“Murray, this is a nasty, nasty thing. I thought we were through with it. Well, it was not inconsistent with Becky’s character to do something like this.”
“How could she do it?” asked Dawson.
“She carried it in her paws,” said Bobo. “Can I leave now.”
“No,” said Dawson.
“Stay here just a few minutes,” said Bressio. “Yeah. Okay. The loft above. You cut through a little hole for a look, then a larger hole for crawling. You bring up the stuff one bag at a time, hand it up through the hole. All right.”
Bressio went around the car and got in the rear seat. He began pulling out the back seat cushion. It was loose.
“All right. They take down the stuff, slow, maybe four hours leaving the car in the street, maybe making a few trips with the car, but never unloading.”
“Wouldn’t they hear in the basement?”
“Maybe,” said Bressio. “I don’t know. What I heard in the hospital was they found that bathroom had been cut into from four sides, the hallway cut being three weeks old, so you figure it out.”
“You mean someone else was working on it, too.”
“Undoubtedly. I was just trying to figure out how Becky Hawkins might have done it. I didn’t hear anything about this car, though. I would have heard if it had been parked outside. They would have been through this car within five minutes of the stash being missing. She must have had the car parked several blocks away. Maybe she had Mary Beth and L. Marvin help her. Each carrying five bags apiece per trip. I don’t know. I don’t know. But I knew one thing for sure—someone was going to figure out a way. Maybe she had help from one of the narcos downstairs. She knew how to peddle her ass good.”
“Shut up, Bobo,” said Dawson.
“I didn’t say anything,” said Bobo.
“All right. We’ve got to get rid of it,” said Bressio.
“There’s death in that trunk. Let’s make sure it doesn’t kill again. Let’s flush it bag by bag down the toilet,” said Dawson.
“And then Bobo tells just one friend and you have vicious company that can’t believe someone would flush millions of dollars down the toilet. They’d keep sticking lighted cigarettes into you until you told them where.”
“But if I tell them nothing but that it’s gone?”
“You’ll be very burned.”
“But certainly there’s some amount of reason. I know, contrary to popular belief, the Mafia is a profit-making organization. Take away the profit and you’re safe.”
“But they’ve got to know it, Murray,” said Bressio, talking loudly with his hands. “They’ve got to know it, and they’re never going to know it just because you tell them.”
Dawson was quiet, mulling. Bobo took this lull to bring up something that bothered her. “What makes you all so sure I’d talk? I’ve kept lots of secrets very well,” she said.
“Name one,” said Dawson absently, looking at the trunk of plastic bags of pure heroin, probing avenues, twisting around corners, weighing possibilities. “Name one.”
“You liking to stick it in my ear and hair,” said Bobo.
“Thanks,” said Dawson.
Bressio said they could not phone the police or narcos because Dawson had too many enemies there who might like to forget the phone call and stage a raid … with the U.S. Attorney General helping to get everyone involved, afterwards a nice promotion.
“That settles it,” Dawson said. “A man likes to be sure he has done one good thing with his life. Often we cannot separate self-interest from charity. But if I had to die for something, for one thing, then I am sure this thing would be it. That is a trunkload of human tragedy. And with my life I will destroy it. I have never been so sure of anything before, as sure as I am sure of what I do now. It’s my gift of gratitude for being alive.”
“That’s beautiful, darling,” said Bobo.
“Have you been drinking, Murray?” asked Bressio.
“It’s not the alcohol talking, Al. At first I saw it as a tragedy visited upon me, but now I perceive its true nature. It is an opportunity few men have. I shall not let it pass, for it may never come again. Bobo, help me with these bags.”
Before either of them could reach into the trunk, Bressio closed it forcefully. Dawson’s pinky caught briefly and he yanked it away, hopping and wincing and blowing on it.
“You motherfucker!” screamed Dawson. “Ooow! You motherfucker!”
“We are going to very publicly and very finally get rid of this stuff and we are going to deliver it with someone of unimpeachable stature with us, so in case we are stopped he can verify what we are doing. Case closed. Is that the phone over there, Bobo?”
“Yes. But I like Murray’s idea better. I’ve never done a great humanitarian act—and with millions of dollars worth of something, too.”
“That’s because you’re bored, Bobo,” said Bressio. “You want to be a humanitarian with your life, fine. Not with mine. I hate dying with a passion. I hate the thought of it, even the possibility of it. It’s my thing. You people will just have to indulge this little whimsy of mine. Think of it as a neurosis.”
“And I thought you were a tough man, Al Bressio,” said Bobo.
Bressio phoned the Cutler residence in Old Lyme. Mr. Cutler could not be disturbed, Bressio was told. Then Bressio would just have to make up his own words for the reporters, he said. There was a pause and then William James Cutler was on the phone. What was this nonsense about newspapers? Hadn’t Bressio been paid?
“You’d better come into the city, Cutler, or your fat name is going to be in the Daily News.”
“Have you no decency, Mr. Bressio?”
“No way,” said Bressio and gave Cutler Dawson’s address. This seemed to relieve him somewhat, knowing that it was not a dangerous neighborhood.
While waiting for Cutler, Dawson asked Bressio why he thought this trunkload would be any safer than it was in Pren Street or the other heroin in police headquarters.
“Because they’ve already made the mistake. Maybe they won’t do it again. That’s how people learn.”
“But you don’t know, do you?”
“No, I don’t,” said Bressio.
“Then you’re taking a chance with the lives of thousands of people, aren’t you?”
“That’s right.”
“I would have thought better of you, Al. I would want to think better of you.” Dawson sucked on his pinky.
“You know what wax is used for, Murray?”
“Candles.”
“And what else?”
“There’s a lost-wax method in making metal tools.”
“Anything else?”
“Engraving, I imagine. Make your point, already.”
“I already have,” said Bressio and they waited in silence for Cutler. Shortly before 1:00 A.M., Bobo noted that the rustling noise they heard outside was probably Cutler.
“They’re waiting for you down here, sir?” Bressio heard one of the servants say.
“Bored to death,” muttered Bobo.
Dawson gentled the hand with the injured pinky.
Cutler looked somewhat haggard despite the neat business suit. Bressio motioned him in and for the door to be shut behind him.
“We found the stash,” said Bressio when the door had been closed for a good minute.
“So?” said Cutler.
“It’s in that car.”
“So?”
“You’re going to drive with us to headquarters, so in case any policeman stops us, you can verify our destination and purpose.”
“You’re assuming an awful lot, Mr. Bressio.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
“And if I refuse to go?”
“You’re going.”
“Where is this thing that has become so famous? I would like to see it.”
“It’s just smack. A lot of it,” said Bressio.
“I’ve never seen the substance, and I would like to see what it looks like. That’s t
he least you can do since you are in the process of kidnapping me to be its escort.”
Bressio opened his mouth. The words did not come right away but when they did they were weak with shock and wonder. “You mean you were on the President’s advisory panel and you never saw heroin?”
“We set policy,” said Cutler haughtily.
“For an entire country,” said Bressio incredulously.
“Well, I did see a sample they bring around to schools and things. Part of the national educational program for high schools.”
“Open the trunk, Murray,” said Bressio.
With his good hand, Dawson opened the trunk.
Cutler sidled along the car to get a view. “So that’s it? Doesn’t look like much. Just plastic bags. How do you know it’s not Bromo-Seltzer in there?”
On the way to the station, with Bobo driving, Cutler allowed Dawson to know that what happened this evening certainly wouldn’t advance his case for a retainer from Mitchell, Walker and Cutler. But Dawson hardly paid attention. He was explaining to Bressio in the back seat that it was not so unusual for a high government official to have a profound unawareness of what he was doing, nor was it limited to any particular government, democratic, fascist, communist or down-on-the-farm commune. When Germany had decided to invade Russia, the chief of the German general staff went out and got a world atlas fifteen years old. They didn’t have a map of the place on hand. Field Marshal Haig of Britain, responsible for more English deaths than the Black Plague, visited the battlefield only once during World War I to exclaim, “My God, I didn’t know it was like this.”
Dawson nudged Bressio. “They’re no different from most of the lawyers we know, Al. Same thing. People.”
“I was thinking,” said Cutler from the front seat, “if someone with Bressio’s contacts were to market that material back there, how much do you think he could get in very liquid cash, twenty million, thirty million, how much? Just a supposition.”
Dawson scarcely blinked and Bressio’s gun was out of its holster and pointed to the back of Cutler’s head.
“This much,” said Bressio. “Turn around.”
When Cutler looked behind him he saw and heard the pistol cock. “Just a supposition,” said Cutler.
“Sure,” said Bressio. “You’re William James Cutler, whose single life is vindication enough for an entire university, a former Under Secretary of State, one of our leading Washington attorneys, a member of the President’s advisory panel on narcotics. Sure it was just a supposition.”
Bressio kept the gun out of its holster all the way to headquarters.
XXIV
Clarissa expressed a certain satisfaction that Bressio had destroyed her note calling him “beautiful.” Bobbi, she said, was driving her up a wall. Dawson, she said, had probably wanted to destroy the heroin for some devious publicity move and settled for the big exposure in turning in the heroin. She was sure that as bad as Cutler was, it was his noble motivations that prompted the turning in of the stash.
“All right, all right,” said Bressio. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong,” said Clarissa. “I’m your secretary, not your wife. You can’t dump that kid on me. You have no right. Get her out of my house by week’s end. God, to think I’d ever call you beautiful—the pressure must have been incredible. You threw the note in several places, you say?”
Since there were times when Bressio assiduously avoided aggravation, he left the office as he had been leaving the office for the last several weeks when the subject of Bobbi came up. Each time Clarissa would angrily point out that she was not his wife, did he see a wedding ring on her hand? did he ever sign for a wedding license? did he ever say he did? Well, then, he should get the little monster out of her house, and yes, she felt a little bit guilty that Bobbi’s mother was dead, but she had her own life to live also. It wasn’t as if she were tied down by some marriage contract.
“I do not know what is troubling her,” Bressio told Bill, the bartender at the Cedar Tavern.
“Sounds like she may love you. Sounds like she may want to marry you from what you tell me. A woman sends you a note saying you’re beautiful, she must love you, Al. No offense, but you’re not a physically attractive person.”
“No kidding,” said Bressio. “No. She doesn’t have those feelings for me. The kid is getting on her nerves. I should get that kid out of her place, she’s right.”
“Maybe she’s asking you to put a ring on her finger and then she’ll keep the kid.”
“I went to a couple of Catholic orphanages the other day, and a couple of boarding-school-type things.”
“Yeah.”
“I think the kid would have been better off dead than with the nuns.”
“So what are you going to do, Al?”
“Fleish is coming up for trial tomorrow.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Dawson’s going to plead him guilty just to keep him off the streets. There’s no contract out on him, but some guys who got hurt by that Pren Street thing may break him up fatally if they see him.”
“What are you going to do about the kid, Al?”
“I come here for some peace and quiet and all I get from you is what I get from Clarissa.”
“I don’t want to marry you, Al.”
“Neither does she,” said Bressio. “All I hear is about the kid. The kid. The kid. What is it with that kid.?”
Thus Bressio left the Cedar Tavern into the afternoon sun that was becoming not at all unpleasant for September. I’ll get rid of the kid, he told himself, and I’ll put an end to all this aggravation.
After all, he didn’t bring her into the world. L. Marvin Fleish did. He didn’t charge unarmored into the vessels of pleasure, why should he have to wipe up the spillings? He didn’t even know the kid. The only time he ever touched her was at the blood bath on Pren Street. She never even spoke to him. What was she? She was a legal package. Since she was a legal package, he knew what to do.
Harriet Whitmore Fleish. With Mary Beth Cutler dead and the papers only in the works at the time, Harriet Whitmore Fleish was the legal mother. There was a legal obligation Harriet and L. Marvin Fleish had to the child. Since L. Marvin was back in jail, Bressio having revoked bail money at Dawson’s request to keep L. Marvin off the streets, Bressio couldn’t very well deposit the kid with him. Besides, he was destined to do a bit, probably Danbury.
Harriet Whitmore Fleish was best known in the West Side for her fight to bus West End Avenue children to Harlem schools. In this district that traditionally voted liberal to left, she was shocked, said she was shocked for television over the lack of support she encountered.
Privately, according to Clarissa, who had heard it from L. Marvin—an unreliable hearsay chain if ever there was one—Harriet Whitmore Fleish confided that she did not expect support, but just wanted to “rub their noses in it.” The “they” being West Side liberals.
From what Bressio knew she was one of those who believed that only a massive armed revolution throughout the world, in every capital, in every village, would bring peace to mankind. She was fond of quoting Ho Chi Minh, who, as Bressio understood it, thought peace was so much nicer after a very bloody war. Ho Chi Minh died in bed, as did Lyndon Johnson. Thus it would ever be, thought Bressio as he rode up to the seventh floor in the elevator on West Eighty-fourth Street.
Harriet Whitmore Fleish’s lust for integration did not deter her from using a police lock, reinforced by several bolt locks, backed up by a massive German shepherd that—she kept telling Clarissa—did not bark specifically at black men. This little did Bressio know about Harriet Whitmore Fleish. What he did know and what made him massively uneasy was that he was trying to foist a child on a human being who apparently married L. Marvin Fleish of her own free will.
He rang the buzzer and heard the locks click down when he yelled who he was upon being asked. The door opened on the tow-headed moppet in a New York Mets T-shirt, untied sneakers, and rela
tively clean blue shorts.
“My name is Al Bressio. What’s yours?”
“Robert Peter Fleish.”
“I’d like to speak to your mother.”
“She’s fucking.”
“That’s not a nice thing to say, Robert.”
“There’s nothing wrong with fucking.”
“That’s not a nice word.”
“It’s legitimate,” said the boy in the Met’s shirt.
“Who is it?” came a woman’s voice from inside the apartment.
“A reactionary, Ma.”
“I’ll be with him in a minute. Tell him to come in.”
“C’mon in, mister.”
Bressio followed the boy into the living room, where he discovered at least that the boy did not lie. A woman who by the rolls of her stretched stomach appeared to be in her early forties had a bearded youth clasped between her legs. They occupied a sofa.
“Just a minute, I’m coming soon,” said the woman.
“You’re Harriet Whitmore Fleish?” asked Bressio, examining very closely the base of a lampshade.
“Yes. Does this bother you? I should be more thoughtful. Sometimes people aren’t as liberated as I would hope them to be.”
“It bothers me.”
“Robby, take this gentleman into the kitchen.”
“Can I have a Kool-Aid Pop?”
“No. You’ve had enough carbohydrates for today. And it’s not even supper time.”
“Brown rice is a carbohydrate,” protested Robby.
“Brown rice is good for you. It’s not a … Just a minute—oh, that feels good … Where are you going?”
“My name’s Al Bressio. I may be back.”
“Marvin and Clarissa have talked so much about you. It’s a pleasure to meet you. You almost got sucked into that capitalist conspiracy on Pren Street, didn’t you? Where are you going? You just got here.”
Bressio was slightly tipsy when he arrived at Clarissa’s apartment that night in Rego Park. He wanted to speak to the kid, he said.
“She’s watching TV,” said Clarissa.
“I want to talk to her.”
“Have you been drinking heavy, Al?”
“A little.”
“Talk to her tomorrow.”
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