Bressio

by Richard Ben Sapir

  He established that there was little possibility now of Mary Beth losing her child. No, neither Fleish nor his wife had any interest in Bobbi.

  “Fleish appears to be somewhat at the mercy of those around him, but what about his legal wife? I would imagine she might feel differently.”

  “She signed the papers.”

  “She can change her mind and make a fight out of it.”

  “She can make a fight, but not a winning one.”

  “She can cause trouble.”

  “Yes.”

  “But you don’t think she will, do you? Perhaps we should cut that one off at the bend, sort of act in the early part of the time frame. What do you think of offering this woman something? Hanging it in front of her like a carrot.”

  “I think we’d be putting ideas in her head.”

  “I think you’re right, although I’d rather be more secure in this matter. I’ve never seen my granddaughter.”

  Cutler asked about the prospects of the Fleish charges, and Bressio was surprised at the rustiness of Cutler’s criminal law.

  “That would be double indemnity if they tried him again, because while those two charges are worded differently, they’re really the same. They can’t try a guy twice for the same crime, as you know.”

  “Of course. Of course. You know, you’ll forget a lot of basic law, too, if you don’t practice it. We just never had to use much of it in the important work in Washington. It was mainly knowing how Washington worked. Now if Fleish were involved in an antitrust action, ah, Mr. Bressio, then I’d be of a little more help.”

  Cutler also had questions about Dawson, starting with why he defended Fleish and then what made Dawson tick.

  “God knows,” said Bressio.

  “Do you like Dawson?”

  “Yes. I guess I do. Very much.”

  “I must admit a certain admiration for him myself. I always entertained a desire to practice criminal law, but I could never afford it.”

  “Dawson must clear upwards of $200,000 before his ex-wives could get to it.”

  “Hmmm. Yes. Couldn’t afford it. Tell me, why didn’t he put up bail himself instead of going through all the machinations to get it from me? I’m sure his time is more valuable than that. And if he trusted the client, he’d get it back. He’s already devoting thousands more in free time for Fleish.”

  “You can’t put up bail for a client. The bar association has it arranged to make it unethical, actionable before it, as a matter of fact.”

  “Hmmm. What’s the logic behind that, as if I didn’t suspect.”

  “Well, it’s to save the lawyers telling clients no. Actually, they have given other reasons, but that’s the real one.”

  “I thought so. What are the chances of Mary Beth waiting for Fleish to get out of jail and then returning to him?”

  “If we get a few years, as I suspect we will, that time can be used in trying to help Mary Beth make a new life for herself. It’s a chance, Mr. Cutler.”

  “A lot better than we had before. I can’t even talk to her now. I haven’t been able to talk to her for years, and when she had that baby out of wedlock, I—”

  “It’s not the kind of social stigma it used to be, sir.”

  “Would you marry her, Mr. Bressio?”

  “Sir?”

  “Would you marry someone like Mary Beth, knowing she gave birth to an illegitimate child?”

  “I would marry someone I loved. I don’t love her.”

  “Could you love someone like Mary Beth?”

  Bressio felt his stomach tighten and his mouth go dry.

  “You don’t have to answer that, Mr. Bressio. The drugs, the goddamned drugs,” said Cutler. He put his right fist silently into his left hand. “The drugs. They’re a disease that must be smashed. People just don’t understand, they don’t understand how dangerous, how insidious they are, all under the guise of raising one’s consciousness, instant happiness.”

  “On that you won’t get an argument from me.” Bressio rubbed the slight cut he received on his left hand when it scraped the Eldorado window pulling Willie Knuckles through it.

  Cutler saw it, and Bressio suddenly discovered where all the secretaries were. Cutler’s came in from a side door. Then Bressio saw a hallway, and realized that was the front door of Mitchell, Walker and Cutler. He had come in through the back door.

  The secretary, a dowdy-looking biddy, applied first aid in the form of an unguent and dainty bandage. When she had gone, Bressio held up the cut hand.

  “The cool house I told you about is slightly cooler than I thought. Some small fry are sniffing around. Heroin will do it every time. That stuff is more liquid than money. Bad news.”

  “But it’s under police protection. It’s the bait in a trap, isn’t it?”

  “If I may ask, who will police the police? When heroin is stored as evidence in police headquarters, it walks. What about in a house? It’s basic economics. If too much money is too easy to get at, people are going to take it even if you put a badge on their chests and call them something else.”

  “But this hasn’t happened to cash evidence and stock evidence, if I’m correct.”

  “Money and stocks have numbers on them. They can be traced. Besides, you can’t break them down. You can’t make a thousand-dollar bill into two thousand dollars of five-dollar bills, but you can with pure heroin, and who’s to say where it came from. You don’t seem to understand, Mr. Cutler, that heroin is lighter and more valuable than gold, more stable than money, and less traceable than even broken-up jewelry—broken up meaning the stones sold separately.

  “You can move a quarter of a million dollars of heroin in a woman’s pocketbook if the heroin is pure enough. Did you know that? Now, you can do that with money, but only thousand-dollar bills with those cute little serial numbers on them, and try cashing a thousand-dollar bill sometime. You can do it with one big jewel, but try breaking a ruby down and it loses value.

  “You take your cop on the beat. Or your narco detective, even the glorious young FBNC. They make a bust, they can always keep large quantities of the smack. The pusher isn’t going to complain. It’s grief for him when he gets into court, but let’s say the bust is for a bank robbery. Well, the bank knows how much it’s lost, and the sentences don’t run heavier for a hundred thousand dollars than for fifty thousand—both of them being well into grand larceny—so the guy charged won’t have any qualms about screaming that the arresting officer is a thief, too.

  “But let’s get back to our deadly little friend, heroin. Not only will the pusher not scream, but just for a little insurance toward that fact, the arresting officer will leave out some information so it’s hanging there as a threat for quiet. He makes the collar less effective.”

  “Hmmm,” said Cutler. “But I’ve seen news of massive heroin arrests on television. They announce they capture a million dollars’ worth of heroin here, a million there, a half million, one and a half million—rather substantial amounts, if you will.”

  “A. There are some honest cops. B. You don’t know how much they find, only how much is left. And C. Look at the conviction rates on those big hauls. A lot of top people walk away from them.”

  “Hmmm. More insidious than I thought.”

  “It’s weird stuff, Mr. Cutler. They just don’t know how to handle it yet. Literally. They know how to handle money, but they don’t know how to handle heroin.”

  Cutler thought a moment and then the fist went silently into the hand again. “What if the house on Pren Street is incredibly cool, so to speak? What if this new agency has decided to make the house a contact point for an incredibly big stash—let’s say the results of several busts, as you call them. Draw out the major dealers. Spread the word of this massive amount. Draw them into a confrontation of major proportions, and in one blow, deal the heroin industry a setback it has never known. Sort of bring the pushers into a large-scale engagement instead of this guerrilla warfare thing that’s going on now. Put s
ome spit into the fight, so to speak.”

  “If I may say so, sir, that’s an incredibly bad idea. For one, no established narcotics agency is going to risk it. They know heroin. For two, maybe this new FBNC might think of trying it, but it’s got some men from the other agencies, I hear, and they’d be climbing the wall if they ever heard of anything so, well, so stupid.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You put so much smack in any one place, you are guaranteed of men with money coming after it. That money which is a tool could wreck a whole department—guaranteed. There’d be so much money coming after that from so many sources it could probably take apart the FBI, which—I might add, sir—Hoover wisely kept out of that stuff when he could have gotten in.”

  “The government has done less-wise things that somehow work out when it perseveres. I was Under Secretary of State for several years. I know.”

  “Well,” said Bressio, “if there should be something as silly as this going on, I’d know about it. First of all, you’d see the family’s structure start cracking at the seams as some people out of the territory went for it and others didn’t. You’d see guys coming in from all over, and in an unrestricted market like that, you’d see a good many of them turning up as bodies.”

  “There was a shooting just a short while ago, in East Harlem, described as a gangland slaying.”

  “I know about that one. Nothing to do with narcotics.”

  “And that cut on your hand, did that come from someone in the Pren Street territory? I think it’s territory, I don’t know how you people divide up the city.”

  “Sir, I haven’t divided anything into any territory.”

  “I’m sorry. You just spoke so knowledgeably that I thought … well, let me extend my apologies, Mr. Bressio.”

  Bressio signified with his hands that the remark was nothing, but his stomach gave him other signals, and they hurt to his very soul.

  “To wrap this thing up, sir, the altercation was with someone from the Bronx, but he is such a small fry that I guarantee he was on a small errand. If there were anything big, he’d be squished like a grape. It would be out of his league, and I know these things because I was brought up in that shit. And I’m not a part of it.”

  “Yes. I know. And I am truly sorry I said ‘you people’! There must be thousands of Italian-Americans who cringe every time someone with a vowel is shown to be Mafia.”

  “Millions.”

  The pain in Bressio’s soul only eased when Cutler showed him to the front door. “Please don’t use the back door again, Mr. Bressio. That’s for secretaries and clerks and deliveries and I imagine for some of the younger lawyers. It’s not for you.”

  “Doesn’t make any difference to me, Mr. Cutler.”

  “The name’s Jim, Al,” said Cutler and he showed him through the front office, introducing him to Mitchell, a balding man with a hefty paunch who pointed out that the serious work of the firm was being done in Washington.

  “This is just where we hang our hats when we’re in New York City,” said Mitchell.

  “Very impressive,” said Bressio.

  “I hear you work with Murray Blay Dawson. Must be exciting,” said Mitchell.

  “Very exciting at times, sir. Yes.”

  “The glamour of the law,” said Mitchell, chuckling.

  “Sometimes,” said Bressio.

  “Often thought, although it would never happen, that I’d like to go head-to-head with a Murray Blay Dawson.”

  “Oh, I don’t really think you’d want to do that, Mr. Mitchell,” said Bressio.

  “He might be right,” said Cutler. “The intricacy and common sense of their strategy in a case I just heard about was rather impressive.”

  “You’re rather impressive yourself, Jim,” said Mitchell.

  “I guess he didn’t tell you, Mr. Bressio, but he was the one who got the health warnings on cigarettes.”

  “Don’t go boasting around,” said Cutler, chiding.

  Bressio felt a tug on his arm. “I guess that was a good thing, but I don’t see as how the health warnings really changes things very much,” he said.

  Cutler tried to guide Bressio out of the office, but Mitchell was launched. “My god, man,” said Mitchell, shocked. “Without the concession of that meaningless little sign on the packs, we wouldn’t have had a year more of television advertising, all advertising might have been outlawed, and—who knows?—it might have been another Prohibition situation. There was strong talk after that lung-cancer link of outlawing cigarettes. The whole industry faced disaster. That minor concession saved an industry, sir. An entire industry.”

  “We do some other things besides little packs of cigarettes,” said Cutler, and with a hand at Bressio’s elbow, guided him to the front door of Mitchell’s office.

  “Sales weren’t even hurt in the long run,” Mitchell yelled after them. “Go downstairs to the stock exchange across the street, and take a look at P. Lorillard and American Tobacco, if you think I’m exaggerating.”

  “The cigarette thing was not one of our prouder moments,” Cutler confided. “But we had them as clients, and you know what a lawyer must do for his client. I was even a bit saddened at the poor showing of our opposition. I do not smoke and I do not think cigarettes are good things.”

  “Yeah, well—” said Bressio, and he was shown an empty office with a stately desk and stately chairs and empty white painted shelves.

  “If you want to work out of here, Al, I’d be glad to have you.”

  Bressio was dumbfounded. Was that an offer of a job he had just heard? He answered more in shock than in a desire to refuse.

  “Thank you for the offer, but I have to work out of my own office. It’s sort of plugged in to all my sources, and I just can’t afford to be away from where they know they can leave a message, Mr. Cutler.”

  “Jim.”

  “Yeah, Jim,” said Bressio, and looking at his watch noted he had to rush to catch a plane to Phoenix.

  XII

  As Bressio’s plane took off for Phoenix, Willie Knuckles, his head bandaged, his ears ringing, was directing his brother-in-law in the unloading of his golf clubs from his car on Bathgate Avenue in the Bronx when a sniper across the street sent a 30–30 slug through Willie Knuckles’ brain, some of which clotted on the sweet spot of his Maxfli pitching wedge. The brother-in-law dove under the car. This was only the first killing among people maneuvering for what was in the house on Pren Street.

  Sally Bugellerio, Bressio’s second cousin, later that night, slipped under the wheels of an Uptown F train at the isolated Fourteenth Street station. Helping him slip were Johnny Tomasino and Alfiere (Al Donnelly) Donelle of Brooklyn, who kept pleading for cooperation as the F train roared in: “C’mon, Sally, you know you’re gonna get it.”

  Tomasino joined Willie Knuckles and Sally Bugellerio the next day when he started his car and got a face full of engine parts and shreds of fire wall.

  The Daily News screamed of gang war. The New York Post, which had lost the news break on Willie Knuckles and Sally Bugellerio to the morning News, but had a Tomasino exclusive, ran a sidebar on the meaning of the gang war, tying it in to every professional-style hit in the last two years.

  “Silly, silly, silly,” said Don Carmine, who normally read only the business section of The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. He sipped coffee and ate buns with his friend and adviser, Felli, in his Brooklyn apartment. “The world is run by fools. Fools. I am convinced of this.”

  “Does Bressio know? Is it possible he still does not know about Pren Street?”

  “I do not see how,” said Don Carmine.

  “Perhaps his new associates on Wall Street have gotten to his head. Perhaps he thinks he is bulletproof? He worked over that Bronx nobody for no apparent reason, unless …”

  “He did not kill that man, I am led to believe.”

  “If he is not involved in this silliness, then he is acting like some Calabrese,” said Felli, us
ing a Sicillian appellation of dim-witted, a reference to the people of Calabria, whose appellation “Siciliano” had connotations of untrustworthy and vicious.

  “Perhaps, but he is not the biggest fool in this thing,” said Don Carmine, who had a distaste for disorder that would shame Queen Victoria. “It is the narcotics people. Why do they not run their business properly? Why must they engage in such … such … silliness.”

  “It comes from Washington, I am told.”

  “And who tells Washington?” said Don Carmine. “Has Washington lost its senses? Has Alphonse lost his senses? I do not know.”

  In Mitchell, Walker and Cutler, Hedding “Puff” Mitchell looked in on his partner, who appeared to be in better spirits day by day. “How are you feeling today, Jim?”

  “Much better. Much better, Puff.”

  “Things working out well with Mary Beth?”

  “Much better. Much better.”

  “Say, Jim, I just happened to glance at the Daily News, I don’t read it regularly, of course, but today I happened to glance at it and the Mafiosi seem to be going at it again. I was wondering if that fellow you have working for you now, Bissio, knows what it all means.”

  “Bressio.”

  “What does this fellow Bressio say about it?”

  “He says don’t believe what you read in the papers.”

  Mitchell thought a moment. “Say, I wonder if we can all have dinner at the club some evening?”

  “I doubt it. Bressio is a loner.”

  “Well, if we can’t have dinner, maybe he can work over the Securities Exchange for me,” said Mitchell, chuckling at his own witticism.

  “He may be a lawyer, Puff, if he gets over the bar. Many good men have trouble with the bar, some psychological hangup. I think that’s what he wants.”

  “That’s nice,” said Mitchell. “Get them into law, maybe they’ll stop littering the streets with their kin, eh?”