House of Lords

by Philip Rosenberg

  “Ask it again.”

  There was more defiance in her voice than he expected. The lady had balls, that was for sure.

  “When did you figure out that Blaine was clean?”

  “Who says I figured that out?”

  He didn’t say anything. He just waited. He could feel his anger rising up, and even before the next words formed in his mind, he knew that he was about to say the one thing he had been hoping not to have to say. He didn’t want to be Humphrey Bogart any more than he had wanted to be the man who put Theresa Benini’s father in the water. He had come a long way from that day in St. Louis when he disarmed a knife-wielding psychotic without using his gun. He remembered what that felt like when it was over, and it didn’t matter that the guy didn’t deserve the break he got. Who ever does? Being a cop is like being a doctor. First do no harm. Except there was already one man dead because Wally Schliester said Let’s reel him in, and now he was about to wreck another life. He wanted to stop but couldn’t make himself.

  “He was at your place last night,” he said. “What do you think he wants, Elaine? A little comfort for a bad marriage? Or a little protection?”

  “You bastard,” she snarled, “you goddamned cocksucking little prick. What gives you the right to spy on me?”

  “Just tell me why Fiore went to Gus’s house. He wouldn’t have gone there if he didn’t already know we questioned Gus. How did he know that, Elaine?”

  “My god,” she said, not angry now, horrified. “Are you suggesting—”

  “I’m not suggesting, I’m asking.”

  Her hand flashed out and she slapped him hard across the face, with more force than he would have thought a slap could carry. He didn’t even try to stop her. He had it coming.

  “That’s not an answer,” he said.

  “It’s an answer, it’s an answer,” she screamed.

  “Did you tell Blaine we had Gus?”

  She slapped him again.

  “Did you tell him to warn his partner?”

  She stopped herself this time, and then she looked at him hard for what felt like a long time. He refused to look away.

  “It’s too bad about us, Wally,” she said. “But it never would have worked out.”

  And then she walked out of the room.

  If Jessica was mixed up with drugs again, the only person who could help Jeffrey find her was Chet Fiore. He had people who knew their way around that world. They could rifle through it like a magician running through a deck of cards. They probably even had cops on their payroll they could turn to. He didn’t like asking Fiore for favors but he didn’t intend to ask as a favor. Fiore was in his debt where Jessica was concerned. His vicious games put her in that world, and now Jeffrey was going to demand that he use whatever powers he had to get her out. As simple as that. No threat had to be made. Fiore knew what the threat was.

  He had Martin drive him to Stasny’s, where he pulled up in front of the service entrance. He told Martin to wait and rang the bell. The same insolent young man opened the door who had opened it the last time Jeffrey had come here because his daughter vanished. Again, Jeffrey followed him down a maze of corridors to the kitchen. This time Stasny made no pretense of not knowing how to get in touch with Fiore. He invited Jeffrey into the office and made a telephone call, speaking in the coded language Jeffrey had come to expect in all of Fiore’s dealings. He used no names, not his own, not Fiore’s, and said almost nothing. While he was making the call, Jeffrey dialed Jessica’s number on his cell phone and waited for her machine to pick up. “Jess, it’s Dad,” he said. “Call me on my cell phone as soon as you get in. Love you lots.”

  Just that. If Jessica came home on her own, Jeffrey knew that Phyllis wouldn’t bother to let him know.

  Stasny suggested he’d be more comfortable waiting in the dining room. A waiter who took the trouble to put on a jacket brought him coffee and a sweet roll without his asking for either. Jeffrey drank the coffee. Ten minutes passed, then twenty. Another waiter, coatless, shirtless, came into the room and went about setting the tables. Then Stasny appeared, flanked by two young men. One of them looked familiar. “Could you come with us, Mr. Blaine?” he said.

  Stasny led the three of them to the front door, unlocking it to let them out. As soon as the door opened, Martin got out of the car to see what was wanted of him. “You can send him home, Mr. Blaine,” the young man said. “We have a car.”

  It suddenly dawned on Jeffrey that this was either the guy who raped Amy or the one he found with Renée. He couldn’t be sure which but it didn’t matter. The fact that he was Eddie Vincenzo’s friend hit him like a jolt of electricity. He had assumed Eddie was out of the picture.

  “Where is Jessica?” he asked sharply, throwing the boy into momentary confusion.

  “I don’t know nothing about that,” Georgie Vallo said. “Just get in the car, okay.”

  The other boy, who was in fact Richie Demarest, Renée Goldschmidt’s date at Jessica’s party, stepped in front of Martin and said, “There’s no problem here. Why don’t you get back in your car?”

  Martin wasn’t about to take this punk’s word for it. Or even Jeffrey’s when Jeffrey said, “It’s all right, Martin.” He knew Mr. Blaine would have to say that even if it wasn’t all right. So he held his ground, waiting to see what came next. This job was weird, he thought. And Mr. Blaine was into some very complicated shit.

  Mr. Blaine didn’t look like a man who was being kidnapped, which was the first thought that had run through Martin’s mind when he saw them all coming out of the restaurant like that. In fact, Mr. Blaine actually took a step toward the punk, who took a step backward so that Mr. Blaine’s face wasn’t right in his.

  “I want to know where my daughter is, I want to know that she’s all right, and I want to know it now,” Mr. Blaine said.

  Georgie Vallo said, “I’m telling you the truth, Mr. Blaine. Nobody said nothing to me about Jess. They just said pick you up.”

  “And you did that. Now tell me where we’re going and I’ll follow you,” Jeffrey suggested.

  “I can’t do that, Mr. Blaine,” Georgie Vallo said.

  The punk sounded nervous. He was supposed to be the tough guy and he was letting Mr. Blaine push him around. He was going to look like a great big asshole when the guy he was supposed to pick up showed up in a different car.

  “You’re going to do it,” Mr. Blaine said. “Now tell me where we’re going.”

  Georgie Vallo’s eyes blinked as though he were sending signals. “You’ll follow me?” he asked uncertainly.

  “Practically in your tailpipe,” Jeffrey said.

  “No funny stuff?” Georgie asked. He just wanted a little reassurance.

  Jeffrey turned to Martin. “We’re following them,” he said, starting back to his car. “No funny stuff.”

  Georgie and Richie Demarest hurried toward a blue Dodge parked a few cars down. Martin waited until they pulled out from the curb and then eased into the traffic right behind them. He looked in the mirror at Mr. Blaine. This was a banker who managed to twist a punk’s head into knots without ever raising his voice or his hand. There was a trick to it, and he wondered whether, if he drove for Mr. Blaine long enough, he would ever learn it.

  He followed the Dodge all the way down to Delancey Street, where it turned east, heading for the Williamsburg Bridge. When it got off at the first exit ramp on the Brooklyn side, Martin threw a glance back over his shoulder as though he wanted Jeffrey to confirm that they were doing the right thing. He didn’t like the feel of this.

  A few minutes later they were driving along the East River through a district of run-down one-and two-story industrial buildings. At least half of them looked abandoned and the ones that were still in operation didn’t look much better. Martin checked the dashboard clock. It was still only a couple of minutes past eight. Which was an awful time of day to get stuffed into sacks like a litter of kittens and thrown into the river. Just the other day a crazy black man in the
middle of Manhattan in the middle of the day picked up a brick and bashed some white girl’s head in, so there were enough ways to get hurt in this city without going out of your way to find them. He wished he could just slam the brakes, jam it into reverse, wheel into a backward turn, and gun it out of there. They’d be half a mile away by the time the Dodge got itself turned around.

  “He’s turning in here, Martin,” Mr. Blaine said.

  Martin hoped he’d hear him say, Keep going, but he knew he wouldn’t.

  The Dodge cut in through a conveniently open gate in a chain-link fence on the river side of the road. Martin followed and they found themselves in a parking lot big enough for about thirty cars. The pavement was breaking apart and there didn’t seem to be any lights on in the building. But the windows weren’t broken, so it probably wasn’t abandoned. A sign that should have been hanging over the front door lay on the ground, partly obscured by trash bins and discarded lumber. Jeffrey could make out the words SHEET METAL but nothing else. Martin noticed it, too, but didn’t much care what it said.

  The Dodge drifted around the lot and disappeared behind the side of the building, heading toward the back. “Go ahead,” Jeffrey said.

  “You sure?” Martin asked. It was as close as he would come to questioning his employer’s orders.

  Jeffrey was sure.

  Martin sighed and pulled around to the back of the building. There were two cars parked there, and one of them was Chet Fiore’s Mercedes. This was going to be the showdown everything had been building toward, and now it occurred to Jeffrey for the first time that he might not be a match for Fiore. The man knew violence inside out. It had seemed such a simple matter to will oneself into being someone one had never been, like shedding a skin that no longer fit. But maybe it wasn’t simple at all.

  He glanced at the building and saw something move in the window. Georgie Vallo and the other boy were standing only a foot or so away, hovering near him like jittery jailers, ready to escort him in. “Come on,” Georgie said, reaching for his arm.

  Jeffrey pulled away from the young man’s touch as he stepped through a warped steel door, leaving Martin waiting in the parking lot.

  Chet Fiore was waiting just inside the door.

  “Where’s my daughter?” Jeffrey asked, before Fiore could say anything.

  Vallo and the other kid stepped in behind Jeffrey, one of them swinging the door closed. It made a heavy, rasping sound.

  “Your daughter’s fine,” Fiore said. “There’s nothing to worry about.”

  “Just tell me where the hell she is, you son of a bitch,” Jeffrey shouted, lunging at Fiore. It was the second time he made a move for Fiore, and for the second time he was grabbed from behind. There was a forearm across his throat, and his right arm was wrenched back violently until it felt like it was going to dislocate from the socket.

  “All right, ease up,” Fiore said.

  The pressure on Jeffrey’s arm and shoulder eased back but the forearm was still around his throat.

  “We’ll talk about your kid,” Fiore said, “but first we’re going to talk about you. I send these geniuses to bring you here and you show up in your own car. I’ll bet you think that’s cute, running a number on a couple kids like that. Makes you smart, right?”

  Jeffrey waited.

  “I asked you a question,” Fiore said.

  “No, it doesn’t make me smart,” Jeffrey said.

  He felt the pain in his shoulder again as his arm was pulled all the way back.

  “All right, it makes me smart,” he snapped. “I don’t know what the answers are. Why don’t you just tell me?”

  “We’ll get there,” Fiore said. “If you don’t know what the answers are, how come you act like you do?”

  “I know my business,” Jeffrey managed to say. It wasn’t easy to talk because of the pain, but he knew that if he remained silent the pain would only get worse. “That’s all I know. Is that what you want me to say?”

  “I don’t doubt that you know your business, Jeffrey. You don’t know mine and you don’t want to try to,” Fiore said, stepping closer.

  “I wouldn’t,” Jeffrey said.

  Fiore reached out and grabbed Jeffrey’s face, his fingers biting into the flesh just over the jaw. He had small but powerful hands capable of exerting immense pressure.

  “You wouldn’t try, you little cocksucker? Is that right?”

  Jeffrey’s jaw felt like it was going to split like a walnut.

  “I’ve been straight with you, Jeffrey,” Fiore went on, his eyes slitted with rage. “Your kid came back at the end of the summer like I said she would. If she started seeing Eddie again, that’s not my problem. I didn’t bring her up, you did.”

  “I didn’t get her on drugs.”

  His arm wrenched so far back he heard something crackling in his shoulder. He gasped from the pain.

  “Sorry about that,” Fiore said. “Sometimes Georgie can’t help himself. He’s a friend of Eddie’s. You put his friend in the hospital. Let him go, Georgie.”

  Jeffrey shifted his shoulders as he was released. All he could do was hope that nothing was broken.

  “That’s old business,” Fiore said. “Now we get to new business. Let’s talk about your little girl.”

  “Where is she?” Jeffrey demanded.

  “You listen, I talk,” Fiore said. “I had a problem with you and now I’ve got a problem with her. Little Jessica went to a reporter last night and told her all about everything. Including the fact that you’re working for me.”

  Jeffrey was stunned. How could she do that? All the lawyers in the world wouldn’t be able to keep him out of prison once he was publicly exposed. Having an intimate friend in the prosecutor’s office helped only as long as the story stayed in the office. Once it got out, Fiore himself would have an easier time making a deal than he would, because one gangster more or less wasn’t going to make much of a difference, but an investment banker who opened a money laundry on Wall Street would be turned into a front-page, lead-story example.

  Jeffrey had planned for everything. Except betrayal by his own daughter. Why? he thought. Why would she do that? “Where is she?” he asked, in a level voice that betrayed nothing of what he was thinking.

  Fiore noticed the calmness in him, noticed that he hadn’t asked a single question about a newspaper story with the potential to destroy him.

  “She came to see me last night,” Fiore said. “She offered herself to buy your freedom.”

  “My freedom?”

  “From me,” Fiore said. “Lovely girl. And a very tempting offer. What do you think? Is she a better fuck than her mother or not?”

  Blaine’s calmness unsettled him, but now that calmness was gone. Let’s see what he’s got, Fiore thought as Jeffrey exploded toward him.

  His left arm deflected the punch and he countered with a hard right straight into Jeffrey’s gut that doubled him over. “Stay back, he’s mine,” Fiore barked to his two henchmen as he unleashed another blow, an uppercut, that followed the first almost in the same instant, straightening Jeffrey up.

  Jeffrey could feel the scorching bitterness of vomit rising in his throat. He was a grown man who had never been in a fight in his life, but he was ready for this one. He liked the taste of his own blood in his mouth and welcomed the pain as he righted himself and charged back at Fiore.

  A right hand that he saw coming but couldn’t stop caught him square on the cheekbone with a sound like an explosion going off in his head. He reeled sideways, his vision blurred, but still clear enough to let him see Fiore stalking after him, his fist cocked, patient.

  Jeffrey took a few steps to the side, like a boxer circling away from trouble. His hands were low by his side, until he remembered to bring them up. But he felt awkward like that. He didn’t know the first thing about fighting and wasn’t going to fool anyone pretending he did. He dropped low and dove forward, driving his shoulder into Fiore’s knees, taking him to the floor.

  Fior
e rolled over and tried to scramble to his feet but Jeffrey wasn’t about to let that happen. He drove his elbow into the small of Fiore’s back, smashing him back to the floor, forcing the breath out of his body in a sudden rush. For an instant Jeffrey felt the immense satisfaction of delivering pain, so new to him and so surprising.

  Not that Fiore was giving him time to savor the moment. He rolled onto his back and kicked out with both legs, straight into Jeffrey’s chest. There was a sound that might have been a rib cracking. Jeffrey tried to spin away, to buy himself a little room, but he felt Fiore come down on his back, felt the floor against his face. And then Fiore was sitting astride him, his fingers twisted in Jeffrey’s hair, and he yanked hard, pulling his head back for a chopping blow with his fist.

  Apparently Fiore thought that would do the trick. With Jeffrey on the floor, facedown in a puddle of his own blood, Fiore got slowly to his feet, flexed the bruised knuckles on his right hand, and turned away, perfectly satisfied to leave Jeffrey lying there.

  But Jeffrey wasn’t finished. The moment he saw Fiore’s back, he lunged after him and caught his shoulder with his left hand. He had big, strong hands. He rowed at Yale his freshman and sophomore years, and even now his grip was powerful enough to drag a man over backward. They fell across each other, both of them erupting at once in a barrage of kicks and punches, knees and elbows that finally mixed some of Fiore’s blood with Jeffrey’s.

  Standing over them, Georgie Vallo and Richie Demarest exchanged looks. Georgie licked nervously at his lips, worried. They hadn’t expected the banker to put up this much of a fight. But the two men were rolling on the floor, digging fists and knees into each other, groaning from pain and exertion. Richie took a step forward but Georgie put a hand out to stop him.

  The room, which at one time must have been an office of sorts, was almost devoid of furniture, just the stuff too ruined to sell off or take. A steel desk and a couple of splay-legged chairs stood to the side, pushed back against the wall. Jeffrey rolled up against one of the chairs, which came apart with the impact, the seat falling onto him, the metal legs clattering to the floor next to him. He grabbed one of the legs as Fiore came after him and swung it in a slashing forehand that caught Fiore across the chest, the unfinished end ripping through his shirt and drawing a bright bloody line where it shredded the fabric.