Bressio

by Richard Ben Sapir

  But in risking the offense, Dawson would also have some leverage against this awesome pair, and since Marvin’s position was virtually without any reasonable hope, that leverage might just be the only slim chance Fleish had. To put it simply, Dawson would be most assuredly facing great difficulty for a chance so slim it might not exist. It just didn’t make any sense.

  “I’ll buzz you in a second,” said Dawson and went back to the mirror behind the curtain over the bar.

  “You know, Murray, if you sent out those papers now, it would be the first sensible thing you’ve done this week. Bressio is right about L. Marvin Fleish. You’re paying a hell of a price. As your legal counselor, sweetheart, I demand you file those papers.”

  Dawson rang the secretary again. “Hold the adoption papers until further notice.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  Dawson went back to the mirror and kissed it. “I love you, you crazy sonuvabitch.”

  In a Jewish neighborhood on Eastern Parkway, Don Carmine was having lunch with a visitor. The man was a friend and an adviser, known to a few people as Anselmo Felli and to almost everyone else as Arnold Foster, president of Alpen Real Estate, one of the larger property management firms in the city. Naturally, it never suffered labor problems and had an easy way with zoning restrictions.

  The two men talked over lentil soup. They talked about Alphonse Bressio. It was this friend and adviser who had first noticed the worth of Salvatore Bressio’s son. The lad was fifteen at the time, and in one of those incidents that will occur in life became involved with three older men when his spaldeen bounced into their car window. Now, this pink rubber ball, so common to New York City streets, could cause little damage. But one of the men, to teach Alphonse a lesson, threw it into a sewer. The young Bressio decked him with a single punch. The other two men came out of their car to avenge their companion. At only fifteen, the young Bressio sent them both to the hospital. These facts were verified by the Dursio adviser, who spoke to those who had seen it. And to make young Bressio even more attractive, he did not have an undue temper, nothing that would cause trouble without sufficient reason. He was not just another talented hothead. Young Bressio had a mind, and when the adviser passed an afternoon’s conversation with the widow Theresa Bressio, he found out further that the late Salvatore had taught his son early the skills of the gun.

  “He’s a young Sal Bressio, even better. He’s smarter,” Felli had told Don Carmine excitedly. But there was only one thing wrong with the boy. He would not make sensible use of the abilities God gave him. He had this crazy law thing in his head which everyone thought would leave when he grew up. But even in later years when he failed the bar, it did not leave.

  Even the gambling did not bring him to seek the employ from Don Carmine, and the extensive credit shown him by all the Dursio books proved fruitless when he always paid.

  “Someday he will come to his senses” was the word. “Someday he will realize that this is a hard world and a man should make use of what he has instead of chasing dreams which do not exist. Someday, and on that day he will be of immense benefit to whoever gains his allegiance.”

  But year after year the day did not come, so at lunch with Don Carmine, Felli told him the strange thing that was happening with Alphonse Bressio. He told him how Alphonse had passed the word along that an apparently worthless crazy person should be treated with the respect as if she were blood kin. Now here was the interesting part. The woman lived at 285 Pren Street.

  “Alphonse is not involved in that craziness. I know it,” said Don Carmine. He ladled himself some more soup from the tureen that his wife had put on the table.

  “But if he is?” said the adviser.

  “He would come to us first. Alphonse has a very good mind. That insanity is not his sort of thing. Still … we will have nothing to do with it. We have even better reason now not to be involved if Alphonse has interest in it. Which I doubt.”

  “He is said to be interested in the welfare of the woman as a business thing. Is it possible that is all he is interested in, a small business thing? Or in some way might it be a part of his dream-chasing?”

  “That is possible. With Alphonse that is very possible.” The topic switched to more pleasant matters such as FHA financing being arranged for a project. The family had a vital interest in its outcome. The adviser interrupted real estate talk to suggest perhaps that Alphonse did not know what was happening at 285 Pren Street.

  “He has sources,” said Carmine Dursio, and the subject was dismissed.

  Bressio woke at noon and to celebrate the start of a beautiful day decided he would break his diet. He would eat breakfast, not just have a scrimpy cup of black coffee. He deserved a little reward. For his reward, he went to a luncheonette on Sixth Avenue.

  “English muffins, toast and bagels, sir?” asked the counterman.

  “Yeah,” said Bressio. “Every diet should have a break.” And he doubly deserved that break because he hadn’t placed a bet the day before.

  Across town, Murray Blay Dawson was wrestling with his conscience which for such a consistent loser had an awesome resiliency.

  “Ah, to hell with it,” he said and told his secretary to file the adoption papers.

  “That final, sir?”

  “Yes,” said Dawson. “Ninety percent.”

  “Sir, that means file it, correct?”

  “Immediately. I don’t want to change my mind. You might not know it, but I am one of the most moral people you are ever going to meet.”

  When Bressio dropped in that afternoon, this feeling of morality had so overwhelmed Dawson that he was exuding joy to the whole world. Naturally Bressio was suspicious.

  “What do you want now, Murray?” said Bressio.

  “I want you to sit down and relax.”

  “Un-uh. On behalf of Cutler we’ll go L. Marvin’s second bail for the papers on Bobbi. I think that’s a good deal for your client. He’s going to get hit with $5,000 grand minimum, and with him being such a flake, he might walk. The bail for the baby. You’re not going to do better, Murray, and if you try, I guarantee you a heavy dose of grief.”

  “If that’s the deal you’re offering, Al, forget it.”

  “Five grand is great for two signatures, especially since the kid is Mary Beth’s natural-born and the father is facing two drug charges, and you’ve got a conflict of interest staring you in the face.”

  “I said forget it, Al. The papers have been filed. That was part of the deal. I’m not going to bargain for the life of a child. And I’m not going to leverage you. That you want those papers processed is enough. I personally think it’s a good thing that Mary Beth is getting her child back legally and I only hope she is well enough to be a good mother.”

  “I missed something in there,” said Bressio.

  “You didn’t miss anything. Mary Beth is getting her daughter back. She’s the mother. I think she made a mistake having Marvin and his wife adopt it. I’d like to spend more time with you but I’m bushed. Haven’t slept in almost two days, and I have a lot of work.”

  “Is something wrong, Murray?”

  “No. If in the excitement I didn’t get a chance to tell you nice job on unraveling the situation at Pren Street and its link to the Arizona bust, I’m sorry. Nice job, Al. It’s a shame that you’re giving up that kind of work. At that, you’re an artist.”

  “You did hire me for a week,” said Bressio, truly worried about the tiredness in Dawson’s eyes.

  “Or until the job was done. It’s done. Well-done. Unfortunately even we can’t overcome the self-destruct of our client. But that’s life.”

  “What are you going to do about L. Marvin?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve got nothing to work with. Two, mind you, two signed confessions, and I don’t even want to tell you the rest.”

  “What would you need to work with? I’m mean, I’m just asking out of curiosity.”

  “First,” said Dawson. “You have got to hear how the boy ge
nius got himself arrested for the second time. This you cannot miss.”

  The brilliant capture of L. Marvin Fleish by the Federal Bureau of Narcotics Control as told by Murray Blay Dawson to Alphonse Joseph Bressio:

  Marvin, feeling obliged to help his accomplice of the Arizona episode, ventured into the only field he knew, importing pot. Through a local contact as yet to be arrested, he arranged to import into New York City fifty-five pounds of Acapulco gold (the best or right up there with the best) through a contact he had made in Arizona. Where in Arizona? In the Phoenix County Jail, no less, where the successful meet to plan even greater successes.

  The finances were as follows: Marvin would purchase the marijuana from his Arizona contact at $150 a pound, resell it to the New York contact who provided the up-front money for $200 a pound, leaving Marvin with a profit of roughly $2,500, with which he would bail out his friend of the Arizona adventure. The financier, a pusher, could easily resell Acapulco gold at $45 an ounce, leaving him a substantial profit also.

  It was in the best tradition of the free enterprise system that Marvin engineered the wholesaling. It also brought to mind a terrifying prospect. Out there in New York City walking around loose was a person who trusted L. Marvin Fleish with nearly $8,000 cash.

  They were to meet in a hotel on Twenty-third Street, the Chelsea District. Room 17. The hotel was known for two things: actors out of work and pushers in work. Marvin showed a sense of tradition.

  Marvin received a phone call from his Arizona contact. They were very clever, these smugglers.

  “Do you have the package for Mrs. M?” asked Marvin from the hall phone on the second floor of 285 Pren.

  “Yes,” said the other James Bond. “I’m in St. Louis Airport. I’ll get into Newark by 8 A.M. and I’ll meet you you-know-where with the packages of Mrs. M.”

  “For Mrs. M,” Marvin corrected, lest the United States government realized M stood for marijuana and it was packages of M.

  “Yeah, for,” said the accomplice.

  The accomplice neatly made it to Newark Airport despite the dogs that can smell the stuff stationed at every major airport. He hailed a cab for New York City and was picked up on the Manhattan side of the Holland Tunnel and whisked jailward along with two suitcases. Exhibit A.

  Meanwhile, intrepid Marvin was playing it cool. He put nearly $8,000 cash (Exhibit B) in a locker in Grand Central Station, the kind in which you insert quarters and get a key back (Exhibit C, the key). He made sure he wasn’t tailed by hitting three bars and checking to see if any faces became familiar. None did, and he proceeded to the Elsinor Hotel on West Twenty-third Street where he cleverly asked the hotel clerk if a Mr. Smith were registered. There were seven Mr. Smiths, which one did he want? asked the clerk.

  “The one in Room 17,” Marvin told the first witness.

  “Oh, that Mr. Smith. I’ll check.”

  The witness then said Marvin would have to sign in on a visitor’s pass. No alarms rang in the mind of the accused. He signed it J. Jones, leaving no traces but his handwriting on Exhibit D.

  A young man with fashionably long hair, mustache, T-shirt and heavily patched blue jeans opened the door of Room 17 when Marvin knocked.

  “Yeah?”

  “Are you Mr. Smith?” asked Marvin.

  “Yeah,” said the young man, later to be identified as Agent Blake Van Sluyters.

  “I’m Marve Fleish,” said Marvin, finally feeling he had found someone he could trust.

  “Come in,” said Agent Van Sluyters, who shut the door behind the accused.

  Marvin, having been burned once very seriously, did not rush into revealing his motives.

  “You here for any special reason?” asked Van Sluyters.

  “I might be,” said Marvin casually.

  “What are you here for?” asked the agent.

  “Things,” said Marvin.

  “What things?”

  “What things do you think?”

  “I’m asking you,” said the agent.

  “I’m asking you,” said the very wary and cautious L. Marvin Fleish.

  “We gotta wait,” said Agent Van Sluyters.

  Marvin lit up a joint and handed one to the agent, who offered to pay for it. Marvin, from the goodness of his heart, refused to take money, thus foiling in a small degree the ever-tightening trap. They would not get him accepting money for drugs.

  “But I insist,” said the agent.

  “Forget it. What is it, a buck?”

  “A buck I’ll be glad to pay. No reason why you should carry it.”

  “The day I can’t share a joint,” said Marvin, “is the day I quit using.”

  The agent put the numbered bills back in his pocket. He also told L. Marvin he would smoke his joint later, and he put Exhibit E in his blue jeans. Then he went into the bathroom and came out with a snub-nosed .38-caliber pistol and badge. He told Marvin to lie on the floor.

  The United States Attorney was thus left with only fifty-five pounds of marijuana, the statement implicating Marvin from the young man who had the number of 285 Pren Street, a key to a Grand Central Station deposit box, the $8,000 in that box, Marvin’s signature as “Mr. Jones,” a joint, Agent Van Sluyters’ testimony, which said Mr. Fleish asked specifically for a Mr. Smith at Room 17, identified as the name and room by the boy picked up with the fifty-five pounds of marijuana.

  So Marvin filled out in his own words why he did all these things because the narco agents seemed genuinely interested and friendly, and besides, they knew everything anyway.

  “Why do you think I was in the room?” said Marvin slyly when he knew the jig was up, “to jerk off? Of course it was my contact point. I wasn’t going to bring the money with me because sometimes you can get held up. I was just going to give my contact the key.”

  The narcos probed for more than an hour as to who had thought up the locker safety device, but Marvin insisted it was his own idea.

  Thus was L. Marvin Fleish captured and charged.

  When Dawson finished, Bressio was rubbing laugh tears away from his eyes.

  “So what would you suggest?” said Dawson.

  “They didn’t even need the confession,” said Bressio. “Maybe the Miranda decision. We get the confession thrown out, maybe, but jeez, why bother?”

  “I don’t even think we can get the confession thrown out,” said Dawson. “They offered him right to his counsel, but he wanted to get the confession out of the way first.”

  Bressio made a disdainful face, signifying everything was not as bleak as it seemed.

  “Granted, a great case, but a weak charge. Lots of slip-ups in conspiracy. Now if we can do a job on the guy who brought in the pot, and somehow we can weaken L. Marvin’s confession in court, and play the harmless marijuana before a jury and we make a deal down in Arizona to plead guilty but part of the deal is they hold sentencing until after the New York trial, and you bring in L. Marvin to the jury and judge clean with a job, and you show the contact who implicated him as vicious … Gee, Murray, we just might not bleed to heavily at all.”

  “Suspended in Arizona and a year, maybe two years, in Danbury,” said Dawson.

  “With time off for good behavior,” said Bressio. “After all, it is pot, not smack or speed.”

  “I thought you thought all of them were the same.”

  “I’m talking for the court.”

  “You’ll deal for him in Arizona and do a job on the kid, Al? Is that what you’re offering free?”

  “I suppose,” said Bressio. “It’s not free. I’ve been paid.”

  “So you, too, are becoming part of the Fleish mystique. He’s exciting, isn’t he? God’s own foul-up.”

  “No,” said Bressio. “I didn’t like the way you looked this morning and I don’t like to see you fight with your hands tied. I’m doing this for you, Murray.”

  Murray Blay Dawson, who could play an entire range of emotions like a piano keyboard, suddenly found himself confronted by real gratitude and
affection within his breast and he did not know what to do with it. He looked around the room for some sort of prop or something to do, anything not to look at Bressio.

  “Uh, Marvin’s contact is a kid name Loring, Calvin Loring, a pre-med student at Prusscott College just outside of Des Moines, Iowa. He’s nineteen and I think you’ll have a tough time doing a job on him. Farm boy. Heretofore clean.”

  “You know he’ll be no problem, Murray.”

  “Yeah. I know that. Uh, how’s Clarissa?”

  “She’s fine, Murray.”

  “Yeah. Good. Well, here we are.” Dawson was saved by a buzzing under the low marble table. The phone, Bressio saw for the first time, was connected to the underside of this table. He had never seen Dawson answer a phone in this office. It was a pearl-white Princess receiver.

  “It’s the U.S. Attorney’s office, this guy Cartwright, who’s handling Marvin’s prosecution … Yes, hello. This is Dawson.”

  Dawson signaled Bressio for a pad and pencil. Bressio gave him a pen and the back of an envelope of a bill that had been in his pocket. Dawson began scribbling furiously.

  “Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Really, and … and … and … Anything else? … No. I’m not too disturbed. Why should I be disturbed? It’s not me who’s going to spend the rest of his life in jail.”

  X

  Bressio got a receipt for his pistol from a clerk in the house of detention, and felt just a bit undressed going to the conference room where prisoners could meet lawyers and relatives. Dawson was too mad to see Fleish.

  “This is too much even for him,” Dawson had said. “You’d better see if this list is correct. If I saw that ninny again, I’d throttle him. I’ve got to come down off the ceiling first.”

  Fleish entered the room in pale prison green escorted by a guard. The harsh fluorescent light made him seem all of his forty years and then some. He slumped into a hard-backed wooden chair on the other side of a metal table dividing the room.

  “This place is a bummer, Al,” Fleish confided.

  “I’m glad to see reality is creeping up on you, L. Marvin. Do you still think the world only requires that you be happy with it?”