Keeplock: A Novel of Crime

by Stephen Solomita

  “Looks like a handful,” I said to his mom.

  She smiled and tossed her head, sending her blond hair flying. “According to the books, they’re supposed to become more cooperative by the time they’re three and a half. Joey has a one-word vocabulary.”

  The kid looked up at me and shouted, “No!” at the top of his lungs, then shrieked with laughter.

  “I see what you mean.”

  Joey, by way of an encore, spit a stream of water onto my shirt. Instead of squeezing his little chest until his tongue popped, I set him down.

  “I told you not to spit water on people.” She gave him a gentle shake, too gentle to discourage him, then turned to me. “Did he get you wet?”

  “No big deal.” I peeled out of the shirt, exposing the calculated result of all those calisthenics. “I could use a little sun. It’s been a long winter.”

  When she ran her eyes over my chest and belly, hope, as they say, sprang eternal.

  “It has been a long winter, hasn’t it?”

  The boyfriend came strolling along the path just as I was about to ask her name. When he saw the two of us together, he picked up the pace.

  “Jo-Ann,” he called, still twenty feet away.

  “Hi, Marty,” she trilled, enjoying the drama for a moment before dismissing me. “Well, I gotta go.”

  Marty threw me the darkest look in his white-collar repertoire, then walked off with his property. I stood and watched for a moment, feeling utterly stupid in my bare skin. For no good reason, I began to think about Eddie Conte. If Eddie had recruited Tony Morasso while they were both inside, if he’d spent hours trying to convince me to call him when I came out, who else had he talked to?

  I stopped at a hot dog stand and bought a couple of dirty-water dogs and an orange soda.

  “How much?” I asked.

  The vendor looked at me like I was crazy. “Three dollar twenty-five,” he announced, pointing at the sign on his wagon.

  I took my lunch to the top of one of the boulders that dot the park and settled down to enjoy my meal. Halfway through the first hot dog, two Spanish kids showed up, lugging the obligatory boom box. They looked at me, claiming the boulder for their own, and I looked back at them. Nobody said anything for a minute, then they turned and strutted down the path. I finished my hot dogs and my soda as a matter of principle, but I wasn’t stupid enough to wait around until they came back with the rest of their crew.

  Up at the bandshell on the east side of the park, a salsa band shot waves of frenetic Latin jazz at a large, receptive audience. I stopped to watch the young Spanish girls dance and eventually fell into a dreamless sleep.

  When I woke up, it was late afternoon and the park was beginning to empty. I wandered back to the West Side, found a movie theater on Broadway, and spent the next few hours watching a movie called True Lies. Luxuriating in the mindless violence and the equally mindless sex, I shoveled Goobers into my mouth while bodies flew to pieces on the screen. They show films in Cortlandt, usually in the mess hall. Prisoners file in and file out. They sit on hard benches and watch their backs as carefully as they watch the screen. A long way from the upholstered seat where I sat and the empty spaces around me. On the other hand, Cortlandt movies are free and this one had cost me seven bucks.

  I went from the movie theater to a Mexican restaurant on Columbus Avenue. The Upper West Side of Manhattan was just making the turn from heroin heaven to upscale pretentious when I went into Cortlandt. It’d been dotted with small dark bars, welfare hotels, and greasy diners. Now both sides were lined with expensive restaurants and young white faces.

  It was ten o’clock by the time I finished dinner and headed back to The Ludlum Foundation. Time to face the music. It was a coin toss as to whether Rico and Condon would be waiting for me inside the shelter or out on the street. I should have called them after I spoke to Eddie—that’s what they expected—but I wanted to establish a little distance, a little independence. There was every reason to believe that I’d need it sometime in the future.

  I let the cab drop me at 39th and Seventh and walked the rest of the way. No sense letting the boys know I had money. No sense letting them know anything they didn’t have to know.

  “Frangello! Get ova here!”

  I found them across the street from the shelter, sitting in a black Plymouth sedan that screamed COP at every mutt on the street.

  “Whatta ya say, Rico? I was just gonna call you.”

  “Get in the fuckin’ car.”

  “What’s the matter? You lonely?”

  Despite my attitude, I was shaking inside. I was still sore from yesterday’s beating, and the morning’s workout wasn’t helping the situation. Nevertheless, I had my part to play in the grand drama. I got into the car and Rico shoved in after me, pushing me against the far door.

  “You askin’ for a beatin’?” he demanded. “You askin’ for it?”

  “Ease off, Rico,” Condon said wearily.

  “This guy only understands one thing,” Rico insisted. “He’s a smart-ass and if we don’t shut his mouth right now, he’s gonna fuck us in the end.”

  Rico was smarter than he looked.

  “I think there’s something you should know,” I said quietly.

  “Now he’s gonna make another smart remark.”

  I looked down at my hands for a minute, then let my eyes jump into his. “I’m not goin’ down without a fight. You put your hands on me again and I’ll tear your skinny ass to pieces. You wanna shoot me, go ahead, because that’s the only way you’ll stop me. You understand that, you guinea bastard?”

  Anybody can run his mouth, and cops are used to calling bad bluffs. A lot of cons think cops are yellow, but the truth is that in a violent situation the cops do just what the cons would do—they try to bring overwhelming force to bear on their enemies.

  Rico stared at me for a moment, trying to gauge my resolve. I stared back at him, a relaxed smile on my lips. Letting him know that I did mean it. I was drawing a line and telling Rico and Condon that if they crossed it, all bets were off. If they chose to stay on their side, I’d have that independence I mentioned.

  “Cool out, both of you.” Condon to the rescue.

  “You tellin’ me I should let this mutt get away with that?” Rico was so mad his acne scars glowed red. They made little semicircles along the edge of his jaw.

  “Get away with what? You been puttin’ the muscle on him since he walked up the street. We told him he had to call us at ten-thirty every night. It’s ten-twenty. Maybe he shoulda called us earlier instead of fuckin’ around all day, but we didn’t tell him to call so we’ll just have to chalk it up to experience. Meanwhile, let’s not cop any attitudes. We’re all doin’ our jobs here.”

  At least I’d convinced someone. Condon didn’t give two shits about me, but he knew that if he gave in to his cop macho, he’d blow his big bust. It took Rico a little longer to figure it out, but I guess he finally got it too, because he dropped his hands to his lap and turned away from me.

  “Your meeting with Conte go all right?” Condon asked.

  “Yeah, it went fine.” I’d accomplished what I wanted to do. There was no profit to be made by antagonizing Rico any further. “Eddie’s gonna do a bank and he wants me to go along. He’s gonna go into the home of the branch manager and hold the slob’s wife and kids until after the job’s done. Two of us stay with the family, the other three arrive in the morning with the manager before the bank opens. We clean the vault, then lock up the manager and the tellers. Once we’re out of the bank, we let the family go. Then the wife calls the cops and the cops open the vault. Nobody gets hurt.”

  “Unless somebody resists,” Rico growled.

  “Look, Rico, it wasn’t my idea. You’re the ones sending me in there. Besides, you’re gonna take care of business before the shit goes down. Which means there’s nothing to worry about, right?”

  “What’s the name of the bank?” Condon, representing the practical half of the dyna
mic duo, cut to the heart of the matter.

  “I don’t know.”

  “When’s it goin’ off?”

  “Not for a few weeks. I don’t know the exact date.”

  “Who else is involved?”

  “I don’t know that either.”

  “What’s the name of the bank manager?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Rico couldn’t stand it anymore. “You tellin’ me you went in a job without knowin’ what’s it about?”

  “I didn’t go in on the job. I told Eddie I’d think about it and he told me that I’d learn the details after I made up my mind.”

  A moment of silence while the boys digested the information. “You want out?” Condon asked. Rico was already going for the cuffs.

  “I jailed with Eddie for eight years. He’s paranoid. The more eager I come off, the less he’ll trust me. If I’m gonna work with you and your partner, I’m gonna need room to maneuver. I’m much more likely to get that room if I don’t suck up to him like a puppy at its mother’s tit.”

  It made perfect sense. It was just what I’d done with them.

  “When’re ya gonna make up your mind?”

  “Today’s Sunday. I told Eddie Wednesday, but I’m gonna call him tomorrow night and set up a meeting. I’m gonna tell him that if the job’s right, I want a piece of it. That way he’ll have to give me the details on the spot.”

  They stared at each other for a minute, not liking what they heard.

  “Look,” I said, “the deal’s not goin’ off for a few weeks, so what’s the rush?”

  “I want you to call me every night,” Condon said. “You understand? Every fucking night. If you move outta this shelter without tellin’ me first, I’ll put a warrant out the next day.”

  “We should take him down and book him,” Rico insisted. “We shoulda done it yesterday. Let him spend a night in Central Booking.”

  “Wednesday.” Condon’s tone left no doubt about who the senior partner was. “You got until Wednesday. After that, you don’t come up with something besides bullshit, you’re goin’ over to Rikers. Now get the fuck outta here.”

  “Jeez,” I said, opening the door, “I thought you were the good cop.”

  “You could be a smart mouth all you want, Frangello, but the fact is that we own your ass.”

  I stepped out of the car and gently closed the door. Rico, unable to contain himself, slid over and called to me through the window.

  “Why don’t ya tell us what ya plan to do until Wednesday?” he asked.

  “What I plan to do,” I said, “is enjoy my freedom.”

  TWELVE

  DESPITE WHAT I TOLD Rico and Condon, I spent the next day working. I had to invent a kidnap/bank robbery convincing enough to fool two veteran New York cops. Cops are dumb, but they’re not stupid. Just like the robbers, they don’t believe in trust. They assume that everyone lies to them, sometimes for no reason at all. Which is why I took the subway down to Battery Park and the ferry out to Staten Island on Monday morning.

  I needed a large bank with a branch manager (or a small bank with a vice president) who lived in a private home, not an apartment. It’s much harder to get into an apartment than a private home, and the whole trick in a kidnap/bank robbery is to get inside without being seen by a nosy neighbor. The Borough of Staten Island, though technically part of New York City, has always been considered foreign territory, the place where civil servants go to die. Except for a small section near the ferry, the island is covered with single-family homes.

  It could have gone badly. Lacking a driver’s license, I had no access to a rental car, which limited the number of banks I could visit. Still, I plodded along, riding the buses down Hylan Boulevard, stopping each time I saw a bank. My plan was simple enough. I’d go up to a teller and exchange a twenty for two rolls of quarters while I noted the name of a branch manager or a vice president. At the next bank, I’d change the quarters back into a twenty.

  By two o’clock, an hour before the banks closed for the day, I had a list of ten names. Time to make a decision. I found a Staten Island telephone book in a small coffee shop on Guyon Avenue and began to run through the names on my list. The first four either lived somewhere else, had unlisted numbers, or names so common I found multiple listings. But the fifth came up roses. There was only one Daniel Jashyn in the phone book. His address—1915 Buttonwood Road—was a few miles from where I stood. Two hours later, when he arrived at his Todt Hill home, I was waiting. I watched him greet his wife and daughter, noted the high fence surrounding his home, the sliding glass doors on his patio.

  The setup was perfect. As vice president of the tiny Grant City Savings Bank, Daniel Jashyn would know exactly when the vaults opened, exactly what they contained. His relatively isolated home would be easy to penetrate, while his young daughter—she couldn’t have been more than ten years old—would make the perfect hostage.

  An hour later I was standing on the corner of Broadway and State Street in lower Manhattan, watching a river of human beings pour out of the office buildings and into the subways. It was raining pretty hard and I had my new umbrella up. Apparently the office workers, seduced by the perfect weekend, had forgotten to take their rain gear. They were trying to run, but there were so many of them, they jammed up at the subway entrances. By the time they got down in the hole, they were soaked to the skin.

  I found a phone and called Eddie. I told him I was ready to go and we agreed to meet at Mario’s.

  “I’m glad you decided to come in with us, cuz,” he announced. “Because I need ya.”

  “We shake hands after I hear the details. If it doesn’t sound right, you can forget about me. I just finished ten years in Cortlandt and I’m not jumpin’ over any cliffs.”

  “After I lay it out, you won’t have no doubts. You’ll be countin’ money in your dreams.”

  There was no sense in pursuing it. “Look,” I said, “I can get up to Mario’s in about a half hour. I’m downtown. Is a half hour too soon for you?”

  He must have wondered what I was doing downtown in the rain, but he didn’t disrespect me by asking questions. “I’m out in Queens, cuz. I don’t know if I can make it that fast. What I’ll do is call Mario and tell him you’re comin’. If you get there first, have a beer on me.”

  “No problem, Eddie. I’ll see you when later. And, by the way, give my regards to John Parker.”

  It caught him off-guard. “You was always a smart guy, cuz. You was always the smartest.”

  Too smart. He didn’t say it, but his tone made it clear. Maybe annoying him wouldn’t pay off in the short run, but I had to establish the same independence with Eddie that I was trying to establish with Condon and Rico. There would come a time when I’d need room to maneuver and I wouldn’t get it if I began by playing the part of the obedient soldier.

  “I’ll see you in a little while, Eddie.”

  I didn’t destroy my mood by trying to find a cab in the rain. That pass was too difficult, even for a high roller like me. I went down in the subway with the rest of the schmucks, breathing in the anger of the soaked commuters along with the stink of wet wool. Fifteen minutes later I got off at Penn Station.

  Eddie must have put some punch into his phone call, because Mario greeted me like I was his brother come back from the war. He pumped my hand, stared into my eyes, led me through a mostly empty restaurant to a completely empty private room. This time there was only one table.

  “Can I get you a drink?”

  I ordered a Heineken, drank it while I thought about John Parker. I didn’t dwell on the fact that it was the first drug I’d put into my system since that night with Terrentini. I didn’t want to think about Terrentini at all.

  Making John Parker for one of Conte’s crew was proof that I was dealing with my problems in a constructive manner. Parker was not a criminal. He was a poor schmuck of a computer scientist who’d caught his wife in bed with another man and responded by hitting the man twenty or thirty
times with a table lamp. His wife, or so he told me, had been next in line, but she’d deserted her lover and run naked down the road, screaming at the top of her lungs.

  The gung-ho assistant district attorney assigned to the case had wanted to go for murder by depraved indifference, but the D.A. was afraid the jury would come back with a medal instead of a conviction. Mild-mannered John Parker looked too much like a victim. He was tall and skinny, with a bobbing Adam’s apple and a permanent hangdog expression. You looked at him and you wanted to mug him. The District Attorney told his A.D.A. to find a plea that Parker and his lawyer would accept, and all had eventually settled on second-degree manslaughter with a five-year max.

  The sentencing judge took one look at pitiful John Parker and directed the Department of Corrections to place him in protective custody, which at that time meant H Block in Cortlandt. Parker didn’t care for the company in H Block. His fellow inmates were mostly snitches and homosexuals with a few high-profile killers like David Berkowitz thrown in for seasoning. After a few months, Parker formally requested a transfer to population, but the administration, instead of shipping him out to a medium-security institution (which is where he would have gone if he’d never been put into protective custody in the first place), walked him across the yard to B Block.

  John Parker would not have survived if it hadn’t been for Eddie Conte. Parker entered B Block dead broke, wearing that same “hurt me” expression on his face. It was only a matter of time (and not much time) until someone discovered that he couldn’t fight back and transformed him into a permanent victim.

  Eddie not only protected John Parker, he took Parker up to the courts and made him part of our crew, which meant that we were obliged to protect him, too. Eddie also toughened Parker up, patiently explaining the realities of survival in the institution. He introduced Parker to the weight box, taught him how to make and carry a shank, recited the prisoner’s code: Death Before Dishonor, What Doesn’t Kill Me Makes Me Stronger, Don’t Trust Anyone.