The boys had kidded him about it for so long, getting a child’s operation when he was almost eighteen that the name had stuck. Now pushing forty, his hair was thinning, and a lifetime of pasta and vino was beginning to put a belly on him. But the name lingered.
“Paesan! Che si dice? You lookin’ for some action?” he answered, watching Vince approach from the other side of his own exhaled smoke. “Rangers look pretty good this year.”
“I don’t bet hockey,” Vince replied as he sat down.
An Enrico Caruso recording was playing low from a phonograph in the back. It was scratchy from over-use. It skipped a little disconcertingly while Vince settled into the chair.
“Right, smart move,” Paulie answered. “I think we got some college basketball going on, if you want to put somethin’ down on that.”
“Yeah, I might lay down a few bucks. St. John’s is playing at the Garden, right?” Vince said.
“Yeah. I’ll put you down for your usual. Good spread on this one, just between you and me. I think you’ll make out on it.”
“Thanks, Paulie.” Vince turned then, out of habit when he heard the door open behind him.
He watched discreetly as a pair of men he had never seen before entered the place from the same unmarked side door he had come through, the door only regulars and good customers ever used. Strangely, though, no one paid them any mind. Not old-time Freddie who sipped his espresso in the corner. Not Mikey, the ancient-looking man behind the bar who never seemed to leave, and not any of the four runners playing cards at a table near the back.
That alone was odd. What was odder still was how the two looked. A bald man so short he was probably a midget, and a guy who Vince imagined would make a good Tonto from the Lone Ranger radio show. Vince wasn’t quite sure what to say.
“Who the hell was that?” he managed, once they had passed.
The balding wiseguy smiled half a smile. He looked like he wanted to say a lot, but he responded briefly.
“Coupla new guys.”
The answer did not satisfy the ex-cop.
“I heard you had some new faces around here. But what gives? Frankie don’t trust nobody that didn’t grow up within spittin’ distance of the neighborhood. And I can tell you right now those freaks ain’t from the neighborhood.”
Paulie took a long draw from his Macanudo. The full, sweet smoke seemed in no hurry to ease its way out of his mouth. He rather carefully checked to his left and to his right before he spoke again, trying hard not to look like he was trying hard.
His voice fell into a self-conscious whisper.
“He didn’t. I don’t neither. Ain’t you heard, though? Frankie ain’t around no more. Hasn’t been for about three months.”
“No. I didn’t hear anything. If somebody took out Little Frankie, I think I’d have heard something.”
Paulie shook his head. His eyes strayed away from Vince’s sight. For the moment, the plain surface of the table was all that he wanted to see.
“We don’t know that somebody took him out, not yet, anyway. Believe me, I don’t mind tellin’ you Vince, cop or nothin’, if I knew anything, I’d take care of it myself. All we know is that he left one day and nobody’s seen him since.”
“And Sam? What’s he say?”
Paulie looked up, just so Vince could tell that he wanted to conversation to end.
“Tell you the God’s honest truth, he don’t seem to care one bit. But the boss ain’t really been himself lately. Gettin’ a little nuts in his old age, if you know what I mean.”
“So I heard. Listen, I’ll be back tomorrow to pick up my cash. Good spread, right?” Vince said, getting up to leave.
“You know it.”
With one more look to the rear, where the newcomers had settled in the shadows, Vincent buttoned his coat, paid his respects to old Freddie, and left.
“Who was that, Paulie?” Indian Joe asked, not a moment later. Paulie had not heard him approach.
“Oh, him? Vinny Sicario. Used to be a cop around here, grew up over on the West Side, Hell’s Kitchen, you know? Good guy, good customer. He drops a couple hundred in here every summer.”
“Every summer?”
“Yeah, you know, baseball season. Big Yankee fan, old Vince. You gotta get with the program here Joey, what the hell do you do all day upstairs?” Paulie tried to use humor to mask his unease at dealing with the giant Native American. It usually didn’t work.
“What did he want?”
“Nothin’. Just talkin’, you know.”
Joseph nodded, and walked away.
The little bodega store was out of Lucky Strike cigarettes. That meant Vince was going to have to settle for Marlboro, or maybe Pall Mall. It also meant he was going to be in a bad mood for the rest of the day.
Having met with failure seeking the first item on his informal list, he ran quickly through the other things he needed. Juice. Canned soup. As usual, he couldn’t remember too many. Maggie was going to be mad at him.
The place didn’t sell bandages, but they had dishrags and twine, good enough to dress a wound temporarily. There wasn’t any hydrogen peroxide either, which meant he’d have to make due with another disinfectant. He looked at rubbing alcohol, a large bottle. At least then he wouldn’t have to waste any more whiskey.
Vince had been a cop for almost twenty years, from the time he got back from the Navy in the spring of ’22 until he drank himself off the force in late ’41. Those years walking the streets had done several things for him. They’d left him with a slight limp and a near-suicidal drinking habit. But the time spent wandering the streets had also honed his instincts. Even years removed from his days in blue, his senses were keen. He knew when things weren’t quite right. And that was the feeling that came over him as he compared the sizes of rubbing alcohol bottles in the back aisle of the store.
Someone was watching him.
He could feel the gaze. It was heavy, the way a cat watches a mouse before pouncing. The stillness was what gave it away. The lack of ordinary movement. When a guy follows you, Vince knew from experience, he tends to focus on you to the exclusion of everything else, including his own demeanor. It was a pitfall that he himself had always sought to avoid, but had fallen into often, nevertheless.
That was what he sensed now, even before he turned around. The area behind him was too quiet, too still.
Cognizant of the presence, he did nothing. It was exactly what he was supposed to do. He continued browsing, picked the bottle of alcohol with the cheapest price and made his way toward the register at the front. As he walked, he pretended to scan the aisle to his left. It was a magazine rack, filled with pulp rags and tabloids, but it was what lurked behind the rack that piqued his interest.
It was a man, Spanish from the look of his skin, olive like an Italian, but with eyes that were too narrow to be a paisan. The fellow was short, and somewhat disheveled, with matted black hair that hung over his eyes. Vince was certain he was the one.
He didn’t keep an eye on the man. He just kept walking. At the front register he greeted the elderly woman behind the counter, made idle chit-chat and paid for his stuff. When he left he caught a glimpse of the other man pausing, and then following.
Brown paper bag braced in his arms, Vince walked in the exact opposite direction of his apartment.
The other man kept a good distance, and Vince was sure that his pursuer was unaware that he was on to him. He crossed at Forty-Second and Eighth, over to the east-side of the street. There he set his bag on the ground and knelt down. He untied and then retied his shoe, and got his best look yet at the Spanish man, who waited in an unassuming manner on the other end of the busy intersection.
Even from a distance, the man’s bizarre features were obvious, such that Vince marveled that they hadn’t garnered his attention before. His face was narrow, but long with a chin that sported bristle-like whiskers. His nose was also long and thin. It came to a near point at the end, extending over a floppy black mustache t
hat hid the man’s lips. In all, he looked more like a sewer rat than anything else.
Vince waited until the light changed to tie his other shoe. Sure enough, the rat-man blended into the crowd and crossed in his direction. He had now gone several blocks in the wrong direction, and the chase had grown tiresome. He was going to have to lose him.
Around the corner he went down into the subway. He darted into a newsstand, and then right back out the other end. Down the stairs into the subway entrance he walked for a few feet until he was shielded by a crowd. Then he doubled back.
As he crossed back over to the entrance, he saw the rat-faced man pass by, still looking ahead, unaware that Vince had eluded him. If it had been another time, Vince thought, he might have turned the tables and followed the follower, but Sean still languished in his apartment, and he needed the supplies.
He bounded up the stairs, in an effort to make up for lost time. As he did, he caught a glimpse of something out of the corner of his eye.
A girl.
She was perched like a pigeon, on the top of a ledge at the exit doorway. Not so far off the ground, but high enough that few people would ever sit there. That wasn’t really what drew his eye though. It was the way she sat there.
Lots of bums and vagrants found their way into odd places, but she was none of those. Her blond hair was unbound, and it flowed long and free over her bare shoulders, despite the chill. Her pale face and icy green eyes seemed to peer down, directly at him, as he left the terminal. It was as if no one else saw her. Vince paid her an eye for only a moment, though, strange though her sight was.
Arachne just smiled as he turned his back and walked away.
EIGHT
WARD’S ISLAND WAS A PECULIAR RUNT OF A PIECE OF land. A misplaced, weed-ridden lump in the East River, awkwardly wedged between Manhattan, the Bronx, and Queens.
A black Cadillac sedan drove along its desolate vista past the whitewashed, ghostly edifice of Manhattan State Hospital. The sight spurred a cackle or two from somewhere within its labyrinthine halls, muffled by the filter of iron gratings that guarded the upper windows. Trailed by a cloud of gravel and dust, the car turned around the empty park and into the unpaved lot just beneath the Hell Gate Bridge. Noon was creeping up on the city, but the river overlook was deserted.
A last desperate call echoed from the confines of the lunatic ward as the sedan vanished under the behemoth structure. The wind was tormenting the Hell Gate currents with gusts that were every bit as violent as the cries escaping the nineteenth-century asylum.
It smelled like dead fish at low tide.
Another car was already waiting when it pulled up into the noisy shadows of the stone pylons. A train was clattering over the rails above, screeching eerily as it slowed. The monstrous white columns that formed the base of the bridge’s stone arch seemed to be the only thing the railcars didn’t rattle as they rumbled along far overhead.
Indian Joe slipped out of the first sedan, his black pinstriped suit pressed and creased in all the right places. Taking the man’s appearance as a kind of cue, a grungy Chinese youth in a black leather coat exited the other vehicle, his hair jutting out from under an old hat and his beard half grown in. They greeted each other casually, but kept at arm’s-length.
The Asian opened the door to his car, allowing Victor Huang to step out. He was a slight fellow, a fifty-ish gentleman also of Chinese birth, though much better dressed than his young associate in a sepia-brown suit with a starched yellow shirt, a striped tie and a matching handkerchief tucked into his coat pocket.
“How are you this morning Mr. Huang?” Indian Joe asked, bowing in an awkward, almost insulting fashion.
The Chinese man merely shook his bald head. He brushed a quick hand over his pointed gray mustache. That sort of ignorance no longer bothered him. He had been around too long.
“Is all this really necessary?” he began, his English devoid of any foreign accent. “Our places of business are not a mile apart. Why all this secrecy?”
“You’ll have to excuse our methods,” Joseph answered. “But you must understand that under some circumstances these types of precautions become necessary.”
The answer did not satisfy, but Huang left it alone.
“Is my money here?” he replied, his manner already betraying some of his ire.
Joseph simply shook his head.
“I am merely the driver, Mr. Huang. Mr. Calabrese waits for you as we speak. I’m sure he can answer all your questions.”
Joseph pointed the other man in the direction of the ornate sedan from which he himself had exited. The back door opened from the inside.
Huang, with a look back to his guard, entered.
Inside, protected from the noontime sun by purple velvet curtains drawn across the windows, Sam Calabrese sat patiently in an absurdly cartoonish white suit. He was polishing a gaudy gold bracelet encrusted with diamonds in a spiral pattern. Even in the daylight shadows, his belly and chin and legs seemed to sprawl out across the seat cushions. He didn’t even look up when the other man entered, and closed the door behind him.
“Mr. Huang, I see you’ve spoken to Joseph. As I’m sure he’s told you, these added security measures must be taken from time to time. I trust it will not affect our little arrangement.”
Huang made no attempt to conceal his unease.
“Mr. Calabrese, I don’t know what kind of quantities you usually deal in, but I’d hardly call our arrangement little.”
“A euphemism, my friend. I merely wish to put you at ease. Assuming all goes well, you’ll have nothing to fear from me, despite what I’m sure you’ve heard. Trust me when I tell you, the old Salvatore Calabrese is no more, appearances to the contrary aside, of course.”
The other man did not appreciate his reference. Calabrese chose to move on with his business.
“I know that I have asked you for a great deal, and that the amounts we’ve discussed are significantly larger than your usual transactions. That is why I have taken such steps to give you extra time to accommodate me.”
“I understand that, but …”
Calabrese interrupted.
“Because no one wants this arrangement to end with violence. Not your Tong, and certainly not me,” Sam said. Finally, he looked up from his gold bracelet. He stared directly into Huang’s eyes.
It took a lot to intimidate a man like Victor Huang. More than a few men would have died for his word, and he hadn’t made his living for thirty-five years with his sense of congeniality. But when Sam Calabrese looked right at him, through him really, the Chinese man couldn’t help but shudder.
It was the coldest stare he had ever seen. Vacant. Soulless. It was almost inhuman.
“I have done my best to fill your needs. And I continue to work on it. My people are dealing with this day and night. I don’t know what you’re planning here, but I’m not certain I’m equipped to handle this kind of order,” he finally said.
“Nonsense,” Calabrese answered. “Your operation has done excellent work thus far. The supplies of hashish and heroin have been superb, top quality in fact. And to be honest, I really never expected you to be able to locate any absinthe. I wouldn’t worry about that. So in actual fact, our matter is very nearly closed. All that remains is the shipment of opium, along with the pipes and other incidentals.”
Huang gathered his resolve to answer.
“Well, that has proven difficult. You must have some very old-fashioned friends, Mr. Calabrese. There isn’t a large market for straight opium anymore. I have had great difficulty amassing a supply large enough to meet your demands.”
Calabrese smiled. The grin did not put his associate at ease. In fact it made him more uncomfortable.
“Perhaps this will aid you,” Sam said, lifting a leather satchel and handing it to Huang.
He opened it, and quickly realized that it contained much more than the fifty thousand dollars they had negotiated.
“I trust that will go part of the way to smoot
hing over any problems you might encounter. I’ll need my full amount satisfied in three nights’ time.”
Again, Huang seemed uneasy. He was about to reply when Sam preempted him.
“Three nights. That is not negotiable.”
Just then, the door opened from outside. The expression on Indian Joe’s face told Huang that the conversation was over.
NINE
SEAN WAS SITTING UPRIGHT, IN AN ANTIQUE ROCKING chair that looked almost as out of place amid the disarray of Vince’s apartment as Maggie did. While his torso remained bandaged, his arm had been placed in a makeshift sling crafted from a sweat-stained T-shirt. It was dark outside, and getting late. His head was spinning, and he felt deathly cold, but he was awake.
That was a start.
“Time to change those sheets, they’re starting to stink up the place. And that’s hard to do in this sty,” Maggie said, rustling up the dirty linen on the couch beside him.
He couldn’t really help, with his arm immobile and the pain that still lanced his side with every breath, but watching her there, he wished he could. Maybe that was why he felt the need to break the uncomfortable silence that followed as she folded up the old cloth and spread out the new.
Maybe it was that. Or maybe something else. Maybe he just wanted to talk to her, with her, again.
“If I haven’t said so yet, thanks. I appreciate what you two are doing for me. Especially with the way we left things,” he stammered, through a cough that brought the warm taste of bile into the back of his throat.
“I haven’t forgotten about that.”
“But you haven’t mentioned it, either.”
“You haven’t exactly been in any shape to be talking about ancient history lately,” she replied. “Considering that we had bigger problems to deal with, I figured it could wait until you were better.”
“I’m better now. A little, anyway,” he said without a hint of irony while a heavier cough plagued him with every breath.
“You’re not better, not by a mile. Do you really want to broach this subject?”
The Lucifer Messiah Page 4