Except for the heavily curtained window, the whole room was shelves. Shelves filled with bowling and fishing and softball trophies, with plaster Cupids and plaster Virgin Marys, with pictures of dark-eyed little girls in white dresses looking sweet, or of dark-eyed little boys with wise-guy smiles on their faces.
The butler said, “Miss Clayton and Mr. Cobb, sir.”
There was a wheezing from the chair that sounded like a jeep failing to start. A wrinkled claw of a hand reached down to the floor and picked up a paper bag that had been sitting there. Its top had been neatly cuffed two inches to give it stability. The bag disappeared behind the chair. The wheezing became a rasp, then a loud wet explosion. A voice that was something between a whisper and a gag said, “Goddam.”
The bag went back down to the floor. The hand waved feebly, as though blown by a breeze. “Come here,” the voice said. “Sit where I can see you.”
Kenni gave me a what-did-you-get-me-into look, which was hardly fair. I shrugged. I walked forward and got my first look at Martin Gardeno.
The man the New York papers had liked to call The Big Boss or The Strongman was a shrimp, and an old, frail, crippled one at that. He leaned back in the recliner as if he were too weak to lift his head. His hair was yellow-white, and uncombed, so it looked as if it had been pasted randomly to his skull. He wore thick glasses. They magnified his eyes so much, all you could see through the glass was liquid brown. Forget lenses like Coke-bottle bottoms, these looked like entire bottles of Coke.
He wore a red plaid shirt, open to show a wrinkled neck, heavy gray corduroy pants, white socks, and slippers. He could have bought it all at the boys’ department at Sears. The pants, thick though they were, weren’t heavy enough to disguise the fact that he wore heavy braces on both legs. The legs never moved.
He smiled at us, showing big, even teeth a shade darker than the hair. The brown liquid sloshed around in the spectacles.
“Welcome,” he said. “Welcome, welcome.” He raised his right hand, put a twisted black cigar in his mouth, then stuck the hand out to me. It took me a second to realize he was offering to shake hands. The hand didn’t tremble with the delay, it just started to sink, as though his muscles had become bored with his orders.
I hadn’t come here to make an old man lose face. I caught the hand before it had sunk too far. Willpower gave him a fraction of a second of a respectable grip, and I let him go as soon as it was ended.
“Sit down,” he said again. He gestured toward a chair to the left of the bank of TV sets. Kenni was already seated in an identical one on the other side.
“I get so few visitors from the States,” he said. “An old man gets homesick.” His smile could have been anything from an effort to ingratiate himself, to the wicked amusement of a cat with a mouse.
Sitting where I was, I had lost his eyes completely. Now, instead of the brown liquid, I got a kaleidoscope of TV images. Here a commercial, here a soap opera, here a game show.
“I just sit here and watch the tube. The tubes. But I hate to miss anything. Cost me a fortune to have the satellite dish put up, but I had to do it. You know St. David’s Island gets only one channel? He shook his head; the TV reflections danced. “Then Haskins got all mopey that the dish ruined the look of the place, so I had to pay some English architect to put a ritzy-looking shack over the goddam thing—excuse me, Miss—that wouldn’t interfere with the signals. Cost me—”
He reached for the bag, wheezed, coughed and spat, said “goddam” and put the bag back down. This time he didn’t apologize to Kenni. He probably went through the routine so often he no longer noticed the curse was part of the routine.
“Cost me another fortune, but what are you gonna do?”
“Haskins is the butler?” Kenni asked.
He grinned again. “Yeah. Ain’t he something? He came with the house. The Englishman I bought this place from wouldn’t sell it to me unless I promised to let Haskins live here forever. I figured why not, he’s as old as I am, how long can he last? And besides, the Englishman told me Haskins had been living and working here since he was ten years old. So I fixed him up a nice apartment and everything, and told him he could retire, but he don’t trust nobody to look after the place but him. So he gets up every day and puts on the monkey suit and does what he’s always done.”
“He does nice work,” I said. “All by himself?”
“Nah. He’s got relatives and stuff come in, and my boys help. Runs them all like a sergeant, Haskins does. Everywhere but this room. This room is mine. Haskins hates it, keeps after me to let him ‘fix it up’ a little, but no way.”
Wheeze. Cough. Spit. Another puff on the cigar.
“So I buy this huge estate, and I live like I got a one-room apartment in New York, like when I first moved out of my old man’s house. Life, huh?”
He turned a little and his left eye came clear of the TV reflections. The circle of brown had become a thick line.
“Tell you why I let you in,” he said.
“I’d like to know that,” I admitted.
“Oh, I ain’t being a bad host, by the way. Any minute now, Haskins will be here—”
And there he was with a drink cart. If I’d asked for absinthe or slivovitz or anything, Haskins could have produced it. I disappointed the hell out of him by taking only a Perrier with assorted citrus fruits. Kenni got more into the spirit of things and asked for a St. David’s Island rum and Coke.
So now we were sociable. Gardeno picked up where he left off.
“Why I let you in. It was your card. Three things. First, that you worked for the Network in New York. Live in the city?”
We told him we did, so we had twenty minutes of New York politics. Gardeno missed talking New York City politics, was up on it better than I was—his satellite brought him hours of New York local news, and he never missed a minute of it.
“This corruption makes me sick,” he said at one point, punctuating the sentence by depositing an especially large gob into the paper bag.
“Don’t tell me you never bribed an official,” Kenni said, protective of the city as only an immigrant can be. As soon as she said it, she sat back and effaced herself, remembering no doubt who she was talking to.
There was nothing to worry about. Gardeno threw back his head and treated us to the sight of his scrawny neck. He laughed until he choked. He choked for a long time. I sat there watching him, thinking I do not wish to give this disgusting old man mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. On the other hand, I didn’t want to have to explain to the guy at the gate how Mr. Gardeno happened to choke to death while I was watching him.
But Gardeno saved himself, this time. He beat himself on the chest, cleared his throat with a sound like a chain saw starting up, and grinned at Kenni.
Gardeno wheezed a few more times, then said, “Yes, Miss, I did my share of that. In my illegal days. I don’t do any of that stuff no more, ask anybody. Ask the Minister of Justice of this whole island if Martin Gardeno is clean or what. But you know what makes for corruption? Do you?”
Kenni didn’t like the old man, and she was having a hard time hiding it. I hoped his vision was as bad as the glasses made it seem. Prodded, she said, “Tell me.”
“Too many god—goddarned laws, Miss. I’m not talking about the laws guys like me used to mess around with. I’m talking about the nuisance laws a legit businessman has to find his way around or else starve to death. You give some bureaucrat, some Civil Service grade who don’t have to worry about the bottom line, or if he does, it’s just how do we stick the taxpayer for it—you give a guy like that the power of life or death over an honest businessman, it don’t take no Amazing Kreskin to see what’s gonna happen. The honest businessmen are gonna disappear—either they get smart and pay bribes, or they get driven from business. The crooked bureaucrats—enough of them to make the whole city stink—get rich. And the city gets a notch closer to being taken over by those slick, collegewise bastids—excuse me, Miss—who run the outfit now.”<
br />
It was an incredibly clear and accurate analysis. I felt that way because I had made myself unpopular at countless New York City cocktail parties outlining the same thesis. Lots of civil servants go to cocktail parties.
Kenni, who (I had almost forgotten) worked for the city, and, come to think about it, had at least some power to affect the livelihood of every mystery writer alive, was getting huffy.
“I would think you’d approve of that.”
Gardeno was aghast. “The outfit taking over the city? It would be a catastrophe.”
“Well,” Kenni said. “The honest citizens would certainly feel that way—”
“Fu—the heck with the honest citizens, Miss. It would be a catastrophe for the outfit. Look at what’s happening now. You get too cozy with the power structure, you’re too easy to find. That wop Giuliani is having a field day.”
Gardeno leaned forward and spoke confidentially. “You know, since I been on this godforsaken sweatbox of an island, I’ve had a lot of time to think. And I come to realize, when the outfit controls too much, things go to hell. I mean, outfit guys got to live in the city, too. You may sell all the dope in the world, and be rich as anything, but some Puerto Rican crackhead isn’t going to check for credentials before he sticks a shiv in your daughter’s ribs so he can grab her purse to buy some more dope from you. It’s, what do you call it, it’s a paradox, but crime chokes itself if it takes over too much of a place. It takes honest citizens to make money. Crime can only steal it. Vegas would have died out long ago if honest people from all over didn’t come to lose their money. Not that everybody in Vegas is crooked, but they sure don’t make anything out there but their percentage. Percentage of what is what the straight world is all about.
“You take a place like Chicago in the twenties, early thirties. It got to the point there was no one left for the gangs to steal from but each other. That goes on too long, all you got is a jungle, with the tigers left having to eat each other.”
He picked up his bag and went through his whole routine twice. He threw his cigar butt in there after it. I was worried about fire, but when I heard the hiss, I knew it was wet enough in there to put the cigar out.
Gardeno leaned back in his chair. He put both hands on his chest, as if taking inventory of his heart and lungs.
“You know,” he said, “I done some rotten stuff in my active career. You want to know just what, you go back to New York and read that indictment. And maybe I ain’t done doing rotten stuff. That remains to be seen.”
And what, I wondered, did he mean by that?
Gardeno went on. “But there is one thing I never done. I never ever took nobody’s legitimate business away. I never went into the napkin racket, or the jukebox racket, or protection, or any of that crap. Even when I’m a snot-nose kid running liquor, I knew that was suicide. Let legitimate business be. There was plenty of money to make in illegitimate business, if you know what I mean. There’s a demand for something against the law, I fill it. Girls. Gambling. Juice. Whatever there was a market for.”
“Drugs,” I said.
Gardeno narrowed his eyes and stared hard at me for five seconds. Then he nodded slowly.
“Drugs, too,” he said. “Back in the States, that is, before I come here and went legit. I keep saying that because you might be wired. I got the best lawyers on this island, and a couple from the States and from London, and they tell me as long as I stay clean, I can’t be deported. St. David’s don’t care what I done before I came here to live.”
The lenses went all brown again. “But yeah, in the old days, I smuggled drugs. I don’t know if you’ll believe me or not, and I’m not even sure I care, but I’m sorry I done it. See, I made two miscalculations. I thought only the colored would take the stuff, and I thought colored people were animals, so it didn’t matter if they did take the stuff.”
Kenni’s voice was skeptical. “What made you change your mind?”
“Living here, where everybody’s colored. Except this one young cop—boy, would he like to boot my tail out of here and into a Federal pen in the States—he’s white.”
I silently asked Buxton’s forgiveness and let it pass.
“Like I was saying. Everyone’s colored here, but none of the stuff I thought they did happens. I mean, they all live like people, you know what I mean? So there’s gotta be other stuff going on in New York. Maybe here, if they’re miserable, and they blame the government, they got only more colored guys to blame. I don’t know what it is. But that’s what made me change my mind. That and—”
Gardeno went into his coughing act, but his heart wasn’t in it. He forgot to say “goddam” at the end, for one thing. It was as if he’d caught himself about to say too much, and was covering up.
It was easy enough to test. When he had his breath back, I asked him, “And what?”
At least he wasn’t coy about it. “Never mind,” he said. “Although I might tell you, at that. In a little while. You’re an honest man. I can tell. Trouble with the world is too few honest men.”
Since that came from an admitted lifelong criminal, I hardly knew what to say. I did know that while this afternoon was very educational, and would make a great magazine article if I were a magazine writer, I still had the irrational itch that had brought me here in the first place. Time to try a different tack.
“You said there were three reasons.”
Gardeno coughed and spit, then said, “Hah?”
“Three reasons you let us in. The first was you wanted to talk about New York.”
“Yeah. God, I get homesick. I guess prison is worse than exile, but sometimes I wonder.”
“What were the other two reasons?”
“Oh. No big deal. When Ray read me your card, like I said, he said you worked for the Network. I wanted to talk to you about TV, I watch it all the time, but the hell with that, now.
“The third thing was I recognized your name.”
Kenni looked at me. She was only slightly less surprised than I was myself.
“You recognized my name?”
Gardeno shrugged. “I think so. I suppose there could be more than one Matt Cobb who works for the Network. You the guy who put Herschel Goldfarb away?”
“Oh,” I said. “Was he a good friend of yours?”
Gardeno laughed, lost his breath, choked, turned purple, recovered. “And now I’m gonna take revenge?” He laughed some more. “Don’t do this to me, you’re going to kill me!” He sighed a few times. “No,” he said with the last sigh. “No, Goldfarb done some work for me—he’s a financial genius, you know. And we’ve had a lawyer in common from time to time. But no, he’s no great friend of mine. It’s just that you hear talk. Even here, you hear talk. And the way Goldfarb has it, you did what two generations of cops couldn’t do, and put him away. He says the only mistake he ever made was messing with you. So I sort of wanted to look you over. My eyes are bad, but I can see what he means.”
“For God’s sake!” Now I was getting this Superman crap from the Mafia. That could be extremely unhealthy. “Goldfarb kidnapped my girlfriend!” Gardeno looked at Kenni. “Not her,” I said. “My ex-girlfriend. He made me come see him. He decided to have us blown away, then he went off with his mother and left two goons to do it. What was I supposed to do?”
Gardeno shrugged again. “A lot of guys would have died in that situation.”
“I got lucky, that’s all. For God’s sake, he left his ledgers in the house! The D.A. didn’t have a whole lot of trouble with him after that.”
“Yeah, sure. Nothing special. You just took out two professional goons and recognized evidence when you saw it.”
I was tired of arguing. “Forget it, okay? It was think of something or die, and I happened to think of something. That’s all. Just let it go, all right?”
Gardeno raised a hand. There was still a memory of a smile on his thin lips. “All right, all right, we’ll forget it. Instead, you tell me why you wanted to see me.”
�
�I don’t really know,” I said honestly.
“Come on, come on. A young guy that has a beautiful girl don’t go spending time with an old man, practically a corpse, for no reason. Look, Cobb, I don’t have many afternoons left, but I spent one on you. You owe me.”
It was my turn to shrug. “I guess it’s because some incredibly nasty stuff has been going on on this trip. And you’re here, and you’ve got a reputation. I wondered if you have a few loose ends in your pockets.”
“I don’t have any loose ends, but I’ve had a lifetime of experience with nasty stuff. Tell me the story.”
“It’s pretty complicated,” I said.
“I’m old,” Gardeno said. “Not stupid. Talk.”
He was old, he was feeble. Practically a corpse, as he said himself. But all of a sudden, I was afraid of him. I’d just had a look at the real Martin Gardeno, the one who’d built and run an empire. He was not to be messed with.
I talked. “My involvement in the business starts with the disappearance—I found out today it was the murder—of a disk jockey who worked for the New York Network FM station. Joe Jenkins—real name Robert Joseph Janski—”
I didn’t get any farther because Gardeno was having a fit.
“Janski? Janski’s dead? He cheated me! That murdering son of a bitch bastard! He cheated me again! Goddam him!” He did not stop and ask Kenni to excuse him. He switched to Italian, and cursed the soul of Robert Joseph Janski until he passed out.
20
“A fit of what?”
“Pique. It means you were sore.”
“Oh. Yeah, I was pique. I was pique as hell.”
—Burl Ives and Hal Buckley, “O.K. Crackerby!” (ABC)
MARTIN GARDENO TOSSED HIS HEAD against the bleached linen on the hospital bed as if looking for a place to spit. This was another part of the estate he’d spent a fortune on—a fully equipped hospital room, complete with a semiprivate doctor, who had his own house (and practice) elsewhere on the estate. Gardeno let him stay there, rent-free, on the understanding that he never be more than five minutes away from his American patient.
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