Condemned

by John Nicholas Iannuzzi

  “Red, you weren’t responsible for Hettie turning out the way she did,” said Sandro, gazing across the table at Red. “Inside, she was already prone to the stuff, an accident waiting to happen.”

  “Yeah, but I happen to be the guy who woke it up in her. I didn’t help any.”

  “It would have happened anyway, with you or without you. You could give some people all the alcohol or narcotics you want, and they will definitely not get hooked. Maybe they’d just take a dab, as you say, just to figure out what it was about. But they will just not be into it. But there are others, like this Hettie, they’re gone the minute they get their first contact high.”

  “That’s what happened, Sandro. I couldn’t stop her after she got her first snort of the hard stuff. I’m the way you described. I do it occasionally, just like that. Do, if I want, don’t, if I don’t. But Hettie! I couldn’t stop her no matter what I tried. I saw what she was getting like, so I’d try to make it scarce, say that there wasn’t any around, that I couldn’t get any. Hell, that’s when me and the boys were really getting started. We had the stuff piled up in closets. The money, too, like I said. But when I wanted to slow her down, hell, she just went off and got it some place else. That’s how she met her husband.”

  “She has a husband?”

  “Well, I don’t know if she was really married, you know, in a church, or by a preacher or nothing, or if she’s still with the guy. He was another coke head who used to push some stuff on a Hundred Fifty-Ninth Street. We probably sold it to the guy who supplied him, I don’t know. Wherever he was getting it, she would get it from him. She started to hang out with him, and the next thing you know, well, it was sad, really sad. Now that I’ve seen the result of it, it’s sadder yet.”

  “Was she still living in the building?”

  “We moved. My wife and me, we moved to Central Park West and Ninety-Sixth Street. I was into a lot of real estate by then. Things were going good. So we moved. But I was always around the neighborhood. I was always out and around. That was my addiction, Sandro—the action! Staying on top of Harlem,” he said ruefully. “Funny! When you’re young, you think you want to get on top of the world, that you’re the first guy that’s gonna get there. You get older, you realize it’s all a lot of nonsense, people been doing the same things since they lived in caves. When you get on top, there’s nothin’ up there. Women realize it better than men. My wife did. That’s why she left me. Found out I was up to my old tricks. Told me to give it up, get my act together. Hell, I didn’t listen. Didn’t listen, Sandro.”

  “And Hettie. What happened to her?”

  “Her old lady became a fall-down drunk, turning cheap tricks, taking her tricks home, you know? And the bums she brought home weren’t the nicest people in the world. They probably tried to hit on the kid, too. Poor child was beat from one end of life to the other. Came to me once in the street,” Red recalled, leaning back in his chair, balancing it on its back legs. “Bruise on her eye, swolled shut. ‘What happened to you?’ I asked her.

  “She told me this dirt bag, this Arnold Murchison, I always remember that little dog’s name, the guy she took up with, beat her up. Lord! I looked at this lovely little girl, or what used to be a lovely little girl, nice face, nice body, now she was all skinny, dirty, swolled up. Man, I got so damn mad, I drove past where this Murchison piece of nothing used to hang out. I didn’t send nobody for him, mind? I went myself. I grabbed his skinny little neck, put him up against a wall, and I told him I would kill him if he ever lay a hand on that girl again. I don’t know why I did that. She wasn’t my girl. I was just furious that somebody would do that to a young girl.” Red paused, pensive. “Now that I think about it, I was probably mad at myself for starting her on that road, and I was taking my anger out on Murchison.”

  “What happened after that?”

  “Hettie just kind of drifted out of the neighborhood, out of sight, out of mind. Didn’t see her again ’till her picture was in the papers.” Red shook his head again, thinking or something in the distant past. “Reed!” he exclaimed suddenly.

  “What’s ‘Reed’?”

  “The name, the name the father told me the son used when he went to Princeton. His given name was Hugh—everyone in the family had the same initials, H.R.—he was Hugh Rouse. His father told me he changed to Hugh Anthony Reed. That’s his new name. You look him up. I bet you find the squirt on Park Avenue, passing for white. Bet you a bottle of bourbon.”

  Sandro made another note.

  “Poor Li’l Bit,” said Red sadly. “Such a sad little creature. Sandro, I want you to take care of her case. You tell me how much you need, I’ll take care of whatever it is.”

  “I’ve already started.”

  “Least I could do. Don’t say nothin’ in front of Jessye about this.”

  “No problem, Red. We have to start thinking about you now. Your situation isn’t too great either.”

  “This,” Red looked around. “This is where the trial was leading all along. In the last years, I did everything I could to stay away from things, to make sure my face and my fingerprints weren’t on any activity. And yet …” He shrugged. “Water over the dam. You know why they’re doing this, putting me in the Can at this time, don’t you, Sandro?”

  “Why?”

  “They want to put a price on my head. That’s what they’re doing. They want to make it look like I’m a rat. The whole protective custody thing is an obvious phony. They want to force me into their camp by making it seem to everybody on the outside as if I’m in here because I’m helping them. Hell! Never! I’m too much of a man to fold my tail between my legs like that.”

  “I think you’re right about them wanting to make it seem like you’re cooperating. Make you a leper.”

  “This’ll be the end of my line, Sandro,” he said pensively. “Here I was out of the business, too. I didn’t have anything to do with it for quite a while. I was even planning to go away, live someplace else with Miss Henry. She’s not one of my chicks, Sandro. She is my woman. We were planning to go down to Santa Margarita, you know, off the coast of Venezuela, get married, leave all this life to the others who want to rassle for it. It’s not for me, not anymore. But I guess you can’t back away from what was, from your past. That’s what hit the fan, Sandro, the old things—and here I am.” He shrugged. “Damn. Just another couple of days before the end of the trial. But the writing is already on the wall. I’d like you to come back into the case, see if you can help me with the sentence, the appeal.”

  “Of course.”

  “Good. We might as well call Jessye back in. Being a paralegal, she can come in and visit with me, stay with me, ’til …” Red looked off into the distance, but didn’t seem to see anything out there.

  125th Street, Harlem : June 28, 1996 : 4:15 P.M.

  The telephone on Maurice Billups’s desk sounded. Billups—light-skinned, with a thin moustache, a most successful black businessman—seated behind the desk, pushed a button on the phone.

  “Representative Carelton is here to see you,” Billups’s secretary said over the intercom.

  “Oh, fine. Send him in.”

  Billups had been the County Clerk of New York County (Manhattan) for many years in the late sixties, early seventies. He ran and was beaten in the Democratic Mayoral Primary several years back. Remaining a political force in black Democratic politics, Billups headed a group which opened a chain of grocery stores concentrated in black neighborhoods, and, from there, invested in a variety of successful black business ventures.

  Carelton entered quickly, a dark look on his face. “You hear the news?” he said as soon as he shut the door.

  “Well, hello yourself, Billy. What news is that?”

  William Archibald Carelton, also light-skinned, also handsome, taller than Billups, had been a Member of the House of Representatives since 1989. He and Billups were political allies, the pointmen for the Harlem Boys, the nucleus of political power in the black community for more yea
rs than most could remember.

  “About Galiber.”

  “Did I hear what about Galiber?” said Billups.

  “Remember, the Mayor was going to appoint our Dave Dinkins to be his Third Deputy Mayor until the news people found out that Dave didn’t file income taxes for four years?”

  “Of course I remember,” said Billups. “Unfortunately.”

  “Well, the Mayor is going to announce that he’s selected Joe Galiber for the Deputy Mayor post instead.”

  “You’re kidding? The Mayor’s going to appoint Galiber? Deputy Mayor? Without talking to us? When did this happen?”

  “Didn’t. Not yet. I heard it through the grapevine from one of my contacts at City Hall. It hasn’t even been announced yet. But, it’s coming down, maybe tomorrow morning, at least the announcement. He still has to go through Investigations with Scopetta and the review process before being sworn in.”

  Billups frowned, glancing over Carelton’s head, out the window. “Joe’s always been a good guy,” said Billups. “Hell, we all know each other for years.… Joe Galiber being nominated for Third Deputy Mayor? Mmmm, that’s unfortunate, I’d say.”

  “To say the least,” said Carelton. “I don’t have anything against Joe, either. But he’s not the guy we want sitting in City Hall, making a reputation for himself, with a mayoralty coming up soon, and the present Mayor not running again.”

  “I’m with you, Billy.”

  “No more vodka?” said Carelton. He had opened a small cabinet on the side of Billups’s office.

  “We finished it last night,” said Billups. “My secretary’s supposed to pick up a bottle today. Have a scotch, if you’d like.”

  “Can’t drink scotch. Walk around smelling like a bar rag.”

  “This’d push Galiber into the catbird’s seat instead of Dave,” said Billups, still pensive. “Just where we don’t want him to be. He’d be the highest ranking black politician in the City. Joe may always have been a good Joe, but he’s never been our Joe.”

  “Not by a long shot,” said Carelton. “He’s always been a little cocky, independent. Out there for himself. Even when he was Captain of the City College Cinderella basketball team, remember? He had all the girls; wouldn’t bother with us non-athletic clumsy types. Now he goes off on his own, getting himself a shelf full of publicity with legislation to legalize drugs, and such. Doesn’t bother with us, doesn’t ask us what we think. Never been a team player—politically. Always just about Joe Galiber. If he were to get the Deputy Mayor slot, it’d be the same. He’d be right in line to run for Mayor. And he’d shut us out with a few crumbs in Sanitation or the Building Department and the like.”

  “We all’d be outside lookin’ in,” said Billups. “Way outside. Mmm mmm. What do you think we ought do, Billy?”

  “Something. But what?”

  “Something to shit-can the appointment, that’s for sure,” said Billups.

  “That’s a given. But what exactly?” said Carelton. “If the Mayor cared about our input, he would have asked for it before doing this. Not having even given us a heads-up, going to him now to say we don’t like the move would be bringing coals to New Castle.”

  “We have to go around him, somehow. Make something happen that’d dampen the Mayor’s ardor, so to say,” said Billups.

  “I agree. What?”

  “Girls, money, something,” said Billups, thinking. “Maybe something from his financial reports when he ran in the Primary for Comptroller. What about this bill to legalize drugs? There’s a lot of controversy, maybe negative publicity about that. You know Koch doesn’t have a thick skin. He shies away from negative publicity—’specially when it’s splattering on him. Maybe we could bend some of that publicity in the right direction.”

  “Meaning the wrong direction, as far as Galiber is concerned?”

  “Exactly,” said Billups. “Maybe we can get Scopetta to look into the financials from the Comptroller Primary. Everybody’s always screwing up the reporting. Happens all the time.”

  “We wouldn’t want it to be coming directly from us, Maury. Wouldn’t look right, you know?”

  “True, true. Who could we use?”

  “I know for a fact that the D.E.A. is somewhat bent out of shape about his campaign to legalize drugs,” said Carelton. “I was at a Forum against the drug laws some group of students held at Fordham Law School the other night. I got to talking to this guy, used to be with the C.I.A., now with the D.E.A., a Supervisor at Twenty Six Federal. He was there with his boss who flew in from Washington; the boss was on the panel. The guy—the one from New York—is moaning and groaning that they have enough trouble on their hands with the proliferation of drugs, and appropriations lucky to be hanging by a thread, without somebody like Judge Sweet, who’s come down against the drug laws, or Galiber, coming in with a bill looking to legalize drugs. I have the guy’s card in my pocket,” said Carelton, fishing into one of his jacket pockets. “Here it is. Supervisor Michael O. Becker.”

  “This guy being bent out of shape is all well and good, but if the D.E.A. had anything against Galiber, they’d have done something about it already, wouldn’t they?” asked Billups.

  “Maybe we could stir something up for them to use,” said Carelton. “Not here in Harlem, of course; don’t want it to be too obvious. Maybe over in the Bronx.”

  “The logical place. Galiber lives in the Bronx, his Senate seat’s out of the Bronx. That’d be the appropriate locale for such a thing—maybe there’s something we can get Merola interested in. He’s always been a team player.”

  Mario Merola was the District Attorney of Bronx County, a Democrat who had served in that post for more than twelve years.

  “Merola would be perfect,” said Carelton. “This way it wouldn’t be coming from us. Not even from a black man.”

  “Beautiful,” said Billups, “but what?”

  “I don’t know. Income tax evasion? Campaign contributions, like you said. Running around with girls? Mopery?”

  “Be serious. And don’t get crazy,” said Billups. “Leave girls out of it. None of us pots want to call the kettle black.” He laughed at his own cleverness. “Now look’a’here. Suppose we uncovered something—something real, of course—I don’t mean cook up some phony thing, you know?”

  “Of course not,” said Carelton.

  “If we had some information about some impropriety, something, maybe campaign contributions that weren’t kosher, and you gave it to your D.E.A. man, that Becker you mentioned, who, in turn, would bring it over to Merola, well, hell, there’s no way that could be traced back to us. A little immediate adverse publicity, even if it’s a one or two shot deal, would slow this whole thing about Galiber being Deputy Mayor down, maybe out, you get me?”

  “The Mayor wouldn’t make the appointment if there was some investigation going. The negative publicity would leave a bad taste in His Honor’s mealy mouth,” said Carelton.

  “And we all could make a hew and cry about the Man making phony charges to discriminate against blacks,” said Billups. “We’d be good guys on Galiber’s side for the community, and nobody’d be the wiser.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” said Carelton.

  “What are we doing for a front page story this morning, gentlemen?” Ed Barquette said to the Associate Editors ranged around the outside of the Copy Desk. He was tilted back in his swivel chair, the sleeves of his blue button-down shirt rolled back to his forearms.

  “You want to run this accident story from the Long Island Expressway? Hell of a picture,” said Seymour Tucker, picking up a picture of a man draped over the top of the open driver’s door of a small car that had been T-Boned by a tractor trailer.

  Barquette grimaced. “We had an accident on the front of this morning’s edition, didn’t we?”

  Tucker shrugged and nodded agreement.

  “Don’t start that shrugging shit. It’s too early in the morning,” razzed Barquette. The other editors snickered. “Drives me crazy, ever
y day, with that shrugging.”

  “Maybe we could run—”

  “Hold it a second, fellas,” said Barquette, seeing Annie the copy boy standing quietly next to his desk. “What is it, Annie?”

  She bent down to whisper. “That Supervisor from the D.E.A. who came to see you a week or so ago. He’s here again. Said it’ll only take a minute.”

  “Becker?” Annie nodded. “Yeah? Talk it up amongst yourselves for a few minutes, fellas.” Barquette said, rising. “Where is he, Annie?”

  “In your office, Chief.”

  Barquette walked toward his office. As he moved behind Milton Adler, one of the reporters sitting at a desk, he hit him playfully on the left side of the back of his bald head, stepping quickly out of view. Adler twirled, but there was no one there. “Gotcha,” laughed Barquette. He reached his office and went inside. “Hey, Mike,” he greeted Becker.

  “Ed, how’s it going this morning?”

  “It’s not. You’ve got to push it,” Barquette chuckled. “What brings you to my office on a nice day like this?”

  “Something that requires some quick action,” said Becker.

  “What’s that?”

  “The Mayor announced he’s considering the appointment of Joseph L. Galiber as Third Deputy Mayor. I know you know that,” Becker said quickly. “And apparently the Mayor wants to move along with swearing Galiber in right away, before some negative information comes up about him, like what happened with David Dinkins.”

  “Okay.”

  “I understand the Bronx District Attorney, Merola—”

  “Yeah, Mario. Nice guy.”

  “Merola is beginning to look into allegations that there are some discrepancies in Galiber’s reporting of campaign contributions when he was running in the Primary for Comptroller a while back.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Apparently, a report of contributions must be made within a certain period of time, and some research has uncovered that Galiber’s wasn’t filed timely. In addition, some of the donations were made with corporate checks—which is against the election laws. The reason I’m telling you all this is that, as I said, the Mayor is evidently determined to make a quick swearing-in, to side-step the investigation process before it uncovers improprieties.”