Night Life

by David C. Taylor

  39

  The headlights of the rented Ford drilled a tunnel through the night and pulled him north toward New York. Insects, awakened to life by spring, flew down the shafts of light and died on the windshield.

  Tolson, not Hoover, had made the calls. Hoover picked up the dress from where Cassidy had left it on the floor, folded it carefully, and carried it upstairs. He did not come down again.

  Cassidy agreed to meet Tolson at the New York FBI office at Foley Square late in the afternoon the next day to turn over the negatives. It would take that long to complete the paperwork that would expunge Tom Cassidy’s record and restore his citizenship, but he would be released immediately to Cassidy whenever Cassidy presented himself at the immigration lockup. There had been no handshakes to seal the deal, just a curt nod from Tolson and the distant footfalls of Hoover overhead.

  Cassidy had made enemies for life and he wondered when, inevitably, they would decide to eliminate him.

  It was after one in the morning when Cassidy got to Brooklyn. The only other vehicle he saw was a black delivery van that passed him a few blocks from the Department of Immigration’s detention center. In the flare of his headlights he saw two men in the front seat.

  Cassidy parked the Ford at the chain-link fence in front of the detention center, showed his badge to the gatekeeper, and crossed the open yard to the metal door with its heavy glass window. He rang the bell and waited and then gave in to the impatience that had been eating at him all night and rang again and beat on the door with the flat of his hand. Dim yellow light shone through the smudged glass. A door opened at the far end of the corridor, and a fat man in a gray uniform shuffled slowly toward him dangling a ring of keys. He stopped behind the glass and raised his eyebrows in question. Cassidy showed the man his badge. The guard yawned massively, fumbled with his keys, and opened the door.

  “Yeah?” The guard let him in and closed the door.

  “I’ve come to pick up Thomas Cassidy.”

  “Who?”

  “Cassidy. Thomas Cassidy. You got a call from Washington about him.”

  “I didn’t get no call.” Cassidy followed him down the corridor toward the open door. “Maybe upstairs they got a call, but I didn’t get no call.”

  “Who’s upstairs?”

  “Rabinov, the fuckhead, that’s who’s upstairs. Lazy bastard. Think he’d lift a finger to do any work? Perkins, do this. Perkins, do that. Fucking guy wouldn’t have the job ’cept his uncle’s a fucking city councilman. Maybe he got a call. How would I know? You think he tells me anything? But it’s too late anyway.”

  “Too late for what? What’s too late?”

  “They come and got him.”

  Cassidy grabbed the man’s arm and jerked him around. “Who came and got who?”

  The guard pulled his arm free and raised a hand in defense. “Hey, easy, man. The Russkis. A couple of the Russkis came and got Cassidy. They always pick ’em up after midnight. One of them told me once, they pick ’em up in the middle of the night ’cause guys don’t fight if you wake them up in the middle of the night. Scares the shit out of them. They just give it up. I guess they’ve had a lot of practice over there, is what I heard.”

  The black van with the two men in the front seat.

  “He was supposed to be released to me. Washington called.”

  “Like I said, they didn’t call me. I got a deport order, release to the Russkis. The Russkis got a pickup order. That’s how it works. You got a problem, take it up with Rabinov, like I said. And good luck to you with that.”

  Cassidy ran up the stairs to a corridor of office doors. Light shone through the pebbled glass of one at the end. Cassidy knocked. No answer. He opened the door and went in. A uniformed man was asleep, head down on the desk. His bald spot gleamed in the light from the gooseneck desk lamp. A bottle of rye stood open at his elbow. There wasn’t much left in it, and the glass next to it was empty. The man snored, and when he breathed out, it lifted the edge of a piece of paper a few inches from his slack mouth.

  Cassidy kicked the chair out from under the man. His face banged against the side of the desk and he awoke with a cry. His hand scrabbled toward the holstered gun on his hip. Cassidy kicked him lightly and said, “Don’t.” He righted the chair and then hauled Rabinov up by his collar and dumped him back in it.

  The paper the man had been breathing on was a scrawled note telling Perkins to not release Tom Cassidy to the Russians and to hold him for release to Michael Cassidy, NYPD. Something that might have been Rabinov’s signature was scrawled across the bottom.

  “Who are you?”

  Cassidy showed him the paper. “You got a call from Washington telling you to release Tom Cassidy to me. Why didn’t that happen?”

  Rabinov scrubbed his face with his hand and looked with longing at the whiskey bottle. Cassidy slapped him with the paper to refocus him.

  “Not my job,” he whined. “I called that son of a bitch Perkins to come up and get the message. He never showed. I called him three times. It’s not my fault.” He reached for the bottle.

  Cassidy moved it. “Did you tell him not to release Tom Cassidy? Did you tell him on the phone?”

  “He’s got to have it in writing. I wrote it. He didn’t come get it. It’s not my fault. I’m following the rules, but the lazy son of a bitch won’t come up the stairs. You know why? He wants my job. He’s trying to get me in trouble, but I’ve got it in writing right here. He just didn’t come get it. So fuck him.”

  “How do you rescind the order? How do you get him back?”

  “Get him back? Get who back? Cassidy? I don’t know. I never had to get nobody back. If they turned in a pickup order and took the release, they’ve got him legal.”

  “Call someone and find out.”

  “Call who?”

  “Call your supervisor.”

  “Call Captain Winsick at two in the morning? Are you kidding?”

  Cassidy grabbed Rabinov’s hair and banged his face onto the desk. He lifted his head. “Call him.” He let go of Rabinov’s hair and wiped the oil off his hand on the man’s jacket.

  Rabinov picked up the phone and dialed. He rubbed the red patch where his forehead had met the desk while he waited a long time for the phone to be answered. The waiting made him nervous. He licked his lips, looked from the bottle to Cassidy, and drummed his fingers on the desk. Cassidy pushed the glass and bottle close, and Rabinov poured an inch of liquor into the glass and then into himself.

  Captain Winsick answered the phone in a way that made Rabinov flinch. “Yes, sir. I know it’s late, sir. I’m sorry, sir. It’s just that we’ve got a problem over here. No, sir. No, sir. They’re all locked in. No problem there. It’s, uh, I’ve got a New York cop here who was supposed to pick up Cassidy, Thomas. Orders from Washington. Release to him. Problem is, we got a foul-up. Perkins released Cassidy, Thomas, to the Russian pickup team before the hold order got to him, so anyway, like I said, we’ve got a problem and…”

  Cassidy snatched the phone from Rabinov’s hand. “Captain Winsick, this is Detective Michael Cassidy. I’m sorry we had to wake you, sir.”

  “You related to the detainee?” Winsick was annoyed but alert.

  “He’s my father.”

  “Yeah, well, look, I’m sorry about this, but I don’t know what can be done. We had a deport order on your father. The Russians had a pickup. That’s how the system works. It looks like the order from Washington came in too late. We’re sorry about any confusion, but it’s not our responsibility. Who sent the order?”

  Rabinov poured himself another drink.

  “Clyde Tolson at the FBI.”

  “Okay. That’s FBI jurisdiction now. It’s out of my hands. They’ll have to take it up with the Russians.” Winsick had a seasoned bureaucrat’s knack for duck and cover.

  “How would they move him out of the country?”

  “Ship is what they usually do. Look, Cassidy, I’d like to help, but once they’re no longer in my
custody, there’s nothing I can do.”

  Cassidy hung up the phone.

  “You can go.”

  “What?”

  “Get out. Take the bottle.”

  “Yeah. Sure. Okay.” Rabinov grabbed the bottle and glass and hurried out. Cassidy closed the door and picked up the phone and dialed a number Tolson had given him.

  A sleepy Tolson answered on the sixth ring.

  “This is Cassidy. Your deal’s falling apart.”

  40

  It was three in the morning when Cassidy parked the Ford on Park Avenue. The city slept. He walked south two blocks, and the only car he saw was a taxi that slowed hopefully and then went on when he made no gesture. The lobbies of the big apartment buildings were lighted, and uniformed doormen dozed in leather chairs behind brass-fitted doors. He turned east and found Susdorf and Cherry sitting on the granite stoop of a town house. They both showed the resentful air of men who had been pulled from sleep. Susdorf nodded. Cherry sneered.

  “It’s down the block,” Susdorf said. “But I don’t think it’s going to work.”

  “What’d Tolson tell you when he called?”

  “Come out here. Wait for you to show up. Do what you want.”

  “Did you bring the papers I asked for?”

  “Yeah.” Susdorf tapped his breast pocket.

  “Let’s go.”

  Cherry flicked his cigarette against the door of the house so it showered sparks and left a small dark smudge on the glass, a mildly contemptuous act that made him smile. The three men walked in silence along the dark street to another large house with an impressive limestone façade, big iron-barred windows, carved gargoyles, and a set of broad marble steps leading to a massive door of black wrought iron and glass, the former home of a captain of industry, now the consulate for the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

  Two uniformed New York cops stepped from the portico that shielded the lighted door. Cassidy had his ID out and showed them his badge, and they touched the brims of their hats and one said, “What can we do for you, Detective?”

  “We need to go in.”

  “Sure. People are in and out all night. They’ve always got someone on the door. I don’t know what the hell they’re up to in and out like that. I had my way, the Commie bastards wouldn’t be allowed in the country. Just ring the bell. Someone’ll show up. I’ll go up with you so they see everything’s okay.”

  “Anybody come in tonight?”

  “Not up in front here. The guys at the back said a van delivered down the alley back there. They didn’t see what. We can’t go down the alley, can’t go past the front step. It’s like that’s all Russia, Russian territory.” The cop rang the bell loud and long. “They don’t like it when I ring long, but what the hell. How do I know whether they can hear it or not? Could be asleep for all I know.” He grinned at his small poke at the enemy.

  A stooped old man in a black suit shuffled across the marble lobby floor and stood behind the glass. Cassidy showed him his ID and badge. The old man took his time reading it and then slowly disengaged three locks securing the door, his small revenge on the cop. He pulled the door open and stepped back as Cassidy and the FBI agents entered. The old man gestured with his head toward a desk at the far side of the lobby. He shut the door and relocked it and shuffled away to sit in a chair in shadows by the wall.

  There were three framed portraits on the wall behind the desk, Malenkov, Khrushchev, and Molotov. A faded patch showed where a much larger portrait of Stalin had hung, and the smaller ones had a sense of impermanency. Two would go, and one would become larger when the complicated process of succession played out.

  The woman behind the desk was blocky and thick. Her hair was drawn back in a bun, and her stiff woolen uniform made her lumpy. Small dark eyes looked out of the dough of her face. She leaned her heavy breasts on the desktop and smoked a cigarette and, with a total lack of interest, watched Cassidy and the two FBI men approach.

  “Help you?” She didn’t mean it.

  Cassidy put his badge on the desk in front of her. “I want to see your security officer.”

  The sight of the badge straightened her. The cigarette disappeared. She calculated. Their authority was one thing. The authority of the people behind the wall at her back was something else entirely. Which was riskier, to dismiss these men or to bother her superiors?

  “A moment, please.” She went back through a door that locked behind her.

  “Let me have the papers,” Cassidy said.

  Susdorf took them from his inside pocket and passed them over. Cherry picked up a pen from the desktop, looked it over, and slipped it into his pocket. He lit a cigarette with a kitchen match scratched on the desk and dropped the match on the floor and watched it burn.

  The door behind the desk opened. The blocky woman held it for two men, then she stepped back out of sight. The first man out was muscle, five foot ten, two hundred and twenty pounds, a head like a tree stump. He wore a square-cut gray suit that was a size too big. He had small, dark, watchful eyes. He took in the three men and then moved around the desk so that he flanked them. Cherry winked at Susdorf and turned to face the man.

  The second man was tall and thin. He wore a dark blue suit that was too well cut to have been made in the workers’ paradise and a white silk shirt open at the throat. His face was narrow and pale and his hair was the color of water. “I am Colonel Vasily Antipov. How may I help you?” He spoke with an English accent.

  Cassidy and Susdorf slid their IDs toward him across the desktop. “Sorry to bother you at this time of night, but a detainee at the immigration detention center was released to your people by mistake,” Cassidy said. “We’ve come to pick him up.” He took the papers Susdorf had brought and put them on the desk. “These are release orders from the Department of Immigration and from the FBI.”

  Colonel Antipov examined the IDs and pushed them back across the desk. He picked up the papers and read them quickly, then put them down and pushed them back toward Cassidy. “I am afraid what you ask is impossible. Mr. Kasnavietski has been released to our custody in a legal manner. He has expressed a wish to be repatriated to the Motherland as quickly as possible. We will grant him that wish.”

  “I want to speak to him,” Cassidy said.

  “I am afraid that is impossible at the moment. He said he was having trouble sleeping. He has been given a sedative and is asleep.”

  “I’ll wake him up. He’ll want to see me.”

  “You’re his son, I believe. He spoke of you.”

  “Yes.”

  “He said you might come look for him. He recognizes that his repatriation will be seen as a political and propaganda defeat by anti-Soviet elements in this country. He knows that pressure will be brought to bear to make him change his mind. He asked that we insulate him from that pressure and to tell you, specifically, that he is happy in his choice and that he hopes you will come visit him after he is settled.”

  “I’d like to hear that from him.”

  “I’m sorry, but that’s impossible.”

  “I can have a hundred New York police officers here with a phone call.” Bluff.

  Antipov smiled. “Of course you can. Mr. Kasnavietski is on Soviet sovereign territory, as you know. We will defend that territory to the best of our ability. If you want to cause that kind of international incident, then so be it.” Bluff called.

  Antipov nodded to Cassidy and the FBI men, and turned to the door. It opened before he reached it, so Cassidy knew someone had watched them the entire time. Antipov and his gunsel disappeared, and the heavy woman came back out and leaned on the desk and watched them until they left.

  * * *

  The Anchor Inn was a seamen’s dive on Albany Street half a block from the Hudson piers. The windows flanking the door were brass-framed portholes. Worn life rings hung on the walls, and a shelf on the back bar held dusty ship models. In a few hours it would be full of longshoremen coming off shift and having a couple of pops befor
e heading home, but at four in the morning the place was empty except for a drunk passed out in one of the high-sided wooden booths, the bartender, a bullet-headed ex-pug with a fringe of gray hair above his ears, and an aging bottle blonde in a lime green skirt and yellow blouse who talked to him while she sat at the end of the bar nursing a bright scarlet drink with a slice of orange on the rim.

  Cassidy and Cherry were in a booth at the back while Susdorf worked the phone that hung near the men’s room. They were drinking coffee from heavy china mugs, and there were a couple of empty shot glasses on the table between them. Cassidy had not slept for nearly twenty-four hours, and his eyes were gritty with fatigue. His stomach was sour with too much coffee, and his mouth burned from too many cigarettes. He closed his eyes and leaned his head against the high wooden back of the booth and opened them again when Susdorf slid into the booth next to Cherry.

  “The only Russian ship scheduled to sail this week is the Bakunin over at the Venezuela Line pier. We had our guy at Port Authority check the passenger manifest. There are five passengers listed. One was put on the list tonight.” He checked his notepad. “Name of Theodor Kosev. He’s listed as a consular official going home on medical leave. We checked the consulate list. It doesn’t show a Theodor Kosev. T. K. We figure it’s Tomas Kasnavietski.”

  “Good work.”

  “Yeah, well, every once in a while we manage to do something right even without the help of the NYPD.”

  Cassidy let it pass. “When does it sail?”

  “She’s loading right now. Due to cast off at seven. We’ve got a guy with the longshoreman crew loading her. Normal surveillance. We do it with all the Russian ships.”

  “I want to talk to him.”

  “We passed the word. He’s coming.”

  “Have the other passengers boarded?”