Westlake, Donald E - Novel 41

by Levine (v1. 1)

  Today, a Thursday, Levine told Andy that there continued to be no break in the case of Maurice Gold, during the investigation of whose murder Andy had been shot, by a drug dealer who unfortunately was not Gold's killer. Andy shrugged, not really interested: "Gold is gonna stay Open," he said.

  Levine had to agree. With some sort of reverse logic, when a case became inactive the Police Department phrase was that it was Opened. "Open that," meant in reality to close it, to cease to work on it. The reason behind the Newspeak phraseology was that only an arrest could Close a case; an inactive case could always be reactivated by fresh evidence, and therefore it would remain —unto eternity, most likely — Open.

  Levine and Andy also talked awhile about Levine's regular partner. Jack Crawley, a big shambling mean-looking harness bull with whom Levine had a very easy and reassuring relationship. Crawley had just come back on duty this week after his convalescent leave —he had been, several nnonths ago, shot in the leg—and the long spell of inactivity had made him more bristly and bad-tempered than ever. "I think he'll arrest me pretty soon," Levine said.

  Andy laughed at that, but what he mostly wanted to talk about was a nurse he had his eye on, a pretty young thing, very short and compact, squeezed into a too-tight uniform. Both times the girl passed by while Levine was there, Andy did some elephantine flirting, very heavy-handed arch remarks that Levine found embarrassing but which the girl appeared to enjoy. The second time, after both men had watched the provocative departure of the nurse, Andy grinned and said, "The sap still rises, eh, Abe?"

  "The sap also sets," Levine told him, getting to his feet. "See you tomorrow, Andy."

  "Thanks for coming by."

  Levine was walking down the wide corridor, not meeting the eyes of the ambulatory patients, when a hand touched his elbow and a gravelly voice said, quietly, "Let's just walk around here a while."

  Surprised, Levine looked to his right and saw a short, blocky, pugnacious-looking man of about his own age, wearing an expensive topcoat open over a rather wrinkled suit, and an old-fashioned snap-brim hat pulled low enough to make it difficult to see his eyes. Levine noticed the awkward bunchiness of the man's tie-knot, as though he had got himself up in costume like a trick-or-treater, as though his real persona existed in some other mode.

  The man gave Levine a quick sidelong glance from under his hatbrim. His hand held firmly to Levine's elbow. "You're a cop, right? Abraham Levine, detective. Visiting the cop in there."

  "Yes?"

  "So let's talk a little bit."

  They had reached an intersection of corridors. The elevators were straight ahead, but the man was pulling Levine to the right. "Talk about what?" Levine asked, trying to shake loose.

  "Cops and robbers," the man said. "I got a proposition."

  Levine planted his feet, refusing to move. Peeling the man's fingers from his elbow, he said, "What sort of proposition?"

  With darting movements of his head, the man shot wary glances along the corridors. "I don't like it here," he said. "Exposed here."

  "Exposed to what?"

  "Listen," the man said, moving closer, his breath warm on Levine's chin, his hatbrim nearly touching Levine's face. "You know Giacomo Polito," he said.

  "I know who he is. Mafia chieftan. He controls one of the five families."

  "I'm a soldier for him," the man said, his voice low but harsh, pushing with intensity. "I know Giacomo's whole life story."

  Levine frowned, trying to see this too-close face, read meaning into the tone of the husky tense voice. Was this an offer of information? The setting was unusual, the manner odd, but what else could it be? Levine said, "You want to sell that life story?"

  "Don't rush me." Another darting glance. "Giacomo disappeared my son," the man said, still in the same breathy way. "He knows I know."

  "Ah."

  "You take your bus, like you do," the man said. "Look out the back window. When you see a green Buick following, you get off the bus. There's a —kind of a flower on the aerial."

  "And who are you?" Levine asked him. "What's your name?"

  "What's the dif? Call me Bobby."

  "Bobby?" The incongruity of that name with this man made Levine smile despite himself.

  The man looked up, facing Levine more directly than before. He too smiled, but with an edge to it. "That was my son's name," he said.

  The green Buick with the red plastic chrysanthemum taped to its antenna followed the bus for a dozen blocks before Levine decided to follow through. Then he got off at the next stop, stood at the curb while the bus drove off, and waited for the Buick to stop in front of him.

  The delay had been because Levine wasn't entirely sure what he thought of "Bobby" and his story. A Mafia soldier who decided to defect usually did so when under indictment himself for some major crime, when he could trade his knowledge for softer treatment from the courts. Simple revenge between criminals rarely included squealing to the police. If Bobby's son had been killed by Giacomo Polito, in the normal course of events Bobby would simply kill Polito, or be himself killed in the attempt. The Mafia tended to run very much along the lines of a Shakespearian tragedy, with few roles for outsiders.

  In addition, if Bobby had decided that his vengeance required selling Polito to the police, why not do it the simple normal way? Why not simply drive to Manhattan and go to the Organized Crime Unit in Police Headquarters and make his deal there? Why talk to some obscure precinct detective in the depths of Brooklyn, and in particular why do it in a hospital corridor? And why all this counterspy hugger-mugger?

  What finally decided Levine to take the next step was that he couldn't think of any rational alternative explanation for Bobby's actions. If someone had decided to murder Levine, of course, this would be an excellent ploy to put him in a position where it could be done; but Levine could think of no one at the moment who would have a motive. He wasn't due to be a witness in any upcoming trials, he hadn't made any potentially dangerous arrests recently, nor had he received notification within the last year or so of any felons, arrested by himself, who had been released from prison. Also, if Bobby's story were merely a charade for some sort of con game, how could it hurt Levine? He wouldn't pay anything or sign anything or even necessarily believe anything. And finally, there had been the real brimstone aura of truth in that last direct stare from Bobby, when he'd said, "That was my son's name."

  So for all those reasons Levine had ultimately stepped off the bus and stood waiting until the Buick pulled to a stop in front of him. But, before getting into the car, he did nevertheless check the floor behind the front seat, just to be absolutely certain there was no one crouched back there, with a pistol or a knife or a length of wire.

  There was nothing; just some empty beer cans. So Levine of>ened the front passenger door and bent to enter the car, but Bobby was leaning over toward him from the steering wheel, saying, "Uh, would you take down the —get rid of the flower?"

  "Of course."

  Masking tape had been wrapped around both antenna and flower stalk; Levine tugged on the plastic stalk and the tape ripped, releasing it. He then got into the car and shut the door, feeling vaguely foolish to be sitting here with a red flower in his lap. He tossed it stop the dashboard as Bobby accelerated away from the curb, checking both the inside and outside mirrors, saying, "I did shake 'em, but you never know."

  "You're being followed?"

  "Oh, sure," he said, shrugging as though it were an everyday event. "They wfinna know I'm not going anywhere before the big day."

  "What big day?"

  "Wipe out," Bobby said, and ran a finger along his neck. "Giacomo's got a contract out on me."

  "You're sure of that?"

  Bobby gave him a quick glance, almost of contempt, then went back to his fitful concentration on the road ahead and both mirrors. "I'm sure of everything," he said. "When I'm not sure, I shut up."

  "So you want police protection, is that it?"

  "Why don't I tell you what I want,
okay?"

  Levine smiled at the rebuff "Okay," he said.

  Bobby turned a corner. He seemed to be driving at random, though trending northwest, away from the hospital and in the general direction of Manhattan, several miles away. "Giacomo's got a young wife," he said. "The old Mama died, all over cancer, right? So Giacomo went to Vegas to work out his grief, he come back with a bride. A dancer at the Aladdin, calls herself Terri. With an I."

  "Uhhuh."

  "My son "

  "Bobby."

  "My son. Got hooked on this Terri. He was like a dog, there's a bitch in the neighborhood in heat, you cannot keep that dog in the house."

  "Dangerous."

  "She says he raped her," Bobby said. "He didn't rap)e her, she was asking for it."

  Levine kept silent. He watched Bobby's fingers twitch and fidget on the steering wheel.

  "A bodyguard found them at it," Bobby said. **Naturally she had to cry rape. My son told his story, the bodyguard said forget it, my son went home. Terri with the I, she went to Giacomo. She talked to Giacomo, but Giacomo didn't talk to nobody, not to me, not to my son, not to nobody. The bodyguard got disappeared. My son got disappeared. I said, 'Giacomo, we know one another a long time, why don't you talk to me first, ask me a question?' He still don't talk. I go away, and he puts a contract on me, he puts shadows on me to be sure I'm still here for the hit."

  "There's a special time for the . . . hit?"

  "Saturday night. Day after tomorrow. I still got friends to whisper me things. At BarolH's Seafood House in Far Rockaway, upstairs in the private dining room, there's gonna be a banquet. It's Giacomo's first wedding anniversary." Bobby spoke the words with no apparent irony. "That's where they're gonna take me out. By the time they're at the coffee and cigars, I'm at the bottom of Jamaica Bay."

  "Pretty."

  "Businesslike," Bobby said.

  "If it's police protection you want — "

  Levine was stopped by Bobby's cold eyes looking directly at him. "You gonna explain life to me, Mr. Levine?"

  "Sorry."

  "I know about police protection," Bobby said. He lifted his right hand from the steering wheel and rubbed his thumb back and forth over the pads of his other fingers. "With this haftd," he said, "I have paid protective police to be blind and deaf while the subject of their concern was falling out a window. You are an honest cop, Mr. Levine, and that's very nice, that's why you and me are talking, but let me break you the sad news. There are one or two rotten apples in your crowd."

  "I know that."

  "I also know about the Feds and their witness protection plan," Bobby said. "They will give me a new name, a new house in a new city, a new job, a new driver's license, a whole entire new life."

  "That's right."

  "All they take away is my old life," Bobby said. "That's what Giacomo has in mind, too. I like my old life."

  "So far," Levine said, "I'm not sure why you're telling me all this."

  "Because I have a scheme," Bobby said, "but my scheme is taking too long. I won't be able to leave town until the middle of next week. I'm okay until Saturday, but when I don't show at the celebration they'll start looking for me. It'll be tougher for me to move around town."

  "I can see that."

  "I need a courier," Bobby said. "I need protection and assistance. I need an honest cop to run my errands and see that nobody offs me."

  "Tell me your scheme," Levine said.

  "I am assembling information," Bobby told him. **I am talking into a tape recorder, I am giving facts and names and dates, I am nailing Giacomo to the cross. And I am getting the physical evidence, too, the contracts and the photos and the letters and the wiretaps and everything else."

  "Giacomo shouldn't have killed your son," Levine said.

  "Not without talking to me."

  "You'll turn over all this information next week?"

  "To the law?" Bobby grinned, a kind of distorted grimace that created deep crevices in his cheeks. "You got the wrong idea," he said.

  "Then who do you give it all to, all these proofs and information?"

  "Giacomo's partners," Bobby said. "His friends. His fellow capi. His business associates. What I'm putting together is what he's done to them over the years. I have stuff Giacomo himself can't remember. I have enough to get him offed ten times from ten different f)eople."

  "I see," Levine said. "You ruin Giacomo with the mob, and his contract on you ceases to matter."

  "Andhc's dead. And the Terri with him."

  "Why do you think I would help you?" Levine asked.

  Again the wrenching grin. "Because I'm gonna give you some scraps from my table," Bobby said. "Just a few things you'd like to know."

  "About Giacomo."

  "Who else?" Under the wide-brimmed hat, under the darting, dashing anxious eyes, Bobby smiled like a death's head. "Just enough to put Giacomo in prison," he said. "Where it'll be easier for his friends to kill him."

  For forty minutes Levine sat at Lieutenant Barker's desk and looked at pictures, front and side views of Caucasian mades, page after page of tough guys behind clear plastic. The infinite variety of human appearance became confined here to variations on one theme: the Beast, without Beauty.

  "Him," Levine said.

  Inspector Santangelo leaned over Levine's shoulder and whisded. "You sure?"

  "That's him, all right."

  It was Bobby, no question. Without the hat, he was shown to have a low broad forehead, thick pepper-and-salt hair that grew spikily across his head, and cold eyes that seemed to slink and lurk behind half-lowered lids. Without the hat he looked more like a snake. The name under the photos was Ralph Banadando.

  Inspector Santangelo was visibly impressed. Crossing the lieutenant's office to resume his seat on the sofa, he said, "No wonder he knows where the bodies are buried. And no wonder he called Polito by his first name."

  Lieutenant Barker, chief of the precinct's detective squad, whose office this was, said, "Who is he?"

  "Benny Banadando," the inspector said. "He's Giacomo Polito's righthand man, they came up through the ranks together. He's the number two man in that mob." Grinning at Levine, he said, "That's no soldier. He told you he was a soldier? That's a General." Nodding at Barker, seated in what was usually the visitor's chair, he said, "You did right to.call me, Fred."

  "Thanks."

  It was Friday morning, nearly noon. Yesterday, saying he would get in touch with Levine sometime today to hear his answer, whether or not he would accept the proposition, Bobby —Ralph "Benny" Banadando, now —had let Levine off six blocks from his home, giving Levine ten minutes to walk and think. At home, he had at once phoned the precinct to give Lieutenant Barker a brief recap of the conversation. Given the truth of Bobby's remark about the "one or two rotten apples" in the Police Department, they'd agreed not to spread the story very widely, and Barker had phoned his old friend Inspector Santangelo, now assigned to the Organized Crime Unit. This morning Santangelo had come down to the Forty-Third Precinct with his book of mug shots, and now Levine had a name for Bobby. He said, "Does Banadando have a son?"

  "He did," Santangelo said in a dry tone. "Fellow named Robert, not very sweet. What do you want to do, Abe? Can I call you Abe?"

  "Sure."

  "And I'm Mike," Santangelo said. "You want to turn this thing over to me, or do you want to follow through yourself?"

  "You mean, do I want to tell Banadando yes or no."

  "That's what I mean." Grinning at some private thought, Santangelo sat back on the sofa, stretching his long legs in the small office. "Before you answer," he said, "let me say this. I don't want to bring this news back to my shop, because if I do it'll get to Polito and he won't wait for the symbolic moment of his anniversary dinner."

  Levine nodded. "Thai's what we thought, too."

  "In addition," Santangelo said, "you'll be marked yourself, Abe, because Polito won't be sure how much Banadando told you."

  Lieutenant Barker said, "He won'
t try to kill a cop."

  "Probably not," Santangelo said. "But if he's nervous enough, it's a possibility. From our point of view, it's better if Banadando can work his scheme in peace and quiet. But what that means, Abe, we can't provide backup."

  "I can," Lieutenant Barker said. "Abe's partner, Jack Crawley, can back him up."

  "That's not quite the same as three busloads of TPF,"

  Santangelo said. "You see what I'm getting at, Abe? This could be dangerous for you."

  "What happens if I tell Banadando no?"

  "I pull him in," Santangelo said. "I try to convince him his scheme is busted anyway and he might as well cooperate with us."

  "He'll say no."

  Santangelo shrugged. "It's worth a try."

  Levine said, "You won't have to. I'll tell him yes."

  "Good," said Banadando's husky, low, insinuating voice on the phone. It was twenty to five on Friday afternoon and Levine was in the hospital again, visiting with Andy Stettin. Andy's phone had rung and it was Banadando, for Levine.

  Conscious of Andy's curious eyes on him, Levine said into the phone, "What happens now?"

  "Nothing. I can still play my own hand till tomorrow night. You know Long Island well?"

  "Pretty well."

  "About fifty miles out there's a town called Bay Shore. On the Great South Bay."

  "I know it."

  "Go there Sunday morning, around nine. Go down to the end of Maple, park there."

  "What will I " But Banadando had hungbp.

  Levine replaced the receiver and Andy said, "What was that? Sounded like a real sweetheart."

  "Mobster," Levine said. "He's gonna give some evidence, for some reason he made me the intermediary."

  "Why's he giving evidence?"

  Levine was reluctant to hold back —it wasn't as though he mistrusted you—but he had to maintain a habit of reticence in this situation. "Some of his pals have a contract on him," he said.

  Andy's lip curled. "Let 'em kill each other off. Best thing that can happen."