by Howard Fast
Fran pulled away and sat up. “Harry,” she cried, “Harry, think back to that dinner with Asher Alan. Do you remember what he said about the Uzi guns?”
“You said something about Santa Marina.”
“Do you remember what I said, Harry?”
“Yes, you mentioned to him that you weren’t Jewish—which I think he might have figured out for himself, and then you said something about loving Israel and being heartsick. I can’t remember what you were heartsick about.”
“But I do,” she said excitedly. “I said I was sick about the news that Israel had sold Uzi guns to the government of Santa Marina, and then he said that if he becomes prime minister, Israel will never again sell arms to a tyrant or a dictatorship. There’s your link to Santa Marina—but to kill a man like Asher Alan over that—”
“They don’t measure the crime against the punishment. They only kill.”
“But at least it’s beginning to come together, isn’t it, Harry? I mean, perhaps it’s no great thing knowing who is going to kill you, but it’s better than not knowing who is going to kill you and being killed anyway. Does that make any sense?”
“No.”
“But Santa Marina?”
“That only connects, it doesn’t explain. If ten people are murdered whose name is Smith, all of them named Smith, well, it still doesn’t give a motive for the murder.”
“The Uzi guns?”
“It’s not enough. Maybe tomorrow we’ll put some more of it together.”
“Harry!”
“What do you have?”
“Hertzberg, the congressman. Do you remember when he made that wonderful speech in Congress calling upon the United States to turn its back on the gang of murderous dictators we had made our allies? Well, that speech defeated the special Central American military appropriation bill.”
“Yes.”
“And a week later, he was killed, right here in New York—wasn’t it on West Forty-fifth?”
“That’s right. A piece of falling masonry. Two other people were killed by masonry from the same building, but this cookie we’re after doesn’t mind a few extra deaths to make a point.”
She was alive again. The enemy had been identified—somewhat. The battle was joined. She rolled over and leapt off the bed. “Harry, I am beginning to feel human for the first time today. I shall powder my freckles and put on lipstick.” She opened her purse and rummaged in it, and then her smile faded, her face fell, and she whispered, “Oh, Mother of God.”
“What is it?”
Her voice trembling, she said, “Harry, do you remember my little red telephone-and-address book, the one I always keep in my purse?”
“Yes?”
“It isn’t here.”
“Where is it?”
“I took it out the other day to look for a number and I left it next to the telephone. Did you notice it? Did you put it in your briefcase?”
I shook my head.
Her eyes filled with tears. “Sean’s number was in it.”
Chapter 8
AS I WAS PUTTING on my coat, Fran begged me, “Don’t go back there, Harry. Please. They’ll be there and they’ll kill you.”
“Maybe not.”
“I feel it.”
“If they want to kill me, they’ll find me and kill me. Sooner or later. I can’t hide here. I have to go to the precinct tomorrow.” As I put on my coat, I felt the weight in my pocket. It was the heavy-duty .22 pistol. I left it there.
“Then I’m going with you.”
“You’re not.”
“If you go, I go.”
“You’d be no help,” I said coldly. “You’d be a damn nuisance.”
“Now you’re blaming me.”
“No, I’m not blaming you.”
“My God, Harry, don’t you know how much I love you?”
“I know how much I love you,” I said flatly, “and you know how much I love you.”
I opened the door, and with one arm in the sleeve of her coat, she began to follow me. “I’m going there,” she said. “You know that if I make up my mind to do something, I do it. You know you can’t talk me out of it. You tried that before.”
I did know. “All right,” I agreed. “Come with me. But from here on, what I say goes.”
“Right.”
We took a cab uptown and paid it off two blocks from our apartment. We walked to our building and saw no one we knew. The elevator is self-service. We took it up to the fifth floor and went down a flight of stairs. I told myself that in all probability they were not in the apartment yet, but a few precautions wouldn’t hurt. When we got to the door of our apartment, I motioned for Fran to stand to one side of the door frame. I thought that I heard a sound from inside, but I couldn’t be sure. I fingered the .22 automatic in my coat pocket, and then I rejected it and drew my service revolver. If I had to shoot anyone, I didn’t want forensic recording a .22 long bullet; let that remain pristine pure for the time being. Before I put the key in the lock, I glanced at Fran, and she forced herself to grin back at me. At best, it was a grin; no one could have called it a smile. Then I put the key in, very slowly, turned it carefully, turned the knob quickly, and then flung the door open and catapulted myself through the little foyer into the living room.
He was standing at our one valid antique, an old tilt-top desk, going through the cubbyholes. He wore a raincoat and a hat, and when he heard me, he spun around and I yelled, “Don’t! Don’t even think about it! Put up your hands, you miserable bastard!” As his hands went up, I snarled at him, “I live here, you lousy creep, and I’m a cop! So it would be a just shooting—square between your motherfuckin’ eyes.”
“Are you crazy?” he cried. “So I’m breaking and entering! I’m not even armed!”
Still, I felt better, letting out my fear and anger at this skinny little guy in the raincoat. Out of the corner of my eyes, I saw Fran dash to the telephone. The little red datebook was sitting there, next to the telephone. He hadn’t gotten to it yet. Fran grabbed it and thrust it into her purse.
“Down on your face,” I said to him. “Get down on the floor on your face.”
“Come on—”
“I’m itching for you to do something that would give me an excuse. So get down on the floor.”
He sprawled on the floor, shouting at me, “You’re crazy! Lady, you been watching this. You’re a witness to this lunatic. I’m unarmed. What have you got on me—a lousy criminal trespass. That’s not even a crime. It’s a misdemeanor, and you stand there and curse me out like some kind of nut.”
“I got you on a burglary, and that’s no misdemeanor. Now shut your mouth and empty your pockets.”
“What kind of burglary?” he screeched, twisting from side to side as he emptied his pockets on the floor. “What did I take? Nothing! And you ain’t going to plant nothing on me. I’m a Wabash Protection operative. I got my private detective plastic. Go ahead and look at it. You got me on a misdemeanor, and that’s all you got.” He was such a skinny little wretch; he wore gold-rimmed old-fashioned glasses, and they had slipped off his nose and he was trying his best to keep his head up. He had thin blond hair, and his little blue eyes were watery with frustration and rage. He had about forty-five dollars on him in bills and change, car keys, house keys, his wallet, and a cute little thing that looked like a Boy Scout knife but contained seven little lockpicks instead of blades.
“What are you? Their in-house lock picker?”
“I don’t have to say anything to you, and Wabash is one of the biggest outfits in the business, just in case you don’t know.”
“Good.” I opened his wallet and let a string of plastics unfold, the accordion of today’s beautiful society and beautiful people. The license was there, Piper Heston, private investigator. Another card informed the world that he was employed by Wabash Protection. I told him to stand up, and I cuffed him. I arrested him formally and read him his rights. Then I asked him what he was looking for.
“I
don’t have to answer you or talk to you.”
I looked at Fran, who had not said a word since we came into the room, but I figured she had been talking to herself and asking, “Who is this madman I’m married to?” But afterward, she told me she hadn’t been thinking that at all, only asking herself whether she would consider me a thug if I shot little Piper. They say that hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, but with the three people she loved most threatened with death, Fran’s fury topped that.
I handed Fran my gun and told her, “If that little louse moves, shoot him.” Her mouth fell open as she took the gun from me; her fury did not reach that far. I was not nervous because the safety was on and she didn’t know how to flick it off.
But Piper yelled, “Where am I moving? I’m standing right here. I’m not even moving.” He nodded violently at Fran. “Take that gun away from her,” he pleaded.
Both Fran and I had developed something neither of us had ever seen in each other, two people so ridden with anger and fear for our children that we were partly out of control, thinking things we had never thought before, saying things we had never said before. Piper was quite right. We were both a bit crazy.
“That gun can go off,” Piper whined. “I don’t know nothing about you, mister. Maybe you’re this Lieutenant Golding, maybe you ain’t—but I got nothing against you. They sent me out to shake down this place. It’s my job. I’m not a crook. This is my job. You don’t have to shoot me.”
I called the station house. Toomey was still there. I told him how I had walked into my apartment and found Piper there. I told Toomey that my car was parked in front of the precinct. He had the key. Most days, we shared the car. I wanted him and I wanted a patrol car too.
“You got him disarmed and cuffed?” Toomey asked.
“All done. I read him his rights.”
“Then we don’t need no prowl car, Lieutenant. I’ll pick you up and we’ll take him in.”
“No, I want the cops to take him in and book him. Don’t argue with me, Toomey. And I want him booked for burglary as well as criminal trespass.”
“I didn’t take nothing!” Piper howled. “You can’t book me for burglary.”
“I hear him,” Toomey said. “He sounds like a squeaky little bastard.”
“Name is Piper Heston,” I said. “He’s a private operator who works for Wabash Protection,” just for the bugs planted around the room, just in case whoever was on the other end of those bugs should decide to descend on us and rescue Piper from the hands of the law. But now that I had put his name and source on record, Wabash would wash their hands of him. They were licensed too. Piper Heston—yes, he worked for us but he had no authority to enter Lieutenant Golding’s apartment. Of course it’s a criminal trespass, and rest assured that any employee of ours who engages in criminal trespass or any other illegalities is immediately separated from the company. “But you come along, Toomey. We’ll go back with you to the house.”
When I put down the telephone, Heston motioned with his head, as if to indicate that he would like to move without being shot by Fran. “She won’t shoot you,” I said, my murderous anger gone. “The safety is on the gun.”
“Of all the damn things!” Fran exclaimed. “You would! Harry, you are one large male chauvinist pig!”
Piper shuffled over to me, put his lips close to my ear, and whispered, “Paper.”
I thought about it for a moment, warned Fran with a finger across my lips, and then uncuffed Piper and gave him a pad and pencil. The place is bugged, he wrote.
I wrote: Who?
He wrote: Don’t know. Now Wabash dumps me. No job. I got a wife and two kids. Maybe we deal.
I wrote: Go on.
He wrote: No burglary. Just criminal trespass.
I wrote: What am I buying, Piper? They can only give you a year for criminal trespass, and you can even plea bargain out of it. With burglary, you can sit up in Attica for fifteen years.
He wrote: Not likely. Two years maybe. Give me a break. I got something you need.
I wrote: Okay. You got it.
He wrote: This is what I know. It’s all I know. They bugged this place and they got a wire on your phone. Altogether, they got eleven men on you. That is big.
I wrote: Why?
He wrote: I don’t know.
Fran was standing behind us now, reading each piece of dialogue as it was written.
All I got to do, I wrote, is to tell these bugs what we wrote. Then they don’t fire you. They kill you.
I know, he wrote.
I wrote: Why eleven men on me?
He wrote: Don’t know. Please.
Fran pulled the pad and pencil away and scribbled: He’s telling the truth. How can you?
I took the pad back and wrote: Okay. Criminal trespass.
The cops came first, and I asked them, “What did Toomey tell you?”
“Criminal trespass and burglary.”
“He didn’t take anything, so drop the burglary.”
Toomey arrived as they were taking Piper away.
Fran said to me, “I almost like you again. It’ll take a while more.”
Toomey said, “What in hell goes on here?”
I put my finger across my lips and pulled him down, so that he could see the bug under the top frame of the fireplace. I pointed to the door.
Out in the hall, Toomey said to me, “Don’t tell me nothing. I’m just a cop. What business do I have asking what’s going on?”
“I don’t know what’s going on.”
The presence of Fran prevented Toomey from using more expressive language. Like most cops, he did not use bad language in the company of women, unless they were hookers.
“That sounds a little funny, Lieutenant.”
“Sure, the whole world is funny, Toomey. We came home and found a private dick from Wabash Protection going through our apartment. I pushed him a little, and he tells me Wabash has eleven operatives on me. If they had that many on Jack Kennedy, he wouldn’t have been murdered. Now the two cops who took Heston downstairs, I told them not to go outside quick, but to stay behind the doors for a while and look around the street very carefully—I wish it wasn’t dark—”
“What would they be looking for?” Toomey interrupted with just a touch of sarcasm.
“Maybe two hoodlums in a car with a couple of shotguns—or maybe not.”
“Let’s go downstairs and see.” He pressed the elevator button.
“We’ll take the stairs,” I said. “I want to see what’s coming.”
As we went down the stairs, Toomey kept shaking his head. I told him to knock it off. “No comments, Toomey,” I said, “not with your head and not with your mouth. If I’m getting the reputation around the house for being a little strange, that’s one thing and I can’t do much about it. But when you’re with me, just cover up on any thoughts about me being a nut.”
“Never entered my mind, Lieutenant.”
Downstairs, the two cops were still standing in the front hall, with Heston, wearing cuffs, between them. Ours was not one of the new post—World War II East Side high rises; it had been built in 1928, one of those rather small and undistinguished apartment houses in the Seventies and the Eighties, between Park Avenue and Lexington Avenue and between Lexington Avenue and Third Avenue. Nevertheless, it aspired to some upper-middle-class East Side glitz with a nicely decorated, large foyer. Two couples were standing in the foyer, intrigued by the sight of cops with a handcuffed prisoner. But I didn’t like that one bit. They were the young upwardly mobile types, mid-thirties, and I said to them, “You know, nothing’s going to happen that’s interesting. So better move along. It makes it easier for us to do our job.”
They went to the elevator. We don’t have a doorman, just a buzz system and an automatic elevator. Once they were in the elevator, one of the cops said, “Lieutenant, there’s a big, four-door Chrysler across the street, you can see it from here. Four men in it. I don’t like that. Four men sitting in a car parked makes me n
ervous. Window’s up now, but before when the window was down, I thought I recognized the face. Benny here”—indicating his partner—“thought so too. Only because he looks like an ape. Crazy Percy Lax, from Chicago. We got his face over at the house, and the feds want him and the Chicago cops want him and God knows who else.”
I knew about Percy Lax. He was a very skillful professional, one of the best, not really connected with the mob for whom he worked intermittently, but very much an independent who hired out on contract not only in places like L.A. and Houston and Cleveland and Philadelphia but also on occasion in Europe, which brought much pleading for information from Interpol. Yet it seemed very unlikely that he could be sitting in a car across the street.
“It’s me,” Piper Heston whimpered. “Your whole goddamn apartment was bugged. While we were up there yakking, they put him there. He cruises when they think there might be a job.”
“Who put him there?”
“Someone, I don’t know.”
“Don’t give us that kind of shit!” Toomey snapped, forgetting that Fran was with us.
“Piper,” I said, “we can open these doors and kick you out there onto the street. I don’t like to be followed. I don’t like to have my phone tapped and my home bugged. I’m nervous and angry and edgy, so it would not break my heart to throw you out into the street and see whether that is truly Crazy Percy Lax sitting there in that Chrysler. His M.O. is one of those rapid-fire guns, cut you in half before you knew anything hit you—”
“For Christ’s sake, what are you doing to me? I’m a lousy little technician with a P.I. buzzer. I don’t know a fuckin’ thing, and you want to kill me. I’m a piece of shit but I ain’t as low as you lousy cops.”
“Piper, Piper,” I said softly, “we don’t want to kill you. I dropped the burglary charge. You probably won’t even go to jail on the misdemeanor rap—if you cooperate. These gentlemen, smart, streetwise cops, tell me that they think a notorious international hit man is sitting in the big car across the street, with three other men who probably carry shotguns. Well, I don’t want to shove you out there and have you chopped to pieces. That’s a horrible, disgusting fate. I want you to live and tell me who Crazy Percy is working for.”