Bressio

by Richard Ben Sapir

  Bressio listened to Dawson quote from St. Francis of Assisi and was deeply moved.

  At the Dawson house, Bressio found out he didn’t have to play God. The post was being filled. Beautifully.

  A telephone was thrust into Dawson’s hands as soon as he entered the house.

  “Marvin … don’t say anything on the phone. Marvin, just keep your mouth shut. Marvin, do not say anything to anyone. Not about anything. Just keep your mouth shut this time. Shut, shut, shut!”

  Dawson slammed down the receiver. Bressio laughed. He laughed till tears formed in his eyes and he laughed to weakness. He laughed all the way to the Eleventh Street Federal House of Detention.

  When Dawson pulled the family Rolls to the front of the fortresslike brick building, Bressio finally got enough control to quote St. Francis back at Dawson.

  “‘And it is in dying that we are reborn.’”

  “Shut up,” said Dawson. “You didn’t have to come. You filled your agreement.”

  “‘It is in giving that we receive and in …”

  VIII

  A young man with swinging long sandy hair who wore a ruby coke spoon prominent outside his tie-dyed T-shirt signaled the Dawson Rolls with one hand while reaching for something in the hip pocket of his patchwork dungarees with the other.

  “You can’t park here,” said the young man and opened a small, thin billfold showing the blue and white of the new FBNC cards.

  “Who are you?” said Dawson, haughtily refusing to look at the card.

  “Federal Bureau of Narcotics Control, suh,” he said, with the syrup of Mississippi in his voice.

  “I thought so,” said Dawson. “Congratulations, Al.”

  “At the end there just beyond the hydrant, you can park,” said the young man pointing down the street.

  “But I see other cars parked in front,” said Dawson.

  “Federal cars. You can park down there. Not here.”

  Dawson shrugged and gunned the Rolls down the block, bringing the limousine to curb in one screeching swoop, which was quite a feat, for Rolls do not tend to make screeching swoops even under the heaviest foot.

  “Who are they trying to kid?” said Dawson, red flushing up behind his ears.

  “If they can get away with it, why not?” said Bressio. “A lot of those FBNC people around this city lately.”

  Dawson ignored the comment. “I am almost insulted they would pull that amateur shit on me. On me. On me.”

  “It isn’t pulled yet,” said Bressio.

  “It will be.”

  “So it won’t work.”

  “But they tried it on me.”

  “What puzzles me, Murray, is them having L. Marvin for five minutes and not knowing everything he knows.”

  “He’s at last learning to keep his mouth shut.”

  “I haven’t had a chance to get to my book yet, Murray, but I’d be willing to lay odds.”

  “Drop dead,” said Dawson and sprang out of the car, marching up the block to show the FBNC his contempt for it. Bressio followed at a leisurely stroll, and somehow they reached the iron door simultaneously.

  The groovy kid who had shown them his badge let them in. Fleish stood in the disinfectant-scrubbed bare hall talking with a black who had corn-row hair topped by a black, green and red skullcap. A black liberation button was prominent on his gray leather shirt. Around his neck on a chain was a molded black fist. Any passer-by would take him for a black militant. Bressio and Dawson assumed he was a narco. To this narco, L. Marvin Fleish was talking away to beat the band. He saw Dawson and Bressio.

  “Murray. Al. Hi. Am I glad you’re here.”

  Dawson hardly noticed Fleish. He spoke to the black narco, who, oh, man, was he sorry nothing was open at this hour where Dawson could confer with his client.

  “There are offices in this building. I’ve spoken to clients here in rooms set aside for lawyers and clients to exchange confidences in private. It’s the law, you know,” said Dawson.

  “The law opens at 9 A.M., man. You want to wait?”

  “Has he been booked?”

  “He’s here,” said the black narco.

  “The charge?”

  “Conspiracy to sell marijauna. Look, man, I’d like to open an office for you, but it ain’t my slammer, dig?”

  Dawson dug. He exchanged glances with Bressio, who smiled tolerantly. Let them play their game.

  Then, lo and behold, the black narco had an idea. “Why don’t you dudes use a car outside? It’s private.”

  Dawson said he thought it was a good idea and that he would use his car. The white narco entered the conversation by saying he couldn’t allow that because Dawson’s car was down the street and he was sorry, suh, but Mr. Fleish might attempt to escape. They were responsible, suh, for Mr. Fleish’s detention and he couldn’t allow that. With all due apologies, suh.

  The black narco pleaded with his cohort, but to no avail. He even called his partner a racist honkie, such as in “What else could you expect from a racist honkie?” The least the white narco could do would be to let this poor guy and his lawyer use one of the FBNC cars out front where they could be watched from the prison. And surprise, surprise, the racist honkie said he would allow this, but only for a little while and only because his partner was losing his head over the whole thing.

  L. Marvin followed the interchange intensely. Dawson and Bressio looked bored.

  Outside a light drizzle began to form as gray emerged in the new morning sky. The street smelled of urine and wretched wine. The black narco agent pointed to a gray government car.

  “It’s unlocked.”

  “No kidding,” said Dawson.

  “He’s the nice guy,” Fleish whispered to Bressio. “The white guy is the bastard.”

  “That’s usually how it works, L. Marvin,” said Bressio.

  “The white guy being bad and the black good?” asked Marvin.

  “Whatever,” said Bressio.

  Dawson stopped Fleish from entering the car. He looked at the car, then at Fleish and the jail. The narcos, Bressio knew, would never dare bug a room in which a lawyer and client were supposed to share privileged information. The courts would crucify the department if they tried, and with a lawyer like Dawson it would be foolhardy in the extreme. Nor would they lightly go about bugging his personal car. But in their own car, for other purposes, what law did that violate?

  Naturally, the information could not be used as evidence, but it could be used for leads. Was there something bigger Fleish was involved in? Bressio dismissed the possibility. Who would get involved in something big with L. Marvin? The narcos were probably just jumpy about the cool house.

  “I’d like to do something for Imaru, the black guy,” said Fleish. “For getting us this car and being so down and everything.”

  “When they burn your pink little ass, L. Marvin,” said Bressio, “you’ll probably find out that Imaru is probably Charles Smith with a degree in accounting from Purdue.”

  “Listen to him,” said Dawson. “That’s free advice.”

  “He’s not working for us any more?” said Fleish.

  “First of all, shut up, Marvin. Just keep your mouth shut,” said Dawson, his voice sharp and scolding yet hushed. “Now we are going to enter this car, in which I do not want too much said. Just say yes or no to my questions. Do not volunteer any further information unless I ask for it.”

  “Cool, man. I dig,” said Fleish his face a cool composure of calculating cunning.

  “Do you really understand, Marvin?” Dawson repeated. The drizzle began working down the gracious crown of white. Bressio pulled up his collar. Fleish seemed impervious.

  “Dig it,” said Fleish. He winked knowingly.

  “Dawson and Fleish got in the back seat, Bressio in the front. Bressio was smiling.

  “Now to begin with,” asked Dawson. “They know this is your first arrest, correct?”

  Fleish narrowed his eyes. This man was telling him something confusi
ng. Bressio knew Dawson was working for leeway. No matter how small, he had seen Dawson turn the temporary lack of knowledge of a previous arrest or something that minor into a major advantage. Even if it only lasted a day, this was a fighter who needed only that one brief small opening to connect. And with a Murray Blay Dawson one thing always could lead to another. What the narcos didn’t know that dawn might be a help to Fleish.

  “I’m talking about what they know. Do they know you’re a first offender and—”

  “Are you talking about the Arizona bust two weeks ago for the grass?” asked Fleish helpfully.

  “Bup, bup, bup,” Dawson hummed to the tune of “Three Blind Mice.” Bressio examined the texture of the seat covers. Fleish waited for the next question.

  “Did I say something wrong?” Fleish finally wondered aloud.

  “Yes,” said Dawson.

  “Oh, they know about Arizona already. I told them because they knew everything already. I was just helping them with some minor details. They’re groovy people. A bit square, but they tuned in fast. Especially the black guy. There’s a richness in the Third World we whites may never understand.”

  “Shut up, Marvin!” Dawson screamed, red-faced. “Shut up, shut up! Up! Up shut! Shut, shut, shut, shut up that mouth!”

  Fleish pressed his lips together, squelched.

  “Good night, Murray,” said Bressio, turning to the front of the car, resting his head on the back of the seat and closing his eyes. He heard the door open and felt Fleish and Dawson get out of the car. He opened his eyes. Whispering, Dawson stood with Fleish near the car. Bressio could not hear them. He saw the rain eat into the magnificent white crown of Dawson hair. As it matted and drooped, Bressio dozed off, dry and comfortable.

  He was awakened when the morning sun was red in the east. He felt a hand on his shoulder. It was Dawson. Fleish waited in the middle of the street.

  “C’mon. I’m done,” said Dawson. His face was grim. His hair was a dull gray mat and he looked like a very tired and very old man.

  Bressio yawned, stretched and got out of the car. It was hot and it was just dawn. It was going to be a scorcher of a day, but he did not mind.

  “I’m taking the boy genius back inside,” said Dawson.

  Fleish was sullen. His shoulders drooped as though under the yoke of outrageous oppression. The brush of a mustache clotted against his face; his long blond hair was wet and stringy. Bressio smiled broadly at him, but Fleish only nodded, chastened. In that moment there was a touch of pity in Bressio’s heart, but only in that moment. It disappeared when Fleish spoke.

  “Oh, another thing. They want permission to search my loft. They can get it through the court anyhow, and I’d like to do the black guy a favor. I mean, he asked and he’s a down dude, dig. If we don’t help those people, who are we going to help?”

  “Is it clean?” asked Dawson. “Nothing incriminating?”

  “Clean like Mr. Clean.”

  “I didn’t ask that. I asked, is it clean? Yes or no.”

  “Yes,” said Fleish.

  “Are you sure?” said Dawson.

  “Absolutely.”

  “That mean’s there’s nothing there, right?”

  “Right.”

  Dawson sighed. “All right. Why not? You’ve given them everything else.”

  Dawson drove Bressio to his apartment on Bleeker Street.

  “I’m not giving up,” he said as Bressio got out of the car.

  “Please, Murray. This is beyond games. Cut L. Marvin loose. If it’s your conscience, if you think you owe him something for some strange reason, pay some kid lawyer to waltz him around. Pay some good lawyer. I’ll chip in if you cut him loose. Enough is enough.”

  “I’m not fighting for him any more,” said Dawson. “It’s for me.”

  “Against whom?” asked Bressio, truly amazed to the point of exhaustion. “Against whom, Murray? Against whom?”

  “The laws of the universe,” said Dawson and gunned the car down Bleeker Street, a narrow, tight road originally designed for oxcarts, not Rolls-Royces. Bressio looked at his watch. By his reckoning, Dawson hadn’t slept for at least twenty-four hours. And he was a fifty-five-year-old man.

  IX

  As Bressio slept contentedly through the morning, several people in Old Lyme, Connecticut, and in the simple Brooklyn home of Don Carmine talked about him.

  William James Cutler told his wife that for the first time in years he could honestly substantiate reasonable hope for their daughter. His wife disagreed, to the point of tears.

  “We thought that before when she started seeing the psychiatrist, and we thought that before when she went to that special home in Switzerland and we thought that before when she agreed to come home and seemed as though … and seemed as though. Jim, it has always seemed as though.”

  “You don’t know what I discovered about Mr. Bressio.”

  “I saw him get out of his car yesterday. He terrified me.”

  “In all this seamy business, he may be the first moral man I have met.”

  “That should tell you something about hopelessness.”

  “He phoned this morning to say things were beginning to work in Mary Beth’s favor now. I’m going into the city tomorrow to meet him at my office. I think for the first time in years we’re not powerless.”

  “I am sorry if I can no longer hope with you, Jim. It is too hard to hope when hoping is never nourished by success. Maybe you should return to your office tomorrow, but for business. Use your energies more productively. As for me, as for Mary Beth’s mother, I cannot bear to hear of another plan that has failed.”

  “Did you know that Fleish fellow is in jail, dear, and Mary Beth is not? They’ve been separated, and Mr. Bressio has told me he is working on keeping them separated. If we can get her into some sort of program, get her out of that whole environment—”

  “We can’t even get to see our own granddaughter, how are you going to arrange these things.”

  “Mr. Bressio can. I know it.”

  “He’s probably going to make a fortune off you, Jim, like the others. It is not an easy thing to say, Jim, but give up. We have lost our daughter. We are not the only parents in the universe this has happened to. I have my life to live, too, what little is left of it. I want to live it with you. Let the dead bury the dead. Mary Beth is dead and has been for years. And you know it.”

  “I know power. If there is one thing I know it is power. Bressio has power. I can feel it. He can reach where I haven’t been able to. It’s a perfect parallel to Vietnam. I was thrashing around clumsily with all the influence of a modern industrial state while what I really needed was someone who knew the jungles. Now we have him.”

  Mrs. Cutler enfolded her husband’s face in her hands. “That’s a perfect description, Jim. Vietnam. Let’s get out.”

  “No,” said William James Cutler. “I will not surrender Mary Beth. I remember her too well.”

  In Bressio’s office, Clarissa was sorting the morning mail and preparing bills when the phone rang. It was Mary Beth Cutler. Clarissa forced herself to be polite, because as Bressio had reminded her in the 7:00 A.M. phone call, Mary Beth was a client.

  “Al says he doesn’t want you going back to the loft on Pren Street, and he means it, Mary Beth. Now get off that fucking tack. He told you to stay at my place, so stay there. You’re paying him a small fortune for his advice—now take it. Stay at my apartment … All right, see Dr. Finney. When are you going? Well, stay at my apartment until your appointment.”

  “Right, dear. Good,” said Mary Beth, but when Clarissa phoned back a half-hour later to ask Mary Beth to check the freezer to see whether Clarissa would have to shop that evening, no one answered. Clarissa Duffy shuddered. What a creepy pair. And that daughter. The kid never said anything and did exactly as she was told, like a robot. And to top off the morning, one of Al’s friends whom she detested so much phoned with one of those cryptic and complicated messages which did not need a heavy Ital
ian accent to make it even more foggy.

  “Youa tella Alphonse, Missy, that his dinna guesta lasta nighta says he was wrong abouta da house what dey talking, yes?”

  “It’s Ms.,” said Clarissa viciously.

  “Righta, Missy.”

  Clarissa tried to make a coherent statement from the man, but when she looked at her notes at the end of the conversation she saw only something about a house being a very bad place. And since the man was going to phone back anyhow, she promptly threw the notes in the wastebasket not knowing that that unclear message had a market value of approximately twice her weekly salary. Besides, she told herself, Al didn’t need that sort of person any more. That’s what was wrong with his life to begin with.

  Murray Blay Dawson was also talking about Bressio. To his mirror in his office. The drapes were pulled back and he looked at himself revitalized by a half-hour’s nap in the barber’s chair where his face was freshened and his hair returned to its glory. He was a bit dizzy from lack of sleep.

  “Murray. You’re not going to fuck up your relationship with Al Bressio for Fleish. Bressio is too good an ally. He’s really too good a friend. If you have any friends. So why, Murray, my dearly beloved love, are you thinking what you are thinking? I will tell you why, darling, because in some ways you have a lot of Fleish in you. You are really an L. Marvin Fleish with a couple of screws better mounted and fifty more points of I.Q.” Dawson gave himself the famous Dawson grin. He rang his private secretary.

  “Did you send out those adoption papers yet?”

  “No, sir. You told me not to unless you gave the word. They’re addressed to the court and waiting for hand-delivery. Should I send them over now?”

  “No,” said Dawson. He thought for a moment. Bressio needed those papers in his campaign for Mary Beth Cutler, whatever the dimensions of that campaign were. Dawson had promised the papers. Should he hold out he would have as an enemy both the famous Cutler influence and Bressio, perhaps his only friend, and if anyone could ever count on an ally, his best ally.