The day had not started well for Bobby Blue Eyes. He had about four million things that needed to get done and instead he found himself sitting in a headmaster’s office listening to this guy blabbing about the many benefits of Manhattan Poly’s enrichment program. Yeah, Bobby thought, and I bet I know who gets the main benefit. You get my $15,000 to teach a ten-year-old which fork to use on the salad. Personally he thought the whole thing was ridiculous. They were going to be studying the same gravity he’d studied back at St. Margaret’s, and no matter how much tuition you paid, what went up still came right down. Enrichment program? Enpoorment program was more like it. As far as he was concerned, it was just more of that liberal bullshit.
But there he was, sitting quietly and looking happy about paying $15,000 tuition. He was there because Ronnie insisted he be there. She made very few demands on him, but about this she was adamant: Whatever it cost, Angela was going to get the best possible education. That was the price of peace in his home and he knew he had to pay it.
He didn’t like being judged, though, and that was exactly what it felt like this headmaster was doing. “We’re a national product transportation company,” he’d explained when asked about his job as the vice president of A&I Trucking, adding, “I think it’s fair to say that we’re well known all over the country for moving hazardous materials.” That statement was totally accurate, if perhaps a bit short on the details. A&I was known by prosecutors in eight states primarily for moving steel drums containing chemical waste products into toxic dumps.
Mostly they discussed Angela, who was sitting between Bobby and Ronnie chewing on a straw. While her grades in her previous school, St. Mary’s of Brooklyn, were slightly below average, when Bobby casually mentioned a few of the right names and promised they would call him directly, the headmaster complimented Angela’s consistency. As the meeting ended, the headmaster explained that while he couldn’t make any promises, pointing out that there were a limited number of places available for new students, Angela would receive every possible consideration.
As they drove home, Bobby asked Ronnie, “You want her going there?” She did, she said. “Okay, then. She’s in. Case closed.”
“Yeah, right, Mr. Magician,” she said sarcastically. “Like you know.”
Bobby shrugged a “what do you want from me?” shrug. It was a pretty amazing thing: Fourteen years they’d been together and Ronnie still did not fully appreciate the power generated by the organized crime families of New York City. Bobby didn’t care, let her be in the dark. But the fact was that nothing that happened in the city was beyond the reach of the families. Nothing. Unions, cops, politicians, tables at exclusive restaurants, publishing, admission to exclusive schools, tickets for anything from Broadway to Yankee Stadium, all of them were for sale. The city worked because the people whose responsibility it was to make it work understood this and made the proper accommodations. Bobby didn’t fool himself into believing that he himself had the power to get Angela into Manhattan Poly—that important he wasn’t—but as a respected individual he could ask that the necessary telephone calls be made and they would be made.
He put Ronnie and Angela in a cab and headed out to Queens to pay his respects to Skinny Al’s family. Franzone had asked him to represent the crew at the funeral. Franzone had also sent enough flowers to bury a battalion. This was still pretty early in the day for Bobby; in his life mornings generally weren’t considered prime time. As Little Eddie once explained to him, “Late nights and mornings go together like homos and hookers.”
Bobby was through the Midtown Tunnel and on the Expressway before he picked up the tail. What surprised him was not that he was being followed, but rather that whoever it was, was driving a great car. Usually the feds drove “vehicles,” boring boxes on wheels with all the excitement of a dark green Dodge sedan. But this tail was driving a charcoal-gray Firebird. That was a really nice car, really nice. Bobby’d looked at buying one himself when they introduced the sloping nose design in 1983, but the elegant design just made it too easy to pick out of a getaway race. He was actually angry with himself that he hadn’t spotted the tail sooner, as he made it a habit to regularly check his mirrors. He didn’t know when they’d got on his ass; he guessed it had to be when he dropped off the wife and kid at the house, but there was no question they were there. He sped up, slowed down, changed lanes, played ticky-tack with his signals, but no matter what he did, they stayed comfortably in their slot, three cars back and—when possible—one lane to the right.
Bobby waited until the last possible minute, then sliced through two lanes to get over to the Van Wyck ramp. The Firebird stayed with him. Jerks. One thing for sure, they weren’t trying to hide their presence. It took him a little while to figure out the ploy: Only after they’d followed him through several turns did he realize that the Firebird was the decoy. He was supposed to spot it. A third car, the traditional dark sedan, was trailing the Firebird. That was the real tail he was dragging along. It’s a fucking wagon train, he thought. After the Firebird dropped back, the dark sedan would take its position. That was supposed to fool him? That was a pretty funny idea. Two cars, that definitely appealed to his ego: He was so important that they assigned two cars—actually a car and a “vehicle”—to track him to a funeral.
Bobby had been tailed several times previously. He’d play the game depending on how he felt at that moment. Sometimes he tried to lose them, sometimes he’d let them come along for the ride. It didn’t seem to make any difference in the outcome. He figured they did it because that’s the way they had always done it. It was like moving clockwise in Monopoly: It didn’t actually make any difference which way you moved around the board, but the rules of the game had to be respected and followed. But these people tailing him were an embarrassment to the whole cops. They didn’t even have enough respect for the rules to pretend they weren’t following him.
Actually it was a pretty funny thing. The funeral was being held at the Linden Brothers Funeral Home off Grand Avenue. Bobby had been to Maspeth maybe five times in his entire life and didn’t really know his way around there. He knew the funeral parlor was off 62nd Street and figured he could find it. How hard could it be? He found 54th Street and turned right, watching the street numbers get higher. Unfortunately he turned left on 62nd Road by mistake. He figured the sign was making the mistake. How could they be stupid enough to have a street and a road with the same number that weren’t the same one? But they did. He tried to correct his mistake by doubling back and he got lost. And then he got angry because he was lost, so he drove faster, which caused him to get even more lost. He started cursing the bastard cafone who figured out they should name the street and the road the same number just to confuse people. Within a few minutes he was completely lost in Queens, mad at everybody.
And the two cars tailing him followed as he made every single wrong turn. He kept going. They kept going. There was no way he was going to stop and ask for directions. He never asked for directions. He wasn’t an ask-for-directions kind of guy. He could find his own way. He didn’t care how long it took—Skinny Al could be Skeleton Al by the time he found it, but he would find it.
Suddenly the dark sedan sped up, passed the Firebird, and, finally, passed Bobby. He didn’t get a clean look at who was driving, he just saw two people in the front. The sedan cut into his lane about thirty feet in front of him. The driver slowed down and put on his blinker. Bobby figured out what they were doing and smiled. Then he put on his blinker. Then the Firebird put on its blinker. Obviously the FBI knew where he was heading. That was not much of a surprise—where else would he be going at eleven o’clock on a Thursday morning? More important at that particular moment, they knew how to get there.
The sedan led them right to the Linden Brothers. When they got there, the driver of the sedan parked at a hydrant directly across the street from the funeral parlor. Bobby pulled into the parking lot, which was filling up fast. The Firebird followed him but parked in the back of the lot. Bobby watched as two men, both neatly dressed in tailored dark suits, got out of the car and went inside. The driver was tall and dark, well tanned; his passenger was considerably smaller, with very short blond hair and extremely broad shoulders. Who the fuck are those guys? he wondered.
The Linden Brothers was crowded. As Bobby walked in, he respectfully took off his white hat. There were two funerals, but only a few elderly people were there for the Schwartz service. The second chapel was packed for Skinny Al.
A mob funeral is a social occasion at which at least some business is conducted. There are rules to be followed. Certain people are required to be present, among them his boss, members of his crew, his family and friends. As Skinny Al wasn’t a boss, Henry Franzone was not required to be there. While Bobby didn’t fit into any of those categories—he wasn’t with Cosentino and wasn’t friends with the victim—he was welcomed as the official representative of Franzone’s crew. An ambassador of respect.
Two large men wearing sunglasses flanked the entrance to the chapel. Bobby recognized one of them as Jackie Fats, whom he’d known casually for maybe ten years. Fats was bouncing up and down nervously. Bobby walked over and shook his hand. “Jackie,” he said.
“Good to see youse,” Fats responded. “Go ’head in.”
The room was buzzing. Men were gathered in small groups at the back of the chapel. A closed mahogany coffin covered with flowers stood on two trestles at the front of the room. Bobby went forward, bowed, and paid his respects, then joined the mourners in the back of the room.
Bobby looked around, spotting several familiar faces. He saw Cosentino in the middle of the side aisle and started walking toward him. This was protocol; he would convey the deep sympathy of Henry Franzone and his people at the untimely death of Al D’Angelo. But as he got closer, he saw that Cosentino was talking to two men—the two men from the Firebird. Cosentino was facing the rear doors, looking toward Bobby, so their backs were to him. But their suits were unmistakable. Whoever those guys are, Bobby decided, definitely they’re not FBI. Another guy, a soldier Bobby had met a couple of times named Jimmy or Johnny something, was watching over the group. Bobby stopped, waiting for permission from him to proceed. He was standing only a few feet away from them, close enough to overhear bits and pieces of conversation. So he didn’t even have to strain to hear their heavy Russian accents.
He looked down and cleared his throat, trying to hide his surprise. Russian? Bobby didn’t know Russian, but he’d seen enough movies and watched enough television to recognize the accent. Whatever was going on, it was now officially crazy. Why were there Russians at Skinny Al’s funeral? And why were those Russians following him? He kept his eyes averted, not wanting Cosentino to think he was listening to a private conversation.
After standing there for several minutes he was beginning to feel uncomfortably exposed and maybe just a little bit insulted when Cosentino and the two Russians laughed loudly and shook hands. The Russians turned and started walking right toward him. As they passed him, one of them, the stocky guy with a blond buzz cut and a pockmarked face, glanced at him and immediately looked away. It happened much too quickly for Bobby to even guess whether or not the guy had recognized him. As he turned to take another look at the Russians, he heard a deep voice commanding, “Mr. Cosentino is ready for ya.”
Bobby pasted on a disarming smile and moved forward. As he did, Jimmy or Johnny whispered something in Cosentino’s ear, probably Bobby’s pedigree. Cosentino grasped Bobby’s hand firmly and accepted his condolences and, still holding Bobby’s hand, pulled him closer. “How’s it going?” he whispered. “That thing you’re doing?”
“It’s okay,” Bobby told him. “We got some interest.”
“That’s good. But see, don’t take too long. This thing, it’s gotta be done by next Thursday night. You unnerstand what I mean, right? It’s gotta be done by then.”
“I understand, Mr. Cosentino,” Bobby said.
Cosentino released Bobby’s hand and took a step backward. “Maybe you need some more help, huh?”
“No, we’re doing okay,” he said. Thursday? That was a week, not a lot of time. But for some reason next Thursday was a big day.
“That’s good, that’s good,” Cosentino said, tapping him lightly on the cheek to indicate their brief conversation was finished.
Bobby sat through the service. According to the priest, Skinny Al was a pillar of respectability. He gave to the church, he was nice to his friends, and he worked hard to earn a living for his family. It was a speech long on platitudes, short on details. Skinny Al’s brother, a civilian, gave a nice little talk, telling a funny story about the Thanksgiving when Skinny Al almost choked to death. Al was so big, the brother explained, that no one could get their arms far enough around him to give him the Heimlich, so instead, they punched him in the solar plexus, dislodging a chunk of bread. By the time he was finished speaking, he was laughing so hard at the memory that tears were rolling down his face. Bobby noticed the Russians leaving early, but at least 150 other people stayed. It was not the kind of room in which you spent a lot of time looking around, but the day did have the feeling of a team reunion to it. People in this business may not become close friends, but through the years they do business with a lot of different people.
As the service droned on—several cousins felt it was necessary to tell not-so-funny Skinny Al stories—Bobby sat there trying to figure out what the hell was going on: With all the heavyweights in this room why did Cosentino farm out the work to another crew? What was going on that he didn’t want his own people involved? Why were those Russians following him? And why did they make themselves so visible at Skinny Al’s funeral? Things like that didn’t just happen. Their showing up at the funeral had a motive and had to have been approved by Cosentino himself. And where did the FBI fit into the whole thing?
Like theme music running softly in the background of a movie, the reality against which everything in the world of organized crime takes place is the possibility of sudden death. Just like what happened to Skinny Al, although based on the damage done, it had to be semisudden. It’s always there, always bubbling just below the events of the day. So Bobby carefully measured all of these questions to determine if they added up to some type of threat against him.
It didn’t seem like it. If somebody wanted to whack him, they would try to get permission to whack him, and if they did, then they would whack him. It wasn’t any more complicated than that. There was no reason to go through all these shenanigans. But as he reviewed the last six months of his life, the last year even, he couldn’t think of a single thing he’d done—to anybody—that would put his life in jeopardy.
In fact, it was pretty much a time of peace in the mob. There were always certain beefs, there were always some people ready to complain that they weren’t being treated fairly, there were always disputes about territory or splits, that was the natural order of things. But overall the families were doing well; business was good, people were earning, and nobody more than necessary was getting hurt. Even the recent recession that the whole country had stumbled through hadn’t put a dent in business. People always want to gamble. They always want girls. They always want bargains. They want to drink, they want drugs, they want what they want when they want it. And when the national economy is bad, people always need to borrow money. It was simple economics: demand and supply. What the people demanded the mob supplied.
As Bobby walked out of Linden Brothers, he noticed that the dark sedan was still parked across the street. By this time several other nondescript sedans were also parked there. Law enforcement always turns out for a mob funeral. As Bobby walked toward his car, he put on his sunglasses—then suddenly changed direction and walked directly across the street to the dark sedan. Even from a distance he could see two men sitting in the front seat. One of them was black, which was still somewhat of a novelty in this part of the crime world. Hey, Bobby thought, it’s pin-the-tail-on-the-honky time, and laughed to himself.
Both men were wearing reflective sunglasses. FBI putzes, Bobby thought. As he got within a couple of feet, the driver kicked over the engine, enabling the black guy in the passenger seat to roll down his window. He and Bobby locked sunglasses. Bobby wasn’t shy. Leaning into the car, he casually rested an arm on the window frame. Smiling confidently, he said, “Hey, thanks a lot, guys. I’d hate to have them bury him without me.”
The driver leaned forward so Bobby could see him. “Professional courtesy, Bobby,” he said,
“Listen, I’m heading downtown. Any chance you guys could pick up some doughnuts on the way and meet me there?”
“Gee, sorry,” the passenger said, “but after this you’re on your own. You know, sometimes they give us important work to do.”
Bobby banged his fist on the window frame. “Good for you. I like to see guys get ahead.” He stood up. “See you tomorrow?”
“We never know, Bobby, we never know.”
When Bobby drove out of the parking lot, they followed him to the first traffic light and, as promised, dropped him.
Canal Street was backed up for blocks. Caught in the gridlocked traffic, Bobby was fuming. Now, this really is a fucking crime, he thought. Where the fuck are the cops when you really need them? Fucking Ed Koch. You want to help people? It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that you got to put cops at the major intersections and make them give out tickets to those bastards who block them.
It took him forty minutes to go four blocks. He double-parked in front of a double-parked truck, put his PBA card in the windshield, and left his blinkers on. He was only going to be a few minutes. Three Guys Plumbing Supply was crowded, at least ten men standing in front of the counter talking pipes. Bobby walked right past them, right into the back room. As he did, a small black guy was coming out carrying a clipboard under his arm. The guy looked familiar, and his nose was bandaged pretty good, but Bobby couldn’t place him.
“Jesus fucking Christ, Tommy,” Bobby said loudly as he walked into the office, “why don’t you clean this fucking place up?”
“Hey, big guy,” So Solly Tommy said, genuinely happy to see him. “Now my fucking life is complete.” The top of his desk was buried under layers of paperwork. Tommy got up and came around the desk to greet Bobby. He gave him a big hug. “What’s a matter with you? You don’t like my filing system?”
Bobby shook his head. “How do you keep track of shit? Boy, I don’t get it.”
Tommy tapped the side of his head with his forefinger. “It’s all up here. You heard of Einstein, right? I’m a fucking Crimestein.” They both laughed easily. The two men had been doing business for twenty years, since Bobby was a crazy teenager, without a bad word ever passing between them. Tommy had fenced the first heist Bobby had ever planned, two dozen new tires taken from a gas station near the Lincoln Tunnel. He indicated the chair in front of his desk. “Sit. Sit. You want a cup?”
Two sugars, Bobby told him.
“Carol,” Tommy yelled, “get in here.”
“What do you want from me?” Carol shouted right back at him. She was an attractive middle-aged woman who was wearing a tight black skirt, a white blouse that hugged her chest—the top two buttons were open—and a big, brassy smile. With the right casting director she could have easily played a moll.
Tommy gave her the order for coffee and Danish, and after she had gone, he turned back to Bobby. “So what do you got for me?”
“You ever heard about Cabbage Patch dolls?”
“Fuck, yeah. You kidding me? Those things are tougher to get than pussy in the Vatican. Why? You got some?” Bobby smiled broadly. “No shit,” Solly Tommy said happily. “You fucking prick. Those things are fucking gold mines. You got the real thing or the fugazis?”
“Hey, Tommy, please. What do I look like to you?”
“It don’t matter to me, kid. As far as I’m concerned, a fucking doll is a fucking doll. But some of the crapola, they stuffed them with kerosene rags. Those fucking dolls are more dangerous than you are. So now the cops are going around collecting them.”
“Fugetaboutit, Tommy, this is primo shit.” Actually Bobby had no idea if these dolls were real or counterfeit. But he had nothing to lose by taking a shot. Tommy was nobody’s fool. He could take care of himself. If he got jammed up, Bobby would settle with him. No problem.
“Whatever you got I’ll take.” They negotiated a fair price and made arrangements for delivery. It had been a while since they’d seen each other, so they spent some coffee time catching up, then, as Bobby was getting ready to leave, Tommy asked him, “So, Bobby, answer me this. Think any of your guys want some VCRs? I got this whole fucking truckload come in last night . . .”
“Holy fucking shit,” Bobby said, remembering suddenly where he had seen that little black fuck with the clipboard. He started to run outside but knew it was much too late to catch him. The driver was long gone. “That guy . . .” He was so angry he couldn’t even get the words out. “That little fucking guy with the clipboard?” He pointed outside. “That’s the fucking guy who ripped us off the other night.”
It was obvious from Tommy’s reaction that he knew nothing about it. “Whattya talking about? That little guy? No fucking way. He was scared shitless doing business with me.”
“I don’t fucking believe it. That no-good little fucker.” Bobby told Tommy the whole story—admittedly with some appreciation for the little guy’s huge gonads. “Fucking guy ripped us off before we could heist the load. I mean, what kind of bullshit is that?” Both men were laughing by the time Bobby finished telling the story. “When I tell this to Lenny, there’s no way he’s gonna believe it. I swear to God, what he’s gonna do to him you wouldn’t wish on your first wife’s divorce lawyer. You got his name, right?”
“Course.” The deal had been concluded no more than an hour earlier, yet in one of those mysteries of life the paperwork had already been buried on Tommy’s desk. He searched through the pile until he found it. “Here. Here it is.” He handed Bobby a Xerox copy of a standard business form. It included the man’s name and address. All the blanks had been filled in. And at the bottom of the form Tommy had made a copy of the guy’s driver’s license.
“Fucking guy,” Bobby said, laughing at the audacity of Mr. Benjamin Franklin Washington.
In Tommy’s business, identities were flexible. Nobody did much checking; all people cared about was the merchandise. Either you came recommended by a good person or you bought pipes at the front counter. Either you had the goods or you didn’t. Nobody ever got a dime from Tommy based on his name. Naturally Tommy had paid him in cash. The merchandise was good, it had all been checked. The guy had come to Tommy from a guy who knew a guy. Tommy agreed to make the phone calls but didn’t offer much hope in finding him. There wasn’t too much that could be done—and it was highly unlikely that, after seeing Bobby walking in, the driver would ever again avail himself of Tommy’s services.
Bobby was laughing all the way back to the social club. Tommy had promised to spread the word, and Bobby had no doubt that if the guy stayed around New York, eventually they would catch up with him. He’d have to tell the story to Fast Lenny, which would definitely piss Lenny off even more, but he thought he’d better forget to mention the fact that he’d walked right by the guy and hadn’t recognized him.
Mickey Fists was holding court when Bobby got there. “Hey, Bobby,” Mickey greeted him, “I got a good one for you. How do you make a hormone?”
There were four men at the table, all looking at him expectantly. He knew he couldn’t let them down. So as he turned up the volume on the radio, he shook his head. “I don’t know, Mick. How do you make a hormone?”
“You don’t pay her the two hundred bucks you owe her!”
Everybody laughed, even Bobby, who’d heard the joke two hundred times. Actually it was a lot better than most of Mickey’s jokes. The kid, Vito V, handed him a message. Normally a person in Duke’s position would be the one to take messages, but his condition made that impossible. So that job fell to the youngest person in the club. “Mrs. Grada-insky called you,” he said. “She wants you to call her soon as possible.”
Ah shit, Bobby thought, just when I was sitting down to get comfortable. There was no possible way he would use the telephone in the club, might as well use a party line. He got up, waved off the Duke, who was carrying a hot cuppa toward him, and went to return the call.
He walked across Canal Street into Chinatown and found one of those cute little pagoda phone booths. The cops couldn’t tap every pay phone in New York, and this one was far enough outside Little Italy to have a reasonably good chance of being secure.
Grace Gradinsky answered on the third ring. “You called me,” he said, seeing no reason to identify himself. “What’s going on?”
“They found him,” she said.
A chill ran through Bobby’s body. “Dead or alive?” was the right question, but he didn’t know how to ask it. He settled for “Who found him?”
She corrected herself. “I mean, they didn’t exactly find him. They just found out he’s okay. He used a credit card the other night to get some cash. He does that sometimes. I didn’t tell them that, though.” There was a sense of urgency in her voice as she gave him the details precisely as she’d gotten them from James Slattery. “So,” she asked when she finished, “what does that mean?”
“It means what it means. What else could it mean?” Naturally she agreed. Bobby told her he’d go to the restaurant and speak to the people. See if anybody had any information. But given his wide knowledge concerning the fraudulent use of credit cards, he wasn’t particularly optimistic. “Don’t go getting your hopes up,” he warned her. “The feds were probably there already. They’re pretty good. So if there was anything worth knowing about, they probably found it out already.”
By the time he got back to the social club, the group at the card table was in the middle of a somewhat heated discussion about sports. Georgie One-Time had insisted that the easiest sport to fix, with the obvious exceptions of boxing and horse racing, was football. The real beauty of fixing a football game, he pointed out, was that you didn’t need to change the outcome of the game—the winning team could still win—just the point spread. “All you need’s one official. He throws two flags at the right time, fugetaboutit. It’s over. All she wrote.”
Vito V was adamant that baseball was the easiest game to fix. “You just gotta buy the home plate umpire.” The kid’s real name was Vito Valentine, which he had changed from Valentino. When Fast Lenny wondered how Vito V could get to an umpire, the kid told him, “It’s not that hard. Umpires got human foibles too, you know.”
The table was completely silent for several seconds, and then Georgie started laughing. “What are you, shitting me? That’s fucking bullshit. I been a baseball fan my whole life and I never heard of an umpire getting a fur ball.”
Vito was smart enough to understand how careful he had to be with his response. He was not in a position to make fun of a wiseguy. “Oh man, I’m sorry. See, that’s not . . . Like what I meant to say was . . .” and this time he pronounced it very distinctly—“foible. You know, like a weakness. Like he likes women. Not fur ball.”
Georgie glared at him. “Then learn to speak fucking English, why don’t you?” Georgie laughed again. “Fucking guy thinks umpires get fur balls.”
“Hey, Vito,” Mickey Fists asked, “I don’t get one thing. Why’s it a weakness to like women? You saying it’s strong to like men?”
Mickey had him there, everybody knew that. “No,” the kid explained. “See, what I mean is if the umpire likes the broads, you can get to him that way. A broad and a camera, that’s a combination that can get a guy rich.”
Bobby turned up the volume on the radio and joined the card players. As he sat down, Silent Sammy Mastrianno asked his opinion. “Fuck,” Bobby shrugged, “how the hell do I know? Guarantee you I know who loses, though. The guy who collects on the bet if the thing ever gets known.”
In reality, fixing a team sport is probably not that difficult to do. All you have to get is a couple of key players or officials. Vito V was absolutely right: Everybody does have a foible, and usually they’re not that difficult to find. Or satisfy. Think umpires don’t gamble? Think they don’t play cards for high stakes during the World Series, for example? Think football officials don’t like the ladies? But the actual fixing might well be the easiest part. To make it worthwhile, you need to lay down a lot of money, and you can’t bet a large sum on an unimportant game without somebody noticing. So it has to be a big game, the play-offs or World Series, the Super Bowl, meaning it gets a lot of attention. But in this world winning is only the beginning. You got to live to spend it. Bobby was absolutely right. If the bookies find out somebody is stealing their money, they will go after him. And they’ll keep going after him until that debt is settled. That really is the primary reason most games are legitimate.
“Any you guys ever do business with the Russkies?” Bobby asked. Fast Eddie looked at him curiously but didn’t say anything.
Nobody leaped to answer. Finally Fast Lenny said, examining his palm, “Yeah, I did a couple things with a Russian. He was all right, you know. Smart. Why, whattya need?”
Bobby banged his foot on the floor three times to get the Duke’s attention. The Duke felt the vibration and turned around. Gimme one, Bobby signaled. “Nothing big,” he told Lenny. “It’s just that missing teacher thing Henry’s got me working. You know, I figure Russky teacher, I should talk to the Russkies. So I thought if you got a name, maybe I could ask him some questions.”
Fast Lenny took a few seconds to calculate the various ways he could profit by making this introduction. But without knowing specifically what Bobby had in mind there was no way to solve that equation. He was safe, though. Bobby was a player, and if things worked out, he would take care of Lenny. “I don’t know. Lemme put the word out for you. See what happens. How soon?”
The much sooner, the much better, Bobby told him. Then he took a deep breath and suddenly remembered. “Hey, Lenny. You’re not gonna believe who I almost ran into this afternoon.” As Bobby suspected, Lenny couldn’t guess—but hearing how close Bobby had been to grabbing the bastard got his boiler started once again. He went through the whole story, explaining in great detail what he was going to do to the little fuck when he caught up with him.
The rest of the afternoon went pretty quickly for Bobby. After leaving the club he went directly to Pam’s apartment. Whatever else was going on in his world, Pam made him feel good about himself. Sometimes he thought she could read his mind; or more accurately, his prick. She had even given it a name: Mr. Upright Citizen. He laughed every time she said it. Ronnie had a name for it too: She called it “that thing a yours.” He could hear her saying it. “Keep that thing a yours in your pants.”
The truth is that in his whole life, from the time he was fourteen years old getting his first blow job on the playground, no woman had ever pleased him as Pam did. She did these things with her hands and her mouth that he had never even seen in the pornos. She touched him in places no woman had ever touched him before, and to his great surprise one of them—although he would never admit this to anyone—was his heart.
Pamela Fox was the woman he so wished Ronnie would be. He really wanted to desire Ronnie the way he did Pam. But Ronnie wasn’t that person. He was certain Ronnie had never slept with another man. Sex with another guy? Ronnie thought Playboy was risky. The nuns would have been proud of her. Ronnie doing the things to him that Pam did? He almost laughed at that thought. He couldn’t talk to Ronnie about doing the things he did with Pam in her next lifetime. Fuck that, her next two lifetimes.
He spent almost two hours at the apartment with Pam. It was getting dark outside when they finally got out of bed. And for the first time since they started seeing each other, she complained when he got ready to leave. “You know, baby, I hate it when you come and go.”
He made a joke out of it. “What are you talking? I came three times. I’m only going once.” But he hoped she meant it the good way. For an instant he thought about taking her uptown with him. He could go up to the Heights Tavern and take care of business, then they could have a nice, quiet dinner at Patsy’s. Oh, he’d love to walk into Patsy’s with Pam. Fucking tongues would be hanging on the floor. Then afterward they would go to bed and he would go home. But that was one fantasy that wasn’t going to come true. He didn’t kid himself. Too often men who mixed pleasure with business ended up sorry.
Bobby was feeling so warm inside when he left the apartment that he neglected to take even the most basic precautions. He didn’t even bother checking the block up and down to see if anything unusual caught his attention. He just got in his car and drove away. If he had taken just a few extra seconds, he might have spotted the charcoal Firebird parked at a hydrant about halfway down the block. And maybe he would have seen the two men sitting in the front seat, who watched with interest as Bobby got into his car and drove away.
Bobby picked up Little Eddie at the club. As they headed uptown, Eddie described in detail “Mount Lenny’s eruption.” He was laughing so hard as he told the story that he had difficulty catching his breath. “Oh man, you shoulda seen the fucking guy after you left. He’s screaming for had to be twenty minutes.” Eddie did a poor imitation of Lenny’s nasal voice. “‘I can’t fucking believe it. The guy peed his pants. What an actor. He should be on TV. No, better, I tell you what, he should pee on TV. I mean, the guy pees his pants, you gotta believe it when a guy does that, right? That’s fucking sick, to fake something like that.’ He goes on and on like this, then finally he sits down and shuts up. ‘I’m done,’ he said. ‘That’s it.’ And then, I swear to God, four seconds later he stands up and starts screaming again. ‘That no-good fucking this, fucking that. How can a guy pee his pants and not mean it? You gotta trust a guy who does that.’ I swear to God, Bobby, I thought I was gonna die.”
Little Eddie had been brought up properly in the mob, so he would never think about asking Bobby where he’d been that afternoon. With a broad, he hoped. He knew that fucking Ronnie was driving him nuts. Eddie’s own philosophy of life and love was pretty simple: Every guy needed somebody to love, and as long as he could keep that broad from meeting his wife, everybody would be happy. But truthfully in his own life he rarely went out on his wife, Joyce. And then usually only when he was with the other guys and the situation demanded it. Eddie always told people that there were a lot of things he loved about Joyce: her pasta, her pork ribs, her shrimp marinara, her banana cream pie. But the fact was that he loved all of her. And, as he also joked, there was more of Joyce to love every week.
The Morningside Heights Tavern was just starting to get crowded when they walked in. The Knicks-Lakers were on the TV. The Knicks were so awful that a bar was about the only place any intelligent person could bear to watch them. At least the Lakers had Lew Alcindor, as Little Eddie insisted on referring to him. None of that African name Kareem Karoom Kaboom or whatever it was he was calling himself. The guy was an American, a New Yorker, and he should have an American name.
Bobby and Little Eddie stood at the bar, which ran parallel to the rear wall stretching from side to side. Several coeds noticed Bobby and drifted toward him. There wasn’t another man in the place wearing a sports jacket, much less an obviously expensive tailored Italian suit. And none of the other men in the bar could match his cool. He smiled back at the girls and took the time to appreciate the flow of their tight sweaters around their taut young titties. Now, that is truly great advertising, he thought, but did nothing more than think about it. He was working.
He and Eddie had a couple of drinks and picked up the rhythm of the place. There was a nice vibe going. There were two television sets above the bar and both of them were showing the game, although the sound was off and Bruce Springsteen was blasting out of the wall speakers. The two bartenders were working hard, so Bobby waited patiently. He noticed that the bartenders were the only people who handled the cash register, so they would have processed the professor’s credit card. When the second round was delivered, he gave one of them a twenty-dollar tip, without doubt the largest single tip he was going to get out of the crowd that night. The bartender smiled at him. “When you got a minute,” Bobby said pleasantly. The bartender nodded.
Getting that one minute took most of the next hour. By that time the crowd noise was killing Eddie. “Why ain’t they home studying?” he yelled at Bobby, who could barely hear him.
Finally the bartender returned, casually wiping the bar with his wet rag as he spoke. He said something about questions, but Bobby pointed to his ears and shrugged. The bartender nodded and yelled, “Give me one more minute.”
Ten minutes later he tossed down his rag and pointed to a doorway filled with long strings of colored beads. Bobby and Eddie followed him into a corridor about thirty feet long. Small signs on two doors identified both of them as restrooms. That confused Eddie, who asked the bartender, “Which one’s the men’s room?”
“They’re unisex,” the bartender told him. “They’re for both.”
Eddie just shook his head sadly. He’d never heard of any such thing. Fucking Democrats, he thought.
The bartender introduced himself as Billy Garvey, then added that everybody called him Gravy. “Good to meet you,” Bobby said, shaking his hand but not even bothering to make up some phony name. “Anyplace a little more quiet maybe?”
The door to the rear restroom opened and a girl walked out, sniffling two or three times as she passed. “Sure,” Garvey said, a friendly smile on his face, “step into my office.” The three men went into the restroom. It was a real tight fit. Only if Eddie turned sideways could the three of them be in there without his stomach pressing against one of the other men.
“Fuck this,” Eddie decided. He squeezed outside and stood directly in front of the door.
Inside, Bobby suggested to Garvey, “Take a seat.” He indicated the toilet.
“That’s okay,” Garvey said, waving his hand dismissively, “I’m on my feet all night.”
“Hey, pal,” Bobby coldly informed him, “that wasn’t a fucking request.”
“Now, wait a second,” Garvey said, still smiling. “I don’t know what you’re thinking, but . . .”
“I’m thinking you better fucking sit down right now, that’s what I’m thinking. Okay, now you know.”
Garvey sat down on the toilet seat. His smile disappeared.
Bobby read people well. This Garvey had an ego; he probably spent the whole night having the girls sucking up to him, so the quicker he was reminded of his impotence in this situation, the more cooperative he would be. “Now, this isn’t going to take long, I promise you that. I just got a few questions you can answer for me. First question, how long you been working at this place?”
“I don’t know, eighteen months, twenty months maybe.”
“Good. See how easy this is? Next question, were you working two nights ago?”
Garvey thought about it, then nodded. “Uh-huh, I was. Look, if you’re gonna ask me about that guy, the professor? Two people were in last night . . .”
Bobby placed his index finger to his lips and shushed him. “Listen up. I don’t really care if the whole Royal fucking Mounted Police came in with their horses. You just answer the questions I ask you. Third question, did this Professor Gradinsky come in here?”
With a rolling chuckle Garvey said, “Honest, I’m telling you just like I told them—”
Bobby smacked him across the face with the back of his hand. It wouldn’t mark him, but it would communicate the proper message. Unfortunately Bobby hit him a little harder than he’d intended and Garvey’s head bounced against the tile wall.
Bobby recognized the fear in the bartender’s eyes. And for just an instant he remembered that the fucking truck driver had reacted the very same way—while he was busy ripping them off. Garvey said emphatically, “No, I don’t—”
Bobby lifted his foot about three inches off the ground and slammed his heel down on the tip of Garvey’s toes. Garvey screamed and involuntarily started to get up—but Bobby put his palm on the bartender’s forehead and shoved him back onto the seat. He warned him, “Don’t be an asshole, kid. Don’t fucking lie to me. I know he used his credit card in here.”
The only person in the corridor who heard Garvey scream was Little Eddie, and he was very busy trying to deal with the fact that a boy and a girl had gone into the second bathroom together. Together! It was the first time in his life he had ever seen anything like that, and he couldn’t figure out if they were having sex or doing drugs in there. There was only one other thing they could be doing in a bathroom, and he refused to accept that possibility. Sex or drugs, those were the options. And as much as he hated everything about drugs—except for the profit margins—that’s actually what he hoped they were doing. The thought of them having sex in the bathroom was just too disgusting for him.
He thought about the places that he and Joyce had had sex. The bed in the bedroom, that was it. The two of them have sex in a bathroom? The two of them couldn’t fit into a bathroom together.
Bobby took out the photograph of Gradinsky and held it up. “Look here.” He pointed to the professor. “This guy. You ever see him in here?”
“I don’t know him, I swear,” Garvey said, then covered his head with his arms. “He might have had dinner here once in a while, but I don’t know him. Please don’t hit me in my face anymore.” He looked up and said completely seriously, as if it explained everything, “I’m an actor.”
“Yeah, right, you’re John fucking Wayne.” When Bobby again raised his hand, the bartender recoiled fearfully, lifting both feet off the ground and cowering against the wall. There was a long scrape over the guy’s left eye where Bobby’s ring had smacked him and a good-sized welt on the right side of his forehead compliments of the wall. The welt was swelling rapidly. Putting down his hand, Bobby said, “Okay, lemme ask you this. You ever hear of the soap One Fucking Life to Live If You Know What’s Good for You?”
Billy Garvey closed his eyes and nodded.
“Good. So lemme ask you one more time. Tell me about this professor.”
“I swear I’d tell you if I knew him. I swear to God. You gotta believe me.”
Bobby sighed. “You know what, I believe you. You ain’t that good an actor. But lemme tell you one thing. I find out you’re lying to me—and believe me, if you’re lying to me, I will find out, even a little tiny lie—I’m gonna find you and I’m gonna reach down your throat till I grab hold of your motherfucking nuts and I’m gonna turn you inside out. We understand each other?”
“Honest, I don’t know the guy.”
“I said, we understand each other?”
Garvey nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“Good.” He turned to leave the bathroom but stopped. “And good luck with the acting.”
Bobby didn’t waste his time questioning the manager on his way out. A bartender working in the same place for eighteen months gets to know his customers better than any manager. If Gradinsky was even a semiregular, Garvey, Gravy, whatever, would have known him. The professor was missing either by choice or by force, but either way it was difficult to believe he would wander into a local joint for dinner. If he wanted to stay missing, he wouldn’t risk bumping into people he knew; if he was being held by other people, they wouldn’t take him out in the old neighborhood for a nice, friendly dinner. There are no time-outs in missing.
Bobby didn’t doubt the credit card had been used. But he was certain of one thing: It hadn’t been used by Professor G.
As they left the tavern, Eddie glanced back at the hanging beads. The couple was still in the bathroom. Gees, he thought, they’ve been in there more than fifteen minutes. They gotta be going for the Guinness record book.