You Get What You Pay For (The Tony Cassella Mysteries)

by Beinhart, Larry

  “What kind of crap is this, Frank? I mean it, what kind of crap is this? You asking me if my father is gonna sing to the grand fucking jury?”

  “I’m asking you ’bout your father’s health. His, you know, morale, state of mind. A man, he done three, looking at seven more … his perspective, it can change.”

  “I don’t know; I never been in the joint. You have.” Arthur said. “What do you think? Freddy, he’s been in the joint. What does Fat Freddy think?”

  “Freddy,” Frank said, “tell the man what you think.”

  “I don’t know, Frank; I never done more’n eighteen months.”

  “So tell me, Artie,” Frank said. “Santino, you think he’s looking for early release?”

  “I respect you, Frank, I do,” Arthur said, “but fuck this shit. My father, he coulda taken the witness program and never done a day. You know that. I don’t have to tell you that. Also, who are you to be asking me about Santino? I tell you what—you got some reason, something between you and him, you’re entitled to ask this shit, you ask him yourself.”

  “Hey.” Frank held his palm up and spoke softly. “We got nothing to fight about. I got nothing but respect for your father. I figure Santino, he’s a stand-up guy. I came to do you and him a favor.”

  “A favor?”

  “When your father, when he’s done his time, I bet he would like to come out, find the slate clean. Not owing nobody nothing … Don’t you think he would like that?”

  “Yeah,” Arthur grunted, wondering what quid would pro for quo.

  “And we are not asking,” Frank said, “anything your father would not do anyway, you understand?”

  “Of course, sure, whatever you say, Frank.”

  “It would be a good thing your father, he don’t say nothing to this special Jew prosecutor, ’specially about Gunderson.”

  “About Randolph Gunderson?” Which was who the grand jury was investigating. It was at his own request. To silence the “scurrilous and unfounded rumors” that his business dealings, before he entered government, had been less than immaculately conceived.

  “How many Gundersons you got in your social circle, Artie?”

  “What you want, you want that my father doesn’t say anything about the attorney general of the United States.” The rumors had started almost immediately after Gunderson had been confirmed by the Senate.

  “Yeah, yeah, the Head Fed,” Frank said.

  “What could Santino say about Gunderson?”

  “Your father never mentioned his name?”

  “He mentioned his name, you know, sometimes. But you know how he is. If he went to Atlantic City on a high-roller junket, and they brought Sinatra around, like they do, to make you feel big after you drop a hundred grand, he would come home talking ‘Me and Frank this’ and ‘Me and Frank that.’ One time they had Diana Ross sing a couple of tunes for just about fifteen of them, and everybody got introduced, personally. You woulda thought my old man done a number with Diana, which I don’t figure she would’ve gone for it. Also you ever hear him talk about him and the mayor? How they’re like this? Well, I know fucking well him and His Honor ain’t. So he mentioned Gunderson’s name, so what?”

  “Hey, if that’s all there is, then it’s painless. Right, Artie?”

  “Whatever you want, Frank,” Arthur said flatly.

  “You telling me you don’t know anything about your father and R. G.?”

  “I got my own problems,” Arthur said. “How deep into things is he?”

  “Ask your father,” Frank said.

  “My father tells me what he feels like telling me. What’s the big deal with Gunderson?” Arthur said, and wondered if there was leverage there somewhere, a little something to get the heavy federal foot off his hard-earned, and entirely legit, money. And let him move to Arizona.

  “Artie, Artie,” Frank said, in that tone that means: We are wise guys; we are supposed to understand these things. “What business is Gunderson in? Where did he raise all that money, for the President’s campaign fund?”

  “Are we talking something specific here?” Arthur asked.

  “Maybe we’re not talking at all,” Frank said sharply. “Except about who owes who how much.”

  Mrs. Estelle Kalmanowitz came out of the apartment building across the street, leaning on her cane, on her way to White Plains Road to buy a chicken. She nodded, somewhat grudgingly, to Ortiz, who gave her an unreserved “Buenos días” in return.

  From the park side and down the block, Mrs. Inez Rodriguez approached. Padded and downed against the cold, she was a magenta-and-gold snow woman. She was dragging her four-year-old, Paco, to all appearances a teddy bear in a puffy maroon swaddle. Paco was dragging his sled.

  “You want to tell my father,” Arthur said, “that you cancel the two mil if he doesn’t talk about Gunderson.”

  “Yeah,” Frank said. “It’s getting cold in this fucking heap. Whyn’t you turn the heat on?”

  “Sure,” Arthur said. He bent forward to turn on the ignition.

  As the engine caught, the new pager, gift of Angelina, Santino II, and Krystal, came tumbling down from his jacket pocket. Frank’s eyes were caught by the falling object. Arthur reflexively reached to snatch his toy before it hit the floor. It looked like something he wanted to hide.

  “The fuck is wired,” Frank yelled. “Hit ’em, Freddy.”

  That was one thing the fat man could still do quickly and smoothly. The .38 came out from his shoulder holster. As Arthur straightened, maybe about to say something, Freddy fired. The bullet entered the back of Arthur’s skull, nicely centered. It came out the front and took most of his forehead with it.

  Arthur’s body folded forward. His arm hit the gearshift and pushed the automatic from Park to Drive. The big Continental shot ahead into the car of Carlos Ortiz. Even though Carlos had taken care to put on the parking brake and leave the car in gear, the disparity in weight was so great that the Lincoln shoved the Honda into the car in front of it, fenders crumpling and lights crackling at both ends.

  Frank bent to the floor. He snatched the beeper from under Arthur’s feet, then he flung open the door and jumped out. Little Louie, who was experienced in these things, had his motor running. He opened the back door of the Buick so Frank could slip in.

  Fat Freddy, however, was having a problem. Getting out was even more difficult than getting in. To begin with, he couldn’t get out of the driver’s side, what with the dead weight of Arthur Scorcese blocking the way. He had to hump his way, heave and grunt, to the passenger side. Then he had to bend, from a seated position, for the latch to release the front seat back.

  As soon as Frank settled in, Louie started the Buick. All of Freddy, except his head, was still in the Lincoln. “Hey, Frankie,” he yelled, the way Andy Devine used to do when Wild Bill went galloping off. “Wait for me!”

  Louie realized that he had, indeed, left one of the living behind. He began to back up.

  Carlos had ignored the shot. But at the sound of taillights cracking, his ears stood up. He always reacted to the sound of a fender crumpling, knowing in his fatalistic Latin soul that someday the crumple would be for him. As, this time, it was.

  “Come back here,” he screamed as he saw the hurters of his beloved Honda making their escape.

  “Hurry up, you fat slob,” Frank snarled.

  Freddy squeezed out through the door in a sort of half twist, then stumbled. Carlos grabbed his ice chopper, a wooden broomstick with an eight-inch-wide metal wedge at the end, and began racing across the street. Inez Rodriguez carefully looked both ways. Since there were no vehicles in motion, she began to cross the street, dragging Paco behind her. Paco dragged his sled.

  “Move, you stupid fuck,” Frank yelled at Freddy.

  “I’m tryin’,” Freddy said, one foot in the Lincoln, one hand on the icy street. He scrambled and stumbled half upright and made a rhino charge, crouched and headfirst, into the Buick. As soon as the bulk of his body was in, only his f
eet still out, toes pointed at the ground, the Buick started moving.

  Carlos arrived, slipping and sliding, as Louie hit the gas. Screaming “Motherfucker car fuckers,” Carlos busted their taillight with a savage slash of the ice chopper. As they escaped, he raised it, a spearman as fierce as any Aztec ancestor, and flung it javelin style. His aim was good. It hit the rear window. But it bounced off as harmlessly as an Indian spear against the Castilian steel of conquistador armor.

  Inez Rodriguez looked up as Carlos yelled. She saw the Buick leap from a standing start, skid, and roar directly at her. She froze as the metal monster came down upon her. And her child. She snatched at Paco, throwing him out of harm’s way before she moved herself. Paco snatched at his sled. He missed.

  Louie swerved as Inez finally started to move. Inez was hit only by the breeze. The sled was less fortunate. Paco wailed as it turned to splinters. “Motherfucking maricones,” Inez screeched.

  “Oy, the neighborhood,” Mrs. Estelle Kalmanowitz sighed to her cane.

  Part I:

  FEBRUARY 1984

  1.

  Have You Seen a Bergman?

  Ninety Percent of the Universe Is Missing

  New York Times, science section

  LUIS, THE SUPER, HAD left a note under the door asking me to call our landlord, Jerry Wirtman. Glenda, the woman I live with, was irritated. She thought the note should have been addressed to her. Quite right; the lease was in her name. It was, she said, a sign of disrespect to her as a woman.

  Wayne was oblivious. He was reading the science section of the New York Times. The science section is published every Tuesday so that the Times has advertising space to sell to companies that sell computers. Whenever a particularly good deal appears, Wayne shares that information with us. We are aware that we, as a family, can enter the computer age for under two thousand dollars. Wayne is ten.

  It was a comfortable time. Without anger, without fear.

  We had, by New York standards, space. Two bedrooms on the upper West Side. Prewar construction, before the builders had figured out how to maximize profits by lowering the ceilings, shrinking the rooms, thinning the walls, and eliminating closets. We even had a real kitchen. Time and rent stablization had turned it into a good deal. A very good deal. By New York standards.

  My income still came in fits and starts. But the fits had been frequent enough to allow the illusion of fiscal stability. My partner and I had even taken to banking our fees and then paying ourselves weekly. Just like real people with real salaries.

  So there was a home. And a relationship. Seven years old. No deliriums of love, no demons of lust. But enough sex for health, enough affection for stability, enough closet space that we didn’t have to keep the baggage of the past and fears of the future on top of the TV set.

  Jerry Wirtman’s note, it turned out, had nothing to do with the landlord-tenant relationship. He had heard from Luis, the super, that I was a detective. Luis has always been very impressed by my profession. Like Wayne, he has some very childish and romantic ideas. Wirtman was interested, perhaps, possibly, maybe, after we discussed the matter, in utilizing my services.

  I told him there was no fee for a first consult. When I got there he asked if I had any problem working for a landlord, against a tenant.

  The detective agency D’Angelo Cassella gets a variety of jobs, but we maintain our hard-won illusion of stability because of four clients—two divorce lawyers, one general-business law firm, and one of the last remaining bail bondsmen in Brooklyn, Alan Bazzini. But Bazzini was talking about retiring. To Sanibel, in Florida. Or Tucson, Arizona. Without Bazzini we’d be dining at a three-legged table.

  So I lied. I said it didn’t bother me at all.

  “Landlords have a bad press,” he said. There was a softness about him, pudgy rather than fat, not nervous but eternally defensive. “We really do. If people don’t want landlords, let ’em move to the suburbs or go co-op. Does any other business get treated this way? Do they?”

  “Never thought about it,” I said neutrally.

  “You live in one of my buildings. Do I gouge you?” Wirtman asked. “No,” Wirtman answered. “Do you freeze in the winter? No. I give plenty of heat. Plumbing’s good. Elevators work. Security is good. The halls are kept decent. Somebody complains, we take care of the problem. That, despite rent stabilization, rent control, union janitors, union doormen, inspectors with their hands out, garbage men with their hands out. You try to find a super who isn’t an alcoholic, a junkie, a thief, and can speak English. You try it.”

  “I see what you mean,” I said.

  “I get carried away sometimes,” Wirtman said, and gave me a silly little smile. It was a nice smile.

  “Rent control,” he said, titling the next subject. “You understand rent control? Rent stabilization?”

  Everybody in New York does. It’s a fact of life more significant than the failure rate of condoms. Rent control was established after WW II. It was fine when an inflation rate of 4 percent seemed high. Then the dollar started acting like a peso and rents lagged so far behind rising costs that the landlords were able to make a decent case for its repeal. Anytime a controlled apartment was vacated, it entered the free market. Once. Then it came under a new system called stabilization, which permits regular raises at each lease renewal at a percentage determined by the Rent Stabilization Board. That number, arrived at after much screaming by landlord and tenant groups, is supposed to allow landlords a fair profit, but no more. When a stabilized apartment is vacated the jump is larger, but still limited. Rent is therefore determined by how long the apartment has been stabilized and how often it has turned over.

  Some rent-controlled apartments still exist. The tenants pay amounts keyed to the days when the subway was a nickel and thirty-five dollars bought an ounce of gold.

  “There are people who abuse the system,” he said. “Twelve C.”

  “Twelve C?”

  “The Bergmans,” he said.

  “Bergmans?”

  “Have you ever seen a Bergman?”

  “Have I ever seen a Bergman?”

  “Have you ever seen,” he said, very pointedly, “a Bergman in Twelve C?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t think I’m following this.”

  “Of course you haven’t seen a Bergman. Nobody has seen a Bergman in fifteen years. But the name on the lease on Twelve C is … Bergman. For twenty years it’s been Bergman.” He wasn’t smiling anymore. He looked sad. “Since rent control,” he sighed.

  “What you’re saying is that the Bergmans still have the lease, but they don’t live there.”

  “Look at this, look at this. … ”

  “For two bedrooms. High floor. In a good building. A clean building. A safe building. With elevators, yet. Abuse. This is abuse. By subterfuge. Abuse by subterfuge.”

  If the Bergmans were subletting, they were making a profit of at least a grand a month. If Wirtman could regain control of the apartment and put it on the market, he could raise the rent between 800 percent and 1,000 percent.

  “Could you prove for me,” he said, “that these Bergmans live elsewhere?”

  “If they do, I probably can. Do you have any more information about them?”

  “Yeah. They came with the building.”

  “Did they fill out an application, ever?”

  “It’s ancient,” he said. But he took it out of the file.

  APARTMENT APPLICATION

  “Am I being an exploiter? A leech? A Dracula landlord?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said.

  “They,” he said, “these Bergmans, they are stealing from me, they are the gonifs. I am entitled to have real tenants. So how much?”

  My rule of thumb is $250 a day. I’ve gone lower, but I prefer to go higher. I said $350 a day, fifteen a week, and warned him that expenses might be the big number. It was worth better than $20,000 a year to him, but he still wanted to haggle.

  “Mr. Wirtman, you seem like a
nice man,” I said. “And your cause is just. That’s important to me. But the thing is, there’s a union. … ”

  “A detectives’ union?”

  “Well, it’s called a guild, but it’s the same thing. I violate the minimums and I can get in a lot of trouble.”

  “A union. Who would’ve thought … ”

  “Hey, they’re everywhere. The doctors got the AMA. Luis, the super, he’s got a union.”

  “Don’t I know it.”

  “My hands are tied,” I said.

  “Unions. That’s why everybody’s driving Japanese cars. What they’ve done for this country. Thank God we finally have a President who stands up to them.”

  “Oh, yeah,” I said.

  “OK. You better go ahead with it. But watch the expenses.”

  “Of course,” I said. Thank God for the Private Investigators Guild. Someday we really should organize one.

  It was a fairly simple case. The first step was a credit check.

  There are several multimillion-dollar corporations that keep track of us and sell the information for a profit. That data is confidential, not to be released without our permission. Something we give, for example, every time we fill out a credit application.

  I use TRS Inc., because their computer is the easiest for Thayer Sturdivon, hacker, to enter. I had to wait until 3 p.m. Thayer doesn’t get out of school until then. He’s in the eleventh grade.

  In the movies, people who are very smart wear glasses over odd-shaped noses and baggy clothes from Sears over skinny bodies. Thayer has lots of biceps and pecs, which he shows off with muscle shirts and designer slacks; his hair is stylishly short.

  There was no Samuel N. Bergman at 754 West End Avenue. At least not one who had ever had a credit card, car loan, mortgage, or judgment against him. Nor was there a Samuel N. Bergman with Citibank checking account number 16652521. I had no other number to cross-reference. All we could do was pull every Samuel N. Bergman in the United States.