by David Grand
“That’s not what the cops think, now is it?” Feldman glared at Freddy for a second and then took a healthy bite of his meat.
“She didn’t have that coming to her,” Freddy said. “What happened?”
“What do you think happened?” Feldman said with his mouth full. He swallowed. “If you had just done what you were supposed to do, she would still be alive. But no, you had to be weak and question . . .” Feldman shook his head.
“Was it you who . . .” Freddy’s head started to ping right between his eyes.
“Was it me who did what?” Feldman’s eyes squinted. “Me? Was I the one who went back on my word? You, Freddy Stillman, were supposed to file some paperwork yesterday, and you didn’t do it. What did I say to you yesterday?” Feldman ran his hand over his face again. “What did I say, Freddy? I said there wasn’t anything smart about what you were doing. God couldn’t have made it more clear. I said there would be consequences. These are the consequences.” Feldman stuffed another healthy piece of brisket into his mouth and washed it down with big spoonfuls of soup.
“You really mean to tell me that if I had filed the paperwork by yesterday afternoon, Janice would be alive?”
Feldman nodded his head. His mouth was too full to speak.
“And now I’m being set up for her murder?”
Feldman once again nodded his head as he swallowed. “Not just set up, Freddy,” Feldman said, a little out of breath. “You’re already a condemned man as far as those cops are concerned. But that’s not what this is really about. See, you’re already going to do time for Janice’s murder. That’s already in the books. That’s just for fucking with us. That’s for thinking you could weasel your way out. But, like I said, that’s not what this is really about.”
“Then what is this about?”
“This is about us putting our foot down is what this is about, see? This is about you going back to that office of yours and filling out that paperwork the second I let you walk out that door with your fucking balls attached to your cock is what this is about. And if that isn’t clear enough for you, if that doesn’t penetrate that mongoose brain of yours, let me tell you how serious we are about you going back to your office and filling out that paperwork.”
Feldman lifted his napkin from his lap and wiped his saucy chin.
“Now that you understand to what lengths we will go, Freddy, keep in mind that the next time you and I see each other, it’s going to be to visit your ex-wife on a fucking meat hook, understand?”
Freddy, without thinking, stood up from his seat and started around the table to Feldman. Feldman, with astonishing, almost invisible deftness, had his napkin back on the table and his hand in and out of his pocket and a revolver trained on Freddy before he managed more than two steps.
“No no no,” Feldman said. “Sit down,” he ordered. The revolver wiggled in Feldman’s hand like a wet fish. “Down, I said!”
Freddy flopped back down in his seat.
“Eat your brisket,” Feldman said, shaking the gun in Freddy’s direction a little more.
Freddy stared at Feldman and didn’t move.
“Eat your goddamn brisket if you know what’s good for you!” he said angrily.
Freddy sat defiantly.
“Suit yourself. You don’t know what you’re missing.” Feldman placed the gun back in his pocket. “Now, all you need to do,” he said, “is walk back out into that alleyway, return to your office, fill out the paperwork, then you call this number and tell them it’s done.” Feldman reached into his pocket, the one in which he kept his gun, and he pulled out a piece of paper with a phone number on it. “You tell them that the order’s been dispatched.”
“What about the money?”
“What nerve.” Feldman shook his head again. “I’m afraid it’s too late for that, pal. Besides, what the fuck do you think you’ll be buying out of Farnsworth?” Feldman waved his hand at Freddy as if he were shooing away a fly. “Now get away from me. Away. I wash my hands of you now. . . . Heshey!!!”
The waiter entered from the kitchen with a platter of herring and turkey legs. “Clear away his place,” Feldman ordered, “and SHOW HIM OUT!” Heshey laid out the platter in front of Freddy and then removed Freddy’s bowl and plate. He handed the bowl and plate to a lackey who followed behind him.
“Oh, and one last thing, Freddy,” Feldman said with a grin full of shredded meat wedged between his teeth, “unless you want to show up at Farnsworth in a wheelchair, I’d find a way to pay Zawolsky the rest of his money. He ain’t one to cross.” Feldman’s chins started to jiggle as he motioned for Heshey to take him on his way.
Heshey walked Freddy through the kitchen, back past the chopping block full of cow tongues, the sink full of blood, through the door leading into the alleyway. All Freddy could think of was that he had to keep Evelyn safe.
Freddy walked into the snow, toward the street, where he was met by two large men. Freddy had never seen them before but they looked at him as though they knew who he was. Vaguely preparing himself for another beating, Freddy studied the two men’s faces: they both looked similarly grizzled, but one seemed distinctly happier, the other mopey. The one with the sunny disposition looked at Freddy and tipped a little snow off his hat as Freddy walked by. The other looked over him cold and hard. They then ventured into the alleyway, under the fire escapes, and Freddy watched them enter the doorway from which he had just come. He didn’t know what to make of it. He didn’t care to make anything of it at all.
Chapter 24
When the two grizzled men reached the open door of Max Fishburg’s Deli, they walked into the kitchen, where the waiter and the cooks were preparing a platter of stuffed cabbage and kishka. When they saw the two grizzled men with their guns drawn in one hand, their index fingers over their lips, shushing them to be quiet, the restaurant staff stopped what they were doing and anxiously inched their way to the alley door. “Out,” the more severe man said to them. Very quietly, the waiter and his staff turned away and quickly walked through the short hall to the alleyway. The two armed men relaxed visibly with the staff gone, and showed themselves into the dining room, where they found Feldman clutching a herring in one hand and a turkey leg in the other. His mouth was full and he was masticating like a cow chewing its cud. But as soon as he saw the two men, Feldman’s mouth stopped chewing; his whole body froze—he didn’t blink. The grizzled man with the severe countenance walked behind Feldman and slid the gun out of Feldman’s pocket and dug it into his back. “Don’t stop chewing,” the sunny one said. “I don’t want you choking. Not just yet.”
Feldman started chewing again, slowly. With the herring and the turkey leg still raised off the plate, he chewed until he was able to swallow. Then he blinked, quivered slightly, and nervously dropped the fish and fowl onto his plate and wiped his hands. “I thought Benny was coming for me?” The zeppelin of bluster Feldman had excoriated Freddy with suddenly popped into a cloud of humility. “Why are you here?”
“Everything work out with Stillman?” the sunny one asked.
“Yeah.”
“He bought it that the girl was a corpse?”
“Yeah.”
“You expect he’ll do what he’s supposed to do?”
“He’s scared witless. He’s still got a big soft spot for that ex-wife of his.”
“Good,” Sunshine said, smiling. He glanced up to the pictures of Feldman on the wall and continued smiling. “You should have kept to acting, Feldman.”
“Not enough . . .”
“Yeah,” the grizzled man said, “acting’s a thin world, Feldman, I know. You already gave us the speech the other day. A real thin world, skinny. And when you’re gone, when you’ve taken your final bow, there’ll be a hundred thousand fat men standing in line to take your place.”
“Where’s Benny?”
“He’s up at the club waiting on us, so get your coat on.”
“What’s he doing up at the club?”
“Get
your coat on, Feldman, before I let this bum bring you into the kitchen and have him show you what he can do with a carving knife.”
“No need to get morbid.”
“I’m sorry, Feldman,” Sunshine said, mocking Feldman. “It’s just been a morbid day. . . . Will you get your fucking coat on!”
Just west of Central Boulevard on the corner of Forty-seventh and Lemark Avenue was the snow-dusted chrome facade of the Triple Mark. The elegant hotel–dinner theater looked oddly misplaced in the run-down company of boarded-up theaters, taxi dance halls, grind houses, and sideshows; it looked as though it should have been planted five blocks east, right under the hot electric signs of the Central Boulevard theater district.
“Let’s go,” Sunshine said to Feldman as the car came to a halt.
“Aren’t you gonna tell me what’s going on before you send me in there?”
“What’s the point? You’re goin’ anyway.”
“Move your fat ass, Feldman,” the moper said, knocking Feldman in the back of the head with the muzzle of his gun.
The three men got out of the car and walked in through the stage entrance on Lemark Avenue. They made their way around aquamarine musicians’ boxes decorated with sparkling treble clefs, through an oasis of artificial palm trees, and up a narrow winding staircase marked with a big sign that read PRIVATE. When they reached a landing that looked over the empty dinner theater, the moper knocked on the door. A buzzer sounded, and the grizzled men pushed their way into Johnny Mann’s office. It was dimly lit by sconces, a fire in the fireplace, and a green glass lamp on the desk. The soft light glowed onto the walls and ceiling in such a way that their ornate patterns of filigree appeared to become animate, like a waving bed of sea moss. Johnny Mann and Jerzy Roth, who had spent the night bound and gagged to chairs in the basement, had been moved into Mann’s office. Mann, a diminutive figure in a dark double-breasted suit with a powder-blue handkerchief in his breast pocket, sat in a high-backed leather chair at his desk before a ledger. He had short slick black hair and butterscotch eyes, and was in need of a shave. His hands were bound behind his back and his mouth was gagged. He didn’t look happy. If his eyes could talk, they would have been spitting invective at Feldman.
Jerzy Roth, a large, muscular man with a wide face, dressed in an unseasonably colorful lightweight suit, sat across from Johnny Mann on a couch near the fireplace. He too was bound and gagged. He too didn’t look happy. He too looked like he wanted to make sausage out of Feldman. Benny Rudolph sat on the couch with Jerzy and watched as a bearded man wearing a beret, a red ascot, and black leather gloves fiddled with a camera set on a tripod.
“Keep the fat boy out of my frame for a second,” the photographer said to Benny.
Benny got off the couch, took Feldman by the shoulder, and pulled him behind the photographer.
“Benny,” Feldman said, looking over to Johnny, then Jerzy, then Benny, “what’s going on?”
“I got another little acting job for you.” Benny turned to the photographer with upturned palms.
“You say you want quality,” the photographer whined, “but you rush me. You say you want it to look real, that you want it nice and stark . . . you think real and stark is easy to come by, Ru? It takes finesse.”
“Yeah, well, sometimes the exigencies of life dictate function over form. So make it snappy.”
“What are you, the fucking philosopher king all of a sudden?” the photographer said with his eyes focused on the upside-down image of Johnny Mann in his window box. The photographer walked out from behind his camera and swiveled Mann in his chair a few degrees so he was facing the camera in half-profile. “All right, snappy. Just remember, you get what you get and I ain’t takin’ no credit for this.”
Benny shook his head and said to Feldman, “Fucking artists: little dictators.”
“Come on, then,” the photographer said. “Throw fat boy into the frame.”
“Step right here,” Benny said to Feldman. He pulled him over so that he was directly in the center of the camera’s frame. Benny looked to the photographer.
The man made a face as he waved Feldman back a few steps.
Benny moved Feldman a few inches to the left, then looked back to the photographer.
“He so fucking big it don’t really matter.”
“Okay, don’t move,” Benny said to Feldman.
Feldman was now standing just three feet or so from both Johnny Mann and Jerzy Roth, both of whom started screaming through their gags. “What’s going on?” Feldman said again.
“So, John, Jerzy,” Benny said, ignoring Feldman, “this is what it’s come down to between you and me. Ten years and my health you took from my life. Now you pay for that.”
Johnny and Jerzy continued to mumble through their gags.
“Benny?” Feldman said. “Benny?”
Benny Rudolph turned to the photographer. The photographer raised his flash over his head.
Benny, without hesitation, handed Feldman a loaded tommy gun that was sitting on Johnny Mann’s desk. Feldman reluctantly took it. “Aim the gun at Johnny,” Benny said to him.
Feldman struck a pose, aiming the gun at Mann’s chest. “Like this?”
“Lean your weight into it!” the photographer shouted.
Feldman leaned forward a little on his left foot and looked back for assurance.
“Wipe that sad-sack look off your face!” the photographer shouted. “Look like you mean it, for crying out loud.”
Feldman flared his nostrils and scowled as much as he could with his fat cheeks. “Why am I doing this?” Feldman said through the scowl.
“That’sa boy,” the photographer said.
Feldman held the pose and the face.
“Now shoot,” Benny said coldly.
“What?”
“Pull the trigger.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“Pull the fucking trigger, Feldman!” Benny said angrily, heatedly.
“Don’t make him lose that look, Ru,” the photographer shouted.
Benny pulled a gun out of a shoulder holster and held it against Feldman’s temple.
“C’mon, Benny, please. Haven’t I done everything you asked me to do? Everything . . .”
“Shoot the gun, Feldman,” Benny said as he cocked his own gun and took a couple steps back.
“Don’t make me do this, Benny. Please don’t make me do this.”
“Shoot the fucking gun!” Benny screamed. “Shoot the fucking gun, Benny, or I’ll off you right here and now.”
The tommy gun started to tremble in Feldman’s fat hands. He looked back to Benny, and when he saw Benny about to take a step forward to brace himself against his gun’s kick, Feldman looked into Johnny Mann’s desperate watering eyes and gripped the trigger. He stepped into the kick of the gun and sprayed nearly the entire magazine of bullets over Mann’s chest. Somewhere, in the middle of the rounds being fired, in the middle of Feldman’s screams, the photographer flashed his bulb and snapped a picture, capturing the sparks shooting out the gun’s muzzle. When Feldman saw Johnny Mann’s head loll off to the side, he got so upset he panicked and dropped the gun on the floor; he watched the smoke curdle up from its barrel, and when the room quieted enough for him to hear the gurgle of blood spilling out of Johnny Mann’s wounds, Feldman started cursing at Benny. “You no-good fuck!” Feldman screamed at him.
“Beautiful!” the photographer yelled. “Keep him angry, Ru! Angry as sin!”
“Pick it up, Feldman. Pick it up!” Benny knocked Feldman in the side of his head with his gun just hard enough to get his attention. The photographer loaded a new bulb into his flash and turned the camera on its tripod in the direction of Jerzy. “Don’t make me pick it up for you,” Benny said.
Feldman clumsily picked up the gun from the floor as he listened to Jerzy Roth’s helpless muffled rantings from underneath his gag. Benny grabbed Feldman by the nape of the neck and threw him as best he could in Jerzy’s direction. “Where?�
� Benny said to the photographer.
“With that look on his face? Right at me. Square him off and turn Jerzy toward him.”
Benny did as he was told. He squared Feldman off so that if Feldman got it into his head to turn the gun on the photographer, he would make an easy mark. Benny then turned Jerzy so that he was framed in profile. “All right?”
The photographer played with his equipment a little. “Mmmm . . .”
“All right,” Benny continued, “don’t make me say a fucking word this time, Feldman. If I have to say another word this time when I finish this sent—” Feldman, feeling like he wanted to kill everyone else in the room except Jerzy, raised the gun and once again gripped the trigger, firing round after round into Jerzy’s chest and throat. The photographer’s flash lit the room, and once again Feldman dropped the gun. This time he dropped with it, to his knees, in front of Jerzy Roth’s blood-soaked shoes.
“Now that . . . that was inspired,” the photographer ranted. “That . . .” he said with his arms spread wide.
“Why’d you make me do it, Benny?” Feldman sobbed. “Why’d you make me do that?”
Benny placed his hand on Feldman’s shoulder and patted it as if he were consoling him. “C’mon, Feldman, get up.”
“Why’d you make me do it?” Feldman asked again.
“Feldman . . . get up.”
The two grizzled men walked over and with all their might pulled Feldman to his feet.
“Get him out of here,” Benny said to the grizzled men.
The grizzled men took hold of Feldman and dragged him out of the room with a gun to his head.
“What you gonna use these for?” the photographer asked as the door closed.
“Mementos. Throw the film in a bag and hand it here. Get your stuff packed up.”
“I’ll make it snappy,” the photographer laughed. “Don’t you worry.”
Benny Rudolph lit a cigarette and stared silently at the corpses as the photographer packed up his things. When the photographer was ready to go, Benny told him he’d meet him downstairs at the car. Benny picked up the phone.
