She stopped at the front door and turned.
“See? This is the kind of stuff I need you for.”
“You can’t do it alone.”
“Well, are you going to help me?”
“Do you mean am I going to help you get killed? No.”
She nodded, and opened the door, and then she was gone.
I ended up going to Westmount the next morning to watch Bravelli get his manicure. It wasn’t so much deciding to go as not being able to stay away.
I remembered that there was a hardware store across the street from the beauty parlor, and I figured that’d be a good place to watch from. I drove to Westmount in my black Chevy Blazer, and parked around the corner from the store. I had on jeans and a dark green golf shirt, which is what I would have worn before going into work that day anyway. I didn’t stand out, but of course I didn’t blend in, either—you couldn’t do that in Westmount unless you lived there your whole life.
As I walked into the hardware store, the door jangled some little bells. The store was dimly lit and cram-packed with cans of paint, black-plastic wastepaper baskets, boxes of nails, toilet seats, rolled-up American flags in boxes, even garden hoses—as if anyone in Westmount had a lawn. And everything was covered with a thick dust, like no one had stepped inside the store in twenty years.
I walked to the front windows and looked out across the street. I could see the clubhouse, the fruit store, and, directly across from me, the beauty shop. On the big front window was written in nail polish-like paint “Angela’s.”
“Whadda ya need?”
I turned to see a little guy about ninety years old, squinting up at me through thick, smudged glasses. His pants were way too big—they probably fit him sometime before World War II—and had to be held up with suspenders. It was like he had suddenly shrunk inside his clothes and hadn’t had time to change into smaller ones. He stared at me, his lower lip sticking out, shiny and wet, in a permanent pout.
“Just looking around,” I said.
He shrugged and walked back behind the counter. He was halfway through some kind of sandwich, maybe chicken salad. I watched as he picked it up with both hands and took a tiny bite, like a little squirrel. He had forgotten all about me.
I looked back out the window at the clubhouse. When I was in OC we had done surveillance on it, usually from a van parked across the street. Like most mob clubhouses, it was where the guys could get together and relax—they’d play cards, eat sandwiches, shoot the shit. The public wasn’t invited. This one was in a vacant storefront, and the tiles on the sidewalk in front still had the old store’s name, written in script, “Westmount Shoes for Ladies.”
From the sidewalk, you couldn’t see inside. There were dusty gray curtains in the windows, and the glass front door was painted black. Hanging in one window was a big Italian flag, sagging a little in the middle. In the other was a sun-faded poster for an Italian-American parade from two or three years before.
We knew from informants who had been inside that there were a couple of tables for cards near the front, a few stuffed and folding chairs here and there, and a fairly new, regulation-sized pool table. They had some sort of video game, but supposedly the deafening sound effects drove Bravelli crazy, and no one dared use it while he was there.
You could tell it had been a shoe store—the walls on either side were still lined with slanted wooden shoe racks, still painted pink for the ladies of Westmount. Farther back. a new kitchen had been installed. That’s where they made the sandwiches and kept the beer.
There was also a TV that always seemed to be on, maybe to make it harder for a bug to pick up conversations. An informant told us that one time when he came into the clubhouse, six mob guys were watching a soap opera in the middle of the day, hanging on every word.
Actually, they shouldn’t have worried about us bugging the place. A couple of times we tried to get in, posing as servicemen for Philadelphia Electric, but something always went wrong.
One time Doc and I got dressed up in electric company uniforms and banged on the clubhouse door. We had toolboxes and everything—we were all set to wire the place up. But just as the door was opening, an off-duty cop from the neighborhood happened to walk by.
“Hey, Doc,” he said. “When’d you quit the force?”
The door slammed shut, and that was the end of that.
I smiled at the memory, then glanced at my watch. Just about 11, time for the manicure. A moment later, Bravelli emerged from the clubhouse. I moved back from the window, though I doubted he’d be able to see in. It was dark where I was standing, and the windows were pretty dusty.
Bravelli was dressed to kill. Perfectly tailored gray nail-head suit that had to cost at least two thousand dollars. Dark shirt, long black tie. The guy was a walking cliché. When you saw Bravelli, you got the feeling he went to mob movies, saw what everyone was wearing, then went out and bought the same thing for himself. Which probably wasn’t surprising, considering that he supposedly loved to watch gangster movies.
I thought he was heading straight for the beauty shop, but instead he ducked into the fruit store. It took up two storefronts, and had probably been grand in its day. But now the place looked rundown, almost abandoned. Its brown paint was peeling badly, and discarded wooden fruit crates were stacked up in the windows.
Bravelli came out of the store carrying a red apple, then disappeared into the beauty shop. A few moments later, he and Michelle sat down at a table in the window, across from each other, like they were in a restaurant. He handed her the apple. What a fucking teacher’s pet.
I was surprised—Bravelli was violating a mob rule. You never sit in the window, it’s too dangerous. You sit with your back against the wall, so you can see who’s coming in the door. But here they were, right next to the glass, and with the sun coming in I could see them both clearly, even the expressions on their faces. It was like Bravelli was so confident on his own turf, he was almost daring somebody to come by and take a shot.
He extended his right hand across the table, and Michelle took it and looked at his nails. He said something and she laughed a little, and then she started doing something to his hand, I couldn’t tell what, some kind of stroking or massaging. It made me a little sick just to watch it. I could see him talking and smiling, turning on the charm. That may work with your usual bimbos, I thought, but it ain’t gonna get very far with Michelle.
I had to admit, she was right—Bravelli was seeing what he wanted to see. Now and then she smiled shyly, playing along. But a manicure was one thing, what about outside the beauty shop? She’d be on her own, in unfamiliar territory. One slipup, one small mistake, he’d know she was a cop. And he wouldn’t hesitate for a moment to have her killed. I stood there in the window thinking, this is going to end in her death. Michelle is going to her death.
“Whadda ya need?”
I almost jumped a foot. The old guy was right next to me, squinting up through his thick glasses. It was like he had never seen me before.
“Nothin',” I said.
He shrugged and headed back to the counter. I started to watch Michelle and Bravelli again. What am I going to do, I thought, just leave Michelle out here in Westmount on her own? Just hope I don’t hear a call over Police Radio one night of a woman found dead?
Bravelli looked out the window, and his gaze swept the street. I took an involuntary step back, into the shadows. What if Michelle saw me here, and got rattled and gave herself away?
The bells of the door jingled, and in walked Frankie Canaletto. He didn’t see me. I quickly turned away, pretending to be examining some feather dusters sticking out of a big tin watering can.
“Hey, Charlie,” Canaletto said to the old man, “I need me a new float for my toilet.”
I glanced around and realized I was standing right in the toilet-float section. There were three of them, piled together in a wire basket at my elbow.
“What kinda toilet you got?” the old man asked in a gravelly,
damp voice.
“What difference does it make? A toilet is a toilet.”
“No, no,” the old man said, “now they got these modern toilets, you gotta have special floats. I remember when I used to carry one kind of float, one kind was all you needed for any toilet anybody had. Then they made things complicated, they’re always makin’ things complicated. Look at this faucet piece here, see how they made it complicated, I remember—”
“Charlie,” Canaletto said, “I don’t want no faucet. I want a float. You got all kinds, right?”
“I don’t got the modern ones. What kinda toilet you got?”
“I don’t know, Charlie, a toilet toilet. Let me take a look at your floats.”
“You probably got a modern toilet. I probably don’t got what you need.”
“Where’s your floats, Charlie?”
“Over by the window. But I probably don’t got what you need.”
I could hear Canaletto’s steps on the dark wood floor. I waited until he was right behind me, then I whirled around and snarled, “What the fuck are you doin’ here?”
He almost fell backwards in surprise, but then he straightened and glared at me. “What are you doin', you spying on us?” He turned his head to look out the window, and immediately spotted Bravelli and Michelle in the beauty shop.
He turned back to me with a triumphant smile. “You are spyin’ on us. Hey, Charlie,” he said, keeping his eyes on me, “this guy’s a cop, you know you got a cop in here?”
“Whadda ya sayin'? I don’t know nothin’ about him. He didn’t want to buy nothin'.”
“That’s ‘cause he’s a cop, Charlie. He’s spying on people.”
I had to get out of there. I grabbed all three toilet floats from the basket and shoved them at Canaletto. “Here,” I said, brushing past him. “Go home and clean up your shit.”
When I reached the door the old man called out to me. “Hey, mister.”
I turned. “Yeah?”
“You don’t see what you need, just ask.”
Canaletto rolled his eyes. I slipped out the door and hurried down the sidewalk and around the corner.
A half hour later, I called the beauty shop from a pay phone, I figured the manicure would be over by then. I didn’t know what name Michelle was using, so I just asked for the manicurist.
“Which manicurist?” the woman on the phone asked. “We got two, ya know.”
“Uh …”
“You want Lisa or Annie?”
“Which has the curly brown hair?”
“They both got curly brown hair.” “Which is the new one?” “They’re both new. What do you want, hon, you want a manicure? They’re both good, believe me, either one, take your pick.”
“Well, I talked to a manicurist in the fruit store the other day, I don’t know which one it was, she said definitely to ask for her. But I’m not too good at remembering names.”
“The fruit store? Probably Lisa, she’s been goin’ over there. Hey, Lisa!” the woman screamed. “Guy onna phone wants a manicure!”
I waited for a few seconds, then I heard footsteps and someone picking up the phone.
“Hello?”
I couldn’t tell whether it was Michelle.
“This is Eddie.” I figured if I got the wrong girl, the name wouldn’t mean anything.
There was just silence, then: “Why are you calling me here?” Definitely Michelle.
“Do you still want me to help you?”
“Of course. But you shouldn’t be calling me here.”
“I know, but I didn’t have any other way of getting in touch. Can you page me when you get off? I’m going into work at four.”
She said OK, and I gave her the number and hung up. I was on the street when she paged me that evening, and I found a pay phone and called her back. We tried to figure out where to get together. One thing we agreed on: it had to be a place where no one from Westmount would ever go.
EIGHT
At noon the next day, I was sitting in my Blazer at Carver Plaza, a public housing project in North Philadelphia that was almost all black. Its three high-rise buildings had seen a lot of misery over the years. All the balconies were covered with wire fencing, so children wouldn’t fall out, and half of them had clothes drying on lines. Probably none of the basement washers or dryers worked.
I was parked in the main lot, out of sight of the street down the hill, and I watched as a dented red-and-white United Cab approached. It pulled up next to my Blazer, and the back door opened and Michelle emerged. She had stopped using her car—it was registered under her real name, and anybody with a friend in the Police Department could run a license check.
Michelle looked sensational. She was wearing stone-washed jeans, white boots, a black blouse, and a thin black jean jacket, tightly buttoned at the waist.
I reached over and unlocked the passenger door, and pushed it open for her. She climbed in, and the first thing she did was lean over and kiss me on the lips. I almost had a heart attack.
“Hey, Eddie,” she said, her blue eyes sparkling.
“Hi,” was all I could say back.
“You ever try getting a cab to a housing project?” she asked. “Forget it. The first cab wouldn’t take me here because of the danger I’d be in. The second one wouldn’t take me because of the danger he’d be in. The only reason I made it was because the third guy was from Iran or India or someplace, and he had no idea in the world who or what Carver was.”
“Is he coming back?” I asked.
“I told him an hour, but I don’t know, one look at this place and he might already be on his way back to his home country.”
Michelle still had a sadness about her, but for now it seemed to be pushed away.
“I’m glad you changed your mind,” she said. “I was hoping you would.”
I told her about how I had watched the manicure from the hardware store, and my encounter with Frankie Canaletto. I thought she might be angry, but she wasn’t, it didn’t seem to bother her.
“Actually, I’m sort of glad you were there, you know, just in case anything had happened.”
“I got to be honest with you, Michelle. I know you want to find out about Steve, but I still think you’re going to be in too much danger. It’s not worth it.”
“But you are going to help me?”
“Well, yeah, I’m going to try to keep you alive.”
She smiled at me. “And I’m sure you’ll do a great job.”
One thing about a white guy and a white girl sitting in a truck in the middle of a black housing project, they don’t exactly blend in. As Michelle and I talked some more, we watched three young black guys walk slowly in front of the Blazer. Predators who had picked up the scent.
“Look at their expressions,” said Michelle. “Their brains are working overtime trying to figure us out. We must be cops, right? But if we’re cops, then what are we doing here?”
“Certainly not undercover work,” I said, and Michelle laughed.
“Right,” she said, “so they figure maybe we’re not cops, maybe we’re social workers, or newspaper reporters, or people from the Housing Authority. But now their problem is, how come we’re not getting out of the vehicle? How come we’re just sitting here talking?”
“We might be ordinary white people who just happened to get lost in North Philadelphia,” I said.
“Though we’d have to be pretty stupid white people.”
“And even those guys don’t think white people are that stupid, I said.”
“So there’s no answer. Nothing fits.”
“They still think we might be cops, though,” said Michelle.
“Yeah,” I said, “and you know they’re going to spend the next twenty minutes arguing about it.”
We kept an eye on them until they were out of sight.
“So how’d the manicure go?” I asked.
“Great. He asked me to go out to dinner with him at the Bordeaux.”
That was a hoity-to
ity French restaurant in Center City where they charged just for breathing their air.
“Oh, I’ve been there many times myself,” I said.
“You have?”
“Actually, I’ve walked past there many times. I’ve never technically been inside. When you going?”
“I’m not. I turned him down.”
“Why?”
She laughed. “You don’t understand women, do you?”
“Not particularly.”
“I knew he’d ask me again, and he did—he called me at the shop this morning. I said OK.”
“You took a chance.”
“Not really. He’s used to women falling all over him. To guys like him, ‘No’ is …”
“Intriguing,” I suggested.
“Exactly.”
“See, I know a little about women.”
“No, you know about guys. Actually, he can be quite charming.”
“Charming? Michelle, he’s a stone-cold killer.”
“What can I say? Anyway, we’re going to Lucky’s tomorrow night.”
“I thought you said the Bordeaux.”
“When he called me this morning he said maybe I’d prefer something less formal, something in the neighborhood.”
“Sounds like he’s getting cheap on you.”
“No, I just think he’s trying to be more down-to-earth.”
“Yeah, right. Did he tell you what he does for a living?”
“Well, at one point he said, ‘Do you know who I am?’ I just looked at him for a second, and then I said, ‘Maybe, but … I don’t know, I don’t watch soap operas much anymore.’ He thought that was very funny.”
I just couldn’t picture that asshole as a normal guy who could sit down and have a normal conversation with a woman. Particularly not Michelle. I tried not to think about it.
“Tell me about your apartment,” I said.
“It’s on the third floor, above where Angela lives.”
“Is it furnished?”
She nodded. “And it’s pretty dismal.”
The living room furniture was old and scuffed up, and the whole apartment was very dark. Even on the third floor, you could smell the pungent chemicals used downstairs in the perms.
Sons of the City Page 9
