“This is a great game,” he told me, “because it illustrates human thinking at its most irrational. The Lizard People have their own society. They live underground and they never bother human beings. We’re down there trying to steal their treasure, yet we think of them as evil monsters.”
As he spoke, he pounded on the computer keyboard. Each time he pounded, another creature exploded. “If we were even remotely honest, we’d put ourselves in their place. Suppose they were coming to steal our treasure? How would we feel? The funny thing is that most of these computer games involve heroes who go out in search of adventure. They don’t defend against invasion. Just like us, they’re looking to take something that doesn’t belong to them and they feel perfectly justified in doing it. Crazy, right?”
“Actually, it doesn’t pay to think about it too much,” I responded. “If you want to be successful in the criminal business, you can’t put yourself in the place of the victim.”
What I wanted to say was, “If you can understand how a fucking lizard feels about his treasure, how come you can’t understand how a cop feels about his life?” But we’d been through that already, so I settled for killing lizards.
By two o’clock I’d had enough. I said goodbye to Parker and went in search of Eddie. Morasso was in the living room, watching cartoons as usual. He looked up at me through sleepy eyes. His pupils were tiny, tiny dots.
“Best go easy with that shit,” I said, still walking. “You don’t wanna o.d. before you get rich.”
“Ya can’t o.d. when ya snortin’ the shit,” he announced. “Ya gotta be shootin’ up to get an o.d.”
“Right, Tony. And you can protect yourself from AIDS by washing your cock with Listerine.”
Eddie wasn’t in his office, so I knocked on the bedroom door across the hall.
“Come in.” It was Annie’s voice.
I opened the door a few inches. She was sitting by a small, lighted vanity putting on her makeup. Her hair was still wet from the shower and she was wrapped in a large gold towel.
“Eddie around?” I asked.
“Eddie went out.”
“Yeah. Well, I’m takin’ off for the day.”
“What about Louise?”
“Who?”
“Big Momma. You remember? She’s comin’ by after dinner.”
“I’ll take a raincheck. She’ll have plenty to do without me.”
Annie leaned in toward the mirror. Even though her back was turned to me, I could see the tops of her breasts reflected in the mirror as the towel slid down to her nipples. She lifted herself off the bench slightly, moving her face to within a foot of the glass. The towel barely covered her ass.
“I thought you’d be really horny. Just gettin’ out of prison and everything.”
I was, but not for a prostitute. Or for Eddie’s wife. Annie loved Eddie. She’d waited nearly ten years for him to get out of jail. But that didn’t mean she didn’t like to sleep around. There are plenty of men who love their wives and still put it to any woman who’ll let them.
“You fucking around with Avi?” It couldn’t be Morasso. He was too crazy. It couldn’t be Parker either. He wasn’t violent enough. “Avi and all his guns?”
She turned toward me, startled. “What’d he say about me?” She was trying for indignation, but it came out scared.
“Nothing, Annie. I haven’t even spoken to him. And I don’t give a shit what you do with Avi, but I want you to stop coming on to me. I don’t need the aggravation and I don’t want the pussy.”
She shrugged and went back to her makeup. As I left the room, I heard her laughing to herself.
I went out and started the car, thinking how the whole scene disgusted me. In my own mind, I was through with that life. But it was a closed book that kept opening. The only way to keep it closed was to burn it. Then I remembered the .38 tucked behind my belt. It sat there so naturally that I wasn’t even aware of its presence, but if I got frisked by a cop, it would put me back in Cortlandt for the next five to ten years. I didn’t stop thinking of Terrentini until the piece was tucked behind the spare tire in the trunk.
I drove over to Queens Boulevard, parked the car, and found a telephone. Condon picked up on the third ring.
“Yeah?”
“It’s Pete Frangello.”
“You’re early.” His voice was instantly alert. Like a sleeping dog catching an unfamiliar scent in the air.
“I gotta see you this afternoon. I gotta show you something.”
“I’m kinda busy here, Frangello. Can’t it wait till tomorrow?”
By tomorrow I might change my mind again. “Well, the thing of it is, Condon, I been lying to you all along. About the bank in Staten Island and the kidnapping. I want you to come out here so I can show you what’s actually going down.”
I figured that piece of information would get him moving. It would also give him a chance to get used to the idea before he got his hands on me.
“Your games ain’t gonna do you no good, Frangello. And your attitude ain’t helpin’ either. The fact is that I’m just about ready to pull your fuckin’ ticket. Where are you?”
The waiting was the worst of it. I didn’t want them to know about the car, so I left the door unlocked and the keys under the seat, then stood on a corner for thirty-five minutes while the boys made their way out of Manhattan.
When they finally arrived, they acknowledged my patience by cuffing me and throwing me into the back of the old Plymouth they were driving. Rico got in next to me. I could see the beating coming and I tried to prepare myself to take it without fighting back.
“What’s the story?” Condon spoke from behind the wheel. He didn’t bother to turn his head.
“I’m not gonna tell you. This time I’m gonna show you.”
“You’re gonna do whatever we tell ya to do,” Rico hissed. He jabbed a finger into my gut. Not hard enough to hurt—it was more like a promise of things to come. I took this as a good sign. They were going to give me chance to tell my story before they broke my ribs.
“If you drive the car, I’ll show you where and how it’s going down.”
“The whole thing? Not some little piece of it, but the whole fucking thing?” Condon sounded bored. Like he’d already made up his mind and he was just looking for the evidence.
“All of it. Names, dates, places. You drive out the Expressway to Francis Lewis Boulevard and I’ll tell you about it while we’re moving.”
He started without any more bullshit and I began to wish I’d asked him to take the cuffs off. Nobody was volunteering. As promised, I gave them the details as we poked along in heavy traffic. First I told them about Parker’s background and what he’d done with the computer. By the time I’d finished, they were beginning to believe me. It wasn’t something you’d make up on the spur of the moment. Then I told them about Avi and what he could do with a weapon. Then Morasso and his end of it. Then Eddie and the fact that he’d begun his planning and recruiting in Cortlandt. I kept back the car, the .38, the false i.d., and Ginny.
“The piece of shit sounds pretty real, don’t he?” Rico finally broke the silence. “Looks like I’ll have to kick his ass just for the fun of it.”
“Shut up, Rico,” Condon said. It was nice to know which one of them was butch. “Why you telling me this, Frangello? Why did you decide to open up? An angel come out of the sky and tell you to do right? Something like that?”
“Yeah—something like that. Take a right here.” We were on Fifty-sixth Avenue. The patrol car was parked in the same place, but the cop inside was different. “You see that cop?”
“What about him?”
“He’s dead. Avi Stern is gonna get up on top of that school you’re driving toward and blow the cop away.”
“Why?”
“Because whenever a cop gets shot, 911 puts out a 10-13. You know what that is, right?”
“We know what it is.” There was no boredom in Condon’s voice. It sounded more like he was frightened.
“When the dispatcher puts out a 10-13, every cop in the area comes running. Every cop. The only way this job goes wrong is if we’re caught in the act. You can’t trace any part of the computer thing back to us. We don’t have any connections inside the company. Eddie’s got everybody locked up in that house, so your snitches won’t be able to help you either.”
“Except for you,” Rico interrupted, grinning. “We do got one little rat squeakin’ in our ears.”
“That’s right.” I ignored the disrespect. “One and only one. You won’t get another.”
“Uncuff him,” Condon said.
“Gimme a break,” Rico responded. “I haven’t even slapped him yet.”
“Just do it. You’re not gonna get any more out of him by hurting him.”
“But I wanna hurt him.”
“Jesus Christ.” Condon finally turned around. “I’m too old for this shit. Uncuff the motherfucker.”
I’d already decided not to rub my wrists, a decision which took all of five seconds to reverse.
“I make them cuffs too tight?” Rico asked. “I’m sorry.”
“No tighter than I expected from a tough guy like you.”
He wanted to come after me—I could read it in his eyes—but he wasn’t running the show and he knew it.
“My time will come,” he predicted. “You’ll fuck up. You can’t help yourself. When ya do, I’ll be waitin’. I’m gonna put your mutt ass in the hospital.”
I didn’t respond. There was no sense to it. We could play Ring-Around-the-Rosie for the next two hours, but I wanted to get to Ginny.
“Why don’t we drive over to Douglaston Parkway and take a look at the job?” I suggested.
“Where?”
They were Manhattan cops and didn’t know or care about the outer boroughs of New York City. I directed them back to the Expressway and had them standing at the edge of the ravine a few minutes later.
“That’s it,” I announced. “It’s all gonna happen back there. First the Pope comes. Then the cop dies. Then we’re all supposed to get rich. Parker’ll verify the armored car’s route so there’s no chance we’ll come up with an empty truck. The detectives’ll go to the company first, looking for an inside man. The cop is guarding the home of a protected witness, so the detectives investigating his death will have to look at the witness’s enemies, even if they suspect a tie-in with the robbery. By the time they figure it out—if they ever figure it out—we’ll be long gone.”
“It works,” Condon admitted. “Except for you.”
“Except for me,” I admitted. “Which leads to a question. When do I get cut loose? I don’t wanna get booked. I don’t wanna spend ten minutes in jail.”
Without warning, without showing a twitch of emotion, Condon slapped me across the face. Rico’s .38 was in my ribs before I could respond.
“This is what you get if you’re a good boy,” Condon said matter-of-factly. “You could imagine what you’re gonna get if you’re bad. You report every night, like you should have been doing. We’ll let you know what’s going down. If you’re a good boy.”
“Yeah?” I could taste the blood in my mouth. “You think that slap scares me? Listen, Condon, I’m not goin’ into this without protecting myself. My P.O. knows what’s happening and he’s gonna know more by the end of the next ten days. If I had a lawyer, I could get a guarantee, but I don’t. So I’m telling you flat-out—when the bust is over, I’m walkin’ away.”
Condon responded by walking away himself. He turned on his heel and strolled back to the car. After a second, Rico followed him. They drove off without bothering to say goodbye.
TWENTY-FOUR
IT TOOK ME OVER an hour to work myself back to my car. By then it was after three o’clock. I knew I should have been thinking about Condon and Rico and what I’d done, but I couldn’t concentrate. The best I could do was realize that I had no guilt for what was going to happen to Eddie and the boys. It was my out, just as taking the armored car was Eddie’s out. There was relief, too. Deliberate murder had never been part of the war I’d been fighting with society. My own particular Geneva Convention had forbidden it decades before, even if it had taken all this time for the information to filter down to me. I couldn’t possibly face Ginny, couldn’t hold her in my arms and make love to her, if I was about to betray her once again. Somebody had to go.
That didn’t mean I wasn’t a rat. Cooperating with the pigs is the ultimate dishonorable act. In Parker’s computer game, the hero fights until he’s got the treasure or he’s killed. There’s no place for betrayal or retreat. Whoever created the game forgot to include the possibility of fear. Maybe that’s why the hero gets killed ten thousand times before he reaches the treasure.
But there’s a good side to being a rat. Now that I’d become thoroughly dishonorable, I couldn’t really go back. If I should happen to violate parole, Eddie and the boys would be waiting for me up in Cortlandt. They’d have to kill me. It would be the only honorable thing to do.
Years ago, while I was doing my first serious bit in the Institution, I took part in a riot. A group of cons seized a cell block, driving the C.O.’s out and barricading the doors. As these things go, it wasn’t much of a riot. Without hostages, it only took an hour for the administration to mass enough force to break through our defenses. Just enough time to end the career of a prison snitch named Billy Balsack. They tied him to the bars of his cell, then jabbed broom handles into his ribs, his gut, his balls, and his face until he was dead. The handles hadn’t been sharpened and it took him a long time to die. The boys responded to his screams with a chant.
“The rat squeaks. The rat squeaks. The rat squeaks.”
Snitches take up the profession for two reasons. Sure, they want to stay out of jail or draw light sentences, but they also want to further their criminal careers. A steady flow of information can keep a snitch on the streets for a long time. Eventually, of course, he does something so awful that even the detectives protecting him won’t intervene. Or he runs out of information, which, in the eyes of the cops, amounts to the same thing. That wasn’t going to happen to me. For me, ratting was the equivalent of paying dues. It was the price of freedom.
I called Simon Cooper from a pay phone on Queens Boulevard, told him I was still alive, and made an appointment for the next morning. I had every intention of following through on my threat to Condon and Rico. And no illusions about their sense of honor. If they could find a way to convict Eddie and the boys without my testimony, they would throw me to the wolves. I was one of those rats with no more information to give.
A half hour later, I was sitting in front of Teng-Ling Realty, waiting for Ginny to come out. I should have been thinking about practical things like finding a job and getting off parole. But I was the hero who’d conquered the 10th Level and stolen the Saurian treasure. Now I would live happily ever after.
Ginny’s face told me otherwise. She looked more tired than ever, as if she hadn’t slept for ten minutes the night before. I wasn’t the hero come to rescue the fair maiden. I was a last attempt to find a life she could deal with, the ultimate long shot. She got in the car without looking at me.
“You don’t have to go through with this,” I said. “If you want to forget about it, it’s no big deal.”
“You just got back. Don’t walk out on me before dinner.” She managed a quick smile. There were a few small lines at the edges of her mouth. They disappeared into her dimples for a moment, then reassembled themselves.
“Don’t worry. I’m not going anywhere.” The smile took me back up. But at least I wasn’t trying to do the impossible. I wasn’t trying to stop an avalanche. I was going with the flow. I was trying to surf the motherfucker.
“Where do you wanna go to eat?” I asked.
“There’s a place called Santoli’s on the other side of the Expressway. It’s right up Main Street.”
I’d been hoping we’d have dinner at her apartment, but I kept a straight face as we p
lodded along behind heavy traffic.
“You wanna hear something funny?” I said.
“Anything.” Another quick smile.
“You know Simon’s my P.O. again. What are the odds against that? There’s maybe five thousand parole officers in New York and I get Simon.”
“Be grateful. Simon’s on your side.”
“I used to think that, but I’m not sure now. He told you not to write me. I didn’t get a letter in ten years. He told you that I couldn’t help myself, that I’d be a criminal for the rest of my life. I don’t wanna start feeling sorry for myself, because I’ve been down that bullshit road before. But I also don’t wanna say that Simon was right. I don’t wanna convict myself, because the trial’s not over till I’m dead.”
“Simon thought he was protecting me, but he didn’t really understand what was happening. Back then, I didn’t understand it, either. The truth is that I don’t care if he was right or wrong. What does it matter?”
I leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. “There’s no big mystery here, Ginny. It matters because of the victims. Like you, for instance.”
I pulled the car to the curb in front of a small Italian restaurant. There was a cemetery across the street. An elderly woman was sitting on a stool in front of a granite cross. I watched her lips move as she carried on an active conversation with the empty air.
“You take me out of the picture,” I continued, “and none of that happens to you.” Why was I putting myself down? I wanted her more than ever. I should have been throwing the blame on the cops or my childhood or the foster care system or the Institution. Hell, Ginny, the devil made me do it.
“Whatever you did, you didn’t do it to me.” Her voice was strong and intense. “I’ve had ten years to think this out. If you had just been arrested and sent off to prison, it would have hurt, but I’d have gotten over it. I would have healed. The cops changed all that. No matter how many times you told me different, I really believed that cops draw a line between the innocent and the guilty.”
Keeplock: A Novel of Crime Page 18