“That right?” Marek responded uneasily. He didn’t really know how friendly he should be under these circumstances. For instance, was Powell a servant? Or an executive? His suit, at least a size too small, had discount written all over it and his manner reeked of neighborhood bully. On the other hand, Powell’s sapphire pinky ring was easily worth a thousand dollars and he seemed much too confident to be a servant. Marek finally decided on a test. “I suppose you know my name,” he said.
“Absolutely. Do you mind if I call ya Marek? I ain’t used to no formality.”
“Sure, Mike. Whatever you want.” He arranged his mouth into a smile, but was troubled by this dope dealer knowing of his association with Blanks. Presumably, Powell had no inkling of Marek’s actual business with his boss; he almost certainly believed Marek to be another dealer. If Powell was ever arrested and had to give up a name or two…Najowski made a firm decision to arrange his affairs so that he could desert his Brooklyn Heights apartment on a minute’s notice.
“Marty said I should tell ya that he can’t meet you at his apartment. A problem came up and he’s gonna meet ya at his office.”
“And where would that be?” Marek asked.
“Uptown. At 133rd Street off Madison Avenue. But don’t worry, ’cause I’ll be with you all the way and I guarantee there won’t be no problems.” He turned and tried to grin reassuringly.
“We’re not going to a place where drugs are sold, are we? I don’t think I’d like that.”
“Sold?” Powell shook his head decisively. “We don’t sell no drugs out of Marty’s office. Never. But if ya wanna postpone or somethin’, I could take ya back to ya house. Marty says I should do whatever ya say. I’m at ya disposal. Only do me a favor and don’t dispose of me. Get it?”
Marek, watching the big man intently, came to the obvious conclusion that his chauffeur was a moron. Probably an enforcer of some sort with pure muscle instead of brains between his ears. That was the trouble with taking a criminal as a partner—they solved every problem by killing it. How could he trust a fool like Mike Powell to keep him safe? 133rd Street was in the heart of Harlem. It was the absolute bottom of the heap, a place where he never went, with or without a bodyguard.
“What time will Martin be free?” Marek asked. “Maybe we can meet later in the evening.”
“That I don’t know. All he said was I should bring you up to him if you wanted to come.”
“Can I call him?”
“He don’t give that number out. Even I don’t got it.”
“Shit.” He desperately wanted to turn around and go home, but the meeting was really urgent. He’d been procrastinating for several days, hoping their problems would disappear, but conditions had grown steadily worse. Now a city councilman was sticking his nose in, probably sniffing around for the publicity—a liberal with a longtime reputation for representing the little guy. Bolt Realty was going to have to convince him, and everybody else, that it was committed to preserving the tenants’ “quality of life.” Of course, he could always call the lawyer and make the necessary adjustments without conferring with Blanks. Instructing Holtz was his job, and Holtz wouldn’t hesitate to put his orders into effect. But Marek felt it was important to preserve the illusion of partnership. And who knew how Blanks would react if he felt Marek was cutting him out?
“All right,” he said finally. “Let’s go visit the underclass.”
In the course of his real estate life, Marek had looked at a number of slum buildings, marginal tenements that could be gotten for next to nothing and kept profitable by withholding basic services whenever possible, but he’d never bitten. The simple truth was that he didn’t want to deal with blacks. Even when you managed to show a small profit, they filled your life with misery. Still, despite the simple fact that his financial investments had gone a different way, he’d been in all the big slums: Bed Stuy, Brownsville, Hunts Point, Mott Haven. He’d seen the devastation firsthand, but he’d never seen a series of buildings as close to collapse as the three abandoned tenements that greeted him on 133rd Street. The facades had broken away on all three and big chunks of stone had fallen to the sidewalk. The easternmost building was actually leaning away from the building in the center (Marek could almost see it swaying), while every apartment in the building on the west bore the scars of a serious fire.
“That’s where we’re going,” Mike Powell said casually, indicating the fire-damaged tenement. “That’s where Marty’s office is, but we gotta go in through here.” He pointed to the eastern building, the one that leaned out into space, walking casually toward the door (or where the door should have been) as if he was out for a Sunday stroll. When Najowski failed to move, Powell turned and smiled. “C’mon. It ain’t that bad.”
Marek followed without a word. He was beginning to feel that the whole situation was designed to test him in some way. Or perhaps it was a kind of insult. In any event, he concluded, his resolve hardening, it was imperative that he find out the reason for the show. He’d invested two million dollars in this project and if his partner was insane, he wanted to know it.
They walked through the empty doorway, pausing in the lobby to let their eyes adjust to the darkness. The building stank of dust and mold, but lacked the urine and garbage smells that usually announce the presence of squatters or junkies. The banister for the stairway to the second floor lay in the first floor hallway. It could only have been removed deliberately.
“Ya wanna be careful here,” Powell announced casually, leading Marek through the lobby and up the stairs.
The second floor landing was even darker than the lobby with only a faint gray light drifting in from the streetlamp. Marek, struggling to see where he was putting his feet, was startled to hear Powell offer a greeting. “Hey, boys. How’s it hangin?”
Peering along the hallway, Marek could just make out two men, both carrying military-style rifles, seated on wooden chairs. The guards were in deep shadow and they didn’t move a muscle, didn’t crack a smile, or return Mike Powell’s greeting. Their lack of reaction meant they knew it was Powell coming up the stairs and Marek realized there had to be a spotter (or spotters) hidden in one or more of the rooms. He had entered a paramilitary complex.
There were sentries on every floor, but Powell ignored them as he led Marek directly to the roof, then across to the center building and down two flights of stairs before entering one of the apartments. Marek, following, was caught off guard by the activity inside. From the street, the tenement had appeared to be deserted, but the interior of this apartment was brightly lit. Someone had knocked down the wall between the living room and the kitchen and hooked up another stove to the single gas line. Every burner was lit and the apartment was unbearably hot. Glass bottles, half-filled with a thick bubbling white paste, sat on the flaming burners. The crackling sound of boiling cocaine was clear even over the hiss of the gas. As Marek stared in amazement, realizing that he was in a crack factory, a worker snatched up one of the bottles and ran to a sink full of water, where he quickly immersed it. The water sizzled against the glass, sending up a cloud of steam.
“Actually,” Mike Powell said, “this is pretty small-time with us. We supply some kids in the projects, but Marty wants to dump the crack business. He thinks we should stick to powder. Wholesale it and let someone else deal with the bullshit.” He indicated the stoves and the workers who moved around them, checking the paste. “Marty says it takes up too much room and there’s too many people involved.”
“Take my word for it,” Marek replied, “it’s not a problem that interests me. Why don’t we find Blanks and get this game over with?” He was furious, so furious he was having trouble controlling it. For Blanks to bring him here, to the site of an enormous potential bust, could only be understood as contempt or madness. Somehow, he didn’t think he’d be able to play the jolly ethnic tonight.
“Whatever you say.” Powell turned on his heel and walked, Najowski following behind, to the far wall of an adjoining bedro
om. He pulled back a dirty gray blanket to reveal a hole cut through the wall into the adjoining building, then waited for Marek to go through, before dropping the blanket to cover the hole and walking back into the kitchen.
The first thing Marek Najowski saw as he entered Marty Blanks’ office was money. Stacks of it piled on a table in the center of the room. Though Marek was used to dealing in large sums, he’d never seen this much cash except on television. He was beginning to feel like he was in the middle of a movie; everything was slightly off-center, slightly out of control.
“There’s about five hundred large there,” Blanks announced. “Too many small bills, though. That’s how come it seems like so much more.”
Najowski looked at Blanks for the first time. He was sitting at a desk in a corner, smiling broadly. A tall black man sat next to him on the edge of the desk. He was smiling, too.
“Ain’t this place a bitch, Marek?” Blanks said. “The way you came in is the only way in. Every other entrance is bricked up by the city. But there’s three ways out. Three tunnels. The pigs’d have to send a fucking army to get up them stairs. By the time they got here, I’d be long gone.” He stopped for a moment, still smiling. Waiting for a reply, but not surprised when Marek remained silent. “By the way, I want you to meet my partner, Muhammad Latif. He’s a black Moslem, but not a Black Muslim, if you take my meaning. We met up in Attica. Watched each others backs for a couple of years, then decided to pool our connections. You know how it is, right? I mean after ya go through somethin’ like that, ya just make natural partners.” Blanks’ grin broadened. “Am I right, or what?”
“How’s it movin’?” Latif asked by way of a greeting.
“Fine,” Najowski replied. The single word hung painfully in the air. Marek, who could think of nothing except the insult being paid to him, noted Blanks’ continued smile. He tried to smile himself, struggling with it at first, but eventually grinning his broadest grin. No sense in showing his anger here. Much better to let the asshole have his triumph. Let the asshole think he was on top of it.
“Give us some privacy, Muhammad,” Blanks said. “Me and Marek are gonna talk business.”
“No problem, bro. I’ll see you tomorrow. So long, Marek. It was a pleasure to meet you.”
Marek said nothing, waiting patiently for the black man to leave the apartment. “You shouldn’t have brought me here,” he said as soon as they were alone.
“It was an emergency,” Blanks explained. “We got a runaway posse in the North Harlem Houses. Think they’re too tough to pay for their crack. If they get by with that bullshit, we gotta fight a war with every fuckin’ crew in Harlem. What we’re tryin’ to decide is if we wanna dump the crack business altogether. Just walk away and forget about it. Most of our business is in Hell’s Kitchen, anyway. Maybe we oughta chill a few of the kids who fucked us and get out.” He stopped suddenly, breaking into laughter. “It seems like now that I’m a man of property, I don’t have the heart for a battle no more.”
“Well, before you retire,” Najowski said, “you better take another look at your property. We got a lot of problems. The cops are making noises about HPD taking the building away from us. And there’s a councilman named Connely sniffing around for potential publicity. The fire hurt us bad. It was supposed to be a warning, but it made the old Jew into a martyr. I thought only Christians were martyrs, but now we got the first Jew martyr. The first two Jew martyrs. The old man is a martyr, too.”
“I don’t see what’s the big deal,” Blanks replied calmly. “The pigs can’t move against the building until they make some arrests and, so far, they ain’t busted nobody. Besides which, all the dealers are squatters. We didn’t actually rent them any apartments, so I don’t see how we can be held responsible.”
“You don’t understand New York real estate any more than I understand the economics of cocaine. If Councilman Connely gets HPD to attempt a seizure, we’ll be tied up for years. Between the three properties, we’ve already got fifty units empty. That’s a potential five million dollars, even if we never sold another apartment. We’d have our money back and we’d still own the rest of the apartments, a situation which I define as a sure winner. I don’t see any reason to risk everything. All we gotta do is cooperate for a month or so. Maybe do some repairs. Try to force the squatters out, but fail, because of the Legal Aid bitch. The trick is to make it look good. To make us appear to be innocent until the papers and the cameras forget all about us. Until we’re yesterday’s news.”
“Ya know somethin’, Marek, I think ya lost ya nerve. The way I see it, we only got one real problem and that problem’s got a name: Stanley Moodrow. That’s the ex-cop who’s runnin’ around with the Legal Aid lawyer. He used to be a detective on the Lower East Side, which is the only reason I didn’t set up there. I know this pig real good, Marek. He’s fuckin’ crazy. He never gives up. Never. I guarantee right this fuckin’ minute he’s lookin’ for the one who made that fire. If we don’t do somethin’ about him, he’s gonna come knockin’ on my door.”
“How can he find you?” Marek asked incredulously. He was afraid of real things, of city agencies and courtrooms. Not a retired flatfoot.
“He’s gonna take some of the assholes we got livin’ in them apartments and smack their heads until they say who put them in there. Then he’s gonna go to the people they name and do the same thing until he finally gets to me.” Blanks shook his head decisively. “I’m not gonna wait around until he blows me away, man. I’m gonna have his ass by the end of the week. Once he goes, the whole Jackson Heights deal is gonna fall into our laps.”
Marek walked over to the pile of money and began to heft the stacks of bills. He felt perfectly calm now. A thought floating just beyond his consciousness suddenly crystallized: he had the buildings and the tenants were on the run. What did he need Blanks for? “Let me see if I have this right, Martin,” he said finally. “You have a million dollars invested in real estate. In the long run, you stand to make ten million. You could, without doing anything else, make two or three million right now. But you’re willing to risk that in order to eliminate a retired cop from the Lower East Side because he might come looking for you ten years from now. You want to murder a retired cop.”
Blanks shrugged. “You wanna make it sound crazy, go ahead. But you don’t know shit about cops, Marek. In your life, cops are people to ask directions from. I’m tellin’ ya there’s pigs who take their shit personally. I met guys in the joint who got busted two years after they fucked up because some pig wouldn’t quit.”
“And if I vote against it, partner?” Marek was surprised to find his voice so calm.
“He’s goin’, Marek.” Blanks didn’t even bother to look up. “See, there’s somethin’ else you didn’t tell me about. You didn’t tell me about the empty apartments. You didn’t say that we can’t have more than ten percent vacancies if we wanna sell the apartments. Sometimes I don’t think you wanna tell me what the fuck is goin’ on.”
“That’s nothing,” Marek fumed. “Those apartments have to be empty for a year before they count as being warehoused. Plus I know a dozen brokers who specialize in putting buyers into empty apartments. Plus if we do major renovations, we can get a waiver.” He stopped to draw a deep breath. “Try to hear what I’m saying, Marty. If we don’t ease up for a month or so, this whole deal’s gonna blow wide open. We’ll have the cops all over us. I can almost always deal with HPD bureaucrats. I give them money and they look the other way. But not if I’m a celebrity. Then everybody wants to get a piece of your ass. Every judge, every cop, every inspector, every reporter. You want to see a headline: Who Is Bolt Realty?”
Blanks finally raised his eyes to meet his partner’s gaze. He looked surprised, perhaps annoyed. “Forget about it, Marek. Two…three days the most. Moodrow’s gone. And it’s all because you were right. When you told me this was my big chance and I should take it? You were a hundred percent right, Marek. Maybe you think I don’t know what happens the next t
ime I take a fall, but I do. This is my only chance, motherfucker, and I ain’t gonna play it like a pussy.”
TWENTY-FOUR
April 20
A CARESSINGLY WARM FRIDAY morning, the kind of a spring day that destroys the will to work. A morning when the bright yellow forsythia growing freely along the Grand Central Parkway beckons to the commuters crawling past LaGuardia Airport, reminding them of other times. Reminding them of young love and long-forgotten resolutions to find a different way. Of dreamers crushed by the relentless grind of the city as surely as Sylvia Kaufman was crushed by the greedy dreams of Marek Najowski and Martin Blanks.
Betty Haluka, driving out to the 115th Precinct with Stanley Moodrow, thought of her aunt even while she noted the annual miracle. The yellow flowers grew so thickly it seemed as if an artist, in a sardonic moment, had decided to paste a swatch of bright yellow over a field of soot and litter. The forsythia, she knew, grew completely wild, like the laurel thickets in southern mountains, though on a much smaller scale. Of course, one expected beauty in the wild mountains of West Virginia. The sudden, brief appearance of the forsythia (to be completely forgotten with the onset of the broiling summer) always came as a surprise, even to veteran New Yorkers who’d been plying the same commuter routes for decades. A surprise, an intrusion, a silent, uneasy memory.
“What are they called again?” Betty asked. “The yellow flowers? All I can remember is that it’s a word that begins with ‘f’ and I could never pronounce it.”
Moodrow stirred alongside her. “I been thinking the same thing. Funny, I never saw this before. Whatever it is, there’s an awful lot of it. You think someone planted it?”
“I don’t know.” She paused as a giant Pan Am jet crossed the parkway a hundred feet above them. So loud it seemed to shake the world. “Forthithitha,” she said after the plane had safely dropped onto the La Guardia runway a quarter mile to the east. “Damn! I can’t say it. I could never say that word. Fasythitha.”
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