Bressio

by Richard Ben Sapir

  He reached out the card hand and pushed the door the rest of the way. Nothing. With gun brought forward he moved, ready to shoot into the second-floor loft where a month before L. Marvin Fleish had barged in as a favor to a landlady, and come out alive and unconscious of his incredible good fortune.

  The sunlight came through a dust-lathered high window at the right and made the loft bright enough to hurt Bressio’s eyes, but not so much so that he could not see the loft was empty. He checked behind the door by pushing it gently until it hit the wall; then he closed it behind him.

  The slatboard floor was bare but for some crumpled papers that appeared like food wrappings. It smelled of old oily rags. There was no reason to assume the loft was laid out any differently from L. Marvin’s upstairs. The walls were plaster and Bressio could see no fresh plaster, so what he looked for was probably not in the walls. Bressio looked at the floor, a good half-century old with no ruptures in the worn wooden slats, probably the same floor immigrants toiled on.

  It had to be the bathroom. He stepped into the center of the loft and saw an old blue painted door at the far end, beyond where the hallway would have had its boundary lines.

  He heard the slats groan under his feet, and with finger light at the trigger he tried the doorknob of the bathroom door. It was unlocked. He opened it with a swift pull, ready, half expecting to see the barrel of a shotgun even though he had heard no breathing inside. It was empty. The room was six feet long and four feet wide. A chain hung from a wooden box above the toilet and the small bowl of a sink was yellow with age. It could not be the box above the toilet. That wasn’t big enough for the death of Willie Knuckles, the Brooklyn guy, and Bressio’s second cousin from downtown, Sally. Wars weren’t started over something that small.

  He should have known right from the beginning. If he hadn’t been so riled by L. Marvin that first day, he would have sensed the tension in the street and checked it out. If he hadn’t been so riled with Willie Knuckles he would not have accepted the explanation of the little thing he was after, and would have checked it out. Yet never would he have expected this, this quantitative change that made a qualitative change.

  Nor would he have expected his dinner guest to feed him misinformation. Perhaps from the original source, this misinformation came. Yet by now the dinner guest surely should have known. Everyone must know, and by not telling him, the dinner guest had committed an offense against Bressio that was akin to a stiletto between the ribs. Undoubtedly he had been paid to misinform Bressio. Undoubtedly. Otherwise, he would have been the first to warn him. The very first.

  But what it came down to, the real reason he had not known was all too simple. It was just too viciously stupid to be believable. Bressio looked down at the bathroom floor, where a new tarpaulin covered approximately four and a half feet from walls to toilet base. There it was. It had to be there. He listened. Nothing.

  He knelt down and with his left hand pulled back part of the tarpaulin. A green plastic bag the size of pepperidge Farm stuffing was wedged against where the floor had been sawed through. He pulled farther. Another plastic bag. He pulled the tarpaulin a third of the way back. Stacked side to side like little fat green missiles were plastic bags. Bressio pushed a hand down between two of them and felt another layer. Farther down there was another layer, and another.

  “No,” he whispered softly. “No. No. No.”

  There was another layer, and another and when Bressio’s cheek touched the top bag, his arm fully extended, he felt the top of another layer. It just kept going down. He smelled the stale base of the toilet, and his stomach jumped in little curlicues, and his breathing was very rapid. Sweat dropped onto the top bag at his face, and when he pulled his arm out, the top bag was wet from his face, and he was shaking his head.

  “No. No. No. Why? The idiots. The idiots. Oh, goddamn them, the fucking idiots. What did they think they were doing?”

  He re-covered the stash with the tarpaulin. Bait. Who knew how much? Wasn’t there anyone to tell these people that when you have enough bait, it is no longer bait, but an achievement? The three deaths were just the beginning, and out there on the street were people who could not conceive he was not desirous of what lay beneath that tarpaulin. Someone, undoubtedly the FBNC, was offering as bait an empire. That was what was at Bressio’s feet. An economic empire. Wars between nations had been fought over less than what those, those, gavones had stuffed beneath the flooring of a bathroom.

  There was running on the stairs. Bressio heard it. He backed out of the bathroom, and was behind the hallway door when it was kicked open. Bressio caught the door with his face and his left hand so it wouldn’t bounce back. Two hippie types ran past him, guns at the ready. One had red hair. They only had to see the bathroom door partly open to fire into it, slamming it closed with wood splinters flying.

  They got off seven very fast and very loud rounds between them. It was just the kind of situation in which they would shoot if Bressio yelled out, “Hold it!” If either of them turned, Bressio was going to shoot first and worry about the courts later. The pair was just that jumpy.

  “All right. You in there. Come out,” yelled the redhead. They had the sick, frightened look of men who thought they had just killed. They waited, guns forward, crouching. Then the redhead saw Bressio and the gun forward.

  “Drop it,” said Bressio softly.

  “Oh, my God,” said the redhead. His partner, a wide-eyed tow-head in blue denim overalls and jacket, also saw Bressio. He started to turn and Bressio was about to squeeze off a bullet into his chest, when the lad let loose his pistol as though it were scalding his hand. It made a dull clunk on the wooden floor.

  “You, the redhead. Drop it,” said Bressio softly.

  “Yes,” said the redhead.

  “Hands up,” said Bressio with gentle coaxing in his voice. “Up, up. Over here. That’s right. Over here. Very nice.”

  Bressio circled the approaching narcos and got them between him and the open door. “Good. Very good,” said Bressio in the same reassuring voice.

  “We’re FBNC officers. We have identification in our pockets.”

  “Yes. I know. I know who you are. Just do what you’re told. I’m not after the stash.”

  “You couldn’t get out anyhow,” said the redhead.

  “I know. Just stay where you are, that’s right. Very good. Very good.”

  “We are federal officers.”

  “Shhhh,” said Bressio.

  More running up the steps. Three officers, two in blue jeans and one in white summer shorts, crowded the door with guns pushing ahead of them.

  “Hold it,” said Bressio loudly. “Just stay where you are. Trigger-happy idiots. This is just what happens. Get the twenty-seventh precinct on the phone.”

  “You a cop?” said one of the men in the doorway.

  “No. Get the twenty-seventh precinct on the phone and get them over here. Now.”

  “We’re federal officers.”

  “I know. Don’t come in and don’t shoot or your buddies are dead. I said stay there. No fast moves. You’re gonna get us all killed. Now send someone to phone the twenty-seventh precinct.”

  “No way, man,” said the narco in the white shorts.

  “Redhead. What’s your name?”

  “Clyde Forrest.”

  “Who’s in charge? Which one of those guys?”

  “I am,” said Forrest, his freckled face dripping sweat. Bressio could see his stomach tremble under his T-shirt. “Do what he says.”

  “Tell them to ask for a Sergeant Philosophus Jones. He’s got sense and he’s on days.”

  “Ask for the guy, Willie. Ask for him,” said Forrest.

  “Drop your gun,” said the narco in the white shorts.

  “Are you kidding? With you cockamamies running around?” said Bressio.

  “We can get you for resisting arrest. We’re federal officers.”

  “Willie, he knows that,” sobbed Forrest. “He fucking knows that a
lready. Get the damned coon sergeant from the locals.”

  “You know Jones, then,” said Bressio.

  “Tell you what, fella,” said the narco in the white shorts. “You drop your gun and we’ll all go to the twenty-seventh precinct together. All of us. Okay?”

  Bressio shook his head at that foolishness. He was not about to go unarmed with these people around.

  “I’m ordering you, Willie,” said Forrest. “Get Jones now, or so help me I’ll fucking have you on fucking report for fucking everything. Now do it.”

  “You want to bring the locals into this thing?” said Willie angrily.

  “Yes, yes, yes!” said Forrest.

  “Tell Jones Bressio is here,” said Bressio. “Trying to stay unkilled amidst narcos with guns.”

  “Look. You put your gun away and we’ll put our guns away,” said Willie.

  “This gun doesn’t holster until there are police around.”

  “Will you do what he says, Willie, Jeezus. Do it.”

  “All right,” said the narco in the white shorts. “I’ll keep the fat guy covered. Johnson will get the locals, but you’ll have to answer to upstairs, not me.”

  “I’ll answer. I’ll answer. Put your gun away.”

  “But he’s got a gun.”

  “I’ll take that chance,” said Forrest. And he waited with his hands up, looking up into Bressio’s gun.

  Bressio heard Jones’s slow labored trudge up the steps and thought the sight of his heavy black face under policeman’s blue was very comforting. He flicked the safety on his gun, put it in his shoulder hoster, and snapped the safety strap closed around it. Forrest lowered his hands in relief. So did sidekick.

  “’Lo, Alphonse. I seen you met the new crusaders against narcotics.”

  “Yeah, Phossy. That I did.”

  Gathering his nerves, Forrest turned on Bressio with threats. Bressio was in trouble, he said. Bressio had threatened the life of a federal officer, he said. Bressio had attempted murder of said same federal officer, he said. He had corroborating witnesses, he said.

  “So charge me,” said Bressio.

  “I’m not sure what I’m going to do with you,” said Forrest, jiggling his hands to get circulation back in them.

  “Let’s all go down to the station house,” said Jones wearily.

  “Through the back way. I don’t want to blow this thing,” said Forrest intently.

  “Blow this thing?” said Bressio incredulously. “Oh, God have mercy on us all.”

  “There might be some people across the street watching this house.”

  “Might be?” said Bressio, and he shook his head sadly.

  Bressio rode in the back seat of the patrol car with Forrest, who stared angrily at him, a menacing look on his young face. Sergeant Jones drove, the black sirloin rolls on his neck appearing to support the prim police hat which bobbed when he chuckled.

  “Beautiful. Beautiful. Beautiful,” said Jones. “You people are just beautiful.”

  “I can consider your comments a lack of local cooperation,” said Forrest.

  “You just do that little old thing,” said Jones. “Beautiful.”

  “Incredible,” said Bressio. “Incredible.”

  “You betta watch yoself, Al, this narco here gonna charge you wif murder. Heh-heh.”

  “I don’t know how we’ll handle this man,” said Forrest.

  “Good luck in your attempts,” said Jones. “The New York City Police Department is here to assist you in whatever assistance you should deem necessary within the law and especially regarding the rights of the individual under the Constitution.”

  “Don’t get official with me, Sergeant.”

  “I wouldn’t get anything but official with you, sonny. With you people and that house it’s CYA all the way. Cover Your Ass. You people want to shoot up a door. I’m going to report a door shot full of holes. They want to bury it upstairs, fine with me.”

  “We have good reasons why we consider that house a maximum sensitive area.”

  “I know when guns is shot off, I gotta make a report. You give any answer you want, sonny. I’ll just put it between them little quote marks. You want to say you shootin’ at King Kong, I’ll put that down too, ’cause I am here to assist you in whatever assistance you should deem necessary within—”

  “I am not at liberty to disclose, especially in front of a prisoner, why that house is maximally sensitive. Nor do I wish to discuss it with you, Sergeant.”

  “You a real winner, sonny. You ain’t gonna talk lest Alphonse Bressio find out what’s going on in New York City. Oh, you are beautiful. Beautiful.”

  As the patrol car reached the baroque cement architecture that marked the twenty-seventh precinct house, Bressio tapped the wire mesh that separated front from back of the patrol car.

  “Keep going, Phoss. I want to speak to this kid,” said Bressio.

  The patrol car passed the station house as though it never intended to stop.

  “Pull in. I’m going to charge this man,” said Forrest.

  “Keep going, Phoss.”

  “Sergeant. I order you to let us out here.”

  “Take us to Gino’s,” said Bressio.

  “Am I being abducted?” demanded Forrest.

  “Right. In collusion with a sergeant on the New York City police force, I am abducting a federal agent,” said Bressio.

  “Now I really have you,” said Forrest, grinning angrily.

  The car stopped in front of a small, dark coffee shop in the West Village. There was a large polished espresso machine in the window.

  “Thanks, Phoss. I’ll take care of you later,” said Bressio. “You just heard a bribe offer, kid. C’mon.”

  “And you heard it accepted, too,” said Jones.

  “C’mon, kid. I want to tell you about some economic facts of life and why you are in very serious trouble.”

  Bressio got out of the car and waited. Forrest looked at him suspiciously. “You’re an ambitious young man, and you want to save your career, don’t you?” said Bressio.

  Forrest looked like a fox sniffing poisoned meat. He leaned forward, drumming his fingers on his faded blue jeans. Bressio noticed his hands were freckled also.

  “Kid, I’ll even tell you why all the experienced men left you with that disaster back on Pren Street.”

  Forrest pointed a shaking finger at Bressio. “I’ll give you five minutes, wise guy, and then I’m going to throw your ass in jail so hard your spine won’t stop ringing till you’re fifty,” said Forrest and scrambled out of the patrol car. Bressio’s quick hands saved him from stumbling, and he guided the lad around a fresh pile of dog droppings, lest he step in it.

  XV

  Bressio ordered two cannoles, a coke for Forrest, and espresso for himself. He played with the wax drippings of the candle on the checkered tablecloth as he talked. He would be seen from the street talking to this man, and the word would be out that Bressio was trying to reach the narcos to make a deal. It was the nature of people to see only their own motives in others. So be it. It was too late now to do anything but try to save his own life and keep his friends and associates out of the crossfire. He was in it and he would not be safe until the disaster was resolved. He could stand on street corners proclaiming his innocence, but the people most likely to kill him would be the last to believe him.

  Forrest refused to drink the coke or eat the cannole and sat across the table with his arms folded. As Bressio’s finger’s molded the wax he remembered being lifted up to the coffin at Fermio’s to kiss Papa goodbye, and seeing that it wasn’t Papa, just colored wax, he started to cry, and they thought he was crying for Papa, but what he was crying about was that it wasn’t Papa in the box but wax with Papa’s hair on top, and when they went to the cemetery, his heart was broken when he saw them put the body in a deep hole. He wanted to tell all the grownups that they shouldn’t bury the box deep so maybe when the grass came up again in the spring somehow Papa would return.


  And as he grew up he found out how many men his father had killed. Bressio thumbed the wax into the base of the candle at Gino’s and tried to explain to this young man whose voice carried a sharp twang the economics of the five families and why what was happening at Pren Street could get them killed.

  Numbers and gambling, the hijacking at the docks and air terminals were stable things. They earned a regular amount of money within easily definable territories. There was shylocking also, which was rather stable and financed a goodly part of the fashion industry and some entertainment enterprises. On these things was the economy of the five families based.

  All of these enterprises needed an orderly market, so to speak, with politicians and police being reached, no raiding of one another’s commerce. There was what one might call a monopoly, which was the real base of power of the families. If one wanted to enter these fields, one had to be part of the system or the system would crush you.

  “Do you follow, Forrest?”

  “I’m waiting,” said Forrest.

  The system was good for the workers, too, because it provided a more stable income. This was the base of the power of the rackets, or the mob, or the Mafia or Cosa Nostra or whatever Forrest wished to call it. The leaders held their power through the resources of capital and manpower. From time to time, fools would try to reign by terror, but these reigns never lasted. The system thrived because everyone, and Bressio meant everyone, wanted it to survive.

  Enter narcotics. Unstable because anyone could get into it. It required no extensive connections in politics; unlike gambling it could be hidden easily and did not require a base of operations, unlike shylocking you didn’t have to have an enforcement body for payments, and unlike hijacking, one did not need extensive cooperation on the docks and in the terminals. Anyone could do it. It created an unstable market. Why should someone for three, maybe four or five hundred a week toil in the vineyards when he could make five years’ income in a week. This was the real reason many of the important people opposed narcotics, not because of public outrage.