Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Could it be? He reached into his breast pocket and took out a photograph. It was a color print of a woman facing the camera. There was a palm tree behind her. A man had his arm around her waist, but the man had been cut out of the picture. He looked at the photograph and then over at the woman. The hair’s different, blond, not brown, shorter and cut different, but Jesus, it sure looks like her.
A thump on the bar startled him, and he jerked around. “Here you go, Jimmy. All done.” Jamie slapped the leather satchel and winked.
“Yeah, good. Put it on the floor back there and watch it for a minute. I’ve got to do something.”
“Sure. No problem.” Jamie took the bag and put it on the duckboards behind the bar.
Greef walked with what he thought was nonchalance to look at some of the book jackets on the wall near the booth where the blond sat, and then turned casually and studied her. Yeah. It’s her. Jesus Christ. Everybody’s been looking for her for months, and I found her. This is going to be good for me. He turned and headed for the phone booth at the far end of the bar.
Alice was aware of the young man with the Elvis sideburns who pretended to look at the book jackets so that he could turn and study her. Men had been looking at her tits since she was thirteen, and very few of them had the courage to do it straight out. She dismissed Jimmy Greef and accepted the cigarette Cassidy offered.
“Do you want a nightcap?” he asked.
“Sure. Here?”
“Is there somewhere you want to go?”
“It’s a nice night. We could walk until we see something we like.”
“Let’s do that.” He raised a hand for the check.
“They’re paying the check right now.” Jimmy Greef stood in the phone booth so he could see the table where Alice and Cassidy sat. “Yeah, I’m sure it’s her. What? No. Like I said, she’s with some guy. I don’t know who he is. What do you want me to do?” He listened for a while. “Okay. Sure. I can do that. Only thing is, I’ve got the bag with me.” He listened again. “Right. Yeah. Sure. Look, Carmine, this is my thing, right? I found her. You’ll let people know, right? Okay. Thanks. Yeah. I’ll call soon as I know where she goes.” He hung up and opened the door to the booth to the hum and buzz of the restaurant and went to the end of the bar where the bartender was opening a bottle of wine. “Hey, Jamie, let me have the bag, huh?”
The bartender put down the bottle and corkscrew and lifted the bag to the bar top. “You could have a hell of a week in Vegas with what’s in there.”
“Not funny. You don’t even want to think that way.”
“Just kidding, man.” Suddenly nervous. “Just kidding.”
“Yeah, well, don’t. Okay. I’ll see you next week.”
Greef waited until Cassidy and Alice went out the Bedford Street door and then followed them up Bedford to Christopher, then over to Hudson where they turned north. In the distance the spire of the Empire State Building was brilliant with colored lights. A taxi slowed in hopes of a fare and then went on. Near Charles Street a man and two women milled in the street, shouting and shoving each other drunkenly. The man fell down. The women helped him to his feet and they began shoving each other again. Halfway up the block a group of teenagers in blue jeans and flannel shirts clustered on a stoop with a guitar player and sang something about Tom Dooley hanging down his head. A whore in a tight green dress stepped from a doorway and asked for a light, but Greef waved her off and went on. Up ahead the blonde laughed at something the man said and bumped him with her hip. He put his arm around her waist and pulled her close. A few minutes later they went into the White Horse Tavern, and Greef stepped into the phone booth on the corner. He put the money satchel on the floor and closed the door only partway so the light stayed dark, dropped a dime, and dialed. The phone was picked up on the third ring.
“Yeah, it’s me,” Greef said. “They’re in the White Horse on the corner of Eleventh and Hudson. Yeah, I can see them. They’re at the bar. She’s got her hand in his pocket. The guy definitely thinks he’s getting laid tonight, but he’s in for a surprise. Okay, okay. I’m just saying. Who are you sending? Yeah, I know them both. Tell them they can park on Eleventh. Plenty of places. Tell them to look for me near the phone booth on the corner. Right. Okay. Hey, Carmine, you told them it was me who found her, right? Okay. Thanks. Yeah, I’ll be right here unless they leave. They leave, I’ll call you.” He hung up and opened the door to the booth and looked through the window of the White Horse to where the man and woman stood at the bar.
At the far end of the White Horse bar three men in orange Con Edison jumpsuits chewed over the Brooklyn Dodgers’ move to Los Angeles nearly two years ago, the wounds of betrayal still raw. The bartender, a big Irishman with the face of a basset hound and long gray hair, brought Cassidy and Alice Rusty Nails and said, “Nah, nah. On the house, Mike,” and pushed his money back at him.
Alice sipped her drink. “Do you know everyone in the Village? The waiter at the restaurant, this guy, the people who stopped to say hello when we were eating.”
“I’ve lived down here a while. Sometimes I can help someone out. A kid gets in trouble, someone’s got a beef with someone and needs someone to arbitrate without getting a lot of other people involved.”
“You like being a cop, don’t you?” She took the cigarette from between his fingers and took a drag. When he got it back he could taste her lipstick.
“Some of it, I guess.” She waited for him to go on. “You get up in the morning, and you go to work. Some days you’re hip deep in the really awful things people do to each other. Some days you see how good people can be to each other. Some days you can help. Some you’re just shoveling shit against the tide. I don’t know if I like it, but I can’t let it go.”
“Okay.”
“I don’t like to talk about it.”
“No.”
“With some things, talking about it doesn’t tell you anything. It’s blah, blah. Either you know it, or you don’t. If you don’t, talking won’t get you close.”
“Men.” She said it affectionately, with a small smile. Other women had said the same word to him with different inflections, but they all meant the same thing—you think you hide your secrets from us, you tell us stories about who you are, but we see.
“They don’t pay you much, do they, the cops?”
“No. Not much.”
“Is that why you live down here, because the rents are cheap?”
“No. I like it here. I grew up on the Upper East Side, but this suits me better. And I own the apartment.”
“You do?” Surprised.
“I bought it with money my mother left me when she died.”
She snuggled close and hugged his arm. “Oooh, an heir. Better and better.” She laughed to show she was kidding. “You know what Billie Holiday said, I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor, and rich is better. Well, I’ve done half of that. I’ve been poor, and I’ve seen how the rich live, and Billie knew what she was talking about.”
A ten-year-old Ford panel van came north on Hudson Street, blinked its lights once, and turned west on 11th and parked twenty feet down from the corner. Someone had painted it with gray house paint, and through the paint you could dimly see its past as a van for Joe’s Fish. The lights went out. The engine turned off, and the metal of the hood pinged and ticked as it cooled. After a while the doors opened and two men got out and walked back toward Hudson. Jimmy Greef flicked his cigarette away and left the shadow of the phone booth to meet them, the money satchel heavy in his left hand. He recognized them both, Junior Carelli and Tommy Longo. They were thick, powerful men in their thirties. They were muscle guys with day jobs running longshoremen shape-ups on the docks, leg breakers, men who were sent to settle disputes with whatever was at hand, bricks, two by fours, a lead pipe, or fists. They both wore cheap double-breasted suits and fedoras, and they walked with the heavy, implacable confidence of men who knew others would clear their path, men used to being fea
red.
“How you doing, Jimmy?” Carelli’s voice was like gravel in a can. He’d been hit in the throat in a melee on the docks when he was starting out, and something broke inside.
“Okay.”
“They still inside?”
“Yeah, the right-hand end of the bar. She’s the one with the black-haired guy.”
The man had his back to them, but the woman was turned in profile to talk to him.
“You sure it’s her?”
“I’m sure. Hair’s different. A little thinner, maybe. Look at them tits. Those sure as hell are the same.”
“Okay. So we wait. We take her when they come out.”
“What about the guy?” Jimmy asked.
“What about the guy?” Carelli said. “We ask him nicely, do you mind if we borrow your broad? He says, no, go ahead, take her.”
Longo, who had said nothing, snorted.
“What if he doesn’t? What if he beefs?”
“What if? There are three of us, one of him. He beefs, we drop him.”
“Clip him?”
“Up to him how hard he pushes it, how hard we come back. Up to him, not up to us.”
Longo offered a pack of Camels. Greef took one, but Carelli waved it away. “Those fucking things are too strong for me. I think they put some camel shit in there with the tobacco.” He looked into the bar. “I could use a drink myself.”
Greef bent to the match Longo held. “Thanks.”
“What are they offering for the broad? Three grand?” Carelli asked.
“Five,” Greef said. “Five grand.”
“I could use that dough.”
“Who couldn’t? That’s a brand-new Caddy Eldorado convertible I’ve got my eye on.”
“I figured I was going to find her.”
“How’d you figure that?”
“I don’t know. I just figured, why not me? You finding her, it’s like you’re taking money out of my pocket. Maybe you ought to give me some of what they give you.”
“Go fuck yourself.”
“I’m just saying, since it should’ve been mine. A couple of grand.”
“Go fuck yourself again. What are you, anyway, thinking like that? When was the last time you gave anybody anything?”
“I gave your mother just about everything she could handle only this morning.”
“Hey, hey. You keep your fucking mouth off my mother.”
“Too late.”
“I’m going to…”
“Shut the fuck up, both of youse. They’re coming out,” Longo said.
Carelli moved closer to the front of the White Horse. Longo went with him. Greef dropped the cigarette and ground it out under his shoe. He switched the money bag to his left hand and opened his jacket and touched the gun butt under his shoulder. Show a citizen a gun, and usually that was enough, and if more was needed, well, like Carelli said, it was up to the guy how hard he pushed.
Cassidy held open the front door of the White Horse so that Alice could go first. As they stepped outside, he saw the three men on the sidewalk. The two big ones stood almost shoulder to shoulder, their faces shadowed by their hat brims. The third one stepped away from them and moved to the side. He carried a satchel in his left hand, and his jacket was unbuttoned. Something wasn’t right here. He could feel the tension coming off them. Alice tried to take his arm, but he avoided that and turned so she was on his hip and a little behind him. The thin man with the satchel kept moving to flank him. Cassidy unbuttoned his jacket to clear his holster. One of the men moved a step in front of the others. Then he said, “How’re you doing, Detective Cassidy?” Did he emphasize detective? The big one near him shifted and some of the tension went out of him. The third man took a step south and was almost out of Cassidy’s sight unless he turned his head.
“Tommy Longo, right? How’s your uncle?” Cassidy asked. The one carrying the satchel took another step. His hand drifted toward his open jacket.
“They moved him up to Attica.”
He looked at the other big man. “Carelli, right?” Cassidy recognized the two as muscle for the Gambino crime family. What were they doing uptown outside their usual orbit of Little Italy and the docks? Nothing good.
“Yeah.” He stepped out of the shadows and into the light that came through the bar’s window.
“Who’s this guy? Hey, you, stop moving. You’re making me nervous. You don’t want to make me nervous.” Greef glanced at Tommy Longo and stopped. “What’s your name?”
“Jimmy Greef.”
“You’re carrying the bag tonight, Jimmy Greef. Somebody must like you.”
“My laundry.”
“Uh-huh.” He looked back at Longo. “What’s up, Tommy? You guys are a little out of your territory.”
“We was coming into the White Horse for a drink. We heard it was okay.”
“It is. No better than some of the places down on Grand Street, but what the hell, a change of scene’s good.”
“Okay. So we’ll go in.”
“Anything else?”
“Else? Nah. What, a guy can’t come uptown and have a drink? Free country, right?”
“So they tell me.” Cassidy took Alice’s arm and stepped forward, and Longo and Carelli made room, and he led Alice across 11th Street and north on Hudson. He did not look back.
“Who were they?” Alice asked.
“Hoods. Enforcers down on the docks.”
“What was all that about?” Alice asked.
“I don’t know. My guess is they were about to do something they shouldn’t do, and they ran into a cop so they didn’t do it.”
“Do you think they were going to rob the bar?”
“Maybe. Stickups aren’t what they usually do, but maybe. Not something you’d think they’d do with the bagman.”
“The bagman? What was in the bag?”
“Money.”
“From what?”
“Payoffs. Every Friday a guy goes around with the bag collecting what the bars owe. Some pay for protection. Some are owned by mob guys who skim from the take every week before the tax man gets told how much they made. Some are fairy bars. The mobsters own them too, and they pay off the cops to let the fairies dance together in the back rooms. The money comes out of the till on Friday.”
“It’s illegal for them to dance?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Wow. Why? They’re just dancing. They’re just having fun.” She wrapped his arm tight. “Let’s go back to your place, and I’ll show you some dancing that’s definitely illegal.”
“Uh-oh. I may have to use the handcuffs.”
“Promises, promises.” And she laughed.
Her laughter drifted back to the three men outside the White Horse. “Why didn’t we take her?” Greef asked.
“The guy’s a cop, or weren’t you listening?” Longo said.
“Yeah? So he’s a cop, so what? The river’s three blocks over. Any luck, he don’t show for months. People want that broad. They’re paying big money for her so they want her bad. What’s one cop?”
“Yeah, well, this particular cop is Frank Costello’s godson.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. So let me make a call, see what people want to do.” Longo stepped into the phone booth and dialed.
“Hey, I didn’t know,” Greef said to Carelli. “Costello and all. That makes a difference.”
“What you don’t know could fill a book,” Carelli said in his gravel voice.
“Hey, fuck you again, okay? You don’t know everything.” Greef carried the money satchel away from Carelli and set it down between his feet and lit a cigarette. He watched the people in the bar through the window. Three Con Ed men were arguing about something. Two couples in scrubs from the hospital on 12th were eating at a round wooden table near the window, and two old men in alpaca sweaters were playing chess at a table nearby. Fucking Carelli. Fucking guy. I was just asking. Thinks he’s such a hot shit. The euphoria of being the bagman, of finding Alice, had vanish
ed, turned to dust. Shit, fucking guy.
“Hey,” Longo stepped out of the phone booth. “Okay, they say let it be for the moment. Cassidy’s got a place over on Bank Street, so that’s where they’re headed. Junior and me are going to go hang out there, make sure she don’t leave. They’ll send a couple of other guys after a while. She comes out alone in the morning, they’ll take her. Jimmy, Carmine’s waiting for the bag.”
Longo and Carelli got back into the gray panel truck and went west on 11th.
Jimmy Greef headed south toward Little Italy. After a couple of blocks he began to feel better. Hey, he was the bagman, and he found the broad, and people knew that. Screw those guys. Things were looking up.
* * *
Nobody took Alice in the morning. The word came down from on high, don’t mess with her. Follow her and find out where she lives. Now that they knew she was with Costello’s godson, people had to talk it over, make sure the next move was the right move.
Shadowing her got easy, because two days later Alice moved in with Cassidy.
14
The day started sunny and then turned back toward winter. A cold, misty rain fell from a gray sky. The tops of the tallest buildings disappeared in the mist. Car tires sang on the wet streets, and people walked with their heads down and shoulders hunched against the weather.
Night Work Page 19