Bressio

by Richard Ben Sapir

  It was Bressio’s guess that L. Marvin had not only failed to improve his loft, but had probably run down its value. This suspicion was supported by the dust on the windows.

  The street door was scarred metal with an ominously new Medico lock, stupidly set into a rotting wooden frame. Bressio tested the doorknob. Unlocked. The dark hallway smelled of old coffee grounds. From the harsh sunlight behind him, Bressio made out rising steps. He climbed, and as the door behind him clicked shut, he found himself in darkness, a black oven smelling of rotted garbage.

  By the time Bressio reached the third floor, he was wet to his palms. He felt along the wall until he reached a door. Then he knocked.

  “Who is it?” came a voice that turned Bressio’s stomach to bubbling bile.

  “Al Bressio, numb-numb.”

  “Just a minute. Boy, am I glad it’s you, Al,” came the voice.

  “Is Mary Beth in there?” said Bressio through the door.

  “No. She went to see you this morning.”

  The door opened, and in the blinding white light, semi-nude, stood L. Marvin Fleish.

  “Ecch,” said Bressio.

  “Is that any way to say hello to an old friend?” L. Marvin was grinning. His strandy blond hair hung shoulder-length over his bare, pale shoulders. His yellow mustache shot from his upper lip like a brush run amok. He wore a loincloth and sandals. A small silver cocaine spoon dangled over his forty-year-old chest. All he needed to appear as a first offender in Arizona, thought Bressio, were needle marks on his arms.

  “I said, ‘Is that any way to say hello to an old friend?’”

  “I wouldn’t have you as a friend to cure cancer,” said Bressio.

  Fleish giggled. Bressio stepped past him into the loft. But for three soiled mattresses and litter the loft appeared unchanged from its original purpose. The windows were lathered with dust. Bressio looked back to the mattresses. Smoke rose from between two of them.

  “I’m glad it’s you, not Murray,” said Fleish, scurrying to the mattresses set against a once-white wall now covered with revolutionary slogans in Day-Glow paint. Bressio smelled pot. Bluish smoke rose from the mattresses.

  Fleish scooped up something at the base of the smoke, moving like a clumsy shortstop after a sizzling grounder. He almost stumbled into the wall but recovered his balance, laughing. In doing so, he kicked one of the mattresses, revealing a blue-black rifle barrel and the edge of a white shoulder strap on the wooden slat floor.

  “What are you doing with a gun, L. Marvin?” asked Bressio.

  Fleish grinned proudly. “It’s beautiful, Al. It gives me protection without injuring anyone. You know I wouldn’t leave a gun around where Bobbi could get it.”

  “Mary Beth’s kid lives here?” asked Bressio.

  “Sure. Where else?”

  “L. Marvin, that is a gun.”

  “No, man, it’s not. It’s a groove. It’s just some wood and metal. It’s a Sea Scout training rifle for kids. But it looks like a gun. Even you thought it was a gun. Dig this, man, I’m into the heads of the violent ones. To them it’s a gun. They’ll respect it as a gun. To me, it’s natural wood and metal from the earth. Good karma.”

  “Well, I’m certainly glad to see you’ve found another way to taunt death, L. Marvin.”

  “You think I ought to put it out of sight?”

  “No. Take it on a midnight stroll down Mulberry Street.”

  Fleish took a deep drag from something minuscule between his fingertips. Holding his breath he offered the thing in his hand to Bressio. It was a joint. Bressio refused it.

  “Don’t tell Murray about the pot, okay?” said Fleish in a burst of breath.

  Bressio shrugged.

  “Let me fill you in on the Arizona bust,” said Fleish as though he were going to reveal a wonderful sexual experience.

  “Where’s Mary Beth and her child?”

  “She’s split, man. Be thankful for small favors. What I have to go through with that broad.… She’s going to kill me with that bail money she laid out yet. Look. Look.”

  Fleish pointed to a faint reddish blotch on his stomach. Bressio squinted attempting to make it out.

  “I’m breaking out. Emotionally I cannot stand the woman and what she puts me through for a little bail money and the cost of your services.”

  “Go back to your wife.”

  “Harriet is worse.”

  “What’s all this nonsense I hear about the loft downstairs?”

  “A drag, man. Two squares.”

  “One of them’s dead, and the other keeps popping up smiling at Mary Beth, I hear.”

  “Don’t tell me your head is into Mary Beth’s shit?”

  “Your landlady was killed early this morning, wasn’t she?”

  Fleish took another deep drag on his fingertips. “Live chemically,” he said.

  “What about the landlady?”

  “A downer. I was asleep. I heard Mary Beth yelling. I went to help. Mary Beth wouldn’t stop yelling. She knows about the fucking rash, but she kept on yelling. I think she yelled just because of the rash, and I went downstairs and the landlady was at the bottom of the second floor. She was cold. She had never lived, man. I mean, she was never alive. You know, a walking zombie. A stiff. She was always after Mary Beth for the rent.”

  “How’d she fall?”

  “Broken step. An accident. This place is a mess. She collected the rent right on the button, but never got around to fixing anything. Justice. It all comes back to you, and she got hers. I bet it was that fucking broken step she wouldn’t fix and she didn’t see it because of the lights she didn’t have in here. The bitch. Look at this place. It’s a garbage dump, and I won’t put my love and sweat into it to make her rich—or her estate, that gross stupidity of capitalism.”

  Bressio watched as. Fleish took a burning ash into his mouth.

  “Waste not, want not,” said Fleish.

  “Anything special about the downstairs loft?”

  “Same as this. No landlady repairs.” Fleish shook his head emphatically.

  “All right,” said Bressio. “This is what you’re going to do—”

  “You’re going to help me, right?” said Fleish.

  “I want you to get rid of any smack you have around. Let me see you do it.”

  “I don’t deal that heavy shit, man.”

  “L. Marvin, you can bluff your wife, your mistress, Dawson, my secretary, but, L. Marvin, you cannot bluff me.”

  “I don’t deal horse, man.”

  “Forget it, rot in Arizona.”

  “I don’t deal harm, man. I don’t.”

  Bressio turned to the door and felt Fleish’s hand gloriously and exoneratingly grab his arm. A legal assault. Bressio whirled and defended himself with two sharp open-handed smacks at Fleish’s face. Fleish blinked. His cheeks flushed red.

  “Tell Mary Beth to phone me or my secretary if you see her. I have a nice clean place for her and Bobbi to live. I don’t want her or that kid spending another night here. She’s going to stay with Miss Duffy.”

  “With Clarissa,” said Fleish, and Bressio could have sworn he saw a big leering grin on that red-cheeked face. “She’s going to stay with Clarissa?”

  “Yes. She’s my client, not you. Tell her I want her out of this place.”

  “That’ll be nice. I hate living in this depressing atmosphere.”

  “You’re not going, L. Marvin.”

  “I can help Mary Beth move. Who knows what Clarissa will want in her bedroom?” said Fleish, sharing a lewd wink.

  Bressio reminded himself he had slapped L. Marvin twice already and his hand did sting. Then he reminded Fleish. “I did slap you in the face, right?”

  “You didn’t mean it, Al. You’ve got problems. I understand that. You didn’t mean it.”

  “I knew I hit you,” said Bressio. “That’s right, I did.”

  And so disturbed by Fleish was he that when he left the loft he did not bother to check the stairwell
or the downstairs loft or the candy store around the corner—a magnet for information—but just wandered out into the wet clammy heat, feeling his right hand sting.

  By the time the sting was gone, Bressio had made two phone calls from a telephone booth. With any luck the calls could start the machinery moving that would clear up his obligations to Dawson within two days.

  The first was to a headquarters lieutenant. Bressio wanted a rundown on anything to do with 285 Pren—specifically, did the police make any sort of investigation into a found gun, and what was the finding on a landlady’s death that morning?

  The lieutenant assured Bressio he would deliver the report personally, which meant he wanted cash on delivery.

  Bressio’s second phone call called for more tact and diplomacy. An old woman answered, speaking only Italian. Bressio asked about her health, her grandchildren, her other relatives. After a formal two minutes of small talk she put on her husband. In the same tongue, Bressio requested a luncheon meeting. The man said he would be honored to see his friend again.

  For their 2:35 P.M. lunch, they met at Angelo’s, a fine Italian restaurant near Fermio’s and down the street from a tourist trap made famous by a recent shooting. It was generally considered that the victim lacked class eating there in the first place, recalling an old Sicilian saying about dying the way one lived. If the restaurant were respected, the contract would not have been filled there.

  Angelo’s had respect. As he walked past storefront athletic clubs bordering the street, Bressio received acknowledging nods from men lounging in front. When he entered Angelo’s he found his guest waiting in the back room. The guest was a dark wizened man, in a pale-yellow suit with a stiff white shirt that lacked a tie but was buttoned to the neck.

  Bressio ordered a heaping plate of scungili with a hearty side of lasagne. His guest had a bowl of vegetable soup, explaining his liver was bothering him. Bressio made a formal statement about the importance of one’s liver and ordered a sweet red wine which ones liver ailments called for.

  After his guest had begun his soup, Bressio noted there were matters concerning Bressio’s business. He repeated twice that this was business and not a personal affair in which one might lose his head or take random offense. He also made it clear there was not a great deal of money involved, and that defined more sharply the parameters of Bressio’s interests.

  “There is something that might be of interest to me whereby I can turn a little profit,” Bressio said. He watched the dark-brown eyes of his guest for any indication as to whether he was approaching matters that someone else might have a vested interest in. “It concerns a woman, Miss Terry Leacock.”

  The eyes remained warm. The guest nodded.

  “She had an unfortunate accident.”

  Still warm.

  “She is of no personal interest to me. There is no vendetta involved. Her accident was a circumstance of business, I believe, not connected with me. Her affairs touch mine only tangentially.”

  A narrowing of the eyes. Confusion.

  “In some ways not very important to me she may have touched the life of one of my clients, from whom I am making a profit.”

  Warm.

  “It may be the woman offended someone for a cause outside what I am concerned with. It is of business interest to know what injustice or transgression prompted her accident. It is of no concern of mine who she offended. I do not wish to know his name. Just why. I have no personal interest in the woman. Naturally these facts will require effort to gather. Perhaps there will be some risk involved to the person whose name or business is no concern of mine who amended this transgression. I naturally would not expect this service for nothing. I would be most happy to share a portion of this small profit I am making.”

  With great courtesy Bressio offered a folded fresh handkerchief across the table. It contained three hundred dollars cash. This was the retainer for asking. His guest would return with either a warning that the matter should not concern Bressio or he would return with the information and a higher bill.

  The dinner guest thought deeply a moment and put the envelope in the interior pocket of his jacket. “I have heard of this woman who had the accident,” he said in Italian. “I have read the papers. It was not the sort of situation that was a warning or an outgrowth of troubles. It is not the sort of thing that is generally known, that is.”

  Bressio nodded.

  “You are a man whose word is good, so it should be easier to ask, other parties not suspecting some foolishness of revenge and the like. I will see what I can do. You have my word.”

  Bressio assured his guest that he had faith in him and the guest noted that the young did not appreciate their livers. He was referring to Bressio, who was under fifty. Bressio accepted the advice with respectful attentiveness.

  The lunch concluded, Bressio phoned Dawson from another outside pay phone. It smelled of urine. Bressio was put right through two secretaries.

  “Whadya think, Al? Something to it, right?”

  “Possibly. I doubt it. As I suspected, some of the information is going to be expensive. It was not an advertised affair.”

  “How expensive?”

  “It could run three, four, maybe five grand.”

  “That’s a lot of money, Al. That’s a hell of a lot of money on top of what we paid you. This is a simple little grass bust in Arizona.”

  “You seem to be forgetting some incidentals which I don’t want to go into over your line. I got one whiff of L. Marvin today and I want this thing cleared up fast even more than you do.”

  “I don’t know if Mary Beth can get that kind of money, Al.”

  “If you’re willing to go down to a precinct house for her, I have a sneaking suspicion that she can get loads and loads and loads of money.”

  “Oh, you know, then. I thought for a moment at my office yesterday you didn’t.”

  “Know what?”

  “You don’t know then. You of all people, always talking about him like he was some kind of a saint.”

  “Oh, no,” said Bressio and he leaned his head against the glass and wire mesh of the phone booth, not caring that it was greasy to the touch.

  “Sure. William James Cutler is her daddy. Tight-fisted bastard, too.”

  “Hold on, Murray. You don’t have any right to …” Bressio did not finish his sentence. Dawson was off the line and a secretary was explaining that Dawson would be back to Bressio in a moment. Bressio put in two more dimes before Dawson came back on the line.

  “It’s all set, Al. Cutler’s going to fork over some more cash. You’ve got to pick it up yourself. He’s got an estate in Old Lyme, Connecticut.

  “Wait, Murray. Maybe I can swing the payment out of the fee you paid me.”

  “Nonsense. He’s got plenty of money. You always said you wanted to talk law with William James Cutler. Now’s your chance.”

  “Murray. You don’t know what you’re doing to me. I don’t want to go to his place like this, like a hustler.”

  “He’s probably the biggest hustler you’re ever going to meet. He makes us look like tadpoles in a swamp. Come on, Al, he puts on his pants one leg at a time like you and I do.”

  “You had no right, Murray. You had no right.”

  “Hey, I thought you knew. I’m sorry, okay? If I weren’t strapped for cash, I’d pick up the tab myself. I’m sorry. But it’s no big thing, really.”

  “You had no right, Murray. You don’t know what you did,” said Bressio and hung up the receiver and waited a few moments in the stinking booth before he walked out into the stinking street.

  VI

  Bressio stopped several times on the way to Old Lyme, Connecticut, for coffee that ended up carefully balanced on the floor of the car, cheese and crackers that got stuffed in the glove compartment, and trips to the lavatory, where he stood useless before the urinals. He also got gas for the rented car.

  “Fifty cents,” said one attendant after Bressio had ordered him to fill it up. When he
crossed the New York State-Connecticut line, he put the .38 police special in the glove compartment, since his license to carry was not valid out of the state. Naturally this called for pulling off to the side of the road and checking the glove compartment lock several times.

  He thought of putting his shoulder holster in there also, but he would have needed to remove his jacket to unstrap the thing, and besides, who was he kidding? He was going to shake down William James Cutler, and he might as well have gone in with a lead pipe. That’s how he was going to meet privately with William James Cutler, whom he had last seen that hot spring day the last time Bressio had walked on the grounds of Fordham University in the Bronx.

  Bressio had worn a black gown and mortarboard with the tassel at ready to be swung over the doctoral corner. He had failed the bar after graduation from law school and had gone on to get his doctorate in law and had just failed the bar again when his doctoral thesis was accepted with the comment “brilliant.” So there he was at the last commencement for the last degree he could get in law without the standard license to practice it, and William James Cutler was one of the three speakers receiving honorary degrees.

  Bressio’s mother was in the audience, scowling at anyone who threatened to encroach on her seat and trying to catch Bressio’s eye so she could signal her contempt for the whole ceremony.

  Cutler, a former Under Secretary of State, a Princeton graduate but a school benefactor and a leading Washington lawyer, spoke of integrity and the law and civilization. He said that as scientists discovered animals that could use tools, animals that could laugh, and animals that appeared capable of love, their definition of man had to retreat from those previous boundaries. He offered one boundary which truly made man distinct, and that was the law. He said that he who served the law with integrity served the humaneness of man. Bressio was not sure, but he thought he might have seen his mother make an obscene gesture at that statement.

  Bressio received his scroll of paper, flipped his tassel and later took his mother to a restaurant on the Grand Concourse. At that time he could not really afford it. “Eat, Ma,” he said. “I got money.”