by Chris Knopf
Cardozo took a big pull from his drink and then looked down at the barroom floor. We waited.
“He was in one of the nastiest actions of the war,” he said. “You probably read about it, then forgot, because it’s impossible to really keep track of these things much less absorb them from afar. It’s impossible for me, and I hear it every day directly from the mouths of these young, devastated men and women.”
He paused again, organizing the memory.
“Aldergreen and Watruss were in their Bradley Fighting Vehicle. They were about an hour from base when they got ambushed by a well-armed bunch of insurgents who obviously had some intel on the platoon’s activities. It gets really messy, and half the platoon is hit with RPGs—rocket propelled grenades. Including our boys Aldergreen and Watruss. But it’s worse than that. They also have the company commander on board their vehicle, Captain Herschel Bergeron. The three of them had been together since training days and it’s a tribute to Watruss and Aldergreen that they were trusted by the highest ranking officer in their unit.”
“This is where Jimmy Watruss gets shot up,” I said.
“It is. Aldergreen is knocked out by the initial concussive force of the grenade, but is otherwise intact. Watruss, on the other hand, is pretty mangled. Bergeron isn’t in great shape himself, but he’s the one who drags the other two clear of the burning Bradley, which subsequently gets blown entirely to shit by another RPG.”
“Presumably with no one else on board,” I said.
“Yeah, thank God. It could have been filled with troops. According to the official report, Bergeron continued to lead the platoon, mounting a counterattack, pulling wounded to safety, even manning a machine gun in a disabled vehicle, laying down covering fire that allowed another of his team to get in position and basically mow down the bulk of the insurgents. It was a bad day for the Forty-Third, but most of the people who ambushed them never made it back home. So who knows.”
“That captain is quite a hero,” said Jackie.
Cardozo again looked amused, though I began to realize there was more than an element of irony in his every smile.
“Was. You can only get shot so many times before all the blood drains out. I hear rumors of a posthumous Medal of Honor, though they’ve been stingy with those things.”
Cardozo’s voice was so precisely moderated that I was as much hypnotized by the style as the content of his story. He partially broke the trance with an uptick in volume.
“What else does a guy have to do to win one of those goddamned things?” he asked the whole barroom, rhetorically of course.
“So that ended Alfie’s and Jimmy’s combat careers?” Jackie asked, pulling him back.
“Careers? Yes. Jimmy was evacuated to the Green Zone, then after a stop in Germany, shipped back to the Nassau County VA Center in the good old US of A. My favorite garden spot.”
Those last words were slightly slurred, and I realized that the retired colonel had downed about a half-dozen bourbons on the rocks, delivered with military precision by the young lady bartender who hovered nearby seemingly for that purpose alone.
“What about Alfie?” Jackie asked.
“He came later. After we released Sergeant Watruss, whom I didn’t know very well at the time. Never seemed to have need of my services. Sturdy young man. Centered. Later we became colleagues when he joined the VA center’s volunteer corps. He’s made quite a contribution, I have to tell you, especially with our substance abusers, who are plentiful.”
He dropped his head again, though not quite in the way he’d done before. More as a person starting to pass out than collecting his thoughts. Jackie reached over and held his cheek, which caused him to open his eyes and perk up a bit.
“Jesus, I’m not the drinker I used to be.”
We spent the next half hour gently discouraging Cardozo from having another few rounds, aided by the bartender, who told us one of the guys back in the kitchen was already assigned to drive him home, this being a more or less nightly occurrence. We didn’t press Cardozo for any more information, out of kindness and concern for his waning acuity.
When the time came, we followed the kitchen guy who drove Cardozo to his house and helped the diminutive Latino haul the big old Anglo-Portuguese into his house and onto his sofa, where we all thought our obligation ended.
I was the last one out and about to shut the door when Cardozo said, “They didn’t just trust Captain Bergeron with their lives, they would have trusted their children’s lives, and their children’s children. They loved their captain in a way unimagined by mortals who’ve never known the intimacy of war.”
I walked back in the house, but that was the last thing he got out before falling into a deep and, I hoped, as untormented a sleep as possible.
CHAPTER TWENTY
I have this little screen on the outside of my cell phone that displays the phone number of the person trying to call me. I don’t know if you have one of these, too, but it’s an extremely handy feature. That morning in my shop, the number that came up was nothing I’d seen before, so I did my usual thing and ignored it.
Then it showed up again. After the third time, I swore and flipped open the phone.
“What.”
“I need to talk to you,” said a deep male voice, accented.
“Who’s talking?”
“No names. But the last time we met, you wrecked my nice silk suit.”
Mustafa Karadeniz.
“What are we going to talk about?” I asked him.
“Not on the phone. Man, you know nothing about electronic monitoring? What country you living in anyway?”
“The Oak Point part of the country. The only monitoring we do is through a screen window.”
“Go to the location of our last happy encounter and you’ll find out where to go from there. Come alone and leave your hot head at home.”
“Sorry. My head goes where I go,” I said. “Can you at least give me a headline?”
“You asked me some questions. Maybe I got some answers.”
“When.”
“Two hours,” he said.
“Time enough to get into my nice suit.”
I ACTUALLY wore a pair of new blue jeans, T-shirt, and Yankees cap, accessorized with a piece of oak sawed off a broken market umbrella. I wrapped one end in duct tape for grip and cut it short enough to fit comfortably into the back waistband of the blue jeans.
I checked up on my grumpy daughter, her angst-ridden boyfriend, and stoic bodyguard. Allison said they were all great, just great. Amanda, still out working on her houses, wasn’t there to comment, so I took her at her word.
Eddie was in the yard happily chewing on something I couldn’t see, so his opinion went unrecorded.
I decided not to tell Jackie about the upcoming meeting with Mustafa, feeling she’d only complicate things with excessive fretting, and as much as I liked her and her Glock along for the ride, I wanted the extra elbow room.
I took Amanda’s Audi, believing with some justification that the Grand Prix lacked discretion, which seemed called for in this situation. I’d never failed to ask her permission before, so I was a little worried she’d report it stolen, bringing on more ruckus than either of us wanted. But you take your chances in life.
I thought maybe giving her free use of the Grand Prix might make it up to her. Wouldn’t actually require a captain’s license, as she once intimated.
I spent the time driving up to Riverhead listening to jazz, drinking coffee, and pretending I didn’t want a cigarette. To compensate, I gnawed on a fat carpenter’s pencil until I realized it might have the greater carcinogen content. I tossed it out the window.
A few blocks from Mustafa’s warehouse, I got out of the car and walked the rest of the way. It was early afternoon, and the sun was warmer than it had been in recent weeks. The Yankees cap kept my face in the shade but did nothing to block the solar blast off the cracked, exhausted sidewalk.
As before, the warehouse parking lot wa
s empty. The old stone building was shut tight and there was no sign of life anywhere. I walked up to the sliding door, on which was pinned a note written with a Sharpie on a small piece of paper.
It said, “Duck.”
A ragged hole suddenly opened up in the door and I felt a spray of splinters wash over my face. I dropped to the pavement, reaching as I fell for the oak club stuffed in my pants. I lay there immobile for a second, then went to push myself back up, when I saw another note taped to the ground.
“Run.”
I stood back up and looked around. Hopelessly exposed. The best bet was an alley around the closest corner of the stone warehouse, twenty feet away.
Another bullet hit the warehouse wall. This time stone dust pelted my face and upper body. I bolted for the alley as fast as my fifty-nine-year-old legs would run, but before I got to the corner, another bullet hit the wall in front of me. I turned and ran in the other direction, knowing it was fruitless, but unwilling to just stand there and get shot.
This time the bullet hit behind me, and I made it to the corner of the building, but not much farther, since it was a blind alley walled off with brick. On the brick was another sign.
“Call me.”
I pulled out my cell phone and hit his number. He answered by saying, “How do you feel about oysters?”
“I don’t like them that much,” I said, as I tried to catch my breath. “Prefer clams. On the half shell. With bacon.”
“I don’t know why you’re running away. I’m only trying to ask you to lunch.”
“The gunfire. It’s a distraction.”
“Oh, of course. Wait there.”
I peered around the corner and saw Mustafa striding over the pavement wearing another precisely tailored suit, this time set off with a large, complicated-looking pistol equipped with a muzzle suppressor and a laser sight mounted above the barrel. He stopped midway and spoke into his phone.
“If I wanted to kill you, you’d already be dead,” he said.
“So what else do you have in mind?”
“Only talk.”
“I can do that,” I said.
“I just want you to know I’m serious and not to fuck with me.”
“I will not fuck with you. Trust me on that.”
“I don’t trust anyone who doesn’t like oysters,” he said, continuing across the parking lot with the pistol pointed at the ground. When he was within ten feet, he stopped, dropped the ammunition clip out of the handgrip, carefully set it down on the pavement, and stepped away.
I stuffed the club back in my pants and walked over to the gun. I picked it up, and having no idea how to check for a round in the chamber, aimed it at the ground and pulled the trigger. Nothing.
“You scared the shit out of me,” I said.
“Good. You embarrassed me. Now we’re even.”
“I hope so.”
“Can I have my gun back?” he asked.
“I’ll trade you for the clip.”
He tossed it to me.
“Of course I could have another one in my pocket,” he said.
I walked over and handed him the gun.
“Just don’t shoot me till after lunch.”
WE WENT to The Benevolent Oyster Bar a few blocks from his warehouse. The place had opened sometime in the early fifties and they wisely allowed wear and tear to establish the ambience over the decades. Even the wooden stools at the raw bar had the worn-down feel of an old pair of leather shoes.
We waited until the seafood in various states of preparation was arrayed on the bar before getting into the heart of our discussion.
“I know what Joey meant when he said beware of Greeks,” said Mustafa.
“I think I do, too, but let me hear your theory.”
“Not a theory. He was talking about Bennie Gardella. They call him the Greek, because that’s actually what he is. A Greek with an Italian name.”
“So who was he to Joey?”
“You probably know that, too. Back in the early nineties, the Greek brought down more guys involved with a certain illicit trade than any other cop in the city. He’s a fucking legend.”
“This is what I hear, too,” I said. “Not much good as an undercover now that he’s uncovered. They tell me he’s in Southampton straightening out the PD’s paperwork.”
“That’s right. And I’m 100 percent focused on importing coffee tables and oriental rugs.”
A small pack of summer people came into the Benevolent looking wary but expectant. They chose to sit next to us at the raw bar, so after paying our tab, we gathered up our meals and went to a distant table in the outdoor seating area. The day was getting hot, but it was bearable under the umbrella.
An optimistic seagull stood on the top of a phony pier several feet away, but otherwise the conversation stayed private.
“Okay,” I said, “so an experienced narco cop shows up in town to help the local police with a recent increase in drug trafficking, and a person involved in that traffic tips off one of his colleagues, what’s the big surprise?”
Mustafa winced a little at such an unlacquered characterization, but didn’t quibble.
“A big increase for who?” he asked. “Sure things were getting active for a while, but ever since Joey departed from this world, it’s very different.”
“Different how?”
“Different as in not so good anymore.”
I waited for him to elaborate, but he looked like a man who really wanted to talk about something he was afraid to talk about. I tried to help him along.
“Look, Mustafa,” I said, “you’re talking to me because I’m not the cops, but I know the cops. My only interest is finding out who killed my friend Alfie Aldergreen. I think there’s a connection with your guy Joey Wentworth, but I don’t really know. If you can help me, and that helps you, so what.”
He took that in, then said, “I told you there were a million Joey Wentworths ready to take his place, but apparently not so. In fact I hear his whole deal has moved over to people who are cutting links out of the chain, and anyone who tries to push back on that is sure to follow Joey to wherever that shotgun sent him to.”
Now I knew why Mustafa was feeding me clams on a half shell and Absolut.
“You’re one of the links,” I said. “They’re cutting you out.”
“Trying,” he said. “I’m not one to go so easy. But I’m getting signals from upstream that sticking with the rugs and coffee tables might be better for my long-term health.”
“Do you know who these new people are?” I asked.
He shook his head.
“No, but I think Joey did,” he said. “And lately I’ve been getting the feeling that he wasn’t afraid of the Greek as law enforcement.”
“Then what?”
“Competition.”
I WAITED until the next day to tell Jackie about my visit with Mustafa. I withheld the substance of the meeting as an inducement for her to ride into the city with me. When she was finished with the verbal equivalent of gnashing teeth, I proposed that she drive, since the Grand Prix had a wider beam than many of Manhattan’s cross streets. She took that about as well as expected, though she did show up at my cottage an hour later, giving me time to make the rounds over at Amanda’s, feed Eddie, and rustle up a full thermos of French Vanilla.
I kept her distracted with my Mustafa story, overemphasizing the incoming bullets with words like “hail storm” and “barrage,” hoping that would mitigate my leaving her out of the mission. It didn’t.
“You could have gone in first,” she said. “I hold back, take a secure position, then take him out at the first shot.”
“Destroying any chance of obtaining crucial intel, Annie Oakley,” I said. “And tying you up in police actions and legal proceedings, including suspension from the bar, thus making you worthless to me and all your worthy, albeit probably guilty, indigent clients.”
When she quieted down, I distracted her by talking about my attitude toward cops, wh
ich was complicated. I mostly stayed out of trouble as a kid, so it wasn’t until my father was beaten to death in the back of that bar that I even talked to a cop, much less formed an opinion on their net contribution to society.
I decided early on it was mixed. As with any subculture, there’s an even distribution among police of honest, decent, well-meaning people, neutral schlubs, and venal sociopaths. Though I’d say with cops you get more extremes at the extreme, both heroic and reprehensible. It’s the environment they live in—the constant exposure to people at their worst, the stiffened postures at their approach, the daily pressure to stay within thin legal lines their opponents feel no reason to honor.
When I spent time with my father at his apartment in the Bronx, many of the sidewalk cops lived in the neighborhood. They hung out at the same bars, stuffed heart-choking food into their mouths at the same breakfast joints, played in the same softball league. It was one reason kids like me stayed out of trouble. The uniformed guy grabbing you by the scruff of the neck likely got drunk with your old man on Saturday night, or sat next to him at Mass on Sunday morning. You were wary of the cops, but every kid I knew was far more terrified of his father.
In my case, that was a realistic fear.
But when he was killed, I didn’t get much help from all those backslapping buddies on the force. What I got was mostly tight-lipped silence and the subtle implication that I was better off letting it go and moving on with my life.
I never learned if that was to protect me, or them, or people I didn’t know. I was too young, too weary from the pressure of working my way through MIT in the boxing ring, too burdened with a mother who’d given up all hope in life, a sister who wanted nothing but to get the hell out of town, and a girlfriend from a loftier social caste whose principal goal in life was to redefine the boundaries of sexual endurance.
It wasn’t until I exchanged my marriage, suburban house, and corporate career for full-time drunkenness that I was reacquainted with rank-and-file law enforcement. Luckily much of what I did went unreported, and thus unpunished, though I’m not sure how. Maybe that’s why there’s such a thing as luck.
