YOUNG LADIES AND OLD LADIES

On Friday I got very nervous.

Thursday night had been bad enough. My first reaction to my wife’s news was to explode, but I caught myself in time. I wanted to tell her to cancel the invitation, but I had absolutely no reason to give her. It was much too far in advance to tell her I didn’t feel like having company that night, and she wouldn’t believe me if I told her that I didn’t like Joe or Cindy Squillante. So I decided to let nature take its course. Perhaps with a little help from me. I knew there was every chance Squillante would not live long enough to share my roast beef.

On Friday morning I picked him up at the funeral home. I parked across the street waiting for him to come out, and as I did I watched a funeral. I never did like watching funerals or going to them.

I wondered what was going on inside, what Sweetlips was telling him. After all, the guy knew Squillante was just not going to show up one day. He didn’t know when, I had no reason to tell him that, just one day there would be no Squillante and maybe a story in the Daily News. Jackie would have to pretend he was upset, but carry on and name a new controller. That’s what he would have to do after. But this was before and I wondered if Jackie was surprised when Squillante showed up in the morning.

And then I thought of the other possibilities. That what they might be talking about in the funeral home was my funeral. Instinctively, I looked in my rear-view mirror. All I saw was a hearse, which did nothing for my confidence. I would have given up the winner in a daily double to know what was going on inside.

When Squillante did come out, about a half-hour late, which bothered me, he got in his car and started driving back up to the Bronx. So far no problems, I’m just laying on his tail and watching him. He stopped at the social club for maybe an hour and played some cards and dicked around. Then he got back in his car and started driving back down toward Manhattan. I can’t figure out where he’s going, so I move in a little closer. This is an interesting new development.

He kept going right into Brooklyn and I cannot figure out where he’s going at this time of day. As we were driving I checked my .38 to make sure it was loaded. Not that I was itchy. Maybe just a little itchy.

Then one of those bad things which sometimes happen happened. We ran into heavy traffic and he made a couple of lights that I caught, and he got waved through an intersection by a cop and I got caught, and before I knew it he was 15 blocks ahead of me and I’m losing him. I could see there was no way I was going to catch him on the avenue, so I figured I would make a right turn, parallel the avenue until I was ahead of him, and then make a left turn and get back on.

I did exactly that. I made my right, went about 30 blocks and then turned left back toward the avenue. The traffic was as heavy as it had been before I turned off—there must have been construction going on or an accident, because there was no reason for this backup as far as I could see—so I figured he had not reached this point yet. I was in the middle of a pretty crowded intersection, one which had rows of stores on both sides of the street, so I pulled over to the curb in a bus stop, to watch the passing traffic until he went by.

By the time I saw him, it was too late.

My timing had been very bad. Somewhere along the line the traffic must have moved because he had beaten me to the intersection and parked his car. He was on foot and crossing the street directly in front of me. I looked right at him and he looked right back at me. At least I thought he looked at me, but he didn’t register any emotion. He just kept right on walking. He was carrying a fur coat in his hand which answered my question about why he had come to Brooklyn. But that thought came later. For the moment I was stunned. I didn’t know if he had seen me or not.

I tried to figure. There were some very interesting, and dangerous possibilities. If Squillante had indeed seen me his first natural reaction should have been to walk over to the car and say hello, how are you, how’s the old lady. The fact that he looked and kept walking meant that either he didn’t see me, maybe the sun was glaring off the windshield or he wasn’t paying attention, or that he did and chose not to acknowledge the fact.

It was the second possibility that bothered me. If he did see me and pretended he didn’t, there were only two possible reasons. One: He made a quick and accurate deduction. He knew I killed people. Maybe he never actually heard of a specific hit, but he knew Now, with what he was doing, the man had to be wary. In fact, one of the things that continued to bother me was his self-confidence. A man doing the things they said he was doing should be nervous. He wasn’t. But if he was guilty, he probably expected to see me, or one of my co-workers, for a long time, and had been ready. So when he saw me parked in Brooklyn he didn’t panic. He knew it was either a coincidence or he was being tailed. But he didn’t panic. Or two: He knew I had been following him, because he was told by Sweetlips. And that this job was slowly being turned around on me. Simply by following Squillante, anyone who wanted to track me could do so. I would have to be on his tail. It was not a pleasant thought.

I turned the engine on and got out of Brooklyn just as fast as my Firestones would carry me. I had planned on stopping by to see this broad I know, but business before pleasure. I wanted to think this thing out. If he didn’t see me I had no problems. If he did see me, and the deal was straight, he was either going to try to bluff it through or make a run for it. If the deal wasn’t straight, he would act as if nothing had happened. I figured the time had come to pay a visit to Jackie Sweetlips at his used-car lot.

The place was on Jerome Avenue and he carried a lot of junk. He did pretty good but he could have done much better if he encouraged business. But what did he need it for? I walked into the small shack that served as his office and started to say hello. Before I got it out of my mouth, we were out of the place and standing in the open air.

“What’samatter?” I asked.

“The walls have ears,” he said. He tried to act casual, but his tongue gave him away. He was not very happy to see me. “How’s it going?”

“So far it’s going,” I said, acting casual and doing a better job of it than him. “Listen, I want to ask you a few questions. Is it possible he knows anything?”

Jackie shook his head. “No way. No way in the world. Number one, if he figured we were on to him the one place he wouldn’t show up is the bank, and he ain’t missed yet. Number two, he’s planning another heist for next week. One of his hoods called me this morning and asked me what to do.”

“And what’s to do?”

“I told him I’d get back to him. I wanted to speak to you first. When do you think Squillante will be grounded?”

I paused. I was the one trying to get information. I didn’t want Jackie to know what my plans were. “Who knows. I’ll know pretty well by Monday.”

He made a minor attempt to apologize for rushing me. “It’s no problem either way. We can set up the heist or tell the punk to put him off another week. No big deal.”

We both knew it was. Eventually Squillante would have to get suspicious if his men keep putting him off. I leaned on a 1963 Chevy that was so covered with dirt and dust some P.R. named “Ricardo” had scrawled his name on the hood. I brushed the dirt off my jacket. “How do you expect to sell cars when they’re so dirty?”

He watched me brush the dirt off. “Send me the cleaning bill.”

“Don’t laugh,” I said, “I will.” Then I decided to ask him about the morning. “Hey, I picked him up at the bank this morning and he was more than a half-hour late leaving. How come?”

“We were putting on a show for him,” Jackie said very matter-of-factly and very believably. “We don’t want any of the controllers to know we grabbed the stick-up boys so every now and then we hold one of them after work and pump them for information. Today was Squillante’s turn.”

“And?”

“He didn’t know a thing.”

“Imagine that,” I answered, trying to make a joke. The story was certainly logical enough. I just didn’t know if it was true or not. I paused for a minute. If I was the center of Sweetlips’s attention I didn’t want him to know that I suspected it. I decided to gamble. “Hey, Jackie, why me?”

“Whattya mean?”

“I mean, you and I don’t get along so good, that’s a known fact. So how come the Fat Man picks me?”

Now it was Jackie’s turn to pause. I watched for the tongue, but it didn’t show. Either he was telling the truth or he had practiced this conversation before. “Don’t ask me,” he answered. “I just follow orders. We had a meeting and Petey suggested you and …”

“What’d you do when Petey said me?”

“I’ll be honest wit’ ya. I didn’t want you. I wanted somebody else. But the Fat Man ain’t got no love for my suggestion. He knows your rep and he didn’t want no foul-ups. So he said it was you. Like I said, I only do what the man tells me.”

“Well, then. How do you feel about it?”

He looked me right in the eye. Then he spit on the ground. It was a very honest answer.

“Glad we’re clear about that,” I said. “Okay, I’ll let you get back to washing these lemons. I’ll see you around.” We both turned and started walking our separate ways, me back to my car and Jackie back into the shack. But there was one more question I wanted to ask him. I knew I wouldn’t be able to depend on the answer, but deep in the back of my mind there was another possibility developing. Maybe there was no plot aimed at me, maybe the whole thing was legitimate. And maybe they simply had the wrong guy. “Hey, Sweetlips.” I stopped him in his tracks. He turned and looked at me. “Are you people sure he’s the right guy?”

He looked disgusted, like he had been through this too many times and now it was beginning to become a pain in his neck. “Ain’t you seen him betting?”

“Not yet,” I lifted my voice across the lot. “Not one goddam time.”

“Don’t worry about it, kid,” he said. “He’s the one. You let us take that responsibility.” He went back inside.

Jackie made me feel no better. I was beginning to realize that I wouldn’t really know for sure what was going on until the final confrontation. If then. I resolved to make sure that I was the one who had all the advantages when it came.

I started to drive back toward Squillante’s place after leaving the lot, but then I decided to leave him alone for a while. I didn’t want to take the chance of having him see me twice in one day, assuming he did see me in Brooklyn. That would have tied it from his point of view. So instead I decided to go see Alice-with-the-big-tits.

Alice lived in the Chelsea section of Manhattan, on West 16th Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues. This was fine because it was far, far away from places where people knew me. I may play around a little, but I don’t want my wife knowing about it no how. My wife has been too good to me to embarrass her by throwing some other broad in her face, so when I do play I do it very quietly and very discreetly.

By this time I had been seeing Alice about five months. Originally I met her through a betting customer of mine. Whenever I saw him, she would be with him. I thought she was a cute kid with an exceptional body. One day I went over to see him and she wasn’t there. Turns out they had broken up a month earlier. “What kind of broad is she?” I asked him.

“She’s a good lady.”

“Gimme her number,” I told him and he did. I gave her a call and we started going out. It was a nice thing. She worked, when she worked, for a temporary agency. And sometimes, when she wasn’t working regularly, I would help her out with a few dollars. It was nice, it was convenient, it was satisfying.

I would see her at least once a week, but rarely more than twice a week. The only rule I made was that I would never see her too often on the same day of the week. You can never tell when somebody is tracking you. I had called her Thursday night and told her I’d be there by 1:30. Because of Squillante it was after 3 P.M. when I arrived.

“You’re late,” she said as I walked in. “I’ve been expecting you for two hours.” She was dressed in a pretty short skirt and a pretty tight sweater. Tight sweaters really did something for her. They also did something for me. She knew her tits were spectacular and did everything she could to emphasize them. As I said, a smart girl. Besides her body, the thing I liked best about her was the fact that she never wore any underwear when I came to visit. Just knowing there was nothing but flesh under that skirt and sweater made my blood boil.

“Business,” I told her and then I grabbed her. She knew that I was in the rackets but she never knew that I used a gun, although I’m sure she liked to imagine that I did, and this turned her on. I wasn’t in any mood for small talk or formalities. I just wanted to fuck. She didn’t care at all. Alice liked sex just as much as I did. She liked to be handled roughly which is why I think she went for me. I was good at that. I never would hurt her—I’ve never hurt a woman in my life—but I’d put on the big tough-guy act and half rip her clothes off.

I spent the whole afternoon fucking Alice and forgetting about Squillante. Both with great success. I wasn’t going home for dinner, so we called Chicken Delight and had them deliver. By the time we got through screwing and eating it was after seven o’clock. I gave her a greasy kiss and went on my way.

I started to drive home and then I changed my mind and turned to go toward a social club to play some cards. Before I went six blocks I changed my mind again and decided to find an empty alley and bowl a few games and think. That decision didn’t last long. I finally decided to drive past Squillante’s place and see if everything looked all right. I wasn’t worried about him seeing me at night. Even with the best lights it’s very difficult to see inside a moving car after dark.

His car was parked outside and everything looked exactly as it should, By that I mean a light was on. I parked in my usual spot, near the lamp post, planning to stay a few minutes just to see if maybe I could catch a lucky break. I’m not sure what I was looking for, some sign, some signal, that he hadn’t noticed me. There was nothing. I sat there about a half-hour and then the front door opened.

Walking right toward me was Mrs. Gibson.

I had no choice but to open my window.

“I saw you pull up and I thought maybe you’d like some coffee.”

“Oh, how nice,” I replied, “but I must be leaving soon. So I can’t come in.”

Her face puckered up. “Oh, no,” she said. “I brought it out for you.” And she held up a thermos jar. Before I could say another word she poured me a cup of coffee. “Do you like cream and sugar?”

I allowed that I did.

She reached into one pocket and pulled out a container of cream. She pulled two sugar cubes out of her other pocket. The woman was a walking supermarket. As she mixed she told me another bit of thrilling news. “I’ve put signs up all over the building for you. If anyone finds the dog I told them to call me.”

I managed to show enthusiasm. “That’s wonderful Mrs. Gibson,” I told her. “How thoughtful of you.” I sat there drinking my coffee talking about Great Danes to this old bat, and thinking about the problem she was causing. For all I knew she could have been the Squillantes’ next door neighbor, maybe even their babysitter. Who knew what she was saying to anybody, how she was describing me, and how often? She certainly could describe me. When she stuck her puss in the car she was no more than six inches away.

And after the hit, would she think to tell the coppers about “that nice Mr. Gold,” who spent hours sitting outside her building, “the same building in which that nice Mr. Squillante used to live?” That could cause me great heartache.

There was nothing I could do about it though, except be nice to the old bat. My business was fulfilling contracts, not blasting little old ladies. I’ve never killed an innocent person in my life. But, and this is an important but, if an innocent person saw me make a hit I’d have to seriously consider it. Thus far it has never happened to me. It has happened to other people though. In one case a hood brought his perfectly pure girlfriend to a “business meeting,” which was actually a setup. They both went. In another recent case out on Long Island this model was called to testify about her boyfriend. They found her floating in Long Island Sound. It happens.

I finished my coffee. “Listen, Mrs. Gibson, I’ve got to get home to my family. The little woman and the little children.” I really poured it on. She loved every minute of it.

Squillante never showed his face.

I went home and spent a very restless night.

Saturday is no different than the rest of the week for a numbers runner. He’s got to be up and at work just as early as the other days to see his people. Bettors don’t know a five-day week and when they want to bet you’d better be around to take their money or they’ll find someone else to give it to. Squillante left his house right on time. I was there waiting for him.

I was ready for him to start making strange turns to see if he was being followed—if that started, I would just drop him for the day. But he gave no indication of being any more worried or nervous than he had been all week. And that was not at all.

It is an interesting thing about being tailed. If you think you are being followed it is very easy to check it out. All you have to do is make four right turns in a row, or go right, left, right, left or some combination with no meaning to it, and if one car keeps following you then you’ve got a partner. But if you don’t know you’re being watched it’s difficult to pick up on it. I’ve been trailed a number of times, and I’ve almost never managed to pick up on it. It almost got me killed a few times.

I was working for Meyer Lansky at the time doing a little of this and a little of that, mostly being a bodyguard. Some people wanted to get rid of him and tried to get me to go along. When I refused they decided to eliminate me. Normally I’m not a nervous person, but I do look, I do check, whenever I get that itchy feeling. I had it this time but it did me no good, I couldn’t pick them out. I never had the slightest idea they were on me.

They picked the perfect location. I had a heavy coat on and was walking out of the bank after picking up a payroll for Meyer. There were 9000 people standing around who started to panic when they saw guns, and I wasn’t ready for my friends. They also did it in the middle of the rush hour when no cop in the world could get through the traffic.

They air-conditioned my body a bit, but they didn’t kill me. I killed two of them in the attempt, and Meyer sent me to Brazil to recover.

I was also followed in Reno, Nevada, when my first wife was killed. These three guys could have killed me easily, but instead they tried to break my head open with a lead pipe. They put me in a hospital 15 months, but they didn’t kill me. Again, I didn’t have the slightest idea I was being tailed.

One time I did realize I had company was when a couple of amateurs tried to make some extra cash. My old lady and I went to the theater and dinner in Manhattan. I had parked the car on 48th Street between Ninth and Tenth because I wasn’t going to spend five dollars to put it in a lot for a few hours. We were walking toward the car and I looked behind me, I always look over my shoulder when I walk down dark streets, and this time there were two niggers walking slowly behind us. Oh, can you imagine that, I said to myself. I just knew they were going to try to rip me off, there was absolutely no doubt about that in my mind.

“Just keep walking,” I told my wife, “and don’t say a word.” She did just exactly like I said. I had my piece on me and I pulled it out and covered it with my hand. I let my wife move ahead and about 30 yards from the car these guys started running and caught up to me. I turned around and one of them has a long, thin blade out. “Gimme your money, man,” he ordered.

I laughed right in his face. “How do you want it, man,” I said, imitating the way he said “man.” I showed them the piece. “In the head or in the belly?” I put the duo against a building and proceeded to rob them. One of them had $250 and the other had $300. The first one had a nice diamond ring, the other a beautiful gold bracelet made of $20 gold pieces. These gentlemen had obviously been very successful in their previous endeavors. I took it all.

The guy who had the knife finally complained. “Hey, man, what you rippin’ us off for? We work the same side of the street.”

“No way fuckface,” I told him, “no way.” I told them to walk the other way and when they reached the end of the street I got in my car and drove away. I handed my wife most of the money. “Here honey,” I told her, “you just got yourself a surprise present for doing just like I told you to.”

So I’ve picked up maybe one tail out of three at least, which means I’m hitting .333, though I admit my one hit was off amateur pitching. Squillante’s average was either .1000 or .000. I would not know for a while yet.

He spent Saturday acting like he didn’t have a care in the world. My only question was whether it was just an act. I didn’t believe he could possibly be that stupid, intentionally. He had to be worried and he wasn’t. So I worried for him.

He went where he was supposed to. He went to the projects, the street corners, the cab garages. He met all the people he was supposed to meet and made all his pickups. He went to the bank and dropped off his proceeds. He made his last few pickups and returned to the bank. And then, his day’s work done, he went directly to his girlfriend’s for an afternoon’s entertainment. I settled down for a long winter’s stay. It could have been worse, there were some very decent college football games on the radio and I didn’t have to listen to no music at all.

One of the things I do when I’m sitting and waiting is time the police patrols, particularly if the area is a potential hit spot. Sometimes they’re irregular and you can’t get any schedule. That alone can make a location doubtful. The one thing you don’t want is a patrol car riding in on you when you’re sitting there with a loaded gun waiting for the intended.

The Randall Avenue project had a few things to recommend it, but it was not a first choice. I figured though, as long as I was sitting there, I might as well get a line on the cops. The first car came by 20 minutes after I parked. This gave me a starting place. The same car reappeared 45 minutes later, and 45 minutes or so after that. Meanwhile, Squillante was still inside, pumping away at his Puerto Rican piece. Or so I assumed.

I really couldn’t figure why Squillante would waste his time with some spic when he had a broad like Cindy waiting for him at home. If I had a broad like that, I started thinking, and then figured why not? As soon as Squillante was dead and in the ground, I’d give her a call as any old and dear friend would, and maybe I would get her away for a few hours to help her forget, and then maybe I’d take her home and ball the daylights out of her.

Somebody was going to. She was young, pretty and very sexy. She wasn’t going to become a nun. Somebody was going to get in her pants. Why not me? I seriously thought about it sitting there. I could almost see me and her sprawled across her bed, her nice, thin legs up in the air as I pumped away at her.

So, I thought, let Joseph Squillante have his Puerto Rican senorita. What I had waiting for me was a lot better. And to get at it, all I had to do was bury Squillante, my job.

I caught myself right there. When you start thinking like that, you get careless. Killing is not a crime of passion, it’s a job. When you do it for love you get caught. I did it for money. And I didn’t want to get the two mixed up.

Maybe, I thought, after he’s been dead a few months. Maybe.

When the time came for the police car to come around again I got out of my car and walked down the block. I didn’t know if they had noticed me or not, but I figured what the hell, I needed the air anyway. And I didn’t need them checking to see what I was doing sitting there for three hours.

That walk proved to be a mistake on my part. In the few seconds it took me to get out of my car and walk down the block I missed Squillante’s exit. Either that or he walked out the back door, or I missed him when I was thinking about balling his wife. I didn’t know. In fact, I didn’t know he left. After the patrol car came and went I resumed waiting in my car. Nothing happened for another 45 minutes, and again I took my walk. It’s possible Squillante left at this point, I will never really know. By the time another three-quarters of an hour passed it was dark enough for me to stay in my car and not worry about patrols. Besides, I knew that they must have changed shifts somewhere along the line and two new patrolmen were riding the area.

In all I waited about six hours and nothing happened. Then the front door of the building opened and this good-looking chick walked out. I had never seen Squillante’s broad before but I had a very bad feeling this was her. She looked exactly like the girlfriend described in Jackie’s letter: small, long hair (the information sheet said it was reddish but I couldn’t tell in the light), great figure and, this was the clincher, this broad was wearing the coat I saw Squillante carrying in Brooklyn. The coat was the thing that caught my attention. It was too good for any dame living in this particular project.

I was stunned. If Squillante was gone the only conclusion I could reach was that he was onto me. I turned my engine on and drove around the corner to check his car. Normally I never watch an individual’s car, I watch the individual. One of the things I learned early in this business is that you never track a person by watching his transportation because he is liable to use several different kinds, particularly if he suspects he is being followed. It is an old law the army taught me: Never make an assumption. Deal with facts. With known things. In this case though I had to throw that law out: His car was gone. I made an assumption and it was very, very bad.

If he had skipped, no physical harm would come to me. Nobody is going to kill me if I blow the job and the man submerges. But it isn’t going to help my reputation and I’m not going to be working too often for a while.

I couldn’t spend time debating the facts. I had to move. I knew he was gone. What I didn’t know was if he had given me the slip intentionally or if I had just missed him one time when I turned my head or walked down the block. If he had given me the slip intentionally that meant he knew somebody was on his ass. I had to find out in a hurry.

I drove my car around the block just in time to see this broad getting into a taxi. If he had given me the slip she was being awfully stupid by leaving the apartment. If I hadn’t seen her I would have simply figured he was still up there doing whatever. I had a quick decision to make: Should I follow the cab or go to the one place I was usually pretty sure of picking him up at, his home? I started to follow the cab. If it had gone downtown, toward the airports, I would have followed it all the way. Instead she headed toward Westchester. I decided to take a gamble and I started driving like a madman toward Pelham Bay.

Every single person in the entire world has at least one place where they invariably show up. Everyone. Once, for example, I was looking for a guy and the only place I knew for sure I could find him was at the race track. The animals were running at Saratoga, but that’s a goodly trip from New York City. I didn’t think he would make the trek so, if he was going to the flats, he had to go to Monmouth Park. I went to Monmouth Park every day for 12 consecutive days to look for this guy and, sure as shit, on the 12th day this guy comes along. It cost me some money, as long as I was at the track I figured I might as well make a bet or two, but I found him.

In Squillante’s case there were a number of places I could depend on finding him: his home, the numbers bank, his girlfriend’s. I knew he wasn’t at his girlfriend’s. There was just no reason in the world he would go to the bank at this hour. That left his home.

He wasn’t there. No car. Lights on in the living room. I drove around the block three or four times looking for his transportation. It just wasn’t there. I was trying hard to relax but there was sweat on my face. Usually I can handle anything that comes along, but I don’t make that many mistakes so I can get used to it. When I blow one it eats me up inside.

I tried to put myself in his place. If someone were after me, where would I run? Where would I hide? Car? Plane? Train? Maybe even a Greyhound? There were just too many options. The first thing I decided to do was call Sweetlips and have him put out the word that anyone seeing Squillante should contact him immediately. It was something I hated to do because it was an admission of failure, and I’m not good at admitting that, but it was something I had to do because I couldn’t let him get too big a head start.

I started driving down the block toward a shopping center where I figured I could find a phone. And then I saw this beautiful sight. Joseph Squillante driving down the street from the opposite direction.

As he drove by I turned my head away and kept going straight. I made the first turn I could and zoomed back toward his place. I got there just in time to see him climbing out of his car with all sorts of packages. That son of a bitch had been shopping! I could have kissed him. He picked up his packages and walked inside. He didn’t even look around. I’m clean, I thought, I’m clean.

I went right straight home and had a big, relaxing, restful, delicious dinner, prepared by my charming wife.

And I never even knew I had been tailed from the moment I left Randall Avenue.