The Mobster’s Lament

by Ray Celestin

  54

  Thursday 13th, 4.56 p.m.

  Gabriel parked the De Soto on a road leading up to Columbus Circle. It was completely dark now and the street lights were on. In the center of the circle the statue of Columbus on his plinth was already foamed in snow.

  He lit a cigarette and waited, staring at the apartment block a few doors down the street, the entrance to Bova’s main parlor. All the brothels in New York worked similar shifts, the young, expensive girls worked five to midnight, then from midnight the older women came on the clock, the ones more likely to take a beating in their stride from the drunks who were abroad at that time of night.

  Bova did the rounds at shift change. Gabriel hoped he hadn’t arrived too late. He looked again at the snowman Columbus on his plinth in the gloom, fixed into position at the apex of the circular roadway which surrounded him, at the red-and-white lights of the cars spinning endlessly about. On the other side of the circle, behind Columbus, was a building with a giant electric Coca-Cola billboard affixed to its roof, thousands more red-and-white lights, blinking into the night sky. Thirst knows no station. In the gaudy illumination that spilled out from it, two whores walked up and down the street, braving the snow, clutching fake furs tightly to their necks.

  Just as Gabriel was stubbing out his cigarette, the door to the parlor opened and Bova stepped out. Perfect timing. Gabriel got out and trotted over. Bova was approaching a parked Cadillac when Gabriel reached him.

  Bova turned and saw Gabriel standing behind him, pointing a .38 at him. There was no one on the street except the two of them; the cars rushing past paid them no heed.

  ‘Good evening to you, too,’ said Bova.

  ‘Unlock both the doors,’ said Gabriel, waving the gun at the doors on their side of the car. ‘And get in the front.’

  Bova took in the situation, did as he was commanded. Gabriel got into the rear passenger seat.

  ‘Hands on the dash,’ said Gabriel.

  ‘Are you serious?’ said Bova, catching Gabriel’s eye in the rearview.

  Gabriel said nothing. Bova exhaled and shook his head, exasperated. He put his hands on the dash.

  ‘Can I at least start up the engine so we both don’t freeze to death?’ he asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  ‘I want an address for Faron,’ said Gabriel.

  ‘You’re crazy.’

  ‘You know where he is, Bova.’

  ‘Like fuck I do.’

  ‘You and him are both working for Genovese. You lent him men from your gym for the airport sting. You fed him one of your girls that was causing trouble. You know where he’s operating from. I want an address or I kill you.’

  ‘You’re no killer.’

  ‘My niece’s missing,’ Gabriel said. ‘And thanks to you and your pals I’ve got a contract out on me. I’ve got the commission coming after me from now till I die. I’ve got nothing to lose, Bova.’

  Bova eyed him through the rearview. Gabriel caught a sliver of uncertainty.

  ‘Well, if you kill me, how are you going to find him?’ Bova said.

  ‘I’ll settle for shooting you in your stomach and watching you die slow. Tell me and you live.’

  The lights of the cars spun about the circle as the game of who folds first played out. Gabriel had the gun, and the element of surprise, and the air of a man with nothing to lose, eventually his advantages would make themselves plain.

  ‘Can I at least turn on the fucking heating?’ said Bova, admitting defeat.

  ‘No,’ said Gabriel, pressing home his victory.

  The lights at the south end of the circle turned red and the road next to them began to fill with cars pulling up at the junction. They sat there in the gloom, both of them bathed in the crimson glow of tail-lights. Bova exhaled dramatically once more.

  ‘He’s in an apartment over a garment factory in Hell’s Kitchen. Across the street from Pier Eighty-five.’

  ‘I’m gonna get you to drive over there,’ said Gabriel. ‘And if you’re lying, you’re dead. Now you sticking with that story?’

  ‘I’m telling you the truth,’ said Bova. ‘He’s got the whole floor above the factory to himself. He’s been there months. But there ain’t no point going there tonight. He’s out on a job.’

  ‘Yeah, sure he is.’

  ‘He’s out on a job for Genovese and then he’s skipping town. Like he always does. You missed your chance, Gabby.’

  Bova looked at Gabriel through the rearview and grinned.

  ‘Who tipped Genovese off about the airport?’ Gabriel asked.

  Bova laughed. ‘You really want to know?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Costello.’ Bova grinned at him again, his gold teeth glinting in the gloom, the scar on his face a trench of deep shadow.

  The traffic signals changed, the cars started moving, their lights sweeping through the Cadillac once more.

  ‘You worried you got played by Costello over the airport?’ said Bova. ‘You’ve been played the last thirteen years. Costello’s always known who you are, why you joined. He’s always known Faron was over in Naples. And here you were running around like a sucker trying to find him and everyone’s known. You’re a joke, Gabby.’

  Before he knew it, the butt of Gabriel’s gun was swinging across the back of Bova’s head. There was a cracking sound, a gasp, a spurt of blood. Bova leaned forward, his hands over his head, convulsing with pain. He checked his hands and saw they were slick with blood.

  ‘You fuck,’ Bova muttered. ‘You fuck.’

  He tried to turn and face Gabriel, but it cost him too much in pain to twist the muscles in his neck so he only quarter-turned and looked all the weaker for it.

  ‘Eyes front,’ said Gabriel, pointing the gun at him. ‘Hands on the dash.’

  Bova turned forward once more. Blood seeped down his neck.

  ‘We’re gonna drive over to Faron’s,’ said Gabriel. ‘And then you’re going to give Genovese a message from me. I get any kickback from him I let the commission know he was in on Benny Siegel’s scam with the Flamingo money.’

  ‘You’re way off the mark,’ said Bova. ‘Benny and Vito hated each other.’

  ‘Bullshit,’ said Gabriel. ‘Vito was the only one in New York who didn’t invest in the Flamingo, because Benny let him know it was a scam to steal all the money.’

  Bova frowned, puzzled.

  ‘Vito didn’t put any money into the pot because they got sore at each other.’

  ‘They met while Benny was in town,’ said Gabriel.

  ‘To talk about the dope routes,’ Bova said. ‘Vito started getting his dope from Asia again, and had dumped the Mexicans Benny had hooked him up with. It meant Benny wouldn’t get a cut no more, right when he needed money for the casino. They hated each other. You got nothing.’

  Gabriel glared at Bova. He tried to think, tried to shift the arrangement of the cards, to make sense of what Bova had just told him. Benny and Genovese had fallen out. Then he realized – Benny hadn’t been going around New York looking for Cleveland with Genovese, but against him. Somehow Benny had found out about Cleveland and tried to use him as leverage in their dope route dispute.

  Just as Gabriel was getting his head around it, the car filled with movement. Bova’s hands flew away from his neck. He jolted for the glove-box, flipped it open. Gabriel saw gun-metal gleaming in the shadows. Gabriel raised his gun, Bova turned with a .38. The inside of the car was lit up with two flashes, Bova’s head exploding in a mist of blood and gunpowder.

  The gunshots deafened Gabriel.

  All went black. A shrill ringing in his ears. The smell of smoke in his nose. He felt warmth on his face, on his neck. He realized he had his eyes closed. He opened them. The car had been transformed, doused red by Bova’s blood. The warmth he’d felt on his skin must have been blood. Then he noticed it in his mouth too. Gabriel must have had his mouth open when the bullet splattered Bova across the car.

  He vomited. A g
ush of acrid liquid splashed into the footwell, onto his shoes. He dropped the gun and wiped what he could from his teeth and his tongue. He prayed he hadn’t swallowed any. And even as he was furiously wiping his mouth, he knew no amount of cleaning would ever clean him of this.

  He’d never killed a man in his life, and now he’d killed two in just a few hours. He needed to think. He needed to get away. He picked up his gun, slipped it into his pocket. He got out of the car. Wiped down the door handle, the edge of the door. He pulled up the collar of his trench coat, flipped his hat down low; he headed for the De Soto, trying his hardest not to break into a run, not to vomit once more, as the car lights spun about him, and Columbus looked on.

  55

  Thursday 13th, 5.03 p.m.

  Ida stood in the kitchen, waiting for the kettle to boil. Through the window all was clouds and falling snow. Central Park was turning white. People were coming and going up the street. There it was, picture-postcard Manhattan. Snow-globe Manhattan.

  The kettle came to a boil. Ida finished making the tea and returned to the living room. Sarah was where she’d left her on the sofa. Ida handed her the tea and they both sat and looked out of the windows a while.

  ‘You mind if I put the radio on?’ Sarah asked.

  ‘Sure,’ said Ida.

  Sarah rose, turned it on, tuned it to Boston Blackie just as the show’s presenter boomed out its tag line: Enemy to those who make him an enemy. Friend to those who have no friend.

  On that evening’s episode, Boston Blackie travelled to Honolulu to help a woman whose husband was trying to kill her. Ida thought of the sound-effects artists making it seem like the jewel-thief-come-detective was on a tropical island. Hawaiian guitars twanged, reed skirts rustled, ice-cubes dropped into cocktail glasses, a volcano erupted.

  Sarah listened, huddled up on the sofa, knees to her chest.

  ‘Are you and Michael cops?’ she asked.

  Ida shook her head. ‘We’re private detectives.’

  ‘For real? Like Boston Blackie?’

  ‘I suppose.’

  ‘I didn’t think girls did that.’

  ‘Sure they do,’ said Ida. ‘Although I’m not really a girl anymore. One of the first ever real-life detectives was a woman. Kate Warne. She worked for the Pinkertons.’

  Sarah smiled. ‘I’d like to be a detective, too,’ she said.

  ‘Maybe some day you will.’

  ‘I don’t think I’m brave enough.’

  ‘Bravery’s not a trait,’ said Ida. ‘It’s a skill. You practice, you get better at it. Like I did.’

  Sarah thought about this and her face brightened, and she smiled again.

  ‘Where are you from?’ she asked. ‘I like your accent.’

  ‘New Orleans. But these days I live in Chicago.’

  Sarah nodded. Ida awaited a comment about jazz or voodoo or hurricanes or swamps, but it didn’t come.

  ‘You married?’ the girl asked.

  Ida shook her head. ‘I was. I’ve got a son. Jacob. He’s a little bit older than you. He used to like radio detectives, too.’

  Outside the wind changed direction and a flurry of snow blew against the windows. In Hawaii, Boston Blackie was safely back at his luxury hotel, the killer in custody, explaining to Inspector Faraday how he’d gotten to the bottom of the mystery. The theme song was played and the sponsor’s announcement came on.

  ‘I know you don’t want to talk about it,’ said Ida, ‘but I need to know what happened last night.’

  Sarah nodded. Told her the story of the firefight, how afterwards she had run off, dazed by what had happened, had hopped on a subway train, had gone up and down the line till she’d got her head straight.

  ‘I knew not to go to the police,’ she said. ‘My uncle told me that. I went back to the apartment. I knew I shouldn’t. Someone had broken in. I picked up some things and I left. Then I went to some places – meeting places, the stash spots Uncle Gabby had told me about, but he wasn’t at any of them. Then I saw in the papers about Michael going to the hospital and I wanted to see if he was OK.’

  She was trying to stop herself from sobbing. Ida took her hand, held it, squeezed it. Not only was Sarah battered by the trauma of what had happened, but also by guilt, for following Michael’s commands and leaving him behind.

  Sarah wiped away tears and continued in a trembling voice. ‘Was the man who attacked us Faron?’ she asked. ‘The big man?’

  Ida paused, surprised she knew the name. ‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘What did he look like?’

  Sarah gave her a description that matched Faron’s.

  Ida nodded. Sarah took it in, then a look of dismay spread across her features.

  ‘He shot at me,’ she said. ‘Faron. He looked at me. I think he realized who I was. Then he shot at me.’

  Something about the way she said it tugged at Ida’s thoughts, like there was something she was missing, something Sarah assumed she knew.

  ‘You’d never seen him before?’

  Sarah shook her head, again that look of dismay, now with added confusion, as if Sarah was wondering why Ida wasn’t reacting more. What was Ida missing?

  Tears came down Sarah’s face in a torrent now and Sarah wiped her eyes, and that’s when Ida realized, and felt foolish for not figuring it out before.

  The girl’s blue eyes.

  So different to Gabriel’s brown eyes, but matching the description Gabriel had given her of Faron. Gabriel had told Ida his sister was attacked and raped by Faron and months later threw herself from a hospital window. That the attack had happened thirteen, fourteen years ago.

  Ida continued staring at the girl, studying her, making sure.

  ‘Faron’s your father?’ Ida whispered.

  Sarah nodded. Burst into tears. Ida reached out and cradled her, felt her body convulse, and it was as if the sobs and wails were the only things keeping her upright. The convulsions came in waves, stronger, then more slowly, then they stopped altogether. Ida continued to hold her, imagined what it must be like for the girl, to have been attacked by her own father.

  ‘You’re safe now,’ Ida said. ‘I’m here. Your uncle’ll be back soon, and you’ll leave New York and you’ll be fine. He won’t get you.’

  Sarah nodded, sniffed back the last of the tears.

  ‘I’m not supposed to know,’ she said.

  ‘That he’s your father?’

  Sarah nodded again.

  ‘Uncle Gabby never told me. Just said that Faron killed my mom after I was born. But I knew he was lying.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘About a year ago, we went to the library on a school trip, the big one on Forty-second Street, and they showed us the periodicals room and how to use it. I went back the next weekend. I looked up what happened in the newspapers. Faron had raped her, and after I was born, she killed herself. She waited till I was born then jumped out of the hospital window. The same night. She was just waiting for me.’

  Sarah stared at Ida forlornly and Ida hugged her again. Then Ida suggested she lie down. Sarah nodded. Ida went to Michael’s bedroom and changed the sheets. Sarah went in there and was asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow. Ida stopped in the doorway and stared at her, saddened by the girl’s plight but also impressed by her youthful resilience.

  Ida went back into the living room. The radio was broadcasting a news report about a meeting in the Waldorf, how the movie industry was hanging the Hollywood Ten out to dry. Proof that people elected their villains as surely as they elected their leaders.

  She took a sip of her tea and found it had grown tepid. She checked her gun. Looked around to see if Michael had hidden any other weapons anywhere. She checked the lines of sight from the windows once more, the fire escapes. She saw the bag Sarah had brought with her. She’d mentioned stash spots. Maybe Sarah had picked up a weapon.

  Ida went through the bag. Ten thousand dollars in cash, a few clothes, a sketch pad, colored pencils. Ida opened the sketch pad, saw odd drawings mixed i
n with superheroes; day-of-the-dead stuff, Mexican skeletons, in musical bands, as gangsters. They reminded Ida of the Voodoo Barons from back home in New Orleans. She thought about the violence the girl had just been through, the violence of her birth, the knowledge of who her father was. Ida looked again at the gun-toting gangsters and they took on new meaning.

  She returned everything to the bag. Went into the kitchen to make more tea. Saw the snow piling up on the window ledge. When Jacob was little, she’d scoop snow up into bowls, pour raspberry syrup on to it, and they’d eat it in front of the radio. It never tasted that great, but the feeling of turning weather into dessert felt magical for them both.

  She walked back into the lounge. The radio was still on. A weather report about the snowstorm sweeping across the northeast. She only half listened. Her mind wasn’t in the room, it was in the hospital. She stared out of the windows at the snow flurries falling ever thicker. She could see the lights of the skyscrapers opposite gleaming.

  She rose, walked over to the phone, dialed the hospital.

  The operator connected the call and it went through to the ward, to the nurse on duty.

  ‘He’s woken up,’ said the nurse brightly. ‘It looks like he’s got through the worst of it.’

  Ida burst into tears. Heaving, sobbing tears. She must have cried for a while, because when she looked up she saw Sarah standing next to her.

  ‘Is he OK?’ Sarah asked.

  Ida couldn’t speak. She nodded. Sarah smiled. She kneeled and hugged her. And in that moment, Ida imagined it was Jacob she was hugging, all those miles away in California, on the other side of the great night that lay glittering across the land.

  56

  Thursday 13th, 5.33 p.m.

  Gabriel sped away from Columbus Circle as quickly as he could, away from Bova and the blood-splattered horror of it, trying to outrun the nightmare. Bova’s words shook his thoughts – Faron had a job planned that night. Was the job anything to do with Sarah? Was that why he couldn’t find her? And then he thought about what Bova had said about Benny and Genovese falling out, and how Costello had known all along where Faron was. If it was true, everything Gabriel thought he knew was wrong.