“No. Let them go. They won’t be back.” He walked over to the men and looked each one in the eye. Longo and Carelli looked back. Greef shied away. “If she had it, she would have told you. Don’t come back. This is finished. Tell them if something happens to her, I’ll come after them.” They would report what he said, but if they were told to come back, they would come.
Carelli put an arm around Longo’s waist and helped him toward the door. Greef followed.
“Are you sure?” Dylan asked.
“Yes.”
She stepped aside and let them pass. The door closed behind them, and they were gone.
Dylan slipped the gun into the big leather purse that hung from her shoulder. They looked across the room at each other, currents flowing, no language available to explain what had happened to them, to say what was between them now, what held them at a distance, and drew them close at the same time.
“You still have your key.”
“Yes.”
“Why?” Was this important? It was the only question he could think of.
“I don’t know. I just kept it.” She shrugged. “You never changed the lock.”
“No.” For the same reason, maybe: a thread back to what they were in the past, or toward a forlorn hope for a future.
And Cuba, a loop out of time, a moment on a different planet. Were they going to talk about that?
“Will you make me a drink?”
“Sure.” He went into the kitchen and began to build a martini. She leaned on the counter and watched him and noticed he took only one glass from the cabinet.
“You’re not going to have one?”
“No.” Adrenaline had chased the alcohol from his system, but one drink and he’d be over the edge again, and he wanted to stay clear. “What are you doing here? Why did you come?”
“I don’t know. I’ve been in New York for a week. Today I opened my purse and I saw the key. I came. I wanted to see you.” She ducked her head away nervously and lit a cigarette.
“And your husband? Where’s Slava? Does he know you’re here?” Just the tip of the knife under the skin. He slid the drink across the counter to her.
She flinched. “You’re not going to make this easy, are you?”
“Should I?” What was driving him, anger, sorrow, or green-eyed jealousy?
“I loved you. I was in love with you. And then you were gone and I was gone, and we were never going to see each other again. I met someone. We got married. What did you expect?” He said nothing. “And then there you were, like magic, like a dream. I didn’t know, Michael. How could I know? We talked about this in Cuba.”
“And then you walked away.”
She jerked as if slapped, and then her face set hard. She pushed back from the counter. “All right. I’m sorry I came. You’re right. It was a mistake. I’ll go.” She picked up her purse and headed for the door.
Whatever it was, anger, sorrow, jealousy, a corrosive combination of all, drained out of him, and he was ashamed. “Wait. I’m sorry. Stop. Don’t go. Don’t leave. I was being an asshole.”
“Yes, you were.” Almost a smile. “I can’t help what happened. It’s done. We are as we are.” She gestured toward the bedroom where another woman lay.
But where were they going? That was the question he wanted to ask, but the doorbell rang. Frank said, “House call for Michael Cassidy,” into the intercom. Cassidy pressed the buzzer and opened the door. They could hear his steps as he climbed and they said nothing to each other, grateful for the interruption.
Frank Kotter’s curly hair lay thick and close on his skull. A perfume of whiskey followed him into the apartment. He wore blue jeans, a T-shirt, and a windbreaker and carried a black doctor’s bag. He had the open, friendly face of a man who liked people, and it lit up when he saw Dylan, because he liked women most of all, and they liked him back. “Ahh, the patient. You better get your clothes off, my dear, and let me examine you.”
Dylan laughed.
“She’s in the bedroom, Frank,” Cassidy said.
“Well, if you insist, but I still think we should examine this one while we’re here. A bird in the hand. Will you still be here when I finish in the other room?” He asked Dylan.
“Probably.”
“Oh, good. We’ll talk then.”
Cassidy took Frank into the bedroom. When he came out, Dylan was sitting at the counter sipping her drink. He sat on the stool next to her with his back against the counter and lit a cigarette.
“She was in Havana on New Year’s Eve, wasn’t she? With those gangsters at the Tropicana,” Dylan said.
“Yes.”
“I thought I recognized her. What did those men want from her?”
“Some money went missing that night, casino money. They thought she might have it.”
“Does she?”
“No. They were just making sure.”
“Uh-huh. And they liked it. Men like to hurt women, like to beat them. When I came in, those guys were having a good time. The younger one was grinning. How can you have a good time beating a woman?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re a cop. You must see it all the time.”
He did see it, all the time, the battered, the broken, raped, and beaten. I didn’t do anything, he just exploded. The food was too cold. There was starch in his shirt. There was no starch in his shirt. I forgot to hang up his towel. He’d been drinking and he just came at me.
And, She pissed me off. She’s always whining. I didn’t like the way she looked at me. What the fuck do you care what I do, she’s my wife.
“I think we scare the hell out of men.”
“Scare us how?”
“I don’t know. But what else could it be?”
He had seen the results, but he had never thought about the cause. “I’ve never thought about it.”
“No. Most men haven’t. When I went back to Russia and they locked me up, they would come beat me once or twice a week. I could see that they liked it, and I began to wonder why. I began to think about it a lot. The two great mysteries are life and death. Women hold the key to life, and you hate that power.” She finished her drink and pushed the glass away with the tips of her fingers. “That was good. You always made a great martini.”
“Dylan, why are you in New York?”
She took a deep breath and switched gears. “We have information that someone will try to kill Castro while he’s here. There are people who don’t think his security is up to the job of protecting him, so they sent us.”
“You and Slava?”
“Yes.”
“You’re better than his security team?”
“We are.”
“Castro’s surrounded by New York cops whenever he goes out. You know that. You’ve seen it.”
“Yes.”
“But you don’t think it’s enough.”
“No.”
“You think you’re better than we are at this.”
“Yes.”
“Do you know who’s coming for him?”
“Not exactly.”
“The three men in the Lincoln from Florida?”
She almost suppressed her surprise. “We don’t know about them. Who are they?”
“We don’t know. The FBI has an alert out for them. They say they’ll pick them up before they get into the city.”
She smiled her disbelief. “What do you know about them? Are they anti-Castro? Are they working for someone?”
“That’s all we know. Three men in a Lincoln coming to kill Castro in New York. There may be nothing to it at all. It may just be a rumor. What do you have?”
“Members of anti-Castro factions. Revisionists.”
“Who?”
“There’s a general named Garza y Mendoza.”
“Not anymore. Someone killed him this afternoon.”
“Ahh. Who did it?” Wariness in her look and voice.
“We don’t know yet.”
“No witnesses? No leads?�
��
“No. Not yet. Where was Slava this afternoon?”
“No, Michael. Don’t.”
The general was strangled. The man who did it only used three fingers on one hand. There’s something wrong with one of Slava’s hands, isn’t there?” She said nothing. Her face was still, her eyes unreadable.
“Diego Fuentes was staying in the general’s apartment. We had him in custody, but he got away.”
“That’s unfortunate. He’s dangerous. Fuentes is a killer, and he brought men out with him who are killers.” She lit a cigarette and passed it to him and lit another for herself, a familiar intimacy from the past.
“The general was tortured. Whoever killed him wanted information. Maybe he wanted to know where Fuentes was.”
“Maybe he wanted revenge for what Garza y Mendoza had done in Cuba.” They were sparring without inflicting damage.
“How will they try for Castro?”
“What we worry most about is the man who doesn’t care whether he gets caught or killed. Someone who is willing to give up his life to do it is hard to stop if he picks the right moment.”
“He’d have to get through a lot of cops.” But he knew she was right.
“We’re worried about the evening in Central Park. There’ll be thousands of people there, and Castro wants them close. He wants to be able to touch them, to shake their hands. It’ll be a security nightmare.”
“Will you be there?”
“Yes. I’ll be close to him. I’ll be there as Selena Perez.” There was a challenge in her look. Will you give me up?
“No guns, Dylan. If they take you with a gun, there’s not much I can do. There are people in the Department who remember you from before. Your cover won’t hold up. They’ll identify you as KGB.”
“Some things are worth the sacrifice.” He could see that she meant it.
Frank Kotter came out of the bedroom and dumped his black bag on the counter. “What does it take to get a drink around here?”
“How is she?” Cassidy moved around the counter to the kitchen and showed the doctor a bottle of Ballantine’s scotch.
Kotter nodded. “She’s got some nasty bruises, maybe a cracked rib, a couple of minor burns. Some teeth are loose, but they’ll set up again. They split her lip, but it’s not big enough for stitches. It might leave a scar, but you’d have to work damn hard to make that woman unattractive. Personally, I like a scar. It adds a little, I don’t know what, danger or something. The only thing I’d worry about is if she pisses blood. I gave her a sedative. She’ll sleep till morning. I left pills on the bedside table. If she has pain when she wakes up, she can have one every four hours. Thanks.” He took the glass, rattled the ice to cool the liquor, and inhaled half of it. “God, that’s good.” He turned to Dylan. “Tell me your name.”
“Selena Perez.” A glance at Cassidy to make sure he would back her lie.
“Whoa, Selena Perez. I like that. And you are a wonderful-looking woman. Do you like to dance? You look like a woman who likes to dance. Selena Perez must love to dance. Let’s go dancing, you and I. I know a place on Eighth Avenue in a basement you’d swear you were in Buenos Aires, or someplace. The tango. All the women smolder. All the men carry knives.”
She laughed, charmed and amused, and touched his arm with her fingertips. “Not tonight, but some night. Do I carry a rose in my teeth?”
“Absolutely.” He finished his drink and banged the glass on the counter. “Bartender, one for the road. I have to be up at six for an appendectomy.”
Cassidy refilled his glass. “Remind me to book my operations later in the day.”
“Hey, I could do this one in my sleep with a butter knife and a spoon.” He drank the whiskey and put the glass down with a sigh. “Everything I like is bad for me. Michael, are you going to get the guys who did this to her?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Hurt them, the fuckers. Selena, you’ll be in my dreams until I see you again.” He lifted her hand and kissed it, and pressed it against his heart, picked up his bag, and went out the door.
Cassidy went into the bedroom to check on Alice. She had turned in the bed and the covers were awry. He pulled them back around her and turned off the light on the bedside table and crouched down for a moment to smooth the hair back from her face. When he stood, Dylan was watching from the doorway. She turned away abruptly.
When he came into the living room, she had her bag over her shoulder and her hand on the door knob. “I’ll see you, Michael.”
“Dylan, wait. Where are you going? Stay.”
“No. I don’t think so.”
“How do I get ahold of you?”
“Uh-uh. It’s okay. Everything’s okay.” But her smile held regret and then she was gone.
23
Cassidy woke at first light, gray dawn in the windows of the bedroom and birds trilling from the cornice that ran just below the sills. Spring is here, they were insisting. Alice groaned in her sleep next to him. He slipped out of bed, careful not to wake her, and padded naked into the kitchen and put the coffee on before taking a shower. He stood by the window, a towel around his waist, and drank coffee as the sun touched the tops of the trees on the Palisades across the river. A black-and-red Moran tug had the river to itself as it towed a barge downstream toward the ocean. Seagulls circled and dove over the roofs of the piers. Early morning, when the world still seemed at peace.
Alice cried out his name from the bedroom.
He put the mug down and went to find her curled in a fetal position, her arms clasped around her stomach. He knelt by the bed and put a hand on her shoulder. She flinched and looked at him with wide, frightened eyes. “I thought you’d gone. I thought I was alone.”
“No.”
“Alone.” Full of anguish. The worst thing in the world.
“No. I’m right here.” He put an arm around her and she buried her face against him, and he could feel her tears on his chest. When he shifted his arm, she gasped in pain. “I’m sorry,” he said, no comfort at all.
“They hurt me. They really hurt me. They wouldn’t stop. I told them I didn’t have it, but they wouldn’t stop.”
“It’s all right. They won’t be back. It’s over. You’re going to be all right.” Silly, useless words against her pain and fear. “Here, the doctor left you some pills. Take a pill. It’ll help.” He refilled her glass from the jug on the bedside table and supported her while she sat up and took the pill.
“I have to go to the bathroom.” The pain drained the blood from her face when he helped her out of the bed, and he could see that she clenched her jaw against crying, but a moan escaped. He put an arm around her waist, and she leaned against him as they navigated to the bathroom. When she saw herself in the mirror, she gasped. Her face was swollen and livid, and one of her eyes was blackened, and there was dried blood at the corner of her mouth. Her torso and stomach were bruised and there was a place on her arm that looked like someone had ground it with a rasp. She put a hand on the sink to steady herself and pulled his arm from around her waist. “Go away. You can’t look at me like this. Go away.”
“It’s all right, Alice. Just let me…”
“Go away, Michael. Go away. Leave me alone. Don’t look at me. Don’t look at me. Just please go away.”
He started to protest, to offer help, but he saw that she did not want it, so he left, closing the door as he went. He heard the shower start as he was dressing. It was still running when he went into the kitchen and poured another cup of coffee. The men who had come to beat her here in his apartment had no fear of Cassidy as a cop and no fear of Frank Costello, so Costello’s power in the Mob was waning. Other men were rising, Vito Genovese, who had tried to have Costello killed in 1956, Carlo Gambino, once a Costello underboss who wanted to move up, and Meyer Lansky, always Meyer Lansky, the little man who loved numbers.
He heard the shower stop. A few minutes later she called for him. She was in bed propped up on the pillows. The shades were down and t
he curtains drawn, and the room was as dark as she could make it, but there was still enough light to see the bruises on her face. He sat on the side of the bed and she took the mug of coffee he had brought her. “Thank you.”
“How are you?”
“Better. The hot water helped, and the pill is working.”
“Good. You’ll hurt today and maybe tomorrow, and you’ll be stiff, but it will get better every day.” Knowledge hard won from beatings he had suffered. What he knew and what she now knew was that the beatings connected you back to the animal we were before we had the language to talk about fear and death, when waking moments were spent attuned to threats, the rustle in the underbrush, the click of shifting pebbles, the hints of dangers that were waiting to snatch you out of life. Once you had been there, it was hard to come all the way back. Once you had been there, you were forever aware that the veneer of civilization was too thin to trust.
She sipped the coffee and studied him over the rim. “Will they come back?”
“No, they won’t, but just to be sure I’ll call the precinct over on Perry and have them station a patrolman outside the building.”
“Thank you.” She drank more of the coffee and then handed him the mug to put on the bedside table. “The woman who came in, the one with the gun, she was with you in Havana at the Tropicana on New Year’s Eve.”
“Yes.”
“Who is she?”
“Her name is Dylan McCue.”
“She saved my life. I was about to give up. I was just going to let go. I could feel myself slipping, and I was just going to let go, because I couldn’t take it anymore. And then she came in. Michael, why did she have a gun? Who is she? Is she a cop?”
“Yes. In a way.” How to explain Dylan? Best to let it go.
She yawned. “Wow, that pill is strong.” Her voice softened and slurred. “You won’t go until you call for a cop, will you?”
“No. I’ll stay until he’s downstairs.”
“Michael.”
“Yes.”
Night Work Page 28