Narrows Gate

by Jim Fusilli

  Tyler shifted impatiently.

  “We all know Hitler’s a sick fuck,” Bell continued. “From the first page, the report needs to tell everybody why—and what he’s going to do next. Otherwise, all you got is this parade of rumors from Germans trying to save their own asses and some stuff from a thousand documents people up the chain already know. Did you read Hitler’s quote I put up top? ‘I carry out the commands that Providence has laid upon me.’ Doesn’t that tell you more about him than—”

  “Hold on,” Tyler said. “You’re telling me you know better than Major Landis and the experts on the task force? You know more than the Ivy League boys?”

  “This report isn’t going to be read by experts or guys from the Ivy League, sir. It’s going to be read by officers like yourself who aren’t much interested in theory.”

  “Now you’re going to tell me what I’m interested in. The gall of it…”

  “When the war’s over, Lieutenant, and those guys go back to the Ivy League, the OSS is going to need a Psych Field Unit. Our first hit better be a home run.”

  “So you want a part in this new unit.”

  “War isn’t over yet, sir.”

  Tyler stared at him. Finally, he glanced at the attaché case.

  “And what’s with you and the Frenchie?”

  “I never saw her in my life, sir.”

  “It seemed to me you were chatting her up pretty damned good, Bell.”

  “In Polish, not English.”

  “What did she tell you?”

  Bell repeated the one-sided conversation.

  “Hairdresser’s. Carnegie Hall tonight,” Tyler repeated.

  “What’s it mean, sir?”

  Ignoring the question, Tyler gestured impatiently. “Give me the briefcase,” he said.

  Bell turned it over.

  Tyler examined the combination lock. “You lay low, Corporal,” he said finally. “Let’s see if I can pull your ass out of the fire.” He headed into the park and hurried toward a rear entrance to the library, passing a canopy set up for a Red Cross blood drive.

  Hennie invited Rosa to lunch at the Union Club in Narrows Gate. Too late to do anything about anything, the moving van already packed and on its way to California, her son in a Beverly Hills hotel, recording sessions in Los Angeles already booked. But Bebe asked his mother to see Rosa. “Ma, she’s not happy.”

  “Not happy? Here she has her family, Bebe. Who does she have in Hollywood?”

  “Toluca Lake, Ma. In the San Fernando Valley. Beautiful. There’s a lot of young couples.”

  “Oh, young couples. With husbands who come home at night.”

  “Showbiz people. The wives understand.”

  Now Hennie said, “He says it’s the kind of place you raise kids.” She was having bourbon, a double; Rosa nursed a ginger ale.

  Rosa nodded. She dreaded meeting with her mother-in-law. Bill told her how she carried on, telling him he thinks his shit don’t stink, walking away from the people who helped him, the town where he was born. Of course, it added up to Bill cutting the cord between mother and son. Rosa thought Hennie might ask her to talk him out of it.

  “I’ve seen pictures,” Rosa said, nodding. “It’s lovely. The lake and the Santa Monica Mountains.”

  “The house is big, no?”

  Rosa smiled. “Bigger than a one-bedroom flat in Bayonne.”

  “He can afford it?”

  “I suppose so. He said I shouldn’t worry.”

  Hennie reached for her hand. “What do you think, honey? A big adventure?”

  “Bill wants it to be a fresh start,” Rosa replied. “The new record deal, Phil says there’s a chance he could be in movies…”

  Hennie whispered, “I hope he’s not trying to get away from Corini and the crew. They’ve been good to him.”

  Rosa shook her head. “Bill says everything is taken care of.”

  “He probably hooked up with Ziggy Baum.” Hennie smiled bitterly. “The Jews. They’re like a union.” She heard Baum was weak for celebrities. Bill would have him nipping at birdseed. “Rosa, I got to tell you, I don’t know what to think. I know my son’s a married man and he could make a career out there. But, for Christ’s sake, it’s three thousand miles closer to the fuckin’ Japs, ain’t it?”

  Rosa looked at her mother-in-law. She hadn’t expected this. “He says it’s where he needs to be,” she replied. “He says if he stays in New York, the fans will always see him as a kid singer.”

  “What’s wrong with that?” she snapped.

  “Well, he’s not always going to be a kid.”

  “He’ll always be my kid.”

  “Oh, Hennie—”

  “That fuckin’ ingrate.”

  “Hennie?”

  “Ingrate,” she snapped. “Rose, I’m telling you, as soon as they don’t need you anymore, boom. You are out the fuckin’ door.” Hennie snatched another cigarette, though she already had one lit in the ashtray. “You know how I found out he was going out on his own? Walter fuckin’ Winchell—”

  “Hennie…” Two men in suits at the next table were listening, their eyes cast sideways. Rosa nodded discreetly.

  Hennie turned to them. “Mind your own fuckin’ business,” she bellowed.

  The men cringed and hurriedly picked at their food.

  “Rosa, you’d better keep him on a short leash,” she said, smoke streams coming out of her nose. “I think he’s up to something.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like…” She wanted to say, “Like he’s got a couple of broads stashed out there.”

  “Something, I don’t know, thickheaded. You know how he gets.”

  “Well, he can be moody.”

  Moody? Hennie thought. This kid has no idea. Hennie gulped her drink, the cherry butting her lips. “But I don’t know. I mean, that’s it, right? Fuck. I don’t know. I don’t know what’s going on.”

  Rosa signaled for the waiter. Despite the tight grip on gas-rationing coupons, she and Nino Terrasini were driving to California, Bill setting him up in an apartment close to the recording industry. The budget stretched, the old car would have to do. Since she didn’t know how to drive, she wouldn’t be much help. But she’d see America up close and feel the fighting spirit.

  They ordered, Hennie demanding her Salisbury steak rare. Rosa took the turtle soup, one of Bill’s favorites.

  “What’s your part of the deal?” Hennie asked.

  “Deal?”

  “He had to come across for you to agree, right?”

  “Don’t be silly,” Rosa replied. “He’s my husband.”

  “Jesus, you are a kid, aren’t you?”

  “Listen, Hennie—”

  “No, no. I’m sorry, honey. I’m sorry. I’m a wreck. Look at me.” She held out a hand and made it shake. “Twenty-eight years old. He don’t need me to tuck him in.”

  Rosa stole a glance at her wristwatch.

  “Listen, if he gives you any trouble, you let me know. He’s not too big I can’t box his ears.”

  But there are 3,000 miles between you and those ears, Rosa thought, as the food arrived.

  Yeah, I’m fucked, thought Bell when his only afternoon assignment was a trip to a newsstand for week-old copies of Le Soir, the Nazi-run French newspaper. Later, an OSS man he’d never seen before reviewed his conversation with the French woman. “Did you identify yourself?” the man asked.

  “I was in uniform,” Bell replied.

  “You’re sure this is everything she said?”

  “Everything,” Bell said.

  The conversation took place in Tyler’s office, the lieutenant sitting behind his desk, observing with his fingertips pressed against his lips. “That will be all, Corporal,” Tyler said, dismissing Bell.

  Now it was past 7 o’clock and Bell wondered if Tyler and the OSS would let him know what was going on. Maybe he could pitch in. It’d be a chance to make good, Bell thought as he grabbed his hat, locked his little room and went upstairs
to see the lieutenant.

  As he turned up to the third floor, Landis was standing in the hall in dinner dress, talking to someone who was blocked from view by a column.

  “Leo,” he said. “Hold on.”

  Stunned, Bell skidded to a stop.

  Landis came down the steps. Bell froze in place, convinced he was about to be chewed to shreds. But Landis jutted out his right hand. “Leo, I’m glad I’ve run into you. I wanted to thank you personally for your work on the report.”

  “Sir?”

  Landis beamed. “That is exactly what we need, boy. Exactly. Fresh thinking.”

  Confused, Bell said, “I was hoping I hadn’t overstepped my bounds, sir.”

  “Glad you did.” He clapped him on the shoulder. “Glad you did.”

  A week later, the beneficiary of an unexpected two-day pass, Bell, in uniform, was riding in Benno’s truck, the scent of provolone lingering despite the Boraxo. Benno was dressed nice in a blue suit, his plan being to crash a dance up at St. Claire’s Nursing School in Jersey City. Benno figured if he don’t show, the girls would be stuck jitterbugging with each other, and he don’t mind Leo tagging along, though he could see him standing shy over there by the punch bowl all night.

  Bell told him why he was suddenly free, leaving out details of the report but boasting a bit on taking a shot at a step up.

  “And then what happened?” Benno asked. He had to turn his head to see Bell, who was seated on his blind side.

  “That’s it. ‘Glad you did, my boy.’ Nothing else. I go back to work, Tyler more or less leaves me be, says hello in the cafeteria and then a two-day pass.”

  “What exactly is it you do again?”

  “Again? I never told you what I do.”

  “You’re in the Ivy League.”

  “What’s the Ivy League, Sal?”

  Benno swerved to dodge a pothole. “I could find out what you do.”

  “Like hell you can.”

  “I’ll ask Mimmo.”

  Bell laughed.

  “What? Mimmo’s not good enough to talk to you no more?”

  “I didn’t say that. But Mimmo’s not privy to everything. These guys are airtight.”

  Benno snorted as he slowed for a red light.

  Bell said, “So now you’re telling me Mimmo’s smart?”

  “I’m telling you this guy knows more than you think. You and the Ivy fuckin’ League.”

  “I’m sure he does. But not about the Army.”

  “OK, smart guy, you think we’re so fuckin’ dumb—”

  “‘We’re’? Who’s ‘we’? You and Mimmo?”

  “You think Mimmo’s so fuckin’ dumb, ask your Ivy League pals about Operation Husky.”

  “Operation Husky.”

  Benno nodded. “Don’t be surprised when they shit themselves.”

  “Operation Husky. I never heard of it.”

  “Ha,” Benno said. “And you’re in the Army.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Eugenio Zamarella had one mission in life: to kill at Bruno Gigenti’s behest. When the matter was at hand, he could not be dissuaded.

  But Pellizzari tried, seeing as he was in this thing up to his balls.

  “Where are we going?”

  “To get the whore.”

  “Yeah, I know,” said Pellizzari, who was driving. “But where?”

  “Jersey,” he replied.

  “Where in Jersey?”

  “Not in Jersey,” Zamarella said.

  Gripping the wheel, the wipers flapping, Pellizzari tried his damnedest not to look over at Zamarella, whose steel-gray eyes and cold demeanor made him as scary as he was scarred. “Help me out here, huh? I’ve got to drive.”

  “She’s in Staten Island.”

  Though one of the five boroughs, to drive to Staten Island you had to pass through the neighboring state. From Manhattan, the only way to get there was via the ferry, which wasn’t too efficient, given the task at hand.

  Pellizzari was thinking ahead. “How do you know she’s there?”

  “Watch where you’re going,” he replied as Pellizzari ran the yellow light at Sixth.

  They rode into the Holland Tunnel in silence, Pellizzari deep in conjecture. A few minutes later, as they emerged into drizzle, he said, “Eugenio, how do you know? I’m just saying. How?”

  Zamarella exhaled. “She goes by the name Angel, right?”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “You go on a hit and you don’t know the mark’s name?”

  “I didn’t know we were hitting nobody, my hand to God.”

  Zamarella pointed to a sign to Route 1. “Go south.”

  Pellizzari did like he was told.

  “Find the Bayonne Bridge,” Zamarella said after a few minutes passed.

  The next time Zamarella spoke, they had crossed the span bridge, and he told Pellizzari to take Castleton Avenue. The wet asphalt was shining in the sun, and every now and then, when a little lagoon appeared on the strip, Pellizzari timed it so they’d pass through it before the rainwater receded behind the previous car. It gave him something to think about besides how he was sweating under his suit coat and how Zamarella was sitting there without an expression, breathing heavy, snoring almost.

  “The hospital,” Zamarella said, pointing. Zamarella reached into an inside pocket and pulled out a navy mask, but the opposite of what the bandits wore in the serials. To conceal his identifying pockmarks, the mask covered Zamarella’s face from the nose down, with a little slit for his mouth. He pressed it against his cheeks without fixing it behind his ears, and then he put it back in his pocket.

  “Park,” he said. “Over there.”

  Pellizzari put the car in the middle of the small, crowded lot.

  Zamarella gestured for the keys.

  “What do you mean?”

  Zamarella reached over, cut the ignition, took the keys. “She’s on the third floor,” he said. “Put her down.”

  Pellizzari recoiled.

  “She seen you, too. Bruno she knew by name. You, no.”

  “You know this ain’t my game, Eugenio. A hospital in broad day—”

  “You shoulda took care of her before. Now go.”

  Zamarella leaned across and threw open the driver’s-side door.

  Pellizzari sighed. Killing didn’t bother him as much as getting caught bumping off a two-dollar broad who already had a couple slugs inside her. Plus, the insinuation that this mess was his fault, like he should’ve taken her pulse before he ran down the stairs to see if the other guy escaped.

  “What’s the play?” he asked.

  “Nobody cares. Make good.”

  “How do I know you’ll be here when—”

  “You don’t.”

  Pellizzari hauled his heavy frame out into the sunlight. Like he had the other day, he checked his pistol in his shoulder holster, then he walked toward the hospital entrance, Zamarella’s eyes burning a hole in his back.

  Twenty-five minutes later, out of breath, Pellizzari arrived at the ferry terminal to head back to Manhattan, Zamarella and the car still waiting in the parking lot. Maybe he couldn’t figure out how Zamarella knew the DA stashed the puttana in Staten Island, but he was smart enough to know that after she was killed, he was next, being the only remaining witness to Gigenti’s rampage. All things being equal, he’d be dead and Zamarella would be driving his car home. Now that Zamarella had to put down the whore himself, Pellizzari figured he had maybe a half hour to disappear.

  The cop outside her door was a 42-year-old rookie, the New York City police force decimated by its best young men volunteering to fight overseas. He was diligent, stopping doctors, nurses, orderlies and visitors, pacing like a tiger in a zoo. Pretty soon, the staff had enough and they called the captain, who told the cop to calm down. That was yesterday. Today his shift started at noon. By 1:35, he was on the floor unconscious, his dome cracked. Pacing despite the captain’s advice, he hadn’t heard the man in a mask come up behind him.

>   The whore’s birth name was Ida Muttley. She was unconscious when Zamarella put a bullet in her cheek and up into her brain and a second in her heart, pressing the nozzle into her breast.

  The next day, Bruno Gigenti and his lawyer, Nicolo Colla, met with an assistant district attorney. With the charge murder in the first degree, premeditated, and Gigenti denied bail, now was the time to deal.

  “You have an eyewitness?” Colla asked as he shuffled his notes.

  Gigenti sat back, his expression rich with disdain and defiance.

  “We have an eyewitness, yes,” said the ADA.

  “Really?” Colla said, unconvinced.

  “He’s in protective custody.”

  Fredo Pellizzari, thought Gigenti, his jaw twitching.

  Lieutenant Tyler asked Bell to lunch in Bryant Park. Of course, Bell said yes, though he’d intended to risk a call to a nurse-intraining he met at the dance at St. Claire’s while Benno was out in the truck making time with an Italian knockout from Keansburg, a friend of one of the students.

  Tyler handed Bell a paper sack. Ham sandwiches on white, yellow mustard, pickles. Nehi orange soda. Yeah, two-day pass or no, he hates me, Bell thought as he unpacked the sack.

  They shared a bench near Sixth Avenue, the June sun bearing down.

  “Major Landis is interested in you,” Tyler began.

  Bell nodded.

  “Have you seen the final report?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “It’s your report.”

  “No, sir.”

  “Why not?” Tyler asked, his mood as bright as the midday weather.

  “You don’t tell the cleaning lady it’s her building, right?”

  Tyler laughed. “No, I suppose not.”

  Bell looked with suspicion at the wafer-thin sandwich.

  “I told the major of your interest in remaining with the unit,” Tyler said. “He was delighted.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “But I wonder if you’re not better suited to an assignment overseas. With your language skills and you have a certain demeanor, Bell. The way you carry yourself.”

  “Sir?”