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

by Beinhart, Larry

  “Yes, I do,” he said.

  “Good.”

  “I should get a written estimate!”

  “I’ll do what I can,” I sighed.

  I did feel I’d been neglecting him. I called Ralph DeLillio, over at the ILGWU.

  “I been meaning to call you,” he said.

  “Yeah. You get in contact with the people over at LMC, the Ginsbergs?”

  “Hey, I did what I could. Talked to them myself. They haven’t heard a word from Bergman in years. Last they heard from Bergman was back around ’77, ’78. He was on an around-the-world cruise. They got a postcard from him. From Hong Kong. It said ‘Wish you were here. These people ain’t never heard the word union!’ … ‘Hah hah,’ I said. Ginsberg swore that’s what the postcard said. … ”

  “It did,” I told him. “That’s what it said.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s what started Ginsberg thinking, according to Ginsberg. That’s why LMC pulled outa New York, wenta HK. You find this Bergman, do me a favor: Kick him in the balls; make sure you got a union label in your shoe when you do.”

  “Will do,” I said.

  “Hey, sorry I couldn’t do more,” he said.

  “It’s OK, Ralph. You did what you could. I owe you one.”

  “Come to work for me. Put on the tattered plume, join the good guys.”

  “I’ll think about it,” I said.

  “Nah, you won’t,” he said, and hung up, as he does, without saying good-bye.

  “Well,” Joey said, “there ain’t much else doing, except for your bet, so I took one a his bail skips. Snake’s. I figure I’m more likely to find my guy than you are to win your bet.”

  When I got home, Glenda said she’d spoken to Philip, her ex-husband, Wayne’s biological father. “Wayne’s tuition is up,” she told me. “Philip doesn’t want to pay the increase.”

  “I didn’t know the tuition went up,” I said.

  “There’s no reason you should,” she said. There wasn’t. Philip’s supposed to pay it. That and a medical policy is the extent of his child support. Less than she could have gotten. If she had had a tougher lawyer. If she had been a meaner bitch. “But he doesn’t want to pay the extra.”

  “Take him to court.”

  “Because of you,” she said. “He says that his lawyer says that we are a common-law marriage. Living together. This long.”

  “Bullshit,” I said, speaking to the issue. “New York doesn’t recognize common-law marriage. What the hell’s wrong with him, not wanting to take care of his kid, not that he sees him that much.”

  “No. He doesn’t.”

  “With as much money as he makes, he can well, well afford it.”

  “He just bought a new house. And Buffy is pregnant. Again.”

  “Oh, are you your husband’s attorney now?” I heard undertones in everything she said. Was she telling me that as long as we were like married maybe we should be married.

  “I’m not defending him. I’m just explaining.”

  “Just tell me what you want to do. You want me to pay the difference? You want me to find a lawyer who’ll make sure Philip sticks to his agreement? Or do you want to send Wayne to public school?”

  “I’m not sure. That’s why I am attempting to discuss this with you.”

  “All right,” I said. “I’ll call Palmeri, the world’s nastiest divorce attorney.”

  “Then we have to pay attorney’s fees.”

  “ ‘Palmeri guarantees,’ ” I quoted, “ ‘the husband pays the attorney’s fees.’ ”

  “That’s not what I want,” she said.

  “What do you want?”

  “We didn’t fight about things like that, even while we were getting divorced. We made our agreement, between us. Then we even used the same attorney.”

  “I know. You’re a good woman. You are. A decent person. That’s nice. It’s terrific. And mostly I don’t get into what goes down between you and Philip, but you’re talking to me about it, and Wayne’s school is something he can and should pay for. The man can afford it. You don’t want to tell him that, I’ll call and tell him that.”

  “Usually I don’t realize I’m dependent on him,” she said.

  The other woman in my life, Alicia Bronstein, did not return my calls.

  Sydney Coberland was out. I asked his secretary when he would be in. His secretary said she didn’t know; he was out sick.

  I called a contact at the SEC. I asked him if he would help me do a number on Peter Dimmer-Lodes. I suggested that he might want to prosecute Peter after I was done. My contact wasn’t interested. I decided to follow Peter and see what happened.

  He left work at seven. He was in a hurry. He got in a cab. I followed. He went home. I waited. He came out in thirty minutes. Blown dry, Pirelli peg pants, Bally shoes. He took another cab, they went about seven blocks. He picked up a girl. She had lots of salon-perm curls; she’d put a touch of blush in the center of her breastbone to make the deeply cut neckline look like cleavage; I guess you could say she was that Cosmopolitan girl. They got in another cab. I followed them to Border Town Rose, where everything was grilled on real mesquite and served with arugula.

  I waited outside until they were seated. Then I went in and sat at the bar.

  Peter had ordered the laaarrge—that’s the way it was on the menu—margarita. With two straws. For him and her.

  The bartender was an actor; he seemed heterosexual. I ordered a beer.

  Another couple entered and joined Peter and the Cosmo girl. Peter and the new guy were clearly dear friends. Slug on the back, let’s get really polluted, we’re fine fellows, friends. The two women were strangers. They looked at each other competitively. The new arrival was plainer of face, built more for comfort and less for speed. Women know superior packaging when they see it. They know it when they are it. Cosmo girl won.

  Peter’s friends thought a two-straw laaarrge margarita was cute. They got one as well. Peter and Cosmo girl ordered a second.

  I made myself friendly with the bartender. I talked to him about acting and art and mourned the death of the New York stage.

  Across the room, the Dimmer-Lodes foursome were very merry. The important dynamic was between the two guys. When two people have a special relationship, it shows. A quicker, almost coded communication, a way of looking at each other, of touching. Not that I thought that Peter and his buddy were lovers. More likely, almost certainly, unindicted coconspirators. Partners in crime. Secret fiscal buccaneers. Pleased with themselves, like two sixties college boys dealing ounces of Panama Red in the girls’ dorm.

  I could smell it. If Peter Dimmer-Lodes had a partner to do the actual buying and selling based on the insider knowledge he obtained at his law firm—and he certainly would, that being the half-smart kind of thing that white-collar criminals think will make them undetectable—this was the guy.

  “See that table over there?” I said to the bartender, gesturing toward Peter. “Foursome. One medium-size guy, one big guy … ”

  “You mean ‘ain’t no margarita too laaarrge for me’?”

  “That what you call him?”

  “Ah—” He stopped in midsyllable. “That guy a friend of yours?”

  “No. I know him slightly,” I said.

  “Asshole says, ‘Ain’t no margarita too laaarrge for me,’ every single time he orders one. He thinks it’s funny. Every time.”

  “What I want to know is about the other guy.” I put a twenty on the bar. “What’s his name? Where’s he work, if you know.”

  “Be right back,” he said.

  He moved to the end of the bar and talked to one of the waiters. The waiter went off. A few minutes later, he came back and spoke to the bartender, who came back to me.

  “Arthur Collinson,” he said. “Young stockbroker. We think Shearson Lehman—They Breed Apart, or have Minds Over Money, I forget which.”

  “Great buddies, those two,” I said.

  “Yeah. High school sweethearts, or something.�
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  “You think they’re like that?”

  “No, I didn’t mean that,” the bartender said. “I can tell. Even the ones deep in the closet. I’m a judge of character.”

  “I can see that,” I said. “But they got something going. … If it’s not sex, it’s money, I would guess.”

  “It could be,” he said. “They hang out a lot together. And they tell the waitress they do big deals. Especially the big one. He’s going to own Wall Street someday, is what he said, when it was closing time and he was trying to get Paula”—he pointed out one of the waitresses—“to go home with him.”

  Two drinks later, Peter’s bladder suggested that he rise. He swaggered through the restaurant, head full of tequila and pocket full of credit cards.

  I was certain that Collinson was Dimmer-Lodes’s partner in crime. And I figured that if I moved fast enough and hard enough, I’d get Peter just enough off balance to open him up. I followed him. The men’s room door was marked by a silhouette of a vaquero, to remind people that it was macho to piss standing up. I paused, to make sure that when I got inside, Peter would be in that psychologically defenseless position of having his zipper down and his pecker in his hand.

  I locked the door behind me and said, “Hello, Peter.”

  He kept his body facing the urinal, but his head swiveled around to see me. When he recognized me, he gave me his good-buddy grin. He thought he was pleased to see me. He thought I was someone who was going to do good things for him.

  “Mohammed, buddy,” he said. “How they hangin’?”

  “Peter,” I said pleasantly, “you’re an asshole.”

  His face went through a series of changes. He’d had a lot to drink, and it took time to get to “Duh?” and from there to “Who you talking to?”

  Cops come on hard. There’s a reason for it. They don’t want the suspect to get his balance, to realize he should keep his mouth shut until his lawyer gets there. Or, in Peter’s case, before he remembered he was a lawyer. I put the flat of my hand against the back of his head and shoved his face into the wall. He tried to shut off his bladder and put his penis away. He flailed at me with his other hand. It was a gift. I took it and put it up between his shoulder blades.

  “Don’t even think of moving,” I said. “I want to take you down.”

  He was a big guy. He was tough. He wasn’t going to take that. He tried to move. I lifted his arm till he thought it would crack. Then I slapped the back of his head with my free hand. The punk was guilty, and I didn’t want him to slip away with lawyer’s tricks.

  “It hurts,” he said. “You’re hurting me. What’s the matter with you? You some kinda crazy?”

  “Peter, you’re so fucking stupid. That’s what this is all about. You and how stupid you’ve been.”

  “What do you want?”

  “You’re gonna take a fall.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Insider trading.”

  “I didn’t—”

  “Don’t bother with denials. Don’t fuck around. Mergers and acquisitions. You have the information. Your buddy Artie, out there, he’s got the setup. Couple of phony trading accounts. Two punks think they’re half smart. You think the accounts can’t be found. You think you left no traces. God, you’re not even half smart.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking a—”

  “Asshole,” I snapped, putting pressure on the arm again. “You take a fall, you know what happens to you? Disbarred, just for starts. No more BMWs, no more credit cards, no more Cosmo girls. The SEC, they’re thinking that maybe it’s time they really set a serious example. And you’re just the kind of small-time punk they would choose to get serious on—”

  “I didn’t do—”

  “Maybe you get to do time. You think you’re tough. You got any idea what a punk you are and what they’ll do to you in the joint?” I shoved my knee into his ass. “You get out, you’re gonna be stretched so wide, you can take a taxi up your asshole.”

  “What do you want from me?”

  “That’s better,” I said.

  “Look, what you’re saying, I never—”

  “Come on,” I snarled, pushing up the arm again. “You think once they start running Artie’s accounts through the computer they won’t turn it all up? How stupid do you think they are?”

  “If … if Artie … Artie wouldn’t.”

  “You think your buddy’s a stand-up guy. Asshole. There ain’t no stand-up guys no more. Even the Mafia, they don’t have stand-up guys. Once the SEC gets started, federal prosecutors, your buddy Artie, he’s gonna sell your ass so fast you won’t even see it happen. This is 1984, the year of every man for himself.”

  “If Artie … if I let something slip and he did something on his own … ”

  “You think they’ll buy that?” I slapped the back of his head again.

  “Stop it, stop it. Who are you?”

  “I’m your worst nightmare come true.”

  “All right, all right. You want me to say something, do something—what is it?”

  “OK. You and your buddy been making a small fortune. You’re up for it if it comes out. But I can show you a way out.”

  “If you say so, but it’s not so.”

  “Asshole,” I said, “I’m trying to help you, and you’re still playing games.”

  “I’ve been scrupulous,” he said.

  Scrupulous. From a guy with his face to the toilet wall. He was doing a lot better than I thought he would.

  “Right. Integrity personified. With an extra sixty grand a year in outside income. As soon as you move into mergers and acquisitions. Sure. You’re a good little yuppie. Ain’t no dirt on you. How you gonna account for that?”

  “That … that’s my trust fund,” he said.

  “Oh, of course it is.”

  “Really. I … I came into it last year. That’s the way my grandfather set it up. I don’t know why. But you can check it. You can check it.”

  I believed him. It made the whole thing terribly embarrassing.

  9.

  Muggles

  ALICIA BRONSTEIN WAS IN conference, at lunch, in court, then gone for the day.

  Sydney Coberland was still out sick.

  I warned Mohammed Salim that someone named Peter Dimmer-Lodes might make some sort of fuss. The best thing he could do, I suggested, was act as if he’d never heard of Peter, never seen him, and never spoken to him. Mohammed was irritated with me.

  I was going to lose that four grand. Plus my time. Plus seven hundred dollars cash out of pocket. It was because I’d been too sure of myself. And, at the same time, afraid to commit myself fully, hesitant to spend too much money or too much time on a job that didn’t guarantee a payback. There was more that I could have done. I could have gone after the other four attorneys. I could also have looked for a resentful secretary or a proofreader with a need for cash.

  There was no time left for any of that.

  At five-thirty, I put on a suit of blend-in gray and an unmemorable tie. I took the subway downtown. At least I was going to close out the Wirtman job. I called Dom Magliocci. There was no answer. That was good. I only wanted to go see him if he wasn’t there.

  I carried a standard brown leatherish attaché case. It contained what are legally classified as burglar’s tools.

  There was a moderate flow of people leaving, not many coming in. I rode the elevator up alone. The office of Finkelstein-Magliocci was down the hall to the left and around the corner.

  The older and saner I get, the more doing something stupid upsets me. Had I looked for an alarm system? Yes. Had I missed the alarm system? Probably not. Sonic sensors, had I thought about sonic sensors? Was Dom out for a meeting and on his way back to the office? Was the lock on the door as simple as I remembered and would my fingers retain their skill? Why was I doing it? Because the answer was inside that office, and I knew it.

  When I turned left at the end of the corridor, the office door just ahead of
me swung open. I started, like a fool, and jumped back. Looking ridiculously furtive, I peeked around the corner.

  It was one of the cleaners, an old woman shaped like a loaf of Wonder bread, walking away from me. She was hauling a cart with a trash bin and a broom.

  She opened the door of Finkelstein-Magliocci. When she entered, she left it ajar. The hall door opened on the reception area. Each attorney had his own office through a connecting door, one to the left, the other to the right. I moved up. I could hear the cleaning woman. She grunted when she bent for a trash basket, then grunted again when she bent to put it down. After she did the center room, she turned right to do Finkelstein’s office. I heard the twin grunts. She closed the intraoffice door, then trundled across to Magliocci’s office. As soon as she did, I dashed into the reception area. All I had to do was step into Finkelstein’s office, which she had finished. I knew how long I had to do it. Two grunts. One grunt and I was in. Two grunts, my hand was on Finkelstein’s door.

  It was locked. I was standing there, with nowhere to go, and I heard the wheels of her trash cart squeaking toward me.

  I dived behind the secretary’s desk. As I went down, I could see her coming out. So I was certain she’d seen me.

  She trundled out, dragging her wheeled wastebin behind her. Without a backward glance.

  It was that simple.

  The file cabinet was a piece of cake. And Bergman was filed under “B,” right after “A” and in front of “C.” I pulled it out. There was another Bergman file behind it. I pulled that. And another. All in all, there were sixteen Samuel N. Bergman files.

  On Eighty-eighth Street, between Park and Madison, Bergman was paying the landlord $286.78 and charging his subtenant $2,100. On West End Avenue he was getting $1,100 a month for a one-bedroom and paying out $187.52. On West Fourth Street he was netting about $1,000. Each file was a different apartment. Except the sixteenth. That was the dead file. Seven apartments on which Samuel had lost the lease for one reason or another.

  The Bergmans were having a very satisfactory retirement. Averaging over a thousand a month on each, better than $180,000 a year.

  I looked at my watch. I stopped and listened. There were no noises in the corridor. I gave myself ten minutes. It was worth the extra time to give the rest of the files a quick once-over and see if Mr. Magliocci, Esq., was handling the same type of scam for anyone else. To my deep disappointment, Bergman was the only one.