The Mobster’s Lament

by Ray Celestin

  When he awoke it was daylight and something about that lifted his spirits. Some winters, when the days were short and Gabriel was working long hours at the Copa, he didn’t see the sun for weeks.

  He heard Mrs Hirsch in the kitchen. He got up and stepped into the living room. Sarah was in there, sitting on the sofa, sipping an orange juice.

  She stared at him, froze. ‘What happened?’ she asked.

  ‘I crashed the car,’ Gabriel said. ‘I’m fine.’

  She continued staring, not sure whether she should believe him or not. Then she got up, rushed towards him and hugged him, and he felt her warmth against him, her tender arms. He hugged her back and they stayed like that and she was a little girl again, and it made him want to cry. The urge to keep her safe ran through him and reminded him that this was the point of it all, and only a fool could be discontented living in a world such as this.

  He heard Mrs Hirsch come in from the kitchen and stop. The silence thickened. Then he heard her retreat.

  Sarah let go of him and he held her out at arm’s length and they looked at each other.

  The phone rang.

  Gabriel smiled at her, then she picked up the receiver, turned back and held it out to him.

  ‘It’s for you,’ she said. ‘It’s Uncle Frank.’

  35

  Saturday 8th, 12.30 p.m.

  The Astoria was packed – guests checking in, checking out, heading to the Norse Grill, the Starlight Roof. The hat-check girl was doing a steady trade in minks and cashmere overcoats, silk scarves, leather gloves. Gabriel crossed the marble floor and walked through the arch into the bar.

  The tables and booths were overflowing. He spoke to the maître d’, was directed to an empty booth, and the ‘reserved’ label was whisked away. He scanned the crowd – well-heeled young women in New Look dresses, old-money matrons in black and pearls, suited men from conglomerates and advertising agencies. These were the people who designed the billboards that floated over the city. And everywhere they were knocking back drinks, chatting, laughing. The whole place seemed to gleam with light, the chrome and leather, the linen, the silver service, all of it sparkling in the sunbeams blasting in from the giant windows.

  And here he was, with five days to find the money, and Faron on the loose, and Costello about to grill him.

  A waitress approached and asked if he’d like a drink. Gabriel looked around the crowd once more and ordered a Martini for propriety’s sake. The waitress flitted away and he lit a smoke, tried to think what he’d tell Costello. What could he say? He tried to put himself in Costello’s shoes, wondered what he’d think if he were a Mob boss and an underling told him he’d lost two million dollars ten minutes after finding it because he’d been robbed by a man who hadn’t been seen in over a decade. He’d probably have the underling whacked, either for lying or for stupidity. Meaning Gabriel had to lie about having lost the money. He shook his head at the thought of it. He’d been walking a tightrope for way too long, and now, five days before he reached its end, a gale force wind had blown in.

  A minute or two passed and Costello entered the bar, with his usual perfect suit, perfect haircut, perfect shave and manicure.

  ‘What happened to your face?’ he asked, sitting down.

  ‘I crashed the Delahaye.’

  ‘You all right?’

  ‘Fine except now I got to drive a Cadillac.’

  ‘It’s a hard life, Gabby. You eating?’

  ‘Yeah, I ordered a Martini olive. You drinking?’

  ‘Always.’

  The waitress reappeared with Gabriel’s drink and Costello ordered a whiskey sour.

  She left. Costello took a handkerchief and a bottle from his pocket. He poured oil from the bottle onto the handkerchief and the booth filled with eucalyptus fumes. He stuck the handkerchief under his nose and inhaled like he was trying to chloroform himself.

  ‘This goddamn cold,’ he said.

  ‘It’s the season,’ Gabriel said.

  ‘How you getting on with the money?’

  Gabriel squirmed. ‘Not great,’ he replied. ‘I don’t think Benny put the money into a bank. I checked with his driver. He stashed it somewhere, I’m honing in on it. He made a few stops that don’t make sense.’

  ‘Like?’

  ‘Like he stopped off at a clinic to arrange booking in “a friend”. Benny mention anything to you about being ill?’

  Costello shook his head. ‘Maybe he caught the clap off one of them showgirls.’

  ‘And he stopped by Joe Glaser’s talent agency.’

  ‘Maybe he was booking singers for the Flamingo.’

  ‘Glaser’s is all-Negro,’ said Gabriel. ‘Benny’d only be hiring whites.’

  Costello thought, tapped his fingers on the tablecloth, on the shining linen.

  ‘There’s something else,’ said Gabriel. ‘I checked in with Tomasulo. He said Benny and Genovese had a pow-wow in the summer when Benny was in town. Said Genovese didn’t invest in the Flamingo, and he was bragging about it after Benny got whacked. You sure Genovese isn’t involved in all this?’

  ‘Sure I’m sure,’ said Costello. ‘Like I told you, they hated each other.’

  The waitress arrived with Costello’s drink. Gabriel studied him, wondered why he was so convinced that Genovese wasn’t involved. Wondered if Costello had got it wrong or if there was something else he wasn’t telling him.

  ‘Tomasulo’s nervous,’ Gabriel said. ‘Told me he wants out. Told me he thinks Genovese’s onto him.’

  Costello shrugged. ‘He knew what he was getting into.’

  He downed half his drink in one go and ordered another.

  Gabriel told Costello about Jasper’s bar in Greenwich Village, how the man had given up information in return for Costello arranging a better deal with the mobster to whom Jasper was paying protection money. Costello said he’d take care of it.

  His drink arrived, he took a sip. Then he sighed, turned to look at Gabriel.

  ‘You ever hear of a pusher called Gene Cleveland?’ he asked.

  Gabriel’s heart jumped. He thought of lying, saying no, then he realized that if Costello spoke to Bumpy he might find out Gabriel had been asking about him.

  ‘I saw Bumpy the other day,’ Gabriel said. ‘He mentioned something. Why you asking?’

  ‘We braced this kid dealer yesterday, some punk selling dope in the Village. He said Vito was all het up looking for this Cleveland character but no one knew why.’

  Gabriel’s thoughts raced. Genovese was looking for Cleveland, too. First Benny and now Genovese. Gabriel tried to stay calm, lit another cigarette, told Costello a condensed version of what Bumpy had told him about Cleveland – that he was a two-bit dealer from Harlem who disappeared after a bunch of people got killed in the hotel he dealt from. Costello nodded and frowned, understanding about as much as Gabriel.

  They finished their drinks. Costello caught the elevator to the roof for his lunch, Gabriel wandered back into the cold outside.

  He sat in the driver’s seat of the Cadillac and stared ahead, at the traffic backing up at the intersection with Park Avenue, trying to figure an angle through it all. The car was freezing, but still he felt hot. He scrabbled a cigarette from his pack, lit it up, sucked it down.

  Benny and Genovese had met over the summer and despite what Costello said, they were possibly in on the scam with the money together. Had they been looking for Cleveland together as well? And what about Faron? Maybe Genovese had hired Faron to find Cleveland. And that’s how Benny knew Faron was back in town.

  Gabriel wondered if, after Faron had stolen the money, he’d kept it for himself, or passed it on to his boss, Genovese. Either way, Genovese and Faron would be coming after him, separately or together.

  He continued smoking and thinking and fighting the dread that was gnawing its way through his chest. He needed to act, but all his leads had stalled. He was waiting for Salzman to get back to him with details of any killings Faron might have been invo
lved in. He was waiting for Tomasulo to get back to him with any info from inside Genovese’s camp. What else could he chase? What other angles were there left?

  Doyle and Higgs. The two dead cops. They’d been in the car with Faron. They used to work for the Gaglianos. Gabriel tried to think who he knew in the Gagliano family he could brace for information, who was weak, who he could squeeze, and who wouldn’t spill.

  Time passed. Or maybe it didn’t. He couldn’t tell. The hands of the giant clock on the First National building were playing tricks on him. He stared at the clock impossibly high in the sky, noticed above it a row of gargoyles peering down at the city with contempt. He thought of Mrs Hirsch. He thought of Sarah. He got back to thinking about the money.

  The two detectives from Chicago. Bumpy had said they were investigating the killings at the hotel. Maybe they had found something out about Faron he could use. Maybe he could find a way to bargain information from them, brace them if he had to. That made a second lead, in addition to the Gaglianos. He tried to come up with a third. Failed.

  At some point he looked around and noticed the sun had dropped low in the sky, was setting behind the finials of the towers to the west. The yellow orb seemed to be sucking light from the land instead of dispersing it. Sucking it first from the buildings, then from the streets, then from the sky itself, siphoning off every speck till the surroundings became a landscape of shadows.

  On the sidewalks the deluge of people continued unabated through the gloom, and the scene seemed so strange to him now, had as much sense to it as a battlefield. There was something alien, unnerving, about the way this mass of people were so in step with their surroundings, like the city was marching to some grand music Gabriel could no longer hear, some dissonance that underpinned it all.

  He rubbed his temples. He slow-breathed.

  He had two million dollars to find, and five days to do it. And now he had a killer after him, and maybe a Mob boss, too. He had to get his head straight. He opened the window a crack and let the air cool his face.

  He only had two leads left to pursue. He started up the Caddy and pulled into traffic.

  36

  Sunday 9th, 12.15 a.m.

  The first floorshow of the night was under way and the sound of it seeped into the backroom, where Gabriel and Havemeyer and the others were counting up cash. There was a knock at the door. One of the runners opened it and another entered, holding a cloth bag. He tossed it onto the table and Havemeyer loosened the drawstring and a rain of dollars fluttered onto the table.

  The runner yawned, then looked at Gabriel.

  ‘There’s a girl out there asking after you,’ he said.

  ‘Who?’

  He shrugged. ‘Leggy blonde. Looks like she walked in off a movie screen.’

  Beatrice. An image of her flashed in his mind’s eye, sitting in the office of her dance studio, smoking, staring at him through her lashes, eyes of slate gleaming in the red gloom.

  He rose and headed out of the room. Havemeyer watched him go, that fatherly concern look on his face. Gabriel went to the washrooms and checked his appearance. He still looked haggard, still had the bruised face. He’d spent all day chasing down information on the Gaglianos, if they had any links to the two dead cops. It was tricky work, having to ask about the crash without implicating himself, having to ask about the money without revealing it was missing, having to ask about Faron without letting on the man was back in town.

  Everything he’d tried had come up blank. No one knew who the dead cops were working for, no one knew what they were working on, no one had seen or heard of Faron, and people looked at him strangely when he asked. So he’d given it up after a ten-hour stretch and had gone to the Copa for the start of the night, anxious about the fact that he only had one lead left now – the detectives from Chicago.

  He left the washroom and walked through the corridor, approaching the rumble that was Carmen Miranda and her floorshow. He stepped into the chaos. He peered through the columns and the fake palm trees, across the mezzanines, to the bar, which took up one whole side of the space. And there was Beatrice, in a black dress, flaxen-haired and long-legged, looking indeed like she’d just stepped out of a movie.

  He headed over.

  On the wall behind the bar was a long mural of Rio’s beachfront at night. An illuminated mural, with fairy-lights poking out of the plasterwork where the lights of the boats and hotels and stars were supposed to be. Gabriel thought of the film he’d watched in the cinema a few days earlier, Rita Hayworth adrift in Acapulco.

  Beatrice saw him and smiled.

  ‘You kept your promise,’ he said, over the sound of the band.

  ‘I always do. What happened to your face?’

  He shrugged.

  ‘I crashed my car,’ he said. ‘I’m fine. You here on your own?’

  She nodded, took a sip from her drink. She was acting cool and composed, but Gabriel could tell underneath it she was flustered. She hadn’t just dropped by for old time’s sake. For Beatrice to be agitated something big had to be going on.

  She nodded at the floorshow. ‘Carmen Miranda’s quite something,’ she said.

  ‘She’s a Brazilian in a million.’

  Beatrice laughed.

  They looked at Carmen Miranda and The Samba Sirens. He studied the girls and thought there was something off. It took a moment but he realized what it was – one of the dancers was missing. Miranda had eight girls normally, now there were only seven. No one had said anything about it. He needed to go backstage and see what had happened.

  He turned to look at Beatrice. Saw her expression had changed, she was staring off into the distance with a look of concern. Gabriel followed her gaze to somewhere beyond the floorshow: a table full of Gagliano goons. The family that had put the contract out on her junkie brother. The family the two dead cops used to work for. The family he’d spent the day investigating.

  One of the goons made eye contact with Gabriel, a wiry kid with a scowl on his face. The kid acted like he hadn’t seen Gabriel, got back to his drink.

  Beatrice turned towards Gabriel like nothing had happened too. Gabriel tried to run the angles, wondering what the chances were Beatrice’s appearance and that of the goons was a coincidence. All of them turning up so soon after the two cops went for a dip in the river and Gabriel started sniffing around.

  ‘So what are you really doing here, Bea?’ he asked.

  She paused, frowned.

  ‘Don’t tell me you came down here for old time’s sake,’ he said, sounding colder than he meant. ‘You’ve avoided this place since the day we broke it off.’

  ‘Since you broke it off with me,’ she said. ‘Let’s not re-write history.’

  Almost as soon as she’d said it she sighed, regretting the outburst.

  ‘Something’s happened,’ she said. ‘I need to talk to you.’

  As she spoke, Gabriel scanned the room. From the corner of his eye he saw the wiry Gagliano goon get up and disappear through the crowd. A second later one of the club captains approached.

  ‘Gabriel, we need you backstage,’ he said.

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Some kind of commotion in the dressing room. One of the girls,’ he said.

  Gabriel looked at Beatrice.

  ‘It can wait,’ she said. ‘Till we find somewhere private.’

  ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Wait here. I’ll be back in two minutes.’

  She nodded.

  He headed off towards the door that led backstage. He turned off the corridor and walked through the kitchen, arrived at the dressing rooms, knocked, stepped inside. The place was mostly empty on account of all the girls being out on the floor, except one. A brunette, sitting on a chair, bawling her eyes out. Kneeling in front of her, patting her hand was Vera, the club’s seamstress, responsible for all the gowns and outfits, and often the girls, too.

  Next to them both was one of the club’s bouncers. The dancing girls had their own entrance to the building, aw
ay from where the customers lined up, and the bouncer was supposed to be guarding it.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Gabriel asked.

  ‘Ah, jeez,’ said the bouncer.

  ‘Joan’s ex-feller’s been hanging about the stage door,’ said Vera.

  ‘We warned him, Mr Leveson,’ said the bouncer, full of remorse.

  ‘Three nights in a row now,’ said the crying girl. ‘Ever since I ditched him.’

  ‘What did you do?’ Gabriel asked, turning to look at the bouncer.

  ‘He beat him to a pulp,’ screamed the girl.

  ‘He was threatening to come back with a gun,’ said the bouncer.

  ‘You didn’t come and get me?’ Gabriel asked.

  ‘I’m sorry, boss.’

  ‘When did all this happen?’

  ‘’Bout a quarter of an hour ago,’ said Vera. ‘Just as the girls were going on stage.’

  ‘Where is he now?’ Gabriel asked.

  ‘We put him in a taxi for the hospital,’ said the bouncer.

  ‘Cops?’ Gabriel asked.

  They shook their heads.

  ‘All right,’ said Gabriel. He thought. He turned to look at the crying girl. ‘Joan, you got the rest of the night off. Here’s money for a taxi.’

  He peeled off some bills. ‘You live alone?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Good,’ said Gabriel. ‘I’m going to send Havemeyer over to the hospital, keep an eye on your fella, make sure he gets the best care and Havemeyer’ll call you when he’s all right. OK?’

  The girl nodded.

  ‘Everything’s going to be fine,’ he said to her.

  ‘Don’t worry, Joanie,’ said Vera, patting the girl on the knee. ‘It’s all gonna be fine.’

  The girl nodded.

  Gabriel turned to the bouncer. ‘Was it just you?’

  The bouncer paused.

  ‘Me and Pete,’ he said.

  ‘Come see me at the end of the night.’

  The bouncer nodded once more.

  Gabriel shook his head and just as he turned to leave a flashbulb popped, blinding him for an instant. He turned to see a photographer in the corridor behind him. Gabriel had left the door open. The photographer was a gangly kid in his early twenties, dressed in slacks and a cardigan, holding a camera aloft.