn’t mean to get carried away,” he said. “I just really enjoyed reading about those people.”

  “I’ve enjoyed hearing about them,” Marty said. “You must have started reading when you were very young.”

  “I don’t remember exactly when I started,” Chris said, “But once I learned, I didn’t want to stop reading. I know I was reading the newspapers when I was seven or eight. I liked stories about the military, and war heroes, and for a while I wanted to go to West Point. I guess that’s why …” He was about to point out the link between the military and the department, then caught himself. “I guess that’s why I like movies about the military.”

  “Why would you have wanted to go to West Point?” Marty asked. She seemed fascinated by the idea. Chris guessed she didn’t run into many guys in her father’s world who’d wanted to go to West Point.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” he mumbled. “I guess I’d been seeing pictures of soldiers or something. Or maybe because I’d been reading about the Korean War. I can remember sitting on the curb on Columbus Avenue and seeing a big headline in the paper about a place called Pork Chop Hill. I remember that really clearly, I guess because the name was so funny. Pork Chop Hill. When the movie came out, I think I was the first person in line, I was so anxious to see it. I couldn’t wait.” He laughed. “I’m just thinking, you probably weren’t even born yet when I was reading about Pork Chop Hill. You’re just a kid.”

  “I’m not a kid,” Marty protested. “I may be a little younger than you are, but I’m not a kid. I’ll be twenty-five this summer.”

  “Twenty-five!” Chris exclaimed. “An old lady! Twenty-five and not married yet! I’ll bet your mother’s lighting candles all over the church for you.”

  Marty laughed. “Well, how about you?” she countered. “How old are you?”

  “Thirty-six,” Chris said.

  “Thirty-six and not married yet!” Marty said. She looked at him thoughtfully. “Were you ever married?”

  “No,” Chris said.

  “Well, then, maybe somebody ought to go around and light some candles for you,” Marty teased. “It’s just that my father insisted I go to college, so I went, and then I wanted to work. I really love graphics, and I’d like to do my own designing someday. My father wanted me to go to college because he didn’t have much education.”

  “That’s kind of how it was with my family,” Chris said. “‘Get an education,’ my Pop always said, ‘because that’s the one thing nobody can ever take away from you.’ It meant an awful lot to him, because he never went to school at all, not even one day.”

  He paused, choosing his words carefully.

  “He made money, though. He started with nothing. When he first came over, he said he worked seven days for seven dollars. But he worked hard and had a good business.” He paused. “I hear your father’s in the trucking business.”

  Marty said nothing.

  “Has he been in that business long?” Chris asked.

  “As long as I can remember,” Marty said.

  “That’s what I heard,” Chris said. “I’ve heard some things about your father.”

  “So have a lot of people, Christy,” Marty said quietly. “But no matter what you’ve heard, he’s still my father.”

  Chris enjoyed the evening so much that he thought he wouldn’t take Marty back to Tre Scalini or any other high-profile place. Let it happen slowly, he told himself. When she gets to trust you, she’s more likely to volunteer things about her father. They began to meet once a week, always openly, never in a clandestine or sneaky way. Chris got opera tickets. Rigoletto had closed, so he had to sit through Aida, but he had a good time anyway, both at the opera and at the Plaza, where they stopped for a nightcap and spent a merry hour arguing about the effectiveness of certain high notes.

  He didn’t feel it was really necessary to use Marty for display purposes, anyway. He was becoming noticed on his own. One night he went alone to a restaurant in mid-Manhattan where Lou had taken him. It was a relief to go to dinner alone without having to wear the damned wire, without maneuvering a seat at the end of a table, where it wouldn’t be so easy for a guy to bump up against him or throw an arm around him; those guys did a lot of hugging and grabbing and touching one another.

  He was enjoying a good dinner when Artie, a regular there, approached him.

  “
I think you’re a cop,” Artie said bluntly.

  Chris didn’t stop eating, and he didn’t deny it, which he thought would have been suspicious.

  “You’re entitled to your opinion, Art,” he said casually.

  Artie put his hand on Chris’s shoulder. “I said, I think you’re a cop,” he repeated darkly.

  Chris put down his fork. He stood up. Maybe it’s time for the best defense, he thought. He picked up the fork and pressed the tines against Artie’s shirt lightly.

  “Do me a favor,” Chris said harshly. “You think I’m a cop, Art? Okay, so you think I’m a cop. That’s okay with me, pal. I don’t give a shit what you think. But you keep it to yourself, okay? Because I’m doing good, I’m making money, and if you fuck things up for me with other people, you’re going to get hurt, understand?”

  He pressed the fork a little harder. “I don’t care what you think,” he went on, talking gruffly. “It doesn’t bother me at all what you think. But if you start badmouthing me to other people, you’re in trouble, pal. Because you don’t really know who I am or what I do, do you? DO YOU?”

  Artie backed away. “Hey, okay,” he mumbled. “Hey, don’t get so upset.”

  “I spend my money here,” Chris went on fiercely, “and I’m telling you, just keep your fucking opinions to yourself, okay?”

  “Okay, okay,” Artie muttered. “Hey, I’m sorry. Dinner’s on me, okay?”

  Chris put down the fork. “Okay, then, no problem.”

  He went back to his dinner, feeling good about his act. But just as he was finishing, Artie returned. “I feel like moving around tonight,” he said. “Let’s have a drink around the corner.”

  Chris thought this was Artie’s way of apologizing, admitting he’d been wrong. “Sure, why not?” he said.

  The place around the corner had a reputation as a good place to fence merchandise. Chris had met a prosperous fence there. He knew that in the long run, fencing was important, because it eventually affected the general public: When goods are stolen from warehouses, trucks hijacked, everybody ends up paying for it down the road. But it wasn’t a priority with him, so he didn’t pay much attention to other conversations. He just sat at the bar with Artie.

  They were on their second drink when Artie reached into his pocket and brought out a folded tinfoil packet. “This is a present,” he declared. “Even if you are a cop, I can give it to you. It isn’t a crime unless I sell it to you.”

  Wrong, pal, Chris thought. Giving it to me is a criminal act, too. But he was less concerned with the legal point than with the realization that Artie still wasn’t satisfied. So he took the stuff and put it in his pocket. “I’ll blow later,” he said. But Artie shook his head. “No, now,” he said. “Let’s go in the bathroom.”

  There, Artie was insistent. “C’mon, c’mon, let’s blow.” Chris knew the guy wouldn’t let up until he was convinced; he must be thinking a cop would never go that far.

  Chris thought he could fake it. He’d done it before. At his club, when guys he was with had passed around a joint, he’d taken it; he’d learned that if he blew out instead of in, he got the same glow. If the other guys started laughing, then, Chris started laughing, too, and they wouldn’t know the difference.

  Even with heroin, it had worked once. He’d gone into an apartment building to make a buy. Four big guys, really huge, were in the apartment, and when he’d bought the stuff, they’d stopped him as he was about to leave. “We want you to get off here,” one guy said.

  Chris had tried to talk his way out of it. “I’ll do it later. I ain’t got my toys with me.”

  The biggest guy smiled tightly. “We got all that shit right here.”

  Chris gave it one more shot. “Naw, I don’t like using anybody else’s shit.” But the guy just handed him the needle. When Chris looked around the room, he saw two guys blocking the door, another at the window.

  He took the needle and went into a corner, near the bathroom door. With his head bowed and his back turned, he put the needle through the skin on his arm, and out the other side. He stayed in that position for a minute or two. What do I do now? he thought. It occurred to him that maybe they’d given him pure flour, and that this was a test.

  “How do you feel, brother?” one guy said, peering at him. Chris straightened and shrugged, his heart pounding. “I’ve had better,” he said arrogantly. The guy smiled. “Okay man, you’re cool,” he said, motioning to the others to let Chris out.

  Now, in the bathroom, Chris hoped he could duplicate that scene.

  He handed the packet from his pocket to Artie, who took a large dash between his fingers and put it up his nose, keeping his eyes on Chris. Chris took some, bent his head, smeared it on his upper lip, and made such a general fuss about it that Artie was apparently satisfied.

  They went back to the bar, then Art wanted to blow again. They went through the same routine twice more, until most of the stuff was used. Chris kept the small residue in the packet with him.

  “I’m going to call it a night now, Art,” he said. But Artie draped his arm around Chris’s shoulder. “No, not yet,” he said. “Now we’re going over to Spartacus and get laid. For a hundred, you get the works.”

  He was watching Chris closely, for his immediate reaction. He wants to see me undress, Chris thought, to see if I’m wired or armed. Since he wasn’t wired, thank God, he decided to string him along, maybe settle this once and for all.

  Spartacus was called a health club, though Chris had never seen any exercise machines there, let alone aerobics classes. But it had showers and lockers and private rooms for its select clients; there was a fifty-dollar admission charge just to get in the front door. Chris gave it one more try. “Some other time, Art,” he said. “I don’t feel like paying tonight.” Artie grinned. “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “I’m paying the freight.”

  At the bar at Spartacus, done up like a Roman fantasy, Artie beckoned to a girl to join them. She brought a friend with her. The men went up to the locker room, where Chris took off all his clothes, put them in a locker and put the key on the elastic band around his wrist. Just like the YMCA, he thought wryly. As screwed up as Artie was, with all the booze and the coke, he was watching intently as Chris came out of the shower. So Chris dropped the towel he’d wrapped around his waist and stood, facing Artie.

  “Well, whaddaya think, Art?” he asked lightly. “Am I okay?”

  “Yeah, okay,” Artie muttered, blinking. He shook his head. “After this, we’ll meet downstairs and then we’ll go for a ride,” he said.

  Chris didn’t like the sound of that. A ride might mean going to a diner for scrambled eggs. Or it might mean a different kind of ride. He waited until Art had disappeared into a room with his girl, then Chris went into one of the rooms. It was small, plain, clean, like a serviceable but not luxurious hotel room.

  “Hello, how are you tonight?” said the girl who followed him in.

  “Not so good,” Chris told her. “Listen, honey, I’m a little too drunk right now, you know?” He knew from his occasional experience with these girls, back at the 4-oh, and more often at The Daily Planet, that they wanted nothing to do with drunks. A drunk would take all night, wear the girl out.

  “I gotta go, sweetheart,” Chris told her. “Here, this is for your time.”

  He handed her twenty-five dollars, dressed quickly and got out fast. He was so tense that when he got down to his Waterside place, which was so conveniently close, he couldn’t fall asleep. He lay on the bed, his eyes wide open, thinking that this was one hell of a stressful way to make a living.

  “Why the opera?” Harry wanted to know. “And why the best seats?” When Chris explained, Harry was not only satisfied, but pleased. “Don’t let her get away,” he said. Chris said he didn’t intend to.

  But he continued to have arguments with Harry, who’d yelled at him for going to Vegas with Frankie. “It’s too dangerous,” Harry told him. “I didn’t know where you were going. What if you hadn
’t come back? I might never have known what happened to you.”

  “Listen, I made a commitment,” Chris said. But Harry kept on. “Well, you should have asked me, or at least you should have told me, where you were going, before you made the commitment.”

  “Look, Harry,” Chris said. “I have to make instant decisions here. I can’t say to a guy, ‘Wait a minute, I don’t know if I can go to Vegas with you, I have to ask my mother.’”

  Harry sighed. “I’m getting old before my time with you,” he said. “I feel responsible for you.” Chris could see that Harry was under a strain. The guy smoked four packs a day, and sometimes, after their meetings, Harry would say he needed a drink. Chris usually could use a drink, too, because he knew Harry had a point. If he were taken for a ride, dumped somewhere, he might never be found. And even if he were found, he had false ID. How would my mother know, Chris wondered. How would my wife know?

  If worse came to worst, if somebody put a gun to his head, he always intended to say, “I’m a cop. I’m a detective with the New York Police Department.” He had nothing on him to prove that—no shield, no “detective special”—but he would give them Harry’s phone number and say, “Check it out, call this number.” If he could convince them that he was a cop, he felt it would be okay, at least with the older guys, who still respected cops and would feel that as a cop, he was just doing his job. Besides, hitting a cop would draw so much heat that they would feel it wasn’t worth it.

  He wasn’t so sure about the younger guys, though. One of Carmine Persico’s sons had breezed into an after-hours place on the upper east side of Manhattan one night, where Chris was making a drop. He’d looked Chris straight in the eye and said, “I’ve always wanted to kill a cop.” Even though Chris felt that the kid was just shooting off his mouth, he knew that the old rules of this game, such as they were, were less important to the generation coming up. He also knew that, in such a situation, there probably would not be time for discussion, giving out phone numbers; people who considered him an informer would be likely to shoot first and ask questions later. As an informer, Chris would meet an informer’s fate; shot offguard, then dumped, and if the shooter felt melodramatic, with a canary stuffed in his mouth.