No One Rides for Free

by Larry Beinhart

  “I stole the tie.”

  “Of course.” I should have thought of that.

  “I was gonna write a book, called Steal This Tie! but then Abbie wrote his.”

  “A great opportunity preempted.”

  “Yeah,” he sighed, still regretting it.

  “You went straight,” I prompted.

  “Oh yeah, I went back to school and really got into it. I realized in a vision …”

  “A different vision,” I interrupted.

  “No. No. Same vision, in Grand Central. I saw it was all a game. I saw that I could play.”

  “But you didn’t give up acid?”

  “Of course not,” he said definitively. “How else could I keep my head straight?”

  “Oh.”

  “You can get lost in those games, man, really lost. You can become a pinball, getting kicked by the flippers, bouncing from bumper to bumper, totally out of control, and forget you’re supposed to be the pinball player.”

  “I see,” I said, but I wasn’t sure that I did.

  “Every year we go on vacation, somewhere where there’s a deserted beach or up in the mountains, and Priscilla and I drop. That clears the cobwebs out.”

  “Oh. That sounds good.”

  “Oh, yeah, it makes for an incredibly healthy relationship. You know, most couples, all modern couples maybe, talk about how honest their relationships are, but that is mostly bullshit and cheap emotional chic. I mean the women learn that that’s the way it’s supposed to be from Cosmo, Redbook and Donahue; the men get it from Penthouse and their wives. If you look at the sources, you realize what incredibly crossed signals are being sent out. They all say ‘Honesty, honesty, honesty!’ but they communicate ‘hype,’ ‘con’ and ‘hype.’”

  “I don’t know. Glenda, that’s the woman I live with, swears by Donahue.”

  “Don’t they all. But anyway, unless you really get down, really get out there, where you can look back and see your bullshit and the fungus that grows in your mind, fear, insecurity, the deviousness of your own defenses, see the garbage as garbage, you can’t be honest even if you want to.”

  “And that works?”

  “Oh yeah …” he drawled as only a true space cadet can, “… it’s beautiful.

  “Priscilla,” he called out after an interval of self-appreciation. She came downstairs and Mel made enthusiastic introductions. Then he asked what had happened with me.

  It might have been the space cadet atmosphere that floated genially behind me gray flannel facade, or a tactical decision that honesty and openness beget more of the same; whatever it was, I told more truth than I expected to.

  “You were going to law school,” he prompted.

  “I dropped out,” I said.

  “Why? Law school is a terrific game.” He giggled at Priscilla who was in on whatever the joke was. He moved off the couch and sat down on the floor where he was obviously more comfortable. She moved over so she could run a stray finger through what was left of his curly reddish hair.

  “My father died. It was during the summer after my first year. I was doing one of those intern things at a Wall Street firm. I told myself at the time that I was … that I had a vision, in a way. But it was one that shut things down, it didn’t open them up. They had all the hotshots, the cream of the ivy crop, and they used them as chickenshit assistants to the senile and venal. With more chickenshit subservience than the army. The army was a world of blind obedience and a soldier was expected to try to evade the rules. The law firm was voluntary subservience and the associates were expected to love it. In school the law was fun. In a law office, it was finding forms. That was the reason, the reason I gave myself then.”

  I poured myself another drink and settled on the floor.

  “But maybe that wasn’t true. There was enough money, if I let my mother keep it all, for her. If she invested it and worked till she got social security, she could get by gracefully. Or I could have taken the bread, finished school. But then I would’ve owed her, I would have been responsible. Locked in. I would have had to finish, and finish high, and taken the big law firm job and locked myself into the money. Maybe that was what it was about.”

  “Someday,” Priscilla said, “you might want to grow up.”

  “Lots of days,” I replied, unoffended, “I consider it.”

  “Wasn’t there some other way to score the bread?” Mel asked.

  “Yeah, I had, have, an Uncle Vincent. But then I would have owed him.”

  “What he needs,” Mel said, looking at his Priscilla, “is the love of a good woman. To show him the way.”

  “True, but what I want, is the Edgar Wood story.”

  “Poor Edgar,” Priscilla said, “he sounded like such a foolish man. … He took it all very seriously. Didn’t he, Mel?”

  “Yeah, no sense of it being a game. No sense of fun at all.”

  “Must have been very depressing for you to work with him,” I suggested, trying to get into the warp and woof of things.

  “Edgar Wood,” Mel said, “acted as if everything was real. He was very serious.”

  “Attica is very real.” I argued out of reflex. “Prison has a way of intruding on your sense of humor.”

  “I think I understand what you’re saying,” Priscilla said. “You would have to have a very strong core, a very firm and steady sense of unreality to maintain your sense of humor in prison.”

  “Oh wow, prison,” Mel said, as if the idea was palpitating him for the first time. He was getting drunk. “We were going to keep him out, you know.”

  “Were you?”

  “Oh yeah, that’s the way me game is played.” He brightened. “Trading up is one of the basic formats of all gamesmanship. I mean especially in law enforcement.”

  “He gave you good stuff then, huh?”

  “Honestly?” Mel asked. “Honestly and truthfully?”

  “Yeah, why not?” I said.

  “Trade up,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Tony,” Priscilla prompted me prettily, “what can you trade for information about Edgar Wood?”

  “Yeah, trade up,” Mel repeated, drunken and impish.

  I tried the riff about the bereaved, grief-stricken daughter who could never rest easy until there was proof of why Daddy died. Maybe it was because I had a thing about her, but I gave a hell of a performance.

  “Tony, that’s, very interesting. And it’s really great that you’re a fellow non-Harvard man. An alumni of old State U and City High. Just like me. And Priscilla probably thinks you’re cute. …”

  “Oh definitely,” she said.

  “But. But! As an attorney. A man of Honor. A Gentleman. I am bound and sworn not to reveal an iota, a jot, a comma, a semicolon of anything that our witness, the late Edgar Wood, has revealed to me … Unless! You have something to trade for it.”

  “It’s hard to know, Mel, what’s worth trading when I don’t know what I’m trading for.”

  “Work at it.” Mel was enjoying his game.

  “Look, Mel, this is murder. I don’t give a flying fuck about Over & East, and games on the big board, and I’ll even guarantee you that nothing goes back to them from me. I’m just looking for a motive for murder.”

  “You’re missing me point, old chum,” Mel said.

  “I am not, I’m evading it.”

  “Tony, it’s quid pro quo, tit for tat and all of that. Unless you just want to chat about old times, which I think is a terrific idea.”

  “You want something sleazy on Over & East?” I mumbled and he nodded. They, who had been investigating Over & East for almost twenty years, didn’t have anything solid.

  “I don’t know, there might be something. There might be a cocaine connection.”

  The gamesman’s eyes lit up and came back into focus, and, I’m willing to swear, one ear actually cocked, like a beagle’s. He waited for more. I waited for him.

  “What is it?”

  “What’s in the testimony?
”

  “Tell me what you know, and, if it’s good, you can read the transcripts.”

  “I’m going to have to track it down, nail down some details,” I said. “It’s going to take some time and money and it’s dangerous. But I’ll do it. I’ll do it for you. Let me look at the stuff, because I might spot a tie-in that you won’t, and because it’ll help me investigating who I have to investigate. Then I’ll do it, and bring whatever I get back to you.”

  “Tony, I would love to trust you,” Mel said sincerely.

  “He would,” Priscilla chimed in. “He loves to trust, but he never does. It’s part of the game.”

  “So here’s what I’ll do, and only ’cause we go way back,” Mel said, “You give me one single thing that I can make a case out of, or even that’s important as a piece of building a case, and you can read the transcripts.”

  11

  CAPPUCCINO

  GENE TATTALIA HAD DONE his homework. The guy in the front seat who did the talking, who had all but shot my ear off, now had a name: Hencio deVega. He worked at the Colombian Board of Trade and had diplomatic status.

  Gene’s people had tailed him for two days. The first day he made them nervous. He kept turning around while he was driving. They thought he was aware of being tailed, or frightened of being tailed, but they had tagged the wrong cause onto the effect and finally realized that deVega was turning around every time he saw a blonde. Any blonde, honey to platinum to dirty.

  To pry him open, Gene had an incredibly complicated scheme based on the Letelier investigation. Letelier, ex-ambassador from Chile, had been assassinated in downtown D.C. U.S. Justice Department investigators traced the bombers to Chile and managed to extradite them, even though the killers worked for the Chilean Secret Police. Along the way they brought about the downfall of the colonel who ran the secret police. As a result, the one person who could frighten a South American diplomat-criminal was a Justice Department Investigator. The case, Gene assured me, was an absolute legend from the Rio Grande south.

  “What this case needs,” I said, “is a blonde and a slug from a .45. That’s all these guys understand.”

  “What’s wrong with this business,” Gene bitched, “is no innovation, no elegance, no creativity. I bet you even want to use Franco Polatrano.”

  “Whatsamatta wid Franco?” I said.

  “Wassamatta wid Franco is he talksalike dis. If Franco haddanuf taste to gedda silka suit, he could maybe qualify to be an extra ina Gonfadder Tree, ya unnerstan’?”

  “That,” I said, “is not necessarily a bad thing.”

  Gene got Whitney, five feet ten of ash-blonde refeened hooker—think D.A.R. with cleavage—at the bargain rate of $350 a night, based on the promise that she would only have to act. She normally made far more, but at the moment she had a minor infection and the dentist was doing some work on her gums, so promises were all that she could deliver in good conscience, which is something she had, and we were the only ones around willing to pay for just promises.

  The .45 I already had.

  The first night we followed deVega, he had company and stayed with them. The second night, he went out alone. When he went into a Georgetown restaurant, Gene and Whitney followed him in. A fair tip to the host got them a table close to Hencio’s.

  Gene is the kind of guy who does not waste. He waited until he had finished his entrée before he staged the quarrel.

  “You’ve seen a lot of Anton lately,” he said.

  “Oh, Gene, don’t be silly, you know there’s nothing between us.”

  “There used to be,” he muttered darkly.

  “That was so, so long ago.”

  “You call six months a long time!”

  “Nine months, darling, at least nine.”

  “You’ve been seeing him again. I can tell.”

  “Gene, I swear to you …”

  “Whenever you see one of those dark Latin types, you just have to spread your little white legs, don’t you … don’t you!”

  “Stop it, Gene,” she whispered. “People can hear you.”

  “Let ’em,” Gene announced. “I’m not the slut.”

  “You really are a bastard, aren’t you?” she said with her head down, hand twisting the napkin and a sniffle.

  “That’s us, baby, the bastard and the whore.”

  “Gene, take me home,” she said with repressed sobs.

  “What,” was the reply, slow and vicious, “and get another dose of the clap?”

  At that point, Whitney, with a ladylike little gasp, gave Gene a slap as realistic as the accusation. Gene slapped her back. DeVega rose on cue to defend me lady’s honor. “A man who hits a woman is no man at all!”

  “Oh yeah!” Gene stood up and faced him. “I’ll tell you what, you wan’ her, you take her. Why not, everyone else has.” Which was his exit line.

  “Can I help you?” the horny deVega said to Whitney anxiously. “That was terrible. A disgrace.”

  “No, no,” she sniffled, “just leave me alone.”

  The waiter had seen Gene storm out. As in many restaurants the waiter was responsible for the bill. He panicked, moderately and decorously. The check immediately appeared under Whitney’s nose. On the verge of tears, she went to her purse, which, as planned, was empty. She began to search frantically. DeVega went up like a trout for a fly and snatched the bill.

  “I will take this,” he snapped at me waiter. “Can’t you see the lady is upset? Get her a brandy.”

  Whitney’s bottom swayed as she led deVega upstairs to the chic little Georgetown flat that Gene had sublet for a week. That easy roll shoved what was left of deVega’s brains down behind his zipper. She opened the door. He stepped in. She stepped out and closed it with him inside.

  Franco sat in an easy chair. Dark glasses, white silk tie, dark shirt, the flashiest silk suit we could find on short notice and a Colt Magnum. The gun had a silencer attached, making it look even bigger than Dirty Harry’s.

  Gene stepped out from the kitchen. He held a silenced .45. I followed. Compared to Franco, both my suit and gun were models of taste and restraint. Unfortunately the same could not be said about my tie.

  “Is dissa de one?” Gene said through half a lip.

  Gene did not like to stereotype Italians. But I had impressed upon him that stereotypes are easier for people to understand and that there is clarity in clichés.

  I nodded and walked up to deVega. I hit him on the side of the head, hard, with the barrel of my .45. It was a cliché, but the point was not to confuse deVega with original thinking. Simple approaches elicit simple responses. Also, I enjoyed it.

  “OK, kid,” Gene said, “we’ll take careit.”

  “Gino, I wanna piece a this mutha.”

  “Kid, ya uncle Vincen’ saysa he don’ wan you to do the deed, ya know, jus’ leave ita us.”

  “What do you want?” deVega said.

  I hit him with a cliché, in the solar plexus. He bent double, gasping for air. I gestured to Franco who rose with implacable and silent gravity. He crossed the room, silent and solid as death, until he stood in front of deVega.

  “I have diplomatic status,” deVega gasped. “My government …”

  Franco’s backhand came with no warning and smashed deVega to the floor. Franco smiled and straightened his silk cuff. He scared the hell out of me, and I was reasonably certain it was just an act.

  I knelt down and put my gun to deVega’s ear. Franco jabbed his silencer into deVega’s balls.

  “What the fuck is your interest in Edgar Wood?”

  “I don’t know who you are talking about.”

  “Hencio,” I said, “you will be much happier if you do know.” He didn’t answer, so I explained. “Hencio, Franco is gonna shoot your balls off.”

  “You can’t do this,” he said.

  Franco fired.

  The bullet was a blank. But a blank contains powder and some form of wadding, frequently wax, to hold the propellant in place. Even the wax, had
it hit the genitalia directly, would, with that much force, have done serious damage. Franco was a careful man and it did not. But it did tear through deVega’s clothes and rip some skin from his inner thigh, and the hot escaping gases from the gun barrel flowed like flame, searing the spot.

  DeVega screamed. His urine rushed out and flowed on the floor. His hands grabbed for his crotch.

  “Talk to me, Hencio,” soft and weary.

  “I di’n’ hurt you, don’ hurt me, please.”

  “Talk to me, tell me about Edgar Wood.”

  “I di’n’ hurt you, I just’ try to warn you.”

  I slapped his face.

  “We were afraid he would talk.”

  “About what?”

  “Who are you?” he pleaded.

  “We’re the people you don’t fuck with, fuckface. Now, before I get bored and let Franco do what he came for.”

  “It’s about what we did with Charles Goreman.”

  At last. There it was. “What?” I asked.

  “It was a big deal, mucho, mucho grande, the biggest trading I have ever seen.”

  “Tell me about it, all of it.”

  “I could lose my job.”

  “Fuck your job, think about your life.”

  “If my government knew, I would not last ten minutes.”

  “Knew about what, you stupid fuck, stop stalling. What the fuck did you do?”

  “We didn’t do nothing … nothing. Goreman did it all. We just went along. I don’t mean even went along, we didn’t. We found out about it after, but we couldn’t do nothing about it.”

  “You got a piece of the action, didn’t you?”

  “No, no, I swear,” he said, but Franco jammed his gun into deVega’s balls. “Sí, sí, yes, but not much.”

  “How much?”

  “Just a hundred thousand. What is that? That is nothing on a thirty-eight-million-dollar deal.”

  “Tell me, Hencio, confession is good for the soul,” I said. It was about the biggest coke deal I had ever heard of. And his numbers were wholesale, not the numbers D.A.s use, based on price per gram, after it has gone from ton, to kilo, to pound, to ounce, stepped on each step of the way.

  “If I tell you, you will let me go? And you will not tell my government?”