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

by Beinhart, Larry

“Oh, come on. We have his testimony. You came up to him. Out of the blue. You said”—he looked at his file—“and I quote, ‘I got the goods. You gotta get it on the air. The people who gave me this, they’ll do good things for you if it gets on the air. Listen,’ you told him, quote, ‘I got to run. I’m leaving the country. I’ll be back when it’s over.’ ”

  I shrugged.

  “Let the record show,” he said to the machine, “that Mr. Cassella shrugged.”

  “I thought it was a Gallic shrug. Didn’t you get that feeling? A tray fran-say type of gesture?”

  “Do you deny the statement?”

  “That I shrugged?”

  “Don’t play wise-ass with me,” Muggles said.

  “What Kennel said I said? … Not true.”

  “Who paid you?”

  “Des. Or he will. He hasn’t paid yet.”

  “You went and stole a top-secret document without payment. I find that difficult to believe. It couldn’t be idealism. I don’t care how perverse you are; there is no way that anyone could conceive of what you’ve done as being anything but detrimental to the good of society.”

  “Muggs, I gotta deny all of that.”

  “You deny that?”

  “Yup,” I said.

  “You deny you stole the special prosecutor’s report?”

  “Yup. I also deny that it was top secret. And I deny that there could not be any idealistic reason to publish it.”

  “What are you? Some sort of radical?”

  “He’s a pinko fag,” Fergie said. “He’s a pansy.”

  “Muggles,” I said, “you say you want to talk, then you insult me. You don’t listen to what I’m telling you, you have me cuffed—”

  “You’re not cuffed now.”

  “I was. When you knew you didn’t need it. You brought in the gorilla, you let him hit me, kick me. You threatened my life—”

  “I didn’t threaten your life,” he said.

  “The gorilla said you were going to send me to a prison where I would be set up to be hit. You made the same suggestion. I take that as a threat on my life. Now you’re scrambling my brain. You got me where I can’t think,” I whined, “let alone talk. So if you want something from me, why don’t you back off and … and talk to me like a person.”

  “All right. Let’s slow down. Would you like a glass of water?”

  “Yes, please,” I said.

  He gestured to Fergie to get me some water. Fergie lumbered out reluctantly.

  “What was it you were trying to say?” Muggles said with forced politeness.

  “I’ll tell you how it was. Me and Des, we were having a drink. We got drunk. The night the report was issued. He had an expurgated copy. His girlfriend, great boobs, was talking about LPW, the Life Plan Way. I don’t know how we got to it, but we ended up making a bet. That I could get the original. In two weeks or less.”

  Fergie returned with my refreshment.

  “I don’t believe you,” Muggles said.

  “That’s how it went down. I don’t know, maybe you can talk to the girl.”

  “We’ll get back to that,” he said. “Tell me how you got it?”

  “This,” I said, “you’re really not going to believe. … ” The truth was a true mind fuck for Muggles. I didn’t tell him about Alicia Bronstein, but then, I didn’t really know that she had sent me the papers. I did tell him about City-Speed, Speedo, and The Dudess. It brought Muggles pain. He had Fergie take my water away.

  Muggles dispatched Fergie to find Speedo. I wish I’d been there to see it. The skinny kid on his Atala with all-Campagnolo parts, slicing between cabs and trucks, with Fergie stuck behind, his government-issue Ford overheating in midtown traffic.

  “Enough,” I told Muggles. “No more until I see my lawyer.”

  “Yeah, Cassella,” he said. “Talk to your lawyer.” He smiled and left, carrying my taped confession with him.

  13.

  Miranda

  “YOU DID WHAT?” GERALD Yaskowitz, attorney for the defendant, said, belly and jowls quivering. “You did what?”

  “I confessed.”

  “You? Without your attorney? You spoke. Without an attorney. I am at a loss. You—”

  “Gerry … ”

  “A confession. Who would believe? Without his attorney—”

  “Gerry … ”

  “It’s a death wish,” he said to himself. He looked up and addressed the ceiling. “Lord, why? Why such clients as this? Am I a bad man? Do I fail in my duties?”

  “Gerry … ”

  “What?”

  “They didn’t read me my rights.”

  “They didn’t read you your rights? What do you mean, they didn’t read you your rights?”

  “You know those little cards they carry. That they read from. ‘You have the right to remain silent’ and all that.”

  “What am I? An idiot? Of course I know.”

  “They didn’t read it.”

  “Really?” he said, his eyes lighting up. “The FBI?”

  “Right. Immigration didn’t, either. Or customs.”

  “That’s wonderful, wonderful news. You know what? That’s wonderful news. Maybe—maybe—I can save you after all. Oh, oh”—he chuckled—“the FBI didn’t read him his rights.”

  “They refused to let me call my lawyer. And I asked. Several times.”

  “That’s good, that’s good,” he said.

  “They stuck a finger up my ass. Then they hit me.”

  “At the same time?” he said, genuinely shocked.

  “Separately,” I said.

  “Heaven. Perfect,” he cried. He looked up. He apologized to the ceiling. “Lord, I doubted. I’m sorry. You did good on this one. They hit him! Don’t worry, I can take it from here.”

  “I really thought they had me. When I delivered the special prosecutor’s report, there wasn’t just Des, who couldn’t wait to give me up, there were cops, firemen, and four other news crews.”

  “Confession,” he sang.

  The worst sort of people use this incomprehensible legal loophole to subvert the law. Crimes of which the police have proof positive go unpunished. Overturning Miranda will be among the most important achievements of this administration. A giant step in restoring the power of self-government to the people of the United States in the suppression of crime.

  RANDOLPH GUNDERSON,

  attorney general of the United States

  The attorney general is right. If it weren’t for technicalities and police incompetence, we’d all be in the slammer. Including him and me.

  ANTHONY CASSELLA,

  Suspect

  Gerry demanded, and got, immediate duplication of my taped confession. He wanted it before Muggles woke up and realized his triumph would leave him sucking lemons in Saskatoon. Of course they could have prosecuted. Their failure to Mirandize me, the elements of coercion and physical abuse, did not disqualify their other evidence. But the point of the exercise had been to minimize embarrassment, not protect the integrity of the judicial system. That aim was best served by dropping the matter.

  My arrest was briefly noted in the press. When charges were dropped, it was not, to the best of my knowledge, reported anywhere. Including WFUX.

  Randolph Gunderson continued as attorney general. No more tarnished by the new revelations than by the old.

  Des tried to welsh on the bet.

  My partner, Joey, has a long, long-standing relationship with his bookie, Angie “The Cat” Canterello. Angie, me, and two of Angie’s larger goons visited Des at home. I told Des that I had sold my action to “The Cat.” Who explained, in turn, that the vig was only 10 percent a week. Actually pretty reasonable by Canterello standards, what with bank interest on personal loans up to 22 percent.

  I told Des I was sorry. Then I left.

  I waited out front. The Canterello group joined me in less than ten minutes. Angie had requested that Des make out his check directly to me. “If there’s a problem, like it’s a
bum check, you call me, you hear, kid?”

  “What do I owe you?” I asked.

  “Joey and me, we go back practically forever—’s on the house. Four bills’ll cover it.” Angie was one of nature’s gentlemen.

  I gave him cash. The check cleared.

  Capitaine Renaud, upon further consideration, contacted the New York City police. They contacted me. I gave them a lightly censored version of the story, claiming that I had merely sneaked a peak at the Rolodex while I was at Finkelstein-Magliocci in my Tony Crispy, ace photographer, disguise. There was clear and compelling evidence of fraud, based on Bergman’s death. They went after Dominic and Morty with warrants and all that official stuff. They found what I had found—the other fourteen apartments—which killed the side action that was going to make me rich.

  Jerry Wirtman was ecstatic. Death was such unequivocal proof of nonresidence. He paid quickly and cheerfully, even apologizing for doubting me. He evicted the illegal subtenants in a record thirty days. He offered me more tenant cases. I was not delighted. But I took it.

  The big news in my partner’s life was that he finally found someone to keep him company. A dog. He had also, while I was in Paris, found Snake Silverman’s bail skip, a certain James Monroe “Rusthead” Robinson, armed robber and manslaughterist. Snake Silverman gave his standard speech about the “Magner Carter,” reached into his desk drawer, took a stack of hundred-dollar bills out from under the sawed-off pump-action Remington shotgun, and paid Joey 10 percent of the $100,000 bail. In cash.

  Part Two:

  SPRING – SUMMER 1984

  14.

  Red Herring

  I WAS SITTING IN my office, reading a threatening letter.

  It was convoluted, opaque, and had been addressed to Glenda. It came from Jerry Wirtman. It was called a red herring, the first open move in the desperate game called Conversion, in which rental apartments become co-ops and condos.

  Not that I wasn’t forewarned.

  It crept up Columbus Avenue from the Seventies. A few years ago, people were afraid to walk there after dark. Now the evening streets are impassable, clogged with pedestrians wearing New Jersey license plates, wandering from bar to bar, boutique to café to bootery, hoping sophistication will strike.

  I knew they were getting close when the apparently nameless Cubano-Chinese joint down the block closed and reopened as a Mexican restaurant named Jalapeño Baby. Comidas China sounds baroque, but in the ethno-food code of New York it is bargain chow, found only in neighborhoods where people still earn money the old-fashioned way—physical labor, welfare, and a soupçon of street crime. For reasons unknown, the cuisine created by desperate poverty in rural Mexico—rice with yesterday’s beans refried and served on unleavened corn muffins—fetches Amex Gold Card prices in Manhattan. Margaritas come in three sizes, all described with synonyms of “large,” each with a brief paragraph outlining the florid machismo of those brokerage trainees who dare to drink them. The price of the least large is at least $5.95. Only people who accrue capital by donning ties, fast-tracking, networking, and managing each other’s mutual funds spend that way on a drink that is 95 percent recycled water.

  Those same people go into heat over the concept of property. Owning cues their estrogen cycles.

  There had been more specific signals.

  Wirtman made no effort to replace the tenants in 12C. It wasn’t the only apartment in the building left empty. He was warehousing.

  Conversion requires 15 percent of the tenants to agree to a non-eviction plan and 5 percent or more to an eviction plan. The tenants have an automatic first option on their own apartments. To get that vote of approval, the landlord offers an “insider” price, usually 50 percent to 75 percent of the market value. The tenants, should they sell immediately after they buy, participate in the windfall. The average price of a Manhattan condo is $100,000 per room. The landlord, therefore, makes an extra profit of $25,000 to $50,000 per room on the apartments he has warehoused.

  I was not looking forward to tenant meetings, dealing with real estate lawyers, or filing applications with bankers. And just the idea of a mortgage made my feet feel like they were set in concrete.

  When the phone rang, I was delighted to toss the red herring into the bottom drawer, face down.

  It was my congressman, John Straightman, calling. I wondered what wild, wonderful, wacky new form of trouble he had gotten himself into. I should have expected the call. It had been at least a year since he had been caught with a no-no up his nose or his penis up a no-no.

  His penthouse windows, high and wide, faced east, Con Ed smokestacks straight ahead, bridges to the left, bridges to the right, the oily gray river beneath. The interior was Art Deco, soft gray over all, highlights in back-beat pink and tropic-vice blue.

  He offered a drink. I turned it down.

  “And none of that other stuff,” he said with a wink. “We’re all clean these days.” He made us cappuccino from his brand-new cappuccino machine. He’d bought it for a mere million lire while he’d been in Italy on a NATO junket. Then he asked me what I thought of him.

  The first time I’d worked for John Straightman was when a coke dealer who supplied John offered to give Straightman to the D.A. as part of a plea bargain. I got the congressman out of that completely clean. The second time, he had been caught with two thirteen-year-old girls sucking his lolly. I was able to establish that both teenyboppers’ moms had been peddling their kiddies for over two years. That took the sting out of things. The D.A. then accepted a plea bargain from five felony counts down to one class A mis. And when John-boy said to the judge, “I’m sick, I’m sick; remand me to a shrink,” the judge agreed.

  I said, “Ahh,” lifted my coffee to my face as a stall, burned my tongue, coughed, and got steamed milk up my nose.

  “You know more about the worst of me than anyone else,” he announced, answering the question himself. Which was much better manners. “You know my dark side. It is problematic. Excessive. Self-indulgent. You know that. And I admit it; I do. I admit it. That, by the way, is the first and, my doctor says, the most important step in my therapy.”

  It sounded like one of Wayne’s jokes. How many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb? Only one. But the bulb has to want to change. I said, “That’s good, John.”

  “I draw a clear and distinct line between my private life and my public life. You can say what you damn well please about my private life, but when it comes to my public duty, my record is impeccable. I am a representative of the people. What I do in Congress, I do for them. … ” He gestured vaguely out the window, to the little people so far below, somewhere out there in the boroughs where such live. “The world recognizes the difference. Look at JFK and Bobby. Look to old Ben Franklin, Tony. Just look to Ben Franklin.”

  My congressman crossed the room to an Art Deco desk. It unfolded like a magician’s trick to become a bar, complete with sterling gewgaws—stirrers, shakers, whatnots—and a rich selection of beverages. It was a genuine Prohibition piece, from the good old days when hypocrisy was stylish and handcrafted.

  “Drink?” he asked again.

  “No, thanks,” I said.

  “Are you political?” he asked.

  “Not especially,” I said.

  “Let me tell you a story. I’m on the Labor Committee. Back in 1969, we passed the Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act. It worked. Every year since ’69, the number of deaths in the mines has gone down. Right up through 1980. Then Reagan came in. He appointed administrators whose purpose was to get government off the backs of business. They couldn’t change the law, so they decided just to enforce it less. For the first time in eleven years, more men died in the mines than the year before. It went up from 133 to 153.

  “That’s twenty men. Good men, bad men, who knows, but twenty more were dead. For no other reason than they went to work in the morning to pay the rent and put dinner on the table.

  “For some people, the politics of 1984 are li
fe and death. Life and death.

  “The Reagan administration wants to go backwards. That’s no secret. That’s what he promised in his campaign. But what does that mean? Does it mean a white picket fence and an apple tree in every yard? Back to a Jimmy Stewart movie? Or to some darker past? Say, back to when we really had rich and poor. When women knew their place. And so did the darkies.

  “Not a joke. Every Justice Department since Ike has gone to court to help end the division of this country into two races. Not these guys. This Justice Department has appeared in court only to oppose integration.”

  “Slow down, John,” I said. “I don’t even vote in your district.”

  “Patience, Tony, patience. You have to see this in context. You have to get the big picture. … You been paying your taxes?”

  “As little as possible,” I said.

  “You rich?” A rhetorical question. “Too bad. If you were rich, the ’82 tax cuts would have been real nice. I’m talking about the $100,000 range. They saved $3,300. But somebody on payroll, making ten grand, all they saved was $52.

  “We’re talking about government by the rich, for the rich, and screw the working stiff. The strange part is, the working stiffs love him for it.”

  “Stop,” I said. “Tell me, John, what you want from me.”

  He went back to the bar. “Here is the problem. We, the Democrats, liberals, whatever, we’ve been knocked on our ass. It’s not issues and it’s not rational. He hurts people, they get up and say, ‘Thank you.’ The bankruptcy rate has tripled under Reagan. That’s mostly small businesses. Result? According to our polls, the small businessman gives Reagan an approval rating around sixty-eight percent, plus or minus two points. Out in the Midwest we have high, chronic unemployment. Courtesy of Reaganomics. Then he cuts back on unemployment benefits. Result? Unemployed white males, union members, give Reagan a fifty-four percent approval rating.

  “Somehow, in a way we can’t yet get hold of, Ronald Reagan has captured the high ground. Of image. Of the media. He’s even stolen Roosevelt and Kennedy, our heroes. Plus they have a lot more money than we do. So how do we stop him?