The Old Turk's Load Read online

  Mad for blood and heroin now, the Street Brothers stalked to the office to finish their job.

  The Kaminsky brothers, having heard the commotion outside, were more than ready.Vince and Woody burst through the door, and Joe and Bennie cut them in half with matching 12-gauge sawedoff shotguns. There’d been trouble in the junkyard before, and the Kaminskys weren’t about to take any shit from anyone, a fact neither Mr. D. nor Vince nor Woody could have been expected to know. The plywood front wall blasted through into the yard, splattered with gore. The blood of Woody and Vince commingled in what was left of the doorway. Together at last.

  The Mushroom sensed trouble and went to investigate. Rem had one for him, too.

  It rained heavily later that day, which helped a little with the blood in the yard.The remainder of the old Turk’s load went into solution and leaked through the bottom of the first flatcar onto the tracks, where it eventually biodegraded, then disappeared.

  Plus Four

  O

  ver in Bensonhurst, Kelly painted Aunt Kay’s kitchen.Things had to be moved from each wall,then the surface behind had to be scrubbed of the decades of grease and dust and nicotine deposited by Uncle Frank (eight years deceased) and his damned cigarettes. It was a slow process, but that was how they both wanted it.

  The painting had been Kelly’s idea. He needed to stay for a spell and wanted to make himself useful. Aunt Kay was all in favor but insisted on buying the paint. She got Spread Satin, which someone had told her didn’t smell. Once Kelly began spreading it, they joked about how it stank.The color reminded him of faded bananas. She loved it. She didn’t ask why he was there, what had caused his unannounced arrival, or how long he’d stay. He loved her for that.

  She lived alone now, but her old friend Rita the hairdresser lived right in the building, so if she needed help, a ride to the doctor or whatever, Rita was there. Bustling about the place, Aunt Kay seemed hale, pink, self-sufficient.

  While he cleaned and painted, they talked.They talked about the part-time job Rita had once gotten for her, applying makeup to the corpses at McGuire’s Funeral Home, and how Rita had gotten a friend to pretend to be a stiff. Kay had gone in to work on her and she’d sat up. They talked about the Yanks who were in the midst of a terrible season, salvaged only by the fact that the Mick had already hit his five hundredth dinger.They talked about his mother, Aunt Kay’s sister, and the old days. What was it that had made Kay and Kelly’s mom laugh so much when they were together? Just like little girls. She reminded him about the time they’d borrowed a car and gone upstate (anywhere north of Yonkers was “upstate,” and they’d barely made it out of Yonkers) and had a picnic, and Kelly had been stung by that nest of yellow jackets, and Uncle Frank had rescued and soothed him. Uncle Frank had been a cop, too good and too simple to rise in the system, and had retired, a saint on his beat. The line at his wake stretched three blocks.

  They talked about him through the cleaning and painting of the wall behind the stove, how he’d loved The Honeymooners, especially Ralph Kramden, and how odd that was because he was not at all like the blustering Jackie Gleason character. They talked and talked.

  Kelly was reminded of a story he’d heard on the radio once. It had been about how POWs during the Korean War would sit around in the prison camp and together remember a movie they’d seen. Each soldier would contribute some bit about the movie, and the more the bits came together, the more other bits were remembered, until they could put the whole movie back together. That’s what it felt like talking with Aunt Kay. Though never a word was said about Kelly’s father, Irish Johnny, who’d ruined the life of Aunt Kay’s sister and driven her to an early death.

  After dinner Kelly would take a long walk on Nineteenth Avenue, during which he’d smoke his nightly couple of cigarettes. At Milestone Park he’d do his push-ups and sit-ups, and chin himself on the jungle gym. Then he’d go home and watch the ball game or Lawrence Welk with his aunt, sipping daintily from his nightly half-pint of Wilson “That’s All” blended whiskey, still wrapped in its paper bag. Beside him Kay worked her bottomless decanter of sherry, kept behind the magazine rack. Later, Kelly would stretch out on his bed and study the letters from Gloria’s apartment. It was still a challenge to get to the bottom of the story they told.They were disturbing, that was the problem. But murky. Mostly they seemed to talk about Agnes’s career, though he thought he could detect a looming threat, a sense of menace. Why wasn’t her husband protecting her? Was someone stalking her? Kelly couldn’t figure it out.

  Bedtime came early at Aunt Kay’s. For Kelly the regular hours, healthy exercise, and diminished whiskey intake felt like Olympic training. For Aunt Kay it was simply a good moment. She was wise enough to understand the fragility of life, and she made sure to take joy in it, and in him.

  After the kitchen was done, he painted the outside hallway and the stairs going down. They both knew this marked the end of their time together. Kelly could feel the Problem out there, and when the wave gathered under him once again, he rode off with it.

  “Irene Kornecki’s office.”

  “Is this Irene?”

  “Who shall I say is calling?”

  “Kelly.”

  “Kelly’s dead.”

  “Let’s keep it that way for now. I need to find Julius Roth. I

  need to talk to him.”

  “About what?”

  “I think you know about what. We’ve got a situation that

  needs getting taken care of.”

  “I see.” It had to be Kelly. But where had he been—and what

  had happened to him?

  She knew some stuff. Like the way DiNoto had gone nuts

  after the loss of the Street Brothers and his heroin. The rumor was

  he’d taken out a couple of cops in Gloucester. It was definitely a fact

  that he’d whacked Murchison and Kraft, the only two attendees at

  Mundi’s burial—other than the priest—right in the cemetery.Then

  Gallagher, on the street in broad daylight, execution-style.The priest

  had taken a leave of absence. Jarkey was staying with relatives in

  Illinois. Gloria had moved in with Maddy, and Roth was . . . well,

  only Gloria knew where. The city, for some, was frozen in a reign

  of terror, with DiNoto’s soldiers lurking everywhere.

  Now Kelly had shown up. Gloria and Harry had offered seriously conflicting appraisals of him. Irene had no idea what his

  capabilities actually were, but he had apparently survived being

  dead. Perhaps he could help.

  Roth and Kelly met a few weeks later at a diner in Newark. They put Roth’s car in a lot and Kelly drove him in the black Fairlane past DiNoto’s office, then west on the turnpike to Pottersville. He stopped at a stone drive in a thickly wooded area.

  “There’s a gate about fifty yards in,” Kelly told him. “Armed gatekeeper. The driveway goes uphill another quarter mile beyond that. The whole lot is clean as a pool table, and the house is on top with an eight-foot stone wall and a clear view all around.”

  Roth had been watching Kelly closely, looking for the moron Mundi had described. He could see only focus and intensity.“How’d you find all this out?”

  “The site plan is in the Registry of Deeds down in Flemington. Then I got a cabbie to drive me up here and I got out like I was lost and asked for directions.”

  Roth nodded. No moron so far.“What do you have in mind?” “Newark’s too crowded. This place is tight as a tick, and he’s always got his soldiers around him.”Kelly accelerated past the drive and turned north on County Road 517. “But you know, I think we could get him anywhere.”

  “‘Get him anywhere’ isn’t much of a plan.”

  “King of the Jungle.”

  “Jungle?”

  “He’s at the top of the food chain with no natural enemies.

  He’s got these guys protecting him—but they’re sleepwalking.” Strange, certai
nly, but not a moron by any means. “But you do have a plan.”

  “I do. Just sit tight.” Kelly liked the way Roth had frankly,

  coldly, sized him up at the diner in Newark, and he appreciated the lack of social bullshit.The guy was built like Primo Carnera, but he obviously had a brain.

  They took a right off Route 517 and pulled up in front of the Black Oak Country Club.

  “A golf course?”

  “Mr. D. and two of his boys play nine on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. Eight thirty tee time. He sends two guys out in the slot in front of him, and two behind.”

  Kelly drove a few hundred yards down the road, along the rusted chain-link fence with fairway on the other side. When he came to a wooded section, he pulled the car over and got out. Roth followed him up to the fence and under the four-foot flap Kelly had cut in it. They stood in the cool shade of oak and pine trees, surveying the course.

  “The first hole is way over there and it goes up to your left. The second one comes back.The third starts down by the entrance, runs up here, and makes a turn—what do they call it?”

  “Dogleg. Dogleg right.”

  “Makes a dogleg right, at these woods here.”

  Roth got it immediately.“The ground crew,what do they wear?”

  “Black T-shirts and khaki pants.”

  “That shouldn’t be too difficult.”

  “I wouldn’t think . . . And a couple of rakes, maybe?”

  “And bags.”

  “Big bags on our shoulders. For the hardware. Right. Rakes and litter bags.” Kelly felt like he’d been working with this guy his whole life.

  “So tomorrow morning we let the first two go by, pop DiNoto’s threesome, and be back in the car before the other two catch up. Is that what you had in mind?”

  “Exactly.”

  Kelly had already procured two stolen pistols with handcrafted silencers the size of beer cans. Roth was given plenty of time to familiarize himself with the gear back in Newark, after they bought their rakes and bags.

  Next morning the two of them ambled to within twenty feet of the increasingly surprised threesome, then made their rush.They caught the two goons reaching under their seats in the golf cart for guns. DiNoto never got past “What the fuck?” and he was done. They wiped the guns, put them back in the bags, left the whole mess there, and drove off.

  On the turnpike Kelly said, “What he was wearing . . .”

  “What who was wearing?”

  “Those short little pants.”

  “Plus fours. They’re called plus fours. They used to be part of the costume.”

  “Oh. Died with his plus fours on.”

  “Exactly.”

  Roth was thinking of the old days, when working for Mundi had been fun.

  Mailman Hell

  T

  he Mailman knew he was in for it, but the precise nature of his suffering surprised him. He’d thought the punishment would consist of physical and psychological distress while he kicked his habit, but the pain was only a means—an instant-by-instant alarm—returning him to the business at hand. His hell consisted of an image of sitting in the room with Langer, his arm beneficently extended, and his smiling nod, “After you, my friend.” Over, and over and over again it replayed, on the junk-sick plane ride to San Francisco, during the agonizing marches through the Haight, and while he lay awake those endless nights on his cruddy bed at the Y. It was all a dream. Haight-Ashbury was a dream, Golden Gate Park was a dream: the weird chicks, the mist-drenched Pacific light, the hippie hustlers, the down and dirty drag of strange faces, voices, the fear they had of his fear of them. The hookup at the clinic, facilitated by smiling, scary Diggers, was a dream, too. All a dream, all punctuated by nightmare chills and sweats. The only real thing had been handing Langer his death.

  He must have known, somehow, that Langer would cook the shit up uncut and poke it into himself. Why had he let it happen? Was that what Langer’d wanted? Was it assisted suicide? Murder? An innocent mistake? The Mailman’s existence took place inside this misery-laden thought loop. Weeks with no relief, accompanied by constant, drumming pain in the throat and neck. He wept from it, welcomed it. Told himself he was getting clean.

  Finally he went to the clinic. The doctor, a peach-fuzz kid half his age, wrote down his information, thought for a while, then informed him he wasn’t a junkie. He was a recovering cancer patient who’d improperly managed his necessary medication.The diagnosis hit the Mailman like a slap in the face.

  The kid put him on a proper med schedule, told him to fill his scrip and come back the next day and take his meds in the clinic.

  The Mailman stayed in his room, sweating it out, working his penance.

  After two days the kid banged on his door at the Y. “Don’t do this to yourself. All you need is a sane environment.” He handed the Mailman a list of clinics all over the state.

  The Mailman, in underpants and T-shirt, gawked, then closed the door and took the paper with him back to his bed of pain. His throat was killing him. As he scanned the paper and read its list of exotic, Spanish-sounding cities, he realized his throat would kill him. For some reason, unknown, he found he didn’t want to die just then.

  He filled his scrip and showed up at the clinic the next day, waiting forever in a room of sniffling junkies and dead people walking. It felt almost like that day back in Gloucester when he’d tumbled into the new grand scheme. Life had ground his tough, lovely spirit to a nub but not destroyed it. When a tree was chopped down, it sent up saplings.The Langer guilt trip had reached its end. Nothing left there but madness and death.

  The Mailman was on his way up for air.

  The kid was surprised to see him at the clinic, and his face showed it. The Mailman liked that.

  He took out his pad and wrote,“This is not a sane environment.”

  “You’re right. It’s not. What do you have in mind?”

  The Mailman rasped, “Dangiego.”

  The kid smiled. “San Diego. That’s good. You’ll like it there.”

  As it turned out, the kid was right.

  That Was That

  T

  ears welled in Norbert’s eyes when Kelly walked into Sammy’s.

  “I knew it. I just fucking knew it.” He retreated to the cooler and took a calming breath.

  Jarkey stood and stared. He wanted to cry, but something was in the way. He approached his old boss, back from the dead, and launched the sincerest right cross he’d ever attempted in his life, freighted with all the pain and guilt and loss he had in him. Smooth as Ali, feet already perfectly positioned, Kelly jacked his torso out of harm’s way. That was that. Then he moved in. They hugged.

  Jarkey said, “You fucking asshole.”

  Kelly said, “I know, I know.”

  Pepsi had never noticed he was gone, but she was glad to see him now that he was back.

  It was sweet for all of them. DiNoto’s empire had been torn apart by vicious infighting and was eventually taken over by people who had no beef with Mundi, no grudge about the heroin, no problem with Mr. D. being out of the way. Kelly’s friends got their city back.

  For Kelly there was still one nagging thing left to do.The package he’d carried out of Gloria Mundi’s apartment, the letters he’d studied during his quiet hours in Bensonhurst, demanded an answer.

  It took awhile. Phone calls and field trips in the Ford. Jarkey back twice to Genzlinger in the newspaper morgue, so happy to be working again for Kelly that he didn’t even voice his obvious question—Are you out of your fucking mind?

  Finally Kelly had everything lined up the way he wanted it. As far as he was concerned, the timing was perfect. School would be back in session, and Agnes’s classmate and Gloria’s protector—Dr. Ruth Warfel, dean of women at Bryn Mawr College—would be in her office.

  She was tall and angular, wearing a tailored white blouse, gray tweed skirt and matching vest. Kelly sat in an overstuffed armchair on the other side of her desk and looked out the big wi
ndow behind her onto the rolling lawn, where coeds roamed like browsing does. Kelly realized she was staring at him, expecting him to speak.

  He told her that Richard Mundi had hired him because he was worried about the company Gloria was keeping. However, the investigation had taken an unexpected turn. Gloria’s apartment had been vandalized by her enemies and certain letters had come into his possession. These letters confirmed past issues he’d suspected. There were unanswered questions about the manner of Agnes Day’s death. Serious questions.

  She smiled at him, not kindly. “After your initial call I spoke with Gloria. She told me you had performed a valuable, ah, service for her. She urged me to speak with you.”

  Kelly smiled back, looking for the right in. “That was kind of you both. Thank you.”

  This produced a surprising effect. The dean’s smile fell away and she leaned over the desk at him. “I don’t like to be lied to, Mr. Kelly. My call prompted Gloria to look for the letters, and she discovered they’d been stolen. She told me you were the only person with any possible motive for this theft.”

  Kelly kept silent.

  “Think about it, Mr. Kelly. Think how it must have felt to discover that those precious letters, from her dying mother, were gone. Think of the sense of violation.”

  “You’ve got it all wrong, Dean Warfel.”

  “Do I? Who else on the planet would have any interest in Gloria’s relationship with her mother? Certainly not the Mafia.”

  “Listen, I saw the inscriptions in those yearbooks, and I’ve read the letters. I know how close you and Agnes were, and how close you are with Gloria, too.”

  “What of it?”

  “Mundi double-crossed me.Tried to have me killed. I believe it was because of what I learned about Agnes’s death.”

  Her expression tightened. “These are tragic, entirely private family matters, Mr. Kelly.”

  Kelly hesitated, then decided it was time his cards were on the table.“I’m just a guy who stumbled across some unpleasant truths. I think you can tell me what Agnes was talking about when she told you death was pursuing her. It’s all over the letters.”