The Mobster’s Lament

by Ray Celestin

Louis could dig it. But by the standards of his youth back in New Orleans, the driver was positively pleasant.

  They smoked the joint and froze in the night-time cold. It got so bad Shelton’s teeth got to chattering and probably because of the joint they both found it hilarious and couldn’t stop laughing.

  Half an hour later a courier arrived in a taxi cab with an envelope. Fifteen minutes after that, their luggage had been released and they were all heading home.

  Louis didn’t even bother trying to look for a cab, he walked to the subway with the rest of them, jumped on the first train that came along, changed at Times Square and caught the Seven for the long ride out to Corona. He sat alone in the smoking car, watched his ghostly reflection in the window, rushing through the blackness. He thought back to the tour, and all the tours before it, all merging into one grueling slog, so many tours he never spent more than a couple of months at home in Queens each year.

  Savannah, Georgia, a decade back. Their bus pulled into the dusty old town, and they’d walked past a little stall at the side of the road, a homeless man selling a miserable selection of vegetables. A voice called out. Louis turned to look at the homeless man. It took a good few seconds to recognize him.

  Joe ‘King’ Oliver. Louis’s mentor. The man who had brought Louis from New Orleans to Chicago. A man as big as Duke Ellington in his day. A man who was mobbed by fans when he walked through the Southside.

  Dressed now in rags, unrecognizable, selling vegetables in the dust. When Louis saw him, he cried. And so too did the man he called ‘Papa’ Joe. He gave him the hundred and fifty dollars in his pocket, told him to head back to New Orleans and start recording again.

  But a year later he was dead.

  Other jazz greats fared as bad – Bunk Johnson was driving a sugar wagon in the backwaters of Louisiana, had sent Louis a begging letter, asking for money to have his teeth fixed, so he could start playing his horn again.

  These stories could be Louis’ story if he didn’t fix up.

  But in the midst of all this, there was hope. A concert next week. In New York. Something radical. Its promoter assured Louis it could be the fix his career so desperately needed. Louis wondered on the man’s youthful optimism, wondered if hope was by its nature fragile, if it always came thinly, in glimmers. It was hard for Louis to believe things could turn around.

  He’d noticed for a while now that wrapped up in his decline was a peculiar sort of lucklessness. It wasn’t just the band and dwindling audiences and pay checks not arriving when they should. There was a cloud of ill-fortune shadowing him – if a rain shower came, he’d get caught in it, if there was a train to catch, he’d miss it, if there was a loose paving stone, he’d trip up on it, and when he rose and dusted himself off, a black cat would cross his path.

  And now a concert, a way out, an escape route. But would his bad mojo mess that up, too?

  The train came out of the Steinway tunnel and was flooded with pale blue light. The sky was quivering, shaking off night. Louis watched the sun rise as he travelled east across Queens. Electric lamps floated past. On platforms clots of people waited, huddled up in winter coats.

  He got off at 103rd Street, lugged his suitcase and trumpet case down the platform, stared at the train disappearing north and thought of his childhood. His mother taking him to the railroad tracks outside New Orleans to forage for dandelions and peppergrass to use as laxatives.

  On the corner of 104th Street the traffic lights hung in the air like red lanterns. Around him the neighborhood was coming to life. A few Pullman porters were heading home, having finished overnight runs from Chicago, Boston, Baltimore. They recognized Louis, nodded hello. World-famous jazz musician in a rumpled tuxedo, dragging his luggage through Queens.

  A horse-drawn coal cart rattled past, the coal merchant at the reins, two kids who must have been his sons sitting alongside him, looking half-asleep and annoyed at having to help on their father’s rounds before school. Louis grinned, imagined what it would be like to have a child. He’d had three wives and countless girlfriends and he had not a single son or daughter to show for it, had slowly realized over the years that there must be something wrong with him.

  Despite the sun rising, the cold didn’t let up, and Louis’ hands were freezing by the time he reached his home on 107th. It was a modest house, blocky and red brick, located on a quiet street in the otherwise noisome neighborhood of Corona. Lucille had picked out the house, it was near where’d she’d grown up, in a mixed, middle-class area, one of the few places in New York outside of Harlem that black people could actually buy houses.

  He climbed the steps, yanking his cases up after him, unlocked the door, and stepped inside. The hallway was murky in that way houses are just after dawn. He left his luggage by the door, didn’t turn on the lights, went into the kitchen to make himself a coffee, did so quietly so as not to wake Lucille.

  As the water heated, he looked around the kitchen – the cupboards, the crockery, the photos and pictures on the wall. It was homely, pleasant, tidy and clean. It was a good place to live, to be part of a family. He thought how two days earlier he was in the segregated South, playing a concert in a town that could explode at any minute. He stared at the fruit in the bowl on the counter and thought of King Oliver, dressed in rags, crying.

  He looked again at his surroundings with a dull fear that all this was on the verge of being lost. That something needed to change.

  He saw there was a note on the pad by the phone. He stopped to read it and smiled. It was in Lucille’s perfectly looping hand – Welcome back, baby. Wake me when you get in. P.S. Ida called, said she’s in town, staying at the Theresa, wants to talk.

  PART NINE

  ‘By devious means, among which were the terrorizing of witnesses, kidnapping them, yes, even murdering those who could give evidence against you, you have thwarted justice time and again.’

  JUDGE SAMUEL LEIBOWITZ, AT THE COLLAPSE OF

  VITO GENOVESE’S MURDER TRIAL, 1946

  19

  Wednesday 5th, 7.32 p.m.

  Gabriel had spent all day chasing down the last few leads he had for Benny and had come up short. One after the other the leads had sputtered, dimmed, extinguished, till there was only one left. And all the while he’d been plagued by thoughts of Faron, distracted by visions of his sister’s killer stalking the city, hunting for yet more victims. He wondered how Benny had found out the man was back in town, if Faron was somehow mixed up with the missing money.

  Late in the afternoon Gabriel returned home, popped a couple of Seconals and caught a few hours’ sleep. In the moments before he passed out, he saw his sister’s body in the blackness, lying in a pool of blood on a sidewalk, crumpled, twisted, hospital gown fluttering in the breeze.

  When he woke he gave in to the urge he’d been resisting all day to go chasing after Faron. He called a friend in the NYPD and arranged a meeting for that evening. Then he sat down for dinner with Sarah and Mrs Hirsch, even though he was too sick to eat, and spent most of the meal staring at his food.

  ‘You OK?’ asked Mrs Hirsch, when they were clearing up the dishes.

  He nodded. How to tell her the man who’d killed Sarah’s mother was back in New York, just a few days before Gabriel and Sarah were supposed to be skipping town.

  ‘Remember you need to talk to her,’ Mrs Hirsch said, gesturing to Sarah, who was sitting in the lounge.

  Gabriel nodded. Mrs Hirsch turned and went into the kitchen. Gabriel knew she would take an age over the washing-up. There was a dishwashing machine in there but Mrs Hirsch never deigned to use it, considered its presence an affront to her housekeeping skills.

  Gabriel walked through into the lounge, looked at Sarah, wrapped up in a raveled and shapeless sweater, listening to a detective serial on the radio. He reminded himself it was for her he was doing it all. He went to the drinks stand and poured himself a whisky, went to the coffee table and picked up Sarah’s sketchbook.

  ‘I nearly tripped on this t
he other day,’ he said, holding it up. ‘I saw the Mexican stuff.’

  Something changed in her look, her expression frosting over with teenaged defiance.

  ‘OK …’ she said, batting the ball back to his side of the court.

  ‘You trying to get us killed?’ he asked.

  She shrugged, stayed silent, pretended to turn her attention back to the radio.

  He told himself this was the wrong time to go through it, that he was still all churned up from hearing the news about Faron. But he ignored his own good advice.

  ‘Sarah?’ he said, sounding more annoyed than he’d meant.

  ‘No one’s going to see,’ she moaned, petulance pouring out like a dam had burst. ‘And even if they did, so what? I drew a few Mexican skeletons, doesn’t mean we’ve run away there.’

  Gabriel wasn’t sure how to go with it; angry or disappointed.

  ‘The minute we’re gone, there’ll be cops and gangsters crawling all over this place,’ Gabriel said. ‘I want you to burn these. OK?’

  ‘Sí, Tío.’

  ‘And cut that out, too.’

  ‘I’ve got to practice. It’s not like you can speak the language.’

  ‘I’ll learn it.’

  They stared at each other, stranded in an icy silence. Gabriel heard Mrs Hirsch in the kitchen, washing dishes, listening in.

  ‘If we stayed in New York,’ said Sarah, ‘we wouldn’t have to worry about all this stuff.’

  There was exasperation in her voice, anger.

  The atmosphere curdled further.

  Gabriel wondered, as he often did, if he’d done the right thing telling her about the plan. If he’d done the right thing all along, being honest with her about how he made his money, the danger they were in. He’d tried to prepare her for the worst, explained what to do if he disappeared one day, or if they were separated, told her where the stash spots were, the meeting points, the bank accounts she should use. He’d even taught her how to use a gun.

  ‘We’ve been over this a million times,’ he said.

  ‘You’ve been over this a million times. You’re dragging me away from my friends and everyone I love and I can’t even say goodbye. I could stay with Mrs Hirsch,’ she continued. ‘And you can go off to Mexico on your own.’

  Sarah looked at the open door to the kitchen. Gabriel knew both Sarah and Mrs Hirsch would favor such an arrangement, making him the bad guy, the destroyer of lives and relationships.

  ‘That wouldn’t work,’ he said.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because they’ll come after you to get to me,’ he said flatly.

  ‘And whose fault is that?’

  Gabriel had no answer, and Sarah knew it, and here was the unavoidable injustice of their situation – by going to Mexico she was being punished for his mistakes. Point made, victory complete, she rose and stomped out of the lounge.

  A few seconds later her bedroom door slammed shut, shaking floors across a couple of city blocks.

  The noise brought Mrs Hirsch hobbling out of the kitchen.

  She looked at Gabriel’s face, figured how things had gone.

  ‘She’ll come round, Gabby,’ she said. ‘Give her time.’

  Gabriel nodded, took a sip on his whisky. Mrs Hirsch returned to the dishes. Gabriel was left alone.

  Falling man.

  Half an hour later he was in Italian Harlem. He parked the Delahaye on 106th Street. Waited. Anxious and bleary-eyed, still thinking about Faron’s return and the argument with Sarah. The petulance she’d displayed wasn’t her. They’d never argued in the past. This was all the result of what he was doing to her.

  He regretted not playing it better. The moments he spent with her were precious because they were so brief; their routines intersected only momentarily each day. How had he managed to fumble the baton? Maybe there was something in Mrs Hirsch’s admonishment. Maybe he was becoming a gargoyle, turning to stone, aloof, watching the world from a distance.

  After a few minutes, an unmarked cruiser pulled up behind Gabriel and a large man in a brown suit got out, Lieutenant Detective John Salzman. He crossed to the Delahaye and opened the door, looked at the passenger seat, the tight space, the low-down floor of the sports car.

  ‘How the hell d’you get in this thing?’ he asked in a gruff voice.

  ‘Ass first,’ said Gabriel, ‘like most things in life.’

  Salzman grunted, squeezed himself in, settled, looked around. He nodded his approval at the plush interior.

  ‘So how much you pay for something like this?’ he asked, gesturing at the car.

  ‘I wouldn’t know,’ said Gabriel. ‘I won it in a card game.’

  Salzman chuckled.

  ‘How’s things in the division?’ Gabriel asked.

  Salzman was Gabriel’s man in the Narcotics Division, probably the most corrupt part of the outstandingly corrupt NYPD. Dealers paid the division two thousand a month to distribute unhindered between 110th and 125th. Harlem. They also caught a piece of the dope shipments that moved through the Port of New York, brought into the country by the Gagliano crime family and Vito Genovese, shipments that were distributed all across the East Coast. Before working Narcotics, Salzman had been in the much less lucrative Homicide Division.

  ‘Pushers push,’ he said. ‘Junkies junk, jigs get sent to Rikers. What’s on your mind?’

  ‘I need you to run a search.’

  ‘Shoot.’

  ‘Guy named Faron,’ said Gabriel. ‘A hired gun.’

  ‘Faron?’ said Salzman, trying to place the name. ‘The diner slaughter perp from back in the thirties? He’s a myth.’

  Gabriel shook his head.

  ‘I heard he’s back in town,’ he said. ‘I need to find him. Fast. Can you ask around?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘And something else,’ said Gabriel. ‘Faron likes cutting up girls. Can you speak to your guys in homicide, get me details of any dead women, prostitutes mainly, who’ve been found mutilated, in the last six months. Picked up in red-light zones. Dumped in industrial areas.’

  Salzman frowned. ‘Six months is a pretty big frame,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll pay.’

  ‘How much?’

  Gabriel gave him a number, a large chunk of the Mexico money.

  Salzman whistled through his teeth. ‘For that kinda money, I’ll do your laundry.’

  He grinned till he saw the look on Gabriel’s face. ‘Leave it with me,’ he said.

  Salzman got out of the car. Gabriel watched his cruiser drive off.

  He wondered once more what he was hoping to achieve. He had eight days to find the money and leave New York, but here he was, sidetracked, derailed by the news that his sister’s killer had returned. In the shadows smothering the sidewalk, he saw her body once more, broken, buckled, oozing.

  He blinked and she was gone.

  He started up the Delahaye and headed downtown, to the Village, to chase down his only remaining lead.

  20

  Wednesday 5th, 10.35 p.m.

  There was nothing like the Village at night. Bebop joints, artists’ lofts, fairy bars, dope pads, burlesques, cafes that never closed their doors. A panoply of venues to pop in and drop out.

  Gabriel parked the Delahaye on Bedford and walked around the corner to a narrow, tree-lined street of picturesque red-brick buildings. The bar was just on the bend before Barrow Street, but Gabriel could hear the jazz music peeling out from the moment he turned the corner.

  When he got there he saw the windows were painted black, and there was no signage anywhere except for a scrap of paper stapled to the front door, with the words – Enter if you dare – scrawled across it in pencil.

  Inside the place was roaring with people, all crammed in tight. Mostly men, what the newspapers referred to as the hands on hips set. There were a few straight couples, artists in denim overalls, awkward-looking types whom Gabriel pegged for intellectuals, students, poets. In amongst them were a few mobsters. New York’s fairy ba
rs were where the interests of the city’s homosexuals and its gangsters intersected.

  Gabriel slipped through the crowd, headed for the bar, where the people were lined up three or four deep, their faces sticky with sweat and smiles, eyes dilated and drug-shined. Everything was in a terrible condition, the walls were bare brick, the tables and chairs looked like they’d been rescued from the street. The bar itself was an unvarnished plank of wood, behind which was a rickety wine rack holding all the booze, and next to it a strip of floral curtain hanging up over a doorway. A couple of young guys in tight white T-shirts manned the bar, cocking their ears over the noise to take customers’ orders.

  There was a gramophone at the end of the bar from which the jazz was blaring out. Old jazz, New Orleans ragtime from twenty-five years ago. There was a revival of the ‘good old music’ going on. Kids who’d grown up on swing wanting to go back in time and experience the real-deal. Though in this setting, Gabriel got the feeling the choice of music was ironic.

  Next to the gramophone was a chubby man with a black slouch hat on his head and a pink carnation in his lapel. Jasper Ericsson was not someone who had any interest in breaking stereotypes. He sipped from a Martini as he shimmied along to the song, looked through a record box for the next selection.

  ‘Jasper,’ shouted Gabriel.

  Jasper turned to look at Gabriel and his face lit up.

  ‘Gabriel,’ he exclaimed. He leaned in and hugged Gabriel tightly, spilling his Martini all over Gabriel’s shoulder. Then he pulled back and grinned at him.

  ‘You look cold. Can I interest you in a bracer?’

  Gabriel nodded. Jasper waved one of the barmen over.

  ‘This is Todd,’ said Jasper, introducing the barman. ‘He’s an actor. He also pours drinks.’

  ‘I’ll have a whiskey,’ Gabriel said.

  The barman poured it, slid it over the bar.

  Gabriel chinked glasses with Jasper. The song on the turntable came to an end. Jasper speedily took the record off, grabbed another, put it on. Gabriel recognized it – a King Oliver number from back in the twenties. Gabriel noted the record looked new, a re-issue maybe.