The Old Turk's Load Page 12

  As his dying eyes beheld Vince and Woody, frozen in astonishment, his last thought was: “How about that, you fucking assholes.”

  Too Little, Too Late

  I

  rene let Harry back in, but not until Gloria was finished with him. “Give me the keys to Kelly’s office.” They were standing on Fifteenth Street, just off Union Square, where Kelly’d unceremoniously dumped them. The bars hadn’t closed yet, but sleepy sailors were beginning to stagger back to the Seafarers Hotel around the corner. If Kelly had been there, he’d have recognized a few from his dream.

  “What for?” Jarkey was getting tugged a lot of different ways.

  Lust, loyalty, and lucre gleamed in the night.

  “C’mon, Harry. You know what for. We’ve already warned

  your pal. What happens to him depends on his choices now. But

  that heroin’s sitting in his office, just waiting to be grabbed. Why

  leave it for the bad guys?”

  “It’s shit, Gloria. It’s poison. No matter where it ends up, it’s

  going to destroy people.”

  “At least with us some of those losses will be redeemed. Do

  you have any idea how far even a quarter-million dollars would go?” “Do you know how much jail time you’d do if you got caught

  with ten kilos? Think about it!”

  “I have been thinking, Harry. All those hours of bullshitting

  in the foco I’ve been thinking there had to be a better way.” “And then, oh Jesus, you’re going to be walking around Manhattan in the middle of the night with all that smack? The junkies’ll

  eat you alive.”

  “Look, I’ve been on the streets. I’ve done the tear gas and

  the dogs and the pigs in their riot gear. That’s not the Revolution.

  That’s nothing but cheap thrills. Street theater. This is risk, Harry.

  Real, honest, calculated risk, with a huge upside.We put that money

  into legal action and education and we accomplish way more than

  guns and bombs.”

  The argument went back and forth, and they finally had to sit

  down on a bench. Was Jarkey with them or against them? Jarkey went silent, trying to figure out if helping her get the

  heroin would be a betrayal of Kelly. She kept at him. They walked.

  He could’ve gotten on the subway and left her standing there but,

  just like in the car, couldn’t bring himself to break it off with her.

  A beautiful rich girl begging him for help—this was more excitement than he’d had in years. Irene might’ve scrambled his brains,

  but Gloria still had his imagination. He was a romantic, after all. She heard the tumbler click, nudged closer to him. “Let’s try it,” he said.

  No one in front of Kelly’s building. No one on the elevator. Jarkey turned the key in the lock to Kelly’s office door, reached his arm around, and flicked the light switch.

  Silence. The familiar, friendly clutter. Nothing but the usual. No heroin.

  Gloria said, “I’ll be goddamned.”

  THE OLD TURK’S LOAD 149

  Jarkey didn’t know what to make of that. “Huh?” “Roth kept the stuff,”she told him.“Got it from Curtis and . . .” “I’ll be goddamned,”he repeated solemnly, happy at not being

  murdered by waiting thugs, trying his best to honor her perplexity. She was wearing a beguiling mustache of perspiration. “We need to get out of here.”

  “I need a phone.”

  They stopped at a booth a few corners away. Gloria called

  Roth’s home number in Forest Hills.

  “Julie, what the hell are you doing?”

  “What the hell do you mean, ‘What the hell are you doing?’

  I’m trying to go to sleep.”

  “The drugs weren’t at Kelly’s, as perhaps you knew.” “You little brat. I didn’t think you had it in you. You just came

  from there?”

  “A couple of minutes ago.” It was odd, the way you got to

  know people. She could tell from his voice that he didn’t have it,

  either. Not anymore.

  “No way DiNoto could’ve gotten someone there that fast.” “Kelly’s got the stuff, then.” She turned to Jarkey. “Don’t look at me! You were in the car with us. You know as

  much as I do.”

  “You and Kelly can straighten that out later,” Roth told her.

  “We’ve got a bigger problem now. DiNoto’s going to go apeshit

  when he finds out we’re fucking with him. It’s going to get messy.

  You need to disappear.”

  “What about you?”

  “Honey, I’m going to throw some stuff in a bag and get out

  of here as fast as I can. That’s how serious I am. You’d better do the same. If those guys find you, they’ll kill you. What’s going down

  now, we don’t want to be in their way.”

  Roth made her copy down the number at which he might be

  reached in case of serious emergency.Then he hung up, dressed, and

  threw some things into a bag just like he’d said he would. He was

  crossing the Tappan Zee when the phone rang back in Forest Hills.

  The cops were calling to tell him that Mundi was dead.

  Gallagher’s Dinner

  M

  ossman waited quite a while after Curtis left. He called Matthews down in the lobby a couple of times and there was nothing going on. Eventually he decided it would be better to leave than be trapped in the office. But he was wrong. Vince and Woody waylaid him as he came out of the Tishman Building. After a light pistol whipping, he told them whom he worked for and they made him escort them past Matthews back upstairs. Then Vince went back down and bopped Matthews, and, appropriating his shirt and hat, took his place. There he waited until the Mushroom brought Doc Viera over to open the safe. As he sat, Vince watched the street and thought about nothing, whistling the first bars of some old song over and over.

  Viera looked eighty years old, a stick of a man with waxy skin showing well-used blue veins beneath. Everyone said he looked the way he did because he was a cleaned-up drug addict, which had something to do with how he’d learned to do what he did, which he did so well that everyone called him the Doctor. He was only fortyfive, and what he did was crack safes. Though Woody wondered if the “Doctor” handle didn’t have pharmacological connotations. He’d asked Viera about it once but got no answer.

  Viera told Woody that he, Vince, and the Mushroom would be taking care of things there. Woody was to call Mr. DiNoto, who had something else lined up.

  DiNoto told him,“I just got a call from Mundi’s boy. He claims a PI named Kelly made off with the stuff on the night of the riots.”

  “Mundi’s dead, Mr. D.”

  “Whaa? You do him?”

  “No. A heart attack right there at the airport. No suitcases, no baggage claim ticket. No smack, that’s for sure.”

  “That son of a bitch.” DiNoto was definitely pissed at Mundi for dying. “Well, then, maybe this Roth guy was right about Kelly. Anyway, his office is at 509 Madison Avenue. Corner of Fifty-Third. Seventeenth floor. They sounded pretty sure the stuff was there.”

  “Probably put it there themselves.”

  “Probably. So toss the place. Get the stuff. Get him and get that Roth guy, and all the little shits that work for him. Mundi has a daughter, doesn’t he? Get her, too. Hurt them all. Do what you have to. I’m very tired of all this. These guys are making me look like a chump.” It was as much as Woody had ever heard his boss say at once, and it made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. The old man was unpredictable when he got angry, which was all the more frightening. As he left the Tishman Building, Woody began thinking of horror movies that had truly freaked him out.

  It took him ten minutes to demolish Kelly’s office. He worked methodically through all the versions of Frankenstein, The Wolfman, and Dracul
a, then through the sci-fi films like Them. The cabinets went over, the desk upside down. No smack anywhere. Not even a

  THE OLD TURK’S LOAD 153

  trace. He reported the results to Mr. D., who told him to go back to the Tishman. Heads would be rolling in the morning.

  While Woody was remodeling Kelly’s office, the warrant finally came down from the judge, who had an early tee time and was predictably annoyed about being wakened in the middle of the night. Spaulding took the warrant and another agent named Voorhees to Gallagher, who’d been cooling his heels in one of the interrogation rooms, reading a magazine, and smoking.

  Spaulding waved the paper in his face.“I burned a lot of favors getting this. You’re coming with us. If this turns out to be bullshit, I’m gonna make you eat it.”

  “Coming where?”

  “I’ve got a warrant to search Mundi’s office.”

  “In the middle of the night?”

  “We’re going through every document in the place and we’re

  not going to be disturbed. If there’s a safe on the premises or safedeposit boxes out there somewhere, we’ll just wait till the staff arrives.”

  Gallagher rolled his eyes, offering his usual contemptuous look. But inside, he felt sick. Spaulding had turned greedy, bumping him out of the catbird seat. “I thought the girl and I were going to steal the stuff so we could hang it on the foco.”

  “That plan’s changed, sonny boy. We’ve got your testimony that she knew about the drugs. When we get the father, we’ve as good as got the daughter.”

  They screamed uptown in their unmarked car, scattering startled late-night drivers, then killed the siren as they approached Fifty-Third.

  Spaulding pounded on the tall glass door with the stylized 666 logo emblazoned above. Vince waved him off.

  “Federal agents,” he said, spreading the warrant flat against the glass for Vince to read. “Open up.”

  Vince rose, tucked his shirt in, and escorted the three men to the elevator. “I’ll take you up there myself.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Spaulding told him.

  “But I insist,” Vince replied, the snout of his pistol pointed right at the soft part of Spaulding’s belly.

  The bell rang. The elevator door opened. “Going up!” He smiled.

  A Suitcase Full of Fitz Hugh Lane

  T

  he Mailman seemed catatonic, but what he was doing was waiting. Clarity was now his.Things were simple. It was people who made them seem complex. Here he was with a suitcase full of the simplest proposition in the world and everyone was running around thinking up reasons why it was too complicated. All he really needed to do was wait. Something else would happen and his scheme would be viable once again. For example, here came Kelly with a suitcase of his own.

  Lloyd, in an obsessive-compulsive groove induced by whatever they’d been taking, was pacing the floor in front of the couch— doorway to front window, front window to doorway. There’d still been no sign of Helen.

  Kelly moved the Mailman’s suitcase off the couch and replaced it with his own. Snapped the snaps, flipped the lid, and . . .

  “Holy shit. Holy fucking shit.” Lloyd’s eyes resembled shaving mirrors.

  The Mailman made a long breathy noise. Desire. Or agony. Or both.

  “Mafia heroin. Uncut. Straight off the boat. It’s hot and so are they. Burning the town down.”

  “Holy shit. Holy fucking shit.” Lloyd’s ability to express surprise was severely curtailed.

  Kelly grabbed the Mailman by both shoulders, establishing eye contact.“We’re putting this in your car,”he said.“In the driver’s door panel. Right now. When there’s nobody on the street. Then you’re getting in that fucking car and driving. You’re not stopping until you’re home. Lloyd’s going with you. You’ll take the paintings back to the museum, and Lloyd’s going to reacquaint himself with Gloucester’s criminal element. We’ll sell the shit off the Gloucester waterfront, split the proceeds, and be gone before the Mob guys can figure it out.”

  “Wrong about that one, Kelly old boy. There’s no way on God’s green earth I’m getting into a jalopy full of stolen art and heroin.”

  “Don’t be an idiot. This is the chance of a lifetime. The Mailman gets a fresh start, and you and I make some dough on the deal. Things’ll be hot for me in this town. But you’re clean. Nobody will connect you with this. Nobody even knows about the Mailman.”

  “I’m not an idiot, Kelly. That’s why I’m not getting in that car. Just like with the paintings, only worse. Too much risk, too insufficient a reward.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake—”

  The Mailman spoke for the first time. “Lloy’s right.”Then he wrote it out on the pad. “I’ll take it back myself. I don’t give a shit. I got nothing to lose.”

  Kelly had to admit it sounded just as good that way. The Mailman wasn’t likely to double-cross them. He didn’t have any contacts. He’d get himself killed if he tried to fence the shit off. He’d probably dip a little off the top, but who cared?

  The detective shrugged at Lloyd. What do you think? And Lloyd started thinking. It was hard for him and it took a while. Kelly could almost hear him grinding through it, like trying to start a car that’d sat in the driveway all winter. He resumed pacing, then he began talking.

  “It might work. We’d have to break it up into smaller loads. And we’d probably have to go partners with Reardon—but that could be done. It’ll just take time, is all. We can’t get greedy. We’ll have to go slow. And we’ll be settling for pennies on the dollar. But considering our investment, it’s still a good deal. Or we could cut Reardon out and step on it ourselves. But then we’d be in the retail business, which would not be a good idea for any of us.”

  “What about this guy Reardon? Suppose he gets ideas?”

  “What’s he gonna do? I make a trip to Gloucester every month and he thinks I’m diverting the shit from some factory in East Harlem. He takes what I’ve got and adds it to whatever’s going onto the street that week. It’s my risk, not his. He’d never figure the Mailman in this, not in a million years.”

  “So the Mailman holds the stash?”

  “That’s the way it’s got to be.”

  The Mailman nodded his assent.

  They all went down to the street. Kelly and the Mailman stood in front of the Mailman’s car while Lloyd popped the panel and stacked the bags inside, leaving room so you could still roll the window down. He replaced the panel and set the suitcase with the paintings in the backseat. Then they all had one last toot and Kelly and Lloyd watched the Mailman head over to the East River Drive.

  Gallagher and the Feds

  U

  p in the Tishman Building Mossman was having a rougher time of it. He heard the muffled thump from inside Mundi’s office and knew the weird-looking guy had gotten the safe open. When they didn’t find what they were looking for, they’d beat him until he told them where it was.Then they’d kill him. He resolved to tell them everything he knew immediately. Get it over with. Just at that moment, however, Vince pushed the Feds and Gallagher into the reception room where Woody and the Mushroom were holding him. Vince handed Spaulding’s warrant to Woody, who read it and said, “Well, well.” It was getting to be quite a party.

  Then Doc Viera emerged from Mundi’s office, coughing slightly, and Vince and Woody went to see what was in the safe. Mossman gritted his teeth. Vince came out and smacked him on the side of the face with his gun. It happened so fast, Mossman didn’t even have time to flinch.

  He went down like a tree, then got to his hands and knees. “The guard. The black guy down in the lobby . . .” His mouth was filling with blood so fast he had to stop and spit it out. “He took the shit out of here while you were waiting for me.” More blood. “Roth planted it in Kelly’s office. You’re supposed to find it there.” He crawled against the desk, holding his head, waiting for the shot.

  It never came. Vince and the Mushroom wanted to off the ne
wcomers right there. But Woody didn’t like the idea of killing federal agents before they’d recovered the heroin. It would draw too much heat. Meanwhile, Gallagher had started screaming, crying, telling them he was no Fed. No pig, no way. He sang his jail time like an aria. He was one of them, he swore.The Feds were blackmailing him to spy on a bunch of college kids.

  Vince and Woody were momentarily taken aback by this performance. Doc Viera told them to use Spaulding’s gun to shoot Voorhees and Spaulding, Voorhees’s gun to shoot Gallagher, and then to put Spaulding’s gun in Gallagher’s hand to get his prints on it. Gallagher was crying. Spaulding or Voorhees, one, shat his pants. Vince and Woody got a whiff and looked at each other.That happened occasionally. It was unfortunate. Robbed a man of his dignity.They locked the three men in a broom closet off the reception room and returned to the business of Mossman.

  Woody grabbed a fistful of his hair and yanked his head up hard.“This guy Kelly.The PI. Got any ideas?”So Mossman described him, wracking his brain for details, sufficiently terrorized by now to have given up his mother had they asked for her. Then he remembered Sammy’s Undersea Lounge.

  But Sammy’s was closed by the time they got there, so they reported to Mr. D. and went uptown for a little shut-eye. It had been a busy evening.

  For some reason they didn’t kill Mossman. Just left him in a heap by the side of the desk. He went in and out of shock for a few hours. Came to around dawn, roused by the muffled shouting coming from the closet. He thought for a moment about letting them out, then remembered who they were and just went home. The cops didn’t arrive until later that morning. It had gotten pretty bad in there by that time.

  Hot Town, Summer in the City

  T

  he next day came in bright and warm.The brown bubble over the city had finally broken and the rain seemed to have cleansed the air. The Street Brothers and Mr. Fungu tooled down the West Side Highway in Woody’s fine Lincoln, happy to be alive.Vince had WKRC on the radio. They all preferred jazz, even the Mushroom, who was watching the boats on the river, smiling. Woody started thinking of famous bandleaders who’d started in other bandleaders’ bands, but there were too many. Then he wondered if he could link them all in some kind of genealogy. Vince was whistling softly, waiting for another song to come to him.