When he was sixteen, he had been taken in hand at one of those parties by the second-lead actress of a drawing room comedy about mistaken identity, a lost will, an adoption that no one knew about. She was in her early thirties and clever enough to allow him to believe that he was the instigator. She reeled him in, pushed him back, reeled him in again, sent him for drinks, laughed at his jokes, stroked him like a cat, and eventually took him back to her apartment on West 74th Street and deftly relieved him of his clothes, his virginity, and many of the misconceptions sixteen-year-old boys have about women, including the one held sacrosanct in school locker room bull sessions, that women did not like to do it, unless they were sluts, and that they had to be tricked into bed. For the rest of the night, after that first explosive tumble, she taught him what she liked, that pace and rhythm were more important that speed, and that things could be done with the tongue, fingers, and even toes that he had never imagined. In the morning she had sent him away, and when he asked when he could see her again, she smiled a bit sadly and said she would phone, and never did. He consoled himself with the bitter, cutting things he would say to her when he saw her again, things that would wound her and make her understand how much she had lost, but he never did see her again, and eventually he understood what she had given him.
He looked for Dylan but could not find her. He could see Ribera, half a head taller than most, but she was not in the group of people around him. Wait, who was that? A glimpse of a familiar face. Where had he seen him before? Black hair, high cheekbones. Where? There he was again, and this time Cassidy caught his eye just before the man recognized him and turned away.
“Victor.” The man was hunched over to light his cigarette as if there were a high wind in the loft. “Victor Amado, right?” In tight black pants and a fitted black silk shirt that clung to his dancer’s body. He looked at Cassidy and pretended to struggle to remember him. Cassidy watched him work it. “You’re the cop. The one at the rehearsal.”
“Michael Cassidy.”
“Right. How are you? I didn’t expect to see … I mean…” He brushed away whatever he meant.
“You didn’t expect to see a cop here.”
“Yeah. I guess.” Amado laughed and looked around for an excuse to escape.
“I’m not a cop tonight. I’m just a guy at a party.”
“Uh-huh. Okay. Great. Good to see you. Listen, um, I’m going to go get a drink.” He nodded to Cassidy and turned and pushed his way to the bar.
People are nervous around cops. Everyone is guilty of something. Cassidy was used to it, but Amado’s discomfort was stronger than that.
“What’s going on, Victor?” Amado started and slopped gin on the bar.
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve been asking around about Ingram, checking with people who lived where he lived, people he worked with, no one seems to have liked him much. How about you?”
“I didn’t know him very well. Like I told you, we went out for a drink a couple of times. That was it.”
“Victor, I talked to the other people in the chorus. I spoke to Marco. He said you and Ingram had worked together before. He said you came to the first dance audition together.”
Amado looked around to see if anyone was paying attention to them. “I can’t talk to you.”
“You’re going to have to talk to me. I’m investigating a murder. You knew the dead man.”
“I can’t talk here.” He looked around again. “I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I just can’t. I don’t want to get involved.”
“Involved in what?”
“Look, leave me alone, okay? Just leave me alone.”
He was scared of something and Cassidy realized there was no use pushing now. “All right. Here’s my card. You call me.” He slipped it into Amado’s hand. “If you don’t call me, I’ll pick you up and take you down to the house. If I do that, people will know. If you want to do this quietly, call me.”
Amado looked like he was going to say something else, but instead he turned and pushed into the crowd.
Amado would never call him. And he certainly wasn’t going to talk to him here. He would have to go to him. Tomorrow would be time enough. Cassidy picked up a bottle of Jack Daniel’s from the counter. Did he want more? He poured an inch in his glass and added a few melting cubes. A hand touched his arm.
“I know you.” Roy Cohn looked at him with his dead eyes. His gray suit jacket was buttoned. His tie was tight to his collar. His smile was a smirk. “You’re the cop from New Year’s Eve.”
“Ah, Mr. Cohen. How nice to see you.”
“You see this guy, David? I told you about him. The wiseass cop.” The remark was thrown to a pleasant-looking blond man who stood nearby swaying under the load of liquor he had taken aboard. Cassidy recognized him from the newspapers as David Schine, the son of a California hotel mogul who had worked as an unpaid assistant on McCarthy’s subcommittee before the army drafted him, the cause, according to Brian, for McCarthy going after the army. “Detective Michael Cassidy. I’ve been doing some research on you. I’ve been looking into you. I’ve been checking around.”
“Did you find out I was Stalin’s love child, or is my secret still safe?”
“You’re a violent man, Detective Cassidy. I saw that on New Year’s Eve when you beat that man in front of the Stork. Violent men think of the moment, not of the long term. Violence is temporary and ineffectual. Violence is bullshit. You know what I like? I like power. Power endures.” He flicked the ash from his cigarette and it sprinkled a cheese plate on the counter.
Cassidy realized Cohn was drunk too. Tightly controlled but drunk, and full of boozy certainty.
“You treated me like shit that night, like I was nobody. You were the cop with the gun and the fuck-you attitude. Well, you’re nobody. I checked. You’re nobody, and your father’s nobody, and I’m the guy who’s a friend of Director Hoover and of Senator McCarthy. I call judges, senators, congressmen, and they take my calls immediately. I’ve had lunch with the president.”
Cohn was leaning in to make his point. His voice was not loud, but people shied away, and the three of them stood apart in the crowded room, isolated by the force field of Cohn’s malevolence.
“Do you know how the world works? The world works on the Favor Bank. You do something for someone, you build up credit. You don’t draw on it till you need it. Just keep doing the favors, putting money in the Favor Bank. Comes a time, you’re a rich man. You, you fuck, have nothing in the bank. You’re a fucking pauper. Nobody owes you anything. I checked.”
“Ah, but I am rich in other ways, in the warmth of my friendships and the strength of my loves.” Cassidy blew smoke toward Cohn’s angry face.
“Wiseass. You’re in for a surprise, wiseass. I’ve got something that’s going to knock you on your ass.”
“And a nice ass it is.” Dylan was at his side and she hooked her arm through his and smiled at Cohn.
“Who are you?” Cohn asked.
“You first,” Dylan said.
Cohn pointed a finger like a gun at Cassidy and pulled the trigger. Then he turned away and said, “Come on, David,” and led Schine into the pack of people.
“Having fun?” Dylan asked.
“Not a bit.”
“Let’s go home.”
The ranting of a drunk. He put Cohn out of his mind.
11
The taxi dropped Cassidy in Times Square so he could walk the last blocks to the station house, a few minutes of privacy before the day truly started, a few minutes to savor the city while it was still waking. Times Square was quiet, empty of tourists. The street-cleaning crews had been through, and the trash was gone from the gutters that still ran with trickles of water. The asphalt was wet and gleaming in the sun that slanted down the street canyons from the east. The Camels man blew his smoke rings, and the peanuts fell endlessly from the Planters bag, but the neon was off, and the few people on the sidewalks were New Y
orkers on their way to work.
He ate breakfast in a diner on 46th Street and read the Daily News someone had discarded. Senator McCarthy denounced the Democratic Party as “the party of communism, betrayal, and treason.” J. Edgar Hoover, in a speech in Virginia, said that America was at war with ruthless communism, and that in times of war such as these the people are best protected by removing some of the restrictions that hampered police in their pursuit of the enemy. The age-old cry of a man with power, Give me more.
* * *
“Mr. Holden, you say this guy has robbed you before.”
“Yeah.”
“And you’re sure it’s the same guy?”
“Yeah, I’m sure.” Holden flicked his cigarette toward the ashtray on Cassidy’s desk, and missed. He was a stocky man in his midforties with a five o’clock shadow that was dark an hour before its appointed time.
“How many times?”
“With this one, three.”
“And you’ve never reported it before?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know.” He shrugged.
“Tell me what happened today.” Holden was not telling Cassidy everything, but he knew they would get to it.
“I’m in the store alone. The delivery guy’s out making a run, a case of scotch down to the Shuberts. I’m restocking the shelves. I go to the storeroom for a case of Jim Beam. When I come back, the guy’s at the front counter. He’s got the mask on and the gun, and he tells me to empty the register.”
“What kind of mask?”
“You know, like a bandana up over his nose, like a stagecoach robber on The Lone Ranger or something, and a hat pulled down. So I give him the money, and he goes. And I think, well, okay, fuck it. Three times. Enough. And I come down here.”
“He had a mask on. He had a hat pulled down. Mr. Holden, how can you be so sure it was the same guy?”
“It was the same guy.”
“How do you know?”
“’Cause I know. I just know.” Holden twisted nervously in his seat, suddenly reluctant.
“Okay. But how do you know?”
“’Cause I know him. All right?”
“You know him personally.”
“Yeah. Personally.”
“Through the mask and everything?”
“Yeah. Fucking guy’s got a snake tattoo comes out under his watchband. Every time he comes in, he’s got his left hand in his pocket so I won’t see it. Gun in the right. I empty the register, hand him the bag, out comes the left hand to take the bag. The fucking snake. Stupid bastard.”
The phone on Cassidy’s desk rang.
“So we’re looking for a man with a snake tattoo on his left wrist.”
The phone rang again.
“No. You’re looking for Jerry Wood.”
Cassidy picked up the phone and said, “Cassidy, here. Yeah, Susdorf, hold on. I’ll be back to you in a minute.”
“You know the stickup guy’s name?”
“Yeah, I know his name. He’s my fucking brother-in-law.”
* * *
The big circular bar at Toots Shor’s was packed three deep. Saloon noise—the laughter, the shouted talk, the rattle of ice in glasses—and saloon smoke always lifted Cassidy. He and Orso shouldered to a place at the bar and Al, the bartender, brought him a heavy pour of Jack Daniel’s and Orso a martini without asking. You did not go to Toots Shor’s for the food. You could get a decent steak and baked potato, a lobster, a chop, or oysters if you wanted them, but Toots Shor’s was a watering hole. You came to Shor’s to drink. A couple of pops on the way home from the office, or after dinner at a restaurant with clients, then to Toots’s to round out the evening. It was a place for sportswriters and reporters, for Hemingway, Ruark, and other literary boozers, for Yankees and Giants when the teams were playing home games, for fighters from the Garden a few blocks over, for actors and wiseguys, and for businessmen who had surrendered to the nine-to-five but were still trying to hold on to some part of who they had planned to be in their dangerous hours. Women were allowed, but if a man showed up with his wife too many times, the frost was obvious and he had a hard time getting served. Showgirls, models, secretaries got some slack, but it was a man’s world.
Orso lifted his martini carefully and took a pull. “God, I love that first pop at the end of the day.” He took another sip. “So the stickup man’s the guy’s brother-in-law, and he doesn’t want the wife to know he fingered him.” Tony Orso in four months’ salary of black lightweight wool suit, cream-colored silk shirt with a dark green and silver tie, black hair slicked, face freshly shaved and talced by the barber at the Park Sheraton, fingernails gleaming from the evening manicure, as sleek as a seal and smelling of bay rum.
“Right.”
“Why doesn’t he just smack the guy a couple of times and take the money back?”
“The wife thinks the brother can do no wrong. He’s afraid she’ll take his side. If it comes to it, he thinks she’ll walk.”
“Here’s your hat. What’s your hurry?”
“He’s in love with her.”
“Well, good luck with that. What does he want you to do?”
“Figure out some way to brace the brother-in-law as if I got the information somewhere else.”
“Have you figured it out?”
“Not yet.”
“What did the FBI want?”
“Susdorf says he went to the building on Sixty-fourth where the guy says he saw Ingram dancing. He says there’s nothing to it. He checked it out, top to bottom, whatever the hell that means, and it’s a dead end. No reason for us to bother.”
“They’re playing us.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why’d you go back to Ingram’s apartment?”
“I just had a feeling.” He had never talked to Orso about the dreams. “I think the guy who did Ingram was someone he knew, someone he trusted.”
“How do you figure?”
“Ingram bought a pound of steak, two potatoes, a box of frozen peas. Someone was coming for dinner. He didn’t put the food in the icebox, so he was planning to cook it and eat it with the guy, but he never got the chance. There’s no sign of struggle in the living room. I think he came home with someone, took off his coat and hung it up to dry, put the food on the counter, and then, he’s a vain guy, he goes into the bathroom to brush his hair, first thing. He wasn’t scared of whoever the other person was. He turns his back on him to brush his hair. Whack. The guy hits him over the head and knocks him out. When he wakes up, he’s tied to the chair, and the fun begins.”
Orso drank half his martini. “Screw it. The Feds claim it, they can have it. They want us to do their work for them? Screw them. There’s plenty of crime in New York for us to worry about. Let’s go talk to Mr. Holden’s brother-in-law. We do this Ingram thing on the side when we’re not doing something else.” He saw the look on Cassidy’s face. “Okay, what am I missing?”
“I don’t know. There’s the guy who tortured Ingram. There’s the guy searching the apartment when I went back. Is that the same guy? Maybe. Maybe not. And the Feds are very interested in whether I found anything hidden in the place. Why else search my apartment?”
“What’s that about?”
“I don’t know. Why are so many people interested in a chorus line dancer? And how did this gypsy go from a guy who couldn’t pay his rent on time to buying new furniture and dressing out of Paul Stuart?” He took a pull on his drink.
“Tell me.”
“Blackmail.”
“Fairies.”
“Yeah.”
“Who?”
“Someone with a lot to lose. A wife, family, a position of some sort, maybe a big job, political. I don’t know. We keep pulling on the string, he’ll show up.”
“So why does the FBI care? Blackmail’s not federal.”
“I don’t know. Hoover’s files, maybe. They say he
’s got dirt on everybody in Washington. Maybe this is new dirt on someone he wants to influence.”
“You think the files exist?”
“My brother says people in Washington are sure they do. The story goes that when Ike was elected, he was going to bring in someone new to run the FBI. Hoover went to see him in the White House. He had a file with him. They were alone for an hour, no aides, no witnesses. Ike kept him on, said he was a great American, said he was essential to the continued excellent operation of the Bureau.”
“So Ingram had something on some guy who Hoover wants in his files. The guy goes to have a little chat with Ingram. It gets out of hand. Hoover knows about the something. He wants it too, but he’s late. Ingram’s dead. The blackmail material is in the wind.”
“Why not?”
“What do we care? A couple of fairies.”
“Yeah. Fairies, wops, niggers, yids, hunkies, gooks.”
“Hey, hey. Easy. I’m on your side.”
“They’re all somebody’s son, somebody’s brother, somebody’s friend. A guy gets killed, we’re not supposed to decide whether he deserved it. We’re supposed to find the guy who did it.”
“Okay. You figure anything out, point me at it, and I’ll go tear it up.” He drained his martini. “I’ve got to go. I’ve got a date. Go home and rest. You look like hell. Oh, hey, Franklin’s back. He’s off medical leave and he doesn’t like you much. I don’t know if he has the balls for it, but he might want a piece of you. Watch your back.” He slapped Cassidy on the shoulder, put a couple of bucks on the bar to cover the drinks, and pushed his way out through the crowd.
* * *
Al brought him another bourbon. Cassidy savored the smoke and bite of the whiskey. The FBI was trying to limit what he learned about Ingram. If he found something that pointed him toward the killer, they would take it away from him. Did he care? He didn’t like being told what to do, and he didn’t like being played.
Night Life Page 12