Intruder

by Peter Blauner

  Mel Green, the supervisor, is standing there in an Everlast weight belt, stacking bootlegged videotapes of films made by various members of the Sheen family. Ernest Bayard, John G.’s old conductor, sits on a chair in the corner, staring at the trains going past the windows.

  “I have to say John G. was more a family-type guy the last few years,” says Mel, once Jake’s introduced himself. “The rest of us didn’t spend that much time with him.”

  “So you wouldn’t know where I could start looking for him?”

  “No, man. Like I say, he was mostly with his wife and little girl. And once he lost them, he just fell apart on us. I don’t know where he went.” Mel puts his hands on his hips and looks at Ernest in the corner. “Hey, didn’t he stay with you a while?”

  Ernest just sits there, with his bald head pitched into his hands, looking shell-shocked.

  “What’s the matter with him?” Jake asks.

  “Ah, he just got promoted from conductor to motorman.” Mel piles The Mighty Ducks and Hot Shots on top of Apocalypse Now. “He took over John G.’s old line.”

  “He doesn’t seem too happy about it, does he?”

  “Well.” Mel rubs his hands together. “He’s had two people jump in front of his train in the last month.”

  Meanwhile, Rolando Goodman, a six-foot four-inch, two-hundred-fifty-pound, half-black, half-Dominican ex-pro football player, is out in Bensonhurst. He’s talking to the owner of the Crown Royale Auto Body Shop.

  Jake’s used Rolando a few times on old cases. His toughness has never been an issue; his thoroughness and subtlety are seriously questionable, though. He’s a prideful hothead who tends to storm away when he feels people aren’t giving him the respect he deserves. A real liability for an investigator.

  “So you don’t know this guy Crazy Phil or his cousin?” he asks.

  The owner, a lardy pockmarked slab of a guy named Tony, who has hair that goes straight back like he’s driving a hundred miles an hour, shakes his head. “I just told you. I don’t know any Crazy Phil.”

  “Well, do you know a guy named Philip Cardi?” asks Rolando.

  “I know a lot of guys named Phil. It’s a common name in this neighborhood. Kinda like Leroy in your neighborhood.”

  “Leroy?” Rolando’s shoulders stiffen. He’s wearing an Armani suit, a Turnbull & Asser shirt, and an Hermès tie with a gold pin on it. He wanted to show these guineas how to dress. “Leroy? What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Means you probably live near a lot of guys named Leroy.”

  “Look out that window, will you?” Rolando points to a white car in the parking lot facing Eighty-sixth Street.

  “What am I looking at?”

  “That’s a Lexus, man. That’s one of the most expensive automobiles on the market. I paid fifty thousand fucking dollars for that car. You think I drive it through a neighborhood full of Leroys?”

  “How the hell should I know?”

  “Rolando Goodman does not live with Leroy,” he says, drawing himself up like a society matron who’s been given a paper plate.

  “And I don’t know any Crazy Phil.” Tony, the owner, staples a couple of pink invoices together.

  “Good-bye,” says Rolando.

  He stalks out to his Lexus and drives away.

  Tony, the owner, watches the exhaust float up into the white winter sky. Then he opens the door to the garage and calls out to a short young guy welding the underside of a black Impala.

  “Hey, Carlo. You still got Ronnie’s number? Someone was here looking for his cousin.”

  63

  I ressure begins to mount. The trial date is now three weeks away. Money is getting tight. Under $40,000 in the bank after all the legal expenses and another big school bill is coming. Jake tries to drum up some business from home, but there are no new cases coming in. No one wants a lawyer whose problems are worse than his own. Thank God for Bob Berger throwing him enough work to keep him busy when he isn’t looking for John Gates.

  In the meantime, Dana has joined the search. Through a friend in the hospital records department, she hears that a woman named Greenglass called from the Interfaith Volunteers Center some months back, trying to get John G.’s file. Dana makes an appointment to see her.

  “You can’t believe how much I did for that man,” Elaine Greenglass is saying. “Every morning for three months, I stood in front of subway entrances and supermarkets, handing out leaflets for him. Every weeknight and every other afternoon, I worked the phones.”

  “You were a dedicated campaign worker,” Dana says, trying to sound sympathetic.

  She’s been sitting in Ms. Greenglass’s office for a half hour, trying to figure out how to work the conversation around to John G. and his current whereabouts.

  “I got that man elected mayor.” Ms. Greenglass pulls out a hair and inspects it under her desk lamp. “But when he got to City Hall—nothing. Not one phone call. No job waiting for me at Department of Personnel. No position at HRA. Nothing available at Landmarks Commission or HPD. Just forgotten. All that work. Slaving!”

  “That’s gratitude,” says Dana, pulling on her fingers and trying to hide her impatience.

  Ms. Greenglass sighs as if she’s just noticed the bitterness in her own voice. “You know what I realize now? They’re all like that. All men. Even the ones who seem decent. They expect to be taken care of like children and then they give you nothing in return. They don’t even know how to give. My ex-husband was the same way. Twenty-two years of marriage, he never once cooked a meal or changed a diaper. Not once! Every night he fell asleep in front of the television. Never once asked me to go on a vacation where I wanted to go.”

  She clucks her tongue and waves her hand as if none of it mattered. Her eyes are still angry, though.

  “Don’t you find that?” she says to Dana.

  “What?”

  “That they’re all selfish children.”

  “Well.” Dana puts her fingers to her lips, still looking for her opening. “I actually do get along with my husband and my son.”

  “You know, the men at the center here are the same way.” Ms. Greenglass charges ahead, as if Dana hadn’t said anything. “They use our beds, take the medication we provide, watch television, and then they just leave when a better program comes along. So you know what I say when people complain I make too much for someone working at a nonprofit?” She curls her upper lip and affects a road-show-company Mame voice. “Tough luck, baby. I got mine, go get yours.”

  If Ms. Greenglass were her patient, Dana would describe her as someone setting herself up for disappointment so she can feel vengeful and righteous later. But this isn’t therapy. It’s an attempt to locate a witness who can help her husband’s case.

  “I’m sure you have very valid reasons for feeling the way you do,” she says.

  That’s right. Give her some space. Make her feel comfortable talking to you. Develop a bond of trust.

  Ms. Greenglass leans back in her chair, so her curly head is framed by the green Christmas wreath hanging from the crisscrossed bars over her window.

  A tall black man with a mop in his hands and a scar across his bald head appears in her doorway.

  “What do you want, Flamort?” asks Ms. Greenglass.

  “Bennett went out awhile to get some lunch. He said he’d call you later.”

  Ms. Greenglass draws back her lips and her nose seems to get sharper. “Goddamn it, who told him he could do that without my permission?!”

  “I’m just passing the message,” says the man with the scarred head.

  “You tell him I want to see him when he gets back. This isn’t any game. I’m the executive director here.” Her eyes flick up at the man. “And do my office before you do his. The floor is filthy.”

  Actually, Dana notices, the floor is immaculate. The man bows his head and backs out of the office.

  “I know they resent me here,” Ms. Greenglass tells Dana with barely contained fury. “I know the staff a
nd the consumers talk about me when I’m not around here. But I don’t care. Really I don’t. My ego isn’t so fragile that I depend on their good opinion.”

  Dana lowers her eyes, sensing it’s time to get on with her agenda here. “I came by today because I was trying to locate a particular client of yours.”

  “Consumer.”

  “Yes, consumer.” Dana tries to smile agreeably. “I was looking for a John Gates. I believe he was staying here. Is he still around?”

  Ms. Greenglass’s eyes turn hard and distant. “What’s your interest?”

  “I’d been seeing him on an outpatient basis. And you called our hospital looking for his file awhile back.”

  Ms. Greenglass cocks her head to one side, like a cheetah catching the scent of gazelle in the wind. “Are you trying to steal this consumer away from us?”

  “No.”

  “Then what do you want with him?”

  Dana feels as if she’s six years old again, caught in her mother’s bathroom playing with the lipstick and rouge. To lie at this point would be dangerous to her professional life.

  “We may need him as a witness in a criminal case my husband is involved in.”

  “I see. And you want me to violate our rules of confidentiality to help you?”

  “I just thought we could share some information as a matter of professional courtesy,” Dana says gamely.

  Ms. Greenglass takes a moment to assess the situation, trying to figure the best way to position herself as the outraged victim.

  “Don’t you think what you’re asking me is terribly inappropriate?” she says.

  “I didn’t think it was that big a deal. He’s someone I’d seen at the hospital. If he doesn’t want to talk to me, he doesn’t have to. All I’m asking for is an address for him.”

  But Ms. Greenglass isn’t interested in these finer points. She’s seized the moral high ground and she’s defending it with the fervor of a Masai warrior.

  “Are you trying to get me in trouble?”

  “No.”

  “Is that what you’re trying to do? Are you trying to get our funding cut off? Because if you are, you can forget about it. I worked too hard to get where I am.”

  “Please. I think you’re being a little paranoid.”

  “Paranoid? You’re calling me paranoid?”

  “No. I...”

  “Listen, Miss whatever-your-name-is. I’m the only thing between these men and the street. I’m not going to let you march in here and expose them irresponsibly.”

  Dana resists the temptation to remind her that not a minute before she was calling these men selfish children.

  “No, no, no.” Ms. Greenglass half rises from behind her desk. “I am not going to allow my staff to cooperate with you.”

  In spite of her better judgment, Dana finds herself getting pissed off. It isn’t just this last outburst. It’s having had to sit through this whole self-pitying, self-justifying monologue without getting anything in return.

  “I’m sorry you can’t find it in your heart to help us,” she says in the coolest voice she can muster.

  “What hospital did you say you were affiliated with anyway?” asks Ms. Greenglass, reaching for a telephone. “I’m thinking someone should talk to your supervisor.”

  “Be my guest.” Dana gets up and drops her card on the edge of Ms. Greenglass’s desk. “If you’re going to help me, help me. If you’re not, don’t. I don’t see any reason for me to sit here and listen to this. I care, but not that much.”

  It’s only when she’s halfway out the door that she realizes she’s just used one of Jake’s lines.

  She turns left and heads down a long hallway where the tall black man with the scarred bald head is mopping the floor. She steps carefully to the side he hasn’t mopped yet.

  “You looking for John G.?” he says, as she starts to pass.

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  He must have heard every word of the conversation while he was mopping outside the door.

  “I think he went to one of them work shelters in Brooklyn,” he says. “One of their outreach workers came by and talked to him a few weeks back. I think John G. went over to their program.”

  “You don’t remember which one, do you?”

  “Nah.” The guy touches the scar on his head. “I’m no good with names now.”

  She wants to clasp his hand in gratitude, but when she looks in his eyes she just sees bottomless wells of rage and numbness. With the scar across his head and his flat voice, she wonders if he was the victim of either a savage attack or a seriously botched lobotomy.

  “I appreciate your talking to me,” she says slowly.

  He looks down, comtemplating the soapy water in his bucket. “I appreciate a clean floor.”

  64

  Philip is standing on the balcony above the Rockefeller Center skating rink on a frigid Thursday afternoon, waiting for his cousin Ronnie.

  There’s a slim young guy dressed in black performing in the middle of the ice. He leaps and turns, doing spins and double axels, and for some reason Philip can’t stop looking at him. He finds himself imagining what it would be like to skate along behind the guy, mirroring his movements, putting his hands on the guy’s slender hips.

  Ronnie walks up. “Yo, my man Philip C. is in the house. Word up, blood. What it is.”

  The kid’s appearance is jarring. In the week and a half since Philip last saw him, Ronnie has immersed himself even more deeply in black street culture. He’s got Bob Marley smoking a spliff on his T-shirt, a black Triple F.A.T. goose-down coat over it, baggy jeans, a pair of Air Jordan sneakers, and a red-and-white striped stocking cap just like the one the Cat in the Hat wears. No wonder Carmine’s worried about him.

  Ronnie twists his right arm around like a pretzel, offering his cousin the latest uptown handshake.

  Philip just stands there, looking at him.

  “What are you calling me for?” he says. “You know we’re supposed to stay clear of each other until the trial begins.”

  Ms. Fusco’s concern. Even though they’re cousins, she doesn’t want it to look like her witnesses are hanging around together all the time, cooking up a story for the prosecution.

  “I just wanted to give you some four-one-one,” says Ronnie.

  “Somewhat?”

  “Some information, bro.” He makes his right hand into a gun and points it at his crotch, like a rap star. “Tony called from the auto body shop on Eighty-sixth yesterday. He said some nigger came by asking about us.”

  Through his gloves, Philip feels the cold pulling back the skin under his fingernails. “Yeah, what’d he want to know?”

  “I’m not sure. Tony thought he might’ve been working for a lawyer or something. Like an investigator.”

  Philip turns away and leans over the brass railing. The young man skating below starts doing leaps and vaults, like he’s performing just for Philip.

  “So, like, what should we do?” asks Ronnie.

  “What should we do?” Philip looks back at his cousin, with his eyebrows frozen. “We should cross the fuckin’ borough to avoid this guy. He probably works for Jake Schiff.”

  “Yeah, you think so?”

  “He ask any questions about me being in prison?”

  “No, why?”

  “I just don’t like people asking about what went on there. It was private.”

  The skater below does a triple spin and his blades shave the ice. Across the rink, men in dark blue uniforms are starting to erect the enormous Christmas tree.

  “So I don’t get it.” Ronnie’s chin lolls idly at the bottom of his face. “The lawyer’s the one on trial here. Why’s he got an investigator asking about us?”

  “He’s looking for dirt, that’s why. CapiscefHe’s trying to put us on the spot, so we do the prison time instead of him.”

  “But—”

  “Ronnie, look. Don’t think. Just do like I say. All right?”

  He quietly simmers in the
snow. Why does he have to keep worrying about this? He’s already made his deal with the prosecutors. Now he has to concern himself with what the defense might dig up about his past. It’s not anyone’s damn business.

  “But what do you want me to do?” Ronnie does a nervous side-to-side hip-hop shuffle. “You want we should pop this nigger with a bat next time he shows up?”

  “No.”

  Philip tries to calm himself by watching the skater. It’s the craziest thing; he keeps picturing himself skating hand in hand with the guy. It’s not a fag thing, he tells himself. It’s a display of manly athletic grace, the two of them together.

  “You just keep track of this yom,” he tells his cousin. “And let me know if you hear about him asking any more questions. I’ll take care of the rest of it.”

  65

  So how’s the case going?” asks Bob Berger, slurping down his miso soup.

  “Okay, considering,” says Jake.

  They’re sitting near the back of an upscale Japanese restaurant on East Sixty-third Street. Though it’s after two o’clock, the place is crowded with businessmen and -women speaking softly with their heads inclined. The walls are covered with gray flannel to cut down on background noise, and the only soundtrack on the expensive Bose speakers is a solitary koto being plucked. This is a place where deals are made, not just talked about.

  “Actually, it’s going rather badly.” Jake pushes his own soup away. “The judge has decided to allow in all the fingerprint evidence; most of the good people of Bensonhurst won’t talk to my investigator; and meanwhile, with only two and a half weeks until the trial begins, we can’t locate the one witness who might be able to help us. We’re looking for him night and day, but he keeps moving around. I don’t suppose you have a lot of contacts in the homeless community.”

  “The only bums I know personally are the kind that summer in the Hamptons.”

  There’s no mirth in Bob’s deep-set gray eyes. He clears his throat with a loud phlegmy rumble. Hrrmmm.

  “How you fixed for cash?” he asks Jake as he wipes his mouth with a pink napkin.

  Jake holds up his empty water glass at a passing waitress. “We’re not going to the Riviera anytime soon.”