The Striver

by Stephen Solomita

  ‘Another thing, Ben. No more gambling until you pay off the debt. I can’t have you riskin’ my money. I hear you’re gambling, I’m gonna take it hard. I’m gonna take it as you spittin’ right in my face.’

  The confrontation finally caught the attention of Ben’s employees. They’d paused in their work and were muttering to themselves, unsure of what, if anything, to do.

  ‘Look,’ Ben said, ‘I don’t have the cash. I need some time.’

  Teddy picked up a Cadbury bar, casually peeled off the wrapper and took a bite. ‘Tell me something. Did Rafi Lieberman force the money on you when you originally contracted this debt? Did he shove forty grand into your pocket? Or did he not even know who the fuck you were until you went up to him said, “Please, Mr Lieberman, I’m in bad trouble. Could you loan me some money?”’

  Teddy held up his hand. ‘Don’t say anything. I seen assholes like you a thousand times. You think life’s a free fucking ticket. You think the bill’s never gonna come due, that you’ll just stumble through your dumbass life without having to pay. Shit, you probably even think you shouldn’t have to pay at all, that you’re somehow being cheated by a big, bad loan shark. You think you’re a fuckin victim when you knew the deal going down. I got no respect for that.’

  Teddy stepped behind the counter and walked straight up to the much smaller Loriano. ‘You wanna call yourself a victim, that’s fine, as long as you accept two things. First, the bill has come due. Second, you’re gonna pay it. You don’t, I’ll hurt you until there’s nothing left to hurt.’

  One of Loriano’s employees finally made a move. He started across the store, a good citizen riding to the rescue.

  ‘Recep,’ Teddy said.

  A wrecking ball with arms and legs, Recep Babacan stood five-ten and weighed 230 pounds. He ducked under the oncoming employee’s clumsy roundhouse right and drove a well-practiced left hook to the man’s ribs. Ted watched the jerk drop to the floor, writhing like a snake in a pan of hot oil. The other two employees also watched, open-mouthed and wide-eyed. Lesson received, they didn’t move.

  ‘Next week, Ben. I’m gonna show up at a time of my own choosing and there better be thirty cases of olive oil in your storeroom. And you should consider yourself lucky. I could force you to sell the store and pay off the whole debt at once.’ Teddy laid a hand on Ben’s shoulder, the gesture meant to calm the man. ‘Now, when you’re alone and thinkin’ over what happened here, try tellin’ yourself this. If I’m a good boy, I’ll come through fine. That guy named Ted? He’s a businessman. Bankruptin’ my little shop is not in his interests. Besides, I know I have to pay my debts. It’s only fair.’

  Teddy, Recep and Shurie piled into Teddy’s 2009 Chevy Impala, Teddy in the back with Recep driving and Shurie riding shotgun. There was nothing special about the black sedan, no mag wheels, no pinstripes, not even a spoiler on the trunk. Under the hood, it was a different story. Teddy had acquired the car at an auction of police vehicles, then had a Hungarian mechanic put it in perfect working order, going so far as to replace the seats and the dash, and have the supercharged V8 engine completely rebuilt.

  Teddy was determined not to make himself an obvious target. Beamers or Benzes were out, as were giant SUVs, gold chains, hip-hop gear and tattooed teardrops. On the other hand, concealed strength, like all that concealed horsepower ready to go at a moment’s notice? Cards, in Teddy Winuk’s opinion, were meant to be played close to the vest.

  As they approached the Long Island Expressway, Teddy gave Shurie his marching orders for the day. They had sixteen commercial refrigerators sitting in a warehouse, the proceeds from a hijacking. Those units needed to be sold before the cops traced them.

  ‘You told me they’d be easy to off, Shurie,’ Winuk said. ‘You told me you had connections with half the Indian restaurants in New York and we’d be rid of them in a week. Meanwhile, it’s been two weeks and they’re still sittin’ there.’

  ‘I know what I said, Teddy. I just need to meet up with this one guy.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Three days. I promise.’

  ‘Good, because I don’t wanna have to do this myself. I don’t have the time and I’m sick of the fucking excuses. Get it done.’

  Teddy watched Shurie squirm. Though he’d been known to challenge men twice his size, Shurie, for some mysterious reason, was afraid of his boss. Or maybe he submitted simply because he was grateful. Barely out of his teens and headed for prison, with deportation certain to follow, Shurie had been running wild when he met Teddy Winuk. Now he clung to Teddy like a suckerfish to the belly of a shark.

  ‘Recep, you do collections. Take Pablo with you. I’m gonna look in on a friend of mine, see if he’s in need.’

  Teddy had money out in Brooklyn and Queens, most of it loaned to small businesses, little grocery stores and jewelry shops. These were true mom and pop operations and the loans were fairly small. Teddy Winuk had no desire to overburden his debtors. If you lent out more than a man could pay, you’d never see your money again. On the other hand, if the debt was too great to be repaid quickly, but not altogether crushing, you could make a decent living off the interest. Still, collecting was a pain in the ass, lots of stops, lots of excuses, lots of threats, lots of tantrums. Not to mention the occasional beat-down when a lesson had to be taught. One thing about Teddy Winuk, if he couldn’t get his money out of your wallet, he’d take it out of your ass. Soft was not an option for loan sharks.

  Recep slid a CD into the car’s sound system as he eased the Impala onto the Expressway. Hassan al Asmar, an Egyptian pop singer. If Recep and Shurie were together again tomorrow, fair being fair, Shurie would throw on some bollyrock, maybe Kolkata.

  Teddy spent half his time maintaining the peace, but the potential gains were spectacular, at least in his estimation. Recep and Shurie and Mutava and Pablo, his four main men, hailed from different communities with different customs. That made for competition. But they could also reach into their neighborhoods to tap the vices that made criminals like Teddy succeed. New York was the most cosmopolitan city on the planet, home to immigrants from every part of the world, immigrants and their children. Like the native born, a certain percentage wanted to gamble and whore and use drugs and borrow money.

  Teddy had earned an Associate’s Degree in business at Manhattan Community College. That didn’t make him Mitt Romney, but he’d internalized the part about supply and demand. Of course, there were hurdles related to language and custom, hurdles he fully intended to surmount by appealing, not to the immigrants themselves, but to their Americanized children. And he’d be the first of his kind to do so, the early bird in search of the worm.

  Recep put the Chevy into the middle lane and kept it there. Slow and steady, Recep had jumped on Teddy’s bandwagon because he lacked the brains, not to mention the ambition, to move up on his own.

  ‘The Armenian, Asep Marjanian,’ Recep said. ‘He’s been short two weeks in a row. If he’s short again …’

  ‘Does he wear a watch, a wedding ring?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Take ’em. And tell the prick, next time you’ll take his car.’

  Teddy settled against the back seat while Hassan al Asmar warbled away, some kind of sour, stringed instrument echoing his warbles in the background. Teddy didn’t understand a word and he turned his thoughts to John Pianetta. Having personally tipped the cops, Teddy was certain that Pianetta knew about his kid’s fate. All well and good, but now there had to be a next step, something a lot better than waiting for the shit to come down. Teddy’s main goal was to stay ahead of the game. To act, not react.

  The Impala bounced through a series of small potholes and Recep eased off the gas. ‘What I think I’ll do about Marjanian,’ he declared. ‘I think I’ll make him beg.’

  And there it was. Teddy rolled down the window and let the cold breeze wash over his face. One thing about the guineas, they loved humility. For them, it was as much about kissing the ring, everyone knowing his pla
ce, as it was about the money. Not that the money didn’t count. No, the money definitely counted, but the bended knee didn’t hurt, either.

  EIGHT

  After leaving the crime scene beneath the Pulaski Bridge, Boots Littlewood checked in at the Six-Four, where he received word that a burglary suspect he’d been looking for, a kid named Alviro Chacon, had been arrested by a pair of uniformed patrolmen. Chacon now awaited Boots’s attention in one of the squad’s interrogation rooms.

  Boots was eager to confront Alviro, but understood that time was on his side. Better to let the kid stew. Inside the squad room, he went directly to his desk and began to prepare a DD5 report describing his activities, from receiving Lieutenant Sorrowful’s call to Karkanian’s dismissal. As usual when he wrote up his reports, the computer slowed the process. It was so easy to add or delete that he found himself changing his words almost before he finished typing them out. That wasn’t true when he used a manual typewriter. The typewriter forced him to organize his thoughts, knowing that whatever he put down would be handed over to the defense. Knowing that he might someday have a criminal defense lawyer ask, ‘And would you tell us, Detective, what lies beneath that whiteout?’

  Finished, Boots strolled over to Lieutenant Sorrowful’s office.

  ‘The good news,’ he told Levine, ‘is that we’re off the hook. OCCB’s gonna handle the investigation.’

  ‘And the bad news?’

  ‘Lily Bremer and Lou Fallanga. They took a shots-fired complaint on Sunday morning, spoke to the guy who made the original call, drove around for a few minutes, then called the report unfounded. Knowing Lily, they made an honest effort – the body was behind a bridge footing and couldn’t be seen from the street – but the bosses might have other ideas.’

  ‘That’s a problem for patrol, not us.’ Levine swiveled in his chair and arched his back, a bulging disc being one of his many physical complaints. He glanced at the photos on his desk, photos of his two children, a girl and a boy. The little girl wore a sparkling gold pinafore over black tights. The little boy wore a soccer uniform. He held a ball in his hands and his wide grin revealed a pair of missing teeth on the right side of his mouth.

  Boots looked down. Something about the way Levine kept returning to the photos left him embarrassed for the man. Like he’d just revealed a secret that Boots would rather not know. Lieutenant Sorrowful’s kids were in their thirties and lived far away. He barely knew his grandchildren.

  ‘So, that’s it?’ Levine asked.

  ‘I should only wish. You remember I told you about my being acquainted with the Pianetta family.’

  That caught Levine’s attention. ‘Keep going, Boots. And don’t leave anything out.’

  ‘But you do remember, right? I told you that the Pianetta and Littlewood families attend the same church?’ Boots spread his hands, inviting a response, which eventually came in the form of a grudging nod. ‘Well, John Pianetta showed up at the scene. Demanding to see the body.’

  ‘Don’t tell me you braced him?’

  ‘Yeah, I did. So now there’s a captain at OCCB who also knows me and Johnny attend the same church. His name’s Karkanian.’

  ‘Did he confront you?’

  ‘Briefly.’ Boots took out a little packet of Tic Tacs and shook a few into his hand. ‘I told him exactly what I told you.’

  ‘That you go to church together?’

  ‘There’s no together to it, boss. In fact, if lowly precinct detectives were allowed to investigate wiseguys, I’d have already found an excuse to take the scumbag off the street.’

  Levine was prepared to let the matter drop. The incompetency of the bosses down at the Puzzle Palace was taken for granted in the precincts, a self-evident truth beyond dispute. Boots on the other hand, had more to say.

  ‘They like gettin’ their pictures in the paper. I’m talkin’ about the deputy chiefs at OCCB. All they care about is headline arrests, fifty suspects rounded up in five cities, the bosses, the underbosses, a whole crime family in custody. This is not something you can do in a hurry and their investigations take years. Meanwhile, the mutts stay on the street, committing one crime after another.’

  Both men were aware of a distinct possibility here. Cops and criminals did not associate with one another, the only exception being cops working undercover. Of course, if Boots was telling the truth, if he and Johnny Piano only ran into each other at church … well, you can’t choose your neighbors. But Karkanian had nothing beyond the detective’s word for his relationship with Pianetta. Plus, Karkanian lived in the ultimate cover-your-ass world. It would come as no surprise if he decided to report the ‘relationship’ to Internal Affairs, let the headhunters worry about it.

  Boots and Levine were right, on one level. Captain Viktor Karkanian didn’t know Detective Boots Littlewood. But the reverse also held true. Boots didn’t know Karkanian, either. That point was driven home when a knock on the door to Levine’s office was followed by Jill Kelly’s appearance.

  ‘Hi,’ she said. ‘Hope I was expected.’

  The phone on Levine’s desk gave off a series of bird-like cheeps, the last one echoing faintly in the small office. He looked at the phone for just a moment, then snatched it up. The conversation that followed was as one-sided as it was quick.

  Jill kept her eyes on Boots throughout. He knew what was coming. Was he eager? Reluctant? Or just annoyed?

  ‘That was Inspector McDowd at Borough Command,’ Levine announced. ‘Boots, you’re on temporary assignment to OCCB. That means you don’t work for me, so get your ass out of my office while I decide how to distribute your cases to my already overworked detectives.’

  Boots led Jill to his desk in the squad room. ‘You here to keep an eye on me?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘And you don’t care?’

  ‘No.’ Jill was ready to let it go at that, but changed her mind when she saw her partner’s expression harden. Though she’d never tell him so, not least because they were incredibly incompatible, she’d come close to falling in love with him. Boots had never revealed the slightest desire to control, contain, dominate, subdue or tame her. Nor was he inclined to beg for her attentions. When she stopped calling, he’d drifted back to … No, he’d simply resumed the life he’d never strayed from in the first place. He’d remained his own man, before, during and afterward.

  ‘OCCB,’ she explained, ‘is so far from the streets that it might as well be a corporate sub-department. Did you know that every phone tap has to be actively monitored? You don’t start the recorder, then come back later to see what you captured. No, you have to sit there and listen to some mob mama talk about her hairdresser for two hours. You have to listen to wiseguys talk about the price of real estate in Syosset. One night, I spent two hours in a blazing hot attic listening to Joe Duranga and Sal Micchiono compare the virtues of a Lexus to an Audi. In the end, Sal decided to buy a Cadillac. I thought I’d go crazy.’

  Boots’s laughter rocked the little room. No human being on the planet was less suited to the tedious pace of Organized Crime investigations than Crazy Jill Kelly. No wonder she’d jumped at the chance to work an active investigation. Keeping her superiors apprised of her new partner’s corrupt practices was simply the price she’d have to pay. In this case, being as Johnny Piano and Boots had no corrupt relationship to uncover, and she knew it, the price was too small to worry about.

  ‘Yo.’ The shout came from inside an interrogation room. ‘Like I’m glad you po-pos are havin’ a good time, but I been in this fuckin’ room for three damn hours and I gotta take a piss. Swear to God, maricon, I’m ready to whip it out and let go in the corner.’

  Jill glanced at a closed door. ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘That’s someone I gotta take care of before I do anything else. Gimme a minute here.’

  The minute turned into ten as Boots led a short, thin boy from an interrogation room to a bathroom down the hall. The boy returned with a package of cheese puffs and a can of orange soda.r />
  ‘I wasn’t gonna run,’ the boy said. ‘I woulda come back.’

  ‘That’s good, Alviro. Because if I had to go out and find you again? Take it to the bank, this particular cop holds grudges.’

  Boots set the boy on a chair bolted to the floor, but didn’t handcuff him to the chair. He closed the door behind him as he left the tiny room. ‘That’s the FUCK YOU burglar,’ he said. ‘He doesn’t know it yet, but he’s gonna confess.’

  ‘A burglar? Boots, tell me you won’t delay investigating the death of a mob figure for a mope who steals television sets?’

  Boots sat down behind his desk as Detective Connie Sherman entered the squad room. Sherman hesitated when he saw Jill, then nodded to Boots before crossing to his own desk. A moment later, he was on his computer, typing away.

  ‘Carlo Pianetta’s gonna have to wait until I nail this particular burglar. Alviro’s creeped twenty apartments. He steals whatever cash and jewelry he can find, along with a TV or a laptop, or sometimes both if the television’s not too big. You understand, his victims are all working-class people. They can’t replace these losses by snappin’ their fingers.’ Boots slipped out of his jacket, unbuttoned his shirt and loosened his tie. ‘But that’s not the worst of it, Jill. Alviro trashes the apartments, slices the cushions on the couch, slices the mattresses, tears up letters and photographs. Then he spray-paints FUCK YOU on the walls so you have to put on ten coats of paint to cover it up.’

  A smile tugged at the corner of Jill’s mouth. Did Boots Littlewood think removing his jacket transformed him into an average Joe? Between the shoulder rig and the bunched muscle in his shoulders and neck, he looked even bigger without the jacket. Bigger in a menacing way that screamed cop.