Westlake, Donald E - Novel 41

by Levine (v1. 1)

"I suppose so," said Levine slowly, but the words were ashes in his mouth. He understood why what Andy had just said was the common, almost the universal belief among the police; whenever one mobster killed another, great smiles of happiness lit up the faces in the precinct houses. But Levine just couldn't take pleasure from the death of a human being, no matter who, no matter what he had done in his life. He supposed it was really selfishness, really only a matter of projecting their deaths onto himself, visualizing his own end in theirs, that made him troubled and sad at the cutting short of lives so stained and spoiled, but nevertheless he just couldn't bring himself to share in the general glee at the thought of a murdered mobster.

  A little later, as he was leaving Andy's room, he paused in the doorway to let a wizened ancient man pass by, moving slowly and awkwardly and painfully with the help of a walker. That's me, Levine thought, and behind him Andy said, "If they start bumping one another off, Abe, just step to one side."

  Levine looked back at him, bewildered, his mind for an instant filling with visions of doddering oldsters bumping one another off: "What do you mean?"

  "Your mobster pals. They love to kill so much, let *em kill each other. It isn't up to us to stop it, or to get in the way."

  "I'll stay out of the way," Levine promised. Then he smiled and waved and left, walking around the ancient man, who had barely progressed beyond the doorway.

  Maple Avenue in Bay Shore ended on a long wide dock, covered with asphalt and its center lined with parking meters. Levine found a free meter, got out of the car, and strolled a bit, smelling the salt tang. Once or twice he glanced back the way he had come, without seeing Jack Crawley; which was as it should be.

  Out near the end of the dock, several small boats were offloading bushel baskets and burlap bags, all filled with clams. Two trucks were receiving the harvest, and the men working there called cheerfully at one another, talking more loudly than necessary, but apparently filled with high spirits because of the clarity and beauty of the day.

  Nine a.m. on the third Sunday in October. The air was clear, the sun bright in a sky dotted with clouds, the water frisky and glinting and cold-looking. Levine inhaled deeply, glad to be alive, barely even conscious of the straps around his shoulders and chest, under his shirt, holding the recording apparatus.

  He strolled aimlessly on the dock for about fifteen minutes and then turned at the sound of a beep-beep to see a small inboard motorboat bobbing next to the dock, with Banadando at the wheel. Banadando gestured, and Levine crossed over to stand looking down at him. "Come aboard," Banadando said. "We'll go for a run on the bay."

  Clammers and fishermen were in other small boats dotting the bay. Long Island was five miles or so to the north, the barrier beach called Fire Island was just to the south, and Banadando's hosii — Bobby's Dream was the name painted on the stern in flowing golden letters —was simply another anonymous speck on the dancing water.

  Bobby's Dream was compact but comfortable, its cabin — where Levine now sat —containing a tiny galley-style kitchen, cunning storage spaces, a foldaway table and a pair of long upholstered benches that converted to twin beds. "Nice, huh?" Banadando said, coming down into the cabin after cutting the engine and dropping anchor.

  "Very clever," Levine said.

  "That, too," Banadando agreed. Today he wore a longbilled white yachting cap edged in gold, the bill shielding his eyes as yesterday's hat had done. In blue blazer, white scarf and white pants, he was almost a parody of the weekend yachtsman. Sitting on the bench across from Levine, he said, "After dark I take the inlet, I go out to the ocean, I sleep in comfort and safety. Nobody knows where I am or where I'll be next, I land where I want, when I want. Until I leave town, this is the safest place in the world for me."

  "I can see that," Levine said.

  "You wired?"

  "Of course," Levine said.

  Banadando shook his head, smirking a bit. "We all go through the motions, right? You know I know you're gonna be wired, so I know you know I won't say anything you can use. But still you got to go through the whole thing, strap it on, walk around like a telephone company employee. You broadcasting or taping?"

  "Taping," Levine said, wondering if Banadando would insist on being given the tape.

  But Banadando merely smiled, saying, "Good. If you were broadcasting, we'd be too far out for your backup to read."

  "That's right. Mr. Banadando, we "

  Banadando made a face. "I figured you'd find that out, who I am, but I don't like it. How many cops know about our little conversation?"

  "Four, including me. We're already aware of the existence of rotten apples. Don't worry, we won't alert Polito through the department."

  "Don't tell me not to worry, Mr. Levine."

  "Sorry."

  "You're a long time dead."

  "I agree," Levine said.

  Banadando took from an outside pocket of his blazer a sheet of white typewriter paper folded into quarters. Opening this, smoothing it on the tabletop, he turned it so the handwriting faced Levine. It was large block-printed letters in black ink. He said, "You see all this?"

  "Yes?"

  "I'm not giving you this paper, you're remembering it. Or you'll listen to your tape, later. You see what I mean?"

  Levine looked at him. "Why do you think I'm going to be in that much trouble, Mr. Banadando?"

  "Because I don't know how smart you are," Banadando said. "Maybe you're very dumb. Maybe one of the three cops you talked to is right now on the phone to Giacomo. Maybe you get nervous in the clutch. Maybe all kinds of things. I can't see the future, Mr. Levine, so I protect myself from it just as hard as I can. Okay?"

  "Okay," Levine said.

  Banadando's fingertip touched the first word on the sheet of paper. His hands were thick and stubby-fingered, but very clean, with meticulously-groomed nails. The effect, however, was not of cleanliness but of a kind of doughy unhealthfulness. "This," Banadando said, his sausage finger tapping the word, "is a telephone number."

  Levine frowned. The word, all alone near the top of the sheet, was THIRSTY. "It is?"

  "The phone dial doesn't just have numbers," Banadando reminded him. "It has letters. Dial those letters. You'll call just after noon today; this is back in the city, it's a city number."

  "All right."

  "You got to call no later than ten past twelve, or he won't be there."

  "All right."

  "When the guy answers, you tell him you're Abe. That's all he knows about you, that's all he needs to know. He'll tell you does he have the stuff yet or not. If it's no, he'll tell you when to call again."

  "What is this stuff?"

  "Let it be a surprise," Banadando said.

  Levine took a breath. "Mr. Banadando," he said, "I have to tell you something you should already know. If any evidence of crime is put in my possession, I am going to turn it over to my superiors."

  "Sure you are," Banadando said. "You'll take the package. you'll sniff all over it like a bird-dog, you'll get nothing out of it. The next thing that happens, you'll bring it to me."

  "But you realize we'll study it first."

  "I am not here to be stupid," Banadando said. His finger moved down to the next item, below THIRSTY. There was the word KOPYKAT, and under it an address: 1411 BROADWAY. "This is a copying service," he said. "It's a chain, there's Kopykats all over the city. This is the Broadway one, you got it?"

  "Yes."

  "They're open on Sunday. This afternoon, any time this afternoon, you go there and pick up the package for Mr. Robert. If there's no package, don't worry about it."

  "All right."

  The stubby finger moved down to the last item on the sheet of paper: BELLPORT on one line, and under it HOWELL'S POINT. "Tomorrow morning," he said. "It's farther out from the city, so let's say ten o'clock. You bring me the Kopykat package and the other package, and I tell you what next."

  "And the scraps from your table?"

  With a thin smile, Banadando shoo
k his head. "We pay at the end," he said.

  "No," Levine said. "We have to have something now, to prove it's worthwhile."

  Banadando sat back, brooding. The small movements of the boats were comforting at first, but then insistent. A large white ferry went by, On its way to Fire Island, and its wake made the Bobby's Dream heave on the water, like something alive and in pain.

  "Upstate in Attica," Banadando said at last, "in the state pen there, you got a guy named Johnson, serving five consecutive life terms. He's never coming out. He'U be the only Johnson there with that sentence."

  Levine smiled faintly. "I guess you're right."

  "In Vermont," Banadando said, speaking slowly, picking his words with obvious care, "there used to be a ski lodge called TransAlpine, had a big Olympic indoor skating rink. Burned down. No link between that and Johnson at all, right?"

  "You tell me," Levine said.

  "Johnson did things for Giacomo sometimes," Banadando said, "Giacomo had a piece of TransAlpine. Not right out in front, but you could find it."

  "And?"

  "Johnson Hired the torch."

  "It was arson?"

  "Nobody ever said it was," Banadando said. "Not up there in Vermont. All I say to you is, Johnson hired the torch, Johnson and TransAlpine, there's no link there, so nobody ever talked to Johnson about that. Now all of a sudden Ygiving you a link. And what has Johnson got to lose?"

  "The same as the rest of us," Levine said.

  The man who answered the Thirsty phone number had thin raspy voice. He said, "I got everything but the gun. You want?"

  "Yes," Levine said.

  "In Manhattan," the raspy voice said, "79th Street anc Broadway, there's benches at the median, middle of th< street, where people sit in the sun. Around two o'clocl there'll be an old guy there with the package, gift-wrapped. Tell him you're Abe."

  Levine followed directions and found half a dozen elderly men on the stone bench there, faces turned to the thin cleai autumn sun. The faces were absorbing the gold, hoarding it, stocking it up for the long cold time in the dark to come. .

  One of the old men held in his lap a parcel that looked likef a box of candy gaily wrapped in Happy Birthday paper. Levine went to him, identified himself as Abe, and took delivery. When Levine asked him how he'd come by the package, the old man said, "Fella gave it to me half an hour ago with a five dollar bill. Said you'd be along, said he couldn't wait, said I had an honest face."

  The next old man over laughed, showing a mouth without teeth. "I said to the fella," he announced, "what kinda face you think /got? Paid me no never mind."

  Carrying the Happy Birthday parcel, Levine went down Broadway to Kopykat, where he picked up the package for Mr. Robert. Then he continued on downtown to hand the material over to Inspector Santangelo at the Organized Crime Unit. "People upstate are talking to Johnson," Santangelo said.

  "But is he talking to them?"

  Santangelo grinned. "He will."

  The next morning, Santangelo brought the two packages to the Forty-Third Precinct and handed them back to Levine in Lieutenant Barker's office. The Kopykat package had turned out to be copies of about forty ledger pages, but only numbers and abbreviations were filled in, making it useless by itself; you'd have to know what business those pages were connected to, and presumably Banadando's intended customer would know.

  As for the birthday present, that box had contained a jumble of sales slips, for items ranging from automobiles and furs to coffee tables and refrigerators, plus a bunch of photos and negatives. There were a dozen pictures of what appeared to be the same orgy, there were pictures of a man getting into a car on a city street, pictures of a man at a construction site, of a truck being loaded or unloaded at the same site, of two men exchanging an envelope in the doorway of an appliance store.

  Everything had been fingerprinted and photographed and brooded over, but there wasn't so far much value in this material. "It's puzzle parts," Santangelo said. "Just a couple stray puzzle parts. Banadando has the rest."

  Monday was a less pretty day than Sunday had been, the broad sky piling up with tumbled dirty clouds and a damp breeze blowing from the northeast. With Banadando's packages on the front seat beside him, Levine drove out the Long Island Expressway and took the turnoff south for Bellport. He found Howell's Point, left the car, and saw Banadando approaching on a bicycle, dressed in his yachting outfit, with a supermarket bag in the basket. Banadando looked unexpectedly human and vulnerable, not at all like the tough guy he really was. Levine was pleased with the man, almost proud of him, for how matter-of-factly he carried it off.

  Dismounting, Banadando said, "Take the groceries, okay? The boat's just over here."

  Banadando walked the bike, and Levine followed with the bag and the two packages. The bag contained milk, tomatoes, lettuce, English muffins, a steak. Levine found himself wondering: Does Banadando have a wife? Is she part of his escape plan, or is he abandoning her, or does she not exist? Maybe she's already gone on ahead to prepare their next home. Banadando's style was that of the complete loner, but on the other hand he was only involved in this problem because of his emotional attachment to his son.

  That was why Levine had never been able to go along with the idea that a murdered mobster was something to be happy about. Even the worst of human beiAgs was still in some way a human being, was more than and other than a simple cartoon criminal. No death should be gloated over.

  Aboard the boat, Banadando lashed the bike to the foredeck, then cast them off and headed out onto the bay, while Levine went below and put away the groceries. Coming up again on deck, where Banadando sat in a tall canvas chair at the wheel, steering them on a long gradual curve eastward into Bellport Bay, Levine said, "I'm not wired today. Thought you'd like to know."

  Banadando grinned at him. "Waste of good tape, huh?"

  "You won't say anything useful while I'm recording you."

  "I won't say anything useful at all. Not the way you mean."

  They ran southeast for fifteen minutes, then Banadando dropped anchor near Ridge Island and they went below together to talk. Levine explained that the Thirsty man had said he had everything but the gun, and Banadando waved that away: "I don't need the gun. I got enough without the gun."

  "Well, here it all is," Levine said, gesturing to the two packages on the table.

  Banadando nodded at the packages and grinned. "Made no sense to you, huh?"

  "That's right."

  "It'll make sense to some people," Banadando said. "And that's all it has to do. What about Johnson?"

  "He's being talked to."

  "He'll be very interesting, Johnson. Okay, time to memorize."

  It was another sheet of paper, instructions on another two pick-ups. Levine listened and nodded, and when Banadando was done he said, "How long am I your messenger?"

  "Two more days," Banadando said. "Tomorrow morning, you bring me this stuff, I give you the last shopping list. Wednesday morning, you bring me the last of it, I give you a nice package for yourself. The Johnson stuff is just a teaser; Wednesday morning I give you a banquet."

  "And you leave."

  "That's right," Banadando said. "And if you keep your ear to the ground the next few months. Detective Levine, you will hear some far-away explosions."

  Their business done, they both went up on deck, and Levine sat in the second canvas chair while Banadando steered back toward Bellport. Even though the sky was lowering with clouds and there was a chill dampness in the air, there was something extraordinarily pleasant about being out here in this boat, skimming the choppy little wavelets, far from the cares of the world.

  Not far enough. They were almost to Howell's Point, Levine could actually see his own car and a few other cars and some people walking along the pier when Banadando suddenly swore and spun the wheel and the Bobby's Dream veered around in a tight half-circle, lying way over on its side into the turn, spt-wing foam in a great white welt on the gray water.

  It wasn't
till they were far from shore, out in the empty middle of the bay, that Banadando slowed the boat again and Levine could tailk to him, saying, "Friends of yours back there?"

  "Friends of his," Banadando said, his voice vibrating like a guitar string. Tension had bunched the muscles in his cheeks and around his mouth, and his lips were thin and bloodless.

  Levine said, "I wasn't followed, I can tell you that. My back-up would have known."

  "The supermarket," Banadando said. "I can't even go to the supermarket. This is rotten luck, rotten luck."

  "Now he knows about the boat."

  "He can put people all around this bay, Giacomo can," Banadando said. "If he knows there's a reason. And now he knows there's a reason."

  "I'll just mention police protection once," Levine said.

  Banadando nodded. "Good," he said. "That was the mention. Look here."

  From an enclosed cabinet under the wheel, Banadando pulled out a Defense Mapping Agency book of Sailing Directions, found the pages he wanted, and showed Levine what he intended to do. "Long Island's a hundred twenty miles long," he said. "From where we are here, there's like another seventy miles out to the end. But I can't stay on the South Shore any more, so here's what I'm gonna do. I don't have to go all the way out to Montauk Point at the end of the island. Here by Hampton Bays I can take the Shinnecock Canal through to Peconic Bay, then I only have to go out around Orient Point and there I am on the North Shore. Then I head west again, across Long Island Sound. Look here on this map, west of Mattituck Inlet, you see this little dip in the coastline?"

  "Yes."

  "There's a dirt road there, comes down from Bergen Avenue. I know that place from years ago. There's a little wooden dock there, that's all. Nobody around. That's where we meet tomorrow, let Giacomo and his boys search the South Shore all they want."

  Looking at the maps, Levine said, "That's a long way to go, in a small boat like that."

  "A hundred miles," Banadando said, dismissing it. "Maybe less. Don't worry, Levine, I'll be there. Between now and Wednesday, let's face it, the only way I stay alive is to do things Giacomo thinks I won't do or can't do."

  "You're right," Levine said.