Keeplock: A Novel of Crime

by Stephen Solomita

“Pete. Is that you? It’s Ginny.”

  “How’d you find me?” I had to say something and that was the first thing that came into my head.

  “I got your number from Simon.”

  I should have known. The last time I was on the street, Ginny and Simon Cooper had been co-conspirators in my rehabilitation.

  “Ginny, I don’t know what to say. It’s been a long time.” My voice was soft and gentle, though I didn’t want it to be. Behind me, I heard SingSing snort a line of coke. It was a fitting counterpoint to the conversation.

  “I want to see you, Pete. I really need to see you. To explain.”

  “Explain what? You don’t have anything to explain.” Was she actually blaming herself? It didn’t seem possible. Then again, the simple fact that she’d loved me didn’t seem possible, either.

  Her voice dropped a notch, became huskier, as it always had when she was being serious. Or when she was turned on. “I know it’s been a long time, Pete, and I don’t have any right to ask you, but if you can just give me a few minutes, I’d like to explain what happened.”

  “You think I don’t know what they did to you?” Why was I putting her off when I would have given my right arm to be with her? Images rushed into my head. I remembered waking up with her warm body curled into me, soaping her back in the shower, her childish excitement when she won a two-dollar bet at the racetrack.

  “Maybe I shouldn’t have called, but it’s been haunting me for ten years. That I was part of it.”

  “No, it’s all right. You want me to come out there now?”

  “Can you?”

  “This is America, Ginny. Land of the free and home of the brave. Even ex-cons on parole are allowed to go to Queens.”

  She managed a small laugh. “I have to be at work by ten.”

  “It’s only seven. I could be out there in forty-five minutes.”

  “How can you do that so fast? Do you have a car?”

  “I’ll take a cab.”

  It was the first lie.

  TWENTY-TWO

  I STOPPED LONG ENOUGH to buy a bundle of heroin from a dealer standing in a doorway out of the rain, then drove against the rush hour traffic to Cherry Avenue in Flushing. I was hoping I could handle Ginny, reassure her with a few well-chosen words, then get her out of my life. The last thing I needed was another complication or a replay of yesterday’s panic, but when she opened the door and looked into my eyes, my heart dropped and I felt like a ten-year-old boy waiting for a nonexistent mother to rescue him from the orphanage. All through our time together, she’d symbolized the normal life that, consciously or unconsciously, beckoned like a rainbow. I’d never really believed that I could have it (or her), but I never dropped the fantasy, either.

  Ginny was wearing a dark blue sweatshirt over faded jeans. Her hair, still wet from the shower, was wrapped in a white towel. Ten years ago, Ginny could have been described as beautiful. Maybe her delicate features and bright blond hair weren’t cover girl material, but she’d turned heads wherever we went.

  She looked tired now, her gray eyes were duller, her mouth somehow smaller and sad. But her body was just as I’d remembered it from the time when she’d worked out five days a week at a local health club. Her hips pushed against the fabric of her jeans, insistent and demanding.

  “Thanks for coming,” she said, stepping aside to let me pass. When we’d first met, Ginny had been writing copy for an ad agency in Manhattan. She’d been sharp and ambitious. That job, according to her testimony, had evaporated after her arrest. “Do you want some coffee?”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  We sat at the kitchen table, coffee mugs and buttered corn muffins before us. I didn’t know what she wanted to hear, so I kept my big mouth shut and let her do the talking.

  “I should have hated you,” she began, “but I didn’t. It wasn’t actually a decision I made—to hate you or not. I just couldn’t stand the idea of you going to jail again. The cops said, ‘All you have to do is tell us where you got the ring and agree to testify and we’ll let you go. We don’t want to arrest you. We know you didn’t have anything to do with it.’

  “I said, ‘If you know I’m not guilty of anything, how can you arrest me at all?’

  “‘You were in possession of stolen property, miss, and that’s a crime.’

  “‘I don’t mean technically. I mean morally. If you know I’m not guilty, how can you put me in jail?’”

  “I bet they turned mean when you said that.” I finally interrupted her. “When they realized you weren’t gonna give me up voluntarily.”

  “Yes, that’s the way it happened. They booked me. Took photographs and fingerprints, then forced me to strip for a search.”

  “Did the detectives stay in the room while you were being searched?”

  She looked down at the table. “Yes. They made … they made comments. Then they put me in a cell in the basement. There was another woman with me. She had a knife and she was as strong as a man. She made me do things to her. I couldn’t get away.”

  “Don’t tell me. For god’s sake.”

  “Are you all right? Are you angry?” Puzzled, she reached out to touch the back of my hand.

  “I have enough nightmares already. I don’t need any more.”

  Ginny looked at me carefully, then went on with it. “She said I was her property and she was going to rent me out to the other dykes. She said she’d kill me if I didn’t obey her and I believed it. The guards came by every couple of hours. They saw what was going on. They wanted it to happen, because they knew I couldn’t take it. And they were right, Pete. I wasn’t used to that life. I couldn’t take it.”

  I think she wanted to cry, but she didn’t. She leaned back and took a deep breath, trapped by her memories in spite of the years. It must have been like having an arm or a leg amputated. Every time you look in the mirror, you’re reminded of the simple fact that your leg will never grow back, that you’ll never be the same. I’d taken similar blows many times in my life and I’d responded with anger and rage. I’d sworn never to submit, and that decision was enough to hold me up. Ginny had absorbed the pain and it still gnawed at her mind like a psychic tapeworm. I reached out and took her hand, holding it gently until she calmed down.

  “The thing is,” I said, “that you’re right when you say that you should hate me. It would make the whole thing easier for you.”

  She pulled away, raising her eyes to meet mine. “How did you stand it? All those years in jail. The cops, the guards, the prisoners. How?”

  “I started young.”

  “Don’t be a wise guy, Pete. I need to know.”

  “When you’re in the Institution and you know you’re going to stay there, your first obligation is to simply survive. There’re lots of suicides in the Institution, especially in the kiddie jails, but if you’re not going that route, you do what you have to do. Say you’re trapped in a cell with a bull dyke. The dyke is much stronger than you and she’s got a knife. You can’t fight back, so what you do is submit until you get your chance. Until she goes to sleep, for instance. Then you try to kill her. If you succeed, or if you hurt her bad enough, word gets out and the next dyke leaves you alone. The C.O.’s are a different problem. All you can do is hate them, so that’s what you do. You bury every human emotion and learn to live for drugs or prison hooch or a contraband roast beef sandwich. Most of all, you live for the day you get out. If you start down that road early enough, you come to believe that there’s nothing else out there. That every citizen is just like you, wanting the same things, but afraid to take them.”

  “I wish I could hate,” she said, “but I can’t. It’s been ten years and I still can’t shake it off. A piece of me is missing and it won’t grow back and I don’t have anything to put in its place.”

  “You’re a victim, Ginny. Can’t you understand that? A crime has been committed against you. By me, by the cops, by the Institution. You should talk to someone. You have to get help.”

  Sh
e stood up, took the percolator off the stove, and filled both mugs. “In the beginning, I used to go see Simon. He told me the same things you’re saying now. I wanted to write you, to explain why I testified, but he told me not to do it. He said the reason you were so attractive was because of your intelligence. You can see the trap and you can talk about it, but you can’t change. He said your line of bullshit is so perfect, you should have been a con artist instead of a … a thief.”

  Good old Simon. I’d spent ten years in Cortlandt without a visitor, without a letter. I felt the anger rising. It was all so fucking predictable.

  “What do you want me to do, Ginny? I can’t forgive you because I never blamed you in the first place.”

  “Last night, after I saw you, I realized something that I should have known a long time ago. I can never go back to the life of a good citizen. The smug security, the idiotic belief that the police and the system are out there to protect me—that’s gone forever. Maybe I won’t rob somebody’s home or mug somebody on the street, but I’m just as much of an outlaw as you are. What I have to do is learn to accept it. And the loneliness that goes with it.” She paused for a moment, sipping at her coffee. “What are you going to do, Pete? Are you going to … you know, go straight?”

  I grinned and she answered my smile. The question was so naive. “It’s not that events work to keep me what I’ve always been or that I simply can’t get my shit together. It’s that events work to keep me what I’ve always been and I can’t get my shit together. But I’m trying. I feel like a high jumper standing in quicksand, but I’m trying.”

  That was the second lie.

  Ginny stood up suddenly. “I’ve got to get ready for work,” she announced.

  “I gotta be places, too.”

  “Come back tonight. Have dinner with me.”

  The question hung in the air for a second, then dove for my crotch. In retrospect it seems funny, but the truth is that she already had my heart, so there was no other place for the question to go.

  “I’m living at a shelter and I have to sign in by ten o’clock. Simon’s orders.” The third lie. “I might be able to come over for a couple of hours, but I can’t promise.”

  “You’re already involved with something, aren’t you?” She waved her hand back and forth as if erasing the question. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter. I don’t want to reform you. That’s gone forever. I just want to be with you. The men I’ve gone out with don’t understand. It’s not their fault, but when I’m sitting across the dinner table, I feel like a peeping Tom looking through a keyhole. I want to be with someone who knows what happened to me. And what it means.” The tips of her teeth clicked together and she stuck her chin out. It was her determined look. The one she’d always put on when she took a stand. I got up and crossed the room. “I’ve got a problem—a big problem—and I’m trying to work my way out of it. Right now it doesn’t look like there’s any escape. What I’m trying to say is don’t count on a long-term relationship. Settle for what you can get.”

  I got to Eddie’s about nine-thirty. Annie opened the door and announced that the master wanted me to report immediately.

  “He’s in the office,” she said. “You remember where.”

  I found him sitting at his desk. He seemed almost jovial as he waved me to a chair.

  “Siddown, cuz. You sleep good last night?”

  “Like a baby.” I assumed he was asking me if my tour of inspection had reassured me, but when I started to get into it, he interrupted me with a wave of his hand.

  “You didn’t sleep on Cherry Avenue, did ya?”

  “What?”

  He’d caught me off-guard and he knew it. He grinned like a kid in a pile of chocolate bars. Stolen chocolate bars.

  “Avi told me what he told you about the old girlfriend. Ginny Michkin. Funny thing about Avi—he never forgets anything. Make a great fuckin’ witness. I looked the girlfriend up in the phone book. There was only one Michkin. G. Michkin on Cherry Avenue.”

  “You disrespected me, Eddie. You shouldn’t have done that. It wasn’t right.”

  The tone of my voice brought him up short. He gave me a hard look, realized it was having no effect, and dropped back into his old-buddy stance. All in the space of a few seconds.

  “I got a responsibility to the rest of the guys, cuz. How would it be if I let everybody run around on their own? I gotta control the situation. And what you gotta do is understand.”

  “That right, Eddie?”

  “What else could I do?”

  “You could stop disrespecting me.”

  “Look, cuz …”

  “Maybe Avi’s happy with his guns. And maybe Parker’s too stupid to know better. And maybe you don’t have a choice with Morasso. But I’m not your fuckin’ dog. I’m not gonna sit up just because you wave a biscuit. I’m not gonna cringe when you raise your voice. And, most of all, I’m not gonna kiss your ass because you happen to think you’re fucking Napoleon.”

  “Cuz …”

  He leaned forward, trying to pin me with his eyes while his right hand slid toward the desk drawer. I grabbed the edge of the desk, pushed it over on top of him, and followed it with my full weight. The drawer popped out and the expected piece, an S & W .38, rolled onto the carpet. We both went for it, but Eddie was closer, so I evened the contest by kicking him in the gut as hard as I could. He doubled over and the revolver was in my hand and pointed at his head before I even considered what I was going to do with it.

  “Don’t. Don’t.” Eddie’s eyes were bulging out of his head. He thought I was going to kill him and I’m not sure I wasn’t. I kept the gun to his head for a long time. My finger pulled on the trigger hard enough to move the hammer back.

  “For god’s sake, cuz, it ain’t enough to kill about.”

  He was right. It wasn’t enough reason to kill. I eased the hammer down, then stood up over him. “Avi’s got guns. You’ve got guns. Now I have a gun.”

  I picked the desk up and sat in front, pulling my chair up close enough to conceal my left knee. It was shaking uncontrollably.

  “I’m not walkin’ away,” I said. “You got me in here and I’m goin’ through with it.”

  I watched him pick up his chair and put it behind the desk. As the fear dropped away, he became enraged. It was so predictable. Sooner or later, probably later, he would try to balance the scales. It was the only honorable thing to do.

  “Maybe I been too hard,” he said after he got control. “Like I known you for a long time and I shoulda figured that you gotta have your head. Sometimes ya get so involved in a situation that ya don’t see the obvious.”

  “You know what’s obvious, Eddie? What’s obvious is that you planned the best job I’ve ever seen. I went out there yesterday hoping I’d find something wrong, but I didn’t. The fucking thing is perfect.”

  He looked at me for a long time, obviously surprised by the quick switch. “You seem pretty sure of yourself.”

  “What I’m thinking is that if you want me off the job, you gotta whack me. There’s nothin’ else you can do. Leaving me alive is like sleeping with a time bomb under the mattress. So if you wanna get rid of me, you gotta whack me, but that makes even more problems, because I’m not easy to kill and I’m gonna be watching my back. Now look at it from my point of view. If I walk away from this job, you’re gonna send Avi to pull my ticket. Avi’s a fucking pro. He knows how to use weapons that I never heard of. Sooner or later he’ll probably get to me. Face it, Eddie, ain’t neither one of us going anywhere. If you respect me, we’ll do the job and we’ll all be rich. If you don’t, everybody loses.”

  He answered me by grinning and rubbing his stomach. “What’d you do, learn karate after I left? If I start pissin’ blood, I ain’t gonna be in a good mood tomorrow.”

  “Guns motivate me.” I tossed Morasso’s heroin supply on the desk. “Here’s Tony’s medication.”

  “Good, the prick’s already screamin’ for it.” He tucked the dope into
a shirt pocket. “You ready to go to work?”

  TWENTY-THREE

  WE WENT BACK AND forth over the details of the job. I kept at it diligently, respecting Eddie’s obsessive nature. He’d been the same way up in Cortlandt, worrying details to death. He’d also been very successful, working scheme after scheme without ever, to my knowledge, catching a keeplock or, worse, being sent to the box. This time he was considering ways of disguising the two of us while we were taking control of the loading docks. We couldn’t very well come out of the van wearing ski masks, but we didn’t need to leave five eyeball witnesses behind, either. If one of the workers picked us out of a mug book, the cops would put our shit together in a hurry.

  I played along, but for all my apparent attention, my mind was on other things. I was thinking about Ginny and all the reasons why she didn’t want me in her life. Ginny claimed to need a man she could relate to, a fellow “outlaw,” but what she really needed was the company of other victims. Some kind of victims’ support group would ease her isolation. There’s plenty of that kind of thing for criminals, both in and out of the Institution. You sit there and tell the others about all the vicious things you’ve done to society and somehow you feel better. You don’t stop committing crimes, of course, but you definitely feel better.

  Ginny would feel better, too. And, like me, she would return to her normal life. All I had to do was put the idea in her head, then remove myself from her company. But I didn’t really believe I would (or could) do it. I wanted her so bad, my heart jumped whenever I thought of her. Ginny claimed that her experience on Rikers Island had left an emptiness that she couldn’t fill. I also felt that something was missing, but I thought I could fill the empty place with Ginny.

  Annie called us in to lunch at twelve o’clock. The boys were already seated when Eddie and I came into the kitchen. Parker looked happy to see me and Morasso was positively ecstatic, but Avi merely grunted and went back to his franks and beans.

  After lunch I went up to Parker’s den and resumed my conquest of the subterranean depths. Somehow, my skills had eroded over the prior twenty-four hours and I couldn’t get past the second level of the game. Parker, on the other hand, slaughtered monsters with all the nonchalance of Fred Astaire putting a move on Ginger Rogers.