by Ann Aptaker
“Uh-huh. So what’s so important in your busy day that you had Screwy yank me awake?”
“Well, it’s like this,” he says with an offhand shrug that hints at the possibility that the length of my life might be abruptly shortened. “You’re bringin’ trouble where we don’t want trouble.”
“Is that so? I don’t recall ever bringing you anything but cash and lots of it. I make sure you guys get paid before my goods ever hit the docks. As far as I’m concerned, my account’s up to date.”
“Oh, the trouble ain’t money, Cantor. The trouble’s a murder and a nosy cop. A certain Lieutenant Huber.”
I can’t let Jimmy see the deep breath I’m trying not to take or the swallow I’m trying to hide. The last thing I need is for Jimmy Shea to figure I’m jittery. The Mob doesn’t like jittery people, can’t trust ’em, and they have only one way of dealing with people they don’t trust.
But yeah, I’m jittery, because now I know just how far Huber’s willing to go to get me. The police usually avoid stirring up the Mob. It runs the risk of exposing the crooked deck the Mob, the brass, the judges, the politicians, and the big-money boys have stacked against the average Joes and Janes. Too much exposure means people have to be silenced. Bodies start piling up, which gets noticed by the newspapers, who shine a spotlight into the police department, sending the dirty cops scurrying like rats. If Huber’s willing to risk all that, could be he’s hoping one of the bodies in the pile is me.
So I have to keep my conversation with Jimmy steady, no sudden swings, no show of nerves. A cigarette will help. I take one from the pack on my night table, pick up the lighter lying next to it, and light the smoke while Jimmy and Screwy watch my every move.
After a deep drag and an exhale as slow and lazy as I can make it, I try a play, keeping my voice and manner as matter-of-fact as my jitters will let me. “Since when are you concerned about a nosy cop, Jimmy? You and your outfit own plenty of cops. Pay Huber enough and he’ll probably go away.”
“Probably ain’t good enough,” he says, not buying my play. “We don’t throw money at people we don’t know, and we don’t know this guy Huber. Matter of fact, this is the first I’ve ever heard of the guy. He’s not the usual dockside cop, not from any of the waterfront precincts. He seems to know a lot about you, though. According to my boys, this Huber knows you visited some old lady last night and the lady wound up dead.”
“He also knows I didn’t kill her.”
“He don’t care. And I don’t care either. And neither do my associates. But we do care about this cop askin’ too many questions about our arrangement with you on the docks. You understand what I’m trying to tell you, Cantor?” He’s pointing at me, index finger extended and the other fingers curled up, his hand aimed like a gun. He lets it linger in the air before he finally lowers it slowly, sure he’s made his murderous point. “This guy Huber is lookin’ to tie you up in a murder any way he can,” he says, “but he’s doing it by digging for the kind of information that could get the attention of too many higher-ups, them reformer types always looking to clean up the docks. That kind of attention is bad for business, Cantor, very bad for business. We don’t want business interrupted by no murder investigation. So I’m asking you: What’s the story with this old lady?”
“She’s dead. That’s all I know.” I keep my lie and my face steady behind a cloud of cigarette smoke.
Jimmy sighs like he’s annoyed with a naughty kid in the schoolyard. “Maybe I haven’t made you fully understand your situation,” he says, getting up, his skinny frame unfolding section by bony section until he’s looming above my bed, “but it sounds like the dead old lady was your client and that whatever you brought into port last night was meant for her. Now she’s dead, and I figure the goods are in the wind, am I right? You see what I’m gettin’ at, Cantor? Your client, your goods. That makes this your problem. Take care of the problem. Get rid of Huber.”
“Whoa there! You can’t seriously be asking me to kill a cop? You’re worried your outfit’s attracting attention now? Killing a cop who’s been sniffing around the docks would bring the whole damn police department down on your head and mine. Even the cops you own would turn on you. Use your head, Jimmy. Cop killing crosses the line. And anyway, I don’t like killing.”
“Give me a little credit, Cantor,” he says with a show of humility even his priest wouldn’t buy. “My associates and I ain’t askin’ you to kill the cop. Just get him the hell off our backs. Give him someone that’s good for the old lady’s murder.”
“You want me to find the killer.”
“Or someone who’ll go down for it. It don’t matter to us. Just do it fast so this Huber can go away happy and we can get on about our business. What’s the matter, Cantor? You look pale.”
“I don’t like sticking a frame on anybody any better than I like killing.”
Jimmy puts his hat on and buttons his overcoat, taking his time about it, overstaying his welcome with each button. “You know,” he says, suddenly good natured through a poisonous sneer, “you should get married, Cantor.”
“Sure. There oughta be a law.”
“I’m talking on the level, as a friend, you understand. You could be a nice-lookin’ dame if you got rid of that undershirt and the rest of your bull-dyke wardrobe and got yourself some nice dresses and frilly underthings. Know what I mean?”
“Get out of here, Jimmy.”
I watch his phony good cheer dissolve into the skin-crawling evil that’s the true Jimmy Shea. “Give this Lieutenant Huber someone who’ll fry for the old lady’s murder, Cantor,” he says. He motions to Screwy to follow him to the door.
“And if I don’t?”
“We’ll give him you.”
*
A long hot shower loosens the knots Screwy tied in my neck. The steam cleans the stench of his cigars out of my nose. Nothing, though, is going to get Jimmy Shea’s threat out of my system. If I don’t deliver what he wants, he’ll either scapegoat me to Huber and have me thrown in the clink, or maybe he’ll toss me in Huber’s lap, already dead.
Huber. If I don’t figure out what he’s up to, I could wind up just as locked up or just as dead.
It’s barely nine in the morning and I’m already squeezed between the Mob and the Law. Surviving the day could get tricky, and I’d hate to be standing at the Pearly Gates before I finally get my chance to twirl around with Vivienne Parkhurst Trent tonight. Some fantasies should come true before you die.
Since there’s nothing in my closet that fulfills Jimmy’s fashion suggestion or his best wishes for my domestic bliss, I get dressed in a light green pullover and a favorite dark brown silk suit which, unlike Jimmy’s cheap goods, is custom tailored to hide the bulge of my Smith & Wesson .38. I load the chambers and slide the gun into its rig, snug under my left arm. Then I put my overcoat and cap on and slip the envelope with the ten grand I got from Hannah Jacobson into my inside jacket pocket.
Before I leave my apartment I grab extra rounds and drop them into my pants pocket. It’s going to be a dangerous day.
*
For a great big city made of steel and stone, New York still has its weedy places, out of the way patches where the landscape hasn’t changed much since the dinosaur days. Drive beyond the piers on the Brooklyn shoreline and you’ll find swampy inlets snaking through real estate where, if it wasn’t for the view of the Manhattan skyline across the river and roadside billboards with pretty girls hawking Rheingold Beer and toothy guys smiling through Barbasol shaving cream, you wouldn’t be surprised to see some toothy green thing slither round the corner, claws out.
Red Drogan berths his tug in one of the inlets, a boggy spot of tall reeds, soupy grasses, and a mist gray as dust. For a less experienced tugman, this inlet would be hell to navigate, but it’s the perfect place to keep a boat out of sight. In other words, it’s the perfect home for Red Drogan.
I park back from the water’s edge where the land is still firm, and call out “Drogan!�
�� when I get out of my car, a snappy dove-gray ’50 Buick Roadmaster convertible I picked up this past February. She’s a free spirit with her top down on warm sunny days, tight and cozy on brisk days like today.
Drogan emerges head and shoulders from the tug’s cabin as I step onto his small, barely visible dock. He waves me to come aboard. Before I’m even on deck I catch the welcoming aroma of coffee.
“You look like you could use a cup,” he says, pouring me one when I walk into the cabin. “Late night?”
“And lousy morning. Jimmy Shea paid me a visit and used Screwy Sweeney as an alarm clock. Oh, and by the way, here’s your cut of last night’s job.” I give Drogan two grand.
He takes the dough and stashes it in one of the overhead bins built into the cabin. Knowing Red, who doesn’t spend a dime unless it’s for his boat or to buy a bottle, and maybe a little coffee, he probably has a fortune lying around up there.
The tug’s cabin is a tidy spot that Red keeps to the essentials: a bunk to sleep in, an old wooden chair and a counter to eat at, a sink, overhead bins to stow gear, and his ship-to-shore phone. Everything’s clean as a whistle, though he really should treat himself to a new hot plate and coffeepot. The hot plate looks like it’s been doing hard time since the invention of the electric plug. And the coffeepot, one of those blue enamel-over-tin jobs, is so beaten up Drogan has to tip it sideways to keep the coffee from spilling out of the dented spout as he pours himself a fresh cup. After taking a gulp, he says, “Now, what’s this about Jimmy Shea?”
I give Red the whole story, from delivering the Dürer to Hannah Jacobson and all the way through to Jimmy’s morning threat in my bedroom. When I’m done, Red says, “Always figured you might die young.” It sounds even worse through that gritty growl of his.
“Not so fast with my obituary, if you don’t mind.”
“Well you made it this far and you ain’t so young anymore, so I guess you’re still beatin’ the odds. I suppose you want me to keep my ear out along the waterfront, yeah? I’ll be towing float barges round the piers today, so I’ll be hearin’ a lotta stuff from a lotta guys.”
“Good, see what you can pick up,” I say. “That freighter I came in on last night, she still in port?”
“Till tomorrow.”
“Start there. I crossed her captain’s palm with a thick slab of green grease, but who knows? Maybe somebody on the crew sold me out. And see if you can get a line on who Lieutenant Huber’s been flashing his badge to along the docks.”
“I’ll look into it.” After another pull of coffee, Drogan’s mood changes, darkens with worry. “Listen, Cantor,” he says, “those goods you brought in last night, you clipped it off some Nazi, yeah?”
“In a manner of speaking. Why?”
“Maybe Jimmy Shea’s not your only problem, if you catch my drift.”
“War’s over, Red,” I say, getting up to go. “Been over for five years.”
“Not for everybody.”
*
My office is my place of business, my treasure chest, my sanctuary. It’s in plain sight but you’d never spot it: a small, nondescript brick job with a blacked-out front door at a midtown corner of Twelfth Avenue, under the West Side Highway. The Hudson River docks are across the street, which has come in handy on more than one occasion. The stretch of piers nearest me is part of Luxury Liner Row. Some of the world’s fanciest ocean liners come into port over there, carrying some of the world’s fanciest people. The fancy folk don’t linger after they’ve come off the boat; they hurry to their taxis and limousines to beat it out of the noisy neighborhood and its tangle of grimy piece-goods factories, cheap eateries, and rough longshoremen’s saloons.
So in the midst of the neighborhood’s hoopla, no one pays attention to my little brick corner or has any idea that down in the basement, behind a false wall, is a walk-in vault with treasures that would knock your eye out.
Only Judson, Rosie, and my lawyer know about my little building, and my lawyer made sure my name never appears anywhere in the paperwork. Even my clients don’t know about the place. All I give them is the phone number. It’s unlisted and in a paper name, can’t be traced back to an address.
I pull into Louie’s garage, up the block from my office, and park my car in my monthly rental spot, paid for in cash, no checks to trace back. Garaging it keeps my car off the street and out of sight of nosy cops and even nosier dockside gangsters. After I get out of the car, I start for the Twelfth Avenue door but change my mind and go out the back and walk through the alleys. No sense kidding myself, I’m jumpy. Jimmy Shea’s threat is crawling all over me like lice. And then there’s Huber. Who knows how many eyes he’s planted around the waterfront?
Judson’s already at his desk when I walk in through the steel door from the alley. In addition to Judson’s aforementioned talents, he’s a first rate guy Friday. He keeps accounts up-to-date, balances the books, deals with paperwork—and all of it in a code only he and I can decipher. If any of it ever falls into the wrong hands, they’ll just figure we’re big fans of Scrabble.
“You got two calls,” he says when he sees me. He gets up and hands me two message slips.
About the first one, I say, “Tell this guy I’ll think about it.” About the second one, “And tell this guy that until I hear one way or the other from that broken-down Count What’s His Name, I can’t move the piece. Now, what’ve you got for me on the Sterns?”
Judson leans against his desk and takes a cigarette from the pack of Camels rolled in the sleeve of his T-shirt. He lights the smoke, speaks through the exhale. “You’re right, Marcus Stern made a killing in the plastics business. He’s got a plant out in Queens, Stern Chemical Products. Does a million-dollar business.”
“What about Stern himself? Is he still connected to a university?”
“Nope. Not since ’43 when his business started raking in buckets of dough in war production. He resigned from teaching to devote all his time to business. According to my guys, the plant retooled after the war to make plastic casings for all those new household appliances. The market for that stuff is booming.”
“What about the wife and daughter.”
“Wife’s name is Katherine, maiden name Anderson. She’s from some little town in Ohio. Came to New York to become an actress, became a secretary instead. Guess whose?”
“Uh-huh, and married the boss. And the daughter? What’s her story?”
“Francine. Eighteen years old, a student at Barnard College uptown, and from what I hear, a handful. The State lifted her driver’s license. Daddy had to pull some strings, pay off her fines, and grease some palms to buy it back.”
“Just what the world needs, another wild eighteen-year-old.”
“Weren’t you?” Judson ribs me.
I get a kick out of the question, even get a little nostalgic. “Plenty,” I say through a smile full of tomboy memories, “but not on my pop’s dime. Speaking of cash, here’s your cut and Rosie’s cut, too. I’ll tell her to drop by for it.” I give Judson three grand from the remaining eight Gs in my suit jacket, fifteen hundred each for him and Rosie.
He pockets his half, puts Rosie’s cut in his desk drawer. “One last thing,” he says and hands me a slip of paper. “Here’s the Sterns’ address.”
I pocket the paper and walk into my private office.
My spot is cozy as a favorite chair, which it has: a large, pale green club chair with leather so supple it feels like I’m sitting in a woman’s soft lap. The chair’s next to my oxblood sofa and near my big walnut desk. Considering how much time I spend here, even sleep on the couch sometimes if I have to lie low, I figured I might as well outfit the place with first-rate furnishings. Hell, what good is risking your life to earn a living if you can’t reward yourself with top-of-the-line prizes like wine, women, and good furniture? There’s even a refrigerator and a hot plate, a phonograph and a radio, and a good supply of Chivas scotch.
Snug as it is, I’m not here to hang around today. I�
�m only here to make a call. I sit down at my desk, dial the number, stash the receiver between my shoulder and my chin, and light a cigarette. Rosie answers on the third ring.
“It’s me,” I say.
“Good morning, Cantor.” Her greeting is sweet as peaches and cream, just like Rosie. “You almost missed me,” she says. “I’m on my way out, doing an early shift. See you tonight?”
“Sorry, can’t tonight. I guess you know Hannah Jacobson’s dead.”
“Yeah, I overheard the cops last night.”
“Well, things are getting rough. There’s stuff I have to do, people I need to get to before the cops catch up with me. And the Mob’s not too pleased with me, either. The cops dragged the Jacobson business to their doorstep.”
“Sounds bad, Cantor.”
“It is bad. But you were terrific last night, my girl. You saved both our skins with your smart move down the fire escape. It was a crappy thing to have to do. I wish things were different. I won’t forget it, Rosie.”
“I hope that’s not the only part of last night you won’t forget,” she says in a whisper so ripe I can almost taste the sweet, warm breath behind it.
“No, it’s not the only part I won’t forget. I could never forget it.”
“Tomorrow night, then?”
“Sure, maybe. But I have to get to the bottom of the Jacobson business first.”
“Just be careful, Cantor, okay?”
“Aren’t I always?”
“No. And…I wish…look, at least try to be careful.”
“Yes, ma’am. By the way, drop by the office during your trips around town today. You can pick up your cut of the job. I meant to give it to you last night, but, well, we got caught up in other things and it slipped my mind.”
“Yeah, mine, too.” There’s that whisper again.
“You can pick up your dough from Judson. ’Bye, Rosie.”
“’Bye, Cantor,” comes through the phone like she’s blowing a kiss before she hangs up.
