Keeplock: A Novel of Crime

by Stephen Solomita

  “You were planning to put a third in my coffin? How sweet.”

  I wasn’t thinking about the money. I was thinking about Ginny and how fast I could get her out of her apartment. “Listen close,” I said, “because I only wanna say it once. First you’re gonna take off the mask. Then you’re gonna get out of the car, open the back door, and take Rico out. If you should see a cop, you’re not gonna wave hello or make any noise at all. Remember the money in the trunk. Remember the piece in my hand. You don’t wanna fuck up here. Not even a little bit.”

  THIRTY-THREE

  I LEFT CONDON AND Rico in the middle of East Tremont Avenue and drove away. Traffic was heavy, as usual, with cars and trucks double-parked on both sides of the street. I wanted to fly to Ginny’s, to shoot across the East River on a rocket, but I knew I was going to crawl. I was afraid for the first time, afraid that Eddie would somehow beat me to Ginny’s apartment, that even if I got there first, she’d be out, that she’d eventually walk into a trap.

  Eddie wouldn’t expect to find her. He’d have to figure that I’d already taken care of that angle, but he’d go there anyway. There was no other place for him to begin. If he got his hands on her, death would be the least of Ginny’s problems.

  By the time I got the big Ford through the toll gate on the White-stone Bridge, I was half crazy. I careened through the traffic at eighty miles an hour, snapping the Ford from lane to lane as if it was a Porsche. The last thing I needed was an accident or a ticket, but I couldn’t stop myself. I jumped off the highway at Linden Place and forced my way through downtown Flushing, running lights and stop signs. The horns went crazy, but nobody tried to stop me. I pulled the car next to a fire hydrant on Cherry Avenue, shoved the cops’ automatics under the seat, grabbed one of the canvas bags out of the trunk, and ran up the stairs to Ginny’s apartment.

  When I heard Ginny’s voice and saw her face, I began to calm down. I shut the door and threw both locks.

  “What happened?” It was Ginny’s turn to panic. I was too early, much too early, for things to have gone smoothly.

  “You have to get out of here. Right now. I don’t have time to explain it. Grab your money and your credit cards and get out.”

  I expected her to stall, to ask me about the canvas bag, to demand that I tell her what happened, to refuse to leave without an explanation. I got none of that. Ginny took a small gray bag out of the bedroom closet and began to throw underwear into it. She added a pair of jeans, a blouse, and a dress.

  “I just have to get my purse,” she said, looking up at me. “Then I’ll go.”

  She was crying and I wanted to take her in my arms, to protect her with the full force of my criminal macho bullshit, but all I could do was whisper.

  “Do you want to tell me where you’re going? If you don’t want to, I understand.”

  She answered by walking into the front room. “You think you’ll get out of this?”

  “Maybe. Tony’s dead, one of the guards, too. The cops turned up in stocking masks instead of blue uniforms.” I took the canvas bag and emptied it onto the rug. “Eddie’s blaming me. That’s why you have to run.”

  She was standing at the door, one hand already working the dead bolt, staring at the pile of cash. “What’s that for?”

  “Tribute, motivation, a bribe. It doesn’t matter. You have to go.”

  “Why don’t you come with me? How would Eddie find us?”

  “Eddie wouldn’t; the cops would. They have the resources. But the cops don’t know you exist. The only way they could find out about you is if we go together.”

  “I’m going to my sister’s,” Ginny said. “She lives in Tennessee. Can you remember the phone number?”

  I walked to the window and looked out onto the street. A gang of kids were playing stoopball in front of the building. White, yellow, Spanish, black—a regular United Nations. They should have been on a poster. “You better write it down. My brain is doing cartwheels at the moment.”

  She took a second to scribble a number on the back of a business card, then opened the door. “Call me,” she said.

  I walked across the room and took the card. “I’ll try, Ginny.”

  Her eyes narrowed. For a minute I thought she was going to hit me. “If I don’t get a phone call within a few days, I’m coming back to look for you.”

  “It won’t help to come back. I’ll get to you if I can.” I tried to keep my voice calm, but she wasn’t buying it.

  “I can’t stand not knowing. I have to know, one way or the other.” She stood there for a few seconds, looking up at me. “What I’ll do is call Simon.”

  “You can try, but I don’t think it’ll help. They must have found a way of neutralizing Simon Cooper.”

  “How? Simon would never betray you.”

  “And cops don’t wear stocking masks. Let’s get going, Ginny. I’ll walk out with you.”

  Elevators are traps. I took her down the stairs and out the side door. The kids on the street were arguing, something about a fair or foul ball. Ginny took my hand as we threaded our way between the two teams. We didn’t have time to say what was really on our minds and I didn’t have the heart for bullshit reassurances.

  When we reached her car, I took her in my arms and kissed her. I wanted to memorize her, the smell of her hair, the feel of her skin, the taste of her lips. Something to take with me if I ended up doing twenty-five to life in Cortlandt.

  “Try Simon,” she said.

  “I plan to try everything.”

  I watched her car turn the corner, then went back to my own car and drove down Parsons Boulevard to a bank at the intersection of Parsons and Roosevelt. I pulled the Ford into the parking lot, backed it into a slot in the rear, and shut the engine down.

  I didn’t have long to wait. Half an hour later, a red Dodge Dynasty drove past. Eddie was behind the wheel, Parker alongside him, but Avi was nowhere to be found. I wondered what John and Eddie would think when they found Ginny’s door open, when they saw that pile of money on the rug. I wasn’t worried about what they’d do. There was only one thing they could do—take the money and run. Later on, when things settled down, Eddie would call his mob buddies and put out a contract on me. He wouldn’t have any choice. In his world, treachery can never be ignored. In my world, too, come to think of it.

  That canvas bag had left a two-foot-tall mountain on the rug. The second bag, as it turned out, contained $480,000 dollars. I’d have to guess the first had about the same. You can go a long way on half a million dollars and a good set of bogus i.d. Maybe Annie would get to sample a few Rio beach boys in spite of everything.

  Avi’s absence meant problems of a different kind. I’d hoped to pursue Condon and Rico on my own, but now I’d have to worry about Avi, who was undoubtedly in pursuit of me. Of course there was always the possibility that Eddie had killed Avi, that they’d had a thieves’ falling out. My only problem was that I couldn’t quite bring myself to believe that Eddie would survive a disagreement of that kind. Not that I spent a lot of time considering the question.

  I gave Eddie a few seconds to disappear, then drove the Ford out of the lot and back to the Bronx. On the way, I switched my little 9mm for one of the automatics under the seat. I wanted a big gun, a gun to scare people enough so I wouldn’t have to shoot anyone. Condon’s .45 would do nicely. It felt like it weighed ten pounds and threatened to drag my pants down to my knees.

  The Ford had to go, because at the very least Condon and Rico would be looking for it. I had three sets of car keys in my pocket. The cars they fit (two of them, anyway) were still parked on Quincy Avenue in the Bronx. I suppose I could have gone to Hertz and used the phony credit card Eddie’d given me, but I didn’t know how long I’d be in New York and I didn’t want to start a paper trail. If I got lucky, I’d end up with an untraceable car.

  As I came up East Tremont Avenue, I kept looking for cops. If Morasso’s shooting had been reported, there would have been half a dozen cruisers in front of t
he garage. There weren’t. The garage door was down and padlocked. The street was quiet.

  I parked close to the garage and looked around. There were people on the block, sitting on the stoops. Predation is a fact of life in poor neighborhoods and I didn’t intend to be the prey. I retrieved the 9mm, shoved it inside my belt, and got out of the car with my jacket unzipped. Two-Gun Pete Frangello. Walkin’ tall in the Wild Wild Bronx.

  I unlocked the garage door, backed the Ford inside, then relocked the door. Morasso was lying on the concrete. The pool of blood surrounding his body had dried to a deep reddish-brown. It looked like a bull’s-eye. I felt something rise within me. Anger, disgust, fear … whatever it was, I didn’t have time for analysis. I took the canvas bag out of the trunk and looked down at the two assault rifles. They promised enormous firepower, but I didn’t have the faintest idea of how they worked. Or how to break them down so I could carry them without looking like a demented sniper.

  I closed the trunk and wiped the Ford down. I’d only been to the garage once before and Eddie had insisted that I wear surgical gloves. For once his paranoia was paying off. There were five suitcases in the backroom. That’s where the money was going. The canvas bag was too conspicuous.

  It took me five minutes to fill two suitcases. I added the 9mm before I closed the last one and headed for the street, stepping over Tony on the way. As I bent over to raise the door, I felt a sudden rush of fear. Somebody was on the other side. Eddie, Avi, the cops … it didn’t really matter. With one hand on the door and the other trying to manipulate a couple of heavy suitcases, I’d be a dead pigeon no matter who it was.

  I let the suitcases go, pulled the .45, and drew back the hammer. Then I got as far to the side as I could and shoved the door up. There was a man standing right in front of me. His clothes were ragged, his face and neck a patchwork of dirt and open sores, his trousers down by his ankles. He was holding his dick in his right hand, taking a long leisurely leak.

  I jumped back, but I wasn’t quite fast enough. My cuffs and shoes got splattered. I raised the .45, more as a reflex than anything else, but the man went right on pissing. He wasn’t blind, just insane. Another homeless wreck in need of the Institution.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  SO MUCH FOR TWO-GUN Pete. I dumped the suitcases in the back of the Buick Regal Eddie’d been using and headed north, up toward Westchester County. I planned to drive into Mt. Vernon to find a telephone book, but I didn’t have to go that far. There’s a Store & Lock just over the city line. You can see it from I-95. I got off the highway, rented one of the small garages, dumped the suitcases (after filling my pockets), and drove into the gathering darkness. It was seven-thirty. The whole deal, from the arrival of the armored car in the shopping center parking lot until the present, had gone down in two and a half hours.

  I needed time to think and now I had it. Everything I’d done up to that point had been absolutely necessary. Getting Ginny out of danger and Eddie off my back, ditching the Ford and stashing the money—a robot could have performed those tasks. They were like the compulsory exercises in a figure-skating contest.

  I’d gone through it on automatic pilot, trying not to think or feel, but now I’d come to the point where I didn’t know what to do next. I’d arrived at the “wall” long distance runners talk about.

  I drove north, toward Connecticut, and found a shopping mall in the town of Rye near the New York border. I picked up a small suitcase, a change of clothing, and a shaving kit, just enough to pass for a traveler in the eyes of the clerk at the Blue Point Motor Inn, a nondescript motel on Route 1 near the town of Port Chester.

  “This here is a proper place,” the clerk muttered into a copy of Time. “That means no parties. You bring in a woman or a bottle, keep it quiet. Checkout is ten o’clock. On the dot.”

  I opened the door to my room, expecting the worst, but the space was clean and the furniture had been purchased within living memory. A bed, a chair, and a table, a bureau with a portable television bolted on top—it wasn’t much, but it would do. I was tempted to throw myself on the bed, to shut the whole thing out for a few hours, but I knew I couldn’t. At the very least, I had to put together the pieces I understood, to stitch them in a line the way I’d stitched seams in the tailor shop at Cortlandt.

  Instead of sleeping, I shoved the .45 into my new shaving kit and went out to get something to eat. I opened the Buick’s trunk before I took off and slid the kit behind the spare tire. There was a diner about a quarter of a mile down the road. It was a warm evening and I was tempted to walk it, but I couldn’t take a chance that a passing cruiser would stop me for a spot check. Not with the 9mm tucked behind my belt. I drove down and parked the Buick in the lot.

  I took a booth and ordered coffee. The waitress started to tell me something about a minimum in the booths, but I assured her that I’d be ordering dinner in a few minutes. I just had to make a call first. When she returned, I took the cup off the saucer and carried it to a pay phone by the rest rooms. She didn’t like that, either.

  The call was going out to Simon Cooper. This puzzle had a lot of pieces missing. If I could put one back, I’d consider it a major victory. I dialed Simon’s home number.

  “Hello?” It was a man’s voice, not Simon’s.

  “Is Simon there? Simon Cooper?”

  “Who’s this?”

  “John Gotti.” I shouldn’t have said it, but I did.

  “You a wise guy?”

  “Simon’s my parole officer. I’m a client.” “Client” was the word Simon used to describe his customers. I suppose it sounded better than “parolee” or “ex-con.”

  “This is Simon’s home you’re callin’, not his office.”

  “In that case why don’t you stop acting like his secretary and go find him? I didn’t get his number out of the phone book. He gave it to me.”

  “Yeah? Well, I can’t go out and find Simon because Simon’s dead. Some piece of shit just like you shot him down in a tenement on West 48th Street. Those sounds you hear in the background are his wife and kids crying.”

  I hung up. Partly because there was nothing else to say and partly out of fear that he might be a cop. My waitress, order book in hand, was waiting for me when I got back to the table.

  “Ready to order?” She was skinny and middle-aged, with a smile that carried as much warmth as the grimace of a street prostitute with menstrual cramps.

  I ordered a steak and watched her walk away. Simon Cooper’s face drifted through my mind. I heard his voice warning me to be careful, to beware the treachery of Eddie Conte and Avi Stern. He hadn’t mentioned the cops. Most likely, in his own mind, they were above suspicion, the one sure element in a volatile equation. He’d been stupid just like me.

  Did they try to deal with him? Did they approach him in some crumbling hallway and offer him a piece if he’d just forget he’d ever spoken to me? Probably not. Most likely they’d come up to him with smiles on their faces. “Hey, Simon, what’re you doin’ here?”

  I was angry, but I couldn’t feel the anger. I once spent a twenty-four-hour keeplock with a con who’d just come back from three years in the box. His name was Paulie Sheehan and he’d tried to shank a C.O. Paulie told me the hacks hadn’t stopped beating him for a month.

  “Every day?” I asked him.

  “No, every shift. After a while I didn’t feel it anymore. I could hear the sound of it. Hell, I could hear myself screaming. But I couldn’t feel it.”

  What I felt was weary. I waited for the waitress to refill my cup, then drank it down in a gulp.

  “Do it again, dear.”

  This time she didn’t bother to fake a smile. I watched her walk away, then forced myself to think. The only important question was whether Condon and Rico would find a way to send the rest of the NYPD after me. I had no illusions. If the cops want to find you and you stay in New York, you’re found. But I couldn’t think of a way Condon could involve his fellow officers without incriminating himself. How, fo
r instance, would Rico explain his battered face?

  Most likely they were sitting in some empty apartment, pissing their pants. I was a loose cannon. If I was arrested and spilled my guts, they’d go down for Simon’s murder. The prosecutor might not want to believe me. He might, for instance, put me on a polygraph machine, but in the end he’d have to prosecute. Second-degree murder in New York State carries a mandatory sentence of twenty-five to life.

  Cops don’t do well in jail. If I was after revenge, I’d have to go a long way to make it worse than twenty-five to life in a Max A prison. I didn’t have to wait to be arrested. All I had to do was find a lawyer and make a phone call. The lawyer would listen to my story and arrange a meeting with the District Attorney’s office. I’d have to testify, but I was already a snitch. Informing on Condon and Rico wouldn’t make my rat whiskers any longer than they already were.

  I think I would have taken that option if I hadn’t given half the money to Eddie and the boys. The cops would never believe that I’d casually tossed away half a million dollars, not if I took a thousand lie detector tests. Maybe they send the three of us—me, Condon, and Rico—to the same prison, give us adjoining cells. We could hang out with Terrentini’s ghost.

  The waitress brought my steak, setting it down along with a plate of greasy french fries and a wilted salad. In the Institution, you always eat. No matter how bad the food is. The chow becomes one more reason for hating the society that put you in prison. If Condon and Rico had kept their end of the bargain, I’d be having dinner with Ginny. I’d be celebrating, looking forward to a life in the world instead of in the Institution.

  I finished every crumb, wiping the last of the grease with a piece of mushy white bread. My waitress appeared before I could swallow it.

  “Everything okay?”

  “Scrumptious.”

  “You want dessert?” If she was aware of my sarcasm, she didn’t show it. She didn’t wait for me respond, either. The check floated down onto the table and she was gone.