by Tim Green
“Comfortable?” he asks.
“You can’t see it, can you?” Bert asks, fingering his ear.
“Don’t touch it,” Chuck says, and disappears out the front door.
“I don’t know about these stripes,” Bert says, looking down.
“They make you look less like a refrigerator,” I say. “Don’t worry. You’ll be fine. You’re everything you’re saying you are, and I’ll be right there in your ear.”
“Yeah,” he says, putting a breath strip into his mouth and replacing the package in his coat pocket, “I’m an Indian from upstate. But I don’t own any casinos or know anything about big business. How’s it going to come off when I’m just repeating the stuff you say in my ear? My grandmother used to say that a skunk in a possum’s coat still smells like a skunk.”
“When they see your bank records,” I say, handing him the portfolio, “all they’ll smell is money.”
“Did you have to call it the Iroquois Group and be so fucking obvious?” he asks.
“It’s a sentimental thing with me,” I say. We are standing in the foyer of the mansion on Fifth Avenue. I open the front door and follow Chuck down the steps toward the white utility van with a boomerang antenna. In front of it is my limousine. “Let’s get going, will you? If you’re late, that’ll piss them off.”
Bert looks down at his watch and shuffles after me. He gets into the limo. In the back of the van are two captain’s chairs and a metal desk beneath a bank of electronics with four different TV monitors. I get in the back, sit down next to Chuck, and put on my headset.
I push a red button in front of me on the desk and say, “Bert, do you hear me?”
“Jesus, not so fucking loud,” Bert says.
The camera gives me a fish-eye view of the inside of the limo, and now Bert’s scowling face dips down into the top of the picture. Chuck Lawrence adjusts some knobs and says, “How’s that.”
“Better,” Bert says, but his tone is surly.
“You’ll be fine,” I say.
Chuck climbs hunchbacked into the front of the van and gets behind the wheel. We follow the limo across the 59th Street Bridge and down into Long Island City.
I watch and listen. When Bert picks up the Post off the seat and begins to go through it, I realize that I’m holding my breath. After I read the papers this morning, they went right in the trash so he wouldn’t see. I try to make some small talk, but he keeps on turning the pages, even when I start blabbing about the Jets’ upcoming game.
I already know the item on Dani Rangle is on page eleven. Two inches. No picture. The small headline reads, FINANCIER’S DAUGHTER DIES. I think maybe Bert will miss it, but he doesn’t. The paper rattles and he pulls the lower corner of the page closer to his face.
After a few seconds he puts the small story right up to the camera lens in his tie, rattles the paper loudly, and says, “Did you know this?”
I sigh and press the red button. “Let’s not worry about that now, okay?”
“You knew,” he says. “Jesus.”
I stab the red button and ask, “What’s Jesus got to do with it?”
“She was just nineteen, that’s what,” he says, looking down into the camera, his nostrils like two dark caves. “First Villay’s wife and now this.”
“She was no fucking Girl Scout,” I say, stabbing the button and blurting out the words before I realize I’m talking about someone who’s dead.
Bert is quiet for a minute, long enough for me to wonder what has happened to my soul.
He folds up the paper and sets it down on the seat. I see him angle his chin out the window. Finally, in a low rumble, he nods his head and says, “Yeah. You’re right. She was going down anyway. No problem.”
His tone isn’t convincing.
When we get to the East River Yacht Club, the limo goes in but we drive past and park on the road where we can see the big modern building, a rectangle of concrete with smoky horizontal windows. Across the East River are the towering skyscrapers of Manhattan surrounding the silver jewel of the Chrysler Building. There are other limousines out in front of the Yacht Club and men in dark suits patrolling the perimeter whose jackets are bulging with automatic weapons.
“Bert,” I say into my headset, “you’re with me, right?”
“Right here,” Bert says. “Ice in my veins. Skunk in a possum suit.”
“Good,” I say.
Bert is frisked by the men at the door and led inside. He goes up the stairs and through a lobby. In the back, overlooking the river, is a long room with a conference table. Nearly a dozen men are sitting around with small espresso cups in front of them on saucers with small lemon peel shavings. Frank sits in the middle of the group facing the water. Ramo Capozza is at one end of the table and there is a chair for Bert at the other, where he sits down.
“It’s good to see you, Mr. Washington,” Capozza says.
“Thanks,” Bert says.
Someone sets down a cup of espresso in front of Bert along with a sugar bowl and some cream. Bert lays down the portfolio on the table in front of him, but doesn’t touch the coffee.
“Thank you for meeting with me, gentlemen,” I whisper.
Bert glances down at his tie and stiffly repeats my words.
“Holy crap,” Chuck Lawrence says under his breath.
“Don’t look at your tie,” I say in an even lower whisper.
“Don’t look at-” Bert begins to say, then after an uncomfortable pause he recovers. “I mean, would you like to look at these bank papers?”
All the men are looking down the length of the table at him. It is Frank who smiles and says, “Damn right I would. Hand that stuff down here, would you, Jim?”
The portfolio is passed down by the man on Bert’s left, and Frank tears it open and begins to pull out the papers. His eyes are narrowed and his massive jowls shake under the effort it takes him to breathe. The diamond ring on his finger flashes on his fluttering hands.
“In a real hurry, aren’t you, Frank?” says a man on the other side of the table with a pocked face, a bulbous nose, and a dark widow’s peak of slicked-back hair. “I guess our business isn’t clean enough for you and all your Park Avenue friends, huh?”
Frank stops what he’s doing and looks from the pit-faced man to Ramo Capozza.
Capozza intertwines his fingers and says, “Dominic, Frank has been a good partner for a long time. He’s ready to do other things. That’s not a sin. I told you, I like the fact that Mr. Washington’s group is a new and legitimate source of financing. They know the industry, so I think this could be a good opportunity for everyone. I don’t want bitterness…”
The man called Dominic folds his hands and dips his head. The rest of the room is silent. A tugboat going by outside sounds its horn. Finally, Bert clears his throat and shifts in his seat. Ramo Capozza nods at Frank and Frank digs back into the papers. He scans one, then another, and slides them down the table toward Capozza. The man to Capozza’s right, thin and angular, wearing a creamy brown suit, puts on a pair of gold reading glasses and examines the papers as well.
I’m pretty sure the most interesting one would be the statement from The Bank of Zurich showing a statement from the Iroquois Group for one hundred thirty-seven million dollars. The other would be the state certificate of incorporation showing Bert Washington as the president of the Iroquois Group.
The man leans toward Capozza and whispers in his ear. Capozza nods. Bert clears his throat again and this time begins to cough. I lift the headset away from my ears and look over at Chuck, who’s doing the same thing. When Bert’s done, I put the headset back on to catch a few words of Bert’s.
“-over the numbers,” Bert is saying.
The men all stare at him. Some start to mutter.
“What did he say?” I say in a hiss to Chuck with my hand over the microphone. Chuck shrugs.
“I think everyone should relax,” Capozza said, raising his hand. “Donald has the books. It’s nothing the differ
ent corporations don’t already give to the IRS, so let’s not get excited. The fact that Mr. Washington’s group is thorough is the sign that they’re a good group of businessmen and they’ll be good partners.”
The man with the reading glasses reaches down and sets a box of three-ring binders on the table. The box is pushed all the way down to Bert. Bert sits silent.
“It shouldn’t take our accountants much more than a week to check through these, then, if you gentlemen are still willing, we’ll have a deal,” I say into Bert’s ear.
He repeats it stiffly. Frank squints at him and rolls his tongue around the inside of his mouth.
Ramo Capozza slaps his aging hands gently on the tabletop and says, “Very good, Mr. Washington. We appreciate your coming by. Now, if you’ll excuse us, we have some more business here before I meet my daughter for lunch.”
Bert doesn’t move.
In his ear I say, “Go shake his hand.”
“Go sha-” Bert starts to say, then stands up and continues. “I’m going to go. Now. Thank you very much.”
He picks up the box, moves down the length of the table, and shakes Ramo’s hand, then walks out the door. A man leads him through the hall and down the steps.
Bert is actually out the door when I hear Frank say, “Hey, Bert, do you mind if I call you Bert?”
Bert turns and there he is. Frank. Massive. Greasy. But with manicured hands and a three-thousand-dollar suit. A lump swells in my chest.
“No,” Bert says.
“Good,” Frank says. “Hey, Ramo told me it was Seth Cole who introduced you. That right?”
“Yes,” I say in Bert’s ear. “Tell him yes.”
“Yes,” Bert says stiffly.
Frank angles his head, still looking at Bert. A small smile creeps on his face.
“Yeah, well… tell him from me… thanks. Okay?”
“Okay,” Bert says. He turns away and steps toward the open door of my limo.
“Hey,” Frank says, causing Bert to turn toward him again. “Don’t think you’re going to pull any funny stuff with those records…
“The last Indian war didn’t go so well for you guys.”
59
FRANK RUBBED HIS TEETH back and forth against the face of his thumbnail. His eyes were looking out the window, but he wasn’t really seeing any of the storefronts on 49th Street, he was just staring. When the car pulled up in front of the Diamond Men’s Club, Frank waited for his driver to open the door. A bullnecked bodybuilder dressed in a tuxedo hurried outside to hold open the door to the club.
“Good morning, Mr. Steffano,” the kid said.
Frank didn’t bother to take the thumbnail away from his teeth when he asked, “Mickey in?”
“Seven a.m., same as always,” the kid said, rushing to open the inner door. The girl in the cashier’s booth stopped chewing her gum to stare.
It was dark inside and the red lights pulsed with the music. On the main stage a blonde girl who looked like she was about fifteen worked the brass pole at the end of the middle runway. Two guys in cowboy hats offered up creased dollar bills. Five or six other men in rumpled business suits were spread out in the dark, sitting at small round tables drinking twenty-dollar drinks.
Frank snuck up on the bartender and watched carefully as he poured a drink, then walked down the stairs, across the floor to the far wall, where he let himself past another musclehead and into the back. He passed a changing room where two half-naked girls were looking at their faces in the mirror and laughing about something. Mickey’s office was in the very back, across the hall from Frank’s. Frank knocked five times with a rhythm that was Mickey’s special code, and after a minute the bolt lock clicked and the door opened.
“What?” Mickey said in his grouchy nasal wheeze before he peered up through his glasses and saw that it was Frank. “Frank. What are you doing here so early?”
“Why?” Frank asked, pushing the door so the knob rattled against the inside wall. “You doing something you shouldn’t be? How come any time I come here during the day everyone acts real nervous?”
The space was cramped, and he kept Mickey there instead of letting him use his own spacious office across the hall even though he rarely used it himself and Mickey was there practically twenty-four seven.
“If someone was gonna try to take you, Frank,” Mickey said, “they’d be doing it at night. We don’t make enough money during the day to pay the phone bill. You’re just intimidating. That’s why they’re nervous.”
“Good,” Frank said. He pulled up a chrome and leather chair across from Mickey’s desk. On top of it sat an open folder with some account sheets, a computer, and an ashtray piled high with spent cigarettes and snowy ash. Behind the desk were a massive safe and two gray file cabinets. Mickey sat down and lit a cigarette, his small fingers struggling to hold the match steady.
“You’re shaking,” Frank said.
Mickey nodded toward the wall that was lined with pictures of his wife and their two teenage kids. The boy was a miniature of Mickey, small and sneaky-looking with big ears, except the boy didn’t wear glasses and he hadn’t lost most of his kinky orange hair.
“She’s leaving,” he said.
“Your wife?”
Mickey nodded.
“She can’t do that. You want me to have someone talk to her?”
“No,” Mickey said, exhaling. “Let her go. I got an apartment already and that little blonde thing from Sioux City is moving in.”
“The girl out there on the pole?”
“How’s your wife?” Mickey asked, squinting one eye at Frank through the smoke.
“Mickey,” Frank said after a moment’s pause, “how’s our books?”
“Clean.”
“I’m not talking just here. I mean the whole crapshoot. The casinos. The hotels. The clubs.”
“Clean,” Mickey said with a little less conviction.
“How clean?” Frank said, shifting his bulk toward the desk. “Clean enough so if a bunch of hotshot lawyers and accountants dug in there’s nothing doing?”
“The way we got it set, it’d be a real shell game. Someone pretty smart would have to have, like, the books from all the companies, and sit down to compare one to the other and have a pretty quick eye to see what you got going on.”
“Fuck,” Frank said.
“Why?”
“No,” Frank said, shaking his head. “Don’t worry about that. I need to find some things out about a couple of guys.”
“Who?”
“Guy named Seth Cole who bought the Jets and his friend, this Bert Washington guy who says he’s with a group of Indians who own some of those casinos upstate.”
“How much? How soon?”
“All I can and yesterday,” Frank said. “And I want you to use all our cops.”
“That much?”
“If you need to empty that fucking safe behind you, you do it, understand?” Frank said, making a fist. “I want to know who these motherfuckers are and what they’re doing.”
Mickey was sitting up straight now and blinking, looking around the room like he was expecting someone to pop up out of nowhere and kill him.
“Ah, I’m just jumpy. Maybe everything’s just fine,” Frank said, waving his hand in the air and easing back in his chair so that it gave a little groan. He looked over at a picture of Mickey and his family on a beach somewhere and his eyes lost their focus. “I’m so fucking close, Mick. This deal is so perfect.”
“Something wrong?”
“I don’t know,” Frank said, putting his thumbnail back against his teeth, his eyes still on the photograph. “But if it is, I ain’t gonna just sit here and take it. You get the money ready too. In case we got to run.”
“Run?” Mickey said. “Hey, I don’t see running from those guys, Frank. You don’t run from them.”
“Oh yeah?” Frank said, pulling his thumb out of his mouth and leaning toward Mickey. “What else you gonna do, talk? You gonna throw me under the
bus and save your own ass?”
“They don’t have to know about me, Frank,” Mickey whined, his eyes pulled down at the corners. “I don’t want the money.”
“Well you’re taking the fucking money,” Frank said, drawing a Glock 9mm out from under his coat and putting it in Mickey’s face. “Ten percent. That’s your share. You’re rich, you and that little Sioux City bimbo. So you better find out for me real quick who these motherfuckers are so I can deal with it.”
60
WHEN MY FATHER DIED, they cremated his frozen body and buried the ashes in a cardboard box. I had that box dug up and reburied under some tall pine trees on a windy knob that overlooks the valley of the Onondaga Nation. I know how much he loved my mother and Black Turtle too. The stone that marks his new grave is a towering pillar of limestone cut from his own quarry with a sculpted bust of my father on top with his eyes facing the Nation. I know he would have liked that.
But still, after he froze to death, his body was burned-one of the few things my father ever openly despised about death. And I remember the one time we talked about it that he asked me to never let them burn his body.
Because of all that, I believe I would be justified if I didn’t feel any remorse as I watch them lower Dani Rangle’s dark walnut casket with its single rose and its silver gilt corners into the ground. But justified or not, there is a knot in my stomach. I sigh and force my mind away from the young girl. My business is with Rangle and it cuts through sentimentality. It has to.
Rangle is stooped over, and when the priest hands him the silver ornamental shovel to deposit the first scoop of dirt over his daughter’s dead body, it glints in the bright sunlight and he staggers away. An attendant from the funeral home catches him and stiffly endures his teary hug.
Katie Vanderhorn is much less affected. She stands in her place next to the grave in a black dress and sunglasses with her long hair gently waving in the breeze and is comforted by the one-armed embrace of Martin Debray. There are maybe two dozen other people there, standing under the pale blue sky, in front of their chairs, and dressed in the finest suits and dresses that can be found on Madison Avenue. One man looks at his watch. Another woman yawns. When the priest finally gives up, dumps the dirt himself, says a last prayer, and excuses them, they turn to leave without bothering to comfort the hysterical Bob Rangle.