The Mobster’s Lament

by Ray Celestin

  He who wishes to revenge injuries by reciprocal hatred will live in misery. But he who endeavors to drive away hatred by means of love, fights with pleasure and confidence; he resists equally one or many men, and scarcely needs at all the help of fortune.

  —Spinoza

  The meeting with the Doc, where Gabriel had asked what the philosopher’s thoughts on revenge were. The Doc had said he’d look into it and he’d come through. Gabriel stared at the last four words – the help of fortune – and almost laughed. He slipped the letter into his pocket, left the apartment for the last ever time and walked up the stairs onto the roof to get the passports.

  He readied his gun, opened the door, looked about. There was no one there, there were no footprints in the snow, and thankfully, the pigeon coop was still intact. He walked towards it, the snow groaning and creaking under his feet. As he reached the coop he saw the door was open, the padlock on the ledge was broken, the strongbox tossed on the floor.

  ‘Drop the gun,’ said a familiar voice behind him. ‘Or I’ll shoot.’

  Gabriel laid the gun down in the snow.

  ‘Now turn around.’

  Gabriel turned to see Havemeyer standing behind him, the passports in one hand, a gun pointed at Gabriel in the other.

  ‘Looking for these?’ said Havemeyer, waving the passports about.

  Gabriel’s heart sank. Old man Havemeyer from the back room of the Copa. Of course. Havemeyer was in charge of club security, the bouncers he employed trained at Bova’s gym. Genovese didn’t just have Bova as a rat in Costello’s organization. Now, it seemed, he had Havemeyer, too.

  ‘What do you want?’ Gabriel asked.

  Havemeyer paused, a look of regret, apology even, playing across his features. ‘I’m too old to be working nights, Gabby,’ he said. ‘The contract they’ve put on you, it’s enough for me to retire on. The others figured they’d toss your apartment. I knew you’d come back here though. Froze my ass off. I’m sorry, pal. It was too good a chance to pass up.’

  Gabriel nodded. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘You do me a favor before you shoot?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You tell me where Sarah is?’

  Havemeyer shrugged. ‘She’s still out there somewhere.’

  Gabriel nodded again.

  ‘I want you to walk to the edge of the roof,’ said Havemeyer.

  The old man wanted it to look like Gabriel had jumped.

  ‘Two sets of footprints on the roof,’ said Gabriel. ‘They’ll never buy it.’

  ‘It’s snowing. By the time they get here they’ll all be covered up. Walk.’

  Gabriel walked, reached the edge of the roof, stopped. Here he was again, a gargoyle looking down on the city.

  ‘I’ll let you do it yourself,’ said Havemeyer.

  He said it like he was being generous, and maybe he was. Gabriel looked over the edge, to the street far below him, he saw the roof of Havemeyer’s car parked up. He should have spotted it when he’d cased the place before he’d come in.

  He watched the snow fall past his feet, delineating the space through which he was about to plunge. He’d always imagined himself falling to his death, had visions of it ever since his sister had died, and now, here he was. He’d die from the wings he never had, a gargoyle smashed to rubble on the sidewalk.

  The snow continued to dance through the void. Gabriel turned around and stared at Havemeyer.

  ‘I’m not jumping,’ he said. ‘You want to kill me, be a man and kill me.’

  Havemeyer stared back at him with those red, rheumy eyes. Gabriel saw him wavering. Gabriel leaped forwards. Havemeyer fired. The bullet whizzed past Gabriel’s shoulder. Then they were both on the snow, fighting, tumbling for the gun. Gabriel got his hands on it and a shot rang out, and Havemeyer went slack. An odd sound wheezed out of him, like a groan, like a ball deflating. He twitched. He lay on his back, a red puddle forming, oozing. Snowflakes fell on it, sailed a moment, turned pink, capsized.

  Gabriel stared at the body of his friend and felt like he couldn’t breathe, like his lungs were filled with boiling ice. Then he realized blood might get on the passports. He jumped up, scrabbled around Havemeyer’s pockets, grabbed the passports. He stared some more at Havemeyer’s body. He let out a sob. Then he remembered the last time he was on the roof, stashing the passports, the old woman looking down on him.

  He spun about. No one was at any of the windows.

  He got up, dragged Havemeyer’s body, hid it behind the coop. He needed to think. He couldn’t leave Havemeyer on his roof. He couldn’t have the police after him on top of everything.

  Think.

  He rose. He pulled Havemeyer’s car keys from his pocket. He ran across the roof, picked up his own gun. He went down to the apartment. He found a pair of gloves and a luggage trunk. He put on the gloves, wiped down the trunk, hauled it up to the roof. He hauled Havemeyer into it, locked it shut, prayed the blood wouldn’t seep out of it. He closed up the pigeon coop. He dragged the trunk down the stairs and into the elevator.

  When he reached the lobby, he had the concierge look after the trunk. He ran out and drove Havemeyer’s car around, had the concierge help him load it into the car’s trunk.

  ‘You going away?’ the concierge asked.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Gabriel.

  He wiped down the trunk where the concierge had handled it. They stood on the street and stared at each other. Gabriel took his apartment keys from his pocket, tossed them at the concierge.

  ‘Like I said. I was never here today. Got it?’

  The concierge got it.

  ‘Go up to my apartment and take anything you want. There’s a painting that looks like someone puked up on it that’s worth a few bucks. If the police call, if anyone calls, you never saw me today.’

  ‘Sure thing, Mr Leveson.’

  Gabriel got in Havemeyer’s car. Drove. The first payphone he saw he jumped out and called Michael’s apartment. No answer. He got back in the car and drove it to the Copa. He parked up on the alleyway next to its side entrance. He left the alleyway. The cops would find Havemeyer’s body in a luggage trunk locked into the trunk of his own car, outside his place of work. Gabriel didn’t have a clue what they’d think, but hopefully it would confuse them enough not to go looking on Gabriel’s roof.

  He walked around the corner, paused to stare up at the facade of the Copa. The maroon awning. The logo of the Brazilian woman with the head wrap. Havemeyer had helped him all those years to conjure up the fantasia of Rio in that Manhattan basement, now he was dead. Gabriel thought of his sister, of their childhood spent on the streets of New York, running through the dust all those years ago. He’d miss the Big Apple, but he was right to turn his back on it.

  Now he had to find Sarah and get the hell out of New York before he bumped into anyone else looking to collect on his contract.

  He walked to 5th and caught a cab back to where he’d parked the stolen car, drove it over to a breaker’s yard he knew, swapped it for a ’42 De Soto that was on its last legs.

  ‘You want me to top up the anti-freeze,’ said the kid at the yard, ‘put some skid-chains on?’

  Gabriel looked up at the sky, at the snow falling ever more heavily. If it was this bad in Manhattan, how much worse would it be on the country roads they might have to navigate on their dash from the city?

  Gabriel nodded and the kid got to work. He ended up paying way over the odds. He jumped in and started making the rounds.

  He was at it hours and there was no trace of her. He tried all the stash spots, the meeting places. He went to the buildings of three of her school friends whose addresses he knew. They looked down their noses at him and told him they hadn’t seen Sarah since the day before.

  He went back to the stash spots and the meeting places once more. He thought of other places she might have gone. The Copa? Mrs Hirsch’s sister in Queens? Havemeyer’s? Maybe she’d been picked up by the cops. He called Salzman but couldn’t get through to him. He called Ida�
�s hotel. He drove to Michael’s apartment.

  Nothing.

  He wanted to keep at it. As long as he stayed out, as long as he prowled the streets, as long as he kept moving, Sarah was still alive.

  When he returned to Grand Central to look for her once more, it was the middle of the evening commute. The place was somehow busier than it usually was, people swamping the information booth, in rows in front of the departure boards. Gabriel stumbled through them, spinning left and right, trying to catch a glimpse of her through the crowds.

  And there she was, bundled up in her coat. Relief coursed through him, joy and gratitude, so strong it made him catch his breath. He rushed over to her, bumping past people, sending up shouts. But before he was halfway there, he realized it wasn’t her. Just some other little girl, alone in the heart of the city. He stopped. His elation soured, his anxiety returned, all the more powerful now after the temporary letup. He cursed his mind for playing tricks on him.

  He stared at the girl. She looked lost, alone. Another newly arrived runaway. He thought of the noticeboards of missing persons in Times Square. Wondering if she’d end up one of the names, one of the GIRLS, GIRLS, GIRLS. He wondered if Sarah might end up one of them, too.

  It was only then that he honed in on the words coming over the tannoy … Disruption … Cancellations … Blizzard … He looked again across the concourse and realized that not only was it busier than usual, but the crowds weren’t rushing here and there like they normally did. They were standing about waiting for announcements, frozen. Except at the information booth, where a horde of people were swamping the desks.

  Gabriel headed over there, shouldered his way into the crowd, managed to get within earshot of the employees manning the booth.

  ‘No trains coming in or out,’ shouted one of the men behind the desk, looking as irate at the passengers surrounding him.

  ‘What about putting us on buses?’ shouted one of the people in the crowd.

  ‘Bud, there’s a blizzard coming in,’ he said. ‘From Maryland to Maine. What buses are we gonna put you on? The highways are closed. There’s no roads, no buses, no trains, no subway, no planes, no boats. Everything’s shut. Take my advice, go to tourist information and find a hotel for the night before all the rooms have gone, too.’

  A roar of disapproval rose up from the crowd, passengers shouting back at the man, the man rolling his eyes and folding his arms over his chest. Gabriel slunk back through the crowd, mind reeling. He was trapped in New York. The very night he and Sarah were supposed to be escaping and there was no way out of the city.

  A wave of nausea overtook him. He hyperventilated, from panic and stress and sleeplessness and drugs. He needed to get out of the press of people. He needed to sit down before he fell. He stumbled back out of the crowd, the nausea making him lurch like a spinning top. He saw some benches lined up against a wall. He reached one, sat, leaned his head all the way back, closed his eyes, breathed. Against the darkness, a carnival of horrors careened through his mind, visions of slaughter. How completely he’d failed to protect his family. All his planning had come to nothing.

  He opened his eyes and found himself staring up at the Milky Way moving across the ceiling of the station; the gold-trimmed constellations fixed in a deep-blue wilderness. He looked at the figures in their flowing robes, floating over the people’s heads like the billboards floating over Manhattan, making their way happily on invisible orbits through a world which was denied most men.

  He cradled his head in his hands. Breathed. Tried to think. Lit a Luckie. Tried to think.

  He’d lost Sarah and he was trapped in New York. She wasn’t at Grand Central. She wasn’t at any of their predetermined safe spots. What to do? Check all the meeting points again?

  The image of Havemeyer flashed into his mind, standing on the rooftop in the snow, gun raised. What if Havemeyer had lied to Gabriel when he said they didn’t have her? Maybe Faron did have her. A steely fear ran through him. He had to check, and he knew how.

  He rose and rushed out of the station, onto 42nd. Into the darkness and gloom. He saw the snow falling now like feathers from the sky. Manhattan was always a few degrees warmer than the countryside around it, a little more sheltered, a bubble. The road closures and blockages wouldn’t hit the island till after everywhere else. He still had maybe a few hours before Manhattan’s streets shut down, too, maybe a few hours to find Sarah.

  53

  Thursday 13th, 12.36 p.m.

  Time passed. Michael’s surgery finished and they moved him to a room. No one was allowed in, but there was a window in the door, which Ida made the mistake of peering through. He was lying on the bed, hooked up to a machine that looked like a pump, that looked like it was breathing for him, rising and falling, emitting a whine, then a hiss, then a whine. The tubes that came out of it went into Michael’s nose, or maybe his mouth. It was hard to tell. All around his face was surgical tape, pasted on like plaster, beyond it blue bruises, unnaturally lumpen. She’d heard about noses being broken to get breathing tubes inside, teeth accidentally knocked out. What little she could see of his face looked old; lined and worn and papery. The image of him lying there like that, so close to the image of a man in a coffin, knifed into her. The dread and panic of losing him ran through her veins once more, causing her heart to jump, her muscles to tense. Images rioted through her mind.

  She stared at the garland of tubes around his face, watched the machine pump and decompress, then Michael’s chest rise and fall. She stepped back from the window, sat in the corridor with Carrasco and his two men and let out a sob. Carrasco put an arm around her.

  ‘He’ll pull through,’ he said. ‘He’s the toughest bastard I ever met.’

  Ida nodded, noted how it was in times of stress that people spoke in clichés. She took a handkerchief from her purse and wiped her eyes.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘For coming here, and for everything else you’ve done.’

  Carrasco shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t be here today, if it wasn’t for him. Me or my family.’

  He told her the story, of a day years ago back in Chicago, when it all could have ended for him were it not for Michael putting himself on the line.

  ‘There’s not many people as good as him,’ said Carrasco. ‘And if there’s any justice in this world, he’ll come out of it alive.’

  And she knew he was right. Michael was a good man. And it wasn’t because he was simple or naive, nor because he expected to receive anything in return. He’d told her more than once that he always tried to act with integrity because of his belief that in a crushingly corrupt world the only compass that could be trusted was a man’s own morality, the decency that came from within, that had to be cultivated through honesty and action. That was what he’d passed on to Ida, had explained to her, had made her see. And in that moment, she realized the weight of it, and that it was her duty to pass that on to someone else, whomever that might be.

  She put her head on Carrasco’s shoulder and closed her eyes, felt the smoothness of his cotton jacket against her cheek. Then a nurse was standing in front of her suggesting she could go to an empty room and rest a little. The room was just a few doors down. She decided against lying on the bed and instead sat in the chair next to it. She looked out of the window to the yellow bricks of the building opposite, and the space over the road, which was filled with snowflakes pirouetting their way to earth. The same snow that fell on Chicago nearly thirty years ago, when she’d gotten off the train from New Orleans and walked to the Pinkerton offices and met Michael for the first time. From a scared, young girl to a widowed mother, all in the time it took for a snowflake to flutter past a window.

  She closed her eyes and drifted in and out of an uneasy, flickering sleep.

  There was a knock at the door and it woke her and hope quivered in her chest that it was a doctor telling her everything was going to be all right. Instead, it was one of the cops who’d come with Carrasco.

  ‘There’s a girl here,
’ he said.

  Ida rose and looked through the doorway to see Gabriel’s niece standing in the corridor. Her eyes looked raw, her shoulders were hunched, her coat askew, her hair a mess. She had a bulging backpack slung over one shoulder.

  Ida nodded for her to come in. Sarah stepped into the room and turned to face Ida, her hands clasped in front of her.

  ‘Is Michael OK?’ Sarah asked. Her eyes filled with tears and guilt.

  ‘We don’t know yet,’ said Ida.

  Sarah nodded, took this in. ‘He saved me,’ she said.

  ‘I figured. Your uncle know where you are?’

  Sarah shook her head.

  ‘He must be out scouring New York for you,’ said Ida.

  Sarah shrugged.

  Ida thought. ‘It’s not safe here,’ Ida said.

  ‘But the police are outside.’

  ‘Even so.’

  There was a moment of stillness, then Sarah burst into tears.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  Ida hugged her.

  ‘I need to get you somewhere safe,’ Ida said. ‘Your uncle’ll want to know you’re safe.’

  Sarah nodded. ‘Where?’ she asked.

  Ida thought. She told Sarah to wait in the room, then she went back to see Carrasco. Told him where she was going in case Gabriel called. Then she went back down the corridor, back down the stairs, outside. The snow was coming down, thicker than ever, suffusing the air with a crispness she could almost smell.

  She did a sweep of the parking lot. She saw a cab and called it over, told it to wait. Then she went back in and got Sarah, took her by the hand. When they reached the hospital entrance, Ida did another sweep then hurried Sarah into the cab, gave the driver Michael’s address and they were off, crawling through the afternoon traffic and sunset gloom, Ida checking over her shoulder the whole way.