Bressio

by Richard Ben Sapir

  “You got money,” said his mother contemptuously. “You got paper. You could put it ina the batharoom, it belongsa there. You got money, you got ugatz.”

  “Ma. Willya please.”

  “Big shot. Professore. Doctor. Dr. Gavone. Pee Haich anda Dee Gavone.”

  “Ma, c’mon. I’ll make money, but I’ll do it my way.”

  “Your way. Pretty words. You alwaysa lika da pretty words. You thinka that bastid Cutler made his money with his words?”

  “C’mon, Ma. Willya?”

  “Them bastids bleed thousands. Millions. And then they gotta their money and they stand upa on thata stupid platform and say pretty words and a gavone like you believes them and don’ta take whatsa his. Take, Alphonse, take. That’sa what they do. You want a lawyer? Buya youself a Jew. They good at that. That’s their business. Don Carmine’sa gotta them unda his rugsa and cupboards.”

  “Ma, I’m not going to work for him.”

  “Who paida for the roofa ova you heada, and da fooda in you mouth, and that fancy school with everyone looking downa they noses at you.”

  “You want me to end up like Papa, Ma?”

  “You fatha was a good man. He had belly. He hada respect. What you got. A pieca paper. Big shot. Professore withouta piece of veal in you mouth.”

  “Papa was found in the trunk of a car parked off the Belt Parkway when the car started smelling too much, Ma.”

  “Witha respect. Ten blocks of cars wenta to the cemetery. Don Carmine himself paida his respects. You fatha had respect. He was a man.”

  “He went with his head blown off by a shotgun, and if Fermio’s hadn’t used a ton of wax and a gallon of perfume we would have had to put him away in a rubber bag. His best friend fingered him, Ma.”

  “Don Carmine avenged that.”

  “So fucking what. Another goddamned animal in a goddamned jungle. I don’t want to be an animal. Weren’t you listening to what that man said at commencement?”

  Across the table Theresa Bressio slapped her son for besmirching the names of Don Carmine and God. Bressio felt the sting of the slap and felt the other people in the restaurant looking at him. He quietly ate his meal. Before he paid the check, he told his mother that some day he would sit in counsel with men like William James Cutler.

  She responded in Italian that indeed her son may be at the same table with men like Cutler—with a napkin over his arm.

  “Butlers don’t carry napkins over their arms, Ma,” Bressio answered in a petty observation reminding his mother that he was entering a world strange to her.

  He offered her cab money home; she took it and promptly entered the IND subway.

  Bressio, left without even fifteen cents for the subway, walked to his one-room apartment. He knew that in his mother’s eyes he was committing two grave sins. One, not using his talents in the service of Don Carmine for which he would be well paid, and two, not living at home with his mother until a proper marriage could be arranged, whereby he would be passed on to another Italian woman.

  Theresa died two years later of a heart attack from screaming at someone whose passing car had splattered her with winter slush. At her funeral, Don Carmine himself attended, and she was given all the respect she could have wanted right to Holy Name Cemetery, where she was interred next to Bressio’s father.

  “A good woman,” Don Carmine had said.

  “Yes, a good woman,” Bressio responded with the courtliness and formality he had always used with men like Don Carmine.

  “And how is business, Alphonse?”

  “Business is fine, Don Carmine,” said Bressio and wondered whether under the ground Fermio’s wax was the only thing that remained of his father.

  He thought of his father and his mother and Don Carmine and his own young life as he entered the quiet stateliness of Old Lyme, and believed at last that he would never sit in counsel with men like William James Cutler but would always be what he had always been. There was no need to take off the holster. Al Bressio knew who he was and what he did for a living, and he would never pass the bar. He was the son of Salvatore Bressio, and brains and knowledge could not overcome it. He wasn’t meant to pass it. He had always known that. Even before the first failure, he knew that.

  But only in the bitter light of this Connecticut summer evening did he realize he had known it all along. “Thank you, L. Marvin,” Bressio said in a rage so deep it sounded like a sob.

  The Cutler estate had the grace of full green trees set with an artist’s symmetry around immaculate lawns the size of meadows. The house was relatively small for the knoll it occupied, a white colonial house with green shutters and a small stone garage set off to the side. Bressio smelled the mild sweetness of the fresh-cut grass and lingered over the gravel on the driveway. But as he had to, he eventually reached the door, and since he did not feel like staring at the washed white paint, he rang the buzzer. At least he hadn’t ended up in the trunk of a car on the Belt Parkway. Yet.

  An elderly man with close-cropped white hair and a humble mien to the angle of his head answered the door. He wore a Hawaiian shirt and green Bermuda shorts. What a strange way for a butler to dress, thought Bressio.

  “I’ve come to see William James Cutler,” said Bressio.

  “You’re Al Bressio?”

  “Yes.”

  “Come into my study. I’m William James Cutler.”

  The old man did not offer a hand. He straightened his head, and with a surprising firmness walked coldly into the house, leaving the door open behind him. Bressio shut it. How else should a man react to what is moral if not legal blackmail, he thought.

  The Cutler who had appeared at the graduation had seemed taller and stronger, and the lines in his face were lines of strength. This man’s face had lines of weariness as though he were waiting to die.

  Cutler preceded Bressio into a room that looked as though it had been deep-polished twice a day for six hundred years. Of wood it was, dark and rich and shining with shelves to the ceiling beamed over by what Bressio judged to be oak. The windows were of lead glass with diamond-shaped striping. King James I of England would have been at home in this room.

  “Will you sit down, please, Mr. Bressio. Am I pronouncing it correctly, Bressio?”

  Bressio nodded and sat down in a chair he presumed was more suitable for a thane of Runnymede. Cutler used a high-back dark wodden chair behind a modest but solid dark-wood desk. The chair looked like a throne. Bressio found out immediately that William James Cutler was not a weak old man.

  “I have spoken to Mr. Dawson, who represents a Mr. Fleish in a criminal matter and my daughter in a child-custody arrangement also concerning Mr. Fleish.”

  Well, that introduced it nicely. With a howitzer. Dawson was vulnerable because he represented two clients with possible conflicting interests. It had been a foolish thing for Dawson to do, but L. Marvin Fleish seemed to generate that sort of inexcusable and careless action.

  “I believe another lawyer is representing Mr. Fleish in the custody matter,” Bressio lied. By the time the papers were signed, Dawson or his secretary would get another lawyer in there somewhere.

  “No doubt,” said Cutler. “Mr. Dawson told me that my daughter may be in some serious trouble and that you are trying to unravel it. Is that true?”

  Bressio leaned forward in a barely perceptible nod.

  “He asked that I finance your further investigation. Mr. Bressio, have I been lured into paying for Marvin Fleish’s legal fees in some manner?”

  “Yes,” said Bressio, surprising himself with the quickness of his honesty.

  There was ringing silence. Bressio noticed Cutler’s eyes for the first time and also realized he had been avoiding them before. They were sharp blue like a glacier pond.

  “Thank you,” Cutler said. “Well, I guess I have then. Perhaps, sir, you are one of those who consider Mr. Fleish amusing. But I, sir, remember my little girl. I remember a young, healthy, inquisitive, attractive woman who went to New York City t
o become an artist. She took my heart with her, sir. I did not stop her because you do not tether a young sapling when it reaches for the sky. You let it rise to where the wind can whip and lightning can strike, but where also are the sun and the breeze and the fresher air. When my daughter met Mr. Fleish, it was as though he poisoned the very roots. She was not always as she is now. Nor do I think she brought this sickness from her youth, although this flies in the face of what we know about psychology.

  “I believe, sir, what she brought to people like Fleish was an openness. That openness proved tragic. Before this, I had believed that an open, inquisitive mind could deal with anything. I do not believe that now. I believe this chemical culture can destroy any human being. But I am of another age and another culture that seems as outmoded and useless today as the rack. Although I do appreciate some of the good new things, chemicals are not one of them nor is the irresponsibility of Mr. Fleish and his ilk.”

  Cutler had spoken with awesome control for the depth of his grief and Bressio could see the struggle for that control in the man before him. He watched Cutler withdraw a leather-bound book in which were loose-leaf pages of checks and with an ink pen first fill in the bookkeeping on the left and then the check. He tore it briskly out of the book and handed it to Bressio, who folded it and put it in his jacket pocket. The check was for $5,000, and Bressio knew then that Dawson had hit him for the maximum amount.

  “Mr. Cutler,” Bressio said as he was being ushered to the door. “I think I should tell you something. Sometimes when I know I’m going to run into L. Marvin Fleish I am tempted to leave my pistol home because I’m afraid I’m going to shoot the sonuvabitch.”

  Cutler looked startled. Then his chest heaved, his composure shattered, and he lowered his head. He wept, his arms stiff at his sides. Bressio wanted to put an arm around the old man, but he could not touch William James Cutler.

  “I think I can help your daughter, Mr. Cutler. I mean, I can help your daughter, Mr. Cutler. You—you hang in there because … because, well, you hang in there. I can do things for Mary Beth.”

  Cutler’s mouth opened and his head rose and his reddened eyes tried to express the gratitude his voice could not. Instead he embraced Alphonse Joseph Bressio and sobbed in his arms. Bressio enfolded the old man, and when Cutler was strong enough, released him.

  “I’m leaving, and I’m going to phone you. And I’m going to phone you with good news, Mr. Cutler.” Bressio turned from the old man quickly and left the house. At the New York State line he pulled over to the side of the road, put his pistol back in his shoulder holster, and cried.

  He did not attach the safety strap, and that night he put a word out that both confused and unsettled those who thought it very important to know what a man like Alphonse Joseph Bressio was doing at all times.

  VII

  Bressio withheld his word lest he influence the information he was paying for. His dinner guest told a tale of misjudgment ending in death pretty much the way Bressio expected to hear it.

  The killing of Terry Leacock was not the sort of hit that would accrue to anyone’s respect. It was a nasty thing that had to be done. She was a beautiful young woman, and like many of her kind, thought her beauty entitled her to certain unreasonable privileges with a man who used his money to support himself and his family in Carona. She assumed, according to the dinner guest, that because the wife of the man was not beautiful, this husband would abandon his responsibilities and duties for a passing attraction. This proved to be untrue, since the man was of substance.

  “How much?” said Bressio, referring to the Shylock’s loan to Terry Leacock, who thought she could pay with her body for the cash she obviously didn’t return.

  The dinner guest had asked that question also and was not told the amount. But he did discover it was part of the financing for the narcotics operation that went sour. At the point where the guest told of the demise of this wanton who attempted to destroy the home of a good man, he smiled as a sign of justice done. It seemed Terry Leacock went into the East River screaming that her lover, this financier, would take care of her executioners.

  But to show the perfidy of this woman, she was also living with a man suspected of being an undercover narcotics agent. Such was the end of such perfidy and thus was justice done.

  “They lived at 285 Pren Street?” asked Bressio.

  He was told on the second floor beneath a couple of no worth who were not married and did not respect themselves in dress or manner or condition of their home. Dirt.

  “What was the color of this undercover’s hair?”

  It was interesting that Bressio should ask that, since the man’s hair was flaming red. Did Alphonse have any pertinent information about the man?

  “Possibly,” said Bressio.

  Another point of interest. The house on Pren Street was best kept away from, a lot of peculiar police activity there, so peculiar that the natural death of the landlady was kept hush-hush until the late afternoon. Naturally this aroused curiosity, and some people checked personally and found out it was a heart attack while walking steps.

  Bressio nodded. His job for Dawson was done. He had all the answers about what was happening, and unfortunately even the reason L. Marvin got busted in Arizona and where the tip came from. Bressio wouldn’t even need the headquarters lieutenant now.

  Over zabaglione, a hot white rummy custard, he thanked his dinner guest. The agreed-upon price was $3,500, which Bressio noted was high even for such sensitive information, but since the guest was such a man of respect and since coming from him the information had to be true, perhaps it was even cheap at that price. Bressio went to the men’s room to count out the last of Dawson’s cash money, folded it in a handkerchief, returned to the table and gave the bundle to his guest with a warm handshake. Then he unloaded what he knew would be a shocker.

  “The woman who lives on the third floor loft at 285 Pren Street, Mary Beth Cutler—I would appreciate you considering her as my sister and informing anyone who might be interested as to this fact. As though she is of my blood.”

  The dinner guest became suddenly effusive and apologetic for having referred to the couple on the third floor as dirt. Appearances were deceiving, he said. People should be allowed to live as they wished, he said. The worth of a person was not in what the eye could perceive, he said.

  “Just the woman. The man is dirt. Just the woman and her child,” said Bressio.

  The dinner guest nodded deeply. Bressio knew he was very curious why anyone should take an interest in this woman, but he would not ask and Bressio did not offer. How could he tell him about William James Cutler and the law being that special thing which made man more than a creature that walked upright? How could he tell him that in the chaotic whorehouse of the courts was that pure temple where man attempted to ascend to civilization, and for Alphonse Joseph Bressio the likes of William Cutler were its priests and its hope.

  Bressio could no more explain these things to his dinner guest than he could have to his late mother.

  It was enough that he knew and would pass on that anyone harming the daughter of William James Cutler would have a blood feud on his hands with Alphonse Joseph Bressio. Any assistance rendered her would likewise be appreciated.

  In amounts, of course, to be negotiated.

  Bressio knew Dawson’s wife Bobo was having another one of her famous parties even before he saw the lights on in all three stories of the Dawson town house on East Sixty-third Street, an area so fashionable only one home had not been written up in House Beautiful, and that was because the owner was a hermit. Bobo’s town house appeared not only in the home magazines but in Life when it did a series on famous bathrooms and in New York when she threw a party for the Black Panthers and Young Lords.

  Bressio knew it was another Bobo party just by the manner of the woman who snatched the phone away from the maid. He knew from a telephone in the Cedar Tavern.

  “Hi there, do you eat pussy?”

  “Put Da
wson on. I want to speak to him.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Al Bressio.”

  “Are you a gangster?”

  “If you can’t get Dawson, put Bobo on.”

  “If you’re a gangster, I’ll eat you.”

  Bressio hung up and took a cab. He wanted to personally deliver to Dawson the wrap-up of the L. Marvin affair, the little key fact about 285 Pren Street that would explain why some people were really following Mary Beth and how L. Marvin had done it again. He wanted to show Dawson his commitment was over in one day.

  He even had verification from the headquarters lieutenant, whom he had met in a back booth in the Cedar Tavern, and whom he took great pleasure in watching squirm. The lieutenant had thought he had told him nothing and was becoming obnoxious about payment because, as he claimed, “I’m going broke in community relations. There’s no money in it. Al, you gotta come across.”

  “I’ve always come across. You come across. What about 285 Pren?”

  “I can’t get to it.”

  “Whaddya mean you can’t get to it?” asked Bressio, knowing exactly why the lieutenant was backing off, far, far better than the lieutenant. “You’re at headquarters.”

  “Take my word for it. I checked with the precinct, they transferred me to a deputy inspector who started asking me questions, and I backed off. The money’s shit since I got transferred out of Harlem to this nigger and spic sensitivity shit. But it’s still a job and I don’t want to lose it.”

  “Well, tell me what you know about the floater, Terry Leacock, who came up off the Fifty-ninth Street bridge.”

  “I’ll check with homicide.”

  “She lived at 285 Pren.”

  “Okay. I’ll check with homicide, but I’ll need three hundred on this thing first.”

  “You check with homicide and you’ll get what your information is worth,” said Bressio, knowing that if the lieutenant did so, he would end up back on the same line with the deputy inspector.

  “Look, Al. I need the money. C’mon. I’ve done you favors in the past.”