“What about you?”
“I kind of wanted to be a lumberjack for a while when I was about nine. I didn’t know what one did, but it sounded cool. Then a movie star. Standard stuff. Then when you joined up and went to war, I wanted to be Margaret Bourke-White, or someone. A war correspondent or photographer. I’d find you and take pictures of you doing heroic stuff.”
“You wouldn’t have used much film. What about now?”
Her eyes darkened. She looked away for a moment and then looked back. “Now I just want to be peaceful.”
The waiter brought food, and they ate in silence. When the coffee came, Cassidy pulled out his gun and stirred the sugar in with the end of the barrel. Leah laughed. “Thanks. Perfect.”
“What’s up?”
The laughter fled. “I’m pregnant.”
“Hey, great. Congratulations. That’s wonderful. Mark must be really happy.”
Her face was like stone. “He doesn’t know.”
“Why not?”
“It’s not his.” She threw it away with a casual voice and then looked up to meet his eyes, braced.
“What the hell?”
“I don’t know. It happened, okay?”
“Jesus, Leah…”
“Don’t. Just don’t.”
“Does this mean you and Mark…?”
“No. It’s not like that. It’s so stupid. I love him. And I know he loves me. I just … I don’t know.”
“And this other guy?”
“Nothing. Nobody. Just a thing for a minute.” Serious eyes, clenched jaw.
“Does he know?”
“No. No. Of course not.” Pleading. “I know, I know. I just don’t want to talk about it. Don’t lecture me, okay?”
“No. I won’t.”
“Don’t you ever just want to tear it all down, smash it up?”
“Sure. Yeah. I do.”
“What makes us like that? Why can’t we just be happy with what we have?”
He reached out to cover her hand on the checked tablecloth. “How can I help?”
“I want to get rid of it.”
“Right. Sure. Okay. Look, it’s illegal. It’s dangerous.” Playing for time. “Are you sure you’ve thought this through? You could have the baby. No one’s going to know.”
“I’m going to know. And Mark’s going to know. I don’t know how, but he’s going to know. I can’t do that to him.”
“Then why the hell did you—”
“Don’t.” She cut him off. “I did something I shouldn’t have done. I made a mistake. I’m not going to pay for it for the rest of my life. I’m not going to make some child pay for it. I’m not going to make Mark pay for it. Do you think I haven’t thought this over? I have to do it now, before it’s something I can really feel. If you won’t help me, I’ll do it on my own.”
“No. Don’t do that. You don’t know what kind of butchers girls end up with. Don’t run off on this.”
“I thought, maybe, you could go to Uncle Frank and get a name. He must know someone.”
“No. Not Frank. He’d be the last one. You’ve heard him talk. Mother Church this, Mother Church that. Family and church, nothing more important. I’ll find someone. It’s going to be all right. Leave it to me.”
“Don’t tell Brian. It’ll just make him worry. You know what he’s like. He wants everything to be smooth, everything to be perfect. And he’d want to fix it, and he wouldn’t know how.”
“I won’t tell him.”
“Not like you. Nothing bothers you.”
Is that how she saw him? How could she think that was true?
9
Dylan slipped the latch on Cassidy’s apartment with a stiff piece of celluloid and went in. Shouldn’t a cop have a better lock? Maybe he didn’t have anything worth protecting. She leaned her back against the door and studied the big room. What she wanted would not be hidden in an obvious place and not in a place where the FBI agents would have found it. Be smart about this. Where would it be? For a moment she thought about leaving, about not doing this to him, but she knew that wasn’t an option. Do it. Just do it. It has to be done. She would save the bedroom till last. The bedroom seemed a greater betrayal.
She pushed away from the door and moved into the room and began to search.
10
Cassidy stood behind the iron gate that guarded the front desk of the flophouse from the lobby and looked at the five men who sat on the worn sofas near the barred windows that gave out on Tompkins Square while Orso talked to the manager. The men were sharing a quart bottle of Ballantine Ale and unlikely ideas on how to get rich quick. One of the men, a wiry terrier in army surplus khakis and a denim jacket, was the leader, and all the others deferred to him. His face was thin and knobby, and when he drank from the bottle his prominent Adam’s apple bobbed up and down.
The manager pointed to him. “Jerry Scanlon. He was here when Ingram was boarding. Hey, Jerry, these guys want to ask you a couple of questions.”
Scanlon made them for cops. “I didn’t do it, officers. I was home with me mum all that night.” The other men on the sofas laughed. Jerry saluted his audience with the bottle.
“Do you remember Alex Ingram?” Orso asked.
“Alex Ingram? Sure. Lived down the hall from me.”
“What can you tell us about him?”
“What’s it worth to you?”
“The thanks of a grateful citizenry.”
“More than that, boyo. Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est.” He grinned and winked at his friends.
“What the hell?” Orso said, and looked to Cassidy for an explanation. Cassidy shrugged.
“Knowledge is power itself, boyo,” Scanlon translated. “And surely power draws money like flies to honey.” He laughed at his own wit and saluted them with the big green bottle.
“Jesus christ, an educated bum.”
“Not a bum, my friend, a hoddie. A man of skill and courage.”
“Five bucks,” Cassidy said. “If it’s worth anything.”
“The money first.”
“No.”
“Okay, then. You look like an honest man, for a cop. And when you hear it, you’ll probably pay me ten.” He took the last of the bottle and reached into a paper bag at his feet to extract a new one and passed it to the man sitting next to him to open it. “Alex Ingram. Much too good for a place like this, according to him. The kind of fella who thinks his shit don’t stink. Never a good word to anybody.” The bottle came back to him and he took a slug.
“Not worth a dime so far. We’ve heard that from everyone we’ve talked to.”
“Give it time. A story builds. So one day I’m over at Washington Square playing speed chess, and I seen him on the corner of Fifth, waiting like. Then a limousine as long as my dick pulls up, and in it he gets, and off it goes. So I think, well then, a limousine. Maybe you can pay me back the dollar I lent you in a moment of weakness, young Alex. So the next time I sees him, I mentions it. Wrong, he says. Not me. No limo. No Fifth Avenue, and no dollar. The lying shit. So, I think, well okay. Then a week later I’m carrying a hod of facing bricks on a building we’re doing on the Upper East Side where the swells live. I’m up six floors on the scaffold and I look over, and there, big as life, in the window across the street is Alex Ingram, buck naked and dancing around with his willy flopping.” He stopped and looked expectantly at Orso and Cassidy.
“What do you mean, dancing?” Cassidy asked.
“Dancing. You know, twirling and leaping, and jumping with the arms spread out. Ballet, you ignorant flatfoot. But naked. Never seen that before.”
“You’re sure it was Ingram?”
“Of course I’m bloody sure. And when I mentioned it to him a couple of days later, he says I tell anyone, he’ll kill me. And I think he means it. The next day he’s gone. Never seen him since, clothed or bare ass.”
Cassidy passed him five dollars. “Worth every penny whether it’s true or not.”
“True as true can b
e. On the heads of my unborn children who are still in my dick.”
“Where was the building?”
“Sixty-fourth between Park and Lexington. We was facing a building on the south side. He was on the north. One of them fancy buildings with the doorman outside in his uniform, brass buttons and all, the last one before Lex. Sixth floor.”
“Did you see anyone else? Anyone go by the window?”
“Nope. Not a soul.”
Cassidy and Orso walked three blocks and went into the dim, religious light and smell of spilled beer and sawdust of McSorley’s for a cold one. The bartender drew them a couple of pints of ale and refused payment.
“I could have used you a half hour ago, officers. I had to throw a damn woman out, she wouldn’t take no for an answer. I told her straight out, no women allowed, but she’s bitching she wants a beer. Said it was her right. Can you imagine? Her right? What the hell’s with that? McSorley’s is a men’s joint. It’s always been a men’s joint. It’s always going to be a men’s joint. I told her it was my right not to serve no damn split-tail, and if she didn’t leave on her own, I’d assist. Came out from behind the bar, and she skedaddled.” He carried his outrage down to the other end of the bar to share it with the men drinking there.
“Do you believe him?” Orso took a long pull on his beer.
“Dancing naked? Hell of an imagination if he made it up. I’d like to know who he was dancing for.”
“Faggot stuff. Jesus.”
“What, you’ve never danced naked with a woman?”
“I’m kind of shy. I’m still working up to that. What do you favor, the fox-trot?”
They had talked to chorus gypsies, dance masters, casting directors, rooming house inmates, secretaries at Actors Equity, and they had learned the same thing from all of them and little else. Ingram was described as a charming little shit, an ambitious little shit, a greedy little shit, and variations on the theme. . Nobody admitted to knowing more about him than that.
“I’m going to call the Feds.”
“Why waste the nickel?”
“I want to know whose apartment he was dancing in. If you and I go up there and ask who lives there, they’ll tell us to get lost, come back with a court order. We’ll let the Feds carry the weight.”
He took his beer mug back to the phone booth near the men’s room and put it on the shelf while he found Susdorf’s card. He put a nickel in the phone and dialed, told the secretary who he was and who he wanted, and waited until Susdorf came on the line.
“Why do you want to know who lives there?”
“Ingram was seen there in an apartment on the sixth floor. We’d like to know who he visited. Everything else is a dead end so far.”
“I’ll get back to you.”
“Do you want another?” Orso asked when he returned to the bar.
“No, thanks. I’m going home. I’ve got a date.”
“Dylan?”
“Yeah.”
“Every night this week. What is this?”
“I don’t know exactly, but it sure as hell is something.”
* * *
Cassidy knocked on Dylan’s door and lit a cigarette while he waited for her to answer. The sound of her approaching footsteps made him smile in anticipation. She opened the door and kissed him lightly on the mouth and took the cigarette from him and took a drag.
“You look beat.”
“Nothing a shower and a drink won’t fix. Are we going to have dinner?”
“Sure.”
“Do you have to work afterward?”
“No. I have to go to Ribera’s, but not to work. He’s having a party and he wants me to be there.”
“A party.”
She heard his unspoken question. She hesitated. “Do you want to go?”
He read the hesitation. “Not if you don’t want me to.”
“No, no. I just didn’t know if you’d want to. You should come.” He read something in her face. Reluctance?
“Third wheel?”
“No, no. Half of New York will be there. You should come.”
He could tell she was holding something back. “Do I have time for a shower?”
“Sure. I’ll come up and drink your liquor.”
He went upstairs and left the door cracked so Dylan could get in. Something about the apartment was different. Something had changed, something was out of place. He stood in the living room and studied it, but he could not put his finger on what bothered him. It was probably something left over from the FBI search, that feeling of invasion. He shook it off and went to shower and change. When he came back, Dylan was lying on the sofa with a drink. Dylan offered her glass, and he took a sip of her martini.
The phone rang. “Hey, how are you?”
He listened.
“No, I can’t. Not tonight.”
He listened.
“I can’t. I’m busy. I don’t know about tomorrow. Maybe. Dad, I would if I could, but I can’t tell you for sure.”
He took another sip of Dylan’s drink.
“I’m not trying to avoid anything. I’m just trying to do the work I have to do.” He could hear the exasperation in his own voice. “You don’t need my help on this. No. You don’t. Okay. Okay. I’ll get there when I can. Yeah. Sure. I promise.”
He banged the phone down.
“Your father?”
“Yes.”
“Do you always fight?”
“Only when we talk.”
* * *
Four Cadillac limousines, bulbous and black, gleaming under the streetlamps, waited in front of Ribera’s building. The doors to one were open and swing music played from the radio. The four chauffeurs gathered there to smoke and talk. Dylan wore a blue silk shirt and a long steel-gray skirt of some light material that molded to her long legs as she walked, and they turned to watch her as she and Cassidy went into the building.
They rode up in the elevator with three businessmen and their dates, who clung to their arms and looked at them adoringly and laughed at the things the men said. An adventure to deepest, darkest downtown. Artists, Bohemia. The men signaled their readiness for the wildness of the night by loosening their ties, hunching their shoulders like Bogart with a gun, holding their cigarettes between thumb and forefinger, and squinting against the smoke when they took tough little puffs.
The din of the party swelled into the elevator before it stopped and the old man running it clashed open the gates. The businessmen and their girls stampeded out with cries of delight into the seethe of people crowding the loft. The long counter under the window was now massed with bottles of beer, booze, and wine, glasses half full, full, empty, and broken, platters of food, clean and used plates and cutlery. The air was dense with cigarette smoke and loud with the trilling laughter of women, the shouts of men, and the occasional crystal break of glass. A record player near the elevator competed with a quartet at the back of the room near the forge, where three couples danced the mambo. Ribera spotted Dylan over the heads of the crowd. He smiled and waved. Then he saw Cassidy and his face clouded and he bulled his way through the people toward them, and as he went, people touched him on the shoulders and arms and spoke to him, eager for his attention, but they could not deflect him. By the time he got to them, he was smiling again. He lifted Dylan in a hug and kissed her on both cheeks. “I was afraid you weren’t coming.”
“Here I am.”
He turned to Cassidy and looked him over. “So, you got a taste, and you could not stay away.” He threw a heavy arm across Cassidy’s shoulders. “I’m glad you’re here,” though his expression when he first saw Cassidy made that a lie. “But I must ask you for a favor. Tonight you are not a cop. You are at my party. You are Michael Cassidy or anyone else you want to be, but you are not a cop. Nobody does anything wrong here. There are no laws. All is allowed. Well, if you see someone killing someone, please step in, but other than that. Agreed?”
“Agreed.”
“You are in Cuba tonight. Things a
re different in Cuba. We are people of great appetites and little shame. Not like you northern people who pretend these things don’t exist, who hold them in, hold them tight.” He minced around in a circle with his shoulders bowed and his hands covering his groin.
Cassidy laughed. He liked this man.
“Now, I must take Dylan for a little while. Get yourself a drink and something to eat. Go flirt with the pretty girls. Give them some excitement.”
“Don’t forget who you came with,” Dylan said.
Ribera laughed, clapped Cassidy on the back, and led her into the crowd.
Cassidy found a reasonably clean glass on the counter and filled it with ice from a large steel bowl and bourbon from a half-full bottle of Jack Daniel’s. The autumn burning-leaf smell of reefer was heavy near the bar. This was probably the reason for Ribera’s discomfort when he saw Cassidy with Dylan. Nothing like a few arrests for drug possession to put a damper on a party.
A woman in a long unadorned black dress stood on the counter, her bare feet among the dishes, and swayed to a rhythm only she could feel. Her hair was thick and black, her face hard and angular as if cut from stone. Her eyes were closed, and her arms and hands moved as if underwater. Men and women stood watching her with the fascination of people witnessing an accident. She reached down and took the hem of her dress and slowly lifted it over her head and flung it out into the crowd. Underneath she was naked, and her body was pale and white. The watchers burst into applause. New York, greedy for everything, money, power, art, pleasure, diversion, desperate to taste it before it slipped away.
He recognized faces in the crowd, two state senators, a congressman, a city councilman, a retired general. There were well-dressed men and women from uptown who looked like they were rubbed with old money every morning until they achieved a perfect glow, people he had seen at the parties his father gave for investors in his shows, elaborate confections, as much as theater party, usually thrown onstage in the set when the current play had a night off. The backstage lights would be up, the doors to the dressing rooms ajar, the makeup mirrors lighted, the jars of creams, cakes of mascara, wigs, false eyelashes, and boxes of blush and rouge scattered in front of them as if the actors had just left or were about to sit down to prepare for the evening’s show. It gave the partygoers the feeling they had lifted the curtain, had been let in on the mystery. Everyone arrived a little stiff, the conversation too loud, laughter too bright. Booze flowed, and the stiffness warmed away. Actresses, actors, chorus boys and girls flirted with stockbrokers and investment bankers, East Side housewives, and magazine publishers, and people who arrived alone did not always go home alone.
Night Life Page 11