Night Work

by David C. Taylor

  “They really hurt me.” She sounded almost surprised.

  “I know.”

  “I want to thank her.” Her voice blurred.

  “I’ll tell her.”

  “Good.” She closed her eyes.

  * * *

  Cassidy met Orso at the coffee shop on Lexington with the good muffins and the counterman with a pint of rye in his apron. Orso was in the back booth hunched over a mug of coffee. He had the sullen look of a man with a hangover. His face was raw from Fuentes’s assault, and the line of black stitches made the skin at the corner of his mouth seem paler than usual. He still wore the suit he had worn the day before, and there were dark patches of dried blood on his shirt. He was usually a fastidious man, and Cassidy wondered what was making him slide. “What the hell happened to you?” He asked as Cassidy slid into the booth across from him.

  Cassidy reflexively touched the abrasion high on his forehead. “Somebody kicked me while I was tied up in a sack.”

  “One of those nights, huh? You’ve got to find a better class of people to run around with.”

  The counterman came with a basket of muffins and a mug of coffee for Cassidy. He slipped the pint of rye from his pocket and put it on the table. “You guys look like you could use this.” Then he went away.

  Orso poured whiskey in their mugs. “So, tell.”

  Cassidy told him about the missing half million, the men trying to beat information out of Alice, and Dylan’s rescue.

  “Who were the three guys?” Orso asked.

  “Longo and Carelli, and the new bagman, Jimmy Greef. Do you know him, Greef?”

  “Jimmy Greef? There was a Big Sal Greef ran numbers for Anastasia awhile back. He ended up in the river. I think he had a son. Could be this guy. You going to go back at them?”

  “Yes. When I get the chance, I will.”

  “Half a million dollars. Jesus, what I could do with that.” He shook his head, a mistake that made him wince.

  “Yeah, wine, women, and song, and then you’d waste the rest.”

  “You don’t know what the fuck I’d do with it. You’ve got money, so the stuff doesn’t matter to you. You don’t have a fucking idea what it’s like not to have it.”

  “Whoa, easy. I was just making a joke.” Where’d that anger come from?

  “You think I can get anyone in the family to help with the old lady? My mother’s going to end up in some fucking county ward.”

  “I thought your father’s insurance money was going to take care of that.”

  “Yeah? Well, it’s not. Okay? It’s not.”

  “Tony, if you need help, come to me.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “I mean it.”

  “Okay. Yeah, I know you do. I’m sorry. That fucking spic kicked the shit out of me yesterday. I had a couple too many pops at Toots’s and slept in the back room there. I woke up feeling like shit. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay. Any word on Fuentes?”

  “No, he’s still on the dangle.”

  “I’m going to go talk to Jane Hopkins about Casey Allen. I’ve got a few questions. Other than that we’ve got nothing till this evening. Why don’t you take the day, get some rest?”

  “Yeah, I might do that.”

  “I’ll check with Clarkson’s office, but I don’t think we’re on till five. We can meet at the house and walk over to where they’re setting up for Castro.”

  “Yeah. Good. Okay. Look, I’m sorry about going off on you. I’ve been kind of nervy these last few weeks.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “All right. Thanks.” Orso heaved himself to his feet, touched Cassidy on the shoulder as he went by, and left the diner. Cassidy watched him go and wondered what was eating him. It couldn’t just be his mother’s finances. Even if the insurance she got from her late husband wasn’t much, she owned her house outright, and that had to be worth something. But what did he know about the pressures of too little money? He had always had more than enough, and he had been brought up to regard it with a certain disdain. It was hard for him to believe that money was grinding Orso, but it didn’t matter. He would cover for his partner the way Orso had covered for him during the first couple of months when he came back from Cuba and was trying to drive Dylan out of his head with booze and women.

  Dylan. Where was she? He wanted to see her. He wanted to talk to her, to be with her. Stop. Don’t think about her. There is nothing there but pain.

  He returned what was left in the bottle to the counterman, paid the bill, and went out into a day that was turning warm. Big cotton clouds floated above the building tops, and the breeze that came off the river was warm. He stopped at a phone booth on the corner and called the hotel where Castro and his people were staying and asked for Ribera’s room. His excuse was to talk about Castro’s rally that night in Central Park, but he knew that the real reason was to ask Ribera how he could get in touch with Dylan.

  Which rules, the head or the heart?

  Ribera did not answer the phone.

  * * *

  Cassidy rang the bell at the Hopkins house on 73rd Street. A maid in a black uniform appeared from the back of the house. She opened the barred front door, and Cassidy explained who he was, and she let him wait in the living room while she went to find Mrs. Hopkins. The room was dim and cool, and though the traffic on Fifth Avenue was no more than twenty yards away, it could barely be heard through the thick stone walls. The house was in the middle of a big, raucous city, but it was as quiet and private as a hilltop in the country. If you had enough money you could live like this where nothing could touch you. An illusion, he knew, but it was an illusion people wanted and paid for.

  The scrabble of toenails on the marble of the hall announced the arrival of the red setter, Lucky, who approached Cassidy eagerly, sniffed him to make sure he was not an impostor, and then butted his hand for affection. Cassidy scratched his head and watched Jane Hopkins enter the room. She wore a dark green dress of some light material. The top was cut low and held up by two straps, and the full skirt molded to her legs when she walked. She looked bright, fresh, and clean, as if she had just been taken out of the box. Lucky saw that he was going to be ignored, and went to lie on a throw rug in front of the fireplace.

  “Michael, how nice of you to drop by. To what do I owe the pleasure? Have you come to accuse me of bank robbery or murder?” She threw it away like a bright line from a Broadway play. She brushed his cheek with a kiss, sat down on the sofa, and leaned forward to take a cigarette from the silver box on the coffee table, giving him a chance to look down the front of her dress. She held the cigarette expectantly between two fingers until he dug his Zippo from his pocket and lit it. “Now, darling, don’t loom over me. Come sit.” She patted the sofa cushion next to her, but Cassidy chose a chair across from her where he could watch her face while they talked. She looked disappointed and said, “I don’t bite, you know.”

  “That’s not what I’ve heard.”

  She smiled, and then snapped her even, white teeth together with an audible click. She was used to tipping men off balance, and she enjoyed it. “What happened to your face? Have you been in a fight? Should I ask how the other guy looks?”

  “I never saw him.”

  “What an interesting life you lead, Michael Cassidy.”

  “Let’s talk about Casey Allen.”

  “Fine. Let’s.”

  “The day that he was killed, Friday, you told me you and your husband left on a planned trip to San Francisco.”

  “Yes.”

  “That was a lie. The driver who picks him up thought he was going to the office, but took you to the airport. The tickets were reserved that morning at seven thirty.”

  “Well then I guess we hadn’t planned it for long.” She smiled.

  “It’s not a joke.”

  “No. Of course not. I’m sorry.” Serious now, like a schoolgirl called to task for talking in class.

  “You took Lucky for a walk like yo
u usually do in the morning.” The dog raised its head at its name, and then flopped back down. “You went into the park at Seventy-second Street like you usually do, and you found Casey Allen sitting on a kitchen chair with a bullet hole in his head.”

  She watched him for a while without speaking while she calculated. If I say this, then what? If I say that? “Even if I did see him, I didn’t have anything to do with it. You don’t think I killed him, do you?”

  “No.”

  She came to a decision that cleared her face. She nodded and shrugged. “Yes. I saw him.”

  “Then what?”

  “I thought he was dead. I mean, I’d never seen a dead man before, but he was so still, and he wasn’t breathing, and he was very pale. And there was that hole in his forehead. I just knew.” She took a deep breath at the memory and let it out in a rush.

  “And?”

  “I came back here and told Bob what I had found. He told me to go pack a bag. He called the airline. We left. He thought there was a good chance that Casey would never be connected to us. And if he was, we weren’t here.”

  “Yeah. That worked well.”

  “Bob’s very smart about a lot of things, but dead men are outside his areas of expertise. And he was probably right to take the chance. Not all policemen are as smart as you are. We might never have been connected.”

  “It didn’t occur to you to call the police?”

  “What for? He was dead. Someone was bound to call. Why did it have to be me?” A woman used to having her problems solved by other people.

  “You may have been partially responsible for his death.”

  “Me? Don’t be ridiculous. How?”

  “You were having an affair with him.”

  She laughed. “I was not having an affair with him. I might have an affair with you, Michael, because you are an interesting, dangerous man. Casey Allen was a great big boy, enthusiastic, sweet, but simple. With him I got laid.” She laughed again. “Oh, the look on your face. Are you shocked?”

  “Not really. I’ve heard about the Hopkinses’ open marriage.”

  “Oh, you’ve been out gossiping with the ladies, or was it the men? It’s hard to know who finds it more exciting. I do know when I go to a party these days, I am never without male companionship.” Cassidy sensed defiance behind her smile.

  “Did Casey’s wife ever show up here?”

  “His wife?” One of those questions asked to buy time to think. “Yes. Once, as far as I know. She brought him a sandwich.”

  “After you started screwing him?”

  “Now you’re being unpleasant.”

  “Answer the question.”

  “After.”

  “And while she was here, did you flirt with him?”

  “No. Of course not.”

  “No gesture, no hand on his shoulder, tap on the arm, one of those things where you pat a man’s chest?”

  Her eyes were wide and her face was serious. “I do that to everybody.”

  “No, you don’t. You do it to men you’re attracted to. And she got the message. And you meant her to get the message. You just wanted to mark the territory a little, didn’t you?”

  “Don’t be stupid. I did not,” she protested, but he could read the lie.

  “Then he began showing up at home with all the new clothes. That must have gotten her attention.”

  “I was trying to help him out. He asked me.” She lit another cigarette, oblivious to the one smoldering in the ashtray, and took a couple of fierce puffs.

  “It turns out she’s a very jealous woman. She attacked an old girlfriend of Casey’s with a beer bottle for the crime of saying hello.”

  “It’s not true.”

  “Yes, it is. She shot her husband because she was jealous of you, and somehow she moved him to where you would find him. She wanted you to see.”

  “No. I don’t believe it.” But she did. She stubbed the cigarette out hard in a crystal ashtray, saw there was another burning and said, “Goddamn it.” She looked at Cassidy and her face was stiff. “I’m going to call our lawyer. Bob said he should be here if you came back, and he’s right.”

  “Don’t bother. I’m leaving.” He stood up.

  “What’s going to happen to me?”

  “Nothing. I guess I could work up some sort of obstruction charge against you, but it wouldn’t stick.”

  “And her? What about her?”

  “We’ll probably get her. Everything she did was on the spur of the moment. There are bound to be some loose ends. But then again, she might get away with it. Who knows? Maybe she’ll come see you.” Jane’s eyes widened, and for a moment her composure dropped away and she looked scared.

  Cassidy stopped on the corner of Fifth Avenue to light a cigarette. He looked back at the house he had just left. It was five stories of gray limestone with the entry blocked by the iron-barred door. The light reflected off the big, deep-set windows so they looked impenetrable. It was a fortress, a sanctuary, and the people who lived in it expected to be insulated from the dirtier problems of the world.

  His comment about Theresa showing up here was a thin blade under Jane’s guard, enough to prick her into fear, and he was glad that he had done it, but he knew it was cheap and petty revenge. The wound would close quickly. Careless people like Jane Hopkins sailed on untroubled by the wreckage they left in their wake.

  24

  The three men who had left the Lincoln in the parking lot of the Atlanta train station had two adjoining rooms in the Bradford Hotel on West 70th Street. The Bradford was a mid-range apartment hotel of no special distinction whose clientele consisted for the most part of businessmen in town for a week or two who, seeking economy, appreciated the kitchenettes in the rooms that allowed them to cook simple meals for themselves rather than eat in restaurants. The three men from the Lincoln were not interested in economy, since they were spending their employers’ money, not their own. They appreciated the hotel’s anonymity and its proximity to Central Park, half a block away, where they would do their work.

  Two of the men from the Lincoln were twins, Terry and Jerry Brasoli. The third, Will Horner, was their first cousin. The three of them had grown up in Ybor City, the cigar-making section of Tampa, Florida. Their mothers, who were sisters, held jobs in the Arturo Fuente cigar factory, and their fathers, petty gangsters in the Trafficante mob, had died stupid, violent deaths. Pete Brasoli bled out on the floor of a dive called the Blind Pig with a hatchet buried in his neck after calling a cross-dressed Cuban meat cutter a fucking faggot. Tim Horner went down at the wrong end of a sawed-off shotgun that ended an argument about whether the Florida state bird was the pink flamingo. The boys, joined by blood and an instinct for mayhem, had grown up rough and wild. When they were in their late teens, a judge took a dim view of their joyriding through an upscale neighborhood in South Tampa in a stolen car and offered them the choice of enlistment in the Marines or three years in jail. They had opted for the military on the assumption that they could run when they got tired of it, but discovered, to their surprise and satisfaction, that the Marines would train them to kill people efficiently. They practiced their craft for a year in Korea and then came back to Tampa and offered their services to Santo Trafficante, Jr., who had a need for their talents.

  Terry Brasoli, the most orderly and precise of the three, favored a Winchester M70 target rifle as opposed to the M1903 Springfield he had mastered in Marine Corps training. He mounted a Unertl 8 power scope with a one-and-a-half-inch objective lens and a fine crosshair reticle. He used M72 match ammunition and at six hundred yards he could group his shots in a four-inch circle. He preferred to work closer, because he liked to see the impact.

  His brother Jerry had discovered an affection for explosives and could shape a charge in such a way that the target would lose his foot, his hand, or his entire being when he turned the key in his car. Cousin Tim was a more straightforward goon who liked to work in close with a knife or a handgun, and he favored the short, bru
tal Uzi the Israelis had developed. “A pretty goddamn good weapon for a bunch of yids.”

  The three men ate pizza and drank Coca-Colas and watched a black-and-white rerun of Roy Rogers and Dale Evans chasing bad guys around a mythical Wild West where Jeeps, telephones, and the rest of the twentieth century coexisted happily with cowboys and cowgirls riding horses and sporting six shooters. The men wore the Parks Department uniforms they had found in the closets when they checked into their rooms. They had scouted the target area and were satisfied the plan would work as outlined. The rifle, wrapped in a couple of layers of cotton cloth, was in a wheeled canvas bucket surrounded by rakes, shovels, and hoes in the short hall near the front door. Roy Rogers leaped from Trigger and dragged two fleeing rustlers from their saddles and rode them to the ground. Dale Evans lassoed a third, and Pat Brady subdued a fourth with the front end of his Jeep. Roy and Dale sang “Happy Trails to You,” and they cut to a Jell-O commercial. Jerry stacked the plates and carried them to the kitchen and dumped them in the sink. They would not be coming back here tonight. Someone else could wash up.

  * * *

  Cassidy was restless. They had been over the plans for the rally in the park three times in the last three days. Who went where. Who was responsible for what. What to do if this contingency arose, or that one. Now all they could do was wait, and Cassidy was no good at waiting. He would meet Orso at the station house at five, but there was time to kill, and it died slowly for him if he did not have something to do. On the off chance that Fuentes was stupider than he seemed, Cassidy went back to the apartment building on 73rd and West End Avenue.

  Drago Peck leaned against an awning pole and smoked a forbidden cigarette hidden in a cupped hand. When he saw Cassidy coming up the block, he flicked the cigarette out into the street, straightened, and smiled a tip-sucking smile. “How’re you doing, Detective? What a day, huh?” He gestured proudly toward the blue sky and white clouds as if he had summoned them himself.

  “I’m going up to the general’s apartment.”

  “Sure. Whatever you want. That Fuentes guy hasn’t been back. I’ve been keeping my eye out. I told the other doormen, the elevator men, I wanted to know if he showed.”