“Michael, he’s your father.”
“I know, I know. I wanted to be able to tell him something when I went. I wanted to be able to give him something concrete to hold on to.”
“Go soon. Don’t worry about having something. Just go see him. He looks gray and tired. And scared. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that before. Mark called a few people, but the moment they heard it was Cohn and McCarthy, they backed away. One guy said he couldn’t afford to do business with Mark since his father-in-law was a Commie. This was someone we thought was a friend. He’s eaten at our apartment.”
“Frightened people.”
“I’m one of them.”
He started to reassure her, and then stopped. She hated meaningless phrases of comfort. She had a right to be scared.
The bartender slid her whiskey sour onto a coaster in front of her. She ate the cherry. “How’s it going with Dylan?”
“Good, I think.”
“You think?”
“I’m kind of in unknown territory here.”
“Ah.”
“What does that mean?”
“I always wondered what she’d be like, the one you finally fell for. I like her.”
“Good.”
“Just don’t run away, okay? And don’t drive her off. Play it out.”
“I’ll do my best.”
“Do that.” She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek.
“Leah, I’ve got that name you wanted.”
Her smile dropped away. “Oh. Okay.”
He put a piece of paper on the bar between them. It had the doctor’s name and phone number and May Stiles’s name for reference. Leah looked at it without touching it. “May says he’s good, and I trust her.”
“All right.” She pulled the paper to her with a finger, folded it, and put it in her purse without reading it.
“Are you sure you want to do this?”
“Yes.” Her voice was tight and low.
“I’ll go with you.”
“No.” Sharply. Her eyes were fierce. “No, you won’t.”
“Someone has to go with you, Leah.”
“Megan’s going.”
“You told Megan?” He was surprised.
“Yes. She’s a friend of mine, Michael, no matter what you think.”
He heard the rebuke.
“I need her.”
“She’ll tell Dad.”
“No. She won’t. I know what I’m doing, Michael.”
“All right.” He hoped she did. He wanted to protect her and had no idea how to do it. It was not the first time.
“It’ll be all right, Michael. Really it will.” As if he was the one who needed reassurance.
“I know. It’ll be fine.” Maybe he was.
21
In the evening, Cassidy and Dylan went to see a movie. They argued without heat about what to see. Cassidy refused war stories and cop films and opted for River of No Return with Robert Mitchum and Marilyn Monroe. Dylan wanted to see the musical Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, but the showtime was wrong, and in the end they walked across to the Loews and saw Sabrina with Humphrey Bogart, William Holden, and Audrey Hepburn, two rich brothers competing for the affection of a beautiful young woman who happened to be the daughter of their chauffeur. Democracy at work.
They came out of the movie into a misting rain. Cassidy bought an umbrella from a street vendor for a buck, and they walked to an Italian grocery on Bleecker Street and bought cheese and bread and salami and small hot pickled peppers and then walked home through the warm evening and the rain. Dylan held his arm and walked tight to him for the shelter of the umbrella. He was as happy as he had ever been.
“Do you have to work tonight?”
“No. Ribera’s rethinking the project. That means a lot of yelling and banging things, slamming around. A lot of tequila. A lot of breakage. Better to stand clear.”
“I’m glad.”
She smiled at him and bumped his shoulder with her head. “Hey, what about you? Have you found anything more about who killed what’s his name? Ingram?”
“Not much. We think he was blackmailing someone.”
“And that person killed him?”
“A heart attack killed him. I think the guy was torturing him to find the blackmail material, and Ingram’s heart popped before he did.”
“What material?”
“Photographs.”
“You told me that before, but of what?” She watched him intently.
“I don’t know. Somebody doing something he shouldn’t have been doing.”
“Do you know who?”
“No. Somebody important. A lot of people want the photos, the FBI, Frank Costello, whoever tortured Ingram. Costello says they’d give him leverage, so whoever is in the photos has a lot of power, and whatever they show is something he can’t afford to have out there.”
“And you don’t have any ideas or clues?”
They waited for a taxi to splash by and then quickly crossed Seventh Avenue. “I do have a clue, but I don’t have a clue about what it means.”
“What is it?”
“A fifty-cent piece. Ingram had it hidden in his locker backstage at the theater.”
“A fifty-cent piece? What does that mean? How can that be important?”
“I don’t know, but he thought it was important enough to hide.”
“Maybe that’s what they searched your apartment for.”
“Maybe.”
“May I see it?”
“I don’t have it with me. It’s hidden.”
“Where?”
“I’m not going to tell you.”
“Why not? Don’t you trust me?”
“If it’s what they killed Ingram for, it’s dangerous information. I don’t want you to have it.”
She shook her head but said nothing, and they walked in silence.
“What are you thinking about?” he asked.
“The movie, how it all came out right in the end. I liked that. I’m a sucker for the happy ending. Did you like it?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“But what?”
“I don’t think she should have settled for either one of those guys. She would have done better if she’d gone into New York and gotten a job.”
“That’s not who she was. She didn’t want a job. She wanted him. And the heart wants what it wants. There’s nothing you can do about that. It’s very romantic. She goes to Paris an ugly duckling and comes back a beautiful swan, and men fall at her feet.”
“I hope she learned more in Paris than how to cook an omelet and where to buy clothes. Otherwise Paris was a waste.”
“Jesus, men. She went to Paris a girl and came back a woman. Do you think that has something to do with omelets?”
“So the baron had his way with her?”
“Why do men always think that they have their way with women, as if women had no choice in the thing?”
* * *
They made love and then got up and made a picnic of what they had bought and ate it in the living room surrounded by every candle Dylan could find in the apartment.
“Who was she?”
“Who was who?”
“The woman who used to live here.” Dylan sat on the sofa wearing one of his dress shirts. Her long legs were tucked under her, and she was eating ice cream from a bowl in her lap. “She left eyelash curlers in the bathroom, and a pack of Kotex.”
“Her name is Gwen Morris. She’s an actress.”
“Did she live here a long time?”
“A couple of months.”
“Why did she leave?”
“She found out she didn’t like me as much as she thought she did.”
“Hmm.” She ate some ice cream. “Did you miss her when she left?” She licked the back of the spoon while she watched him.
“Sometimes.”
“Sometimes?” Raised eyebrows.
“Hey, come on.”
“I want to know.”
&
nbsp; “Not when she first left. We’d been arguing a lot, so when she first went, it was a relief. But then after a while, yes. Sometimes.”
“Did you love her?”
“Dylan, what are you doing?”
“I’m just asking questions. You don’t have to answer.”
He got up and poured bourbon over ice in a tumbler.
“Did you love her?”
“I don’t know. I thought I did for a while, but no.”
“Did you tell her you loved her?”
“Come on. Stop it.”
“Did you?”
“Yes, I did, I guess. Do we have to talk about this?”
“No.” A couple of minutes later she asked, “Even though you didn’t love her?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Because she wanted to hear it. Because I thought it would make her happy.”
“Oh, boy.” She scraped the last of the ice cream from the bowl and watched him while she ate it.
He found it hard to breathe.
She stood with a flash of legs and carried her bowl past him and put it in the sink. She came back and stood next to his chair and tangled her fingers in his hair and pulled his head back so she could see his face. “Don’t ever tell me that lie.”
22
A cool, gray day with a lowering sky and dark clouds above the river. Late March weather, offering spring one day, taking it back the next.
The Immigration Department’s detention center was a windowless block near the Brooklyn piers. The taxi let Cassidy off at the chain-link fence that isolated the center from the neighborhood. The guard in the gatehouse checked his ID and then let him through, and he walked the half block of open pavement through spitting rain to a gray metal door with a thick glass window that distorted the face of the guard inside.
They locked his gun and handcuffs in a cage behind the reception desk, and another guard in a gray uniform led him down a gray corridor to a gray interview room that held a wooden conference table scarred along the edges by cigarette burns, six wooden chairs, a gray metal wastebasket, four mismatched metal ashtrays, three of them full to overflowing. There was a framed photograph of President Eisenhower screwed into one wall next to a framed photograph of the flag raising at Iwo Jima. Cassidy lit a cigarette to add his smoke to the stale air and tried to see how many men strained to raise the flag on the rocky summit. Four? Maybe five. How many, he wondered, made it off that rock alive? On the opposite wall hung a framed copy of the Bill of Rights, a reminder to those about to be deported of what they would miss in their home countries.
Cassidy turned when the door opened. His father came in dressed in a green cotton jumpsuit that zippered from crotch to neck. His shoes had no laces, and he shuffled to keep them from falling off. Tom Cassidy’s face lit up when he saw his son, and he opened his arms and said, “Hey, you’re here. Great. Great,” and stepped forward and hugged Cassidy and kissed him on both cheeks, a ritual left over from his father’s childhood that had embarrassed the hell out of the schoolboy Cassidy. Over his father’s shoulder, Cassidy could see the guard watching them with a peculiar expression. Foreign men hugged. Americans did not. The man shook his head and shut the door. His father pushed back and held his son at arm’s length.
“How are you? Everything okay?” As if it was Cassidy who needed concern. “What’s this? Where’d you get that?” He touched an abrasion on Cassidy’s temple, a souvenir of a fist or shoe on the darkened stairway.
“Nothing. An occupational hazard. How are you, Dad?”
“I’m fine. Great. I’ve been in worse places. I spent a couple of weeks in a jail in Istanbul that makes this place look like the Waldorf. The food’s not much, but that’s okay. I’ve lost four pounds, and I could afford to lose them.” He slapped his stomach. When he turned his head, Cassidy saw the bruise on the side of his face and dried blood on his ear.
“Dad, what happened?”
“Nothing.”
“What happened? Who hit you?”
Tom Cassidy touched his ear. “Some asshole was going on about the country, America this and America that. I straightened him out.”
“Jesus.”
“What? He was saying things that weren’t right. Better off in Russia. Just like Nazi Germany here. I couldn’t let him get away with that crap.”
“Just keep your head down, will you?”
“Sure. Don’t worry about me.” He took a cigarette out of the pack Cassidy had left on the table and bent to the light Cassidy held. “Have you talked to Frank?”
“Yes. He’s got someone working on it.”
“Okay, then. Good enough. That’s what we need. Call Megan when you leave, tell her I’ll be home in a couple of days. Stop her from worrying.”
“Dad, it might not happen that fast.”
“Hey, you don’t know Frank. When he wants something, he gets it done. I want you to stop by rehearsal, let everyone know I’m okay. It would be good if you could stick around and watch the eleven o’clock number. I don’t know if it’s right. I like the song, but I don’t know. It doesn’t seem to fire. Go take a look. Tell me what you think.”
“I wouldn’t know what to look for.”
“Sure you would. I always said you have a great eye for what works in the theater.”
“Dad, saying it doesn’t make it true.”
“All right, all right. If you don’t want to do it, don’t.”
“I’m working something hard, and it’s important.”
“More important than doing something for your father that’ll take an hour? Come on. Is that too much to ask?”
“I’m working on getting you out of here.”
“Frank’ll get me out of here.”
“Not unless I do something for him.”
Thomas Cassidy read his tone. “You mean like a favor? Okay. That’s how it works. You help your friends, they help you.”
“He’s Frank Costello. I’m a cop. How many favors can I do for a guy like that?”
“You’re my son. Frank’s never going to ask you to do something that’ll hurt you.” His father would see only what he wanted to see.
“I want you to think about something.”
“Sure. What?”
“What if something goes wrong? What if Frank’s guy can’t do what he needs to do?”
“What are you talking about? Frank has this city in his pocket. People owe him. If he says he’ll get me out, he’ll get me out. This whole thing’s a mistake. I’m an American citizen. I’ve led a good life here. I’ve done good, and I’ve done well. One lousy screw-up when I was a kid. They’re going to look at that against all the other stuff, and it’s going to be fine. Trust me. I know what I’m talking about.”
Cassidy walked ten blocks in the cold spring rain before he found a cab. He gave the cabbie the precinct’s address and settled back, grateful for the cab’s heater. How could his father be so stubborn in his optimism? It was as if he could will the world to work the way he wanted it to work. What if Cassidy didn’t find the photos? What if he found them and didn’t turn them over to Costello? How many ways, large and small, do sons and fathers fail each other? When does it start and when does it end? One thing he knew, if he failed his father here, it would be terminal and he would have to live with that.
As they crossed the Brooklyn Bridge toward Manhattan, the skies let loose, and the rain fell in sheets.
23
“I’m getting pressure from higher up,” Crofoot said. He flinched when Fraker stabbed a raw oyster with a small fork, put it in his mouth, and chewed. “Hoover’s complained to the White House that we’re running an operation here against our charter. The FBI gets domestic; we get foreign. It’s not the way it should be. They’re good at running down car thieves and the occasional bank robber, but this is way beyond their level. But Ike’s got an open door for the old toad, anything he wants, God knows why. We have to get this done before the White House draws rein.”
&nbs
p; “Uh-huh.” Fraker did not care about pressure from above. That was Crofoot’s problem.
They were in the Oyster Bar under Grand Central Terminal. It was mid-afternoon, and the place was nearly empty. The hanging light globes made the arched tile ceiling shine. Two waiters gossiped near the kitchen door. A man in a suit read the Journal-American while he ate clam chowder and drank a beer at the other end of the bar. Fraker had checked him out when he first came in, soft hands, a wedding ring, horn-rimmed glasses, shoes with slippery leather soles, a businessman playing hooky from the office. No threat.
Fraker squeezed lemon juice onto another oyster, then picked it up with the fork and examined it. “You know how you can tell if they’re really fresh? They kind of squinch up when you put the lemon juice on.”
“Fascinating.” Crofoot glanced away as Fraker ate. He knew Fraker sensed he was squeamish about food. It was why the son of a bitch always asked for meetings in restaurants. Crofoot couldn’t seem to do anything about it, and he resented the loss of authority. “Amado. You didn’t have to kill him.”
“What the hell was I supposed to do with him at the end? Apologize? So sorry. Have a nice day.” He stared at Crofoot.
“He was the only one besides Ingram we know about, and we were lucky that Ingram led us to him.”
“I didn’t kill him before I learned something. I killed him after I learned something. That’s the way these things go.”
“Tell me.”
“There were four of them. Ingram, Amado, two others. He told me who, where, and when. Jesus, he was eager at the end. Ingram organized it. He had some guy who was willing to pay their monthly rent if they would make themselves available when he needed them, and bonuses when they performed.”
“Who?”
“Amado never met him. The rent went straight to the landlord. The cash came in envelopes with no return. It was set up around September last year. They went out on a couple of calls. The first was a suite at the Plaza. Ingram took pictures then too. He had some special little camera, really small, that he could hide. They didn’t know who the guy was, but Amado thought from what was said that he was military. Ingram knew him from somewhere else. Like they’d been together a few times before. The second party was in a private house. Amado was really drunk most of the time, but he thought one of the guys was a senator, maybe a congressman. There was another party he was pretty hazy on, a bunch of rich guys out in Cold Spring Harbor, and then the one you’re hot for.”
Night Life Page 20