The Case

by Leopold Borstinski

  On this occasion, there were two thick set dudes, neither with a noticeable neck, who encouraged me to take a trip with them. A short time later, their Cadillac took us to the self-same alley I’d had the luck to visit a day or two before.

  Back in the same room, my host sat in the same chair and in the same cross-legged position.

  “Well, Mr. Adkins. Do you have our money?”

  “I hope you believe me, because I truly say this with all due respect. I have spoken with the third party and he is choosing not to take up your kind and generous offer.

  “In this, I am only the messenger and I hope you remember this if there are any consequences for Mr. Levin’s decision.”

  “Do not fret Mr. Adkins. We are very aware of your circumstances. If Levin doesn’t want our help then he must deal with what happens to his men, not you.”

  I relaxed slightly because I really didn’t want to get a beating, just because Bernie was too stubborn to submit to an old-fashioned piece of extortion.

  “But as a self-confessed messenger, you must pass on my words and know I mean every one of them.” I nodded.

  “If Bernie Levin doesn’t call off the strike by Monday then Bernie Levin’s family will be burying him on Tuesday. Understood.”

  I nodded again, this time with greater urgency. I was dropped back at my apartment. At least the hoods operate an efficient shuttle service too.

  Calling Bernie on the phone, I figured I’d lay it out straight to him. The money was off the table and his life very much was on the same piece of furniture.

  “Jake, they are bluffing. No matter how powerful they may be, no gangland mobster will off a union official. These things just don’t happen.”

  “I gotta tell you, Bernie. They are not bluffing. They really will do it. I don’t know why this strike is so important to them, but it is now. Maybe the fact you refused to pay them off, just made them pissed. Perhaps someone else is paying them more. I don’t know.

  “But you’ve got to decide how you are going to end this strike before Monday because there’ll be Kaddish said shortly after if you don’t.”

  “Nah. Bluff I say,” and Bernie put the phone down on me.

  There was nothing else I could do at that point. The only decision made was by me: I’d stay with Bernie on Monday to try to help him survive the day, but the man was not for turning.

  MONDAY ARRIVED AS predicted the day before. I was awake before six, having spent the previous night thinking about Bernie and the trouble he was in and the trouble he was just not recognizing himself to be in.

  I scooted over to his house so I could be with him from the start of the day. At the very least, I could watch out for him. I was good at judging early signs of threats as my natural reaction was always to head the other way.

  Today I would stand firm with Bernie - at least for a while. I hadn’t decided what I would do when the heat in the kitchen rose. But I knew I’d figure it out later, one way or another.

  After he’d had breakfast with Mrs. Levin, I drove Bernie round to the union building so he could pick up some papers and then we went over to the Harry’s Deli warehouse. Today Bernie had decided to stand by his men. This also meant he would be surrounded by witnesses should anything go down, I thought. Less noble. A more practical side of Bernie was shining forth this morning.

  By ten there was a sizeable gathering outside the gates and no-one had been let in. Then a van appeared across the road, near where I stood on Saturday and a bunch of hooded thugs stepped out. This time, their baseball bats had nails sticking out of them and some had long, clanking chains. They had upgraded from wooden to metal objects and it wasn’t going to be pretty.

  “There’s still a chance to stop this bloodshed, Bernie.”

  “No there isn’t. These men are striking for better pay and conditions. They deserve it and no hired hands can stop the purity of their actions.”

  “No but they can stop the solidity of their bodies, Bernie. You gotta stop this now. If this is what the mob has in mind for your men, you can bet your bottom dollar, they’ll plug you full of lead. They’ll keep their promise and kill you dead.”

  JUST AS I said those words, the hooded dudes started their attack, running forwards with weapons raised, flailing their bats and chains around, knowing they didn’t need to get too close and could still do some serious damage. In fact, they were doing some serious damage to the strikers, who were falling left, right and centre.

  That said, at one point, three drivers had somehow surrounded one of the hoodies and had grabbed the end of his bat. Pulling him to the ground, they kicked him and pounded at him and generally made a mess of him all over.

  Our attention was diverted away for a minute, I happened to spot a flash, a glint of light from the top of the opposite building. I saw a flash and knew exactly what was happening and pulled Bernie to the ground by grabbing his sleeve and throwing myself to the floor, forcing him to follow me down.

  A shot sounded out and caught Bernie in the left arm. If I hadn’t shifted his position, it would’ve been his heart, so the doctors said later.

  I lay there, cowering next to Bernie for a minute or two, happy that all the men around us were still standing and providing the perfect cover. I pulled out my handgun and aimlessly pointed it toward the sniper, but there was nothing to see and nothing to do. It just made me feel better.

  Later that day, when I was allowed into Bernie’s room in the hospital, he looked in a much better way than I thought. Given the man had survived an assassination attempt, I’d have expected him to be in good spirits, but I sensed there was something more.

  “The strike’s over, Jake.”

  “Is it? How?”

  “Pilkerton has let the drivers have longer paid breaks.”

  “Is that it? Is that all you got? What about the amount he was paying you guys?”

  “You can’t have everything, Jake.”

  “Who got to you, Bernie? This morning you were prepared to die for your men and now you’ve sold them down the river for a few minutes extra shut eye. What gives?”

  Bernie smiled at me and shook his head.

  “You know, Jake, sometimes it’s not about the money.”

  “No?”

  “No, sometimes it’s about other things.”

  “What about your friends with the muscle? They weren’t here today either and you told me that Monday was their starting day.”

  “Yeah, well, our hired hands didn’t work out so well. Some other... friends... appeared and convinced me to change strategy. For the good of my health.”

  “Did the Don get to you?”

  Bernie smiled and nodded and let his head fall back on the pillow. He was a tired man.

  But not tired enough to stop himself from taking a union job in Washington later that year. I’m sure the two events weren’t connected.

  You still get the best bagels in Chicago at Harry’s Deli; you should try them if you’re ever in town.

  PART NINE

  BOSTON 1977

  22

  I THOUGHT I’D come to the end of my sleuthing only a few years ago. There was yet another dame and yet another room with another camera. This time I’d bought myself a tripod and a telephoto lens.

  On this occasion, Lenny Almaguer had been a New York walk-in with the usual yada yada and I’d followed his wife on a girl’s weekend over to Boston. Mrs. Christina Almaguer was in the apartment block opposite me, but there were no girls or women with her. Just one man. Lenny should be thankful for that one small mercy, I suppose.

  Anyway, the job sounded simple. I wait for something worth photographing for Lenny and then I return to New York and get my fee. To be honest, even though I knew this was going to be a dull job, it drove me over the edge with boredom, anyway. So afterwards I stopped being in the game. Kept my licensed gun, just in case, but hung up my sleuthing hat for good. More or less.

  So this was the set-up. I’d figured out which room they were in by watching whi
ch floor they’d got off in the elevator and then sweet-talking the concierge for the room number with a ten spot. The dive was swanky enough for a concierge but it was Boston, not New York. I’d have needed a twenty in New York.

  Then off I trotted to the hotel opposite and took a room overlooking the apartment block. In my case, I’d brought a camera and a tripod, like I said. I didn’t mention the binoculars, but that was what I was using to stare into their room and wait for the money shot.

  Of course, that was the easy bit. The kitchen blinds were open, and the living room curtains were open, but the lovebirds were in the bedroom and those curtains were stubbornly shut. So I had to wait to earn my fee.

  I rotated the easy chair that every decent hotel comes supplied with and dragged the footstool so I could put my feet up and watch in comfort. This was completed by taking a side table next to my armchair to place a drink from the minibar. I closed my own curtains, so that there was only a gap left, out of which I could peer into the darkness and catch me two Hispanic humpers.

  Glancing down at my watch, I saw that it was past eleven. I stood up and found a light jazz FM station to listen to - otherwise the silence would do me in.

  By eleven thirty, I was bored. Plain bored and all I could do, to stop myself falling into a pit of tedious despair, was to check out other windows with more interesting things to see.

  ALL THE APARTMENTS were laid out exactly the same: a small hallway, living room, separate kitchen, a bathroom and a bedroom. Apart from the bathroom, each room had floor to ceiling windows, so I had total visibility inside. The only differences between the apartments was the paint or wallpaper on the walls, the carpets and the furniture. Other than that, all the rabbit hutches were identical.

  Above the trysting apartment was a black and white one. The walls were white, the easy chairs in the living room were black and they had gray photos on the walls in black frames. All the lights were on but the inhabitants were in the bedroom.

  There was a man and a woman, sat up in bed, reading. She had a magazine and he had a book. Nothing strange about that, but I could sense they were both naked. I mean, I could see that she was naked, at least her top half, for the simple reason her magazine was resting on her lap and I could see her tits resting under her arms. And the man’s chest was visible too.

  That then begged the question: what the hell were they up to? They couldn’t be finished for the night because all the lights were on. Trouble is, I’ve never heard of people going to bed to read late in the evening only to hop out and do something else or then get the place ready for sleeping. Made no sense to me.

  Perhaps they were night owls and instead of witnessing the end of their day, I was seeing their beginning. They’d read a bit, get up and dressed, put on their party clothes and go out to some club in downtown Boston where the night people met.

  Their nocturnal meanderings around the city would culminate in some debauched sadomasochistic orgy around six or seven and they would return, replete, for a few hours before they hit the hay in the mid-afternoon, in readiness for the next day’s fun.

  Weekdays, he was a financial adviser by trade, who made his own investments on the side, otherwise how else could they afford that apartment? She would spend her days in the local markets, finding interesting object d’art and other bric-à-brac. Then she’d come home and cook something up a storm. If it was steak, it would be red raw.

  Wait. I was wrong. Next, the man rolled over, pecked the woman on the cheek, got out of bed to close the bedroom door, leaving the other lights on, and returned to bed. By this time, she’d put her magazine down and thrown the covers off herself to reveal her total nakedness beneath. He got back into bed, switched the bedside light off and, in the murky, inky gray darkness, I could just about make out the movement of their bodies as they fucked. People behave in the strangest ways.

  I left them to it because I couldn’t honestly tell anything anymore and there’s nothing more annoying than not quite being able to see people making out.

  So I shifted my binoculars one apartment to the right and found a guy standing in front of the mirror in his living room. Full-length and attached to the wall opposite the window. He had his back to me but, because of the angle, I caught everything going on with him through his reflection in the mirror.

  Now, that wasn’t what drew my attention to him, because a man looking at himself in a mirror is not what I’d call interesting. Oh no, this guy wore a one-piece Elvis Presley outfit, straight out of a Vegas show. His legs wobbled like he had Elvis’s thighs and he held a hairbrush.

  Again, people hold hairbrushes. There’s nothing odd about that. But if you are holding it so the bristles are pointing downwards and the handle is up in the air and your lips are moving, the only conclusion must be that the dude was treating it like a microphone. He sang along to his very own King show at the International. Only it was inside his head in an apartment in Boston.

  His pelvic thrusts took a turn for the worse. Well, they got more aggressive anyway. Who knows what song this was associated with - I guessed not Love Me Tender. So the gyrations became more intense and the guy’s arms were wobbling around, presumably to help him keep his balance given what the flailing of the rest of his body.

  Weird but under control. Until it moved to weird but not under control. Abruptly, the dude vanished from view. I mean, one minute he was there and the next minute, he lost his balance and fell on the floor, what with all his contortions ‘n’ all. As there was a sofa between him and me, when he fell, he plain vanished from sight.

  I was almost worried and thought about calling the cops, but then I’d have some mighty fine explaining to do all of my own. So I sat in my easy chair and waited to see if he would get up. A minute later, I spotted a hand hanging onto the back of the chair so I knew he must be conscious.

  EVENTUALLY, HE CRAWLED on all fours round the chair and leaned on its seat to haul himself up and into it. He sat there for five, ten minutes, clearly deep breathing and also in agony, because after that time, he somehow got himself upright and trundled to the bathroom and came back with something in his hand. Shuffling to the kitchen, he poured himself a glass of water and popped the aspirin down his neck.

  Still chortling at his misfortune, I decided to give up on him because there’s only so much stupidity I can stomach.

  The binoculars headed downwards, to the right of Christina Almaguer, and on to an apartment, painted in a variety of bright colors. One wall red in the living room, another green, blue in the kitchen and so on. I wouldn’t have chosen it myself, but it wasn’t my apartment.

  I noticed the bedroom was filled with wooden artifacts: carved heads, elephants, that sort of thing. All the lights were on, but I had real problems spotting any occupants.

  A girl appeared from the bathroom. She was wrapped in a yellow towel, tied just under her armpits. In her early twenties at the most. She walked towards a low table in the living room and to a basket on it. She picked up the woven basket using the handles on both sides and took it into the bathroom.

  The door closed behind her and she vanished but the door swung back on itself to reveal the space inside. Beth - I decided - pulled out a string from one side of the bathroom to another to hang up her washing. Now, I will admit I almost moved onto the next apartment until I realized quite what she was hanging up.

  First there were a string of panties. Red plain, white and blue stripe, pink spots on blue. The red one looked particularly skimpy and I imagined what she might look like wearing them.

  She moved onto her bras. The colors of each bra matched the panties, one-for-one. After each was hung up, I paired them up in my head and I placed the image of Beth wearing top and bottom, walking in front of me and sitting down next to me.

  Finally, she hung up her pantyhose. And then Beth had the most wonderful private moment. She took off the towel, which was covering her and hung it up somewhere in the bathroom, a radiator or just a hook behind the door. I couldn’t say because I
couldn’t see.

  So there she was, having turned around to leave the bathroom, standing there with her tits and her bush for me to see. She stretched her arms up as high as they would go and then bent down to touch her toes with straight legs, her long hair trailing onto the floor. Straightened up, she placed a hand on each of her tits and had a good feel. Casually, she let one hand drop down to her crotch and she fingered herself briefly. Then she flipped a switch outside the bathroom to take its light out, still naked, giving me a great sight of side boob and bush hair. And what a cute ass. Then she padded slowly into her bedroom, switched the light on and I could clearly see the roundness of her breasts and the nipples sticking out. Was she cold?

  She hopped into bed and I imagined her and all the contours of her body beneath the sheets. I spent a minute or two doing just that and noticed that I’d stopped looking through the binoculars and had begun daydreaming over the thoughts of her nubile, young body.

  I SHOOK MY head twice and shifted the binoculars down and onto another apartment. Different decor and different circumstances. This time it was a couple but not in the same room as each other. A woman stood by the sink in the kitchen and a man faced out of the head-to-toe window in the living room.

  He had his hands in his pants pockets, legs apart, standing, staring. In contrast, she was busy, scrubbing, frothing, rinsing, drying. Women’s lib hadn’t reach their relationship just then.

  And so she carried on, plate after plate, pots, knives, forks. All cleaned by her fair hands. When it was all over, she switched off the faucets and picked up a towel and began the task of drying each item, which she’d left on the draining board, and putting on the kitchen table. Once all the crockery and cutlery was dried, she took each item and put them away in the cupboards and drawers.

  She dropped down on one of the kitchen chairs and slumped her head into her hands. All the while, the man stood there in the living room, facing out into the night’s darkness. I might not have seen her face, but I got the sense she was crying: her shoulders were shaking up and down and, thirty seconds into this behavior, she took a tissue to blew her nose and replaced her head back into her hands.