Bressio

by Richard Ben Sapir

  “You want good-faith money, then.”

  “Right.”

  “Fifty bucks for good faith,” said Bressio, dropping two twenties and a ten on the table like a tip.

  The lieutenant stuffed the money into a worn billfold.

  “Guinea cocksucker,” he said.

  Bressio smiled and went to one of the two phone booths near the bar. He dialed Clarissa’s apartment. She had not been home earlier when he had called to see if Mary Beth was living with her yet. A voice answered that made Bressio want to take a piece out of the phone booth.

  “What are you doing at Clarissa’s, L. Marvin?”

  “I helped Mary Beth and Bobbi move in.”

  “You move out.”

  “I’m leaving, man. When the going gets tough, the tough get going. Mary Beth isn’t the only source of bread in this world, man.”

  “Put her on.”

  “You really want to rap with her, man?”

  “You will get Mary Beth to the phone and leave that apartment, L. Marvin, or when I see you, I will break both your arms.” Bressio hated L. Marvin for the naked threat, too.

  Bressio heard L. Marvin laugh, assure him he was one of the funniest men in New York City, and snap his fingers.

  “Hello,” said Mary Beth.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Sort of. Did you break the case? Exciting, isn’t it?”

  “Mary Beth, you have nothing to worry about. Just stay with Clarissa for a while. Did you phone the doctor?”

  “I couldn’t. You see—”

  “You’ll do that tomorrow. No fooling now. All right?”

  “Well, all right.”

  “And Mary Beth. Your father loves you very much.”

  There was a wooden clack at the other end as though the phone had been dropped and then Clarissa’s angry voice.

  “You bastard, Al. What did you say to her? She’s crying.”

  “I told her I was going to put a contract out on her life, what do you think I told her?” said Bressio, and was in no mood for the nonsense he got when he phoned Dawson’s house, and felt very much less pleasant when the cab took twenty minutes just getting to Union Square on a hot August night. It was in this traffic that Bressio noticed a black convertible maneuver with the cab, and make the same desperate side-street attempts to break out of traffic. Well, he had been expecting that. They should have been on him right from Pren Street. Perhaps in his anger over Fleish he hadn’t noticed, although this tail was so inept it seemed like a waste of taxpayers’ money to have it in an unmarked car.

  The tail stayed behind the cab to Dawson’s place, where Bressio tipped the driver, waved to the black convertible following him, and went up to the ostentatiously polished wooden door of the town house. He knocked the great bronze lion-head knocker and the door opened to a gust of noise and a haze of hash and marijuana that could turn on the Great Mojave Desert. Very bright, thought Bressio, for a lawyer who would be taking on the narcotics people very soon. He pushed through the crowded crush of bodies, noticing that the door had been opened by a woman now hiding behind it. She popped out, smiling. Her eyes were cocaine wide. She wore an alligatorlike sheath with high dark alligator boots. She focused on Bressio.

  “A Mafiosi, a real Mafiosi. Make me an offer I can’t refuse.”

  “Act puerile,” said Bressio and mowed his way through some more beautiful people until he was in a large white domed expanse known in Home Beautiful as the “Dawson Downstairs Living Room.”

  “Murray Dawson!” yelled Bressio. “Murray Dawson!”

  The noise subsided slightly.

  “Alphonse Bressio,” came a woman’s voice about twenty heads away. Bressio saw severe black hair topped by, of all things, wide black sunglasses at this hour of the night. It moved through the crush toward him. It was Bobo Dawson in a faintly transparent black sheath. Her face was darkly manicured, accenting her elegant sharp features that looked as though they had fallen off an Etruscan wall.

  She was thrice-divorced, and considering she was Dawson’s fifth, the normal odds for connubial stability would have been almost nonexistent except that it was her money that paid for this house, the Hyannis house and the Ibiza house, and the two maids, the cook and the butler that went with them. She had earned this money from her first three vaginal investments, which reinforced Bressio’s belief that marriage for a woman was a good contract, but for a man marriage surrendered riparian rights on his blood. It always mystified Bressio how a man like Dawson and many other good lawyers knowing so much about the law could get married so many times.

  “Everybody, this is the famous Al Bressio I told you might be coming,” Bobo squealed to her guests. “His father was offed in a mob war during the forties and he has connections with people you wouldn’t believe.”

  “I saw him in The Godfather,” commented a man with a purse over his shoulder. Several others thought this high humor.

  “Where’s Murray?” said Bressio harshly.

  “Upstairs in the den or bedroom. Go later. I want my friends to meet you. Tell them some stories about your growing up. Murray says you had a fantastic, simply fantastic childhood. I’ve told them so much about you, you’ve got to stay. You simply have to.”

  Bressio spun rudely from her, plowing through arms and shoulders.

  “He’s so beautifully brutal,” said one woman Bressio banged out of his way with a forearm across her chest.

  As he ascended the stairs, the Dawson house became less crowded. In the den, only a few people lounged among the giant plants under a Babylon of artificial lights.

  “Dawson?” Bressio called out.

  “Not guilty” came a voice from behind a giant fern.

  Bressio found Dawson in a third-floor bedroom with a teen-age girl—both dressed. She sat on the large square bed and Dawson in a lounge chair, his legs crossed, his chin in his right hand giving the appearance of listening intently. This was his pose, Bressio knew, when he wanted to think about things privately while appearing to give audience.

  “Murray,” said Bressio interrupting Dawson’s thoughts. The girl looked up at the intruding oaf, waiting for Dawson to put him in his place.

  “Al, what’s up?”

  “Case closed.”

  “In a day?”

  “I know the great conspiracy surrounding L. Marvin. It didn’t follow him, he found it.”

  “I beg your pardon,” said the girl. “But Murray and I were in a serious conversation.”

  “And we’ll have to give it the proper time it deserves. A party is too rushed, too helter-skelter. Lacks the proper vibrations, dear. Some other time.” The girl was out of the bedroom before she could muster serious indignation. Dawson plopped himself back into the lounge chair and began cleaning his nails. This was his real concentration.

  “L. Marvin is living in a cool house,” said Bressio. “Do you know what a cool house is?”

  “Certainly. A place where they’ve got a stakeout on a narcotics stash.”

  “Two eighty-five Pren is undoubtedly a house with a stash and very definitely has a lot of undercover narcotics agents who tend to follow people coming in and out. Especially those who break into the apartment where I believe the stash is kept.”

  “Go on.”

  “Like so many out-of-town girls who are the prettiest where the competition isn’t overwhelming like it is in New York, Terry Leacock tends to overestimate what she can do with her body. She finances a heroin deal through someone, a connected Shylock. He had to be part of one of the families or I wouldn’t have gotten the information so quickly. She is living with an undercover narco at the time. This sort of cohabitation tends to ruin sales. She can’t unload the stuff, can’t pay back the money and pays with her life.”

  “Why can’t she give the Shylock the heroin?”

  “Some of them won’t touch it. Besides, who is going to take smack from someone living with an undercover?”

  “She could peddle her ass for the money.” />
  “That’s black stuff. You got the wrong group. Besides, what can she make—considering the competition—fifty grand in a year? Seventy in a year? I know the thinking of the guy who ordered her hit. It probably had a little bit to do with his personal pride, too, that he knew she thought she could use him. Now what happens to the heroin? Keep that question in mind as we run down this road. The landlady dies of a heart attack today. The cops keep it hush-hush. It naturally attracts interest. Some people check it out, and lo and behold, it really is nothing. Just a heart attack. L. Marvin and Mary Beth break into the second floor loft some time ago, after Miss Leacock is gone, and cops all over the place. When you or they check, lo and behold, nobody knows nothing. A headquarters lieutenant is denied information about the house today. And surprise, surprise, denying the information is a police rank that usually acts as liaison with the federals.”

  “You sure it’s federals?”

  “Pretty sure. This lieutenant is out of Harlem. They can smell it if it’s local narcotics. He said nothing.”

  “Maybe he’s holding out.”

  “All right, you want a definite on it. I’ll go to 285 Pren Street and ask someone for a match. If he answers in a twang or a drawl, we got federals. New York in its municipal wisdom hires nobody but locals. It’s probably this new FBNC that’s been crawling all over the city.”

  “And Marvin?”

  “You can ask L. Marvin yourself whether he offered to sell some grass to his friends.”

  “Entrapment,” said Dawson.

  “Speak to L. Marvin. If they suggested the deal, you got yourself entrapment. But I doubt it. I think these guys are after heroin, and they probably only passed along the tip to get him the hell out of Pren Street. Mary Beth’s money brought him back. I’m assuming you used her money for his Arizona bail. He mentioned something like that today.”

  “Would they bug a place with millions of dollars of heroin around?”

  “First of all, ever since the New York City police department got heroin stolen from its evidence safes, nobody is going to leave a million dollars of smack lying around. Nobody I can conceive of is going to be that stupid.”

  “You’re right, but they would have bugs for what little amount they have there.”

  “I’d think they would, Murray. But we’re never going to be able to get that into an Arizona court, not when they have a trunkload of grass against your boy.”

  “I don’t like entrapment either.”

  “It’s your case. Is your stomach at rest now that you’ve found out how your little genius got himself stopped in Arizona one fine night? Any loose ends I failed to tie up?”

  Dawson shook his head. “Nice job,” he said glumly.

  “And you’re in no position to go butting heads with narcos, not with the atmosphere in your living room.”

  “They’re Bobo’s friends, not mine. It’s her house. I just live here.”

  “All for L. Marvin, what the hell’s the matter with you? Enough is enough. What’s with you and L. Marvin? Do you owe him your life?”

  “Give me the Cutler money.”

  “Thirty-five hundred of it is mine,” said Bressio, giving him Cutler’s green check.

  Dawson examined the check and handed it back.

  “What’s coming off?” he said.

  Bressio looked at the check. It was made out to him; even before he had told Cutler his feelings towards L. Marvin, the check had been made out to him. And with his face, too.

  “Well, Murray, it seems as though Mary Beth Cutler has got a little defense fund to be used for the benefits of Mary Beth Cutler. I want to put you on notice that we consider it highly irregular that you represent both her and the Fleishs in this matter.”

  “I hate sneaks,” said Dawson. “Let’s get a bite to eat.”

  The Dawson kitchen was one of the best in the city, but Dawson did not like using it. He could get neither baloney and mayonnaise nor delicatessen. Delicatessen to Dawson was Jewish delicatessen, and while Bobo had in the past years featured such a specialty at a party for Sammy Davis, Jr., Dawson could not regularly get the food into the house. The Swiss cook would no more allow it than he would baloney. In a concessionary move, the cook had offered exotic Middle Eastern dishes which to Dawson tasted like something left too long in the refrigerator.

  “But that’s real Jewish food,” the cook had complained.

  “Then give me some unreal Jewish food like I was brought up on.”

  “What you were brought up on, sir, was Eastern European cooking adopted by Jews.”

  “All right, that.”

  “They were—with all pardons, sir—peasants. Now the Rothschilds—”

  “Fuck the Rothschilds,” said Dawson.

  An argument ensued in which the cook angrily declared Dawson had the palate of a peasant.

  “You’d better believe it,” Dawson had said, vainly searching for an ethnic insult that went with Swiss. Bobo had smoothed over the tension by saying it was impossible to find such a good chef equal to the one they had and such a good man equal to the one she had. Dawson refused to apologize to the chef or even negotiate a small portion of the refrigerator for himself, and thus Bressio knew that when Dawson said he wanted a bite to eat, it meant leaving the town house and walking several blocks down Lexington Avenue to the Star’s Delicatessen.

  At the Star’s, Dawson was greeted with a “Hi, Murray. Having another party at your house?”

  Dawson ordered a hot pastrami on rye and a cup of coffee, heavy with cream. Bressio, insisting he was on a diet, started with black coffee, then said he did not want Dawson to eat alone and had a pastrami with him, and threw in a couple of hot dogs with potato salad on the side.

  “Side order of potato salad?”

  “No,” said Bressio. “Side order of hot dogs, put the potato salad on the hot dogs and give me a diet cream soda with it.”

  By mistake, the waiter brought French fries too, but since they were at the table already, Bressio ate them.

  “What’s with you and Cutler?” asked Dawson.

  “The check?”

  “And him telling me I should clear everything to do with Mary Beth through you. That’s pretty fast company for a kid from Little Italy, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” said Bressio.

  “What did you say to him? I couldn’t stretch a conversation twenty seconds with that guy, and I’m Murray Blay Dawson, and he phones me tonight talking like you’re a junior partner of Mitchell, Walker and Cutler.”

  “What were his words?”

  “That he was prepared to stand by any of your actions and that if I had any further reason to contact him I should do it through you.”

  “No kidding,” said Bressio, not even ashamed of his big kid grin.

  “Watch that guy, Al. You’re better off working for Don Carmine.”

  “Do I hear jealousy, Murray?”

  “Sure,” said Dawson, dunking an end of the pastrami sandwich into his sugar-heavy coffee. “That’s why I went to the precinct house for Mary Beth. I wanted to see if that guy was for real. Couldn’t get near him. You go up to his place to shake him down and you’re goombahs on the hello.”

  “I want L. Marvin out of Mary Beth’s life,” said Bressio.

  “Listen to God,” said Dawson. “How are you going to accomplish that?”

  “I don’t know,” said Bressio.

  “Don’t hurt Marvin, okay? I mean, don’t go out of your way to hurt him in order to separate them.”

  “For L. Marvin I go out of my way to go out of his way. I want those adoption papers filed.”

  “They’re ready to go.”

  “You’re not some lawyer talking to a client now, Murray. Ready to go and gone are two entirely different things. I don’t want to be held up on those papers at the last minute because you want maneuvering room. I want them out. Now, you want money on that, you can have it. I’m cutting the loose ends between Mary Beth and L. Marvin.”

  “They�
�re going to go. Don’t sweat it. Consider them gone. Now I want your thinking on Marvin’s situation.”

  Dawson mentioned several tacks he might take with the Arizona arrest. He had been right, he said, with his instinct that the government was involved, but it really didn’t do anything unjust as he could see it. Perhaps it was even a good thing that Marvin had this experience before he got in any really difficult scrapes. Perhaps it would have a maturing effect. With this in mind, Dawson outlined how he would inform the new Federal Bureau of Narcotics Control that he knew of their cool house, but would not disclose it because he knew they were going to put in a good word for his client in Arizona, a situation they were partly responsible for. It was their choice—do they go after the hard-drug dealers or a freaky artist type who got in over his head on a first offense?

  “A year suspended on a guilty plea,” said Bressio, estimating the results of Dawson’s actions. They left the delicatessen and walked back up Lexington Avenue, the day’s garbage encroaching on the wealth of the neighborhood.

  “Yeah, I think so. A year suspended,” said Dawson. “This isn’t a juicy fighting case anyhow.”

  “Especially since Fleish was probably guilty as sin,” said Bressio.

  “Probably?” asked Dawson in amazement. “They got him with a trunkload of grass. A whole car trunkload and he signed a confession.”

  “You didn’t tell me about a signed confession.”

  “Well, he won’t go around giving confessions any more. If he learns that from this experience it will be worthwhile for him. Just to learn to keep his damned mouth shut. Ninety-five percent of all the people who are in jail now are in there because of their mouths. One way or another their mouths do it to them.”

  “I know,” said Bressio. “L. Marvin doesn’t deal smack, by the way.”

  “See, see. You just may have misjudged him. Seriously misjudged him. You know, Al, the more I think about this bust, the more I think it may be just what Marvin needed. He’s an artist, and he just may get back to some serious work. Some good, serious work. I’ll miss the kid in him, but I guess everyone has to grow up sooner or later. For Marvin it came when he was forty. Gone is the beautiful, innocent, exciting child. Well, so be it. ‘The laughter fades and the wisdom begins. There is a time for everything. In death there is rebirth.’”