by Edward Dee
They stood on a huge western-style rug near a cactus taller than they. The tinkle of silverware and the screech of chairs on the marble café floor echoed in the cavernous room.
“Did you ever meet Gillian Stone?” Ryan asked.
“At an AIDS fund-raiser in the Sheraton a few months ago. Actually, this may seem cruel, but I wasn’t surprised she committed suicide.”
“Why?”
“I took a good look at her at the fund-raiser. Real good. After all, my husband gives her this great apartment; I’m curious, right? She was beautiful, truly beautiful, but something was missing or wrong. I don’t know what to call it. Something missing in her eyes. My husband says she was doing drugs, but I don’t think that’s it. Oh shit, I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about. Go ahead, ask me something else.”
Darcy Jacobs Winters gave her assessment of Gillian with such conviction, Ryan’s gut reaction was to walk away. He wondered how a sleazeball like Trey Winters could hook up with a nice person like this. Marty Jacobs was right to object. Any father would do the same.
“Do you know someone named Buster Scorza?” Ryan said.
“I know of him,” she said. “My husband has some business dealings with him.”
The answer surprised Ryan. He’d had his next question ready, a follow-up on a negative answer. Sometimes you get fooled.
“What kind of business dealings?” Ryan asked.
“Umm, something to do with the theater unions.”
“Scorza’s been legally barred from involvement with those unions.”
“My husband says he still wields influence. Actually he has a meeting with him this week. Wednesday morning, I believe.”
A steady stream of tight-bodied women in clingy exercise gear passed by, elevator doors opening every few seconds. Ryan had been prepared to dissect Trey Winters’s personal relationship with Gillian, but he decided to switch gears. He knew he couldn’t turn this woman against her husband. Better to get on her good side.
“Has Scorza been threatening your husband?”
“Not that I know of,” she said, looking alarmed. “Why?”
“I don’t mean to worry you. But Scorza has a history of extortion and intimidation.”
“It’s just a business deal.”
“Now you’re worrying me.”
“No, please don’t worry,” she said, laughing. “It’s nothing. Mr. Scorza said he’d intercede with the unions in regard to my husband’s new show, and hopefully avoid any problems.”
“What’s the catch? Scorza always has a catch.”
“Everything has a catch, Detective,” she said, still smiling. “He asked my husband to speak to my company in his behalf in regards to his Times Square real estate holdings. His buildings are in the renovation zone.”
“The renovation zone?”
“One building on Forty-second Street. Three or four more around Eighth Avenue. Mr. Scorza wants to get the fair market price for his buildings, before the city condemns them.”
“If your company buys them before the city condemns them, Scorza gets a lot more money.”
“It happens all the time. It’s just business. Nothing to worry about.”
“One hand washes the other.”
“That’s all it is. But thank you for your concern.”
“Just be careful of Scorza,” Ryan said.
“Thanks. I’ll make sure my husband stays on his toes.”
He watched her walk away, a tomboy walk. Heels banging heavily against the floor. Ryan had been wondering where the actual gym was. Then he saw that everyone who walked through the restaurant area wound up at a bank of elevators on the other side. Ryan figured it was those elevators that carried the well-heeled jocks to far-flung corners of the immense gym.
Ryan punched the elevator button, knowing that Trey Winters was smarter than he figured. He didn’t have the heart to confront Darcy with the testimony of Stella Grasso, or Gillian’s sister, Faye. She’d never believe it. If Trey Winters told Darcy the sky was falling, she’d advance him the money for a billion hard hats.
He’d set her up perfectly. Whatever his deal with Buster Scorza was, he’d sold her on his scenario. In truth, there was no way Buster Scorza, even when he did have influence in the stagehands union, was worth the money he’d make selling his buildings to the Jacobs Organization. It was a deal too sweet. Payment for something else… like murdering Gillian Stone.
He took a last look at Darcy Winters waiting at the other bank of elevators, and he wondered what kind of gym this was. There was no clank of iron weights, no squeak of sneakers on a hardwood floor. Only the tinkle of cups and glasses, the whir of a blender. The smell was not sweat or chlorine from a pool, but fresh coffee. And fresher money.
28
It was Victor’s first trip to Randall’s Island. From the maps it appeared the island’s only purpose was to support the pillars of the Triborough Bridge. In the sky above the island, the wide ribbon of concrete and steel connected auto traffic between Manhattan, the Bronx, and Queens. The island itself seemed deserted on a Monday morning. It was certainly a place where no one lived. Even the permanent buildings appeared abandoned. The streets looked like overgrown and unrepaired paths in a forgotten industrial complex.
Victor parked Pinto’s car in a lot opposite the main tent of a closed street fair. A line of carny booths stretched along a dirt path. Idle rides, including a small ferris wheel, sat on the opposite side of the tent. The sign read, “Fri, Sat, and Sun Only.”
He decided to walk because he couldn’t figure out what road to take. It all seemed like one big back alley, and he didn’t want to get stopped by the cops for some obscure driving violation. Ward’s Island was his destination, and it was close enough.
Ward’s Island had been joined by landfill to the south side of Randall’s Island. The linked islands sat in the northern part of the East River between Manhattan and Queens and were officially part of Manhattan. The 255-acre Ward’s Island was originally purchased from the Indians in 1637 by the Dutch governor. After the American Revolution it was sold to the brothers Jasper and Bartholomew Ward for farmland. The southern tip of the island splits the East River into the Harlem River and the Hell Gate Channel.
From books in the library, Victor learned the island once housed an auxiliary immigration station, an asylum, a hospital for destitute immigrants, and a potter’s field. But he was interested in it not as a place for the penniless to die, but as a place to get rich and start a new life. The point was to get the money from Trey Winters and, in case the police were involved, use the island to elude capture. As did Alain Charnier in The French Connection.
The trick was to figure out how Charnier did it. The waters surrounding the island were Victor’s last resort; he didn’t want to go into the water. Swimming would slow his flight, and carrying money and clothes would add to the effort. But if he had to, a strong swimmer like Victor could traverse either the Harlem River or the Hell Gate Channel.
The books said that hundreds of ships had sunk in the Hell Gate’s waters, including the British frigate Hussar in 1780. The Hussar had been carrying gold and silver for military paymasters. Divers still hunted for its treasure. In 1876 the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers blasted out most of the dangerous underwater rocks, but the channel still remained difficult to navigate.
Alain Charnier, in the movie, didn’t appear to be a strong swimmer. He was an old man who used guile. Victor couldn’t imagine Charnier going into the filthy water. Alain Charnier escaped the clutches of the police in a more elegant manner. Completely dry.
In the movie the police had blocked only the Triborough Bridge exit, because they knew Charnier had driven onto the island. They assumed he’d leave by car. He didn’t. If Charnier did not go in the water, the map showed one other possible avenue of escape: the Ward’s Island footbridge to Manhattan.
Victor walked past a golf driving range and New York City’s school for firemen. In the pure peace of the summer morning th
e island seemed an oasis in disrepair. The green grass of picnic areas and ball fields stretched out like shaggy meadows. Off to Victor’s right lay a complex of the city buildings: a psychiatric hospital, a men’s shelter.
He strolled the peaceful footpath around to the east side of the island. Although it was early in the day he was shocked that no one was using the park. In a city of joggers, it would be so easy to walk across the footbridge from Manhattan and enjoy this bounty. The island was an incredibly quiet haven in the middle of a brutal and noisy city. The breeze blew gently off the water. The sounds of birds came from the heavily wooded area in the center of the island. The smell of trees and plants blooming filled the air. New Yorkers didn’t appreciate the gifts nature had bestowed on them.
As he rounded the bottom of the island, Victor saw the Ward’s Island footbridge in the distance. It was a thin slice of turquoise metal rising high above the Harlem River. He was now sure the narrow footbridge into Harlem was the route used by Charnier. The police didn’t cover this route because they never anticipated a chase on foot. Across the dark river, Manhattan loomed like a fortress of brick and concrete. He began walking up the path to the bridge ramp.
“Hey, buddy,” a voice said.
Victor turned to see a man in a dark green khaki uniform leaning out of an official-looking Jeep.
“The bridge is closed,” the man said, a glaze of sugar on his upper lip. “You can’t get up there.”
It was then that Victor noticed an obstruction up ahead, around the next angled turn. A huge barricade of plywood and barbed wire.
“Why?” Victor said.
“They wanted it,” he said, pointing across the river. “Those people in the housing project over there. They said the inmates were walking across the bridge. Pissing in their hallways, bumming money, acting weird, shit like that. They had all kinds of stories about rapes and shit. They were picketing, doing everything to get it closed. The city finally said fuck it, closed it down. Over a year ago.”
“Too bad,” Victor said.
“Hey, makes my job easier. Know what I mean? Less beer cans and rubbers. Only thing, it gets spooky out here sometimes. Nobody but weirdos to talk to. A whole park full of nothing but nut jobs. Tell you the truth, I wouldn’t be caught dead out here at night.”
“I see,” Victor said, wondering how the man knew he wasn’t a nut job.
“You’re a big guy and all that. But I’d be a little careful anyway. You see somebody, don’t make eye contact, whatever you do. Some of these psychos wandering around this park, they’re not fucking human. My brother-in-law is a cop, and he says that psychos get this superhuman strength. Can’t be stopped. Gotta blow them away. And sometimes that don’t even work. They keep coming at you.”
The man drove away. Victor looked up at the footbridge. The entrances on both sides were blocked by the barricades. Past the barricades, approaches ran for several hundred feet, gradually sloping upward. Then nothing. The center of the bridge was raised to allow ships to pass underneath. It was raised, not in the center like a drawbridge, but one long section, raised to its highest point, like a pole-vault bar. They’d simply left it in that position. Nothing but air between the two approaches. He couldn’t believe his luck.
29
Danny Eumont spent Monday afternoon looking for Wacky Walzak, but he couldn’t get Faye Boudreau out of his mind. What happened between them, happened; he wasn’t going to analyze it now. The important thing was Faye was in trouble. Maybe he’d missed something with Gillian, but he wasn’t going to do it this time. He just needed a few hours to think it through before he called his uncle. To find the right way to say it. After all, he’d been drinking, the juniper berry, and the jet lag. All that. Maybe just be honest: I had sex with her. Maybe not. Either way Joe Gregory was going to be merciless.
He didn’t find Wacky until an hour before curtain, coming out of Shubert Alley. The night was warm, and the streets were packed. Office workers, getting out of town, hustling toward the Port Authority and Penn Station, crossed paths with theatergoers traveling in from New Jersey and Connecticut.
“What do you know about Buster Scorza?” Danny said.
“Enough to say cement shoes are not my style,” Wacky Walzak said.
Cars idled in front of parking garages, waiting for spots to open, blue exhaust fumes rising. On the sidewalks, early arrivals gathered nonchalantly under marquees, occasionally drifting into the path of a head-down, homebound New Yorker. A full-speed pedestrian shoulder slam was just one more Gotham experience.
“Everybody knows Scorza’s a bad guy,” Danny said. “All I want to know is, what is Trey Winters’s connection to Scorza?”
“Not my area of expertise.”
Danny treated Wacky to a hot dog from a street vendor outside Charley O’s restaurant. Wacky wore a T-shirt that read, “Send a salami to your boy in the Army.”
“This is all I get for my help?” Wacky said. “A dirty-water hot dog. Dinner under the umbrella with Mr. Big Spender. ‘Hey, big spender… spennnnd… a little time with me.’ Remember that song from Sweet Charity?”
“I still owe you a dinner,” Danny said. “Anywhere you want to go.”
They were standing near the Booth Theatre on West Forty-fifth Street. The Booth connected with the Shubert Theatre on Forty-fourth. Back to back. They’d been built as one building, but the Booth had half as many seats as the Shubert. Wacky bit into his hot dog with everything, and onion sauce dribbled down his chin.
“My uncle told me you knew more about the theater district than anyone. Yet you can’t tell me one simple fact about Buster Scorza.”
“Buster Scorza has nothing to do with the theater.”
“He used to head the stagehands union.”
“He’s been beheaded,” Wacky said, a dime-size dollop of yellow mustard resting on his purplish lower lip.
“If he’s been beheaded, why is he meeting with Trey Winters?” Danny said.
“‘Hey, big spenda…’ Cy Coleman song. Neil Simon book. The hookers sang it. Did you know that at that time Neil Simon had four plays on Broadway simultaneously?”
“That’s really interesting, Wacky, but I have an important appointment on the East Side in fifteen minutes.”
Danny was due to meet Abigail Klass for dinner. He figured he’d get a cab easily; all traffic was coming toward the theaters at this hour, and cabs usually went away empty.
“I’ve never dined in Twenty-one,” Wacky said. “I like those little jockeys going up the stairs.”
“Twenty-one’s the magic number,” Danny said.
The sound of bagpipe music came from the corner of Broadway and Forty-fifth. Danny could see the lone piper in MacGregor kilt and bearskin hat standing behind his open case. In the hour before curtain the streets of the theater district were filled with street performers. Singers, trumpet players, jugglers.
“You must buy these twelve to the pound?” Wacky said to the small Greek behind the hot dog cart. “Thin as a pencil, these hot dogs.”
“Shut you crazy mouth,” the vendor said. “Nine dogs to a pound, like always. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Terra-cotta figures lined the upper portions of both theater buildings. On the capitals of the Shubert were two woolly rams; along the top of the building were heads with bat wings. The capitals of the Booth featured two openmouthed animals; under the cornice at the top of the building were a series of brackets consisting of white glazed human heads, all with their mouths wide open. Danny pulled big-mouthed Wacky away from the Greek bearing a hot fork.
“Am I wasting my time here?” Danny said.
“You know, once I found a Raisinet in a box of Goobers peanuts. Everybody said I was wasting my time. I wrapped it in plastic and sent it back to the company. They sent me a whole case of peanuts.”
A woman walking into Charley O’s with two little girls warned them about the long lines to the ladies’ room at intermission. Make sure you pee before you leave
the restaurant.
“I really don’t have the time for this,” Danny said, checking his watch. “I’m going to let Joe Gregory talk to you.”
“Don’t bother the man, he’s probably busy beating some hapless miscreant. The truth is I don’t know the answer.”
“Gregory says you know the answer, because he does. He says Scorza met Winters through Paul Klass.”
“He only knows that because he worked in Vice,” Wacky said, then mumbled, “Uh-oh. Too much information. Too much information.”
Outside the Shubert a guy in a tux and a mask entertained the waiting crowd by singing songs from Phantom of the Opera. His top hat sat on the ground in front of him, ready for cash.
“Now tell me what Vice has to do with it?”
“I’m still very hungry, you know,” Wacky said, jingling the coin changer on his belt. “Hungry man of La Mancha. Little wieners do nothing for me.”
“Don’t push me too far, Wacky.”
“Paul Klass passed away. I will not tarnish his reputation.”
“You’re giving me no choice. I’ll call Gregory, tell him you sandbagged me.”
“It’s all ancient history,” Wacky said, jingling the coin changer louder and faster. “Only a few alive know the tale.”
“Gregory will be here tomorrow night,” Danny said.
“So will I,” Wacky said. “Haven’t missed a performance in five years. Then only because I snapped my ankle in a pothole crossing Forty-third. Streisand hated to miss a performance, too, you know. Once in the Winter Garden Theatre Barbra’s understudy in Funny Girl, Lainie Kazan, was ready to go on. Babs called in with strep throat. Lainie was so excited; she’d waited fifteen months. She was in costume, curtain ready to go up, when La Streisand drags herself in and insists on going on. She knew Lainie was talented.”
“That’s it. Adios,” Danny said, and turned around.
Wacky grabbed him by his sleeve. He held a roll of bills up to his face. “Subtlety goes right over your head,” he said.