Keeplock: A Novel of Crime

by Stephen Solomita

  She was touched, surprised that I’d been thinking of anything besides cocaine in the time I’d been away.

  “Is it stolen?”

  “I couldn’t say for sure. But the broad who sold me the ring took it off her finger, which is at least a good sign.”

  I wanted to make it up to her. As if loving Ginny and being a good boy would erase what I’d done. I stayed close to the apartment, shopped for food, did the laundry, made love to her every night. I swore—to myself, naturally—that I would never return to a criminal life. If the Lord would only spare me this one last time, I’d put it all behind me. I’d marry Ginny, hold a straight job, have righteous children. I’d be a good boy forever.

  The Lord had other ideas. Eight days after the shooting, the cops found my cocaine buddy, Armando Ortiz, at his sister’s apartment in the Bronx. Drawing on all of his Latin macho, he held out for two hours before giving me up to the detectives. The detectives went before a judge. They got arrest and search warrants, then arrived, along with ten uniformed cops, at Ginny’s apartment.

  I was hustled off to the 7th Precinct on the Lower East Side before the search. The detectives put me in a lineup, but the old man who owned the bodega failed to make a firm identification. After a month at Rikers, when the boy came out of the hospital, they took me back to the precinct and put me in a second lineup. The boy, too, failed to pick me out and despite their hustling me back to Rikers, I began to hope that I’d beat it.

  Sure, Mando Ortiz would testify against me, but it’s hard to convict solely on the testimony of a co-conspirator. Mando’s rap sheet was longer than mine. In the eyes of a jury, he would be a lowlife Puerto Rican while I would be a white kid with a million-dollar smile. If I didn’t testify, the prosecutor would not be allowed to bring up my past. Maybe the cops would find someone who’d seen us together that night, but there wasn’t a single piece of evidence to put me at the scene. The prosecution was without ammunition.

  Meanwhile, what the prosecution did was arrest Ginny for the crime of receiving stolen property. They knew she wasn’t part of the robbery, but she was wearing the ring that’d been taken from the bodega, and that was enough to keep her at Rikers Island until she was ready to cooperate.

  I continued to drive east on Northern Boulevard, passing through one neighborhood after another, until I got to Bell Boulevard, where I took a right and cruised up to Fifty-sixth Avenue. There was a school on the corner of Fifty-sixth and Bell. I made another right and found a blue and white police car two blocks away. A uniformed cop was sitting behind the wheel, smoking a cigarette. He was young, blond, and obviously bored. As I drifted by, he got out of the cruiser and walked up to the house. The door opened and he stepped inside.

  I circled the block, hoping that he’d stay there forever, that he simply wouldn’t be available when Avi climbed to the roof of the school. But he was back in the car before I came around, his bladder undoubtedly empty. I drove past without taking a second look at his face. Even though it was unlikely that he’d be the one in front of the house when Avi pulled the trigger.

  It was only a couple of miles to the small shopping center on Douglaston Parkway where Stern’s Department Store shared space with a number of smaller businesses. The center had been cut from the eastern side of a deep ravine. The ravine had in turn been cut by Little Neck Bay centuries before. The bay had receded, but the steep sides of the ravine remained.

  The shopping center was on two levels. The upper came almost to the top of the hill, but the lower was nearly invisible from Douglaston Parkway, the only residential street adjoining the center.

  I parked the car and walked to the edge of the ravine. The sides were so steep, the builders had covered the hillside with small stones, then covered the stones with wire mesh. All to keep the hill from sliding down into the receiving area behind Stern’s Department Store. A short roof projected out over the loading docks and the rear end of a parked semi-trailer with the Stern’s logo on the side. I backed ten feet away from the edge of the ravine and found myself on the sidewalk. All I could see was the top level of the shopping center. The loading docks, where all the action would take place, were completely concealed.

  I made a U-turn and drove to the lower-level parking lot, where I found a drugstore, a liquor store, and a huge Waldbaum’s Super Market. The entrance to Stern’s, hidden beneath the upper-level parking lot, was far back. I drove to the entrance and sat for a few minutes. There wasn’t much to see, just three pairs of glass doors and a few customers wandering in and out. A sign on one of the glass doors announced a “Super Sale.” It would take place on the weekend of the job.

  The back of the store was almost deserted. A few cars, probably belonging to workers, were parked well away from the loading docks. The semi was still in place, its rear doors open. Two workers were unloading pallets of merchandise with small forklifts. As I watched, a middle-aged man wrestled a large box off the edge of the dock and slid it into the back of a station wagon. The wagon had not been visible from the top of the ravine. I continued around the building and found a one-way ramp that led directly to the street. We would be able to get away without having to recross the parking lot in front.

  It was perfect. Eddie had covered every detail, and I had to admit it to myself before I could take the next step. I parked the Ford on the upper-level parking lot and went into Stern’s in search of a telephone. According to my own script, I was supposed to call Rico and Condon, to admit the bullshit of the night before, to accept the bullshit guaranteed to follow.

  I managed to find a pay phone easily enough—there was a bank of them in the credit department—but I couldn’t bring myself to make the call. A small voice kept whispering, “Let the pig die, let the pig die, let the pig die.”

  What difference could it make to me? One dead cop, one big funeral, one more chance for the politicians to demand the death penalty for murder. Society had been playing that game for a long, long time. If I didn’t want to be part of it—and I didn’t—I could take Eddie’s money and put my ass in the wind. I was under no obligation to protect an anonymous cop who undoubtedly hated me and everyone like me. Eddie, Parker, and Avi, on the other hand, had been as close to friends as convicts ever get.

  I’d spent ten years in Cortlandt without having a single outside visitor. The C.O.’s had made their attitude clear from the first day. The prison motto may be Don’t Trust Anyone, but even convicts need companionship. As I stood next to the phones, a quarter in my hand, I recalled a freezing cold January day. We were up on the courts, gathered around a fifty-gallon drum filled with burning wood. Below us, on the flats, two prison football teams, one mostly white and one mostly black, were pounding each other into the frozen turf.

  We were all there, including Tony Morasso, drinking a nauseating mixture of prison hooch and black coffee that assaulted the stomach even as it made us forget the cold. Our team—the white team, naturally—was never behind, and as they piled up the points, we were already collecting our bets. We’d put up twenty cartons of Marlboros and Salems against ten 2-pound steaks one of the black crews had smuggled out of the mess hall.

  It was as if Cortlandt had ceased to exist. The walls, the C.O.’s, the anger, the grief, the endless biting fear—all vanished as if a genie had wished them away. You don’t get many moments like that in the Institution. They never come when you’re alone or in the company of the Squad or sitting with a couple of hundred murderers in the mess hall. They come when you’re with your allies. When you feel almost-forgotten emotions pulling you toward the false promise of friendship.

  I’d been thinking about this moment all day, the moment when I’d have to do something I couldn’t take back. As soon as I dropped that quarter in the slot, I’d be committed. Committed to putting Eddie Conte, John Parker, Avi Stern, and Tony Morasso in jail for the next twenty-five years. Avi was well over forty. He’d be seventy before the gates opened. Seventy or dead.

  I looked down at the quarter in my hand, then
put it back in my pocket. Ideas flipped in my head like playing cards in the hands of a magician. Take the car and the five hundred and just start driving. Join the twenty thousand parole and probation violators trying to keep one step ahead of the law. The car isn’t rented in your name, and Eddie can’t very well go to the police with the plate number.

  They’ll find you, of course. Sooner or later, you’ll commit a crime and your prints will come up dirty. They’ll ship you back to New York, to Rikers Island, to Cortlandt. But that’s way in the future. You’ve got a lotta livin’ ahead you, boy. Best get to it.

  When my head stopped spinning, I found myself on Northern Boulevard. I was driving into Flushing, and this time I made the turn on Union Street and parked in front of Ling-Teng Realty. There didn’t seem to be any clients in the office, just real estate agents sitting at their desks. They were all Chinese, except for a black woman by the window and Ginny way in the back.

  Ginny had broken down on the witness stand, refusing to look at me until that moment when the prosecutor demanded that she identify the man who’d given her the ring.

  “Do you see that man in the courtroom now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Would you point him out.”

  Her eyes had swept the courtroom as if she was seeing it for the first time. She’d looked directly at me for a second, then slowly raised her arm, one finger extended.

  I’d written a letter to Ginny during my first year at Cortlandt, telling her that she wasn’t to blame for what had happened. That, as usual, I’d done it to myself. I had no right to expect a reply, and I hadn’t gotten any.

  As I watched, Ginny left her desk and walked to the front of the office. She was wearing a light gray business suit over a black silk blouse. A small gold pin, a sunburst, glittered above her right breast. I’d given it to her on her twenty-fifth birthday and she hadn’t thrown it away.

  She sat on the edge of an empty desk and began to go through a stack of paperwork. Her blond hair had faded somewhat over the last ten years, and a few thin lines had formed at the corners of her eyes, but she still held her mouth slightly open when she was concentrating, still laid the tip of her tongue on the edge of her lower lip. I’d imagined her as unchanged, an icon resting in a niche, but I found myself glad to see her as a human being again, as a living, breathing woman.

  She dropped the papers on the desk, said something to the Chinese woman sitting at the adjoining desk, then glanced out the window. Her mouth dropped open for a second, then snapped into a thin, hard line.

  TWENTY-ONE

  ADOLESCENTS IN THE INSTITUTION lack the skills to jail properly. There are dozens of small things, physical and psychological, a prisoner can use to make his time go more easily and they have to be learned. The kids make up for their ignorance with their only abundant asset—pure rebel energy.

  I spent more than four years of my adolescence in Spofford Youth Center, almost all of it in some kind of trouble with the hacks (they called themselves “counselors”) or with my fellow aspiring criminals. In some ways I was just like Tony Morasso. Although I don’t think my eyeballs rolled in my head, I was ready to go to war at the drop of a hat.

  One day I was coming from the gym to my room. I was seventeen and had managed to bench-press my body weight for the first time. The glory of it raised my macho self-image to new heights. My eyes glowed with insolence and my slow, proud strut warned the prison world to keep away.

  At the peak of this prison high, I rounded a corner to find my archenemy, Olivera Santana, standing in the hall with six of his companions. Their eyes lit up when they saw me coming and my attitude peeled away like the skin of a tomato in a pot of boiling water. The only emotion I felt was panic. For a minute, I was paralyzed with fear, then I turned and ran for my literal life.

  Ginny was no threat to me physically, but when she put on her coat and pulled the door open, what I felt was pure terror. I didn’t speculate on what she might say or do. The intensity of my fear had nothing to do with my mind. I slammed the car into gear and whipped the Ford into traffic.

  It was after six when I got back to The Ludlum Foundation. SingSing was behind the security desk, as usual, though he looked a little fresher. I nodded to him, then wandered into the kitchen and got a typical shelter meal—overcooked spaghetti, half-raw meat balls, and a wilted salad.

  I forced myself to eat it, then went off to McDonald’s office and worked out for more than two hours. At ten-thirty I picked up the phone and dialed the number Condon had given me. He picked up on the third ring.

  “Yeah?”

  “Condon?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s Pete Frangello.”

  “Well, well. Right on time. You must be gettin’ the message.”

  “I got the name of the bank.”

  “Give it to me.”

  “The Grant City Savings Bank. On Hylan Boulevard.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Right, that’s it. The Grant City.”

  “That ain’t what I mean, Frangello.”

  I was starting to enjoy myself. In my line of work, you don’t find many opportunities to bust a cop’s balls.

  “I don’t get it,” I said.

  “There seem to be a few small gaps here.” He got right into the spirit of the exchange. Maybe he was bored. Or maybe the name of the bank was enough to take the edge off his temper. “Like who’s the guy ya gonna snatch? Like what’s the date when the heist is goin’ down? Like what’re the names of the rest of the perps? Little gaps, like I said.”

  “I don’t have that yet.”

  “You tellin’ me ya spent the whole day with Eddie Conte and all you got for me is the name of the fuckin’ bank?”

  “We spent the day in Staten Island, checkin’ the location. The thing is, Condon, I’m still playin’ it tough. I’m comin’ on skeptical. You wanna hear what Eddie’s plan for me is?”

  “You bullshitting me here, Frangello?” Veteran cops are much sharper than criminals like to believe. When they put up that cop radar, they can pick up a scam from a thousand yards out.

  “What do you want me to do, Condon? You want me to take a lie detector test?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Then set it up, because I don’t have another way to prove myself.”

  “You have another way, Frangello.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like wear a wire.”

  “That’s fucking suicide. I’d rather go back to jail. Eddie’s more paranoid than you. And that’s saying something, because you’re completely paranoid.”

  I heard him sigh into the phone, trying to decide what to do next. He didn’t trust me, but there wasn’t a lot he could do about it at the moment. Later, maybe, he’d put me to the test, but for now he’d have to settle for taking notes.

  “Where’s Conte livin’? What’s his address?”

  “I’m not gonna tell you that. Not yet.”

  “You better stop fuckin’ with me. I’m gettin’ sick of it.”

  “If I tell you the address, you’re gonna set up surveillance, right?”

  “How’s that your problem?”

  “If Eddie spots you tomorrow, who’s he gonna blame? One day I arrive and the next day you arrive. Who they gonna find in a Jersey swamp? I’m tryin’ to survive here. Now let me tell ya what I’m supposed to do. It’s got a nice murder in it, so you oughta be happy. I’m the one who stays with the family while Eddie does the job. After the heist, I get a call, then eliminate the witnesses. Bing, bing, bing. Execution style.”

  “Conte wants to kill them all? The kids? The women? Everybody?” He seemed impressed, almost respectful.

  “But it’s not gonna come to that, right? Because, unless I missed something, you and the cavalry are gonna show up before the shit goes down.” I didn’t wait for a response. “Eddie also swears the bank is getting a shipment of cash from the Federal Reserve the day before the job goes down. He won’t tell me how he knows, but he says the bank
needs the cash to make up payrolls.”

  The conversation rolled on with Condon firing questions and me dodging as best I could. I don’t know if he was satisfied, but by the time I hung up the phone, I knew he’d wait a few more days before he had his partner work me over.

  I went up to my room and showered. For once, my roommates were nowhere to be found. I fell asleep thinking of Ginny, but I dreamed of the jewelry store and the fat proprietor and blood everywhere. As usual, the dream repeated like a stuck record. And, as usual, I woke early, more tired than when I’d gone to sleep. I tried to will myself awake, but I kept drifting back to the day of my release from Cortlandt. My dreams were closer to reality than my fantasies on that day. Death Before Dishonor? Shit Happens? I felt like I was on a mountain, holding a stop sign up to an onrushing avalanche. I could hear the gods laughing.

  I jumped into the shower again, washing the sweat away before shutting off the hot water. In the box, in Cortlandt, the showers are timed to give two minutes of hot water. I don’t know who dreamed up this particular punishment, but the C.O.’s added their own wrinkle. They started the timer as soon as they opened your cell. The showers were set up on the eastern side of the building, so if your cell was on the west side, you had to run past the other cells, soap yourself, and rinse off before the hot water shut down. Most of the time you didn’t make it.

  After dressing, I went downstairs. I would have liked to hike around the city, but it was raining pretty hard, so I settled for a conversation with SingSing. We swapped stories about life in the Institution for an hour or so, then the pay phone in the hallway behind us started ringing. It was barely seven o’clock.

  “Yeah!” SingSing rubbed his hands together. “I been waitin’ on this call. This here is a money call.”

  He answered the phone, muttered a few words, then turned to me in surprise. “It’s for you,” he said.

  “Shit.” I went to the phone and announced myself, expecting Eddie or Condon. When I heard Ginny’s voice I nearly dropped the phone.