Bressio

by Richard Ben Sapir

  “She knew exactly where it was, Joey,” said Bressio, nodding to Becky’s body. Joey’s pockmarked middle-aged face was flushing red. Bressio moved as if to put his pistol back in his holster. Seeing this, Joey relaxed and lowered his shotgun from Bressio’s belly. As the barrel of Bressio’s .38 touched his holster, Bressio moved towards his second cousin Joey as though to explain something.

  “What you got to understand about this situation, Joey,” said Bressio reaching out his left hand palm upward in an explanatory manner, “is that …”

  His left hand gripped the barrel of the shotgun like a steel clamp, and the .38 police special suddenly came down, and Bressio’s fine eye and reflexes put a loud hole in the chest of Joey’s friend.

  Joey tried to wrest the barrel free, but Bressio jerked it to his side, pulling Joey to his own massive belly and bringing a knee up into Joey’s testicles, doubling him over and gaining control of the shotgun for himself.

  With one hand he flipped up the shotgun, gaining the stock with his palm, and with his finger on the trigger stuck the wide double-barrel into Joey’s ear and pulled the trigger.

  Joey’s head exploded as though turned on by three high-pressure nozzles of brain and blood and skull splinters. The loft floor was slippery with blood when Bressio went to Bobbi, and taking her by the hand, said, “Mommy’s gone to sleep, honey. You come with me.”

  He brought her to a far wall, the stairs being too dangerous just then, and buried her head gently in his chest, keeping her clean dress away from the blood on his shirt. He felt a tearing pain there, but he knew he would live.

  Fleish sobbed. “I didn’t know. I didn’t know. I didn’t know.”

  The firing had stopped. Sirens were in the air all over the streets outside. Bressio heard lawmen in the process of arresting and searching and taking down information move up the stairs. He heard them come to the rifleman he had killed and heard that it was not one of theirs. He could probably beat this manslaughter charge and still carry his gun. If the guy wasn’t law he had to be connected, probably with a record.

  And Joey, Bressio knew, had done two stretches for armed robbery and assault with intent to kill. His “friend” undoubtedly carried a similar past.

  “Forrest got it,” said one of the men in the hallway.

  “Where?”

  “In the basement. He was with the supervisor when the hell broke loose. Ran into it.”

  Oh, no, thought Bressio. The kid hadn’t made it either. All the grief of the senseless deaths came down upon him and he put his face to the little girl’s shoulder and wept. He did not know why Forrest’s death had unleashed this awesome sadness, why just one more life should do it, but it had. And there he was and he felt very frightened and very alone, and for some reason which he knew not either, he was without hope.

  Several agents came into the room, remarking on the blood bath, and Bressio surrendered his gun. He felt a nudge at his shoulder and he looked up to find the U.S. Attorney Cartwright standing over him.

  “Jim Cutler is here. Is that his daughter?” asked Cartwright.

  “By the bathroom.”

  Cartwright went to the door and asked, “Do you want to look?”

  “Yes. She was my only child.”

  Bressio caught Cutler’s glance and saw the eyes move away from him. Cutler stood over his daughter’s body for a few moments, bowed with a certain dignity. When he came back he toddled like a child to keep from slipping on the blood. Already one agent had taken a header.

  “I guess I should have expected something like this,” said Cutler bitterly. “Dealing with someone like you, Bressio. Thank you very much. Thank you so very much. Let me tell you, young man, you’re through. I don’t care what it takes, what I have to do, you’re through in this city.”

  Bressio thought of spitting, but there was blood in his mouth. Surprisingly, U.S. Attorney Cartwright became engaged.

  “You vile, goddamned hypocrite!” Cartwright bellowed. “You make any move against this man and I will be happy to indict your sanctimonious ass from here to Washington. Look at the floor. Is this enough spit for you? Did your FBNC put enough spit into the casual fight against drugs? Yes, you, Cutler, and your Washington friends with your bright ideas. Every time someone wanted to back off on this thing, they had you people screaming how casual they looked in their fight against drugs. Show me the winner here. Out in that street as of this morning is enough smack to turn on the East Coast for a year. Congratulations, Mr. Cutler, and thank you on behalf of the city’s junkies for your firm’s pro bono work in narcotics.”

  “You talk as though you have a lifetime appointment,” said Cutler menacingly.

  “Long enough to make life miserable for you.”

  “You can’t indict me for the mistakes of the FBNC. I was only on the President’s advisory panel on narcotics. We only helped shape policy.”

  “Screw all that,” said Bressio heavily. “This is your granddaughter, Cutler.” Bobbi refused to lift her head.

  “That’s Fleish’s child, if I’m correct.”

  “The papers have been filed. She’s an orphan and she’s your granddaughter and she’s entitled to whatever that entitles her to.”

  “Well, you take care of it, if you can without getting her killed. Get her into some kind of home. I’ll take care of the bill. Keep my name out of it. There have been too many people into my pocket already. Including you, Mr. Bressio. I’ve had a very trying day. Seventy-five dollars an hour. What gall. What incredible gall.”

  Alphonse Joseph Bressio began to laugh and despite the wound he could not stop laughing even when the doctors told him he had to. Finally, it was decided he should have a sedative, and he agreed, but noted that it did not seem to have any effect. He went to sleep pointing this out.

  XXII

  The heroin failed to surface on the streets of the cities, thus justifying the FBNC’s request for secrecy from the press. As it was explained by the public relations officer: “If we keep a lid on this thing, we still have a chance for a major breakthrough against organized narcotics rings.”

  So the press knew about it, the police knew about it, the major drug dealers knew about it and even some Senators and Congressmen knew about it, but no one was talking publicly. It did not get the heroin returned, but for a while did save the new FBNC a major scandal as its special investigative body gathered more evidence to prove that agent Clyde Forrest had been responsible for perhaps the biggest gaff in narcotics history.

  Naturally the agency instituted new procedures so that “one bad apple” would never again be allowed to hold such a sensitive post.

  One newspaperman did report the rumors of this gaff to his city desk, but was told his newspaper did not wish to take the responsibility if their story should send the people who had the heroin under cover.

  “But the pushers know about it. If I know about it, the pushers certainly do,” complained the reporter.

  “When a cop tells me that, I’ll run the story.” And everyone waited for someone else to take the responsibility for making the news public. An underground newspaper made an inept attempt, with almost all the facts wrong, which didn’t really bother their writers since they were trying to prove that the U.S. government wanted heroin to reach the streets to “dull the consciousness of the revolution.” It was the concept that counted, not the facts.

  The shootout at Pren Street was attributed to the growing gang wars in the city, and a former business writer transferred to the crime beat explained the violence as a result of too rapid expansion of the gangs without enough capital. This article received very favorable comment from the business community, many of its members feeling that this writer had produced the first intelligent and coherent analysis of organized crime. He also offered a solution: Take away crime’s markets through massive funding of urban housing, the theory being that slums bred the markets for organized crime, and why not dry up their consumer markets at the source, especially since crime was having tro
uble anyway. Naturally the builders, like Arnold Farnsworth of Alpen Realty, saw this as an excellent solution.

  Al Bressio quickly recovered from his physical wounds, which were called minor, and was allowed to keep his weapons permit when the grand jury failed to indict him for manslaughter. It was considered self-defense since ballistics while sorting out which fatal bullet came from which gun, found that all of Bressio’s slugs came from people with records. The coroner, when removing and tagging the bullets from Bressio’s body, remarked, “Hell of a shot on that .38 police special. Like he put these things in with calipers.”

  One of the things that helped Bressio before the grand jury was the government’s knowledge that Murray Blay Dawson was raring to bring the whole Pren Street situation “to public light.” The U.S. Attorney submitted the evidence against Bressio to the grand jury as though he were counsel for the defense.

  William James Cutler thought the bill submitted by Bressio’s firm was “incredibly excessive, something akin to extortion.” Clarissa Duffy handled the situation with one phone call to Murray Blay Dawson.

  “I’d like to get this thing settled by the time Al comes out of the hospital.”

  “A pleasure,” said Dawson, who promptly instituted a half-dozen suits from breach of contract to conspiracy to defraud, the latter really being the province of the District Attorney, but very serviceable for “hellos.”

  Dawson had three young lawyers badgering Mitchell, Walker and Cutler in both their Washington and New York City offices, attempting to get depositions.

  Hedding “Puff” Mitchell kept telling Jim Cutler, “These suits are groundless. Not a feather’s weight of case in any of them.” But the prestigious firm found itself totally consumed in fielding these “absurd little cases,” while it took Dawson less than a half-hour each day to think up a new one.

  “The bastard is ruining us, Jim,” said Mitchell and was backed up by Walker from Washington. The three partners met one afternoon in the Washington offices of their firm, with Walker saying one word to open the meeting.

  “Settle.”

  “It’s like robbery,” protested Cutler.

  “So?” said Walker. “We’ve been robbed before. If someone came in here with a gun, would you try to wrestle it out of his hand just so you wouldn’t be robbed?”

  “I have looked into the face of guns recently. Of guns, I know,” said Cutler indignantly.

  “Dammit, fellas,” said Mitchell. “Let me take on this Dawson and see just how good he is in the courtroom.”

  “We can all pay one-third of Bressio’s bill,” said Walker.

  “It’s the principle of the thing,” said Cutler. “It wasn’t your daughter who was killed. It wasn’t you who was terroriźed by gunmen, it wasn’t you who had to walk through a room slippery with blood. I am willing to settle with Bressio, but dammit, I want peace with honor.”

  “Let me at Dawson,” said Mitchell, and Walker blinked and Cutler sighed with the resignation of the defeated.

  “Do you doubt that I couldn’t make a good showing against that publicity whore of a kike Dwarshkopf?” said Mitchell angrily. “You all know he doesn’t have a damn thing to come in with. It’ll be like a slingshot against a heavy bomber. I’ll bomb him back to the Stone Age.”

  “What was his latest figure this morning?” said Cutler.

  “As of this morning,” said Walker. “It was a hundred and ten thousand dollars. That included punitive damages.”

  “Punitive damages for what?” demanded Mitchell. “Give me five minutes with him in front of a judge, and I’ll show you punitive damages. I’ll get that hotshot disbarred is what I’ll punitive damages him.”

  Cutler and Walker thought a moment about Mitchell and Dawson in front of a judge and Cutler spoke first.

  “Offer him ten thousand dollars. I hate to pay it, but I’m weary of this thing.”

  “I won’t pay, gentlemen,” said Mitchell.

  Walker ignored the comment and reached for the telephone, telling his secretary to get Dawson on the line.

  “The ingratitude of the man,” said Cutler. “The ingratitude. I offered him a place in this firm, in Mitchell, Walker and Cutler. With his background, I offered him a chance to be someone in this world.”

  “You weren’t serious about that Bressio in Mitchell, Walker and Cutler, were you, Jim?” asked Mitchell. The thought of it outraged him.

  “I was serious about the offer. I wasn’t exactly serious about taking him in.”

  “Oh,” said Mitchell, satisfied with the explanation.

  At the little game of who speaks to whose secretary first, Walker lost. He was on the line waiting for Dawson.

  “Hello, this is William Walker, Mr. Dawson, of Mitchell, Walker and Cutler. We’ve been playing with your little suits now for a week or so, and we wondered what it would cost us to save postage and carfare back and forth on these things … I see. Well, I was thinking of something more in the neighborhood of ten, maybe twelve thousand dollars … I don’t like to haggle either, Mr. Dawson, that’s why I’m phoning you personally. Give us a realistic figure to deal with … I see … Well, look, this fellow Bressio only put in a week at the most … I see. Twenty-five thousand. That’s awesomely reasonable. I might remind you, Mr. Dawson, that some of my partners want to go into court with you … Well, we have nothing to lose either, we are lawyers, you know … You have twenty-five thousand dollars to lose, is what you have to lose … I couldn’t get my people to agree on fifty. I’m just a partner, not God.”

  Walker put his hand over the receiver.

  “Thirty-three five,” he whispered.

  “Yes. Yes,” said Cutler. “But that has to include taking care of Fleish’s daughter, putting her in a home or something.”

  “Thirty-three five,” said Walker. “There’s the matter of the child that must be taken care of … Correct. We don’t wish to read in the papers about the granddaughter of William James Cutler … We understand. There was nothing anyone could do about the daughter. Her name had to be in the paper—she was dead, after all … Correct. Fine, Mr. Dawson. I’d like to add I have a great admiration for you … Yes, I’d love to. Sometime when I’m in New York City, that would be absolutely fine … Yes, I knew Bobo briefly. Exquisite, charming, delightful woman … Yes, yes, of course … Well, we are considering transferring some business. We could work out your firm’s retainer very easily … Yes. Yes. Of course, well, it has been obvious through this last week that we should have retained counsel for criminal matters. Frankly, we would have gone to fifty … I am not full of shit, Murray … Heh-heh. You’ll never know … Well, let’s make it next Thursday for lunch … Certainly. I’d love to meet Helmer and Burns. Next Thursday for lunch it is then. Give my regards to Bobo. ’Bye.”

  Walker hung up. “Thirty-three five,” he said.

  “I know,” said Cutler.

  “I still think we should have fought,” said Mitchell, lighting his pipe with decisive motions.

  “For thirty-three five?” asked Walker incredulously.

  “Were you serious about retaining Dawson, Hemler and Burns?” asked Cutler.

  “Absolutely,” said Walker. “I like the way that man operates. He can add dimension to our resources.”

  When Bressio returned from the hospital, Clarissa presented him with a welcome-home check from Mitchell, Walker and Cutler, for services rendered.

  “C’mon, Al. Don’t be so gloomy.”

  “What do I do with the kid?”

  “Put her in a home, Al. I’ve had her ever since Pren Street and I think a home will be a good place for her. There are loads of Catholic orphanages.”

  “I thought you said the Catholic Church was a reactionary oppressive force? You said it did a lot of damage to you.”

  “For me, yes. For Bobbi Cutler—I mean Fleish, no. It would do her good. Get some order into her life, an order that she never had. Do you know she eats with her hands? I can’t get her to use a fork.”

  “N
o,” said Bressio. “No orphanage. I don’t know what I’ll do, but no orphanage. I’m going out. Leave me alone.”

  “Are you okay, Al?” said Clarissa. She placed a gentle hand on his arm, and he moved away.

  “Don’t touch me,” he said “Just leave me alone.”

  “Is it because of what I said about Bobbi, Al?”

  “Just lay off me,” said Bressio and left his office and went to the Cedar Tavern and despite doctor’s orders got somewhat drunk, and went home and locked the doors behind him. The phone rang promptly on the television introduction of Dick Schaap. It was a Dawson call though.

  “What is it, Murray?”

  “Get over here right away, Al. I’m scared and I need you. I don’t know what to do. We just got the trunk of our Rolls open.”

  XXIII

  Dawson poked his head out of the basement’s garage entrance. “C’mon in, Al. I kept the servants out.”

  “Anybody else know? Bobo?”

  “She’s inside here.”

  Bressio had to suck in his stomach to move between wall and Rolls. It always amazed him about this garage that it never smelled of oil. The massive Rolls trunk was open. Bobo stood by a taillight drumming her fingers on a fender.

  “Thanks, Al. Thank you very much for all that you’ve done for us,” snapped Bobo. “We needed this. This makes the season complete. I have had to spend three weeks in New York this summer and now this. Oh, thank you so very much, Al Bressio. This here is carrying the Mafia a little too far, just a little too far. Don’t you think?”

  Bressio saw the plastic bags stacked, wedged and pushed into a mass that filled the trunk. He shook his head while calculating.

  “What do you think, Al?” said Dawson.

  “I think I’d better think,” said Bressio.

  “Why bother to think? Aren’t you going to set up a connection here?”

  “Bobo, shhh. Please,” said Dawson.