by R.J. Ellory
‘Streetcar Named Desire,’ Cathy said.
‘Right, the sister . . . the one who was in Gone With The Wind.’
‘Vivien Leigh . . . she played Blanche DuBois.’
‘Right, right, Blanche DuBois. She was like that, all airs and graces and ideas above herself, that’s just how she was. From the moment Garrett met her he was walking on eggshells with everything he did. He was a regular guy, a real straight-up Joe, and then she came sailing in like the Queen Mary and kicks the wind out of his sails—’
‘Why did he shoot himself?’ Harper asked.
Freiberg shrugged his shoulders. ‘You asking me whether I think he wanted out of the thing with Evelyn?’
‘I’m asking why he shot himself, that’s all. You knew him. You knew what he was like—’
‘You knew him too kid, you were almost a man when that thing went down.’
‘I was twelve.’
‘Okay, fine, you were twelve. You weren’t a baby, though. You lived in the same house as Garrett for more than ten years. Why d’you think he killed himself?’
Harper smiled, like he was embarrassed, like he’d been asked something intensely personal in front of the whole class.
‘So?’ Freiberg said. ‘What’s your view on this?’
‘I don’t think I’m qualified—’
‘Qualified?’ Freiberg asked. He laughed coarsely. ‘This isn’t Harvard. We don’t need qualifications. I’m asking for your opinion Sonny . . . just your opinion about a man who lived under the same roof as you for a decade or more. That’s all. Don’t make something out of it that isn’t there.’
Harper turned once more and looked at Cathy. His right hand was on the table, and even as his eyes met hers he felt her hand close over his own. Port in a storm, he thought. None of this matters. None of this is important. Everything here in New York will someday be of no significance.
Cathy nodded. ‘Speak,’ she whispered. ‘It’s okay.’
‘I think . . . I think he was hiding a secret,’ Harper said.
‘Hell, everyone has secrets kid. Show me someone who doesn’t have secrets and I’ll show you a dead guy.’
Harper was shaking his head. He smiled. The expression was of someone exhausted but resilient. ‘Not just a secret,’ he said. ‘I’m talking a big fucking secret.’
‘Whatever the hell went down in that house . . . Christ, it’s all years back, it doesn’t matter anymore, right? The past is the past. All that matters is today, tomorrow. Christmas is coming. You have to be happy about that. Everyone’s happy about Christmas.’
‘I don’t know that happy is something I can use right now,’ Harper said.
‘Sure it is,’ Freiberg replied. ‘You have to work yourself out of this serious attitude thing you got going on—’
‘What the hell’s the matter with my attitude?’ Harper asked. ‘I’ve been here, what . . . six days? I’m starting to unravel a little now. I’m starting to wonder whether I can really hang all this together and stay upright for more than ten minutes at a time. I go see Evelyn. I ask her some questions. She breaks up like a storm cloud and the tears come. She tells me the truth. She tells me my mom committed suicide, that she died lonely and afraid. That’s what she said, Walt. She said that Anne Harper died lonely and afraid. You have any idea how that makes me feel?’
Freiberg raised his hand, opened his mouth to speak.
‘It was a rhetorical question,’ Harper said. ‘I don’t want you to even try and answer it.’
Freiberg nodded, closed his mouth.
‘So I get that. I get that small detail right between the eyes.’ Harper paused. He could feel Cathy Hollander beside him, their knees touching, her hand still closed over his. He wanted to move it but the pressure of her skin against his own seemed to give him some small measure of comfort. She was the only person who had managed to retain some aspect of humanity amidst everything that was happening.
‘And then Evelyn suggests, she implies that maybe everything that happened with my mom and her husband wasn’t precisely as it appeared to be.’
Freiberg’s eyes seemed to tighten. He angled his head to one side and looked closely at Harper.
‘She kind of rolls out this theory on a maybe, just a maybe, nothing definite, okay? She gives me a few words of suggestion that maybe Anne didn’t kill herself, that maybe Garrett didn’t kill himself either—’
‘What the fuck is she—’ Freiberg started.
‘Exactly,’ Harper interjected. ‘This is six days of my life, Walt, six days and everything has changed. Everything that I’ve been told is once again being turned on its head. Evelyn says that Anne killed herself to get away from my father. You’re saying that she killed herself to get away from Evelyn and be with my father. Who the hell am I supposed to believe?’
Freiberg smiled. It was nothing more than a cool, matter-of-fact change in expression. ‘You believe whoever has lied less,’ he said.
‘Which means you?’
‘If I have lied less to you then, yes, it means me.’
‘This is bullshit,’ Harper said. ‘I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to play this game. This is a nightmare. That’s how it feels, like a fucking nightmare, and as I’m walking through it I don’t even have the idea I’m asleep, that it really doesn’t matter what the hell happens because at some point in the not-too-distant future I’m going to wake up.’
‘What d’you want me to do?’ Freiberg asked.
Harper shook his head. ‘I don’t know, Walt, I just don’t know . . .’
‘You want me to answer any more questions?’
‘I don’t think I dare ask any more questions. I’m getting to the point where I’m scared to find out something else that’s going to kick me while I’m already down.’
‘You’re a tough guy. You walked through all of this and came out the other side. You even wound up smart enough to write a book.’ Freiberg turned and looked at Cathy. ‘She read your book,’ he said. ‘She read your book and said you were a fucking genius. Hell, you even made her cry.’
‘Did you read it?’ Harper asked Freiberg.
Freiberg looked bemused for a moment. ‘Me? I look like the kind of person who reads books?’
Harper sensed an element of irony in Freiberg’s voice. He wanted to turn and smile at Cathy, wanted to ask her what had made her cry, but he couldn’t. If anything he felt a little embarrassed.
‘So what d’you want to know?’ Freiberg repeated.
‘The cop,’ Harper said. ‘What is the deal with this guy?’
Freiberg shook his head. ‘Who the hell knows. Guy’s out on a limb. Been a cop for God knows how many years. Who knows what he’s involved in, what his vested interests might be.’
‘But with my father . . . why does he have this thing about my father?’
‘Anyone mention the name Lauren Sachs to you?’
Harper frowned, shook his head.
‘Not Evelyn . . . she didn’t tell you about Duchaunak and a girl called Lauren Sachs?’
‘No,’ Harper said. ‘Who the hell is Lauren Sachs?’
‘Okay, okay, okay.’ Freiberg sighed and leaned back in his chair. He reached up and loosened his tie. ‘You want to know about Lauren Sachs then you’re going to need to know about someone else.’
‘Someone else?’
‘Sure,’ Freiberg said. ‘You’re going to need to know about Ben Marcus.’
‘Evelyn mentioned him . . . I heard that name before when I spoke to Evelyn. Who is this Ben Marcus?’
Freiberg glanced at Cathy.
Harper was aware that she had withdrawn her hand. He turned and looked at her but her face was directed towards Freiberg.
‘Ben Marcus,’ Freiberg said quietly. ‘Ben Marcus is the man responsible for the attempted murder of your father.’
FORTY-FOUR
Eight minutes after two p.m.
Ray Dietz, Albert Reiff, Maurice Rydell, Henry Kossoff, Karl Merrett. The noise of the bar f
ilters through from the front, and beyond that the street, the sound of cars passing like a tired man sighing. North of the cross-over between Bowery and Little Italy, there on the junction of East Fourth and Lafayette, another oasis, another watering hole, another microcosm of this shadow of New York, the sour and darkened underbelly; the real world.
‘Four cars,’ Rydell says.
‘Four cars,’ echoes Merrett.
Dietz looks up from a clipboard, upon which are notes, detailed, all of them with margins and headings and times and locations. ‘Drivers are Charlie Beck and Joe Koenig from Lenny’s crew, Henry Kossoff, and Maurice from ours.’
Kossoff and Maurice Rydell each nod in turn.
‘Walt Freiberg will be running the show from their end. As you know we’ve got Larry Benedict, Leo Petri, Ricky Wheland and Ron Dearing—’
‘Jesus, I hate that motherfucker,’ Karl Merrett interjects.
‘Whatever,’ Dietz says. ‘Personal feelings are irrelevant now. We do this thing and then we’re done. It’s the end of an era. Nothing’s gonna be the same after this one.’
Henry Kossoff nods towards Albert Reiff. ‘Hey, what’s the name of this boy we’re using instead of Lester?’
‘Lewis Parselle.’
‘He’s good?’
‘Good as we need.’
Kossoff frowns. ‘Doesn’t sound like much of an assurance to me.’
‘My assurance is good enough for you,’ Reiff says. His voice is brusque and sharp.
‘And what the hell is that supposed to mean?’
Dietz raises his right hand. ‘Ladies, ladies, ladies, enough. We got business to see to. Take your sandpit squabbles home and put them in a fucking box until after Christmas, okay?’ He looks at Kossoff and Reiff in turn. His expression is tough and uncompromising. ‘Okay?’
Reiff nods in the affirmative, as does Kossoff. The tension dispels.
Karl Merrett laughs and everyone relaxes.
‘I know feelings are high,’ Dietz says. ‘We got Lenny Bernstein in St Vincent’s and we don’t know anything about his son, nothing except he’s s’posed to stand for him and give the word. This is what we have, and this is the best it’s going to get. We deal with it, just like we dealt with everything before, right?’
There is a murmur of considered affirmations from around the table.
‘So we go through it again, and we do the same tomorrow, however many times we got to to make sure we have everything straight. We all agreed on this?’
They are. There is no room, no time, no place for disagreement.
‘Okay then,’ Ray Dietz says. ‘Karl, we start with you.’
Duty Sergeant, man by the name of Warren Oates, stands in the doorway. Wears his face like it doesn’t fit, like it’s someone else’s and he’s seeing how it works. It doesn’t. Resigned himself to the fact that it’s too late to take it back, that he’ll always look this way; carries that shadow of resignation around his eyes, in the stoop of his shoulders, in the quiet tension of his jawline.
‘Who is it?’ McLuhan asks.
‘Jackson,’ Oates replies.
‘Mouse Jackson?’
‘The very same.’
‘What’d they do to him?’
‘Nailed him to something through his hands.’ Oates holds out his right hand like it will help to understand the concept. He closes his fingers slowly, almost like he’s imagining the pain. He can’t. Never could. Get your head around that kind of pain and you faint right where you stand.
‘And?’
‘Taped around his mouth and throat, around his ankles too, but they took off his right shoe and beat his foot to pieces.’
‘Fuck me, that’s got to hurt,’ McLuhan says, and he scrunches his toes inside his shoe.
‘And then there was the screwdriver,’ Oates says matter-offactly.
‘The screwdriver?’
‘Right.’
‘What fucking screwdriver?’
‘The one sticking out the side of his head. That was the thing that killed him.’
McLuhan nodded, leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs. ‘You figure that might have been a good thing to tell me first?’
Oates shrugs. ‘It was all good to tell you . . . don’t seem to make a difference in what order.’
‘Where was he found?’
‘Under a bench in Washington Square Park.’
‘Aah, Jesus Christ, you’d think they’d have the decency to keep this thing out of public view goddamn it!’
McLuhan rises suddenly and thumps his fist on the desk. ‘Fuck these people!’ he barks.
Oates doesn’t bat an eyelid, doesn’t move a muscle. He’s either seen this so many times he isn’t fazed, or he’s beyond the point of caring. His expression doesn’t shift.
‘You thinking something?’ McLuhan asks.
Oates shrugs again. ‘Thinkin’ that maybe there’s going to be a war.’
‘No!’ McLuhan snaps. ‘No, no, no! That is not what I want to hear! There is not going to be a war, for fuck’s sake!’
Oates smiles wryly. ‘Not on your watch, right?’ he says.
McLuhan glares at him. ‘Fuck you!’
‘It is what it is, Captain . . . we got Micky Levin and Johnnie Hoy, now Mouse Jackson, all of them directly or indirectly connected to Ben Marcus. We got Lenny in St Vincent’s, bleeding out like there’s no tomorrow. You tell me you don’t see a war coming, eh?’
McLuhan raises his hands. ‘Leave me alone for a while,’ he says. He turns and sits down again. He looks like a beaten man.
‘You want me to do anything on this thing with Mouse?’
‘Where is he?’
‘City morgue I reckon,’ Oates says.
‘Make sure Forensics pulls him apart, the bench also . . . see if there’s anything that tells us where they killed him. Hell, Oates, you know this shit as well as anyone. Get whatever you can, and whatever you get let me know as soon as possible, okay?’
‘Okay, Captain.’ Oates smiles. ‘Have a nice day.’
‘Hey!’
Oates pauses, turns.
‘Is there anything, anything at all on these McCaffrey people, the social worker guy and his sister?’
Oates shakes his head. ‘There’s nothing yet. Got a lead on another brother . . . Thomas McCaffrey, though no-one seems to have heard word of him for some time.’
‘And what the fuck is he, a brain surgeon?’
‘No, he’s a crook, he was the black sheep of the family. Did a stretch in Attica. Coincidentally, he was in Attica at the same time as Johnnie Hoy and Ray Dietz.’
McLuhan shakes his head and looks down. Feels like someone ran over his life with a twelve-wheeler.
‘Make this shit go away will you, Sergeant . . . do whatever you have to to make this shit go away.’
FORTY-FIVE
Freiberg cleared his throat. ‘By the time everyone walked away . . . everyone that could still walk, six people were dead. Apparently, and I don’t know if this was someone’s effort to sensationalize it, the health and sanitation people had to come down and hose the blood from the sidewalks. She was amongst the dead, killed by a single bullet that went through the back of her neck from behind and exited through the lower part of her face. Couldn’t have been worse for her family. They were Catholics, good Catholic people, and she had to have a closed coffin at the funeral.’
Freiberg shook his head slowly. ‘That was November of ’97, all of seven years ago, and, understandably, Frank Duchaunak has not been able to let go of it. That’s the kind of thing you wind up carrying for life.’
‘Where was it?’ Harper asked.
‘South-Western Mercantile Bank on Canal Street.’
‘And he’d only been in New York a short while?’
Freiberg nodded. ‘Weeks I think, maybe a month or two. Came from Chicago, transferred here because this was where she was from.’
‘And she looked like Marilyn Monroe.’
‘Dead ringer . . . almost s
cary. Her name was Lauren, Lauren Sachs. Hell of a nice girl from all accounts. Native New Yorker, family in Stuyvesant I think, still there as far as I know.’
‘How did he meet her?’
‘I don’t know, Sonny. How does anyone meet anyone else these days? Friends of friends, work connections, who the hell knows? Duchaunak was out in Chicago, he got transferred here, all set to get married I reckon, and then this thing happens.’
‘Tell me.’
Freiberg smiled, shrugged his shoulders. ‘What’s to tell, John? It was a bank robbery, an armed bank robbery. You’ve seen the movies, you know how these things supposedly go.’
‘And Edward . . . my father . . . he was there?’
‘Christ no. Your father? Not a prayer. He was probably out of the state, more than likely someplace like Jersey City. He was never in the vicinity of these things. There was never any direct connection between your father and the work he did.’
‘So what did he do?’
‘He paid for it.’
‘He paid for it? I don’t understand—’
‘He was the banker. He put the money up. He financed the whole operation. That’s what he did, and that’s what he was doing right until the moment he was shot. That’s what your father has spent his whole adult life doing, John: working with people like this, paying their way, financing these operations and then taking whatever percentage was his. And Ben Marcus, he’s the same. Years ago there were no divisions . . . everyone worked alongside each other. Then it seemed to be divided, your father on one side, Ben Marcus on the other.’
Harper took one of Cathy’s cigarettes and lit it. His mind was struggling to contain itself. He was silent for a good minute. He sat there without moving, the cigarette burning; didn’t say a word.
Freiberg eventually broke the quiet tension. ‘And that’s why Frank Duchaunak has pursued your father all these years.’
Harper looked down at the table. All of a sudden whatever appetite he might have had, had vanished.
‘I am—’ he started, and he looked up at Freiberg.
