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

by Beinhart, Larry

  “You gentlemen,” Gunderson said, “will excuse me.” He had no intention of being present for that.

  “I won’t,” I said. My voice came from somewhere through the numbness around my mouth. I knew I was doing what I shouldn’t be doing, but the silence wouldn’t hold.

  “Remember what I said, Tony,” Straightman said.

  “Fuck off, John,” I snapped.

  Gunderson turned his back and began to move toward the door. I stepped around in front of him, blocking his way.

  There is sin and evil in the world and we are enjoined by Scripture and the Lord Jesus to oppose it with all our might.

  RONALD REAGAN

  Gerstein got up as if he thought it was necessary to restrain me. Straightman swallowed some Scotch. My old professor looked irritated.

  “I don’t think there’s a deal.” I said. “I think there’s a triple murder by arson in Brooklyn. I think there’s uncounted people pushed around, lost their homes, got ripped off, by you. I think you tore up neighborhoods and made back-door deals and fucked up people’s lives, so you could make a nickel. I think it’s time for you to stand up and face that. It’s time for the world to see what you are.”

  He was good. And more in control than I was. Maybe because he was getting what he wanted and I was the one having the ground cut out from under me. He stood still and unflinching and looked at me with his face frozen.

  “Tony … come on, Tony. You’re gonna get the money,” Straightman said, tugging on my arm.

  I pulled my arm from his grasp, then shoved him away. He bumped into the wall and spilled his drink.

  Gunderson thought before he spoke. “I don’t think there is a need to explain myself to you, and I don’t think my conduct needs any defense. But in the interest of clarity, I will address myself to a few points.

  “In the first place, there is hardly anything immoral in making a profit. This is America. Not Communist Russia. The business of America is business. Building and maintaining housing is an extremely useful and socially valuable task. We in America do that better than anyone in the world. What our people consider inferior housing would be palatial for someone from a Third World country. There would be riots in the streets if middle-income housing in New York even resembled a Moscow apartment. People of your mentality may consider calling someone a landlord a form of insult. I don’t. It is something I am rightly proud of.

  “As to these charges. You have assembled a group of coincidences. I, too, wish that accidents didn’t happen. But they do.

  “You have tied them together with conjecture and the statements of two of the most unreliable witnesses that it has ever been my misfortune to hear of. Mr. McGarrity, as his confession makes clear, suffers from religious mania. Mrs. Murphy is an elderly widow whose testimony meanders and wanders. She clearly relishes the fact that anybody is willing to listen to her. I suspect that she would say anything, simply to be listened to.

  “I think it is time for you to step back and look at your material objectively. The congressman and Mr. Gerstein understand that already. You may pursue it at great cost and embarrassment to all parties, including yourself. I will sue for libel. That is not an idle threat or, I point out, an illegal or a criminal one.

  “You may think that the suit is unfair. But that will not prevent it from costing you every nickel you have in legal fees to defend it. An onerous burden on top of the legal fees you must already be committed to in order to face your own tax audit.”

  “You son of a bitch,” I said. “Shit like that is not going to stop me.”

  “Slow down, Tony,” Gerstein said. “Say what you have to say, if you like, but restrain yourself. Control yourself.”

  “Shove it,” I said to him. “I’m going to take you down,” I said to Gunderson.

  “You won’t succeed,” the attorney general said. “And it would be regrettable for everyone if you made the attempt. I really do”—he looked at his watch—“have to go.”

  He stepped around me. At the door, he turned and looked at Straightman. With a faint trace of a sneer, he said, “I assume you can cope with your own operative.” Then he left.

  “Let’s sit down and talk this through,” Gerstein said.

  “No,” I said. “There’s nothing to talk about. You paid me to do something, and it wasn’t this. Now I’m gonna go and do what you paid me to do. I’m going to go to the D.A. and put that bastard away.”

  “Tony,” Straightman said, “if it’s the hundred grand you’re worried about, you got it. You got it.”

  “You’re damn right I do. I’m gonna have an indictment by October.”

  “Tony, you are so impatient, so rash, so full of enthusiasm,” Ulbrecht said. “You must be more exacting. More research before you conclude.”

  “Hey, Flawless,” I said, “I’ve done my research.” I waved my report at him.

  “Listen to your old professor,” he said. “McGarrity will not testify.”

  “McGarrity will testify. Under subpoena if necessary and with the prompting of God and his conscience.”

  “Call him up, Tony, dial his phone. There will be no answer.”

  “What did you do, have him hit too? Like Scorcese and Calabrese?”

  “No. He is alive. Comatose but alive. Tubes—they do things with tubes and monitors. I think I have here … ” He fumbled through several pockets, pulling out scraps of paper and bits of this and that. “Ah, yes. The telephone number of the hospital.”

  I took the number and dialed.

  “Ask about McDonald, not McGarrity,” Ulbrecht said.

  I asked for Rolf McDonald. They told me that unfortunately Mr. McDonald couldn’t answer the phone. Was he comatose? Yes, he was. What was his prognosis? He was stable. I hung up the phone.

  “What did you do to him?” I asked. “Come on, Flawless, what did Gunderson have done to him?”

  “Tony, I swear to you, nothing. It happened two days ago. After you left Faith, McGarrity’s blood pressure—he had high blood pressure, you know—started rising and he complained of headaches. As a true believer, he did not seek medical advice. He went to one of Reverend Parker’s healing services. McGarrity proceeded to the altar. The reverend proceeded with this laying on of hands—a very interesting phenomenon; perhaps you would like to do a paper on it?—The reverend raised his eyes to the ceiling and commanded, ‘Heal! Heal!’ McGarrity convulsed, his eyes rolled into the back of his head, and he had a massive cerebral accident.

  “Gunderson had nothing to do with it. Ten million people saw it happen, broadcast live on the Christian Broadcasting Network.”

  “Hey, Tony,” Straightman said. “We won. Relax and enjoy it. You get rich, I stay out of the slam.”

  “Not a chance, John. I don’t buy into this.”

  “Jesus Christ, Tony,” Straightman said, on the verge of a complete breakdown. “Dammit, I don’t want to go to prison. That’s all. I just don’t want to go to prison.”

  “You made a major error,” Stanislaw said to Straightman. “It is so difficult, and very expensive, to make one man betray himself.”

  “I don’t want to go to prison,” Straightman said. “Would you?”

  “It is always possible to get one out of a group to betray the others,” Flawless Slawless lectured the congressman. “But to rely on one man to turn on himself, and to ask him to do it when he is looking in the mirror … Bah! What you should have done … it’s academic, but what you should have done was hire Mr. Cassella for exactly what you wanted him to do. To get information with which you could … should I say blackmail or should I say barter? Cassella would have found his own rationalization. For the money. For the game. Professionalism. But instead you have a problem. And it is a big problem. Because Mr. Cassella is going to do his very, very best to destroy the attorney general. And if Mr. Gunderson goes, of course you go also.

  “But I get carried away with this urge to teach and enlighten. I was always like that in class, wasn’t I, Tony?”


  “Yeah, you were flawless, Slawless.”

  “Come on, Tony,” Straightman said, pleading. Then he twitched and ran to the bathroom. He’d needed a deal, had his deal, lost his deal. Down, up, down, the world crashes on.

  “You really should reconsider, Tony,” Gerstein said. “What can we do to satisfy you here, congruent with arranging things to everyone’s satisfaction?”

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “You are such a child,” Ulbrecht said. “An absolute child. It is time for you to step back from your obsessions and your ego and your adolescent theatrics and look at the situation objectively.

  “On the one side you have your pride. Ego. Pride is nothing but ego. Yes, you can embarrass Gunderson. What will that do? He has been embarrassed before. And survived. Will it embarrass Mr. Reagan? Nothing embarrasses Mr. Reagan. Will it affect the election? Not according to our polls.

  “This is what it will be,” Ulbrecht continued. “Your client will go to jail. Perhaps you, too, will go to jail. Yes, the IRS will press its suit. Nothing personal. But we both know that to be a small businessman is to be vulnerable about taxes.”

  “I’ll fight it,” I said.

  “Perhaps you will. Even with success … ” he said. “At what cost? Will you sell your newly acquired condominium—or is it a co-op? these things confuse me—to pay your legal fees? I suggest that you will have to. How will your business fare as you spend all your time defending yourself? You’re a man with family responsibilities.

  “Add to that criminal charges, minor ones—destruction of property, reckless discharge of a firearm—in Faith.”

  If that was all he was talking about, it meant that they hadn’t hooked me up with the slaughter in Freeport. Not that I was guilty of anything there, but it was an unholy mess. That could really cost me. “Garbage charges, and you know it,” I said.

  “Suppose someone connects you to the death of Francis Fellaco and Federico Ventana in Freeport? Garbage also. I know it. You know it. Everyone knows it. But just as it has cost Mr. Straightman many dollars to stay out of jail, and it has cost Mr. Gunderson many dollars to stay out of jail, it will be very expensive for you to refute these garbage charges. The difference is that Gunderson and Straightman can afford lawyers, private detectives, and long court battles. You cannot.

  “On the other hand,” Ulbrecht said, “you can win.”

  “That’s right,” I said.

  “The way you win,” Ulbrecht said, “is by letting go. First you get your hundred thousand dollars.”

  “Immediately,” Straightman said.

  “Then the IRS will drop this audit. Then you can concentrate on all the success that is coming your way. Mr. Straightman and Mr. Gerstein can’t help but be impressed by your work. I am certain more investigations and new clients will absolutely flow from them. We, too, are impressed. There are people in this government who do have use for outside agents. Very, very lucrative work. I’m certain some of that would flow your way. Not as a bribe. Not as quid pro quo. Not at all. Because people are impressed with your talent. And after all, isn’t that why you really, in your heart, went all out on this? To prove yourself. To let people see just how good you are.”

  “You gotta listen to him,” Straightman said. “He’s telling it like it is.”

  “Fuck you, Straightman,” I said.

  “I guess I deserve that,” the congressman said, shaking his head. “But—”

  “Stifle yourself, John,” Ulbrecht snapped. “You’ve made an ass of yourself on this from the beginning. Don’t continue.

  “As I was saying, Tony, we are all impressed. Including myself. I don’t know if the idea of working abroad interests you. But if it does, I can arrange that for you. When this is all over and you’ve taken a vacation or whatever, we could do some fascinating things. Have you traveled much?”

  “I’ve been to Paris,” I said.

  “America is a wonderful place,” he said, “but there is a big world out there. The Middle East, still as dramatic as it was in the Middle Ages. Asia, so different, utterly fascinating. That’s another subject, and I could lecture for hours, weeks, on it.”

  “Are you done?” I asked.

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “Goodbye,” I said, “and good luck.”

  They all started trying to talk to me at once. Flawless Slawless cut through all of them with his “Stifle it, people.”

  “So,” he said, “you are going to go ahead.”

  “If the D.A. won’t play, TV will.”

  “I’m not going to fight you about this. You will make up your own mind, I understand that. I am going to ask one thing from you. Only that you not be rash and adolescent. That you reserve your decision for twenty-four hours. Sleep on it.”

  “I’m not going to change my mind,” I said.

  “Fine,” he said.

  “What’s going to happen to me on my way home? Is that it? You want time to arrange for me to … disappear?”

  “No one will harm you.” He sighed, as if I were being paranoid.

  “You tell that to Scorcese and Calabrese?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. As far as we can determine, those were exactly what they appeared to be. The Scorcese boy was killed because Fellaco and Ventana were stupid. Calabrese was killed because the Prozzini people thought he was going to talk about them. That is as much as we know. You may know more. But I don’t believe that Gunderson had anything to do with it.

  “So will you wait until tomorrow to tell us all what you are going to do? You cannot act on the decision until then, in any case.”

  “Yeah, why not?”

  41.

  Shaggy Dog Story

  The real crisis we face today is a sþiritual one; at root, it is a test of moral will and faith.

  Ronald Reagan

  I REFUSED TO SAY much when I got home. Glenda started talking about how I didn’t open up and share. I said that was an old record and we’d better find a new one if we were going to keep on keeping on. It was late anyway, and there wasn’t enough zest in the conflict to keep either of us from feeling the gravity against our bones. So we just went to sleep.

  I was up with the light. Needing to think. Not what I was going to do, just how. I was going to bring Gunderson down, the question was how to survive the process. I slipped into jeans and a sweatshirt and walked down to the office in the ambiguous light of a New York morning.

  The office door was open. It was clear that it had been broken in with a crowbar. Mario was dead.

  A cursory examination showed that he’d been shot three times. Once in the throat. Twice in the chest. There was a lot of blood on the rug. It was a cheap rug and it was time for a new one, probably. Paper was everywhere. The files were open. They hadn’t gotten into the big old safe, where I keep the cameras, sound gear, and such. It didn’t look like they’d even tried. I went to the Gunderson file. Most of it was gone. Including the original of McGarrity’s confession.

  I didn’t examine much else. I called the police. Not that I expected them to do anything. Just for the record and the insurance and to ask them how one gets rid of a dead dog.

  It wasn’t like we lived in the suburbs or something and could have a doggie funeral in the backyard. There had to be laws about burial ceremonies in Central Park.

  They suggested that I call the ASPCA. Or the Sanitation Department. They had no interest in fingerprinting or photographing the room. So I did it. Numbly and halfheartedly. I wanted to remove Mario before Naomi arrived. It seemed to be the right thing to do.

  I called the ASPCA. Their facility was out on Linden Boulevard in Brooklyn. They don’t pick up. I called the Sanitation Department. They don’t answer. I realized that veterinarians must have facilities for this situation. I dragged out the yellow pages. Veterinarians are listed only alphabetically, not by location. I had to read all the listings to find the nearest one. It was on Thirty-sixth Street between Eighth and Ninth avenues.

  I tried picking Mario up
in my arms. Blood, bits of flesh, and hair came off his body. He was awkward to carry, and it didn’t seem right to walk through the streets with a dead dog in my arms. A large dead dog. I went down to the basement and got a plastic garbage bag from the super. Mario fit in it OK, and I put him over my shoulder and proceeded to walk to the vet’s.

  When I got there, I peeked in. There was a waiting room. Must’ve been pet flu season or something, because it was full. I thought it would be tasteless to parade death in front of the assembled animal lovers, who were certainly, at that very moment, in a state of anxiety about the fate of their own beloved beasts. I tied the top of the garbage bag and set it down gently outside the door. Then I went in. The receptionist was behind a plastic shield, with a small hole for speaking and a larger one for paying.

  “I have a dead dog outside,” I said in hushed, mortician’s tones. “Do you have facilities to handle that?”

  “Yes, we do. Bring the departed in and go right to the back.”

  I went and hefted Mario back up on my shoulder. The receptionist held the inner door open for me and I walked quickly but quietly through. The vet came out from an animal care cubicle and took my burden from me. She hefted it in two hands and said, “About eighty, eighty-five pounds. But let me weigh it.” She took Mario away and came back a moment later. He’d been eighty-five pounds.

  I went to the receptionist’s desk. She was already making out a bill. “That will be three hundred forty dollars,” she said.

  “You’re out of your mind,” I said.

  “It’s four dollars a pound,” she said.

  “By the pound? For what?”

  “We can’t help it. We get charged by the crematorium by the pound.”

  “Crematorium? You’re gonna send a dog to a crematorium?”

  “Yes, sir. Would you be interested in an urn? For the ashes.”

  “Three hundred and forty dollars?” I said.

  “Without the urn,” she said.