“I’m a changed man, Al. I looked at those bars this morning and I said, if this is cool, I’ll be warm. No more of this shit for me, man. Bad trip. Bad trip.”
“It’s a little bit late for that, L. Marvin. The U.S. Attorney’s office phoned Dawson this afternoon. You know that Lestoil-clean loft of yours, the one you so freely gave them permission to search?”
“Yeah?”
Bressio took the envelope Dawson had written on out of his breast pocket.
“It seems as though they found fifteen tabs of LSD; a quart bottle of reds (Seconal); four dollies (methadone)—in state hospital packages, no less; seventeen footballs—dex and amphetamine combined, that is; fifteen DBM’s—that’s, as you know, faster-working LSD for people who don’t want to wait thirty more seconds in reality; and five packages of white powder now being analyzed by the laboratory.”
“Oh, that,” said L. Marvin. He snapped his fingers and nodded knowingly.
“Those things are illegal, too, L. Marvin.”
“I wasn’t thinking of that. I was thinking of pot. There’s no pot in the loft. They didn’t find pot, did they? Because if they found pot, they fucking well planted the shit.”
“They didn’t have to plant pot with all the other goodies you left for them, L. Marvin.”
“Yeah, but I was thinking pot when I said they could check out the apartment without a warrant. I wasn’t thinking of the other stuff. I should have thought of the other stuff.”
“Dawson wants to know what the white powder in the five glassine envelopes was.”
Fleish picked at his mustache as though generating some mental energy which would enable him to analyze the envelopes on the spot.
“Glassine envelopes … glassine envelopes. Oh, yeah. I call it Consciousness IV.”
“Do some other people call it heroin?”
“No, no, it’s new, man. It’s a wipe-out.” His eyes twinkled and his hands began to move in a happy descriptive pattern much like a Gillette executive explaining a new miracle blade.
“You know how it takes maybe five seconds with DMB? You don’t, huh? Okay. This is instant. I mean, instant. It’s condensed DMB. You trip the minute it hits your tongue.”
“Anyone ever live through it?”
“We haven’t tried it out yet. I was waiting for the right vibes, man. I’m not tripping Consciousness IV until everything grooves. What with these hassles and everything, I wouldn’t go near the stuff. No. I want a nice clear day with a good morning and maybe a joint, and a wooded stream and no air pollution, cops, hassles, hunger. A beautiful scene of love with someone I love. The way the world should be. Then I’ll drop Consciousness IV.”
“With all that, why would you need Consciousness IV?”
“To expand it, man. Expand it.”
“I hope you learn to like jails, L. Marvin. Now some questions about Mary Beth.”
Fleish stood up and exposed his stomach. “No rash. Look. You see. It was her that did it.”
“What drugs is she on?”
“Speed. She’s a speed freak.”
“LSD?”
“Just a couple of times.”
“Anything else?”
“No, just pot, hash sometimes. I don’t think she was up to DMB.”
“Regular, does she use this stuff?”
“Just the speed.”
“That does cause paranoia.”
“She was weird when I met her, man. I mean, she was a real package. She wanted to try everything all at once. You know?”
“And you helped her.”
“I couldn’t stop her.”
“She’s addicted to speed, then, correct?”
“Speed isn’t addicting. Nothing is addicting, man. It’s all nature. It’s the bad stuff you bring to it. She brings shit to it.”
“L. Marvin, I have heard about your proverbial luck before, but you have never been so lucky as you are now that I left my gun at the door. If we were outside, I would put a bullet in your face. Just sit where you are and I will turn around and leave. Say nothing. Do not even blink your eyes, for if you blink them I will take them out of your head. I am going to try very hard to leave here without killing you. I will need your help. Do not even say yes.”
Bressio was still trembling as he walked out into the sweltering dusk of Eleventh Street. He noticed he picked up a tail on the way out and the tail dropped off at his office.
Clarissa was gone. She had left notes. The work was done. He saw the Cutler appointment was made for the morning at Cutler’s offices. Good. He could not speak to the man now without depressing him, as Bressio was depressed.
So Bressio went to a singles bar on Second Avenue—commonly called “meat racks” by male and female alike—and bought several girls drinks; after finding one who said she found him fascinating, he took her to the Plaza Hotel for the evening, and in so doing effectively removed himself from his sources of information, who most assuredly would have reached him that evening. He did not wish information on anything. What he wanted was to have a painful hangover in the morning to take his mind off the tears that were perpetually behind his eyes for a young girl who had grown up in a home he wished he had grown up in.
“Why are you taking the bullets out of the gun?” said the blonde in the hotel room.
“Because I don’t know you,” said Bressio.
She flipped her bra over a sedan chair and poured herself a drink from the bottle Bressio had ordered sent up.
“It all depends on which gun you want to risk,” she said, laughing.
“C’mere,” said Bressio.
When they had exhausted themselves, the blonde said, “That was great.”
“Bullshit,” said Bressio.
“Well, it was okay,” said the blonde. “At least you could get it up. You’d be surprised at all the guys who can’t get it up. Talk, talk, talk. At least you’re not talk. You want to go again?”
“No,” said Bressio.
“Something’s bothering you.”
“Yes.”
“Well, a little talk is all right.”
“Maybe I don’t know everything, right?”
“Sure.”
“And who am I or some shrink to write off a human life, right?”
The blonde became nervous. She looked at the unloaded revolver on the bureau drawer.
“Where there’s life, there’s hope. And I’m only human.”
“That’s two clichés,” she said.
Bressio poured himself a tumbler and worked it to the bottom. He put the bullets under his pillow, kissed the blonde good night, and went to sleep. In the morning she was gone, and he did not remember her name. Which was probably fair because she probably did not remember his. Thus did Bressio spend an entire night away from people who might have warned him about Pren Street.
XI
Clarissa had a bandage over her left eye when Bressio entered the office with morning coffee and Danish.
“I fell. It’s nothing, Al,” said Clarissa as Bressio unloaded a slightly sloppy white paper bag near her IBM electric.
“I didn’t ask,” said Bressio.
“You would. I see that Mary Beth Cutler is the daughter of one of our leading fascist pigs, William James Cutler.”
“You don’t know him, Clarissa.”
“He was Under Secretary of State, wasn’t he? Under Dulles.”
“And Kennedy.”
“It was his kind who started the genocidal Vietnamese war.”
“Did one of your liberated boyfriends belt you or something?” Bressio examined the mail.
“Why do you say that?”
“Because you’re trying to get me into an argument. You know how I feel about your childish use of the word ‘genocidal.’”
“You had a one-night stand last night, didn’t you?” asked Clarissa. “I can tell. I can always tell.”
“Who was he?” asked Bressio, nodding to the bandage.
“Al, you’ve got an 11:30 A.M. appointment
with Cutler. Do you know where the New York office of Mitchell, Walker and Cutler is? I’ll get the address for you.”
“Who did that to you?”
“I fell and it’s none of your business; now get over to Mitchell, Walker and Cutler. The airline confirmed your reservations this morning made by Dawson’s office. You have Phoenix, at 4:30 P.M. leaving from Kennedy, and a 1:30 P.M. tomorrow from Phoenix to Des Moines. What the hell is in Des Moines, Iowa?”
“Who did that?”
“One of your goombahs called again with some kind of a message about a house—”
“Who did that to you?”
“He didn’t leave his name. He called yesterday and today, saying he tried reaching you last night at your apartment.”
“Who hit you, Duffy?”
“None of your fucking business because I’ve seen you settle my scores and I don’t like seeing you that way and I don’t like seeing you like that. Now, get out of here or I’m leaving. I’m not talking, Al, so forget it. Besides, what’s the big thing with me? You went out screwing that trash last night.” Clarissa attempted to open the container of coffee gently, but the cover gave with a start, spilling hot brown liquid on her hands and desk and the morning mail Bressio was returning to the desk.
“You’re dumb,” she screamed. “You’re just so goddamned dumb, a big goddamn guinea. A big goddamn dumb guinea who can’t even see what’s in front of him. Fucking gavone.”
Clarissa was crying, and since Bressio could not cope with her tears—he never could—he left the office. Mad.
He was still mad when he saw a white Eldorado power its way through the City Hall traffic on Broadway and cut off a Volkswagen at the curb. The Volkswagen driver poked his head out of the window to complain, saw the four men in the Eldorado, and pulled away quickly. The two men in the back wore white T-shirts. The driver wore a conservatively cut shimmering green suit. Seated next to him was an oaf of a man in a black suit with a white polo shirt underneath. All wore little gray fedoras slightly too small for their heads.
“Alphonse, Alphonse,” called out the driver.
“Hello, Willie Knuckles, what are you doing out of the Bronx?” Bressio looked down at the thin, hard face with the scimitar nose and dark lips.
“I’ve come to talk with you and offer an indemnity.”
“Talk,” said Bressio.
“We have heard that you are concerned about a woman who lives at 285 Pren Street.”
“Is she all right?”
“As far as we know.”
“Then what’s the indemnity?”
“That in a minute. We have concerns about 285 Pren Street. We wonder if you shared the same concern, you know.”
“What?”
“There’s a bit of smack there left lying around. A cool house, you know?”
“So?”
“So we wondered if, you know, you were interested in it, too? You know?”
“I’m not. Just Mary Beth Cutler.”
“Okay, okay, okay. Good. It ain’t much smack and it looks as though we can do it, and we just didn’t want to cross wires, you know.”
“The indemnity.”
Willie Knuckles passed a white legal-sized envelope up through the open window. Bressio did not touch it. He saw the two men in the back seat slide their hands behind their backs. The man in the front seat reached into his jacket.
“It’s for you, Alphonse.”
“What’s it for, Willie Knuckles?” said Bressio, apparently ignoring the reach for weapons.
“It’s five hundred dollars, Alphonse. And could be more, you know, if you think it should be more. We ain’t got no quarrel with you, you know. Yesterday I came to your office, police and all. Respectful, right, Carlo?”
“Right,” said the man in the front seat, whom Bressio did not know.
“And I was real respectful and everything, you know. And I wants to leave a message. Just a fucking message, you know. Right Carlo?”
“Right,” said the man in the front seat.
“And it was what I told you just now almost.”
“Right,” said Carlo.
“And I was polite.”
“Right,” said Carlo.
“And all of a sudden, like, I had done something, and I hadn’t done nuthin’, you know. Nuthin’. Right, Carlo?”
“Right.”
“Your secretary, Miss Duffy, comes at me swinging and screaming like I don’t know what. Like, I should get out of your life, you know? That stuff she was screaming real crazy. And I ain’t coming here to get in your life, you know, Alphonse, not that I have anything against youse or anything, you know. I’d drink with youse and it’d be a pleasure. And she comes at me and I lift my hand to take care of myself. That’s all. Just lifted the fucking hand, right, Carlo, and I—like, it was an accident—cut your secretary over the eye. No hard feelings. Take the five yards. I didn’t mean no ways to do it.”
“You hit Clarissa Duffy?” said Bressio, and he shrugged as though this were no major event, not even worth indemnity.
“Yeah,” said Willie Knuckles, smiling.
Bressio laughed lightly and looked around the block. The men in the back seat put their hands on their laps, smiling broadly with Bressio. So did Carlo, who took his hand out of his coat. Bressio shrugged again and chuckled. They all smiled with him. Then he pulled Willie Knuckles out through the window of his Eldorado by the flesh of his cheeks and broke his scimitar nose against an upcoming right knee, cracked his cheekbones and kicked him back against the side of the car through the groin.
“Yeah?” said Bressio, sticking his head into the vacated window, his right hand on his unsheathed gun. Hands remained on laps. “You touch her, Carlo?”
Carlo shook his head.
“Any of you touch her?”
The two men in the back seat shook their heads.
“Evened out, right?” said Bressio.
“Right,” said Carlo.
Bressio knew there would be explaining to Willie Knuckles how no one had time to get to their weapons and how Bressio moved too fast. He knew he would meet Willie Knuckles again on the street and there would be formal acknowledgments that all was a misunderstanding and everything was forgiven. He also knew that if there were a contract out on his life, Willie Knuckles would be the first to try to fill it. But there had been others, and that was life. Besides, he would never let Willie Knuckles very close to him again.
Willie Knuckles groaned as he tried to lift himself from the curb. A crowd of passers-by gathered, aghast.
Bressio kicked Willie Knuckles in the bloody face. It was not a cruel act as the passers-by surmised. It was merely to put Willie Knuckles away momentarily so that Bressio could turn his back on him and walk away. Which he did.
At Mitchell, Walker and Cutler, high above the fury of greed and fear known as the New York Stock Exchange, there was no waiting room. Which was the first thing special Bressio noted about the firm. People didn’t get stacked up like planes waiting to land.
A middle-aged secretary was examining her typing at a simple, functional, gray metal desk, her glasses perched at the tip of her nose. “Yes, can I help you?”
“I’ve come to see William James Cutler. My name is Al Bressio.”
“Oh, yes, we’ve been expecting you. Won’t you come in, please.”
She led him down a wide cork-floor corridor with widely spaced white doors signifying large offices. The white walls in between each had one modest print, more to break up the expanse of wall than to show art. Bressio judged that they had passed eight offices, and there was an equal number behind them in the other direction. A faint smell of stored paper, dry to the nostrils and somewhat numbing to the mind, reminded Bressio of the Fordham library.
At the end of the corridor, she knocked on another door, and Bressio expected to be ushered into Cutler’s secretary’s office.
“Come in,” said Cutler’s voice. The secretary opened the door, and Bressio was in Cutler’s office. He ha
d heard of hidden lighting before, but never hidden secretaries.
“Mr. Bressio. Come in, please,” said Cutler, rising from behind a well-polished wooden desk. This was a law office. From floor to ceiling, in wooden bookcases, were thick high books.
He looked more like the Cutler at graduation in his dark suit and vest with the soft white shirt and the Princeton tie.
“It’s so good of you to come,” he said, shaking Bressio’s hand warmly. “This is what I look like in working clothes.”
“Yeah. I noticed the difference. You look more like I remembered you at Fordham graduation. I bet you didn’t know that I heard you speak.”
“You got a doctorate of law that day, according to what I’ve been told about you. Yes, I have had an investigation made of you. And let me say I am very impressed. More than impressed. I am grateful that you’re willing to help me. You may be the only man who can.”
“I’ll do what I can do … it’s—well, I’ll do what I can do.”
“Good,” said Cutler. “Let’s get down to cases. Fill me in on what Mary Beth has been doing the last five years. I know I have a grandchild.”
“She’s a pretty little girl. Very well-behaved. Her name is Bobbi.”
“And Mary Beth?”
“I have her scheduled to see a psychologist I know.”
“She’s been to one of the best psychiatrists. If I’m correct, psychologists don’t have medical degrees. I could afford a psychiatrist for her if you’d suggest.”
“This guy is good. He’s done some good research in drugs.”
“I see. Can I have his name?”
“His name’s Finney, but I’d suggest you not contact him. Let me say that I ask that you don’t contact him.”
“Done. Just tell me what I should do. I’m in your hands.”
“There really isn’t too much you can do, Mr. Cutler,” said Bressio, taking an offered seat by a high wooden table. It was interesting that sitting catty-corner, the two men were in an equal conversation, but because of the height of the table they were always reminded of business.
“Then let me ask some questions about this Fleish matter and Mary Beth,” said Cutler.
Bressio found Cutler’s questions incisive, his mind always working toward clarifying and organizing even the most extraneous fact. Where Dawson might streak to the heart of a problem and seize its glowing essence to hold before the world, Cutler mined for it, exploring this possibility here and that one there. It was a method of eliminating what wasn’t in order to find out what was.
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