by Alan Hruska
Braddock, ignoring that outburst, says to Alec, “You realize what you’ve done?”
“Yes.”
“Could totally compromise our calling this woman.”
“I know.”
“Could ruin you.”
“I realize that.”
“You have some other way of breaking down Poole’s story?”
“Yeah. I think so.”
“Then you better get to it,” Braddock says. “Now!”
FORTY-THREE
On a noisy corner in Hell’s Kitchen, as all manner of humanity streams by, Alec and Harvey hurriedly confer. “If Raffon’s in his office,” Harvey says, “there’s a chance he’ll spot us from his window up there on the third floor, in which case, by the time we get up the front elevator, he’ll have flown the coop.”
“You know this.”
“Trust me,” says Harvey, stepping into the phone booth. “So what we do, we make damn sure he’s looking for us.” Harvey slots a dime into the phone, dials, and Alec can pick up his side of the conversation. “Carl, you sit tight, you hear? We’re coming upstairs.”
Smiling to himself, Harvey leads Alec onto the south side of 49th Street. They stroll casually into the front hall, then dart outside, hugging the facade of the building, so as not to be seen from the third-story window, and go to an alley door between this edifice and the next. They then rattle along steel steps into the alley and wait but two minutes. Bursting out of the back door, past fan exhausts, old duct work, and bundles of trash, chugs Carl Raffon, smack into Harvey Grand’s arms.
“Where you going, little man?” Harvey laughs at the confounded, still struggling, putative escapee.
“Shit!” says Raffon, straightening himself up, glaring, pursing his lips.
“So whatta you say, Carl?” Harvey says. “We stay out here with the garbage, freezing our asses off?”
Begrudgingly, Carl leads them upstairs. He’s a chinless man, with a widow’s peak of black, greased hair. His dark blue, white-collared shirt is worn with a pinstriped suit, sharp but threadbare, and a dull red tie. There are people who are frog-faced, horse-faced, or who look like a fish. Carl Raffon resembles a weasel. Thrust back into his hole-in-the-wall office, he glares like a weasel in a trap.
Alec and Harvey lean forward on metal chairs, no doubt rented as a set with Carl’s desk. Through the one window blinks one word on a neon sign, “Dancers.” The room smells sour. It might be the building, or Carl.
Alec says, “We want you to help us, Carl. And we’re willing to pay for your time. I understand your fee is one hundred dollars an hour. For this—”
Raffon breaks in. “You wearing a wire?”
Harvey rises with indignation. “A wire? Christ! What the hell good would a wire do us? Jesus, Carl! Think! I told you. For this, we need testimony, not wire transcripts. We can’t put hearsay statements in evidence. We need you live. On the stand.”
“I’m not doing it, Harvey. I’m really not that fucking stupid.”
“What are you afraid of, Carl?”
“What the fuck do you think?”
“What do I think? I think you were paid off by the Angiapellos to look the other way. That you know they funded Martini. And that you’re scared shitless. That’s what I think. What do you think, Carl? That you can avoid having to tell that story in a courtroom? Not fucking likely.”
“I think you’re wearing a wire,” Carl says in a monotone.
“Well, suck my dick!” shouts Harvey, ripping off his jacket. “You can just put your slimy hands all over me and find out. Go ahead. Cop a feel. You’d probably like it.”
Raffon produces a nasty grin. “No, him,” he says, pointing to Alec.
“Me?” Alec laughs.
“Get up, kid!” Raffon commands, enjoying it.
Alec, still laughing, rises to his feet, takes off his jacket and suffers the little weasel feeling around for a wire Alec’s not wearing. “What I don’t understand,” he says, with Raffon’s hands in his armpits, “is how you’re avoiding telling the truth to the DA.”
Carl hesitates for less than a second, but it’s enough for Harvey to pounce. “So that’s what’s happening. You’ve got a deal with a prosecutor. The DA? Or is it the U.S. Attorney? What are you getting, Carl? Immunity? Witness protection?”
Satisfied Alec’s not wired, Raffon returns to his seat. “I’m not talking about this.”
“Why the hell not?”
Carl shakes his head glumly.
“Hey!” says Harvey, settling back into his chair. “Be enlightened, man! Working with them doesn’t stop you from testifying for us. And you want to deal with us. Because in witness protection, you know what you get? A pot to piss in. Some menial job. Beneath your talents, Carl. You’re gonna need some serious cash.”
“Am I.”
“I think so!”
“And that’s where you come in?” Carl says sardonically, but with a glimmer of interest.
“If you’re wise, we do,” says Harvey.
“To the tune of, say, what?”
“Well, that depends, doesn’t it. On who you can deliver.”
Raffon emits a derisive grunt, with his thin lips pressed together.
Harvey says, “Use your head, man. Once you testify for the government, you’re out there. Exposed. The wiseguys find you, they’ll kill you. They can’t kill you twice. You might as well make some money on this to fund yourself in hiding. And we can’t do this without making a deal with the government ourselves—who, once they arrive at an agreement with us, will protect you in our trial too.”
Carl’s eyes widen a bit. “How much?”
“I told you, depends on who—”
“How ’bout Phil Anwar?” he says.
Harvey, coolly, says, “With what evidence?”
“He was there,” Carl says, as if commenting on the weather. “We met. With Poole. But it was Phil who was running it. Poole just took orders.”
Alec says in a low voice, “Who told you not to probe the tanks?”
“Phil, of course. The scam may have been Martini’s idea, but Phil banked it and took it over.”
Alec and Harvey exchange a brief glance.
“Okay,” Harvey says, “that’s valuable testimony, I won’t kid you. And we won’t disappoint you on the money. Also, we’ll expect nothing from you—nor, of course, can we give you anything—until we’ve made our arrangements with… who was it you said you’re working with?”
Raffon nervously sucks on his teeth. “I didn’t.”
Harvey gives him a big, friendly, questioning smile, as if to reaffirm the obvious.
“Ray Sancerre,” Raffon finally says. “U.S. Attorney.”
“Good,” says Harvey. “With him, then.”
The three stand, shake hands. Carl says, “I wanna see some money on this soon—or you get nothing!”
“We’ll be in touch,” Alec says. “No pun intended.”
In a taxi on their way to the office, Harvey opens his shirt and removes the wire he’s wearing. They listen to the recording on his portable tape player. It sounds as if Raffon is sitting with them in the back seat of the cab.
FORTY-FOUR
London. The Ritz. Listening to piano music gently crest the many tea-time conversations, Phil surveys the honeyed elegance of the room, the glistening service, the balletic deportment of the staff. The guests comprise an ill-assorted lot of tourists and bankers. The financial men are dressed, as is Phil, by Savile Row, but, unlike him, they are totally at home in—indeed, knowingly contribute to—the theatricality of the scene.
Phil’s companion, a compact, elderly man with pocked skin and thick glasses, reaches for a cucumber sandwich. “I love this city,” he says.
“For the afternoon teas?” Phil says.
“For all of it. What? You don’t like London?”
“Not particularly.”
“You don’t know it.”
“I rarely come here, you’re right.”
“
I’m an outrageous anglophile.” The older man brushes back some white hair with a gesture that doubtless became reflexive back when there was more of it. “Strange doings, eh? For a Sardinian?”
“I’m surprised you haven’t joined one of the clubs.”
“Whatta you saying, haven’t joined? I have. Two of them. I like this better, though. The hurly-burly. The show. The humanity.”
Phil thinks, He didn’t ask me to London for tea at The Ritz.
“I love to watch the excess,” his uncle says. “Other people’s excess.” He squints at his nephew. “You understand what I’m saying? Not ours. Not our excess. We feed on other people’s excess.”
“Of course.”
“I hope you understand, Phil.”
“Why wouldn’t I?” Phil says, beginning to feel put upon and annoyed.
“That’s the question, isn’t it?”
“Is it?”
“There’s reason to believe, Phil, you’ve been indulging in excess.”
The maitre d’ sidles over to their table. “All well, Signore Angiapello?”
“Excellent, Gilbert. As always.”
“So nice,” Gilbert mutters, nodding to Phil and shuffling off to another table.
His uncle says defensively, “I come here twice a week. It’s the only reason he knows who I am.”
“My first time,” says Phil.
“Within our world—” wistful smile—“I’m still referred to as Don Giovanni.”
“You certainly are.”
“A name—historically—associated with excess.”
“Never as applied to you, Uncle.”
The old don nods and removes his glasses by their heavy black frames.
“I supported you, Phil.”
“And I owe you.”
“Not only as head of the family. I supported you in this oil deal. Put my own money in it.”
“Which will be returned to you, Uncle, twenty times.”
“At what cost, Phil?”
“We’re good, Uncle, don’t trouble yourself.”
“Not what I’m hearing, Phil. I’m hearing about excess. Greed. You maybe went too far with this? Took too much? Got too public. And you’re maybe too exposed? This young wife of yours? A junkie, I hear.”
“You’ve been talking to Little John?”
“He calls, yes. He’s very respectful.”
“He’s not an objective informer.”
“I understand. He wants your turf, your businesses. So I have to weigh what he says carefully. But the facts, Phil. The facts are the facts. You took a lot. You got people excited, many bankers, the federal authorities. And in general, you’ve made yourself too visible. Like a celebrity. Out of vanity, which is a form of excess. What’s more—and worse—this young woman, this junkie, you got her involved. She knows things no junkie should be trusted with.”
“I’ll take care of it.”
“Yes? How will you do that? Because in a situation like this there aren’t that many alternatives.”
“Respectfully, Uncle, there are ways of silencing people, which don’t involve sticking legs in a barrel of cement.”
Don Giovanni gives his nephew a skeptical glance. “A woman like this can do anything. She’s too big a risk, son.”
“I’m not having her killed.”
“Then get her under control. You’re losing respect over this. In our world. Where it matters.”
Phil is silent.
“And what about the civilians you used on the job?”
“Under constant surveillance, Uncle.”
The maitre d’ saunters back. “More tea, Mr. Anwar?”
“You know my name?”
“Naturally, sir. You’re well-known here. If I might venture to say, a celebrity.”
FORTY-FIVE
Vito answers the front door of the Long Island mansion, looks Sam over, says, “Whatta you want?”
“I should have called, maybe?” Sam says.
“I dunno. Whatta you want?”
“There’s a fault in the system.”
“A what?”
“Something’s not right in the burglar alarm system we installed. Let me show you.”
“You know this how?”
“We have a monitor. In the home office. A mouse chews the wire, something—could be anything—we pick it up, come to fix it. Is Mr. Anwar at home?”
“No, he ain’t.”
“Maybe I should come back then?”
“Shit, no. There’s a problem, fix it.”
Vito stands aside to let Sam in. Vito’s dog, Friday, is alert behind him.
“The most likely place,” Sam says, “is the basement.”
“Okay,” says Vito, “let’s go.”
Sam laughs. “You want to keep an eye on me.”
“What the fuck you think?”
“Let me get my stuff from the car,” Sam says.
When he returns, Vito leads the way to the basement, turns the lights on, says, “So where we looking?” Friday seems to be following all of this, turning his attention from one man to the other.
“Well, the wires, of course. I may have to open up some of the boards, but don’t worry. We installed them, can put it all back, no one will notice.”
“You do what you have to do.”
“Right.”
Sam gets to work. He feels along each exposed section of the wire. Slowly, meticulously, he unscrews the wall panels and feels inside. Vito gets bored, goes for a beer in the fridge under the bar. Friday, curled up on the vinyl tiled floor, watches intently. When Sam pulls out wires, Friday barks, and Vito looks up.
“Isn’t that the telephone wire?” Vito calls out.
“Yeah, of course,” says Sam. “We work off the telephone wires. How else you think the alarm goes to the central system?”
“Hey, buddy. I’m not a fucking mechanic.”
“Okay, found it. Here’s the problem. I’ve got to splice this wire. Want to give me a hand?”
“What the fuck I look like? I should hold your tool?”
“No. Never mind. I can do it. Just thought if you came over here I could explain exactly what I was doing.”
“Why? So I can do it myself?”
“Forget it. Relax. I’ll be out of here in five minutes.”
Friday barks again for no reason Vito can fathom, but he believes animals in general to be unfathomable.
In Abigail’s kitchen, she asks, “So which one did you use?”
“The FM transmitter,” says Sam.
“Safer.”
“No click.”
“And Phil’s still in Europe?” she says. “He wasn’t there.”
“Vito hadn’t a clue?”
“Don’t think so.”
“You’re really out of your mind,” Abigail says. “This is an insane risk.”
“Big risk. For both of us. There’s only one I can think of that’s bigger.”
“Not knowing what Phil’s thinking.”
“That’s the one,” he says.
FORTY-SIX
Friday morning, Alec drives to New Jersey in a pounding rainstorm. Regular visiting hours, he’s been told, are on Sundays, but Kendall, Blake, Steele & Braddock has already laid claim to him seven days a week. He succeeded in negotiating this one weekday off for moving—into the new apartment he’s found on East 87th Street—because even the partners know that movers, unlike lawyers, do not work on weekends, except at multiples of their normal rates. So his belongings move uptown as Alec drives west.
In Alec’s head is the message from Carrie, scribbled and mailed. “Hi, darling. I’m fine. I got through everything thus far in pretty good shape, but don’t come out here yet, okay? I’m going to need just a little more time—to get human. I love you lots, and I’ll look forward to seeing you. God, I’ll look forward to that!” But she hasn’t called him. Or come to the phone when he called. In more than two weeks.
He turns his rented car into the parking lot of the facility. Metropolita
n Outreach looks like a summer camp in the hills. Low, clapboarded main buildings and cottages dispersed on rolling, grassy grounds surrounded by woods. If it had rained here, it hadn’t melted the snow that still streaks the land in ice-bound clumps of random design. It’s nearly noon. As Alec walks from his car with a package of food, groups of young, fresh-faced patients stream out of several of the outlying buildings, heading toward the dining hall or the cottages.
In a corridor of the main building, Carrie makes her own way painfully on recalcitrant limbs. She’s forced to stop from time to time, to take hold of one leg and pull it forward, then drag the other, as other inmates scurry past. They stare at her, she thinks, not only because of her unusual gait, but because her general appearance frightens even hard-core addicts. It frightens her. She’s ninety-four pounds, gray-skinned, and gaunt. She doesn’t want others looking at her. Especially Alec. Who miraculously appears through the front door holding a package. Which, when he sees her, he drops.
“I told you not to come,” she cries as he runs to hold her.
In the pine-paneled dining room, at a table at which they’re left alone, Carrie gazes at Alec with dark, sunken eyes.
“Detox took longer than anyone’s, ever.”
“I know. Velsor told me.”
“I look totally hideous. Like some creature in a body-snatch movie.”
Alec empties the package of gourmet tins and bottles and a loaf of French bread. “You look fine,” he says.
“Are you blind?” she says.
“You’re recovering. That’s what you look like. Which, to me, is beautiful. Should I open the pâté?”
She covers her mouth as if she might vomit.
“Well, you’ll get better now,” he says.
“Yeah,” she says, in a forced upbeat tone. “Gotta be something better than this.”
What they hadn’t been told is that the people in charge would give them thirty-five minutes, tops. The rules forbid Carrie even sitting in Alec’s car, much less leaving the premises. So they sit on the sofa in Carrie’s cottage, holding hands. Carrie says, “I’ll make this up to you.” Alec says, “I would have made the trip anyway.”
Her Brunhild-sized counselor walks in on them and is introduced. She says to Alec, “This is a very sick young woman.”
