THAT NIGHT
Bruno is in his early thirties and works as one of the bartenders at Tramonti’s. He’s a former heavyweight contender, in solid shape. He is as good with money as he is with his hands and has invested his ring winnings wisely. A few years back, he took over a deli struggling to meet the rising rent and turned it into a boxing club for the neighborhood kids.
Carl is a few years younger and hasn’t seen the inside of a gym since high school. He is quick to smile, keeps his thick brown hair long, and has a tattoo of a butterfly on each arm. During the day, Carl plays guitar on street corners and parks, taking in as much as twelve dollars. His take-home grows larger once the sun goes down. Carl’s a fence, meaning he moves everything from knockoff designer goods to high-end cars and jewels. When he works on his own, how he goes about his business is none of mine. When he works for me on a case, he wrangles the goods the crew requires in as clean a manner as possible.
I walked over to Pearl and raised my glass to him. “Welcome home,” I said.
He nodded, his eyes welled up with tears. “Never thought I would see a day like this,” he said. “Figured I would live the rest of my life in one rehab facility or another. Here, I feel like I belong. I feel like I can breathe again. For that alone, I’ll never be able to thank you. Never.”
“Don’t thank me yet, partner,” I said, giving him a smile and clinking my glass against his longneck beer. “At least not until you see your rent bill.”
“Any word from the chief?” Carl asked. “Been a couple of months since he tossed us a case.”
“Those Ferragamo shoes not moving as fast as you’d like them to, Carl?” I said. “Or are you just missing the action?”
“Little bit of both,” Carl said. “Besides, fall is just around the corner and singing on street corners in the cold is no fun, let me tell you.”
Alexandra Morrasa walked up behind Pearl and gave him a big hug and a huge smile. “There she is,” Pearl said, resting his beer against the side of his wheelchair and reaching for Alexandra with both hands. “I swear you get more beautiful by the day. You have to tell me your secret.”
“It’s Romanian blood,” Alexandra said. “We never get old and we never forget. Most especially our friends. And, even more so, our enemies.”
“That’s a good way to go through life,” Pearl said. “And it sure as shit makes me glad you sit on our end of the table.”
Alexandra is another member of my little crew of misfits. She has rich curly-brown hair and wears a ring on each finger and a wolf’s head pendant around her neck. She has a psychic parlor in Chelsea and another on the Upper West Side. You more than likely have walked past them and never taken notice. Next time, maybe you should. Those parlors—and Alexandra’s in particular—are the eyes and ears of the city. If something is said that needs to be heard, she’s the first to know about it and pass it our way. Her customers come to her from all walks, some with seven-figure bank accounts, others with wanted posters of their faces pinned to the wall of the nearest post office. It doesn’t matter who it is or what their worries are, Alexandra will tell each one what the future has in store for them. They leave with some peace of mind. She gets to pocket a twenty in return for her words of wisdom.
She also has a platoon of street fighters at her disposal, most of them from Romania, now living in the States, and all lethal in the use of a knife during a tussle. They’re straight out of another century, similar to the River Pirates and the Hudson Dusters crews that roamed the New York waterfront in the late 1800s. They live on the outskirts of the city or in small apartments nestled close to the river’s edge. They make their living off the street and are the most adept pickpockets any street cop could ever confront. They are a secret society living out in the open, impossible to infiltrate and even harder to catch. Their word is sacred, and they always hold up their end of an agreement.
“Never go up against any of those guys with a blade and expect to come out in one piece,” Carmine once told me. “They will cut your tongue out before you can call for help and slice off your fingers before you can reach for a weapon or make a fist. They’re like those ninjas you see in the movies, only faster and deadlier.”
Chris came over and stood next to the group. “You’re all set, Pearl,” he said to him. “And I left the instructions, in case you need them, on your coffee table. But everything should work.”
“What did you two cook up?” I asked.
“All of Pearl’s appliances and equipment are now voice-activated,” Chris said. “Television, stereo, Wi-Fi, phones. Fingers crossed on the microwave, but everything else is working. All Pearl has to do is talk and the system takes care of the rest.”
“Thank you, little man,” Pearl said. “You have more than earned those four Yankee tickets.”
“I can do the same for your stuff if you want,” Chris said to me.
“I’m afraid I’m not as high-tech as my friend Pearl here,” I said, giving Chris a wink and a smile. “Besides, I talk in my sleep, and God only knows what I’ll turn on in the middle of the night.”
I went looking for Connie but stopped short when Pearl wheeled himself next to me. “You got a few minutes for some one-on-one talk?” he asked.
His mood had turned suddenly serious and his upper body seemed to be on edge. “You live here now, Pearl,” I said. “Once the party wraps up, this place will turn as quiet as an empty church and we can talk until the sun comes up. But maybe we should keep our voices down. Wouldn’t want to say anything that might turn on your toaster.”
“I was going to hold off for a few days,” Pearl said. “I know you got your brother’s situation to look into and that’s not going to be a light lift. But some info came my way today that I need to put on the front burner.”
“What’s this about, Pearl?” I asked. I looked around and made sure no one was close enough to overhear.
Pearl took a deep breath and inched his wheelchair closer to my side. “It’s about getting a guy out of prison,” he said. “And in order to do so, we have to be ready to go up against one of the dirtiest and most dangerous cops to ever put on a badge.”
“Eddie Kenwood,” I said, without a second of hesitation.
“Public Enemy number one himself,” Pearl said.