Pfister’s face turned red and he roared, “What the hell you talking about? I’m a legitimate dealer in jewelry and precious metals. You come here to sell me something, I don’t ask where it come from.”
“Any of this stuff come from Francis Hoyt?” I asked.
“I already tole ya—”
I grabbed Pfister by the arm and spun him around in his chair so that he was facing me. I got my face as close to him as I could, no more than an inch or two away.
“You smell my breath, Tommy?”
“What?”
“You heard me. You smell my breath?”
“Yeah. I smell it.”
“That’s how close I am to you. Close enough for you to smell my breath. You’re a lucky man. I brushed my teeth this morning, used a little mouthwash, too, but maybe it doesn’t smell so good after lunch. Maybe it’s even worse after I eat dinner at some Italian joint. You can’t imagine how much I love garlic. You don’t want me this close then, Tommy. But this is how close I’m gonna stay until we get the answers we came here for.”
I smacked him across the cheek. Not too hard, just hard enough so I could see the slight imprint of a couple of my fingers it left on his face.
“Hey! You can’t—” He started to get up but I pushed him back down.
“Sure, I can. You want me to do it again?”
I turned to Manny.
“Maybe you ought to lock the door. Until we finish our business with Tommy here. We wouldn’t want to disturb the neighbors.”
Manny flipped the lock.
“Listen, you guys can’t…” Pfister whined, like a baby.
Pfister’s bravado disappeared. He was beginning to believe we could and would hurt him. He slumped back in his chair. This would be the beginning of the end.
“I guess we can, Tommy. Because we’re doing it.”
Manny, came back to the desk and fiddled with some papers.
Pfister’s hand shot forward to try and stop him. But Manny pulled his hand away with a fistful of papers.
“Hey, that’s private stuff.”
“That’s funny, I thought I heard you give us permission to search your office,” I said. “Didn’t he give us permission?”
Manny nodded.
“I didn’t give no one no damn permission. I’m gonna report yiz guys. That’s what I’m gonna do. This is an illegal search and seizure.”
I picked up a cell phone from his desk and handed it to him.
“Which police department you wanna call, Tommy?”
“Whaddya mean?”
“We didn’t say we were from here, so who you gonna call? NYPD? You think they’re gonna show up on their white horses and save your ass?”
“Where the hell are you from?”
“Somewhere else.”
“You got no right…”
Manny, who’d been thumbing through the papers he’d removed from Pfister’s desk, moved to the file cabinet near the window. He went to pull open a drawer, but it was locked.
“Mr. Pfister, I am going to need the key to this file cabinet, if you please.”
“I don’t please. I don’t fucking please at all. You fucking guys don’t have a warrant. You can’t—”
I got up in his face again and grabbed his shirt collar.
“Read my lips, Tommy. We. Don’t. Need. A. Fucking. Warrant. And you know what? We’re not interested in what’s in those files. But someone else might be. What do you think about the idea of cops nosing around the stuff you’ve got in that file cabinet?”
“You ain’t got no right,” he sputtered, his face turning bright red.
“You want us to leave you alone all you have to do is tell us what you know about Francis Hoyt.”
Beads of sweat began to roll down Tommy’s cheeks. I let go of his shirt. I could tell we’d broken him. Now, it was just a matter of time.
“I already tole ya, I don’t know no Francis Hoyt.”
“These drawers would be very easy to open,” Manny said, as he removed a pocket knife from his pants pocket.
“Come on, guys,” Pfister whined.
“Look at me.”
He turned his face back to me.
“In the eye, Tommy.”
“Okay, so I’m looking at you. It don’t matter where I look, you guys ain’t got no right coming in here and—”
“You’ve got this all wrong, Tommy. This isn’t about rights. And even if it was, right now you haven’t got any. You want us to leave, all you have to do is tell us what you know about Francis Hoyt.”
“I tole ya like a hundred times, I don’t know who you’re talking about.”
I grabbed him again, twisting his shirt around his neck.
“Hey, you’re hurting me.”
“That slap was just to get your attention, Tommy. It could get worse. A lot worse. Just be glad it was me and not my partner here. See, he’s got impulse control problems. You know what that means? It means he’s got some very interesting ways of making people talk. Especially when he’s frustrated. See, he’s not from around here. He grew up not far from Guantanamo in Cuba and you know where that is and what they did there, right?”
There was fear in Tommy’s eyes. He was a trapped, panicked animal. He had no idea what we were capable of doing and that frightened the hell out of him. I let go of his shirt and stood up. Manny took his cue. He backed away from the file cabinet and took off his jacket, exposing his holstered pistol.
“You guys ain’t gonna do nothing…right?”
I shrugged.
“I have to be honest with you, Tommy. My partner’s kinda hard to control. It’s not his fault. It’s his culture. You know what that’s like, right? It’s hard to break old habits. I’ve seen him pistol whip guys until they’d confess killing Jack Kennedy and Jimmy Hoffa.” I threw up my hands. “I’m out of it now. You had your chance with me. Now you have to deal with my partner.”
“Okay, okay. I really don’t know where he is. Honest, I don’t.”
“But you know he’s up here, right?” I said, sitting back down on his desk as Manny put his jacket back on.
Pfister hesitated. I saw fear in his eyes again, but I couldn’t swear it was us he was most afraid of.
“You know, Tommy, speaking as a new friend, I think you ought to do something about this condition you have,” I said.
“What condition? I ain’t got no condition.”
“Sure, you do. It’s the sweating, man. It’s kind of gross. I’ve never seen a man sweat so much. How about you, Manny? You ever see a man sweat this much?”
Manny, his hands akimbo, holding his jacket apart enough so Tommy could still see he was packing, shook his head, no.
Tommy opened his desk drawer and took out a handkerchief. He had a pistol in there but he made no move to reach for it. He wiped his brow with the handkerchief then shoved it back into the drawer so that it covered the pistol.
“Day like this I bet you go through at least half dozen handkerchiefs. If I were you, I’d probably get myself a box of Kleenex, that way you’d have one handy all the time and you’d save plenty on laundry bills.”
“You guys, you guys are stepping over…the line. Way over—”
“What line, Tommy? Manny, you see any lines around here? ’Cause I don’t see any lines.”
Manny shook his head, no.
“Okay, yeah. Maybe he’s up here. I don’t know for sure. But yeah, he’s probably up here.”
“Which one is it? Is he up here, or isn’t he?”
“Yeah. For sure. He’s up here.”
“Have you seen him?”
“No, I ain’t seen him. That’s just what I hear.”
“You fence for him, right?”
“Not anymore.”
“Why not?”
“We had a falling out, that’s why.”
“What kind of falling out?”
“Just a falling out, okay. Things happen.”
“Did you see him when he was up here last year,” aske
d Manny, who was now back sitting on the other side of Pfister’s desk.
Pfister swung his head in Manny’s direction. “I don’t remember.”
I looked at my watch then tapped the face of it. “You think we’ve got all day to sit around playing patty-cake with you, Tommy? My partner and I have more important things to do than sit here listening to you lie about things we know you’re lying about. You’re wasting our time. We don’t have a lot of time to waste, Tommy. My partner here has to get back home. So why not answer the questions truthfully so we can be on our way?”
Pfister opened the drawer, pulled out the handkerchief and wiped his brow again.
“Who told you he’s up here?”
“Someone.”
“Who?”
“People.”
“What people?”
“Just people. You know, word gets around. I don’t remember what people. I see people all the time, you think I remember all of them? What the hell’s the difference?”
“There is a difference, Tommy. But let’s move on to a more important question. Where is he?”
“How should I know?”
“The same way you know he’s up here.”
“Look, this guy doesn’t take out an ad in the newspaper giving out his address and itinerary. He just shows up when he wants to show up.”
“When was the last time Francis Hoyt showed up, Mr. Pfister?” asked Manny.
“It’s been a couple years. Like I said, we had a kind of falling out. We don’t do business no more.”
“Was it because of that thing that put him in jail?” I asked.
“You know about that?”
“We know everything, Tommy.”
“That wasn’t my fault. Guys I work for set that deal up. I had nothing to do with it. But yeah, Hoyt blamed me for it. Said he wasn’t going to deal with me anymore. Said he’d find somewhere else to take his business to.”
“Who might that be?”
He shrugged. “Beats me. There’s lotsa guys like me around. A lot of ’em don’t work out of an office like me. You guys probably know who they are better than me.”
“So, he has nothing to do with the mob anymore?” I said.
“Mob? What would I know about any mob?”
I smiled. So did Manny. This had been fun but it was getting a little old. I could see we weren’t going to get anything else out of Tommy Pfister, probably because he had nothing else to tell.
I got up, reached into my wallet, pulled out one of my old business cards and tossed it on Pfister’s desk. I’d blacked out the old information and written in my phone number and email address. It was sloppy and I knew if Manny got a look at it he’d wince, but it would do the job.
“You find out anything, Tommy, you’ll let me know, right?”
“Yeah, sure,” he said, picking up the card and squinting at it.
“Charlie Floyd, huh?”
“That’s right.”
“Why’s this stuff blacked out?”
“That doesn’t concern you.”
He held the card up to the light.
“Says here something about Connecticut.”
“It doesn’t mean anything. That’s why I blacked it out.”
“Why would I call someone I don’t know who he is?”
“You do know who it is, Tommy. It’s me. Or would you rather deal with my partner? You know who he is, right?”
Manny, his face turned hard, just stared at Pfister. Even I was a little unsettled by the menacing look on his face.
Pfister hesitated a moment. “Nah, I’m okay,” he said as he opened a drawer and tossed in the card. “So, you’re a private cop working with a real cop?”
“Did I say that?”
“What’s your friend’s name?”
“I don’t think it’s necessary for you to know that, Tommy. Just so long as you don’t forget mine.”
We moved toward the door. Manny unlocked. I turned back to Pfister.
“Remember, you’re gonna let us know if you find out anything about Hoyt.” I pointed to his glass case filled with jewelry. “You’ve got some nice merchandise here. It would be a shame if someone got the cops to come up here and check it out. You know, like to see if it might not belong to you. Like that.”
“I tole you guys what you wanted,” he whined.
“I’m just saying, Tommy.”
Rather than waiting for the slowest elevator in New York, we took the stairs down.
“You know that we will never hear from Tommy Pfister,” said Manny.
“I’m not so sure about that. He was practically pissing in his pants. I’m not sure who he was more afraid of. Us or Hoyt? If it’s us, we might just hear from him.”
“You know, of course, that the first thing Tommy Pfister will do is contact Francis Hoyt to tell him that we are looking for him.”
“I do. In fact, I’m counting on it. I want Hoyt to know someone’s on his trail. And you know why.”
“Francis Hoyt is not the kind of man who will panic or go underground. Instead, he will most likely take it as a personal challenge that someone is looking for him.”
“Exactly. That’s the only way we’re going to catch him—by letting him know we’re after him. His ego makes him as good as he is but it can also work against him. Who knows, maybe he’ll come looking for us instead of the other way around.”
Manny patted me on my back. “You see, Charlie Floyd, I made a very wise decision enlisting you to help my find Francis Hoyt.”
“I hope so, Manny. I really do.”
Francis Hoyt
“You fat little fuck.”
“Francis, what’re you getting all bent out of shape about? I’m your friend, aren’t I? I mean I call you as soon as these two guys leave. I figure you’d want to know everything.”
“I want to know what the fuck you told them.”
“Nothing. I told them nothing. What the hell am I going to tell them? What the hell do I even know? I didn’t even know you were here for sure. I just called that old answering machine number you got somewhere, left a message then you call back. I swear, Francis. Nothing. I told them nothing. I don’t know nothin’. What could I possibly tell them?”
“Who the hell were they?”
The fat little worm dipped into his pocket and pulled out a scrunched-up card and handed it to me. It was filthy, like he’d used it to wipe his mouth after a meal.
“What the fuck you do to this card? It looks like shit. You know, everything you touch turns to shit, Tommy?”
He looked at me with these sad little beady brown eyes. He’s the reason I spent two years in the can. He had to open his big fat mouth to those mob guys. If he hadn’t I never would’ve had to take those two clowns along with me and I never would have been caught. I guess I was just as much to blame. I knew it would end in disaster, but I didn’t have much of a choice. Not if I ever wanted to work again. You don’t say no to the boys. But I thought, hey, it’s only one time, maybe nothing will go wrong.
I would have slapped Tommy upside his head, just to scare the shit out of him, but that wasn’t going to happen sitting in an uptown West Side diner, filled with fucking millennials and gen Xers, or whatever the hell they’re called. Besides, it wasn’t worth the effort. But the more I verbally knocked him around the better I’d feel and the better the chance I’d get the fucking truth out of the little weasel.
My veggie burger was sitting in front of me, untouched, while he was halfway through his cheeseburger, which oozed ketchup over the sides of the bun.
“And you’re fuckin’ sure they didn’t follow you?”
“Give me some credit. I ain’t no amateur. After I spoke to you I did just like you said. I waited a couple hours until I come up here, just like you said. I took the subway, just like you said. I got off at Columbus Circle and waited on the track for the next train. Just like you said. I kept my eyes wide open. Those guys weren’t within ten miles of me. I swear.”
“You better b
e right, Tommy.” I looked at the card he’d handed me. It was a name I didn’t recognize. Charles Floyd. There was stuff blacked out in heavy ink so I couldn’t quite read where he was from in the dim light of our booth. He was trying to hide something, that’s for sure. I had to ask myself, how professional could this guy be he couldn’t even afford new business cards?
“Who the hell is Charles Floyd?”
“I don’t know. I figure he’s just another cop.”
“Cops don’t give out cards with information scratched out. Cops want you to know they’re cops, unless they’re undercover. These guys weren’t undercover.”
“Yeah. Yeah. You’re right, Francis. He wasn’t a cop. I can smell cops a mile away. Maybe he’s a private dick.”
“Maybe,” I said, running through all the possibilities in my mind.
Tommy took another bite of his cheeseburger and a piece of onion fell on his plate. He grinned, picked it up and stuffed it back under the roll.
“You ain’t hungry?”
“I lost my appetite the minute I sat down across from you, you little fat fuck.”
“That ain’t very nice. I’m just trying to do a solid for you. You know, trying to make good on what happened to you, though I swear it wasn’t my fault. How was I gonna know they would contact you and ask you to work with some of their guys? You gotta understand. I work with them all’s the time. They’re my best customers. And those guys don’t fuck around. What was I gonna do they ask me to hook them up with you?”
“You could’ve kept your big, fat mouth shut in the first place.”
“I’m sorry, Francis. I really am. You know, they showed up and we just got to talking and I was just kind of proud of you, you know, how good you are and all, and I just got to bragging a little—”
“Would you just shut the fuck up? That’s in the past. I don’t deal in the past, Tommy. I deal in the future. Describe the two guys to me.”
“Sure. The dude that gave me the card was a big guy, maybe six-two, six-three. I couldn’t really tell ’cause I was sitting down the whole time. Maybe fifty. Maybe a little older. He looked like some kind of dime-store cowboy. Cowboy hat, jeans, boots. But he didn’t have one of those accents, you know, the western thing. So, I think he’s from like around here.”
Second Story Man Page 11