Intruder

by Peter Blauner

  Part of him wants to turn on his heel and leave right now. But the other part reminds him he doesn’t feel safe on the street anymore. Who knows if he’ll run into the guys with the baseball bats again?

  “So do you think you might be interested in being here?” Ms. Greenglass asks.

  John G. notices she’s wearing a pair of gold earrings shaped like ram’s heads. Nothing ostentatious enough to get them torn off her earlobes on the subway, but tasteful and probably expensive in a quiet way. He wonders if she’s another rich lady slumming it with volunteer work or if somehow she’s making good money off this.

  “I’d want to know if I can have my own room,” he says suddenly.

  “Well first you have to make it through the interview process.” Ms. Greenglass grimaces in distaste, leaving lipstick stains on her upper row of teeth. “Generally speaking, we prefer to have the men bunk five or six to a room. We feel it gives them a chance to reinforce therapeutic values.”

  An elderly man with a whiskery nose and stubby fingers barges into the room, wearing a blue Don’t Ask Me 4 Shit T-shirt.

  “Do I know you?” he asks John G.

  John G. stares back, but can’t place him. The old man’s face is as worn and woolly as an old Brillo pad. “Do I?”

  “You were part of the old gang from Atlantic Beach.”

  “I’m from Patchogue.”

  “No, you’re one of the Jews.” The woolly man waves a scabby hand. “Arlene Finkelstein. Bennie Levine. What’s his name, you know, Herbie Leonard, who ran the bar association. I remember they had me surrounded on the boardwalk outside Jackie Kan-non’s Rat Fink Club. They were working for Jack Warner. He was the head of the Jewish Mafia, you know. I had to shoot two of them. At the time, I was going with Miriam Sulzberg, you know. But I had to shoot her too, because I got interested in some other girl . . .”

  “Yankel, is there something I can help you with?” Ms. Greenglass interrupts, sounding weary and impatient.

  “Yes. I have a plan for getting rid of Eddie Fisher. So I can run off with Liz Taylor. Remind me to tell you later.”

  He walks out.

  “Does he have his own room?” John G. asks.

  “He has to.” Ms. Greenglass purses her lips. “He can’t get along with the other consumers. He’s too erratic. He needs his own space.”

  “I see . . .“John G. scratches his ribs, considering the state of things.

  Five guys in a room. Stink and sweat. In Catholic school, he once went on an overnight retreat and Daniel Fitzpatrick stole the outfielder’s glove his mother bought him. Took it from right under his mattress, with the linseed oil still wet in the pocket. The last thing she ever gave him. He’s not sharing any room.

  “You know, it wouldn’t be a bad idea for you to come here,” Ms. Greenglass is saying. “We’ve seen a lot of men turn their lives around. I know you’re concerned about sharing a room with other men, but something about that closeness can be very nurturing.

  John G. stands up suddenly. “Fuck the Irish!” he says, amplifying the distortion in his mind so she can hear it. “Motherfucker cocksucker kill all the donkeys!”

  “Hmm, perhaps you would do better on your own,” says Ms. Greenglass.

  39

  The female ADA sits in her scuffed-up white office downtown at the Manhattan Criminal Court Building. She’s reading the charges and rubbing the right side of her chest. On the cork-board behind her, there are pictures of her on horseback and a black-and-white portrait of the Civil War general William Tecumseh Sherman.

  “Jesus,” she says. “You cut off this guy’s nipple. What kind of sick bastard are you anyway?”

  Is that what this is about? Philip shrugs. Minchia, he thought it was something serious.

  He stares at this little prosecutor. She can’t be more than five feet tall. Ms. Fusco. She looks as if she hasn’t had her First Communion yet, in her cream blouse and navy blazer. With her olive skin and long black hair, she reminds him of Mrs. Califano’s daughters who used to work at the bakery across the street on Twentieth Avenue. Karen and Lisa—with the lips that looked like they could suck the chrome off a ‘65 Buick.

  “How’d you think of something like that?” she asks.

  “What?”

  “Cutting off a guy’s nipple.”

  “I don’t know nothin’ about it.” Turning up the Bensonhurst in his voice, just in case she is from the neighborhood.

  She looks over at the cop standing in the corner. Red-faced guy with silver hair and a waxed moustache. Fourth-generation mick detective, Philip figures. The Irish wooden Indian. There’s one like him in every station house. They probably wheel him out to frighten first offenders. He’s just supposed to stand there and look scary. Fact is, he’s probably bombed by the middle of the afternoon and couldn’t talk if he tried.

  Ms. Fusco continues looking through her report. “We have sworn witness statements from the victim of the assault and from his girlfriend, who says you and your cousin Ronnie picked her up and drove her to the scene.”

  Rat bastards. Walt and his girlfriend. Now Carmine’s going to have to send somebody out to put both their heads under tires until they withdraw their complaints.

  “I don’t have anything to say about this.” Philip half turns in his seat. “I think I ought to call my lawyer.”

  Ms. Fusco keeps turning the pages in her file, a little bit of tongue sticking out of the left side of her mouth. “You know, he went into shock and almost died at Beekman,” she says without looking up. “The charge against you is going to be attempted murder, not just aggravated assault...”

  Philip suddenly feels his sphincter cramping. “No way.”

  He knows Ronnie has been arrested and is cooling his heels in an interrogation room down the hall. He hopes the kid can stand up to this pressure.

  “Plus, I see this would actually be your third violent offense if you’re convicted,” Ms. Fusco goes on turning pages. “When you were eighteen, you assaulted a gay man on West Broadway and stuck a crowbar up his rectum. Right?”

  “I was part of a group. It was a long time ago.”

  She turns another page and starts biting her nails. “And what about this?” she says.

  “What about what?”

  She doesn’t answer for a moment. Her eyes move back and forth across the page.

  All of a sudden, he’s not just nervous; he’s scared. They know about the girl in the warehouse. But how?

  “What about this?” Ms. Fusco repeats, taking a page of handwritten notes out of the folder. “In nineteen seventy-four, you helped kidnap a businessman from Staten Island and put him in a hospital for a year.”

  Oh that. He almost smiles in relief. They don’t know about the warehouse.

  “Mike Torro? He was an asshole. He didn’t pay his debts. And again, I was just part of a group.”

  “Well, you and your friends broke his jaw and collarbone. He lost most of his hearing in his right ear.”

  “Hey, you don’t understand what my life was like,” Philip says loudly, shooting out his right arm. “I’d just got back from Vietnam. I’d seen all kinds of shit over there and it messed with my mind. I was suffering from post-traumatic stress!”

  “You’re full of it.” The red-faced detective steps forward, his waxed moustache twitching. The wooden Indian speaks. “I commanded a rifle company for a year and a half over there and none of my men ever got up to crap like that. I bet you’re one of those assholes who goes around saying he went to Vietnam when he really washed out in boot camp.”

  Philip shrinks down in his seat a little, wondering if this mick has actually somehow seen his service record.

  “The point is,” says Ms. Fusco, “you’re in a lot of trouble. If a judge sees your record, you’re going for at least twenty to life with this case. With an emphasis on the upper range. Understand?”

  Philip feels another wave of self-pity wash over him. What kind of world is this where a girl this age can threaten him? H
e wonders what Ronnie is telling them down the hall.

  “So what do you want from me?” he asks.

  “Your uncle.” The Irish wooden Indian speaks again.

  “Wha?”

  Ms. Fusco leans forward on her brittle-looking elbows. “We want you to give up Carmine. We want everything. The whole criminal enterprise. Structure of the organization, list of all known associates, and a signed agreement to testify in any and all related cases. Plus you admit to all previous crimes you’ve committed. You leave out anything and the deal is off.”

  “We already have your cousin in custody,” the detective says. “If you don’t start talking, he will. Train’s pulling out now, Philly, better get on it.”

  Philip puts his head in his hands, thinking about things he’s seen Carmine do to people for far lesser offenses. He keeps seeing bodies cut up in bathtubs and parts buried in the bird sanctuaries on Staten Island.

  “What happens if I say no to you?” he asks Ms. Fusco.

  “Then you’re going back to prison.” She lines up all the papers in the file so the edges are even. “And judging from your record, I see you don’t do time very well.”

  Philip shivers a little and looks to the old mick detective for sympathy. At least they’re both men—not like this little girl pulling the wings off a fly. But it’s useless. The man’s face has about as much give as a tree trunk.

  “I think I gotta think about this,” says Philip.

  40

  After a half-dozen intake interviews and encounter groups with the staff, John G. is sitting on fresh bedsheets in his own room at the Interfaith Volunteers Center.

  In his locker, there’s a special shampoo to kill the lice in his hair and the first set of washed clothes he’s had in months. He never truly appreciated clean surfaces before; now he finds himself hanging around the laundry, just to enjoy the smell of detergent.

  The room is not much bigger than a motorman’s cab and the walls are filthy. And one of the previous occupants drew in Magic Marker on the window, marring the sunlight. But the space is his, for now.

  41

  Philip has been in custody for more than twenty-four hours, but he still hasn’t called any of the crew’s regular lawyers for fear they’ll tell Carmine he’s making some kind of deal. In his mind’s eye, he sees a robin taking wing and flying skyward with part of his liver in its mouth. In the meantime, his bowels are backing up because he’s afraid to use the DA’s bathroom and catch some nasty skell’s disease off the toilet seat.

  “All right, I wanna ask you something,” he says as Ms. Fusco and the mick detective come back in the room.

  His wrists feel scraped and raw from the handcuffs and his mind feels scarred from worry.

  “What is it?” Ms. Fusco takes a seat and smoothes her gray gabardine skirt. As if she’s really a nice girl.

  “What if I could give up somebody bigger than my uncle?”

  She turns and looks at the red-faced detective, who’s resumed his position, glowering in the corner. Philip wonders idly if there’s something going on between them.

  “Who do you have in mind?” she says.

  “What if I could give up somebody legitimate? Somebody well known? Like a guy you’ve never been able to get anything on?”

  “Look, Philip, don’t play games with us. You fuck us and we’ll fuck you.”

  Such a mouth on this one. If it was his daughter, he’d smack her right now.

  He frowns. “You know who this Jacob Schiff is?”

  “The defense lawyer?” Her eyebrows go up and she glances once more at the detective in the corner.

  Now Philip’s sure they’re fucking. Disgusting. A man his age and a girl like her. It’s like father and daughter.

  “You got any favor bank going between him and the DA?” Philip asks. “Some kind of special relationship.”

  “No, he’s just been defense counsel on a couple of cases where I was the assistant.”

  “So what if I could tell you something about him that would make you forget Carmine? At least for a little while.”

  “I’d say you were full of shit.”

  It doesn’t sound right, a girl like her cursing. It bothers him.

  “No, you’re full of shit. I’m trying to give you something of value and you’re not listening.”

  She leans away from the table, getting ready to bluff him. “We already know about Mr. Schiff.”

  He sees right through her composed expression. “You don’t know anything,” he says. “I’m not talking about some crappy tax evasion case you’re gonna have to turn over to the feds. I’m talking about a serious capital crime. And Ronnie will back me up on this.”

  Of course, Ronnie would sleep on thumbtacks if Philip told him to.

  “We don’t care about Ronnie,” says the Irish detective. “He’s your codefendant.”

  “Then I have other witnesses and physical evidence to go with him,” says Philip.

  All of a sudden, Ms. Fusco is the one fidgeting uncomfortably. Lawyers. If you were a regular citizen, they had no mercy. They’d rip your throat out, threaten your children, tell you that you’d never see the light of day again. But say something bad about one of their own and they get all wide eyed and worried. Professional courtesy. One shark to another.

  “So what exactly are we discussing here?” she says, rising a little on her pert little butt and biting her nails again. “What kind of physical evidence do you have?”

  Even her boyfriend seems a little more interested, pulling a notebook from the inside pocket of his brown NBO suit.

  “Uh-uh,” says Philip. “Before I say anything else here, I want to get a lawyer of my own and talk about what my exposure is. I’m not testifying without immunity. And neither will Ronnie.”

  “Well that would be something for the DA to decide. I’m not going to make any promises here.”

  She’s trying to sound cool and professional, but clearly this whole turn in the conversation has caught her off-guard and left her unnerved. She knows she’s in over her head.

  “Yeah, you talk to Norman,” he says. “And tell him I’m not interested in doing any more time upstate. I’ve had enough of institutional life.”

  42

  The district attorney is tired. He has a thirty-four-year-old wife, a three-month-old baby who wakes up twice a night, and a black-tie fundraiser at the Sheraton Centre tonight, where he’ll probably be trapped next to some bore like Chet Allan or Andy Botwin. He’s feeling more like sixty-four than fifty.

  “Listen,” he says to his two assistants, Joan Fusco and Francis X. O’Connell. “I can’t stand Jake Schiff, but are we doing the right thing here?”

  It’s almost seven o’clock and Norman McCarthy is sitting behind his desk, wearing a tux and shoes with bows on them.

  “I think we have to get out in front of this,” says Francis, raking his fingers through his Beatle mop. “We have a campaign coming up next year, so we have to stay on message. Are we going to tolerate vigilantism? Are we going to tell ourselves that we let a defendant slide because he’s a lawyer and he has money?”

  The DA closes his eyes for a second and his drawn lids look like the backs of polished spoons. What to do? Another thirteen months until the elections. Just the thought leaves him exhausted. The next year is going to be a blur of pollsters and media consultants telling him to smile during debates and comb his hair over his bald spot. Like it or not, he’s going to have to delegate more responsibility to ADAs.

  “So what about you?” he asks Joan Fusco. “Do you believe this guy Cardi?”

  She crosses her legs and her skirt rides up an inch or two above her knee. “I think he’s a good witness. Everything he’s said checks out and he’s pointing us in the direction of all the leads we’ll need. Besides, if I can work on him a little bit, I might eventually get him to roll over on his uncle too.”

  “But what about this case? Do we have enough?”

  “I think we have to go for it,” she sa
ys, punching the air.

  A real fighter, Joan Fusco. No wonder the head of her bureau awarded her the picture of General Sherman for her aggressiveness. The deal makers and backpedalers had McClellan on their walls.

  “I’m not sure if I’m quite that gung ho.” says Francis, putting an arm in front of Fusco as if he’s trying to keep her from getting whiplash. “But I think it’s developing into something. We need to track down this third witness, though, and get a set of Schiff’s fingerprints to see if they match the ones on the weapon.”

  “So what are we going to do?” Ms. Fusco turns in her chair to look at him. “Invite him down to the station and ask him to give us a set?”

  “Why not?” Norman McCarthy straightens his bow tie and stands up to go. “He’s going to find out we’re looking at him soon enough. Send a detective over and rattle his cage. Who knows what Jake will say?”

  43

  Mr. Schiff, Mr. Schiff. Slow down a sec. I been trying to get you on the phone.”

  It’s three days since Philip stopped by the house. Jake is just leaving his office building on Fifth Avenue to meet Bob Berger for lunch when he runs into a burly detective with Velamints on his breath and Grecian Formula in his hair.

  “Got a minute?” says the cop after flashing his badge and giving his name as Seifert.

  “Probably not.” Jake watches the revolving glass door, making sure none of the partners are coming out.

  “I was wondering if you’d mind stopping by the station, seeing as it’s lunchtime and all.”

  “That’s nice. What would we talk about there?”

  “Come on.” Detective Seifert smiles just enough for Jake to see his caps look brownish and crooked. You’d think the PBA would have a better dental plan. “We both know what there is to talk about.”

  Jake starts to walk toward the corner. The detective follows him. It’s an oyster gray noon sky, but the midtown streets are still jammed with the mad tramping hordes. No one seems to notice Jake and the cop. They’re just two ants in an ant farm.