City Of Lies

by R.J. Ellory

  Cathy shifted in the seat and looked more closely at Harper.

  Harper looked back. He still felt unable to speak.

  ‘So – no more staring at each other,’ Walt said. ‘Eyes front and center. We’re driving now, all eyes on the road, okay?’

  ‘You sound like a schoolteacher,’ Cathy said.

  ‘Good enough,’ Walt said. He started to laugh. ‘We should sing a song, a school song, right? The kind of song kids sing when they go on a trip.’

  ‘Forget it, Walt,’ Cathy replied. ‘You sing if you want to, but you’re on your own.’

  ‘Radio then,’ Walt said, and leaned forward to switch it on. ‘Tell Her Tonight’ by Franz Ferdinand rushed from the speakers behind Harper. He looked to his left and out of the window. His heart thundered. The engine gunned into life and drowned everything but the tension in his chest. He wanted to look at Cathy Hollander again; wanted to look at her and nothing else.

  Walt turned out of the lot and headed onto West Eleventh. Harper looked at the lights of New York, the shops, the pedestrians. He saw someone stringing a line of Christmas bulbs across the front of a delicatessen. He saw himself as a child, walking streets just like this one. He remembered everything that had happened with Garrett Sawyer. He remembered the rank smell of drying blood – coppery, earthy, immediately identifiable. He remembered the way Evelyn fell apart, the way the seams that kept her together just unravelled. He remembered all these things with a child’s perspective. Remembered them like they were yesterday. Realized he was concentrating on anything he could, anything to take his mind off the mess of feelings that had swamped him.

  ‘You alright?’ Cathy asked.

  Harper turned and looked at her. Her hair was past her shoulders, her features clear and perfectly proportioned, her eyes a kind of hazel color, bright and inquisitive. She had long fingers, Harper noticed, as she once again reached up to fingertip a stray lock of hair away from her cheek and tuck it neatly behind her ear. A pianist’s fingers. He thought to ask her if she played but let it go. He thought to ask her if there was someone she loved, someone who loved her in return. His heart was now twice its natural size, and the blood it pumped was molasses.

  He shrugged his shoulders. He felt like such a fool.

  She reached out with her long fingers and took his right hand. She closed her other hand over it. He felt the warmth of her skin. Felt the unmistakable security and assurance of female contact. A rush of electricity invaded his entire body. He wanted to slip sideways, wanted to just slip sideways and lean his head against her shoulder. He wanted to close his eyes and sleep with his head on her shoulder, feel her hair on his face, smell her perfume, smell the leather upholstery – anything but the smell of drying blood which he now seemed unable to forget.

  He didn’t say a word. His heart continued to beat in two-four time. His mind continued to wander.

  They drove in silence for a long time. They must have been heading south because at one point they passed the Fire Museum. Harper hadn’t been there for the better part of thirty years, but still recalled it vividly. Perhaps he drifted away at some point, because it seemed that, as they drew to a halt, he opened his eyes. He couldn’t remember closing them.

  ‘You hang in there, John,’ Cathy said, and squeezed his hand with her pianist’s fingers, and John Harper sort of half smiled and closed his eyes in slow-motion like a sunbathing lizard on a New Mexico rock, and then the back door of the car was open and Cathy was leading him out and across the sidewalk, and Uncle Walt Freiberg was standing there smiling, but there was something in his eyes that said everything that needed to be said about the real reason for their long-overdue reunion.

  The old guy – the one that was both a friend and a thirty-year-absent father, well he was laid up in St Vincent’s connected to everything they possessed and then some, and he was going to die.

  ‘Who was the man?’ Harper asked eventually, and the words slurred from his lips like the memory of an unpleasant taste.

  ‘Man?’ Freiberg asked. He frowned and shook his head. ‘What man Sonny?’

  Don’t call me Sonny, Harper thought. I’m thirty-six years old. I was Sonny when I was a little kid. Thought it, but didn’t say it. What he did say was, ‘The one in the hospital. The one that was there when we went up in the elevator.’

  Freiberg snorted contemptuously. ‘Asshole cop!’ he snapped, and then he laughed again. ‘It was nothing John, absolutely nothing . . . now let’s get inside here, it’s cold.’

  Harper followed Cathy. She walked beside Freiberg and they entered a narrow-fronted Cantonese restaurant. Harper glanced over Cathy’s shoulder. They were down near the east corner of Tribeca, on Sixth. Inside it was warm, welcoming almost, and Harper realized how hungry he was.

  ‘We sit, we talk, we eat,’ Freiberg said. He started to remove his overcoat. The maitre d’ approached them, smiling, hand out to greet Freiberg like a long-lost.

  ‘Mr Fleeberg,’ he cooed, and Uncle Walt was talking, laughing, walking with the guy to a small table at the back of the room, and before Harper knew it he was up tight and close beside Cathy, the pressure of her leg against his, the smell of her perfume, the awareness that there now seemed to be an altogether different reason for being in New York. She turned and put a glass of sake in his hand. Uncle Walt was laughing louder and telling some anecdote he’d heard about Elvis in Las Vegas and an impersonation contest.

  Surreal, disconnected from anything even remotely close to reality, John Harper sat and listened, and every once in a while he talked, but in all honesty he felt he didn’t really have a great deal of anything to say. Felt like the world had closed in on him, a world he never chose to belong to, a world that just came rushing right at him without respite.

  He thought of Miami, catastrophe by the sea; of the islands, of the shoals of blackfin tuna, of the waves of frigate birds, and the smell – the once-in-a-lifetime smell of salt, seaweed, fish and mangrove swamps. He thought of pirates and Ponce de Leon, the Dry Tortugas, the footprints of turtles, the reefs, the clear water, the citrus, the coconut . . .

  Such things as these, a hundred million miles from the dark streets of New York just before Christmas.

  Later, how much later he didn’t know, Walt came from somewhere and sat down facing him.

  ‘I called Evelyn,’ he said, and he smiled. He smiled like when Harper was a kid and he came visiting with gifts. ‘I called her and said we’d be taking care of you tonight. You have money John?’

  Harper merely looked back at Walt Freiberg with a blank expression.

  Freiberg nodded, buried his hand inside his jacket, and was then pushing a wad of notes into Harper’s shirt pocket.

  ‘We’ll have you stay in a hotel near here,’ he said. ‘Should get some rest, eh? Long day for you, Sonny . . . long old day for you. . .’

  And then his voice faded, and maybe it was exhaustion, or the sake, or perhaps nothing more than the tidal wave of emotion that seemed to sweep over him and carry him away.

  Later he couldn’t even remember leaving the restaurant.

  SEVEN

  Ben Marcus: simple name, simple man. Ancestors were Polish Jews, perhaps even further back they were people who came out of the Carpathians with names built from too many consonants and too few vowels. Ben Marcus’s grandfather on his mother’s side, hard-edged bastard, all angles and corners – he came to ‘Hamereeca’ with a vision of something that was a world apart from what he found. Man makes shoes in Lodz; comes to the States and dies of emphysema after eleven years of clearing storm drains and sewage junctions for the New York Metropolitan Sanitation Department at one dollar eighty-five cents an hour.

  Ben Marcus’s father made different decisions; wouldn’t bow to The Man, so he figured the angles and sidelines, made a handful of dollars on the racetracks, bought himself into a warehouse crew ferrying liquor during Volstead. Volstead was repealed in ’33; Marcus Senior ran lines in silk stockings and cigarettes, and a protection gig for b
ookies’ runners, and everything went fine and dandy until May of ’55 when he was shot in the throat by a man called Fraschetti, a man with psoriasis and bad teeth. Ben Marcus was ten years old when he buried his father, celebrated his twelfth birthday in a South Brooklyn Juvy, and by the time he was twenty-seven he’d done nine years all told between Fulton Correctional, Sing Sing and Altona. Then he got smart. He got other people to do the wet-work and running. Benjamin Marcus, hard head like a clenched fist, collection of features that seemed to argue about who owned center stage, kind of man who stated the obvious and everyone agreed such a thing was a very new idea. Crew he ran was a mixed bag of stealers and blood-letters. People like Sol Neumann, Raymond Dietz, Albert Reiff. Neumann was the right hand, the one who translated the nods and frowns into words and actions. Marcus would say, ‘That thing Sol . . . that thing with the Williamsburg fuck-up. I don’t think we should leave that behind without an example being made.’ Neumann would say, ‘I’ll take care of it Ben, I’ll take care of it,’ and three, maybe four days later, New York’s finest would find some poor bastard hanging from a fire escape back of a derelict building, his tongue cut out perhaps, his balls in his overcoat pocket. But it was business, always business; never personal with such people. Such people never got close enough to anyone to consider anything personal.

  Monday, 15 December, Ben Marcus sat in a wicker-backed colonial chair in a smoke-filled room. The window behind him overlooked La Guardia Place and Bleecker. Sol Neumann sat to his right, and ahead of him a man called Henry Kossoff who carried a bruised and beaten look about him, as if he’d been tied tight, hands and feet, and dragged across rocky unforgiving ground. Kossoff was saying something, something about ‘The asshole didn’t show Ben . . . McCaffrey didn’t fucking show.’

  Marcus sighed and shook his head. He glanced towards Neumann. Neumann kept his gaze fixed on Kossoff.

  ‘Maybe he got himself fucked up,’ Kossoff said. ‘These guys . . . hell these blacks are running their own gangs. They’ve got a different view of things. They shoot people they don’t even know. Maybe he was into something and got himself into trouble,’ and there was something in his tone that suggested he hoped to hell that was the case. There was also something that said he knew it wasn’t.

  ‘He did a runner, Henry, plain and simple,’ Neumann said. ‘It’s not your fault . . . don’t sweat it.’ He turned slightly and nodded at Ben Marcus. Marcus nodded back, an almost imperceptible shift in expression, and yet it seemed to grant Papal indulgence to whatever Neumann was thinking. ‘See to it Henry,’ Neumann said. ‘Send some people out and bring McCaffrey in. We can’t have this asshole running around all over the city, okay?’

  Kossoff nodded, didn’t speak.

  ‘The other thing,’ Marcus said matter-of-factly, the first words he’d spoken since the meeting began.

  ‘I don’t know if it was something. Maybe it was something, maybe it was nothing. I had Karl Merrett over at St Vincent’s keeping an eye on the show. Freiberg was there with the girl, and they had some other guy with them—’

  Sol Neumann uncrossed his legs and leaned forward slightly. ‘What other guy?’

  Kossoff shook his head. ‘Fuck knows, Sol . . . never seen him before. Karl said he looked just like Lenny—’

  Neumann laughed drily. ‘Don’t pay any mind to what Karl Merrett has to say. I know Merrett better than anyone . . . I was down in Five Points with the guy for more than a year. He has his uses, but reliability of information isn’t fuckin’ one of them.’

  Marcus raised his hand. Neumann fell silent. ‘Find out who he is,’ he told Kossoff. ‘Find out who he is, and have some people on this McCaffrey as well. I need McCaffrey as a priority. Find out if he has family. Go speak to them. Go shake some favors up and see if we can’t get this matter tidied up in the next twenty-four hours. We got a busy time ahead of us and I don’t want things interfering. I also don’t want any grievances with the blacks.’ Marcus shook his head. ‘The whole thing is falling apart, what with the blacks and the Eastern Europeans. These are things I don’t want to get involved in. When I’m gone I’ll be pleased to leave what’s left of New York to these people.’

  ‘Yes, Mr Marcus. It will be taken care of.’ Kossoff rose from the chair. He buttoned his jacket and started towards the door. He was on edge, evidently nervous.

  ‘And Henry?’ Sol Neumann called after him.

  Kossoff turned.

  ‘Call Reiff and tell him Mr Marcus needs him over at the warehouse in the morning. Tell him ten a.m.’

  Kossoff nodded and made his way out the door.

  There was silence for some while.

  Eventually Ben Marcus turned towards Sol Neumann. He smiled, but without humor; a smile befitting Cesare Borgia. ‘He will not lie down.’

  Neumann raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Freiberg . . . he will not stand by and watch the territory taken from Bernstein. Seems to me we may have a bloodier fight on our hands.’

  Neumann shrugged his shoulders. He reached for a cigarette and lit it. ‘Whatever,’ he said, his voice almost a whisper. He drew on the cigarette and exhaled smoke from his nostrils. The grey cloud half-obscured his face. Everything was flat-toned and chiaroscuro, almost monochromatic. ‘He wants a fight he’s going to get one.’

  ‘We change nothing . . . we run it the way we agreed. There will be ample opportunity to take these things apart either on the day or soon afterwards.’

  ‘Makes sense,’ Neumann replied. ‘Seems to me we miss the chance for some good returns if we just go to war . . . and like you said, we start a war and we have no idea who’s going to get involved.’

  Marcus acknowledged the comment without speaking; stayed silent for a time. He rose from his chair after a few minutes. ‘I have made my decision,’ he said, almost to himself. He turned to Neumann. ‘You come tomorrow as well . . . we will go through some of the details again with Reiff. With Lenny Bernstein laid up in St Vincent’s we have to make busy. I believe the kingmaker intends to become the king.’

  ‘Of course, Ben. Sure thing.’

  Ben Marcus left the room. Sol Neumann, close behind him, turned out the light as he left, and through the window the faint indigo-blue pulse of the external neon sign haunted the glass and made faces on the wall.

  EIGHT

  A little after five a.m. New York hadn’t woken. John Harper stood at the window of a room on the tenth floor of the American Regent on the corner of Hudson and West Broadway. Room was cold. Raised his hand and pressed his palm against the glass. Spread his fingers, watched the lights from beyond appear in the spaces. Tried to count them. Too many.

  He tried to focus on a single thought; just anything at all. He found something, and then it was gone. Like the past he believed he had. There, then gone. You have no father John Harper . . . oh fuck, yes you do, and by the way, he’s seventy years old and laid up in St Vincent’s ’cause someone shot him. Nothing. Then something. What the fuck was that?

  Harper walked back and sat on the edge of the bed. He felt chill, the hairs raised on his arms, and he reached for his shirt. As he tugged it around his shoulders dollar bills spilled from the breast pocket. Harper gathered them up – fifties, all of them, and in counting them he remembered that Walt had leaned across the restaurant table and tucked them inside. Seven hundred dollars, the better part of half a month’s salary.

  Harper looked at the money, fanned the notes out between his fingers and held his arm up.

  ‘Seven hundred dollars,’ he said to no-one but himself.

  He folded them and set them on the edge of the bedside table. He wondered how much the room would cost – three, four hundred dollars a night, and that was without the mini-bar and the pay-per-view cable movies.

  And then he thought about the old man he’d seen through the window at St Vincent’s Hospital.

  He wanted to call Evelyn and scream at her down the phone. What the fuck were you thinking, you stupid fucking bitch! Did you think this didn’t mat
ter? Did you think you could just leave me the whole of my life without telling me the truth?

  John Harper didn’t call Evelyn Sawyer. He had a shower instead, and then he spoke to room service and asked who was paying the bill.

  ‘The room is booked in the name of a Miss Cathy Hollander, sir,’ the room guy said, and Harper told him Thank you and ordered a breakfast trolley sent up.

  While he ate slender crisps of smoked bacon and eggs Benedict, while he sipped fresh-squeezed orange juice and drank coffee that tasted like good Colombian with a hazelnut under-tone, he wondered what he should do. He needed to go back to Evelyn’s and collect his bag, but the impulse to return to the hospital was strong, very strong indeed. His father lay in a bed in the ICU. His own father, seventy years old, and someone had shot him for trying to prevent a liquor store robbery. Harper wondered who the shooter was: how old, what he looked like, whether he actually went away with any money, where he was now . . . was he scared or stoned or drunk, or maybe between the legs of a thirty-dollar hooker in a cheap room in a cheaper hotel somewhere on the Lower East Side . . .?

  Wondered all of these things. Had an answer for none of them.

  Finished eating. Wanted a cigarette real bad. Thought to call room service and have them send some up. They would’ve done that in a hotel like the American Regent. Couldn’t risk it. Smoke one and he’d smoke the whole pack, and then where the hell would he be? Right back where he started. He possessed more willpower than that; he exercised it and didn’t call.

  Thought he should leave New York. Make a call, book the flight, go home. Wasn’t the first time he’d have such a thought. Second time it would be stronger.

  Dressed in the same clothes as the previous day. Everything else he’d brought was in his bag at Evelyn’s. Picked up the money Walt had given him, figured he would give it back; couldn’t accept such an amount from a relative stranger. Sure the man had been there however many years before, but Harper had been a kid, a kid all of seven, eight, nine years old. Hell, he was thirty-six now. He had his own money, not a great deal ure, but he wasn’t one to be accepting unsolicited charity.