Keeplock: A Novel of Crime

by Stephen Solomita

  I should have known. “I’ll try to catch him later.”

  “Who should I say called?”

  “Tell him Old Yeller.”

  “Wait a second, he’s comin’.” He let the phone crash down onto the desk.

  “Condon.”

  “It’s Pete.”

  He took a deep breath. “Jesus, Pete, where ya been? We nearly gave up on ya.”

  “Where I’ve been is none of your business.”

  He took another deep breath. “All right, I’m not gonna argue about it. So where do we go from here.”

  I wanted to say, “Upward and onward,” but I didn’t. “I’m trying to figure a way out of this.”

  “Why don’t you stop being such a hardhead and let us help you? We can handle Eddie and others. You can’t, Pete. You can’t do shit to stop them. How long are ya gonna hide? A week? A month? Sooner or later you’re gonna have to run and then everybody’s gonna be after you. Eddie, the parole board, me, everybody. What’s the point?”

  “I don’t trust you. If you get the chance, you’re gonna blow me away.”

  “Pete, you gotta trust me. You don’t have any other choice.”

  “I have a choice, Condon. I definitely have a choice.”

  He took a third deep breath. This was exactly what he didn’t want to hear.

  “And I don’t see any reason why I shouldn’t take advantage of it,” I continued. “You set me up. You told me you were going to prevent a murder and now I’m a co-conspirator in two murders. Correction, three murders. I forgot about Simon.”

  “Who’s gonna believe you? You got no proof. Most likely you’re the one who’ll get arrested.”

  “We could go on like this forever. You want me to trust you, you gotta prove yourself.”

  “And how am I supposed to do that? You want me to take a lie detector test?”

  “I want you to kill Eddie. And I’m giving you forty-eight hours to do it. If you don’t get it done, I’m gonna take the money and my story and walk into the D.A.’s office.”

  “I need more time, Pete. Two days ain’t enough.”

  “Bullshit. We’re talkin’ about four people on the run, three ex-cons and a woman. They don’t have any money and they can’t all be staying with relatives. One or two of them gotta be on the streets somewhere. You find that one or two and convince them to take you to Eddie.”

  “Pete, don’t hang up. Don’t—”

  On the way back to my hole, I tossed the rest of the cocaine into a storm sewer. At the time, I considered it the noble thing to do. Maybe it was, but half an hour later, I wanted that coke almost as much as I wanted to lock the sights of my 9mm on Condon’s head.

  I knew from past experience that if I held on for another couple of hours, the urge would disappear. I understood that my desire was chemical, even though it felt like my very soul was crying out for cocaine. Somewhere along the way, I began to tell myself not to be a fool. Cocaine would give me the energy to stay awake until Condon showed up, even if it took a few days. What was the point of playing the reformed convict? All I had to do was climb down the fire escape. They were selling coke two blocks away.

  I ignored it all, but in the end I had to pay another penalty. After the cocaine pushed through my system, I flipped from energetic and alert to exhausted and nearly unconscious. I crawled through the hole into the adjoining apartment. There was an ancient sofa near the wall furthest from the window that led to the fire escape. I wedged myself behind it and fell asleep.

  I woke to the sound of sirens. A dozen voices screamed in my head. The cops were coming, hundreds of them. Condon had found a way out of it, a way to keep himself clear. I was going away forever, away from Ginny and back to the hell of the Cortlandt Correctional Facility.

  Mmmmrrrrowwwwrrrrrr.

  My head was up and the gun was out before I could form anything like a coherent plan. What were the sirens doing in the room? How did they get sirens in the goddamned room?

  Mmmmmrrrrrrowwwwrrrrrr.

  What I saw, when I was able to focus my eyes, was a large gray tomcat sitting on the windowsill. The son of a bitch had a meow that spread itself across three octaves.

  “Jesus, cat, you have any idea how close you came? Maybe you do have nine lives, but you oughta consider that what I’m gonna shoot you with is called a nine millimeter.”

  He stared at me with calm cat eyes, then jumped down into the room. I opened one of the Diet Cokes and drank directly from the bottle. There’s enough caffeine in regular Coke to raise the dead. If you take away the sugar, you get the full effect. I won’t say the taste of warm chemicals was pleasant, but a few minutes later, I was close to being awake.

  Mrrrowww.

  Now that he had my attention, he was shortening his act.

  “C’mere.” I opened a can of tuna fish and put it by my feet. The cat paid no attention until the smell hit his nose. Then his whole body stiffened and his eyes locked on mine.

  I gouged out a chunk of tuna and ate it. “You better get in on this before it’s too late.”

  There’s no way to know what a cat’s thinking by looking into its eyes. I knew there was something behind that stare, but I couldn’t guess what it was.

  “Last chance, brother.”

  The cat must have read my mind. He came across the room slowly, his body in a crouch, every muscle alert. I pushed the tuna away from me with my foot and he jumped back ten feet.

  “You wanna—”

  I heard a crash down in the yard behind the building and a dog began to bark. My heart froze for a moment, then I crossed to the window and looked out, careful to conceal my body and as much of my head as possible. I found an elderly man picking through the rubble and a Latina woman shouting at him in Spanish from a window.

  I turned away, sighing, resolving to get my fear under control. I couldn’t afford to react this way if I meant to be in command of the situation when Condon finally showed up. I needed to be more like the cat. He’d taken advantage of my panic to enjoy a free meal.

  I watched him pick at the food. A hungry dog would have eaten the whole thing, can and all, by this time, but the cat only nibbled at the tuna, its ears and whiskers pulled back, its eyes narrowed to yellow slits.

  “Chew your food. You wanna make yourself—”

  The dog. An idea formed in my brain like it’d been shot from a cannon. When the commotion started, a dog had barked. It was the same dog that’d barked from inside the second-floor apartment as I made my way up and down the fire escape last night.

  I gave the dog a name on the spot. Radar. Which is exactly what he’d be. For the first time I began to think I might actually do what I had to do and still get away to Ginny. Good ol’ Radar was a big break for me, a personal Distant Early Warning Line.

  Something touched my arm and I felt my skin curl. The damn cat had finished the tuna. Now he wanted love and understanding. I ran my hand over his skinny body. The poor bastard had scars everywhere. One of his ears looked like it’d been put through a paper shredder.

  Cats born on the streets never come close to people. Once upon a time, this cat had had a home. Then his trusted humans had tossed him out into the street like so much garbage. I wondered what he’d done? Had he missed the litter box once too often? Or scratched one of the children?

  Maybe they just got tired of feeding him. Maybe they just opened the door and dumped him in the hall. He’d hung out for a while until hunger overcame whatever need he had for humans. Then he’d gone out onto the streets where he’d been (and was) subject to vicious children, careening vehicles and, most of all, other street cats. Now his life was nothing more than an expression of the will to survive and to reproduce.

  “You keep this up,” I told myself, “you’re not gonna be able to see Condon through the tears. Stop feelin’ sorry for yourself. You know you don’t give a shit about the cat.”

  I opened up another can of tuna and found the cat’s face in it before I could grab a chunk for myself. I
pushed him away and tossed him a piece.

  “Look here, cat, this ain’t the supermarket. You gotta pace yourself.”

  Good advice for the both of us. I finished the tuna, took a healthy pull on the soda, then went back to the window and looked outside. I wanted to get an idea of the layout before it got dark again. It’d been near dawn when I fell asleep and, without a watch, I had no idea of the current time.

  Peering through the open window didn’t help much—the sky was carpeted with heavy, dark clouds—but I could see well enough to know there was only one way out, the alley between my building and one to the east. The small yards separating the buildings on the north and south were fenced. In the dark, I’d be a blind man running an obstacle course. Much better to kick out the front door if I had to leave before Condon showed up. That alley was ambush heaven.

  The rain began an hour or so later. Accompanied by distant thunder and an occasional flash of lightning, it came straight down, exploding against the concrete, brick, and stone of the city. I had no particular problem with April showers (or May flowers either), but the noise of the rain, echoing in the courtyards, would provide cover for Condon and Rico if they came before it ended.

  Well, those are the breaks—a dog for me, the rain for them. I got up and went back into the front apartment, lit several new candles, and found a sharp knife. Then I cut a hole through the back of the couch, just big enough to see the window and the far wall, and settled down to wait.

  The cat curled up on my lap and fell asleep with its motor running. I ran a finger along a particularly gruesome scar that ran from the base of his tail to his shoulder blades. He responded by arching his back and turning his purr up a notch.

  “You’re stupid, cat. You’re rubbing up against me like I was your momma. Only problem is I’ll be gone in a couple of days and you’ll have to go back to eating maggots out of garbage cans.”

  I think he was asking for a lawyer.

  It was well after dark when Condon finally showed up. I could make out a lighted window across the yard, but just barely. If it wasn’t for the glow of the candles in the next room, I wouldn’t have been able to see anything but the window. As it was, the few pieces of ragged furniture were merely shadows against the darker flat shadow of the far wall. The only real light came from the hole between the two apartments. It was a beacon, a guide, and I was pretty sure Condon would go toward it.

  I don’t know anything about the size of the dog in the lower apartment, but I guarantee he was loud enough to be a lion. I lifted the cat off my lap, put him on the floor, and drew my weapon. A minute later the fire escape began to rattle and Condon’s bulk appeared in the window. I’d been up and down fire escapes many times in the course of a long career. You need a very light touch to keep all that metal from vibrating. Condon didn’t have it.

  He stayed out on the fire escape for a long time. I could hear him panting, despite the rain. And I could see the small revolver he held in his hand. He must have been desperate to come at me like this. To come head-on into the distinct possibility of a setup.

  I was tempted to take him as he came through the window but I couldn’t be sure he was alone. There was no hurry, either. Condon was already trapped by his own mistakes. He should have shot me down in that garage. Now, with no access to the might of the thirty-five-thousand-man New York Police Department, he was just another assassin, an amateur taking a professional’s risks.

  An obese assassin, at that. He could barely squeeze his fat butt through the open window, and when he dropped to the floor, he grunted like a pig. I kept one eye on the window, looking for a silhouette, but the window remained empty.

  Maybe I’d hurt Rico more than I thought. I suppose there was always the possibility that he was waiting in the alley or in front of the building, but it didn’t seem likely that Condon would have come up the fire escape if Rico, fifty pounds lighter, could have done it.

  Condon began to inch his way across the room. He went straight for the light, stopping just short of the rectangular glow cast by the candles. I came up over the top of the couch and put the PPK’s sights on his head. It was time to shit or get off the pot, but I continued to wait. I waited until his head and shoulders disappeared into the next room, until he was thoroughly stuck.

  “You don’t wanna move, Detective,” I said quietly. “You don’t wanna move at all.”

  He took the hint, freezing in his tracks. “Jeez, Pete—”

  “Forget ‘Jeez, Pete.’ Forget any excuse of any kind. What you’re gonna do is back into the room. And when your hands appear, they better be empty.”

  Stuck in that hole, he couldn’t very well spin and fire the way he’d been taught at the police academy. Condon was trapped and he knew it. He slowly inched his way back into the room, then turned to face me.

  “Don’t kill me, Pete.”

  “Stand up and do exactly what I say. I wanna warn you that I’m very nervous here and if you make any quick moves, I’m not gonna wait around to see what happens next. I’m gonna blow your fucking head off.”

  “All right, all right. Please, don’t get crazy. We can work this out.”

  “Take off your coat. Do it with one hand and do it slowly.” I waited until he finished, then ordered him to do the same thing with his jacket, then his shirt, then his pants. Sure enough, he had a small revolver neatly tucked into an ankle holster.

  “Kneel down with your back to me. Draw the piece with two fingers. Slide it across the floor.”

  The tension was so heavy the room appeared to be vibrating. Condon must have been sensitive enough to understand my feelings, because he pulled the piece as if he was handling a bottle of liquid plutonium. When he finished, I had him kick his clothes out of reach, then turn to face me.

  “Why’d you do it?” I asked, finally drawing a deep breath. “Why?” The answer, money, was too obvious to say out loud. Condon simply stared at me, his fat jowls, for once, motionless.

  “Well,” I finally said, “enough chitchat. I have some good news for you. Some good news and some bad news. The good news is that I’m not gonna kill you. The bad news is that you’re gonna make a full confession.”

  I took the minirecorder out of my pocket and laid it on the floor between us. “Start with Eddie Conte. What you knew about him and how you began your investigation. Don’t leave anything out. Do it as if your life depended on it. Which, of course—”

  “Pete, I’m cold. I’m freezing my ass off.”

  “Now, ya see, Condon, that’s exactly what I was talking about. If you said that after we started taping, it’d look like I was torturing you in order to make you confess falsely. If I can’t get a convincing statement out of you, then I have no reason to leave you alive. Are you beginning to catch my drift?”

  Condon, now that he was sure I wasn’t going to shoot him on the spot, appeared to accept his helplessness. As for me, I had a job to do and a guy named Avi Stern to worry about. I wanted to finish with Condon, then get the hell out of the Lower East Side.

  “What are you gonna do with it, Pete?” Condon’s voice was reasonably firm, which was all to the good.

  “With what?” I said innocently.

  “The tape. Are you gonna hand it over to the press?”

  “The press?” It was funny. He was more worried about publicity than his own life. “I have a lot of things on my mind, Condon. I have Eddie Conte and Avi Stern and thirty-five thousand cops to worry about. Eddie and Avi? They’re my problem. The cops? Well, if I go down, you and your buddy, Rico, are goin’ down with me. Now let’s do it.”

  I picked up the minirecorder and fingered the button. “I want you to start with Eddie Conte. Tell me exactly how you found out about him. And don’t worry about protecting your informants. Worry about protecting your life.”

  My finger tightened on the trigger as I pictured Simon Cooper baby-sitting his kids. Worried about popcorn spilling on the rug, about vacuum cleaners and orange juice. The reaction was completely spontan
eous. It surprised me as much as it surprised Condon.

  “Pete, please. Please don’t—” His eyes were wide with terror. He knew just how close he was.

  I flicked the switch on the minirecorder and set it down. Condon began without prompting, and to give the bastard credit, he went through it without leaving anything out. At first, all he and Rico had wanted was a prestigious collar, but after I detailed the size of the robbery, they’d gotten greedy. Simon Cooper had been their biggest problem. They’d made an attempt to bring him into their scam, but he’d refused outright. Rico had murdered him with a throwaway piece they’d taken off a street junkie.

  It took Condon about fifteen minutes to run through the whole thing. When he was finished, I shut off the tape recorder and slipped it into my pocket.

  “One more question, Condon,” I said. “Why didn’t you kill me when you had the chance? Hell, why didn’t you kill all of us?”

  Condon sighed and looked over at his shirt and pants. “Pete, it’s really cold in here. I’m freezing.”

  “It’s a lot colder in the grave. Which is where Simon Cooper is. You make one move toward your clothes and you’re gonna join him. Answer the question.”

  “We talked about it for a long time. At one point, we made up our minds to do it, but then we couldn’t get our hands on a silencer. Not without attracting attention. I mean, how could we be sure the mutt who sold us the silencer wouldn’t turn out to be some other cop’s snitch? We were carrying AK47s, Pete. There were people out on the street. Citizens. If they heard the shooting (and they’d have to hear it), maybe they’d come to investigate. Or maybe somebody would get a plate number. Or dial 911. Rico said we should force everybody into the back room, then do it like a mob hit, but I didn’t think—” He stopped for a moment, then bit the bullet. “I didn’t think four prison-hard criminals would allow themselves to be executed. I told Rico that we had to control the scene. We couldn’t even be sure that one or two of you didn’t have a backup piece. Things could get out of hand in a hurry, especially if Tony Morasso went crazy. Which he finally did.”