Their desks were pushed together so they faced each other near the stairs, because Bonner liked to be first out the door when a call came in. From ten feet away Cassidy could smell his perfume of whiskey and cheap cigars.
“The wop and Park Avenue.”
“Good to see you too, Bonner.”
Bonner was built like a bulldozer, five nine, two hundred and ten pounds, square, low to the ground, indestructible. His head was a block with mismatched eyes, one blue, one hazel, a small nose, a thick-lipped mouth, and fine white hair buzzed short. He had the look of someone who had been slapped together from spare parts. He had put in his twenty more than five years ago, but everyone knew Alfie Bonner would be a cop till something or someone killed him.
Clive Newly was a tall, thin Negro with salt-and-pepper hair and a long face that rarely changed expression, a mask of calm. Who knew what it covered? Being a Negro was hard enough, being a Negro cop was harder. What were you to your people, an ally or an enemy? Newly, who lived with prejudice, hated nobody as far as Cassidy could tell, and he went about his business quietly and dispassionately.
“How’re you doing, Detective Newly?”
“I’m fine, Detective Cassidy. How are you?” A low voice as smooth as honey. Newly had been in uniform for eleven years before his luck happened. Until then it was understood that he might make sergeant but would go no further, the quota for black officers in the higher grades being filled. On a fine July day the year after Pearl Harbor, he was walking a beat in the Bronx and stopped at a grocery store where the owner was good for a cold Coke and a pack of smokes. He found two Puerto Rican punks pistol-whipping the owner while a third cleaned out the cash register. When the gunfire stopped, two of the punks were dead and the third was down and screaming for his mother. Newly took a bullet in the arm and one in the side. It was an election year, and the councilman for the district was in a close race, and there was a suspicion that the blacks of the district would be the margin of victory. A smart young aide persuaded the councilman to declare Newly a hero and to push through his promotion to detective. The councilman won by eighty-three votes.
“What’ve you got for us?” Bonner asked.
“Nothing. We were just getting started.”
“Nothing? What do you mean, nothing?”
“Nothing. Alexander Ingram, twenty-four years old. Tortured. Dead. We don’t even know where he worked. We were just getting started. You want to know more, check with the Feebles. They yanked his body out of the morgue. We don’t even have a cause of death.”
Orso covered his surprise.
“How can you not know the cause of death?” Bonner asked.
“The Feds pulled the body from Bellevue. They put a clamp on Skinner. He’s not giving anything.”
“So get out of here, you useless fucks.”
* * *
“What was that about?” Orso asked.
A diner on Ninth. The place was empty except for the counterman, who was at the other end reading the Daily News.
“I can’t drop the case, and I need a head start over Bonner and Newly on it.” He told Orso about his meeting with Frank Costello.
“He didn’t tell you what the photos are?”
“No. They have to be of someone powerful enough that Costello thinks he can use him. And the Feds want to control the same guy.”
“What does Costello want?”
“If he gets them, he’s got a legit guy in power who can run interference for him.”
“Is that a good thing?”
“He can get my father out. He’s got more grease than anyone else in town.”
“That’s it? You find the photos, Costello gets your old man out. You like that deal?”
“It’s all I’ve got. When it comes down to it, I don’t give a shit about what Costello wants. I don’t give a shit about what Hoover wants. My father’s locked up because of something I did. That’s on me. I have to make that right.”
“Okay. Whatever you want to do, we’ll do. But the Pig and the Nig aren’t stupid. They know how to work a case. It won’t take them long to figure out you’re still working it too. And it won’t take them long to catch up.”
* * *
The Waldorf-Astoria took up the entire block between Park and Lexington Avenues and 49th and 50th Streets. Finished in 1931, it was considered by many to be New York’s most elegant hotel. It was, at times, home to General Douglas MacArthur, President Herbert Hoover, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Cole Porter, and Bugsy Siegel, the hood who invented Las Vegas. President Roosevelt, it was said, used to pull his private railroad car into a little-used siding beneath the hotel. His armor-plated Pierce-Arrow would rise by elevator to 49th Street, exit through polished brass doors, make a sharp right-hand turn, enter the hotel garage, and stop in front of the elevators, sparing the crippled president the embarrassment of riding his wheelchair in public.
A concierge in a starched collar and a dark uniform with discreet gold trim sneered politely at Cassidy’s badge but passed him off across the thick carpet to an assistant manager in an elegant office who sneered less politely at his badge but passed him off to a bellboy who led him without comment across the lobby, down the marble hall past the expensive shops, through an unmarked door, down one metal staircase and then another, along a corridor crammed with service trolleys, past the open doors of a steamy kitchen of shouting cooks and clanging pots to a red-painted door on which was stenciled in black letters SORINO. The bellboy knocked once and waited. A voice inside said, “Come.” The bellboy put his hand on the knob and looked at Cassidy expectantly, palmed the quarter Cassidy handed him, and opened the door. Cassidy went in.
The office was small and windowless. There was an old wooden desk near the back wall. Two of the walls were lined with unpainted wood shelves that held loose-leaf binders. A big corkboard on the wall to the right of the desk was covered with charts and lists. The desk was piled with papers. The man sitting behind it wrote quickly with a fountain pen, stabbed a period, put the paper to one side, pulled another in front of him and wrote again. “Yes?” He did not look up. He was in his late thirties, Cassidy guessed, and his black hair was oiled and so neatly combed the part looked cut by a razor. He was narrow shouldered and soft looking, and he wore a blue-and-white-striped shirt with red arm garters to keep his cuffs from smearing the ink when he wrote. His jacket, a peculiar mustard color, hung on a clothes tree behind him. He stabbed another period, stacked the paper left, pulled another in front, held the pen poised, and looked up at Cassidy. “Yes?” Impatiently.
“Mr. Sorino, I want to talk to you about one of your employees.”
“Yes?” He began to write again. “Which employee?”
“Alex Ingram.”
Sorino kept writing. “He is not an employee at this hotel.”
“But he was.”
“But he isn’t.”
Cassidy dropped a business card in front of Sorino. Sorino stopped writing and looked up. “What did he do?”
“Someone killed him.”
“Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy, the prick.” Sorino capped his pen and leaned back in his chair.
“Why prick?”
“Have you ever worked in a first-class hotel, Mr.”—he looked down at the card—“Cassidy?”
“No.”
“The Waldorf-Astoria is a first-class hotel. Everyone thinks people come for the rooms, for the bar, for the restaurant, and while they do come for those things, they would not come at all if the service weren’t excellent. A first-class hotel is made by first-class service. Few people understand that. I do. When he wanted to be, Alex Ingram was a first-class waiter. He was attractive, efficient, personable. The guests liked him. However, he had a tendency to do as he pleased when he pleased. It did not matter to him that he inconvenienced others. The last time was one time too many.”
“When was that?”
“He was scheduled to work last New Year’s Eve, a very important night, as you can imagi
ne. A night where there are many private parties, where service is of paramount importance, and where, I might add, there is a good deal of money to be made in tips. He pestered me for months to put him on. I did. He did not show up. He did not call. You can’t imagine the trouble that caused. When he came by the next week to pick up his pay, I told him to clear out his locker.”
“Did he?”
“What?”
“Clear out his locker.”
“I have no idea.”
There was nothing in the locker but a crumpled room service order sheet with nothing on it and a soiled white waiter’s jacket with empty pockets.
“I need to talk to someone he worked with, someone who might have known him well.”
Sorino sighed, another burden added to the load he carried through his busy day. “If you must. I’ll check the work roster and see who’s here.”
* * *
“He was a prick. What can I tell you?” Fred Bandy voted with the majority while he arranged lunch on a room service cart in the kitchen in the subbasement below the Waldorf Towers. He was a round, cheerful man with the broken veins and red nose of dedicated drinker. “Not always. When he first got the job here, he was all sweetness and cream. Help you out anytime but full of questions. How do you do this? Where do you put that? Who’s who? What’s what? He started out as a breakfast waiter in the hotel, but he figured out quick that the money was in serving the Towers. Pretty soon he was sucking up to the right people and got transferred over. Man, he liked going into those big apartments. All that money. Once he said to me, ‘Someday, Bandy, I’m going to live here.’ I laughed, but you could tell he was serious.” Bandy rearranged the parsley that garnished the roast chicken.
“What do you know about him outside of work?” The smell of food reminded Cassidy that he had not eaten since breakfast.
“Nothing. He wasn’t a guy who went out and had a couple of beers. He had other things to do, but don’t ask me what they were. I don’t know.” Bandy filled the water glasses.
“When did you see him last?”
“New Year’s Eve.” He went to a glass-fronted refrigerator and removed a bud vase holding three dark red roses. He put it on the cart and rearranged the stems to please his eye.
“Sorino said he fired him because he didn’t show up New Year’s Eve.”
“He showed up. He just didn’t show up to work.” He patted his pockets until he found a box of matches that he put at the ready by the two silver candlesticks. “I was serving the Vanderlin apartment on thirty-three. Nice people. Sugar money from Cuba. Always here New Year’s. I was taking the cart down the hall, the elevator stops to let some people out, and there he is, bold as brass, standing in the guest elevator, dressed to the nines. Tuxedo, patent leather shoes, the full rig, a Chesterfield coat. Very nice. I remember thinking, where the hell did he get that?”
“Fawn colored? Brown collar?”
“That’s the one. He looks right through me like I’m not even there. The doors close. Off he goes.”
“Do you know where he was going?”
“Thirty-four and up, ’cause I was on thirty-three, and he was going up. I asked the other waiters who were working parties above me. No one saw him.”
“Was he alone in the elevator? Was he with someone?”
Bandy checked the ice bucket to make sure it was full. “There were a couple of other guys, maybe three. Young guys. Same age. Full rig too. He was talking to one of them when he saw me, so maybe they were together.”
“What did they look like? Can you give me a description?”
“Nah. I don’t know. I mean, I was stunned. I was looking at Ingram like, what the hell? The others, I never really saw them. Just that they were there.” He folded a white towel over his arm. “Listen, I’ve got to get this upstairs while it’s hot.”
“Thanks. If you think of anything else, call me.”
“Sure.” Bandy tucked Cassidy’s card in his pocket. He closed the big chrome warming dome over the food and wheeled the cart into the service elevator.
Sorino, pen poised above paper, was not happy to see Cassidy back and was even less happy with his request. “A list of who occupied the apartments in the Towers on New Year’s Eve? I don’t think so.”
“Just above the thirty-third floor.”
“Detective Cassidy, I don’t think you appreciate what you’re asking. The Waldorf Towers are quite distinct from the hotel. Many of the apartments are rented on a yearly basis. There are people who have lived in the Towers for years. Most of them are rich. Many of them are public figures. General Douglas MacArthur is a guest. One of the reasons they come here is for the privacy. Even if I had such a list, I could not give it to you without permission from the manager.”
“What information did Ingram give you when he applied for the job here?”
“He filled out the standard form.”
“May I see that?”
Sorino hesitated.
“The man’s dead. It’s a little late to be delicate about his privacy.”
“Of course.”
There was nothing on the form he did not know. The home address listed was the one in New Jersey that had been on his driver’s license. Cassidy folded the form and put it in his pocket, thanked Sorino, and left.
* * *
The Waldorf Towers manager was an affable man in a cutaway coat and striped trousers. His office was furnished with antiques, including a large partners’ desk with an inlaid top of dark green leather that held a telephone whose ring was so muted it sounded like an apology. “I’d like to help you, Detective, but there is no way that I can give you such a list without a court order. I’m so terribly sorry.” He was so sincere Cassidy almost believed him.
* * *
The precinct house was worn shabby by the rub of misery that came through its doors. The late-afternoon sun barely penetrated, and the dim white bulbs in the overhead fixtures weakly contested the gloom. Two men were handcuffed to the opposite end rails of the big wooden bench just inside the precinct doors. Both were bleeding from head wounds, and one of them kept snuffling blood back up his broken nose. The ignored each other while a uniformed cop explained their situation to the desk sergeant. Cassidy went by them and up the stairs.
Newly stopped Cassidy as he walked toward his desk. “Someone called you three times this afternoon. He didn’t leave a name. He said he’d call back at five.” He checked his watch. “A couple of minutes.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
Cassidy hung his jacket on his chair, pulled the phone where he could reach it, and put his feet up on the desk. Half the calls that came in were anonymous, and most of them started with I don’t want to get anyone in trouble, but … If it wasn’t about trouble, why were they calling the cops? He lit a cigarette and tossed the pack onto the desk. What was Ingram doing at the Waldorf on New Year’s Eve? A guy who loved money gave up the richest night of the year to go to a party? Everybody remarked that Ingram was money hungry, so the party was going to be more valuable in some way. How did that work?
The phone rang.
“Cassidy.”
“Detective?”
“Yeah.” Someone played a piano in the background, and he could hear people talking away from the phone. “Hello?”
“This is Victor Amado. I don’t know if you remember me.”
“I remember.” The rehearsal piano at the theater. “Thank you for calling, Victor.” Alfie Bonner came out of the toilet zipping his fly.
“Look, I don’t know whether I should be talking to you at all. I just don’t know.”
“You knew Alex better than you said.”
A long silence. “Yes.”
“What did he have that made someone torture him?”
Another long silence. “I can’t talk about that.” Cassidy could hear the fear in his voice.
“Okay. What do you want to talk about?”
Bonner stopped at Cassidy’s desk.
“Hold on a second. Don’t go away.” Cassidy put the phone against his shoulder and nodded to Bonner.
“Are you still working Ingram?” Bonner asked.
“No.”
“Who’s on the line?”
“My girlfriend.”
Bonner grinned and made a kissing noise, did a jerk-off motion, and moved on.
“Are you still there?”
“Yes. They’re calling us back. Break’s over. I’ve got to go.”
“Victor, do you have any idea why Ingram was killed?”
“I can’t talk about it on the phone.”
“I can be at the theater in ten minutes.”
“No, don’t. We’re in rehearsal. I can’t. Not here.”
He could feel Amado slipping away. “This is a murder investigation, Victor. I’m coming over.”
“No, please. There are too many people.”
“After rehearsal.”
“I don’t know.”
“I’ll meet you wherever you want. We’ll talk. You tell me whatever you want. And I can keep you out of it.” The reassuring lie.
“I don’t know. Jesus. I live in the Village on Christopher Street.”
“Great. Perfect. I’m on Bank.” He held his breath.
Silence. “Do you know the White Horse? I usually stop there for a drink on the way home.”
“The White Horse. What time?”
“Nine?”
“I’ll see you there.” He hung up and let out a breath. Landed him. Maybe.
* * *
Cassidy bought eggs, coffee, and bread for breakfast at the Italian grocery store on 12th and walked west toward his apartment as darkness fell and the sky turned dark blue over the river. The breeze off the water smelled of salt, and it stirred scraps of paper in the gutters. Cassidy thought about Dylan and hoped she was home. There was enough time before he met Amado to have dinner somewhere in the Village, or maybe they’d go to Chinatown to the place off Canal on Mercer he liked. Did she like Chinese food? There was so much about her he did not know. A man stood outside the phone booth on the corner of Washington. As he went by, the man stepped into the booth and made a call.
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