by R.J. Ellory
Freiberg reached for his glass again, took another drink.
‘So Edward says, “And why would this concern me Frank? What does this have to do with me?”, and Frank says, “I don’t know Edward. I just figured you might want to know. I just spent four and half hours by the old guy’s bedside in the hospital, waiting for him to come round so he could tell us something about what happened. Only problem is he never did come round. He gave up less than an hour ago, and I thought it was only common decency to come over here and tell you.” “Common decency,” Edward said. “What the hell are you talking about?” “Talking about one of your people,” Frank said . . . stood right there at the end of the table and said that to your father. “Talking about one of your people . . . some no-good two-bit asshole who works for you . . . works for you on one of your robberies. He gets a little unruly, a little freaked, and he whacks some poor old guy in the head and the guy dies. Not a word. Not a single fucking word and he’s dead. That’s what I’m talking about Lenny,” he says. Calls him Lenny right there in front of his friends. “That’s what I’m talking about Lenny.” And Edward sits there and doesn’t reply. Doesn’t say a goddamned word.
‘I was with him the whole time. We’d been living out of each other’s pockets for, like, two, three weeks, and if there was a robbery on West Houston then it was news to me. But Edward doesn’t challenge Duchaunak. He knows that if he challenges him, riles him, then Duchaunak will just go off into left field and never make it home. He lets Frank Duchaunak stand there for a little while longer, and then when Frank starts to feel awkward, when he starts to look like he’s made an asshole of himself, Edward stands slowly, walks around the edge of the table and takes Duchaunak’s arm. He walks him to the door, smiling all the way, and if you’d seen them they would have looked like long-lost catching up on stories from home. Edward walks him out into the street, right out into the street, and then he calls a cab. The cab comes, he puts Frank inside it, and just as he’s about to close the door Duchaunak leans towards the open window.’
Freiberg leaned forward, almost in echo of what he was describing.
‘Edward sees Duchaunak leaning towards him, and he bends down to hear what the guy has to say. “Given the time again,” Frank says. “Given the time again . . . with hindsight, with everything behind you, with everything that has happened, would you make a different choice?” And Edward thinks for a moment, almost like he’s teasing Duchaunak, and then he says “Choice, Frank? What the hell made you think that this was ever a matter of choice?”’
Freiberg smiled and leaned back in his chair. ‘That, John Harper,’ he said, ‘is the kind of person your father is, and if you want to know the truth about him then you ask me. You don’t ask Frank fucking Duchaunak, and you sure as hell don’t ask Evelyn Sawyer. You ask me. And you want to know why?’
Harper raised his eyebrows.
‘I’ll tell you why, Sonny. You ask me because I was there . . . all the way along the line, regardless of what happened . . . good, bad or indifferent, I was there. That’s the facts, my boy . . . those are the facts. I was there. No fucker else was. You want to know something about Edward Bernstein then you’ve come to the right place, okay?’
Harper nodded. ‘Okay.’
‘So you want to know some stuff?’ Freiberg asked.
‘Sure, Walt, sure.’
‘Shoot,’ Freiberg said. ‘You ask me whatever the fuck you like and you’re going to get an answer. May not like it, but hell, you find me anyone on God’s green earth who likes everything that goes on, eh?’
‘Anything?’ Harper asked.
‘Sure as hell, Sonny, anything. Ask away.’
FORTY-TWO
Ben Marcus, Sol Neumann. Both of them standing back of the desk. Neumann standing to the right, Marcus leaning forward, hands on the back of his chair, a chair he would ordinarily be seated in.
Ahead of them sat Raymond Dietz and Albert Reiff, other regulars – Maurice Rydell, Henry Kossoff and Karl Merrett. Seated, chairs gathered together in a sort of half-circle, and already the room was filled with smoke as they sat and listened to Marcus, listened and never questioned.
‘Easy is not in this vocabulary,’ Marcus said. ‘Easy is for other people – kids, schoolteachers, people who work in libraries. What we have in front of us is an asshole of a thing. No bones about it. No questions. Maybe the toughest thing you ever done. All of you.’
Marcus pulled out his chair and sat down. He rested his forearms on the desk, hands together, and he took a moment to survey the faces in front of him.
‘Johnnie Hoy. Micky Levin. May they rest in peace. Just because they messed up doesn’t mean they don’t deserve a moment of respect now they’re gone.’
A murmur of consent.
‘This is a tough business. We all know that. People walk between the lines. Lines are very easy to see. Step over the lines and you have to set things right again. You don’t get things right, then you have to be put someplace where you aren’t going to interfere with business. Johnnie, Micky, they knew where the lines were. Maybe they believed that there was room for a little sidelining. Maybe not. Doesn’t matter now.’
Marcus turned and looked up at Sol Neumann, standing there at the side of the desk, arms folded, face implacable.
Marcus turned back to the small audience.
‘Mouse Jackson. We had some words with him.’ Marcus looked at Dietz and Reiff in turn. ‘He wasn’t able to give us anything. From all appearances, Lenny Bernstein got himself shot up in a liquor store robbery. Wasn’t anything. Some wild kid with a .38 as far as we can tell. They have Lenny in St Vincent’s, but his son is here, and as far as we know, simply because we’ve heard no word to the contrary, everything is going to roll forward on the twenty-fourth. Seems everything is going to make time, just like we figured with Lenny. And then when the thing is done we’ll have what we always wanted, and Lenny . . . well, Lenny would have done whatever the hell he wanted, but now?’ Marcus shook his head. ‘Maybe he’ll make it, maybe he won’t. Doesn’t matter a great deal to me. I respect the man. Have to respect the man after everything he’s done, but just ’cause I respect him doesn’t mean I’m going to be sorry he’s dead.’ Marcus waved his hand in a dismissive fashion. ‘Whatever,’ he added. ‘These things always have a way of working themselves out.’
Once again, a murmur of consent from the five seated men.
‘So everything goes . . . everything goes as if nothing has changed. This guy, this Sonny Bernstein, seems he will stand for his father, and whatever he says is going to be the same as if Lenny himself had said it. That’s the way we’re treating this business, and if it comes out the way we figured then everyone’s going to go home happy.’
Marcus eased back his chair and stood up.
‘But there is still this one thing, and I am not happy. You have all done what you were supposed to do. We have vehicles, we have weapons, we have the people we need. Victor has provided the floor plans and names we need. We know what we’re after and we have a way to get it.’
Marcus paused and surveyed the gathered faces. ‘However, despite this, I am not happy. I am not fucking happy at all.’ His fists clenched, and the tension in the room tangibly increased. ‘This Thomas McCaffrey is still somewhere. He may already be dead. The point is that we don’t know. This is something that we cannot forget about. This is something that has to be fixed, and fast. You understand?’
The gathering nodded, looked at one another, looked back at Marcus.
‘Whatever it takes we find him. Get word out to whoever you know. Speak to the people you trust, even to the people you don’t. You need buy-money then you speak to Sol. When it’s done the man who found him gets twenty-five bonus. That’s all there is to it. I want this Thomas McCaffrey found before this thing goes off on the twenty-fourth.’
Once again the men nodded in affirmation.
‘So, until the night before, we don’t meet again. Not any of us. Not in the same place. No phone
calls from landlines. Use payphones. Don’t use cellphones. Everyone knows the drill. Anyone wants me they go through Sol, understood?’
The men nodded, grunted their acknowledgements.
‘So let’s get out there.’
They all rose, all five of them, and as they left they each shook hands in turn with both Ben Marcus and Sol Neumann.
Once the office was vacated Marcus turned to Neumann. ‘I see Lester McKee was not present.’
Neumann nodded.
‘Trouble?’
‘Enough.’
‘Someone’s going to take care of it?’
Neumann nodded. ‘Someone’s going to take care of it.’
‘Did he do the thing with the trailer . . . the one with the cigarettes out of the McCarren Park warehouse?’
Neumann shrugged. ‘Fuck knows.’
‘He did something else?’
‘He did something else.’
‘We’re going to lose him?’ Marcus asked.
‘Yep.’
‘And on the day? Who’s going to take his place?’
‘Albert has a boy we can use.’
‘Not his own kid for Christ’s sake . . . that kid has to be the dumbest motherfucker ever to walk the face of the earth.’
Neumann smiled. ‘No, not his own kid. Some other kid he knows.’
Marcus raised his hand. ‘Whatever, whatever. Just take care of things right, okay?’
‘Ben,’ Sol Neumann said, in his voice a tone of disappointment and surprise. ‘When did I ever—’
Marcus reached out and gripped Neumann’s shoulder. ‘Never is the answer to your question Sol,’ he said. ‘I’m not talking about you . . . I’m talking about these other assholes. Hell, they’re good people, but this is the big one, right? This is the thing. This is the one that makes everything come together, and I cannot afford any fuck-ups, know what I mean? I made an agreement with Lenny, an agreement I never intended to keep. Now, events unforeseen, I have to keep this agreement. I got Lenny’s kid up from Miami, and as far as I know the guy’s a fucking ghost. I got this McCaffrey guy on the loose. I got his dead brother and his dead fucking sister . . . a fucking social worker and a nurse for Christ’s sake! You imagine how that’s going to look on my résumé? I got too many variables Sol, too many variables. I don’t sleep so well when there’s variables.’
‘Take it easy Ben, take it easy,’ Neumann said. ‘This thing has been worked out professionally. Victor knows what he’s doing, and this McCaffrey guy has gone somewhere and I figure he isn’t going to come back. If I were him I’d pick a direction and just keep fucking running. Believe me, nothing is going to go wrong, Ben, nothing is going to go wrong.’
‘I know, I know, I know. I just cannot have anyone out of step on this. There’s going to be a meeting with Freiberg. I have any loose ends, anything looks out of place, then I’m going to have to kill him. That’s just the way it’s got to be. I get the idea Freiberg has created a mirage around this guy. I don’t care who he is, how many people he knows down in Miami . . . fact that we’re not getting any substantial word on him tells me that it’s a scam. Way it feels right now I’m going to have to kill Walt Freiberg, maybe this Sonny Bernstein as well. People around them will fall into line fast enough. Freiberg has made himself the head of Lenny’s crew. He disappears, then that crew will become ours and we can still pull this thing on the twenty-fourth. I don’t want to do that, but if that’s what needs to happen then that’s what will happen.’
‘Ben, it’s okay. Go to the club will you? Go see one of those girls and get a fucking massage or something. You’re making something out of nothing. It’s going to go fine . . . believe me . . . it’s going to go fine.’
Ben Marcus smiled and reached for the door handle. ‘Ever the optimist, Sol, ever the optimist. How’d you get to be so fucking optimistic?’
Neumann smiled back. ‘Dropped me on my head when I was born . . . been as cheerful as fucking springtime ever since.’
FORTY-THREE
‘You know she killed herself,’ Harper said matter-of-factly.
‘You heard me,’ Freiberg replied.
Harper turned to look at Cathy Hollander.
Evelyn had stated the facts the way she saw them, the way she believed them to be. Confirmation was everything. One person is opinion, two people . . . well, two people say the same thing and you can pretty much take it to the bank.
‘And why do you think she killed herself?’
‘Why?’ Freiberg echoed. He pushed his dinner plate to the side and leaned forward. Harper thought the man looked like something from a ’40s classic – Edward G., Jimmy C., Humphrey B.; Sidney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre somewhere out back in the kitchen sharpening things and looking scary, all hooded eyes and high-key lighting. ‘Why does anyone do such a thing?’
‘Two of them did, my mother and Garrett Sawyer, both in the same house and five years apart.’ Harper shook his head. ‘What the fuck was that all about?’
Freiberg leaned forward. ‘People kill themselves for two reasons. There’s something they want they can’t have. There’s something they’ve got they don’t want. That’s pretty much it. Doesn’t get an awful lot more complicated than that.’
Harper was silent for a moment. Once more he looked at Cathy. She smiled understandingly. Harper looked at her lips, the way the muscles tensed when she changed her expression. He wanted to know why she had pulled away. He wanted to kiss her again, make her yield.
He turned back to Freiberg. ‘She had something she didn’t want,’ Harper said matter-of-factly.
‘Something she didn’t want? What d’you mean?’
‘Evelyn told me . . . that Anne was aware of the life my father was leading and felt she couldn’t escape from it. That’s why she killed herself.’
Freiberg smiled. It was a dry and humorless smile. ‘Is that what she told you?’
Harper nodded. ‘Yes. Why?’
‘Because, my dear friend, it was exactly the opposite.’
‘The opposite? I don’t understand.’
‘Anne Harper didn’t kill herself to get away from something. She killed herself because the people who loved her, at least the people who said they loved her, were hell-bent on making her leave your father. That’s why your mother died, because her sister, your Aunt Evelyn and her husband, other people who knew her at the time . . . all of them were doing everything they could to make her leave your father. That was what happened Sonny, that was exactly what happened.’
Harper was frowning, looking sideways at Cathy Hollander, then back to Walt Freiberg.
‘It isn’t difficult,’ Freiberg said. ‘Your father and your mother, like Romeo and Juliet, the Montagues and the Capulets, and all manner of bullshit thrown in there by people who had no goddamned business getting themselves involved. Evelyn and I never saw eye-to-eye as you know. There was always something with that woman, something undercover, something unspoken. Never said what she meant, never meant what she said. I mean, for Christ’s sake, look at the bullshit lines she fed you. Your father is dead. Goddamnit, you’re how old? Thirty-whatever fucking years of age before you find out that your father isn’t dead; all these years, he’s alive and well and living in New York. And then this thing with your mother . . . dying from pneumonia, that’s what she told you, right?’
Harper looked back at Freiberg, didn’t move, didn’t say a word.
‘That’s right, isn’t it?’ Freiberg asked again. ‘She told you that your mother died of pneumonia?’
Harper nodded.
‘So what the hell is that? The truth about your parents is right there in front of you all this time. She tells you just what she wants you to know and nothing more. That was always her way. That’s just the person she is, Sonny. She didn’t want your father around Anne, believed that what she thought was right for your mother was more important than whatever the hell anyone else might think, even Anne herself. Anne lived under a cloud. Jeez, she was one of the prettiest, br
ightest girls I ever knew. She was a real sweetheart, and smart too, very smart indeed. And yet you could see something else there, like there was something that haunted her. You could just feel the way she lived under this oppressive cloud all the time, and that came from Evelyn.’
Freiberg shook his head, ground his cigarette into the ashtray and lit another.
‘And Garrett? Garrett was a good man. I knew Garrett long before he ever met Evelyn. Garrett Sawyer was a tough bastard, didn’t take no crap, but he got himself in with Evelyn and that was the end of that. Guy was never the same again. We used to go out, me and Edward and Garrett, used to go out and see people, used to play cards over in Atlantic City with Ray Dietz and Victor Klein, a couple of guys who now work for Ben Marcus. We caused some trouble, we upset some folks, but we never did any real harm. We were young, and things never seemed to be as serious as other people made them.’ Freiberg smiled. ‘One time . . . I tell you about this one time with me and Garrett—’
Freiberg stopped mid-flight. He shook his head. The smile vanished. ‘Hell, I’m sorry, kid. You don’t want to be hearing good ol’ boy stories about me and Garrett Sawyer. Where was I?’
‘Garrett and Evelyn,’ Cathy said.
‘Right, right . . . Garrett and Evelyn. Yeah, so I knew him before he ever met her. I knew Garrett when he was a hired hand for this freight company downtown. Hard-working guy, real hard-working. Never complained, never a bad word out of his mouth about anyone. And then he met Evelyn, and Evelyn was something else. She was like whatsername in that Brando movie, the one where the sister comes to visit.’
