“Forget it. Just make sure she gets to the hospital and call that number.”
Being in over my head was par for the course, but this wasn’t just about me anymore. Looking back, I’m not sure it ever was. Unfortunately,
Standing on the Coney Island side of the Cropsey Avenue Bridge, Vinny Cee was about as hard to spot as a cotton ball on a sea of black velvet. He was pale, skeletal, fidgety, and squeezed his too-prominent beak between his fingers every few seconds. Christ, if this guy didn’t have LOSER tattooed across his ass, he should have. It was easy to see why he made good snitch material. He probably didn’t deal enough to hurt anyone but himself, so the cops could leave him on the street. And depending upon his level of desperation, he’d probably sell out anyone, from his birth mother to the Holy Ghost.
I folded too much money up in my palm. Money was the second best way I knew to cut through bullshit. Fear was best, but I’d hold that in reserve. As I approached him, Vinny Cee got even more twitchy, his eyelids beating like hummingbird wings. I guess I still had the cop vibe about me. I liked that, I guess. I slapped the folded bills into his hungry hand. He took a peek. That got his attention.
“Only half grams, buddy. I can’t-”
“This isn’t about coke and I ain’t your buddy.”
“Hey, man, no reason to be that way.” I thought he might burst into tears.
“We have a mutual acquaintance. Detective Melendez sent me your way.”
Vinny Cee smiled at that. “She’s fine. You a cop? See, I fuckin’ knew it. I was jus’ thinkin’ to myself, dis guy’s a cop.”
“I’m not a cop anymore, Vinny, and you talk too much.”
I’d hurt his feelings again. “No need to be that way. Whaddaya want?”
“Malik Jabbar.”
“Whadabout him?”
“You tell me.”
“Maybe I don’t feel like talkin’ no more. Maybe I-”
“Vinny, don’t try and shake me down for more than what’s already in your palm. ’Cause, you see, I’ll throw your skinny fucking ass off this lame excuse for a bridge if you don’t just answer me.”
He flinched. “Okay, okay, man. Easy, easy.”
“We’re good. Now tell me what you had for Melendez.”
“I been copping from Malik since his name was Melvin and I know the pretty lady was askin’ around about Malik’s new friends. Am I right?”
“You’re the new fucking Kreskin.”
“Who?”
“Forget it.”
“Whatever. Well, one day, a few months back, I went around to Malik’s and I seen him with dis guy I went to Xaverian with and they was doin’ some business, if you know what I mean.”
“This guy have a name?”
“Frankie Motta.”
I twisted my hands around Vinny Cee’s collar and lifted him over by the railing.
“Listen to me you lying piece of shit. Frankie Motta has to be fifty-five, sixty fucking years old. I don’t like having my time and money wasted.”
Vinny Cee flailed his arms and kicked his legs frantically as he tried choking out some words. I relaxed my grip enough to let his lies flow a little more easily.
“Frankie Junior.”
“Frankie Junior what?”
“His son. I went to school with Frankie Motta’s son.”
I let him down, but not free. “How many years ago was that?”
“We got out in ’76, I think.”
“Were you tight, you and Frankie Junior?”
“Nah, Frankie was always braggin’ about how tough his old man was. He thought he was tough too, but he was a punk. Nobody would touch him because a his dad’s rep.”
“I can see that. Second generation’s always got it too easy.”
“Huh?”
“Never mind, Vinny,” I said, smoothing out his rumpled clothing. “Nothing you’ve got to worry about.”
“I understand stuff.” Oy, there were those hurt feelings again. “I ain’t stupid, ya know.”
Who was I to argue? Maybe he hadn’t looked in a mirror just recently. Or maybe he had, and all he saw were thin white lines and razor blades.
When I first met Wit, he literally lived out of a suitcase. It’s not like the guy went from one Motel 6 to another. From the Pierre to the Plaza to the Waldorf was more likely. Sometimes I think his rootless-ness was a hedge against the grief over his grandson’s murder. It was as if he hoped having no permanent address would make it harder for the grief to find him. Worked about as well as his drinking.
These days he lived in a tidy, three-bedroom apartment on Fifth Avenue in the Village. For Wit, this was blue collar stuff. Of course, it was really about as blue collar as a private jet. But given the polo pony world out of which he’d fallen, it was a start. The package of documents that Fishbein had faxed to Klaus, and Klaus to Wit, was waiting for me in the lobby. There was also a copy of the Esquire piece Wit had done on Tio Anello.
I was going to leave it at that, but then I remembered about Carmella’s grandmother and the promise I’d made. Earlier, I had intended to ask Ronnie to ask Miriam to do it. But under the circumstances, I figured I’d asked quite enough of them, too much. Wit, on the other hand, always liked to be asked favors. Made him feel needed.
“Wit,” I said when I got upstairs, “how’s your Spanish?”
Rico was a lot more receptive to my presence when I showed back up at his place. It was late. He was less drunk and, as he was quick to mention, Marisa had thrown him a freebie because of my financial largesse.
“A fuckin’ freebie! Man, I almost felt like a cop again,” he cooed.
I felt sick.
That summed up the difference between us. He had seen his being a cop as a means to an end, something to use for his own good. Naively, I suppose, I’d come to see it as a way to do some good. Strange, I had almost laughed at Carmella Melendez for voicing that same sentiment to me. What’s that they say, you criticize in other people what you despise about yourself? I’d outlived my naivete. I hoped Melendez would as well. I suspect that hole in her shoulder would go a long way to that end.
“What’s that?” he asked, pointing at the envelope in my hand.
“The personnel file of a detective who I think tried to kill me.”
“This have anything to do with what happened in Red Hook last night?”
“You know about that?”
“Name me five people in New York that don’t.”
“I get your point. And yeah, it’s got everything to do with Red Hook.”
“You must be getting close.”
“Not that I’m sure exactly what it is I’m close to. All I know is that Larry must’ve been mixed up with the Anello Family.”
“The Anellos. Get the fuck outta here!” Rico was skeptical. “They ain’t even an active family anymore, not since the Russians swallowed up their territory.”
“You kept up on things when you were-”
“-away. Yeah, they have papers and TV in prison. When you do your bid in isolation, you got all the time in the world to keep up and think.”
“Sorry.”
“You and me, we’re way past sorry, Moe.”
“Way past.”
“So. .”
“So I think the Anello Family is trying to make a comeback. At least with the drug trade.”
“Drugs? That don’t sound like Larry. Not his style, especially him knowing what happened to me.”
“I know, but Marge told me he grew up with Frankie Motta.”
“So what? We all grew up with connected guys. That don’t mean shit.”
“They were close there for a while when Larry first got on the job. Then Marge said they had a falling-out, but Larry wouldn’t talk about it.”
“Maybe Larry owed him.”
“We’re talking a long time to owe somebody,” I said.
“You owe somebody, you owe somebody. Owing these guys a favor don’t come with a time limit. Believe me, I know.”
“Larry never owed anybody anything. It was everybody that owed Larry. It was his strategy, the way he built the rungs on his ladder.”
“Not for nothing, Moe, we didn’t know Larry Mac before we all served together. Could’ve been an old debt.”
“But it’s Motta’s kid fronting the drug move, not his old man.”
“Don’t mean the old man ain’t behind it, even if the kid’s leading the charge.”
“I guess not. Look, Rico, I’m beat. I’m gonna crash out on your floor, okay?”
“You don’t mind the roaches, they won’t mind you.”
“That’s comforting.”
“Hey, toss me that file. I don’t sleep so good sometimes.”
“Here.” I handed it to him after removing the Esquire. He wasn’t the only one who had trouble sleeping.
Although a lot of what Rico said made sense, there was definitely something else at play. There was more here than an old debt and new drugs-there had to be. No one kills cops without a good reason, especially not the mob. Bad for business, killing cops. And what about Malik Jabbar, Kalisha Pardee, and Larry Mac? I was missing something.
I know the world is a messy place and that to expect things to snap together like Legos is crazy, but I couldn’t escape the feeling that they should. Einstein spent the last decades of his life looking for a unifying theory, one thing that tied all the forces of the universe together. He failed. Thinking about it that way, my task was considerably less daunting. Trouble was, I didn’t have decades to putz around, and failure didn’t seem like a viable option.
CHAPTER TWENTY
It came to me in my sleep. Who knows, maybe a roach whispered it in my ear. More than likely it was Wit’s article. What can I say, the man’s my good luck charm. Six years ago, it was his expose on the career of a New York politician that was the key to my discovering Moira Heaton’s true fate. But this time it wasn’t so much one detail or a particular sentence that made it come together for me. I had simply drifted off reading Wit’s piece, “Said the Spider to the WASP,” and when I woke I up, I knew it all revolved around ’72.
Although there were guesses I was making to help things fit snugly into place, I felt pretty confident. I also felt like an idiot for not seeing what was in front of my face from the day of the grand opening party. Larry had been trying to give himself away, not only at the party but that last time we spoke on the boardwalk. I just hadn’t been listening carefully enough.
“Rico.” I jostled him, Bento’s file spread over him like a paper quilt. He stank of cigarettes and sour scotch.
“What?”
“I’m heading out.”
“Whatever.”
I left most of the money in my wallet on the shelf in the bathroom. When I closed Rico’s door behind me, there were the usual ambient odors of urine and crack smoke in the air. Mostly there was a weary silence, emptiness. Even one-eyed cats have to sleep sometimes.
It was early yet, so I rode back into Brooklyn, back to my house. I showered and made some calls. Waited for some answers. My house felt even emptier than the Mistral Arms and nearly as desperate. I was
At a little after ten, I headed out the door and bumped into our regular mailman, Joey.
“Hey, Mr. P.”
“Joey, no more vacations for you, man. That guy who replaced you was-”
“-a dick. Yeah, I know.”
“There are guys on death row with a happier outlook on life than him.”
“Not only is he a miserable fuck, but he’s an incompetent one too. Here, Mr. P.” Joey handed me a neat stack of banded letters.
“What’s this?”
“That shithead delivered some of your mail to the Bermans even though he knew they moved.”
“Thanks for looking out for us, Joey.”
“No sweat, Mr. P.”
I tossed the banded pile of mail on the front seat and drove to Mill Basin.
Mill Basin is sort of Brooklyn’s anti-Ditmas Park. The area’s unifying theme seemed to be bad taste. Surrounded by water on three sides, it’s the kind of place where people who make a little bit of money turn perfectly lovely houses into things that would make Salvador Dali scratch his head. Yeah, it may be ugly, but it’s big and it’s mine! Just lately it had become quite popular with the Russians, who had recently began to wander beyond the confines of Brighton Beach. I took perverse pleasure in the fact that most of Frankie “Sticks and Stones” Motta’s neighbors were people he probably despised.
I came fully prepared to do battle, my.38 in its usual spot and my replica shield in my back pocket. I might as well have come with a cap gun and cowboy hat. The big but tasteful brick house on National was, as near as I could tell, unguarded. There were no obvious security cameras, no Beware of Dog signs, no nothing. The toughest thing I had to cope with was avoiding a medical supply truck backing out of
I parked at the curb, strolled up to the front door, and pressed the bell. It didn’t play the theme from The Godfather, but did the usual bong-bong-bong-bong. The way I figured it was that Motta was the shooter in Rip’s that night, that his kid had gotten in way over his head, and Dad was trying to fix the damage. When the door pulled back, I got the sense that maybe I needed to reassess the situation.
A petite Filipino woman in a white nurse’s outfit smiled up at me. “Can I help you?”
“I’m here to see Fran-Mr. Motta.” I was reaching around to my back pocket, ready to produce my fake shield. I needn’t have bothered.
“Oh good,” she said. “Visitors really perk up Mr. Frankie’s days. Come with me.”
I followed her through the house, barely noticing the decor or layout of the place.
Just outside a door, near what I assumed was the back of the house, she stopped and whispered.
“He’s having a good day, but don’t let it fool you. He becomes tired very quickly. My name is Anita. If you need me, just call out. There’s a monitor in the room so I can hear if he should fall or have trouble breathing. Okay?”
“Thank you, Anita.”
“I’ll be just down the hall.” She pushed open the door.
It was a spacious room, probably once a den, with high, angled ceilings. Long-necked fans hung from exposed beams, their lazy, spinning blades creating a gentle breeze. Large rectangular skylights let in the sun and the smell of salt air. There was a large stone fireplace surrounded on either side by a black granite ledge. The mantle was black granite as well, but that’s as far as the “den-ness” of the room went. Now a hospital bed sat where a leather sofa or loveseat might once have faced the big French doors that looked out onto the back deck and canal behind the house. Next to the bed was all manner of medical equipment and two large oxygen tanks.
In spite of the sun and salt air and fans, the nose-stinging medicinal tang and the stink of decay were heavy in the air. Frankie Motta was sitting in a wheelchair, staring through the glass of the doors that stretched from one end of the room to the other. A forty-foot boat
“Used to have one a them myself. Big motherfuckin’ boat. Didn’t do shit with it except let it impress my friends. Sat at the marina a few blocks from here. What a waste a fuckin’ time and money, boats. But now I like watchin’ ’em, you know?”
I didn’t say a word.
He turned the electric wheelchair at an angle away from the French doors and toward me. “I know you?”
“I’m an old friend of Larry McDonald’s.”
If I laid a glove on him, he didn’t show it. He rolled the chair closer to me and gave me a squint. “I seen you before. You was on the TV a few years back. Solved that girl’s murder, the cop’s kid.”
“Moira Heaton.”
“Yeah, her. I watched the press conference. Larry Mac got the big bump after that case.”
“You got a good memory there, Mr. Motta.”
“I got lung cancer, idiot, not Alzheimer’s.”
“Sorry.”
“Makes at least two of us. You got me at a disadvantage. You know my nam
e, but I only know your puss.”
“Moe Prager.”
“Oh yeah, the Jew. Larry used to talk about you sometimes.”
“That’s funny, because Larry never once talked about you, Mr. Motta.”
“Frank.” It wasn’t a suggestion. “He wouldn’t, now would he?”
“I guess not, Frank.”
That pleased him, me calling him Frank. “Larry was always the smartest guy in the neighborhood when we was kids. He picked things up right away.” Motta snapped his fingers weakly. “Took stuff in like a sponge, you know? He always understood shit without being taught it.”
“Sounds like Larry,” I agreed. “Always knew how to get what he wanted without asking.”
Motta laughed at that, but the laugh transformed itself into a coughing fit. I grabbed a white towel and handed it to him. He sounded like he was hacking up what was left of his lungs. When the coughing subsided, he put the towel down and slipped a green plastic oxygen mask over his nose and mouth. He took shallow breaths. Shallow was probably the only option left to him. Finally, some color came back into his face, and the panic in his eyes, which he hadn’t bothered hiding, subsided.
He removed the mask. “You ain’t from Meals on Wheels and you ain’t a respiratory therapist, so what you doin’ here, Prager? Not that I don’t enjoy the company.”
“Wanted to talk about Larry with you, talk some old times.”
“Old times is all I got. No time to make new memories.”
“Does it scare you, dying I mean?”
“I used to be scared of it, but when you die this way, in little pieces. . Hey, when it comes, it comes. This!” he said, making a sweeping gesture, “This ain’t really living and it ain’t really dying, pal. It’s waitin’. I always hated waitin’.”
“I hate waiting too. Bad news is better than no news.”
“Exactly. I jus’ hope the lungs crap out on me before the shit spreads into my brain. I can see why you and Larry Mac got along. You think like he thought.”
Finally, an opening. “Not really. I wasn’t an ambitious cocksucker.”
If I thought that was going to make an impression on Frankie Motta, I guess I was going to be disappointed. Coughing out his lungs might have concerned him, but he was still a tough motherfucker.
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