Criminal Conversation

by Ed McBain

  She did not know where to look. She would not meet Michael’s eyes. Was it possible he hadn’t recognized the voice on the tape? Was it possible he didn’t realize that the woman performing … ?

  “You ever do this to your husband?”

  “Yes, all the time.”

  “You don’t.”

  “I do. Every night of the week.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “I’m lying.”

  “Jesus, what you do to me!”

  “Whose cock is this?”

  “Yours.”

  “Mine, yes. And I’m going to suck it till you scream.”

  “Sarah …”

  “I want to see you explode! Give it to me!”

  “Oh God, Sarah!”

  “Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes!”

  And another long silence.

  Michael snapped off the machine.

  “We think we know who she is,” he said, and moved to the VCR. Again, the power was already on, a cassette was already in place; Michael simply pressed the PLAY button.

  From the right-hand side of the screen, Sarah saw herself moving into the frame …

  He knows, she thought.

  . . . crossing hurriedly to the blue door on Mott, her back to the, camera …

  Oh God, he knows.

  . . . and then pressing the bell button under the Carter-­Goldsmith Investments nameplate, back still to the camera …

  There was no way that any objective viewer could say for certain that the blonde leaning into the speaker in that shadowed doorway, her face partially hidden, was Sarah Welles. No way that any stranger could possibly identify her as the woman announcing herself beside that blue door. The picture simply wasn’t that good.

  But as she watched herself reaching for the doorknob the instant the buzzer sounded, watched herself breathlessly letting herself in, she knew that anyone who knew her would recognize her in an instant. Michael knew her. Knew the clothes she was wearing, knew the way she moved, the way she walked, knew every nuance. Even with her back to the camera …

  The door closing behind her now.

  The camera lingering on just the door now.

  Outside in the hall, the big clock tolled midnight.

  “Happy Mother’s Day,” Michael said bitterly.

  4: May 10–June 2

  Mollie complained that she didn’t need a babysitter, and besides why were they going out on a Monday night? Mollie was twelve years old, and twelve in the city of New York was considered grown-up, at Hanover Prep, anyway. Michael told her there were lots of bad guys out there, and he would feel happier with Mrs. Henderson in attendance. Secretly, Mollie felt Mrs. Henderson would be the first to pick up her skirts and run out the door if a bad guy came climbing through the window. Michael gently told her they wouldn’t be long.

  “But why are you going out on a Monday?” Mollie whined like a twelve-year-old grown-up.

  Walking beside him on the street now, people everywhere around them, Sarah felt he might kill her. He had left the apartment immediately after their confrontation on Saturday night; she suspected he had spent the night in his office. His anger now was monumental. He walked as if propelled by an inner fury, his jaw set, his eyes refusing to meet hers, his gaze, his head, his entire body, thrusting into the night like a dagger. In a voice she scarcely knew, cold and distant and barely audible, he said, “This man represents everything I hate. Everything I’ve devoted my life to destroying, this man rep—”

  “Yes, Michael, I know that.”

  “Don’t give me that damn impatient …”

  “I didn’t know what he was.”

  “Would it have made a difference?”

  She was silent for several seconds.

  Then she said, “I don’t know.”

  He turned to her at once, as if to strike her, his fist clenched, his arm coming up. She stopped dead on the sidewalk, flinching away from him, saw his contorted face and the anger seething in his eyes a moment before he withdrew his hand, trembling. They were on Lexington Avenue, it was a mild night, the sidewalks were crowded; she felt certain he would have hit her otherwise. He began walking again, faster now. She debated running away from him, back to the apartment. She was afraid to do that, afraid he might chase her, grab her, punch her, she didn’t know what he might do. She no longer knew this man. Her husband. This man.

  “I’d kill him if it were legal,” he said, his voice quivering with the effort to regain control of himself. “I’ll settle for putting him in jail, and getting you out of my life forever.”

  On Saturday night, he’d told her they’d been conducting a surveillance since the beginning of the year …

  The son of a Mafia boss the U.S. Attorney put away for good. We’re certain he’s running the mob now, we’ve just been waiting to get enough for an OCCA conviction.

  Andrew. He’d been talking about Andrew. Andrew was the target of his investigation, Andrew was the son of a Mafia boss in prison, Andrew was himself a gangster.

  We know he’s linked to narcotics and loan-sharking, but we can’t prove it from what he or anyone else has said. We also think he may have ordered a hit or two, but again, no proof …

  She had lain awake all that night, wondering if this was true, knowing it was true, they had tapes. Wanting to call Andrew, wanting to ask him, Is this true, can this be true? But of course it was true.

  “This is the deal,” Michael said. “Plain and simple.” His voice had suddenly changed. It sounded clipped, cold, detached, professional. “If you get me what I need, Mollie never finds out about you. We divorce, we share custody, we live our separate lives. If you don’t cooperate …”

  “I’m not one of your criminals,” she said.

  “If you don’t cooperate, I’ll play those tapes in divorce court, you’ll be declared an unfit mother …”

  “You wouldn’t do that,” she said.

  “. . . you’ll be denied custody …”

  “Listen,” she said, “don’t …”

  “. . . and you’ll never see Mollie a—”

  “. . . threaten me.”

  She was suddenly shaking. My daughter? she thought. You’re threatening me with the loss of my daughter? My Mollie, you son of a bitch? What sort of man … ?

  “This is what I want,” he said. “You …”

  “Don’t offer me any deals!” she said. “I’m not a criminal!”

  “Aren’t you?” he asked.

  And, of course, she was. Moreover, she had made the criminal’s unforgivable error. She had been caught. He had her cold.

  “I don’t care how you do this,” he said, “and I wouldn’t presume to advise you. That’s entirely your business.” From the way he said those words, so slowly and carefully, she knew at once that he was somehow covering himself, a skilled lawyer protecting himself against some future allegation that might come his way. “My business is putting Faviola in jail,” he said. “I want you to get him to talk, that’s all.” She noticed again that he did not suggest—not even by innuendo—how she should get him to talk. It was as if, for the record at least, he was wiping out all knowledge of her infidelity, completely forgetting that she’d already made love to this man, and dismissing the possibility, for the record at least, that in order to elicit further information, she might have to make love to him again. Even here in the open air, where no one could possibly overhear them, he was unwilling to mention that sex was in fact the basic element in this transaction, unwilling even to suggest that in order to encourage conversation about criminal matters, Sarah would have to engage in criminal conversation of quite another sort. There had to be a reason for this, and she wondered what it was. “Get him to describe everything in detail,” Michael was saying now. “Get him to describe all the wonderful things he’s involved in.”

  “I don’t k
now if I can do that,” she said.

  “Oh, I think you can do it, Sarah.” Spitting out her name as if it were something vile on his tongue. “I think you’d better do it, Sarah. Unless you want your daughter to learn what kind of woman you are.”

  “Don’t threaten me!” she said again, louder this time, and turned to him with her fists clenched, ready to kill him if he told her one more time that he would use Mollie to …

  “Oh?” he said, and raised an eyebrow.

  They stood rooted to the sidewalk, both of them silent and staring, people rushing by heedless in this city of strangers, Sarah trembling, Michael looking down at her the way he must have looked at countless criminals in his office, a smug, superior look on his face, knowing he had her, knowing she was trapped. A faint angry smile flickered momentarily on his mouth and in his eyes. Then he turned away and began walking again, secure in the knowledge that she would follow him. Defeated, she fell into step beside him, trying to match his longer strides, struggling to keep up.

  He told her exactly the sort of information he wanted her to elicit from her boyfriend. He kept calling Andrew her “boyfriend.” Each time he used the word it made whatever she’d shared with him sound shoddy and cheap. Her boyfriend. Was that all it came down to in the end? Was Andrew merely a boyfriend? And was she now to do whatever her husband asked of her in order to keep the cheap and shoddy, sordid and shameful truth from her daughter? She was wondering what sort of man could even make such a threat. For that matter, what sort of man would never once suggest that perhaps this marriage might still work. Not even to suggest it? Not even to say I love you, Sarah, I’ll forgive you, help me do this thing and I’ll forgive you? No. The opposite instead. Help me do this thing or I’ll …

  It suddenly occurred to her that the detectives had heard everything he’d heard, seen everything he’d seen. Even if she agreed to do what he wanted, the detectives already knew; her daughter would still be vulnerable to …

  “The detectives,” she said.

  “What about them?”

  “They know. They heard the tapes …”

  “They don’t know who you are. There are millions of Sarahs in this city.”

  “Didn’t they see the video?”

  “All they saw was an unidentifiable blonde going in. And they already knew Faviola’s whore was a blonde.”

  “Please,” she said.

  “Lovely person you turned out to be,” he said. “You must be very proud of yourself.”

  “State of the art,” Bobby Triani was saying. “The phones do everything but vacuum the floor. Thanks,” he said to the waitress, and looked her over as she left the table. Top to bottom. Didn’t miss a thing she was showing, and she was showing a lot.

  It was late Tuesday afternoon, the eleventh of May, a bright sunny day. They were sitting at a sidewalk table outside a little pasticceria on Mulberry Street, eating cannoli and drinking cappuccino. Bobby had suggested the place. Andrew suspected he’d been here before. He also suspected he’d returned, because of the waitress. He wondered if he should give his underboss a friendly little warning. Keep your eyes off the legs and the tits, Bobby, and keep your hands in your pockets.

  “Lenny’s kid put the phones in for me,” Bobby was saying, his eyes moving to the espresso machine, where the waitress was now filling several small cups. “Lenny Campagnia?”

  “Yeah?”

  “His kid works for AT&T, he gets a break on the equipment, you know?” Bobby said, and winked. “You want me to send him around the office?”

  “What for?” Andrew said.

  “Fix your phones,” Bobby said, still ogling the waitress.

  “There’s nothing wrong with my phones,” Andrew said.

  “Put in new ones,” Bobby said, and shrugged. “You’d be surprised, the stuff these phones can do nowadays. He gets a good break on the equipment,” Bobby said, and winked again. “Anyway, the office, it’s a business expense, am I right? I had him go to La Luna, you know? On Fifty-Eighth? He put in new phones every place, the kitchen, the front near the cash register, the table where Sal the Barber sits in back, the office, all over the restaurant. Sal gave him a coupla hundred bucks and this crummy black ring he says came from Rome when there were emperors there. I ought to send him around, Andrew, check out the place, see what he can do for you.”

  “I like the phones I have now,” Andrew said.

  Bobby signaled to the waitress. She came to the table at once.

  “Can I get another cappuccino here?” he asked, smiling.

  “Certainly, sir.”

  “Andrew? Another cappuccino?”

  “I’m fine, thanks.”

  “Just one, then,” the waitress said.

  “What’s your name, miss?” Bobby asked. “So I don’t have to keep yelling ‘Hey, you!’ all the time.”

  “Bunny,” she said.

  “Bunny. That’s a nice name, Bunny. Is that your real name, or did you make it up?”

  “Well, my real name’s Bernice,” she said.

  “Bernice,” he said, weighing the name gravely. “Is that Jewish, Bunny?”

  “No, I’m Italian,” she said.

  “’Cause I always thought Bernice was a Jewish name.”

  “Well, I don’t know,” Bunny said. “Both my parents are Italian, and they named me Bernice. So I guess it’s Italian, too.”

  “Bunny, tell me something. How old are you?”

  “Twenty-two,” she said.

  “I woulda said nineteen,” Bobby said.

  “Oh, well, thank you.”

  “Tell me, Bunny, do you live down here in Little Italy?”

  “No, I live in Brooklyn.”

  “What’s your last name, Bunny?”

  “Tataglia.”

  “Really?” Bobby said. “That’s a nice name. Bunny Tataglia. Very nice.”

  “Well,” she said, and shrugged.

  “Bunny Tataglia in Brooklyn,” Bobby said, nodding.

  “Mm-huh,” she said.

  “I’m Bobby Triani,” he said, and extended, his hand.

  “Nice to meet you, Bobby,” she said, and took his hand. He was wearing a big diamond pinkie ring. Bunny looked at the ring as they shook hands. “I’d better get that cappuccino,” she said at last, and let go of his hand and went swiveling away on her black high heels, in her little black flounced skirt and white scoop-neck peasant blouse.

  “Don’t call her,” Andrew said.

  “What?”

  “I said, ‘Don’t call her.’”

  “What?” Bobby said. “What?”

  “You cheat on my cousin, I’ll break your fuckin’ head,” Andrew said. “Capeesh?”

  “Hey, come on, Andrew.”

  “Enough said.”

  “I mean, what kind of person do you … ?”

  “Enough said, Bobby.”

  Bobby shook his head and tried to look hurt and amazed. When Bunny brought his cappuccino, he didn’t even glance at her. She went off looking really hurt and amazed.

  “So you want me to send him around or not?” Bobby asked. “Lenny’s kid. Take a look at your phones.”

  The pay phone on the tailor shop wall was an antique with a rotary dial. Whether or not Mr. Faviola decided to go along with a new communications system, Sonny Campagnia would suggest that he contact New York Telephone and ask them to replace the unit with new equipment. That’s if he was thinking of adding the tailor shop phones to whatever he did upstairs, if he decided to do anything.

  Mr. Faviola had told him he’d be here at one o’clock to unlock the door and take him upstairs for a look at the system he now had. It was now a quarter past, and he still wasn’t here, and the old guy who owned the tailor shop had asked Sonny three times already if he wanted a cup of coffee or anything, but Sonny had seen how filthy the cups
looked, and each time he’d said, No, thanks, really.

  It was while he was checking out the wall phone that he made his first discovery. What it was, a wire had been dropped from the phone to the baseboard, disappearing into it. Sonny followed the baseboard around the room, trying to figure out where the wire was leading, and saw that it came out of the baseboard alongside a door, where it was tacked up the wall and over the doorjamb molding, and then down the wall again into the baseboard, where it finally surfaced under a long table. The wire ran up from the baseboard into a 42A block that didn’t have any phone plugged into it. Sonny was on his hands and knees, wondering about this, when Andrew walked in.

  “Sorry I’m late,” he said. “I wasn’t thinking of putting any new phones in the tailor shop, if that’s why you’re …”

  “No, I was just wondering about this wire, that’s all,” Sonny said, getting up and dusting off the knees of his trousers.

  Andrew was already unlocking the door that led upstairs. He had no particular interest in changing all the goddamn phones in the place, except that Lenny Campagnia was a well-respected capo, and letting his kid install a new system would be a favor to him. He just hoped looking over the place wouldn’t take too much time. Sarah would be here sometime after four, as usual.

  “This won’t take too much time, will it?” he asked.

  “No, no. I just want to see what you’ve got, maybe take a look outside at the terminal box.”

  “What’s that?” Andrew asked.

  “Where the lines come in.”

  “Just so it doesn’t take too long. I have to drive up to Connecticut this afternoon.”

  “No, it shouldn’t take too long, Mr. Faviola.”

  Sonny looked at all the phones on every floor upstairs, commenting that this was really very old equipment, Stone Age stuff, you know, and suggesting that he could install a state-of-the-art system, at very little cost, that would make Andrew’s life much simpler. Andrew told him he didn’t want his telephone service interrupted while all this was going on—if he decided to go ahead with it—because the telephone was very important to him, he did a lot of business on the telephone. Sonny assured him that once he’d designed a system for him, the actual installation would be a very simple thing, and he could promise that at least one phone would he completely functional all the while he was working inside the building and out. He told Andrew he’d like to take a look at the terminal box now, which he guessed would be on the rear wall of the building, or perhaps on a pole outside.