by R.J. Ellory
‘You always talk like that?’
‘Like what?’
‘Like Raymond Chandler wrote the screenplay of your life?’
Harper grinned. He’d been trying to sound tough, trying to sound like he had corners and edges. Truth be known the corners and edges that made up John Harper had long since worn smooth. Life did that. Wasn’t complicated. Life was tougher than any human being, and the more you fought it the more it wore you down. Emotional attrition was the penalty for possessing a heart.
‘Now you look plain stupid,’ she said, challenging him back.
‘Going to insult me you can leave.’
‘No insult intended. You ask me a question I’ll answer it.’
‘Truth?’
‘Sure the truth.’
‘Where are you from?’
‘Right here in New York.’ She sat up straight, reached for her cigarettes. She offered him one and he declined.
‘How old are you?’
‘Thirty-four in January.’
‘Ever married?’
She shook a negative.
‘Ever nearly married?’
‘Like a long-term relationship thing?’
Harper nodded.
‘Longest relationship I ever had lasted maybe two years, a little more.’
‘You canned him or vice versa?’
She laughed. ‘There you go again.’
He frowned. ‘What?’
‘That. You canned him or vice versa. Who the fuck talks like that, ’cept maybe James Cagney or Humphrey Bogart?’
‘I talk like that,’ Harper said.
‘And it isn’t an act?’
‘An act? Why the hell would it be an act?’
‘People play life like it’s theater.’
‘They do, do they?’
She nodded. ‘Sure they do. Everyone carries a suitcase full of faces for the world. Face for the parents, face for the boss, one for the wife, another for the mistress, you know?’
He nodded. He knew. ‘It’s not an act. I don’t have an act. I am who I am. I talk how I talk because that’s the way I talk.’
‘Like a writer.’
‘Eh?’ He was caught off-guard.
‘Like a writer. You talk like that ’cause you’re a writer, a novelist.’
‘Was a novelist.’
She laughed again. ‘No-one was a novelist John Harper. That’s like saying you were a human being. Something like that is inside you. Something like that is inside everyone, it just takes a particular type of person, maybe even a particular type of situation to make them bring it out and share it with the world.’
‘Interesting perspective.’
‘Don’t know about interesting. Real, perhaps?’
‘So what is the deal with you and Walt?’
‘What makes you think there’s a deal?
‘It’s an expression . . . you know what I mean.’
‘I know what you mean, John. You just use the word like it’s an accusation.’
‘Apologies.’
‘Accepted.’ Her manner, her body language, everything about her told Harper she wasn’t only there because of Freiberg. He read in her words and expressions that she had also come for herself. He wanted to believe that, wanted to believe it very much.
‘So?’ he prompted.
‘We’ve known each other a little while.’
‘And my father?’
‘A little while too.’
‘How did you meet?’ Harper took a few steps forward and sat down in the chair. He crossed his legs, mimicking her perhaps.
‘Just in the general run of things.’
‘The general run of things?’ Harper asked. He smiled. ‘What the hell does that mean?’
‘Just out and about—’
‘You said something yesterday,’ he interjected. ‘Something about coming with the territory, that you were just the eye candy.’
‘It was a joke.’
‘Never a truer word, right?’
‘It was a joke, John. Nothing more than a joke.’
‘So tell me the truth.’
Cathy Hollander looked away, glanced back towards the window, the skyline of New York. ‘You don’t know anything at all about these people, do you?’
‘My father? Walt?’ Harper shook his head. ‘Walt I last saw about twenty-five years ago, and as far as my father is concerned I’ve spent thirty years thinking I didn’t have one. What I know about them is what you’ve told me.’
‘I haven’t told you anything.’
‘Exactly.’
Cathy looked down at her shoe, turned her foot slightly as if she was inspecting it. ‘If you had some idea of who they were and what they did then you’d have some idea of what I’m here for.’
‘So why don’t you tell me?’
She shrugged. ‘Figure it’s one of those things you should find out for yourself.’
Harper shook his head and sighed. ‘This is a circular conversation. I was hoping for too much, wasn’t I?’
Cathy nodded. ‘Aren’t we all?’ she said drily. She seemed to have cooled. Harper wondered if he’d read her wrong.
‘So what’s the adventure?’ he asked.
Cathy stood up, straightened her skirt. ‘We’re going to go see Walt. There’s someone he wants you to meet.’
‘We go now?’
Cathy glanced at her watch. ‘There’s no frantic hurry, but we should leave in ten minutes or so. Walt appreciates punctuality.’
‘He does, does he?’ Harper rose and walked towards the small bathroom. He finished buttoning his shirt. As he walked through he gently kicked the door to behind him.
‘I’m going to go down and wait in the car,’ Cathy called through from the bedroom.
Harper didn’t reply. He waited until he heard the door close and then he leaned forward, hands on the edge of the sink, face mere inches from the surface of the mirror.
‘What the fuck,’ he said quietly.
‘Like what kind of book?’
Duchaunak made a face, a kind of mouth-turned-down-at-the-corners face. He leaned forward and took his coffee cup from the desk. ‘I don’t know . . . like a thriller maybe? No, not a thriller . . . Christ, I don’t know. How the hell d’you describe a book like that?’
‘Genre-defying,’ Faulkner said.
Duchaunak frowned. ‘You what?’
‘Genre-defying.’
‘Whatever you say.’
‘Is it good though? That’s always the point isn’t it, always the acid test. Is the book any good?’
Duchaunak paused, smiled. ‘Yeah, it was good, good enough to keep me reading to the end.’
‘So what the hell is a guy like that doing in New York with these people?’
‘I’m going to go see the aunt and find out,’ Duchaunak said.
‘You’re just going to show up?’
‘Sure, nothing official. Don’t want to upset her.’
‘And Harper said that it was the aunt who called him, not Freiberg?’ Faulkner asked.
Duchaunak nodded.
‘Bet you Freiberg got to her, told her to get the guy up here from Florida.’
‘Who the hell knows, eh?’
‘Freiberg does,’ Faulkner said.
‘You figure he has a place for this John Harper?’ Duchaunak asked, more rhetoric than a real question.
Faulkner laughed, a dry and brittle sound. ‘Freiberg is into everything. Freiberg is a fucking genius—’
‘Genius is not a gift, but the way a person invents in desperate circumstances.’
‘Eh?’
‘Jean-Paul Sartre,’ Duchaunak said.
‘Don’t care what the fuck he had to say about it. Freiberg is as sharp as a needle, more the player than Bernstein ever was.’
‘He’s not dead yet,’ Duchaunak said.
‘Well, either he will be very soon, or he’s going to be out for a few scenes yet.’
‘And Freiberg will run the company while he’s gone.
’
‘Sure as shit he will,’ Faulkner said, ‘which makes me think that there must be an exceptionally good reason for Freiberg letting this guy hang around.’
‘I’ll go see the aunt. She can give me some of the back story. See what turns up, eh?’
‘And what d’you want me to do?’
‘Read Harper’s book if you want . . . call it research.’ Duchaunak picked up the book from his desk. He turned it over. An exciting new literary talent, the blurb read. A testament to the indomitability of the human spirit in the face of adversity. Harper has created a model for our times in a challenging and difficult hero. He tossed it to Faulkner who caught it with his left hand. ‘I’ll call you,’ Duchaunak said.
Faulkner said nothing; watched him go. He leaned back in his chair, turned Harper’s book over and scanned the back. He flicked through it, read a paragraph or two, smiled, turned to the front and started reading.
THIRTEEN
An unholy bag of smashers. Scars and bullet-wounds; clenched fists, white-knuckled knots of trouble; wide necks, short hair; ill-fitting two-thousand dollar suits, itself an art, itself a contradiction; small room heavy with smoke, cheap cigars with fake Montecristo and Cohiba labels; bottles of sourmash, Coors chasers, mismatched glasses; see-your-own-reflection shoe-shined wingtip cordovans, light-colored socks; wafer-thin platinum watches on eighteen-carat gold bracelets; all of it expensive, yet all of it made to look somehow cheap and used and pointless.
This was the Marcus crew: Victor Klein, Attica and Green Haven; Sol Neumann, Queensboro and Five Points; Henry Kossoff, Altona and Sing Sing, their tours of penitentiary duty reading like a high school graduation list. Alongside them were Raymond Dietz, Karl Merrett, Lester McKee, Maurice Rydell and Albert Reiff. Something in the region of three hundred years of collective criminal experience, maybe a century of hard time in the Big House.
The warehouse near Pier 53, Ben Marcus sitting up front near the window overlooking West and Bloomfield. The hubbub of voices, the cacophony of laughter, the sound of familiarity amongst men who were only ever gathered in one place if there was trouble or the promise of money.
‘Enough!’ Sol Neumann shouted. ‘Enough of this. We got business!’
The voices quietened, the sound within the room staggered to a halt, and each of the seated men turned his attention towards Neumann, to Ben Marcus also, seated behind Neumann and to the right.
‘We have a situation,’ Neumann started. ‘Some of you may know, some of you may not, but we have a situation with our friend Lenny Bernstein—’
Neumann was interrupted by a rush of noise, catcalls and badmouthing.
‘Enough!’ he shouted once more, and the rabble fell silent.
‘So, like I said, we have a situation with Lenny Bernstein in that he’s been hit—’
‘’Bout fucking time,’ Albert Reiff said.
‘Okay, differences aside,’ Neumann continued, ‘there is a matter to discuss and a question to resolve regarding an agreement that was made with Lenny before he got himself shot.’
Puzzled faces, men frowning, wondering what agreement might have been made with such an adversary as Bernstein.
‘As we all are all too aware, things have changed. Can’t turn the corner without discovering some part of the neighborhood has been taken by the blacks, the Hispanics, the Puerto Ricans. Everything is hookers and crack houses. These people have no scruples, they have no ethics. They have mules buying and selling this stuff in schoolyards for God’s sake. And then there’s the Eastern Europeans.’ Neumann shook his head resignedly, glanced over his shoulder at Ben Marcus. Marcus was implacable, immobile. ‘Cheap guns,’ Neumann continued. ‘Connections into Bosnia and the Czech Republic. Used to be that you’d pay two hundred bucks for a .38. Now these people can get you Glocks and Uzis and Berettas for half of that.’ Neumann glanced at Reiff. ‘What was that stuff you got? C4?’
Reiff nodded. ‘Anything I wanted. C4, Semtex . . . crazy prices. Prices we could never compete with.’
‘So that’s what we’re dealing with, and let’s face it—’ Neumann smiled and looked at the men gathered before him. ‘None of us are getting any younger, right?’
Reiff laughed, the others were waiting for the punch-line.
‘So, here’s the thing,’ Neumann went on. ‘Lenny was going to retire.’ He waited for questions; there were none. ‘Lenny came to speak with Mr Marcus and myself. He told us he was thinking of taking his retirement from the business. He proposed a resolution of past differences and a settlement between himself and Mr Marcus that would give us his ground, several little things he had in the pipeline, other stuff. We were going to speak again, going to talk about some ideas we had, but then this thing happened with him getting shot and he was taken out of the picture.’
‘So no deal?’ Merrett asked.
‘Maybe, maybe not,’ Neumann said. ‘That’s what we’re here to discuss.’
‘What’s there to discuss?’ Klein asked. ‘Seems to me we’re in a situation where we just take what we want and fuck Lenny Bernstein—’
Ben Marcus raised his hand. The gathering fell quiet. He leaned forward slightly, and as he did his face seemed to emerge from the half-light. The effect, perhaps not intended, was nevertheless unnerving. ‘It isn’t that simple Victor,’ he said quietly. ‘It never is just as simple as taking what we want. Fact of the matter is that I made an agreement with Lenny Bernstein. The fact that he was shot puts us in an awkward position. Now this is something I’ve thought long and hard about, something that I have talked about with Sol, something that Albert knew a little about . . . I just need you to understand the bigger picture here and take a vote on something.’
Marcus paused, looked at the faces ahead of him, glanced at Neumann. Neumann nodded. Ben Marcus leaned back and his face disappeared.
‘So here it is,’ Neumann said. ‘We’re dealing with Walt Freiberg now. Walt Freiberg is a different kind of man. He’s a business type guy. He doesn’t do the talking and negotiating like Lenny does. He’s a straight lines kind of guy, all action, no bullshit. He doesn’t go for the sit down stuff. He knew about our meeting with Lenny. He knew what we discussed. For us to now go back to him and say we don’t want to go through with the deal lays us wide open to suspicion that we did the hit on Lenny.’
‘And the problem with that?’ Klein asked.
‘The problem Victor, is that Walt Freiberg is not a man to stand back. He’s right in there already if I know Walt. He’s right in there figurin’ out every angle on this thing, and if he believes for a moment that we had anything to do with Lenny’s hit then I guarantee there’s going to be a war.’
There was silence amongst the gathering.
‘A war we don’t want,’ Neumann continued. ‘Bernstein may be in a vulnerable position, but right now we cannot deal with a war. We are not set up to deal with the costs and losses of such a thing. And there is another factor.’ Neumann paused and looked at Marcus.
Marcus nodded.
‘Lenny’s son has come into the picture.’
‘You what?’ Klein asked. ‘Lenny’s son? Who the fuck is that?’ Neumann leaned forward and placed his hands flat on the desk. ‘We don’t know. Right now all we know is that Lenny’s son has come to New York, and from some inside track we think he’s come up from Miami. We don’t know who he is, we know nothing about his history or connections. For all we know he could have his own crew down south who are set to come and clean the slate for his father if a wrong step is taken. With Lenny’s shooting there appears to be a power vacuum. Freiberg could have stepped in, may very well have done so, but we now have this unpredictable factor to contend with.’
There was silence from the gathered men.
‘Which leaves us in a situation of making a decision,’ Neumann said. He cleared his throat, reached for a glass of water on the desk ahead of him and took a sip. ‘We have to decide whether to go with the plan Lenny Bernstein was proposing.’
‘W
hich was?’ Henry Kossoff asked.
‘Four actions, simultaneous—’ Neumann stated.
‘The hits I was working on?’ Victor Klein asked.
‘The very same,’ Neumann said.
‘And what do we get from this?’ Ray Dietz asked.
Neumann nodded his head. ‘It’s real simple. We go through with this thing then we minimize any suspicion Walt Freiberg may have about our involvement in the shooting of Lenny Bernstein. We avoid any possibility of Lenny’s son bringing people from Miami into a war we don’t want. We all make some money and we wind up with Lenny’s territory.’
‘Seems a good deal to me,’ Dietz said.
‘Okay, there it is,’ Neumann said. ‘We need a majority on this, whichever way it goes.’ He scanned the faces. ‘Okay . . . yes for the Bernstein deal, no for anything else.’
The vote was unanimous. All of them – Ray Dietz, Victor Klein, Karl Merrett, Lester McKee, Maurice Rydell, Henry Kossoff, Albert Reiff – all of them voted for the Bernstein deal.
‘So there we have it,’ Neumann said. ‘Victor is going to get some details together on some places we’ve been looking at, and myself and Mr Marcus are going to have a meeting with Walt Freiberg and straighten out any changes as a result of what has happened with Lenny. Then we’re going to get with Bernstein’s people and go through this thing until we got it nailed down tight. We have days, not weeks, but we’ve done this kind of shit before and we’re all still here to tell the tale, right?’
A chorus of agreements.
‘So get the fuck out of here,’ Neumann said. ‘Go kiss your wives and fuck your girlfriends, buy presents for the kids. Get whatever shit together you need to ’cause we’ve got a busy Christmas ahead of us.’
The men rose from their chairs, talking amongst themselves, draining glasses, laughing once more, and in twos and threes they filed out of the warehouse and started down the fire escape to the car lot below.
Neumann walked across the room just as Ray Dietz was leaving and touched his arm. He indicated back towards Ben Marcus. Ray Dietz turned.
‘Ray,’ Marcus said. ‘Come and speak with me.’
Ray Dietz walked towards the desk and sat down.
Sol Neumann sat beside him, almost between him and Ben Marcus. Dietz was struck with the impression that it was always Sol’s words, but somehow they were generated and driven by Ben Marcus.
