Marie still didn’t care for Paddy, but she was glad to have been included in the conversation. An ordinary matron didn’t usually get many details on an arrest, although if narcotics were involved, brassieres would be lifted, pantie girdles unpeeled. Marie was unwilling to signal any alliance with him, just yet. “So, what did you get on her? Why is she locked up?”
“Listen, honey,” said Paddy, flushing again, so that the scratches were even less visible. “If she wasn’t a broad, she wouldn’t be locked up, she’d be in the emergency room. I’m not going to tell you that this is the best collar I’ve made. But my rule is, nobody ever lays a hand on a cop and walks away free and clear.”
Marie didn’t disagree with what he said. But all of them knew that you didn’t lock up a female for being hysterical, even if she scratched you. If a male did the same, he’d be half-dead by the time he was back in the station house. That was what a cop had to do, as a man, before submitting the matter to the abstract majesties of the law. Marie’s indifference stung more than Charlie’s fingernails. When she didn’t respond, Paddy began to shout, “Nobody raises a hand to me, or any cop on this job!”
As he stormed out toward the stairs, he halted suddenly and turned to Charlie. Marie and Paulie both tensed, ready to effect another separation.
“So you’re on the rag, are you? Is that your excuse? I think there oughta be a law, broads gotta wear a red hat outside, if they are. The city ain’t safe, with you walking around!”
And then he turned to Marie, with no less spleen. “How about you? Where’s your red hat today? Because, sure as shit, that blue one don’t suit you!”
Marie and Paulie both rushed toward him, but Paulie beat her to him, and he hustled his partner up the stairs. “Come on, Paddy, let’s not—”
“Neither of these broads—”
“Come on, Paddy—”
And they were gone. Marie was speechless. How could that cafone say those things? He should be suspended, at a minimum. Marie turned to take in the reaction of the sergeant. Where was he? After a few seconds, his head rose from behind the desk. Marie must have squeezed the dog, because it kicked and whined. Sorry, baby. When she picked up the purse from the desk, the sergeant didn’t meet her eyes. As she led Charlie to the ladies’ room, they exchanged amazed, indignant glances. Marie reminded herself that she shouldn’t be too familiar, but she wanted to buy Charlie lunch for scratching Paddy in the face. She set the dog down on the floor. The pup chirped and gamboled, squatted and pissed. Marie felt her anger fade. “So adorable!”
Again, she steeled herself against letting her guard down. Charlie had shown she could take advantage of the moment. What Marie knew about her wasn’t flattering. The outburst about her period—Galoshes? What woman would say that? She directed Charlie to the far side of the room, such as it was, as she went through the purse.
“Well, Charlie, let’s take it easy on each other.”
Compact, comb, tissues, lipstick. No hypodermic needles or razor blades. A ten-dollar bill, four singles, small change. House keys. A little bottle with a white stopper, L’Interdit. Wasn’t that what Audrey Hepburn wore? It was time for Marie to leave the perfume counter behind. “I have to tell you, it wasn’t such a nice trick, letting me put my hand in your pocket.”
“You’re right. I’m sorry.”
The act of contrition wasn’t false, Marie felt. She snapped the purse shut and opened her own, to take out the handcuff key. As she fished for it, she was reminded of Charlie’s earlier request. “Is it really your monthly? I have Midol, and a Kotex.”
“Please! Well, at least I’m not pregnant. That’s the one upside, I guess.”
This wasn’t a conversation between friends, Marie reminded herself. “Huh. Let me give you a quick check, and you can take care of business. Have you ever been arrested before?”
Charlie seemed horrified at the suggestion. “God, no!”
“I have to check you for contraband. That’s anything you shouldn’t have. Is there anything you want to tell me about, to save me some trouble?”
“No! Please, I really gotta go.”
There was mounting desperation in Charlie’s voice, but Marie had been fooled before by claims of bathroom emergencies. “Sure, but once I uncuff you, I need to check your bra—”
“No problem! Just hurry—”
Once Marie unlocked the cuffs, Charlie dropped the coat and tapped the back of her dress, by the zipper. “Go—please—unzip me!”
Charlie shimmied out of the top, letting it slip below her shoulders. She yanked her bra up over her head and shook her bosom—Nope, nothing hidden there—while waving her hands like a burlesque dancer. “Please, can I go?”
Marie handed her the Kotex, and Charlie scampered into the stall. After the toilet flushed, Charlie emerged and went to the mirror to fix her hair. She wore a sad half-smile. Marie asked, “What did you get yourself mixed up with today?”
“Did you ever go out with your guy, expecting an engagement ring, and you get a punch in the kidneys instead?”
“I can’t say that I have. I’m sorry.”
Marie was sorry for her. Charlie retouched her lipstick before addressing her eye shadow. “I’ll be a mess, tomorrow, when my eye swells up. Gino hit me with a cheap shot. Otherwise, I usually give better than I get. He has a cute little bump on his nose from when I hit him with a lamp.”
When Charlie did her mascara, her hand seemed to tremble. She caught Marie’s reaction in the reflection—a pitying tilt of the head. “No, I don’t have the shakes, even though I could use a cocktail. You have to zigzag the wand when you do the lashes, that way you won’t get clumps. Speaking of drinks, Gino was going to buy a cabaret for me to run. We had our eye on a place in the Village. Really just a bar, but it had a little stage, and a dance floor. That dream’s down the toilet, too. Good riddance!”
Charlie examined her finished face and collected her cosmetics. “Are you married, Marie?”
“Yes.”
Charlie stepped away from the mirror and slipped back into her fur coat. “So you’re not in the market, and you don’t need my advice. But if you were a single gal, I’d tell you not to fall for married dope-dealing gangsters. You know why?”
“Why?”
“Because they’re not nice.”
Charlie scooped up the pup, tucking her back into her pocket. “Then again, I’m not always nice, either. If that Irish bull wasn’t such a prick, I’d give him Gino on a platter. I wouldn’t spit on him now, not if his hair was on fire. But you, Marie? I’d be willing to tell you lots of things. You interested?”
Charlie placed her hands together behind her back to be cuffed again. Marie took Charlie’s elbow and spun her, so they were face-to-face. She slipped her arm around Charlie’s, as if they were chums, and began to escort her out of the room. This day on matron duty might not turn out to be such a waste of time.
“I’m a very good listener.”
5 YOU WERE BORN READY
La donna è mobile, qual piuma al vento,
Muta d’accento, e di pensiero . . .
—Giuesppe Verdi & Francesco Maria Piave
Rigoletto
OCTOBER 22, 1959
1230 HOURS
As they marched up the stairs together, Marie hummed the tune from the opera: Woman is fickle, like a feather in the wind, changes her mood, changes her mind . . . The life Charlie had described—and had discarded as a pipe dream, at least with Gino—was exactly what Marie had. A career that engaged her; a home with a child who loved her; a husband who wouldn’t leave her, no matter how he strayed. It wasn’t altogether satisfactory, but no one wanted to hear you complain, any more than they wanted to hear you brag. Mama had told her daughters how to conduct themselves, at seven years of age or seventy: Never let them hear a breath you take.
Paulie greeted them on the third-floor landing. Seeing Charlie at liberty, such as she was, seemed to amuse him. He invited them into the office, which was no different from a
ny other squad room, with a holding cell and a series of battered desks, all uninhabited. He pointed like a maître d’ toward the interrogation room in the far corner, as if it were the best table in the house. Inside were three metal folding chairs around a wobbly wooden table. He asked how they took their coffee. It was a very civilized and equal-seeming trio, despite the fact that one of them was a prisoner, and two of them were women.
Marie didn’t know the social conventions for this kind of occasion. A matron was delivering an inmate; a rookie cop with a potential informant was being tested by a veteran detective; a young lady was being introduced to a suitor by her vigilant chaperone. Marie looked over at Charlie again, wondering how old she was—twenty-two?
“I’ve had a heart-to-heart with Charlie, and she’s agreed to talk about certain matters of interest. And I’d like to help. I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but I won’t be disrespected, either. Charlie will not talk to your partner. The same goes for me.”
Charlie inclined her head in demure assent, and Paulie smiled. “I’d like to apologize for Paddy. This won’t be the first time, or the last. My partner has a heart of gold, balls of steel—pardon my French—and a head of solid rock. If you’d like to talk—and I hope you and Charlie will—I promise, you’ll deal with me alone. My mother told me—she still tells me—how to treat a lady. I have sisters. I was raised right. Again, I’d like to apologize to both of you. Mi diaspace, dal mio cuore.”
Marie glanced over to Charlie, and she seemed content. She didn’t look Irish, Marie thought. Was she even a real redhead? Whatever her background, Charlie took comfort in the courtesies. “Well, like Marie said, I’ve come to a point where I don’t see the point with somebody I know. Who I guess you know, too. Gino. Whaddaya want to know?”
“Everything.”
Marie felt herself recede from Paulie’s sight. She didn’t mind.
“What’s everything?”
“Pretend I’m an idiot.”
“Do I have to pretend?”
Paulie reached out and patted Charlie’s hands as they rested on the table. “I left myself open to that one, I know. I’m a big boy, and my feelings weren’t hurt. But your new friend Marie here, she just made such a nice speech about respect. I took it to heart. Did you?”
Charlie didn’t appear chagrined, but she took Paulie’s hand and clasped it. “All right, Detective. If we’re going to talk as long as I think, I’d like cigarettes, a cup of milk for my dog, scotch if you have it, rye if you don’t, and a Coca-Cola.”
Paulie withdrew from the room. Charlie took the dog from her pocket and set it on the table. She made a barrier of her purse, on the side that adjoined the wall, and Marie did the same, making a kind of corral. Paulie returned shortly with a pack of Chesterfields, a pint of Fleischmann’s rye, and the rest of the shopping list. The office apparently didn’t lack for liquor and sundries.
“All right, ladies. Are we ready?”
Charlie took a long sip of whiskey, and a short one of Coca-Cola. “Well, Detective, Gino tells me things, and sometimes he tells me more than he knows . . .”
Marie couldn’t gauge Paulie’s reaction. He didn’t interrupt Charlie, and he lit her cigarettes as the need arose, which was often. Marie was fascinated by the presentation, by its breadth and clarity. As Charlie told it, the major heroin brokers in New York—mostly Italian, a few Jewish—bought it in bulk from syndicates in Montreal, Marseilles, and Beirut, fifty or a hundred pounds at a time, which they cut with milk sugar and laxative powder. Heroin that was 70 or 80 percent pure would be half that—at twice the cost—the next time it changed hands, to gangsters across the country, or midlevel dealers in New York. By the time it moved through the middlemen, the heroin might be one part in twenty, and the price might be thirty times what it was when it arrived. A pound of heroin cost more than gold, wholesale; when it hit the slums, it approached the value of diamonds. Charlie rubbed her ring finger at the mention.
“Now, like I said, the closer the junk gets to the streets, the money gets crazy, but the scene gets crazy, too. That’s where you get the stickup guys, the fiends, the ones who’d sell their mother for a fix. It’s where you draw the cops’ attention.”
Charlie smiled and held up another cigarette. Paulie lit it, and she continued. “Nobody hates junkies like the mobsters. Not even cops. Funny, isn’t it? The big boys, the ones who pony up a hundred grand for their friends in Montreal and Marseilles? If they found out that one of their kids—or their friends’ kids, or even a cousin on the wife’s side—if one of them ever touched the stuff, that would be it. They would be dead to them. Maybe dead to everybody.
“Tell me, Paulie,” Charlie went on, suddenly coquettish, maybe warmed by the whiskey. “When are you gonna have a drink with me? I guess you know, I have a soft spot for Italians.”
Charlie held up another cigarette, but Paulie slid the lighter across the table. His tone remained even, and his eyes remained kind as he replied. “Maybe when we have something I can drink to. What you told me, it could be part of a news program, like See It Now, with Edward R. Murrow.”
“That’s not on anymore.”
“Well, I’ll miss it. You learned a lot of things about the world from Mr. Murrow. And what you told me, it matches up with what I know. But what it’s like I’m looking for a stolen car, and you’re telling me that the Ford Motor Company makes ’em, and the steel comes from Pittsburgh, and the rubber on the tires comes from trees. That and a dime would get me on the subway.”
“It’s fifteen cents now.”
“Like I said, you’re good with the big picture. And I know we’re just getting started here, but you haven’t said much about Gino.”
“I don’t have anything good to say.”
“I’m not here for good things. What does he do? Deliver packages? How many, how big, to who? When and where?”
“He delivers packages maybe twice a week. I’m in the car, so we look like a nice loving couple. At least a pound of dope, usually to Brooklyn or the Bronx. For his cousin or something—you know how these Italians say everybody’s a cousin—”
“What’s his cousin’s name?”
“Nunzi.”
“Big Nunzi or Little Nunzi? Nunzi from Delancey Street, or Nunzi from Mulberry, or Nunzi from Arthur Avenue, or Nunzi from Canarsie? Nunzi Farts, or Cross-Eyed Nunzi, or Crazy Nunzi?”
“Nunzi from Astoria. But Nunzi from Astoria, his cousin is on Pleasant Avenue. He’s Frankie.”
“Big Frankie or Little Frankie? Frankie Whiskers, or Frankie Blue Eyes—”
“Pleasant Avenue Frankie.”
“Now we’re getting somewhere.”
Marie recalled Paddy’s expression at the mention of Ambrogino Bocciagalupe, and she was relieved it was Paulie who led them through the cavalcade of Nunzis and Frankies. Did Nunzi Farts’s friends call him that? Did his mother? She realized her mind had wandered as Paulie began the next round of questions: “Did you ever meet Pleasant Avenue Frankie?”
“No.”
“Did you ever meet Nunzi from Astoria?”
“No.”
“The packages, does he deliver them the same days?”
“Sometimes, there’s two on the same day, but we never had more than one package in the car at a time, in case we got ripped off or stopped by cops.”
“Did that ever happen, that you got ripped off, or stopped?”
“No. Gino drives careful.”
“What car does he drive?”
“There’s a couple different ones.”
“Who does he deliver them to?”
“I never met the gentlemen. I stay in the car. And wherever he goes, he parks around the corner.”
“Is there anything concrete you can give me?”
“Isn’t what I just—”
“No. And my guess is, today wasn’t the first time you and Gino had cross words. You’re hot as a stove now, but how do I know he won’t send you flowers tomorrow, and you’ll take him back? Are you wi
lling to do whatever it takes here? Are you in for the long run?”
“You don’t know anything about me, if you think—”
“Does he stash anything at your place? You’re on 88th Street, just off Third, right? Second floor of a brownstone?”
“How did you—”
“I’m a detective,” Paulie replied, as if he were straining to remain jovial despite his deepening disappointment. “It’s my job to find things out. But the only news you gave me today is that the subway fare went up. The city doesn’t pay me much, but, in all honesty, I can’t say that I’ve earned my day’s pay. You sit tight, have a drink and a smoke. Take the dog for a walk around the ashtray. I’m gonna step outside with Marie for a minute.”
Paulie rose and led Marie from the interrogation room. Charlie seemed shaken before she laughed and began to talk baby talk to the dog. Marie felt foolish. She’d been so taken with Charlie, impressed and intrigued. Had they wasted Paulie’s time? You had to take chances, and not every chance panned out. He had to know that. Didn’t he? He continued to watch the door, as if he expected Charlie to make a break for it. A minute passed, and then another. Paulie walked to a nearby desk and picked up the phone. His voice was low, as if to keep Marie from overhearing. “Yeah, it’s me. No, not much—Damned if I know. I’ll be right there.”
Paulie hung up and walked out into the hall. Marie endured a few more minutes of awkward solitude before returning to the interrogation room.
“What happened, Marie? What did he say?”
“I swear to God, Charlie, he didn’t say a thing. Not to me. He talked on the phone, and then he left. I felt like a dope standing there, so I came back in with you.”
Charlie reached for her whiskey but put it down without drinking. “Are you being honest with me, Marie?”
“I am. I said, ‘I swear to God,’ and that’s not just an expression. If I couldn’t tell you something, I wouldn’t. I like you—that’s the truth—but I won’t pretend we’re old friends.”
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