The Striver

by Stephen Solomita

  ‘How can you compare property loss to the loss of life?’ she asked. ‘A few years from now, this jerk’s victims will barely remember what happened. But there’s no “few years from now” for Carlo Pianetta. He’s dead.’

  Boots didn’t expect cops who worked special squads to understand precinct life. Those units moved all around the city, a few months here, a few months there. They never hung around long enough to meet the citizens they protected and served. The bosses stationed at Borough Command or the Puzzle Palace were even more handicapped. Statistics dominated their working lives, especially the ratio between complaints and arrests. Some hadn’t come within spitting distance of the streets for decades.

  ‘Let me explain it like this,’ Boots finally said. ‘When someone in the family dies, someone else has to go through their belongings. Everything, right? You have to decide what to give away, what to throw out and what to keep. My dad wasn’t up to it when mom passed, so the job fell to me. Lemme tell ya, I wasn’t in such great shape either – Mom was our rock – but it had to be done. So I went at it one afternoon when my dad was out of the house. I don’t know what I thought going in, but what I found were her treasures.’

  Boots drummed his fingers on the desk. This was a place he’d never gone, not even with his father. ‘I found ’em in a box tucked way back in the closet, a bunch of love letters tied up with a ribbon, some costume jewelry and a few porcelain figurines. The letters were from a boyfriend she had in 1962, before she met my father and they left Ireland. I think Mom was about fifteen at the time. The letters didn’t really amount to much. He’d love her forever, she was the love of his life, nothing could tear them apart. The usual adolescent garbage.’ Boots finally met Jill’s eyes. ‘I don’t wanna drag this out. The jewelry also wasn’t much, or the little figurines either, but when I finally looked around, I realized that everything in the apartment was a treasure to my mother. The furniture, the good silver, the good dishes, the photos in the living room –which she called a sitting room to the end of her days – these were all her treasures, the life she’d built up. Now imagine her comin’ home one day to find everything destroyed by some kid with anger management issues. Imagine those letters ripped up and tossed to the floor like so much toilet paper. Imagine the jewelry missing, the figurines smashed. It’d be like takin’ her whole life away, my father’s, too. It’d be like they got wiped out by a hurricane, only without being eligible for a low-interest loan from the government.’

  Jill started to interrupt, but thought better of it. ‘Go ahead, Boots.’

  ‘Now this kid’s committed a couple of dozen burglaries in which he destroyed his victims’ treasures, but I’ve got exactly one I can hang around his neck. A witness saw him coming out of an apartment building with a TV in his hands, a witness who knows him. You’re sayin I should book him and walk away. But if he’s only got the single charge, the judge’ll set a low bail, or maybe even release him on personal recognizance. Keep in mind, the kid just turned seventeen and most judges don’t take burglaries too seriously. On the other hand, if I get a confession, I can charge him with enough counts to make the prosecutor and the judge think twice.’

  Slightly out of breath, Boots grabbed a case file and headed into the interrogation room. Jill waited until the door closed behind him, then made her way to a small window. This was a one-way mirror that revealed two small chairs and a table, the only furniture in the room. The chair behind the table was occupied by a teenage boy. He stuck his chin in the air and crossed his legs as Boots took a seat, a show of defiance that didn’t fool Jill Kelly, who had a predator’s nose for weakness. Alviro’s dark eyes were fearful and sad as he watched Boots roll up his sleeves to reveal a pair of obscenely thick forearms. The kid’s life, all seventeen years of it, had taken a bad turn somewhere in the past and it was about to get a lot worse. Go, Boots, go.

  NINE

  Teddy Winuk opened the door to the Poseidon Lounge on North 11th Street and took a tentative step inside. He drew a deep breath as he glanced around, then marched off to a stool in the shadows at the far end of the bar. Teddy wasn’t fooling himself. The Poseidon was home turf for the Pianetta crew and the few late-afternoon customers, including Mike Marciano, the Rock, were carefully evaluating his sudden appearance. Marciano was John Pianetta’s tax collector. Teddy found his presence at the Poseidon encouraging. Despite the tragedy, Johnny Piano and Company had opened for business.

  Al Zeno, the tavern’s ancient bartender, put down his racing form and made the long walk from the other end of the bar. He looked exactly like the ex-pug he was, with a flattened nose, thick scars along both brows and hearing aids in his ears. Not the disappearing type. Al’s hearing aids were large enough to serve as speakers for a rock band.

  ‘So, whatta ya want?’

  ‘Heineken.’

  ‘Tap?’

  ‘Bottle.’

  Teddy forced himself not to look around as Al shuffled off. He’d chosen the role of penitent, not to mention supplicant, and he intended to stay with the script no matter what the provocation. Not that he expected trouble. The expectations were all on the other side. The wops played a simple game: I can disrespect you any time I want, but you can never disrespect me. All Teddy had to do was observe this simple rule and he’d be fine. Or so he hoped.

  On reflection, while reviewing his best moves earlier in the day, Teddy had admitted that he, too, played the game. You couldn’t allow strivers on the lower rungs of the ladder to disrespect you, ever. But Teddy understood that respect was something you extorted from people who feared you. The guineas believed respect was due them.

  Teddy settled down to wait. The Poseidon was lit by track lights that reflected dimly in the walnut paneling, and by the lights behind the bar, a system designed to keep the booths along the wall in deep shadow, as the cork floor and acoustical drop ceiling were designed to muffle sound. At the other end of the bar, a small television was running a close-captioned account of yesterday’s races at Aqueduct.

  The wait turned out to be short. Within a few minutes, the Rock sidled up to him. Marciano didn’t sit. He stood behind and just off Teddy’s right shoulder.

  ‘You got a lotta nerve comin’ here. You got balls of steel, which I might just decide to remove with a fuckin’ blowtorch.’

  Teddy looked down at the bar. He kept his shoulders slumped and his voice low. ‘I heard what happened on the news,’ he said. ‘I don’t wanna add to your troubles.’

  ‘Add to my troubles?’

  ‘Yours and John’s. I’m here to pay what I owe ya. I woulda paid sooner, but I came up short last month on my collections.’

  The excuse was bullshit and both men knew it. Teddy was making a simple offer. If the Rock pretended that Teddy hadn’t defied him and his boss, Teddy would hand him an envelope with five thousand dollars inside. With the promise of more envelopes to come. That would take the heat off while he planned his next move.

  Mobsters being as greedy as private equity capitalists, the Rock didn’t ponder the offer. He confined his skepticism to a single hard look, then said, ‘In my office.’

  Teddy rose and followed Marciano across the bar and down a narrow hallway to a small office that reeked of stale tobacco. The room’s two windows were sealed with brick, the better to foil OCCB and FBI listening devices.

  Marciano dropped his bulk into a leather chair on the far side of a massive wooden desk. ‘Take a seat.’

  Teddy laid the envelope on the desk. ‘I did a couple of deals last week. If things work out, and I have no reason to think they won’t, I’ll do better next month.’

  ‘That’s good to hear.’ The Rock put on his reading glasses, then made a little production out of opening the envelope. He hefted it, sliced the top with a small pocket knife, separated the edges and peeked inside. Finally, he slid the envelope into the center drawer on his desk. He didn’t actually count the money, the assumption being that Teddy wouldn’t have the balls to shortchange Mike Marciano.


  ‘So, whatta ya doin’?’ Marciano said. ‘How come you been avoidin’ me?’

  The Rock’s short face was all jowls and furrows. When he raised his brow, as he did then, his skin settled into a series of parentheses on either side of his face. He’d been fearsome once, a thick-chested bull of a man. Not anymore. Like his boss, the Rock had softened, though not, of course, in his own estimation.

  Teddy dropped his eyes. ‘Ya know … I mean, I didn’t have the money and I didn’t know how you’d … how you’d react.’

  ‘C’mon, Teddy, don’t bullshit a bullshitter. We’re in this thing together. That’s the whole point. You come to me, say you can’t pay the tax, I’m gonna arrange for a loan.’

  A loan at ten percent interest per week.

  ‘Next time,’ Teddy said. ‘I’ll remember.’

  ‘Are you tellin’ me there’s gonna be a next time?’

  ‘No, no. We’re doin’ good now. There won’t be any more problems, I promise. Like I said, you got troubles of your own. I don’t want you to worry about me.’

  ‘Worried? Do I look like I’m worried?’ When Teddy failed to respond, the Rock transitioned to a lecture he routinely delivered to his hard-pressed debtors. ‘You gotta pay your taxes, just like you would if you were a square john and worked for a paycheck. In return, you get connected to us and nobody fucks with us. If somebody tries to muscle in, we take care of the problem. In other words, with us watchin’ your back, you could operate freely. You don’t have to be lookin’ over your shoulder every minute, wonderin’ who’s comin’ up behind ya.’

  Having heard this lecture before, Teddy let his mind drift. Not that he disputed the facts. Order was good. Turf battles were bad. Besides, Teddy himself was busy establishing the same order in a Queens neighborhood dominated by Indian immigrants and their children. Shurie, acting as their point man on his home turf, had approached the neighborhood’s small and mid-level dealers. He’d keep them supplied with whatever they sold, from weed to OxyContin, at competitive prices. Even better, he’d front the drugs for a short time. In return, he wanted only one thing. He wanted to become their exclusive supplier.

  Did they sense the trap? Probably not, any more than a bug on a leaf senses the oncoming tongue of a hungry frog. Then again, Shurie’s pitch wasn’t exactly an offer. The neighborhood was being organized, to everyone’s benefit. Go along or stop dealing. Never mind that in the long run you’d become an employee. Never mind that if you ran up a little debt, the Teddy Winuk crew would own your sorry ass. Just go along.

  ‘So, like I’m sayin’,’ the Rock continued, ‘everybody pays it up, including me. If there’s someone at the top, somebody who only collects, I ain’t met him and I don’t expect to. Me, I pay my taxes and I’m glad for the opportunity.’

  When Teddy finally looked up, he had to stifle a laugh. The Rock had put on his sincere face, mouth and jaw firm, chin dropped. Meanwhile, his dead black eyes might have been carved from obsidian.

  ‘Like I said, Mike, I know you got troubles enough. I don’t want to add to your problems.’

  ‘My problems?’

  ‘With Carlo gettin’ …’

  Marciano’s expression instantly hardened, a simple trick that Teddy knew well. Still, the dead eyes were a lot more convincing in this context.

  ‘What happened this morning, to Carlo, it didn’t have anything to do with you, right?’

  ‘Jesus, Mike, I …’

  ‘Forget what I said, kid.’ Marciano leaned back in his chair and spread his hands. ‘You’re not stupid enough to hit a made man like Carlo. But there’s a favor you could do for us. To, like, ease the family’s suffering.’

  ‘Name it.’

  ‘If you should hear anything, any loose talk about Carlo? Even if you think it’s bullshit, let us know. The family would owe you, Teddy, and the family always pays its debts.’

  ‘Yeah, no problem. I’ll keep my ears open.’

  ‘I appreciate that. And I’ll see you next week.’

  Teddy had the doorknob in his hand when the Rock dropped the hammer. Not real hard, not hard enough to hurt. The envelope, after all, was in the drawer. Just hard enough to remind.

  ‘I heard you bought Rafi Lieberman’s accounts. That true?’

  ‘Some of them, but yeah, I cut a deal with Rafi.’

  ‘That’s good, Teddy, and I can see that you’re goin’ places, which I got no objection to. But you shoulda told me up front. You wanna be trusted, you gotta trust. The way it is now, I feel I gotta watch you.’

  TEN

  ‘If you’re goin’ out, I’m gonna go with you,’ Tommy Frisk said. ‘It ain’t safe out there.’

  ‘No need, Tommy,’ Corry told her brother. ‘I’ll be all right.’

  ‘You don’t look all right.’

  And that was the truth. Corry Frisk had passed a good half-hour in front of the bathroom mirror, about as long as she could bear standing upright. Swollen to mere slits, her eyes and the right side of her face, when she started, were the color of an overripe plum. Maybe even a rotting plum.

  This was a deformity that a thick layer of concealer had failed to conceal. Her skin was now a shade of lavender she associated with the handkerchiefs her grandmother carried in a tiny, beaded purse.

  What she ought to do, being as she was safe here, was hole up until she halfway healed, then get her sorry ass out of town. Tommy had army buddies down in Florida. Buddies who’d put them up, no questions asked.

  That was the sane thing to do, a course of action Corry would definitely take if she lived in a sane world. If she wasn’t a heroin junkie, for example. Or if Tommy hadn’t been blown up one too many times in Afghanistan.

  Five to be exact, and he still had all his limbs, which was unnerving because a whole chunk of his mind had gone to hell and stayed there. By last count, there were eight guns in his one-bedroom apartment, including an M249 machine gun that had to be a major felony waiting to happen.

  On one level, Corry was sympathetic. Her own post-traumatic stress disorder was ongoing. She couldn’t stop replaying her … Corry couldn’t find an adequate word for what happened to her. Assaulted? Raped? No way. Not even close.

  Corry’s brain wouldn’t stop rerunning the whole chain of events, from when Carlo Pianetta pulled up on Navy Street to the bullet that blew Carlo’s brains all over the asphalt. Sometimes in sequence, sometimes a piece here, a piece there. Especially the moment when she knew, as she knew the sun would rise, that Carlo was going to beat her to death and dump her body in the river. In truth, she’d never been more certain of anything. Never.

  What actually happened didn’t matter. Every time her brain dragged her back to those minutes before the guy showed up, the certainty returned. She was going to die and there was nothing to be done about it.

  It was like they were already closing the lid on her coffin. Rest in peace, whore.

  The issue, the big issue, which Corry somehow had to face, was that she’d recognized Sir Galahad. She didn’t know his last name, but she’d seen him once or twice at a bar where she hooked before Stat put her on the street. His friends, one of whom was bargaining for her services, had called him Teddy.

  Corry had been a fool to get into the car with Carlo. He’d seemed straight enough, but she’d been warned about him, and not once, but twice. So, what could you say? Corry Frisk had fucked up again? Gee whizz. Somebody tweet Beyonce.

  It seemed, to Corry, that the stakes just kept getting higher. For the whole of her life, every minute, every second. And now she was playing for the biggest stakes of all. Corry had been watching the news all day, especially the part about Carlo with his pants down. Carlo was a big-time mobster – that’s what they were saying – and his even bigger-time father would be after a little payback. Make that a lot of payback.

  If John Pianetta put things together, he’d look to Corry for answers. Hell, he might even blame her. After all, if she wasn’t out there being raped and beaten half to death, Carlo would stil
l be alive.

  Big stakes, all right. A blunder here would be the last one she’d ever make. As if she wasn’t in enough pain.

  One step at a time, Corry told herself, first things first. She watched her brother jam a pistol behind the waistband of his jeans. Tommy was a handsome boy, his face bright and youthful, even after four deployments. But he was also a walking time bomb and ordinary people shied away from him. The long hair didn’t help, or the stringy beard, or the camo gear …

  Corry doubled over as a spasm tore at her gut. Even beyond the pain, she was sick and getting sicker and the only fix was a fix. The only fix.

  ‘You wanna protect me, little brother?’ she asked, knowing very well that what Tommy really wanted was a mission.

  ‘Whatta ya think, Corry? You’re my sister and somebody kicked your ass and you won’t tell me who …’

  Corry waved him off. ‘All right, all right, I hear ya. And I could use the protection, which I admit. But you’re gonna have to lose the hair, lose the beard and dress like a civilian. The kinda war we’re in, you don’t wear a uniform.’

  It was threatening rain when sister and brother stepped out of a thirty-unit apartment house on 90th Street in Jackson Heights. Corry wore one of Tommy’s ponchos, in basic camo, of course. The hood practically covered her face, especially if she kept her head down, which she would do anyway.

  Corry’s face throbbed with every step, but she never paused. The rhythm of her legs remained constant, if a bit ragged, as she covered the few blocks to the elevated subway stop at the junction of Elmhurst and Roosevelt Avenues. Tommy walked on the far side of the street, no doubt mentally rehearsing his quick-draw technique.

  Corry was on the way to meet a working girl named Shoona. If Shoona was true to her word, she’d be carrying twenty bags of heroin for which Corry would pay double the going price on the street. Corry didn’t begrudge Shoona the profit. But if Corry Frisk could add two and two, so could Shoona. Maybe she wasn’t bringing Corry’s medicine. Maybe she was bringing John Pianetta.