by Ann Aptaker
Lilah’s still near me, still looking at me, her eyes still asking me to believe her.
Esposito breaks the mood. “Listen, girlie,” he says to her, “you can try and romance Gold all you like, but she’s not the one you have to convince. So why don’t you drop the poor little sister routine and talk to me. And you can start by telling me what the hell Sergeant Pike is doing here.”
Pike picks up his glass of whiskey, says, “Don’t tell him anything, Miss Day.” If he’s trying to sound forceful, his nasal voice is killing it. But behind those droopy eyelids is the cold stare of a cop who’s sold his soul to cheap grifter Mickey Schwartz Day and his pals Berg and O’Byrne. “He’d only blab it to Sig Loreale, and believe me, that’s the last person you’d want knowing what goes on here,” he says, then he knocks back the whiskey in one gulp, looking not at Lilah, but at Esposito. When he’s done with the drink, he puts down the glass and gives Esposito the sort of smile you want to forget you ever saw but never will. His usually dull eyes aren’t so dull now. There’s a gleam in them, a touch of fever. “You know what I’m gonna do now, Lieutenant?” he says. “You and I are goin’ out to the little shed in the back. Al keeps supplies in there, stuff like tools and rope. You and I are gonna walk back there, and then I’ll take a nice long rope and tie you up and leave you there, all alone in the dark, and you won’t be able to move a muscle.”
Esposito says, “Why don’t you just kill me?”
“I’ll let the rats do it. And oh, yeah, I’ll stick my handkerchief in your mouth so no one will hear you scream when the rats chew on your fat flesh.”
I gotta hand it to Esposito. He doesn’t flinch at Pike’s gruesome threat, his stony cop coldness still in control. All he says is, “You never were much of a cop, Pike. So I’m not surprised you’re not much of a killer, letting the rats do the work for you.”
“You wouldn’t know, Lieutenant. That’s been your problem all along.” He pulls his service revolver from his shoulder rig, shoves the barrel in Esposito’s face, laughs, then moves the gun to the lieutenant’s ribs. “Now get moving.”
Esposito still doesn’t flinch, but before he starts walking he’s still close enough for me to hear his sudden, sharp breath.
With Pike now behind him, his gun at Esposito’s back, the two cops walk out a side door of the kitchen. I don’t want to think about anything past that door.
None of this fazes Berg or O’Byrne, or even Lilah, who joins the long list of disappointments in my life.
With Berg’s long gun pointed at me, he says, “What do you want I should do with Gold, Miss Day? I can take care of her nice and quiet if you like.”
“Maybe later,” she says. “Right now I want to talk with her alone.” Aiming my own gun at me, but talking to Berg, she says, “You have any rope in the house?”
“Nah, just back in the shed.” I swear, he glows a little when he says it. I bet he wishes he was back there now with Pike. Sick bastard.
Lilah ignores Berg’s lust for gore and just says to me, “Okay, then take off your tie, Cantor—no, wait. I have a better idea. Keep your gun on her, Al.” With a smile so seductive it could melt the North Pole down to a steaming puddle, Lilah raises her hands to my throat, loosens my tie, and slips it off, slowly, so that the silk whispers as it slides under my collar and along my neck.
Yeah, it’s the little things that make a pro.
Stepping behind me, she pulls my arms behind my back and uses my tie to tie up my wrists. “Now, let’s take a walk, Cantor,” she says.
“Where are we going?”
“Not far. Just to your favorite room.”
“I didn’t know this place had a bar.”
Lilah laughs. Berg doesn’t. He says, “Don’t get cocky, Gold. Just do what the lady says.”
“With pleasure.”
I hear Lilah behind me. “Start walking. Down the hall, first room on the right. Door’s open.”
The hall beyond the kitchen has a room on either side of me. Obeying the woman with the gun at my back, I walk into a too-long-lived-in bedroom whose gray walls and old gray chenille bedspread give the room the feel of a perpetually gloomy day.
Just as Lilah closes the door when we’re both inside, we hear the side door to the kitchen open and close, and heavy footsteps walk in. It’s Pike, coming back from the shed. Lilah looks at me, then looks away. I keep my eyes on her. I want to know how she feels about the horror Pike let loose on Esposito in that shed. But whatever she’s feeling, if she’s feeling anything at all, she keeps hidden.
She seats herself on the bed, says, “Sit down, Cantor.” When I start for the chair at the dressing table, she says, “No, not there, here,” and pats the bed.
She’s got the gun. I do as I’m told.
The bed’s one of those old-fashioned iron jobs with a headboard and footboard like metal fences. I lean my back against the one at the foot. “Now, suppose you tell me what’s on your mind, Lilah. You didn’t take me back here for some hanky-panky, not with my hands tied up.”
She answers that with a naughty smile that crawls up the length of me. “I just want to talk to you, Cantor. I’m worried about you.”
“Well, then, I feel better already. Warm all over. I can feel the heat of the boiling oil you’re about to throw me into.”
“No, you keep getting things wrong. First you think I killed Mickey, and now you think I want to do you harm.”
“Lilah. You’re pointing my own gun at me, and you’ve tied my hands behind my back with my own tie. Friendly gestures, they ain’t. So yeah, I think you want to do me harm. The only question is, will I enjoy it?”
My little taunt lands somewhere other than her funny bone. She’s not laughing. She’s not even smiling. She’s gone paler than her blond hair. “Why do you want to hurt me, Cantor? We had…we had something special last night, at your place, in your bed. Didn’t you feel it? We could have that again, if you want to. I want to.” She puts the gun on the bed like she suddenly realizes she has it and wonders how it got into her hand. Then she kicks off her shoes and slides over to my side of the bed. She takes my hat off, then tosses it aside and brings her face to mine, looking at me like I’m a drink she’s thirsted for for years. I see myself reflected in her green eyes, my own face staring back at me, imprisoned in the dark centers of her eyes, unable to break free. She kisses me. It’s the kiss of dreams, a kiss whose softness lulls with warmth and comfort but hints at dangerous pleasures.
She takes my face in her hands for a moment, then slides her hands down to my coat, opens it, wraps it around her, and presses against me. Kissing me again, her body moves against mine, and mine against hers, a conversation of lust, and tears. She’s crying softly, and talking to me through her kiss. “I didn’t kill Mickey, I promise. I didn’t kill anybody.”
I whisper through our kiss, too. “Then what are you doing here with these guys?”
She takes her mouth from mine, looks at me as if maybe I have the secret of life, then lays her head on my chest, quietly weeping. “Okay, I didn’t kill my brother, but you’re right, Al and Frankie work for me now, and we’re all trying to figure out who killed Mickey.”
“And Gus.”
“Sure, okay, and Gus.” She says it like she’s grown tired of hearing his name.
I keep pressing. “And Pike? What’s he got to do with it?”
“He’s been Mickey’s man for months,” she says. “Esposito belongs to Loreale, but Pike belonged to Mickey.”
“And now you.”
“Yes. And now me.”
“Then you’ve made your first mistake as Coney’s newest rackets boss.”
That sits her up. “Mistake? What mistake?”
“Esposito is Sig Loreale’s man in the Coney Island precinct, right?”
“Sure. Everyone knows that.”
“Well, Sig doesn’t like his people picked off behind his back, especially not by small-timers like—well, like the remnants of the Schwartz gang, or their associates.
Believe me, Lilah, Sig’s not going to let this go.”
She does her best to look like she’s in charge, worthy of the title of Coney’s newest rackets boss. “Well, I guess Pike will just have to take his medicine.”
“You mean hand him over to Loreale.”
“If I have to.”
“Oh, you’ll have to. But that won’t satisfy Sig. He’s not the type to leave the head on a snake.”
That shakes her.
“Yeah,” I say, pressing the issue, “he’ll come after you, too.”
“But I didn’t tell Pike to—”
“Torture Esposito? You didn’t tell him not to, either. Look, you want to be a rackets boss? You’ve got a lot to learn, kiddo, like how to keep your people in line.”
It seems Lilah knows only one way of getting what she wants and needs, and she uses that talent now, placing her head on my shoulder, sliding her hands along my body, slowly, skillfully arousing me, softening me up until she’s ready to deliver the punch line. “Then I need you to teach me how to be in charge, Cantor. Will you? Or maybe we can run things out here together! Listen,” she says, lifting her head and facing me now, “even Mickey knew Coney is ripe for the pickings. Loreale wants to turn his money respectable, clean it up with real estate and make a fortune. What does he need with Coney’s nickel-and-dime rackets anymore? For the right deal, I bet he’d give them up.”
Her hands no longer exploring me, no longer distracting me with temptations of the flesh, my head clears. “You may be right,” I say. “Sig might be willing to unload his old Coney rackets if the deal is good, but he didn’t want to deal with Mickey, and he won’t want to deal with you. Sig won’t deal with the last of Solly Schwartz’s kids if that kid stood by while one of his local guys was murdered. At least not until the rest of this mess is cleaned up.”
“Then help me, Cantor, please. I need you. I need your help.” She kisses me again, falling back into her tried-and-true skills to get what she wants.
I let her kiss me, because I like it, and because it keeps her attention away from my last hidden fidget with my hands, until the silk finally slips and I’m free, free to grab Lilah’s shoulders and pull her off me, free to grab my gun.
She looks surprised enough to faint and annoyed enough to kill me.
“That’s the thing about silk,” I say. “It’s slippery, lousy for knots, except the fancy kind at the collar, the kind I like having a beautiful woman like you slip open.”
She grabs my arm as I get up from the bed, her grip as much a lure as a plea. “See?” she says, “I always knew you’re smart. Knots can’t hold you, but maybe I can. Maybe Coney Island can. We can rule it together. Come on, let’s go back into the kitchen and tell those lugs who’s boss now. It’s you, Cantor. It can be you. Now kiss me.”
She gets up from the bed, brings her face to mine, those green eyes offering everything she has to give: her life, her body, her pleasures, her world. And when I kiss her, I see it all. I see us in bed, taking each other until we’re limp, and I see us running Coney Island, letting the hucksters do our work for us while we rake in cash from the top…and I wonder if I could give up everything I’ve become, risking life and limb for people with too much money and too little soul just so they can have pretty pictures on their walls, or have museum wings named for them. I wonder if the hold Coney Island has on me is the truth of my life, if my past and my future are one and the same, and have been staring me in the face all this time.
The kiss ends, and the only reality staring me in the face is Lilah, whose smile is pretty but small, just like her dreams, just like this little corner of Brooklyn, and I know I’ll go on risking my life in a world bigger than Coney Island. My dreams are bigger than Lilah’s. Like Sig, I need more than just this honky-tonk isle, even if some part of it still lives inside me, and always will. As any Coney local will tell you, you can never get rid of the sand in your shoes. Maybe that’s why Sig still can’t completely cut himself loose from his Coney rackets. Maybe without that sand in his shoes, his shoes would be too big.
And there’s another matter, too, one that makes me stand back from Lilah, hold her at arm’s length. “You think I’m going to play around here with you while Esposito’s being eaten alive in that shed? Just what kind of a no-good do you think I am? Don’t bother answering, Esposito doesn’t have time. Just tell me, is there another way outta here besides the front door and that side door in the kitchen?”
Hurt, scared, she shakes her head.
I open the window, say, “If you call for the others, so help me I’ll use this,” and make a big show of my gun, aiming it at her forehead. “I’ll hate it, seeing that lovely face of yours covered in blood, but I’ll do it.”
“I wouldn’t—”
I don’t want to hear her desperate promises, so I cut her off. “Better yet, to be on the safe side, you’re coming with me.”
That puts the color back in her cheek, and a spark in her eyes.
“Put your shoes on,” I say.
We slip out the window, Lilah first, then me.
Halfway across the yard to the shed, I realize I left my tie and my hat back in that crummy bedroom. They say if you leave things behind, it means you’re coming back. Frankly, I’d rather buy another hat.
*
It’s pitch-black inside the windowless shed. I flick open my lighter. The flame throws my shadow across the room, along a wall hung with tools and rakes. There’s no sound except the horrible, scratchy whisper of tiny, scurrying paws.
Lilah, behind me, says, “I think there’s a light switch somewhere.”
“No, don’t turn it on. The boys in the kitchen might see the light seeping under the door and know we’re here.” I have a bad feeling as I say all this to Lilah, because my own voice is the only voice I hear. There’s no painful moan from Esposito, no weak cry for help.
I let my lighter’s flame find my way. Three steps along, my foot slides in something slimy, and I nearly trip over a large, soft bundle. The slimy liquid is blood. The bundle is Esposito, half of his neck chewed to the bone, his face chewed completely off.
Chapter Seventeen
My car’s still parked back on Sixteenth Street, but the black Ford cop cruiser Esposito and I arrived in is parked at the curb in front of Berg’s bungalow. I’m tempted to take it, hot-wire it, and get me and Lilah out of the Gut fast. But heisting a cop car is never a good idea, even if I plan to give it back. Cops never believe my good intentions, and all I’d get for my trouble is handcuffs.
So we have no choice but to hoof it, which is the quieter method in any case. Berg, O’Byrne, and Pike don’t seem to know we’re gone yet—at least, they haven’t looked out to the street—so avoiding the noise of an engine is a good move.
“Don’t dawdle,” I whisper to Lilah, who’s in a daze from the horror movie memory of Esposito. “We have to keep moving.”
“We…just…left him there,” she says.
“What were we supposed to do? Throw him over my shoulder and take him to a funeral parlor? Okay, he didn’t deserve to die like that. Nobody does, not even a cop. But look, here’s what’ll happen. The boys, your employees—”
“Mickey’s employees. They’re sons of my father’s old gang, so they were loyal to Mickey.”
“And now they’re loyal to you.”
Waving that away, she says, “I don’t think they’ll be taking any more orders from me after tonight.”
“Maybe they will, or maybe they won’t. But in the meantime, they’ll take Esposito’s body to some out-of-the-way spot and bury him where he’ll never be found. His precinct will list him as missing, they’ll search high and low, never find him, and after a while he’ll be listed as presumed dead. And that will be that. One less cop in the world. Now don’t dawdle.”
“I’m cold,” is all she says.
“Here,” I say, and give her my coat. She slips into it, letting the good wool keep her warm, wrapping it around her as if it might keep out any more lou
sy doings this night could throw her way.
“Where are we going?” she says.
“Mona’s.”
“But it’s the middle of the night. She’ll be asleep. She’s no kid anymore, Cantor. Banging on her door in the middle of the night could give the old woman a heart attack.”
“I doubt it. In order to have a heart attack, you have to have a heart. I’m beginning to think Mona’s went missing. Or maybe it got buried with her dog.”
“That’s cruel.”
“So’s this whole situation,” I say, my voice and annoyance rising. “So’s what happened to Esposito, and what happened to Mickey. And the way Mickey treated you. And the way Esposito treated Pike, to make the guy hate him so much. And if Sig Loreale jumps in to finally get rid of the whole mess, then cruel will take on a whole new meaning. He’ll make what happened to Esposito look like the work of a naughty kindergartener with dull scissors and too many red crayons.”
Sig’s reputation for bare-knuckled brutality isn’t lost on Lilah. It’s been part of the Schwartz-Day family lore for years, since Sig muscled in on the Schwartz gang and left Solly bleeding to death on the beach. My saying it only brings it up to date and makes Lilah wrap my coat around her more tightly, more protectively.
She says, “Why are we going to Mona’s?”
“Suppose you tell me,” I say, keeping up the pressure, letting the edge in my voice slice through my every word. “You said you went there to hide out from whoever searched your house and the tattoo parlor. You said you felt safe at Mona’s. And you were safe there, Lilah. Because Berg and O’Byrne were keeping watch outside.” I’m not crazy about badgering her like this, because despite all, despite her sneaking around with Berg and O’Byrne, her brother was murdered, knifed in the back, and her own life could be on the line, too. But if badgering her is what it takes to crack the truth out of her, then I’ll keep it up, no matter how crummy it makes me feel. “The boys weren’t there to kidnap you, Lilah. They were there to protect you, and then to whisk you away from me and the threat I represented in getting too close to whatever you and the gang were up to. But you could’ve gone to Berg’s in the first place, and been even safer. Instead you went to Mona’s. Why? What’s her angle in all this?”