From the pier, I headed down to Wall Street, to stalk Haven.
The building with the offices of Choate, Winkler, Higgiston, Hahn & Moore, attorneys-at-law, had exits from both ends of the lobby. An effective stakeout had to be inside. To make myself look like I belonged, I bought a cup of coffee in a container to go, a newspaper, picked a good vantage point to view the elevator and leaned against the wall. From time to time, I glanced at my watch impatiently, as if wondering, “Where the hell is she?” Had one of the security guards questioned me, that would have been my explanation, along with something convoluted as to why I could not be seen with her in her office.
Associates usually leave late, anywhere from eight to midnight. Partners leave anytime they please. Sometimes after lunch, often around four, to beat the rush. Haven came down at ten past.
Outside the building, he headed west. He was an old man, moving slow, and easy to follow. When he got to Broadway he went north to Cortlandt where he turned left and headed for the World Trade Center. I trailed him past the CNN studios and into the lobby of the Vista Hotel. He was just passing through, and I followed him as he went out to West Street. On the other side was Gateway Plaza.
Rising out of the rubble of old warehouses and loft buildings, part of what will be Battery Park City, Gateway Plaza is a logical idea. Housing within walking distance of the highest density of jobs in the world, an area which otherwise has no places to live. I had been there before, on a divorce case. For the downtown broker, businessman or lawyer, Gateway is heaven-sent. Nooners take place at a time that does not have to be accounted for. Some girls work there; more are kept there.
But Haven didn’t go into the building itself. He went around the side, to the underground garage. Slipping his plastic card into a box mounted on a steel pole, he caused the doors to open. There was no way to follow him in, so I waited. A few minutes later he drove out in his Mercedes.
As I watched him go, I thought that it was an odd place to keep his car. Convenient for him, but I would have assumed that the parking spots, in a town where a place to park can rent for more than entire homes elsewhere, would be reserved for tenants.
I had to endure long protestations of integrity and go all the way up to fifty bucks before the doorman at the front entrance acknowledged to me that Mr. Haven did pay the rent on an apartment there. At that price the doorman included the information that Mr. Haven didn’t live there often, but that his “cutie” did.
I had some shopping to do and the time to do it in, since I couldn’t make my next move until after dark. My old friend on Perry Street was home when I called and said that a quarter was no problem. We did some tasting together, and I was starting to move.
The next thing I wanted was a briefcase. Something cheap, ordinary and untraceable. Then I remembered that I had one just like that, the one that Choate Haven had given me with the initial job, the one where I fingered Wood for him. I picked it up from the office. Then I went over to Forty-second Street, and from one of many, many stores offering them, I bought a knife. I also bought a pair of panty hose.
Back at Gateway Plaza, I waited where the driveway came out into West Street. It was dark by then. What I needed was a nice lady leaving the garage to get caught at the fight with her window open. It took an hour, but finally one did.
When she stopped, I stepped out. I wore a stocking mask and held the gun I had been carrying since I had chatted with Whelan at Kevin Murphy’s. I told her to give me her purse. She gave it to me. I said don’t yell. She agreed to that. I told her to drive away. She did.
I simply walked away in the other direction. All I wanted was the key card that opened the garage. I took it, handling everything through the stocking so as not to leave prints. When it was all over, I intended to send her belongings back. It was the least I could do.
I wanted Choate Haven alone. Preferably at night. The garage was perfect.
The next night he worked until six. Then he went to dinner with clients. After dinner he took a cab over to the Gateway to get his car. It was eight by then and it would have been perfect, but he had one of his dinner companions with him.
The night after that, he went straight home. I was getting increasingly strained, doing more coke, worrying about stopping once it was over.
I no longer had to wait inside the lobby; I knew which way he would come out if he was going to the Gateway. At four, the day after he went home, he came out, heading west. This time he went in the front door. The time had come.
My guess was that he would take three to five hours. There would be a dinner, then some drinks. When he undressed he would hang his clothes carefully on hangers in the closet. Then it would take some time for her to get him in operating condition. But just in case I was wrong and he was going to pop her quick, I didn’t want to miss him.
Using the stolen card, I let myself into the underground garage. I found his Mercedes. It was as spic and span and shiney as Edgar Wood’s Jaguar had been. Sitting down in the grime and the grub to hide myself, I decided that if I had Haven’s kind of money, it would be an old Silver Cloud, just to flaunt it, and I would let it go dusty, just to show I didn’t give a shit.
From where I half sat and half lay, I could see the elevator door. Every half-hour I got up, did two little lines, then stretched to keep from getting too stiff. The time crept. And crept. My anger and I held each other close, like lovers, starting to breathe hard, waiting to get swept away with mutual infatuation.
Luck was with me. When the elevator door opened and Choate Haven stepped out, looking as well groomed and impeccable as ever, he was alone. As he came toward his car, I slid around the passenger side, pulled down my stocking mask and slid out my gun. As he came alongside the car, I moved around behind the trunk.
He reached in his pocket for his keys, found them and bent for the lock. I came up and around, moving fast. I had the gun in my right hand. With my left, I grabbed his hair, then smashed his face down into the roof of the car. He was an old man, weak, even frail, and it didn’t take much effort. It had all the macho thrill of mugging old ladies and crips.
I lifted him up by the hair. Blood was trickling from his nose and it looked broken. I turned him around. Then I sapped him with the pistol. He crumpled. I checked his pulse. He was alive but out cold.
I had thought about confronting him. To find out why he thought he had done what he had done. Maybe just to find out if I was right, all the way down the line. But if I spoke to him, I would have seen him more and more as a person, a creature of fear and frailty. I couldn’t afford that.
I picked up his keys, opened the door, then dragged him into the driver’s seat. Then I heard the sound of the garage doors opening. I pushed him over so he lay flat, closed the door and scrambled around the front of the car where I would be hidden.
Whoever it was found their parking space, got out, locked up and headed for the elevator. Each sound echoed and I could follow the action easily. I kept my head down until I heard the door close.
Grabbing the briefcase, his briefcase, I came out on the passenger side. I opened that door, took my plastic bag of cocaine, worked it into the hinge until it was stuck, then pulled it until it tore. The crystalline white powder spilled over the inside of the case, as intended. Then I put his hands all over the case, leaving his prints on the case and coke on his fingertips. I scattered some more of the white lady on the seat and floor. I folded the bag down over the tear and put what was left in my pocket.
Then I closed that door and went back around the other side. He was still out, and I hauled him up. Except for the blood trickling from the smashed nose, it was a handsome patrician face. From the care he lavished on it, the perfect tan, the perfect haircut, the barber-close shave, I knew it meant a lot to him. I took the knife and began to carve a “C” in his cheek. He started twitching. I stopped; the pain was waking him up.
I sapped him again. It scared me, but when I checked, he was still alive. I finished cutting his face as quickly a
s I could. For good measure I blew some coke into his nose through a straw and threw a paper strip, used by banks to bind up stacks of hundred-dollar bills, on the floor.
Panic and nausea started up from my bowels. All I wanted was to get out of there. As I pushed the button that opened the garage door I heard the elevator again. I don’t know if they saw me. If they had they couldn’t have identified me through the mask. Still, I was only able to clamp down the control until I was outside the big metal doors. Then I ran. I ran for a long river block until what was left of my reason told me it was the worst thing I could do.
I stripped off the mask, dumped it down a drain and turned east, walking around the World Trade Center. I dropped the knife into the next drain. It was legal for me to have the gun and it had not been fired, but there would be traces of hair, blood and possibly scalp on the barrel. I wiped it as best I could with a newspaper out of the gutter, and with spit.
Then I walked into the brightly lit underground world beneath the towers. I found a fairly isolated phone booth. First I called the New York Post. In a half-assed Latin accent I told them that a prominent attorney had been knifed in a drug deal that went bad. I told them where it was and suggested that they get there before the police hushed it up. I gave them five minutes, then called the police. I wanted everyone to find Choate Haven before he woke up and crawled away.
They would think that the “C” carved in his face stood for cocaine.
But Haven would know better. He would know what it really said. Don’t fuck with Tony Cassella. He’s no better than you are. Don’t fuck with Tony Cassella. He’ll get right down in the dirt there and cut your face, frame you with drugs and tear your life down so that there’s nothing left you care about.
Just because you’re a fragile old man doesn’t mean that Tony Cassella won’t break your nose and leave you bleeding in an underground garage. He knows the kind of fix and frame that’ll warm the hearts of aging hoods like Mikey Fix. Antonio Cassella has his devils too; he doesn’t understand what they are or why they live with him, but every time you look in the mirror, you’ll know.
When I got to Christina’s, I didn’t buzz. I slipped the outside lock. When I rang the bell to her apartment, I sensed her come to the door and I saw the light as she peered through the peephole. She unlocked the locks and opened the door as far as the chain would allow. She was lovely, in a long caftan, soft white with red and gold embroidery down the slit front.
She was distraught.
“It’s done. Let me in,” I said, unshaven with eyes bloodshot from too little sleep, too much coke. I could smell the stink of fear sweat coming off me.
“I have company,” she said.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said, my voice held in neutral.
She closed the door. I heard the chain unlatch, then she opened it again. I walked past her into the living room. A slim, well-groomed young man sat there. His cotton shirt was better than anything I had, and the rep tie loose at his throat was silk. He looked like a Stefan.
“You better go now,” I said to him.
“Who do you think you are?” he said.
“Tony,” she admonished me.
“Get him out of here, or I will,” I said. At that moment, I meant it. Cut up one, cut up two, it was all the same to me.
“Go on, Stefan, it’s all right,” she told him.
“Christina,” he protested.
She opened her closet door and brought him his suit jacket. In spite of himself, he took it when she handed it to him. He made protesting noises as she led him to the door. She made soothing noises, then she closed the door behind him.
“He’s just a friend … these days,” she said.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“What’s happened? You look terrible.”
“I better take a shower,” I told her. “I stink.”
I walked into the bathroom and began to strip. I let my stinking clothes fall to the floor. I turned on the shower and stepped in. The heat felt good. Then I remembered me cocaine that was left in my pocket. There was quite a bit. I stepped out of the shower, not caring how wet the floor might get, and fumbled through me pockets. I took it back into the shower with me and held the bag open and let the rushing water flow through it. Two or three hundred dollars of cocaine washed my feet, flowed through my toes and down the drain.
Tomorrow, tomorrow I might regret it and go buy some more. For the moment, I was trying to tell at least one devil to be gone.
All the time I scrubbed, she stood there waiting. I ran it hot to make me feel clean, then I ran it cold to shut the pores and wake me. I stepped out and rubbed myself down. Half dry, I said, “Let’s talk,” and she followed me into the living room. The caftan was moist from the steam in me shower and clung to the shape of her body. I was naked.
We sat on the couch.
“Your father,” I told her, “never knew the thing he was killed for.”
The moisture gathered in the corners of her eyes. I told her, as quick and simple as I could, who, what and why. As I talked, she stayed silent, but her fist clenched and the tears streamed down her cheeks. I watched the drops fall; they fell on her breasts.
When I was done, I reached out to her. She grabbed my hand, clung to it fiercely, then held it to her cheek tightly. I put my other arm out and she came to me, sobbing loudly. Eventually, she sat up and wiped her eyes, like a very little girl trying to face adult realities.
“What will happen to … to that man?”
“It’s already happened.”
“What has?” she asked.
I told her.
“My God, Tony. Oh, my angel, what if they catch you?”
“They won’t,” I said flatly, then my voice turned harsh, saying, “Don’t you see? What will it take to make you see? I’m not an angel.”
“To me you are. And I love you.”
She reached out to me, with wonder, with awe. “Nobody has ever done anything for me. Not like that. I’ve never known anyone who would, or could.” Her lips found mine. Our kisses were fierce, biting. I held her to me, our bodies rocking, our hands grabbing, as if our bodies could fold into each other.
“My angel, my angel,” she said.
I was angry. I pushed away from her and stood up. “I am not an angel. I don’t know what I am, but I’m less than I should be. I’m less than my father’s son.”
In her eyes what I had done was wonderful. In Vince’s eyes and Mike Paley’s, it would have style; they would like it and be happy to offer me further opportunities. Those opportunities would pay for this woman that I loved. My father, whatever he might’ve thought, was dead and had nothing to say.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
What was wrong? Once there was, or somewhere there is, a world where what I had done was clean, bright, right. Maybe in Uncle Vincent’s world. Or the world he had come from, old Sicily. Maybe in Haven’s world, but I doubted that. Or maybe when Alan Ladd played at Shane and said, “A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.” But I didn’t believe in John Wayne either. Was that what was wrong?
“I don’t know,” I said.
“What about us? What do you want?”
I walked over to her. I stood before her naked. I looked down at her, down into her green eyes, wide open and confused. Down at her mouth, open, moist, hungry. I wanted to take her. Perhaps she could see that; her hands reached out to hold me, settling on my hips. When she touched me, my body shook, a shiver, a tremor. My stomach turned with fear and anger, of myself, at myself, and it rose, acid and acrid in my throat. I forced it back down inside me. It showed somehow on my face, because I saw fear looking back at me.
I took her head in my hands. I wanted to kiss her, to force her to taste how foul I was, I wanted her to share the bile that was at the back of my mouth.
“What do you want?” she asked.
Did I want the short wild ride we would have? As sweet as sugar and as clear as pain? Did I want to go for the money, the
gold, the girl, the everything? And pay the price that someday, somehow, Paley and Vincent and Christina would ask. My fingers curled through her hair. It was so soft, so fine. Did I want to take her? Yes, I did. I could, I could fuck my anger and confusion into her mouth.
“What do you want?” she asked.
No. I loved her, and there was something tender in me still. No, I didn’t want her to be the receptacle of my fear.
“I love you, my angel, I love you.”
I wanted to go home. To see Glenda and hope that she loved me enough to let me come home. Start turning the past into the memories that it ought to be, not the living, ongoing reality it sometimes is.
“What do you want?” she asked, and she was so beautiful. I hadn’t realized I was sweating until a drop fell on her breast. Or maybe it was a tear. Or even something else.
“I’m going home.”
HE WAS ALONE (AS IN REALITY) UPON HIS HUMBLE BED, when imagination brought to his ears the sound of many voices again singing the slow and monotonous psalm which was interrupted by the outcries of some unseen things who attempted to enter his chamber, and, amid yells of fear and execrations of anger, bade him, “Arise and come forth and aid;” then the coffined form, which slept so quietly below, stood by his side and in beseeching accents bade him, “Arise and save what is beautiful.”
Come back when fog drifts out over the city
And sleep puts her kind hands on all these poor devils
Come back when the policeman is in another street
And Beatrice will let you see her thin soul under the paint
Come back to the corner and tell them what brand of poison you want
Ask them why your very own dear lady is always on the lay
Somebody will pick up the pieces, somebody will put you to bed
No One Rides for Free Page 23
