The Black Stiletto

by Raymond Benson

  Roscoe was one of those stone-faced guys who’d been there forever. The place had some friendly guards, but most were coldhearted assholes who didn’t give a shit about you. Roscoe was one of those.

  We went through a series of doors that opened and closed as a buzzer sounded. I passed Julio, another lifer who’d been in since the early seventies. He was paintin’ a wall or something, some kind of work detail he was on.

  “Hey, old-timer,” he said. “You really leavin’ us, huh?”

  “Better take a good look at my ass when I walk out,” I answered. “It’s the last you’ll see of it.”

  “Take care, Roberto.”

  “Thanks, Julio. You, too.”

  “Wish it was me, man.”

  “It will be someday. Don’t give up.”

  “Right.”

  We went through another couple doors and finally entered the office where they gave you the official send-off. I’d already filled out all the paperwork, got it signed and approved and everything. There wasn’t much more that needed done.

  Some ancient guy—probably a lifer even older than me—worked the unit where they kept prisoners’ personal belongings. Sing Sing had over two thousand inmates, so there was an awful lot of junk in there. I often wondered what they did with the crap that belonged to guys who died in prison. Did the guards use it for currency and play poker with it?

  I signed the paper and they handed over a little plastic bag. Inside was my wallet I’d had in my pocket when I was arrested. Damn, it looked just like new. I opened it up and found my old driver’s license, fifty years out of date. A business card from my bank with an account number scribbled on it. A few black-and-white pictures of my mother and father, and one of my brother Vittorio.

  Vittorio. He would’ve looked just like me now if he’d lived.

  There was also a comb, a wristwatch that didn’t work anymore, a tiny notepad, a key ring, and a hundred and three dollars and sixty-two cents. That was the amount of money I had on me at that stupid New Year’s Eve party. I stuffed the money into the billfold and stuck it in my pocket. The comb I shoved in my back trouser pocket. The wristwatch was useless, so I dropped it in the trashcan by the counter. I picked up the notepad and flipped through it. It had some names and addresses in it. At first I didn’t remember why I’d had it. Then it came back to me. It was my little black book, so to speak. I was never good at rememberin’ addresses and phone numbers, so I carried that little notepad around with me. The key ring—that was somethin’ I needed. There were three keys on it. One opened my old apartment and another was for my long-gone Studebaker—those were garbage now—but the third key was important. I slipped the bad keys off the ring and tossed them in the trash. The good one I kept and put in my pocket.

  “You need me to call you a cab?” the old man asked.

  “I thought they said my ride was here.”

  The guy looked confused. “You had a ride comin’ for ya?”

  “No. I think it was just an expression.”

  “Oh. So you want me to call a cab?”

  “No.”

  The geezer shrugged. His eyes looked me up and down. “How long you been in here?”

  “In here? Sing Sing? Or how long has it been since I was arrested?”

  “Whatever.”

  “I was arrested New Year’s Eve—er, rather, early New Year’s Day, nineteen fifty-eight.”

  The guy whistled. “How old are you, man?”

  “Seventy-eight.”

  “No shit? You look pretty fit. I’d have said you were sixtysomethin’.”

  “Thanks. I guess.”

  “And they didn’t parole you sooner? How many people did you kill, anyway?”

  “I was convicted for one.”

  The guy nodded. He knew there were more. “You’re lucky, man. Most lifers stay lifers. How’d you avoid the chair?”

  I shrugged. “Had a good lawyer, I guess.”

  “Must have.” He winked at me. He, too, knew I was connected at one time. The family had good attorneys with judges in their pockets. “You’re a legend around here, Roberto.”

  “Better that than a fossil.”

  “Well, good luck to you.”

  “Thanks.”

  The doors opened.

  I was free.

  I walked out into the sunny streets of Ossining, past the shell that was old Sing Sing, the original prison that was declared some kind of historical buildin’. What a crock. A historical monument to pain and sufferin’ and death. I heard they were gonna make it a museum. They closed it in the forties. Thank God it was before I got in. It was supposed to be really awful. The so-called modern facility was horrible enough. I’d seen a lot in Sing Sing. I knew guys who did the sit-down dance. They finally abolished execution by the chair, thank goodness. I was there for the riots of eighty-three, but I didn’t participate. I knew better. I stayed the hell out of the way and made sure the guards saw I wasn’t doing anything. That went a long way toward improvin’ my conditions. I got offered more work/program assignments. My days of bein’ the prison badass stopped after my first twenty years, so I became known as a “model prisoner.” It took forever, but it got me paroled. Good behavior. And age. The heart murmur probably had somethin’ to do with it, too. The prison doctor told me to have it checked out by a cardiologist when I got out.

  Screw that. I had more important things to do with what time I had left on this stinkin’ planet.

  Like finding her.

  The cab took me all the way down the FDR Drive to lower Manhattan. The driver was some Arab guy wearin’ a turban. I didn’t expect that. Luckily, he wasn’t a talkative type, ‘cause I didn’t feel like chattin’. Man, things sure had changed. I hardly recognized the city. Well, parts of it were exactly the same. The skyline was different. More buildings. I wish I’d seen the Twin Towers. They were built and destroyed all durin’ the time I was up the river. Do they still use that expression—“up the river”? It came about because you had to go up the Hudson to get to Sing Sing. There are probably a lot of expressions people don’t use anymore and many more they do use that I don’t know about. It’s gonna be a learnin’ curve. Will I reenter society smoothly? I had to attend some seminars in the joint that were supposed to help me “reassimilate.” They didn’t teach me a damn thing. Most of it was common sense. They told us about how technology had advanced, what we could expect when we tried to do somethin’ as simple as makin’ a phone call. Again, computers had changed the world. One of the first things I wanted to do when I got my dough was buy one of them laptops. I needed to get online. And I had to find some of my old friends—ones who were still alive, if any.

  I told the driver to let me off at the corner of Wall Street and William. I paid him and then looked up at the buildin’ I’d been dreamin’ about for fifty-something years. Imagine my shock when I saw it. Forty-eight Wall Street was completely different. It was supposed to be the Bank of New York. It had changed. It wasn’t a bank anymore.

  What the hell had they done with my stuff?

  I felt my heart skip a beat—that damned murmur thing again—but I took a deep breath and told myself to relax. They weren’t gonna throw out anyone’s money. The bank probably moved. So I went inside. The lobby was now some kind of museum of finance. I walked up to some guy that looked like he worked there.

  “Yes, sir, can I help you?” he asked.

  “Where’s the bank that used to be here?”

  He looked confused.

  “The Bank of New York.”

  “Oh. You’re in the wrong building. You want to go to One Wall Street.”

  “One Wall Street?”

  “That’s the Bank of New York. Actually it’s now the Bank of New York Mellon.”

  “Mellon?”

  “They merged. A few years ago.”

  “I see. Would they have all the stuff that used to be in this building?”

  The guy shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess so.”

  “Thanks.
”

  I wondered if I should call my lawyer’s office. They’re the ones who’ve kept the trust money that paid the rent on my safety deposit box all these years. Wouldn’t they have told me if my bank had changed? Maybe not. Fuckin’ lawyers.

  I left the place and started walkin’ toward Broadway. It was a minor miracle I remembered where certain streets were and what direction they were in. Some things never leave you. Manhattan’s in my blood. I lived here all my life.

  And the women. My God, the women. They sure were different. I mean, they were still women, but sweet Jesus, were they amazin’. Short dresses. Long bare legs. Some had tattoos! Blondes, brunettes, redheads. All nationalities. Young, middle-aged, old. They were all fuckin’ beautiful. I didn’t see many women in the joint. I thought I’d have a heart attack right there on the street.

  When I got to the corner and saw the really tall buildin’, it came back to me. One Wall Street used to be the Irving Trust building. But now it wasn’t. Now it was the Bank of New York Mellon. Interestin’. I just hoped to hell they had my stuff. I went inside—it looked like a bank lobby, so that was promisin’. There wasn’t much of a line in front of the tellers, so I waited patiently. I admit I was nervous. This would be my first business exchange with someone on the outside—except for the Arab taxi driver, that is.

  The teller was a young girl. She looked mighty pretty. I could barely speak to her.

  “May I help you, sir?”

  “Yeah, I, um, I used to have a safety deposit box back when the Bank of New York was at Forty-Eight Wall Street. What would have happened to it?”

  I could see the question threw her for a loop. She blinked and asked, “When was the last time you accessed it?”

  “Nineteen fifty-seven.”

  Then her eyes really bulged. “Oh, my. Have you been away somewhere?”

  “Yeah. Prison.”

  She swallowed. “Just a second. Let me get the supervisor.”

  It took a few minutes, but she eventually came back with a squirrelly lookin’ bald guy in a fancy business suit. I didn’t think it was a coincidence that a security guard accompanied him and stood in back a few feet away.

  “What seems to be the trouble, sir?” Squirrelly Man asked.

  “No trouble. I just want to access my safety deposit box. But it’s been fifty-two years since I’ve done so.” I handed over my old driver’s license, the key—which opened the old box, and the business card with my account number.

  “What’s this about prison?”

  “Why does that matter?” I asked. My temper was risin’ and I felt my heart start to pound again. “Yeah, I was in prison and I just got paroled. I came to get the stuff out of my safety deposit box. You still have it, right? It’s supposed to be safe. That’s the idea, ain’t it?”

  The fellow pursed his lips. “Let me look up your account.” He punched the keys on the computer and then checked the information with my driver’s license. “This license has expired.”

  “No kiddin’. I haven’t had time to go get a new one.”

  Finally, the guy glanced at the security guard and nodded. Everything was okay. The guard walked away but hovered nearby, just in case. Then came the kicker. “I’m sorry, all the safety deposit boxes that were once at Forty-Eight Wall Street are now at the Chase Bank branch at Forty-Five Wall Street.”

  “What?”

  He repeated what he said.

  “You gotta be kiddin’ me.”

  “Didn’t you get a notice in the mail about the move?”

  “No. I don’t think so.” I couldn’t remember if I did or not. Besides, the lawyers would have got it. Maybe they didn’t tell me.

  “I’m sorry, sir. You’ll have to go to the Chase branch.”

  Jesus H. Christ.

  “Fine. Thanks for your trouble,” I said to both him and the female teller. She smiled at me, which sent a lightnin’ bolt down to my groin. I didn’t think I’d still have feelin’s there, but I did. Must’ve been the Italian in me. Nevertheless, I was too pissed off to respond in any way. I wanted to break somethin’.

  But I took a deep breath and calmly walked out of the building. Went back to 45 Wall Street. I don’t remember what it was in the fifties—in fact, I seem to recall the buildin’ was under construction the last time I was across the street—but now it was a tall high-rise apartment buildin’ complex with shops and stuff on the bottom. And a Chase Bank. So I went inside and did my song and dance yet again for a teller—this time a man; I’ll call him Four Eyes because of the thick glasses he wore—and after a few minutes of exchangin’ IDs and fillin’ out papers, it seemed I’d finally hit pay dirt.

  I followed Four Eyes through a door and down a corridor to another part of the buildin’. He talked me through the procedure, directed me into a vault containin’ what appeared to be a zillion safety deposit boxes. The guy had a different key, which he stuck in one slot.

  “Your key goes there,” he said, pointin’ to a different keyhole. This was different from what it used to be. In the old days, it just took one key to open the door. Now it took two—mine and his. I guess it was a minor marvel that my key still worked.

  “Do you need a private room, sir?” he asked.

  “Yeah.”

  I carried my box to a series of booths with doors. The banker let me in one and showed me a button on the wall. “Press that when you want to return the box.”

  “Thanks.”

  He left me alone and shut the door. I sat at a small table and eagerly opened the box.

  It was all there.

  Unbelievable. I breathed a sigh of relief.

  First I stuffed all the cash into my jacket pockets, and what didn’t fit I crammed into my trouser pockets and even inside my underwear. By the time I was done, I was pretty well padded down. Forty-eight thousand dollars. Back in nineteen fifty-seven, that was a hell of a lot of money. A fortune. Today, probably not so much. Still, it was enough to get me back on my feet for the time being.

  My beloved snubby Colt Detective Special and one box of thirty-eight special cartridges were there, so I loaded six into the cylinder, spun it once—it needed oilin’, that’s for sure—and snapped it in. The rest of the bullets I poured into one of the pockets with the money.

  I stood and made sure I didn’t look funny. Yeah, my pockets were bulgin’, but I didn’t think it would be too suspicious. I’d go straight to a hotel and regroup. Havin’ my money and revolver made me feel like the king of the world. I hadn’t felt this good since—well, way before New Year’s Eve of nineteen fifty-seven, that’s for damn sure.

  I pressed the button to call Four Eyes.

  Next on the agenda—the hotel, some decent food, and contact some of the boys if I could find them. And then I had to figure out how to locate the bitch. The Black Stiletto. I’d waited fifty-two years to avenge my brother’s death. And by God, I was gonna get that woman. I wondered where she was. Was she alive? I hoped so. Was she still in New York? If she was still there, I’d find her. If not, I’d search every goddamned town in the country until I did.

  At least I knew her real name. That’d help.

  Judy Cooper.

  5

  Judy’s Diary

  1958

  Dear diary, New York City wasn’t what I expected. Actually, that’s not true. Let’s just say I naïvely thought it would be easier to leave home and start anew in another city. New York wasn’t Odessa in any way, shape, or form. New York was like another planet, totally alien to anything I’d ever experienced. There were people everywhere, all kinds, of every race imaginable. Cars and buses and trucks and bicycles and lots and lots of people. And the buildings—they were huge and they were everywhere, towering over me like gods. It was overwhelming at first. I didn’t have the first clue of what to do when I got off that bus at Port Authority.

  I was fourteen, alone, with very little money. What the hell was I doing there?

  Needless to say, I had to mature early and quickly. I remember g
oing to a tourist information booth in the bus station and asking about a hotel. I stayed in some fleabag joint on 42nd Street for about a week as I explored the city, trying to conserve what little money I had. Eventually I found my way farther downtown and started kicking around East Greenwich Village. Somehow the Bohemian nature of the area appealed to me. I pleaded homelessness and got a temporary place to stay at the YWCA on Broadway and set about looking for a job. I’d been in New York about three weeks and the money was nearly gone. Then one day I saw a restaurant on the corner of Second Avenue and East 4th Street with a sign on the window that said HELP WANTED. It was called the East Side Diner and was one of those places that served breakfast, lunch, and dinner, opened early, and closed late. I thought, what the hell.

  I went inside and the place was packed. It was eleven o’clock in the morning, so there were still customers eating breakfast and quite a few having lunch. There were two waitresses running back and forth like chickens with no heads. They constantly yelled orders to the short-order cook in the kitchen while dishing out sass to customers. “Where’s my eggs over-easy?” “Cheeseburger, hold the mayo!” “Are you done, mister? Sorry, my legs ain’t on the menu.” That kind of stuff. They even had one of those new jukeboxes, which I later found out was very unusual for New York diners. I’d never seen or heard one before. I remember the song that was playing when I walked in—it was “Cry” by Johnnie Ray and the Four Lads.

  One waitress, a pretty woman with blonde hair and a great figure, saw me standing by the door. She was probably twenty one years old or so.

  “You comin’ in, honey?” she asked.

  “I want to apply for the job.” I gestured to the sign in the window.

  “Oh. Honey, we’re really busy right now, as you can see. Can you come back after the rush? Say, two o’clock?”

  “Sure.”

  “I’m Lucy. What’s your name, honey?”

  “Judy.”

  “Okay, Judy, see you later.”

  I felt excited. Maybe I’d get hired and start making some money. I immediately liked Lucy. She had a thick New York accent and it sounded funny to my ears. Funny in a good way. Lucy didn’t seem to notice I was probably too young to work. I appeared older than I was. I suppose this is a good time to tell you, dear diary, what I look like. I was tall—still am—ridiculously tall for a fourteen-year-old. I’m not sure exactly how tall I was then, but now, at age twenty, I’m five-eleven. I was maybe an inch or two shorter when I was fourteen. So, yeah, I looked older. I had, and still have, dark hair—almost black—that comes down a little past my shoulders. My eyes are brown with flecks of green. My skin is pale—I used to get sunburned pretty easily. My legs are long, of course, and I’m fit. Since I did a lot of sports and all that gymnastics stuff, I was, and am still, well-toned. My boobs were growing fast at that time and were already something I noticed men stealing glances at. Today they’re a nice full size that fit a 36C cup. Lots of men tell me I’m attractive. Some say I’m beautiful. That’s nice, I guess. To tell you the truth, it makes me a little uncomfortable. The incident with Douglas put me off men for quite some time. That would change, though.