The Straight Man - Roger L Simon

by Roger L. Simon

  "I'm looking for Seventeen B."

  "Oh, yeah. Well, you got the wrong building. You're lying to me. You're a narc, motherfucker!"

  "I'm not a narc. I'm looking for a girl in Seventeen B."

  "Sniffin' poontang, Charlie'?" someone shouted.

  Everyone started to laugh. I began to back out of the building as quickly as I could, but I hadn't gotten five feet when two more guys, both about the size of New York Jets linemen and both wearing the obligatory berets, were at my side, lifting me off the ground as they escorted me out the door, through the gate, and into the backseat of the same Silver Cloud I had seen, moments before, dispensing basketballs like the lead vehicle in a drug dealer's antipoverty program.

  10

  "Do you like Eastern seafood, Mr. Wine? The scrod is good. I particularly recommend the scrod this time of year." He pronounced it "scrahd" like a proper Bostonian.

  "Fine. I'll take the scrod."

  "Two scrod, Eddie," he told the waiter. "Lightly grilled with lemon. And bring us a side order of your cottage fries. I feel like going off my diet today."

  Eddie nodded and slipped off. I was sitting opposite King King in Nick's Sea Grotto on City Island, a minute enclave of the middle-class good life floating incongruously off the eastern shore of the Bronx. Through the window to my right was a tiny marina, a pier, and some rustic Cape Cod frame houses. It could have been Falmouth or Hyannis. King himself fit in perfectly, the well-groomed but casual professional in a pale green Fila jogging suit, Sperry Top-Siders, and a beeper on his belt. Even the car was right, a 1985 black Jeep Cherokee with wood siding and fog lamps. He was waiting by it when the Silver Cloud pulled up to deposit me. He signaled its drivers on with a dismissive wave of the hand meant to indicate, incontestably, that parading around in a vehicle like that was a sign of unspeakable vulgarity.

  "I had an interesting fish on my last visit to California," said King. "Orange roughy. From New Zealand."

  "You get out West often, Mr. King?"

  "Hardly ever. I don't like the weather. Too consistent. And the real estate prices are a joke." He sipped on his beer. "Though I understand some people think I have great interests out there."

  "Some people do. But you seem to be doing pretty well where you are. Your business looks about as well organized as General Motors."

  "Things aren't what they appear to be, Mr. Wine. And I can assure you I suffer from the same syndromes as other businessmen. Too many people on the payroll, murderous competition, and the IRS snooping around every little nook and cranny. They don't realize that if they put me out of business, the city has massive unemployment all the way from l49th Street to the Cross Bronx Expressway. But the fact is, right now I'd do anything to get out of it."

  "Come on now, King. You don't look like a man who's struggling to stay afloat."

  "It's not that simple." His beeper sounded and he switched it off. "Do you have any children, Mr. Wine?"

  "Two boys."

  "Lucky man. I'd do anything to have children. Move to Detroit. Have a house in Grosse Pointe. But I have to get out of this business first."

  "So get out."

  "It's the only thing I know. I've been doing it since Otis and I were kids. I was six years old when I sold my first nickel bag to one of the fifth-graders in my grammar school. But I am going to get out," he said, "and I'm going to get out big .... See this?" He took out a small notebook and dropped it on the table. "My vocabulary list. Every time someone uses a big word, I write it down here and look it up when I get home: euphemism . . . perspicacious." He read a couple from the top. "Soon I'l1 be ready to make every one of those white-bread fucks at the Harvard Club look sick. I'll take my rightful place as King King, captain of industry . . . as soon as I get my stake."

  "Your stake?"

  "I want to buy in on a level commensurate with my position. Wouldn't you, Mr. Wine? After all, here in the Bronx I have a certain status and, I'm sure you would agree, the skills it takes to run my business are not altogether different from those it takes to run a conglomerate."

  I looked at King. On one level he was a delusional, vicious, dope-dealing bastard, but on another he made perfect sense.

  "Where does Otis fit in all this?"

  "Otis is crazy. He's all emotion and can't hold anything in. When there's a threat on my life, he's absolutely out of control. He thinks he's helping me, but he's hurting me. Lots of people would be interested in getting the feds on my path, take over my business. I'm a moving target and Otis is a liability because he's so visible. Makes him guilty. You know what I mean. So he comes here, he doesn't even see me. And then when Della shines him on, he's gone. God knows where he is." Our scrod arrived and King started in on it immediately. "He was better off when Ptak was around. He kept him on the ground. Of course, their partnership was doomed anyway."

  "Because Ptak didn't have the talent."

  "Oh, yeah, everybody knew that. Even Ptak. But he didn't want to be in show business anyway. He was the one who broke the partnership with Otis."

  "He did?"

  King looked at me suspiciously. "You didn't know that?"

  "All the Hollywood press reported it the other way around."

  "Well, sure, what're they gonna say? But Ptak had other plans."

  "What kind of plans?"

  "What do you want to know that for?"

  "I'm investigating. It's my job."

  "Some job." He laughed softly. "Eat your scrod."

  I ate my scrod. Then I said, "For a guy who wants to have children and move to Grosse Pointe, you're pretty cavalier about this LAPD investigation."

  "What're you trying to do, gumshoe, put some muscle on me? Make me tell you some secret that's going to unlock your case? Let me tell you, there's no kind of muscle you can put on me. You're a slimy little private eye and I'm a major businessman. I make more money in a day than you make in a year."

  "I wouldn't doubt it."

  "And Mike Ptak needed me more than I needed him."

  "What would he need from you?" I added a little smirk to the end of my question because I figured it might make him defensive. It did.

  "My expertise."

  "Don't tell me Mike Ptak wanted to go into your kind of business."

  "How stupid can you be? No wonder you're a cheap gumshoe."

  "So Ptak wanted to go into legitimate business."

  "Investment banking."

  "And what did he have to offer the world of investment banking?"

  "Nothing. He just suffered from what you might call an inflated self-image."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Well, I'll tell you, Mr. Investigator, because it doesn't matter now anyway. The man's history. He said he knew how to put his hands on twenty-five million dollars." King grinned at me. "Now I bet you're thinking, Where can I get hold of this twenty-five million dollars'?"

  "Very good guess."

  "I told you I was a business genius." He grinned again, then sat there a moment enjoying the silence. "Well, don't waste your time with that, because I can assure you I checked it out fully and Ptak's twenty-five mil was a stone fantasy."

  "Checked it out with whom?"

  "Figure that out for yourself. Besides, that would've been real dirty money. Scum money. So dirty even I wouldn't touch it." He checked his watch and frowned. "Now I've talked so long I won't be able to finish my lunch." King stood and put his initials on the back of the check. "This one's on me. But for your own health, stay away from housing projects in the Bronx. It's not Seventy-seven Sunset Strip, if you know what I mean. And one other thing—if someone's trying to nail my ass for this Ptak business, there's a good chance, since you're poking around in my affairs, they might want to take a crack at you and blame me for it. It's the kind of headline they love in the New York Post: 'L.A. Private Dick Blown Away by Black Drug Lord.' Or maybe they'd just dump you off a pier and leave you there. You wouldn't want to end up one of those bloated corpses found every so often floating along with the garba
ge in the Harlem River, now would you?"

  "I'll ruminate on that."

  "Ru-what? What'd you say?" he asked, pulling out his little notebook. I spelled it for him. "Thanks," said King and left, leaving me sitting there with the scrod.

  I stared at it for a second, wondering what kind of money was so dirty even King King wouldn't touch it. When I didn't get anywhere with that, I returned to the problem at hand: finding Otis. Getting to him through Della didn't seem a particularly promising idea, given the welcome I was receiving at the Tremont Avenue Projects. And being a smart guy and trying to sneak back there by disguise or by some other trick of tradecraft was about as quick a route to ending my ambivalence about being a detective as I could think of. In fact, in all probability it would end whatever ambivalence I had about life. Then I thought of someone Otis had mentioned during our laid back California lunch at the Malibu Pharmacy. It was a flimsy lead indeed, but for the moment it was all I had. Before I acted upon it, I went over to the restaurant pay phone and dialed home to see what was happening. It had been a late lunch and a good portion of the day would have passed on the West Coast. An answering machine picked up and I thought I had the wrong number until I realized Chantal had recorded a new message in a cool, professional tone: "You have reached the offices of Moses Wine International Investigative Consultants, specializing worldwide in missing persons, technical surveillance, industrial espionage, witness analysis, domestic relations, personal injury, and related areas. All our operatives are engaged in field work at this time. If you leave a message, together with your name, number, and time you called, our staff will contact you as soon as possible."

  Jesus, I thought, where did she get that jargon, the Yellow Pages?

  I hung up and headed for the door of the restaurant, stopping by the cashier to find out where I could get the subway. It turned out I had to get a bus off the island and pick up the IND near Route 295, but all this complicated maneuvering stopped the moment I exited the restaurant and noticed a van parked across the street. It was a brand-new bronze Toyota without license plates and its driver was a tall, muscular white man with chestnut brown hair and an angular, chiseled face resembling the actor Scott Glenn—a killer's face. He was pretending not to look at me, but I could see that the sideview mirror of his van had been skewed slightly toward the front of the restaurant. King's warning about the Harlem River flashed through my mind and I quickly retreated inside. Ten seconds later the van drove off. But it hadn't gone far because ten minutes later I caught it in the rearview mirror as I rode yet another gypsy cab west across the City Island Bridge back into the Bronx proper. My driver, Fouad Fayed, a Lebanese on a green card studying to be a civil engineer, was regaling me about the political significance of evenhandedness.

  "It not evenhanded. It not evenhanded," he repeated about six times. "Don't take me amiss, but when the Arab man blow up in his office in Orange County, nobody care. But when the Jewish man, the old Jewish man in the wheelchair, about to die and everything, goes boom off that boat, everybody scream and yell like he Albert Schweitzer or something. Don't take me amiss."

  "Don't take me amiss either, but see that bronze Toyota van right behind us?"

  "I see. Yes. Good van. Japanese van. I for free trade, but we better have restrictions for that. Otherwise who buy American car? All industry go belly up. Green card worker first to go. Don't take me amiss."

  "No chance of that. Look, why don't you drive a little faster?"

  "Hey, mister, speed limit here twenty-five miles per hour."

  "So what? Nobody's going to bother you. I'l1 pay the ticket." At that point we were heading east on 184th Street, the van a couple of car lengths behind us.

  "I don't care ticket. Big deal ticket. But insurance go up. Big price. In this country, everybody sue, sue, sue."

  "Okay, now listen to me and don't get nervous."

  "I don't think I like what I going to hear."

  "That car is following me."

  "What for? Don't tell me. I don't want to know. Get out of my cab. No, don't get out. I won't stop. I die. Hold on."

  And he stepped on it.

  In a moment we were hurtling between an oil truck and an abandoned school bus, the van barreling along behind us. We came out on the next street, both vehicles zigzagging through traffic, maintaining their distance until Fouad, his neck straining, floored the accelerator, jumped ahead, and made a hard right into a warehouse alley, getting a fifty-yard advantage on our pursuer.

  "Where'd you learn to do that?"

  "Drive ambulance for Beirut Red Cross."

  "Pull in there." I pointed to a driveway. Fouad tucked in just as the van went whistling past.

  "Follow him."

  "What're you, crazy? I no follow him. You get out of cab. Pay twelve dollars forty-five cents." He nodded toward his meter.

  "Hey, listen, you're not going to abandon me now. We're old friends."

  "Friend? I no friend of yours. I leave here right now. Have class Long Island University. Must study reserve book room. Otherwise fail. Good-bye." He leaned over the front seat, opening my door and muttering to himself.

  "All right. Listen. Just drive me downtown like I asked you in the first place."

  He looked at me, then, continuing to mutter, closed the door and drove off. In a few minutes we were crossing the Willis Avenue Bridge, Fouad watching me all the while in the rearview mirror, not saying a word. He finally spoke when we hit the FDR south.

  "Mister, how come that man following you? Don't take me amiss."

  "I think he wants to kill me."

  "Oh, boy. Oh, boy. You the good guy or the bad guy? No, don't tell me."

  "Okay, I won't."

  He fell silent again until we reached Washington Square Park. "Okay, mister. Good-bye. I go."

  "Hold on a second, Fouad. I'm not sure this is where I want to be."

  "What you mean this not where you want to be? This Washington Square Park. What you talking?"

  "I'm not sure my man is here."

  "Look," he pointed. "Many men here. All kinds men. Women too. Faggots too. See how they dress up. Tomorrow Halloween. Big holiday for faggots. In my country everybody a faggot. No big deal. Men hold hands, but nobody gets cancer in the blood. No, no, no. They all die too young for that."

  "I'm looking for some guy who might help me find another guy. What I'd like you to do is stay here." We were double-parked on the corner of Fourth and Macdougal. "Keep your meter running. I'll be right back. This is on account." I handed him a crisp fifty and got out of the cab. Emily's tab was mounting up.

  In a few seconds I was wending my way through the action in the park. It was only six P.M., but the area was already jumping with the flotsam and jetsam of thirty years of American culture. Every fad since the war was represented and I wasn't sure which war. A toothless Jack Kerouac was sitting on a bench next to an earth mother who looked like she was still raising money for the Lincoln Brigade. Behind them a group of bisexual eleven-year-old punkers wearing their pre Halloween masks were taunting an inept mime who was trying to climb the inevitable imaginary stairs. Over to their right, past some skateboarders and this year's Hare Krishnas, the crowds were gathering around Washington Square Fountain, small groups clustered about some eager beaver selling an inflation-diminished nickel bag or the latest psychedelic. It all reminded me of when I was a kid and would take the train down from Cos Cob to hear poetry readings at Rick's Café Bizarre. And I was mildly comforted that in their desperation to be new some things never changed.

  I didn't see any comics among the street entertainers vying for an audience that evening, but I did notice a jazz musician playing some complicated fusion version of "Salt Peanuts" on a white plastic alto of the kind Ornette Coleman used to play, or, for all I knew, still did. I wandered over and joined the group of a dozen or so listening to him, waiting for him to finish the number. Despite a few days' growth and a faraway bloodshot look in his eyes, he still seemed to be in his late thirties. He wore
a frayed hound's-tooth overcoat that swayed back and forth as he moved his sax to the beat of the music and a porkpie hat cocked sideways in the Lester Young style. He took it off when the song was over and started passing it around.

  "How long you been playing around here?" I asked when he reached me.

  "Too long."

  "Swami X?" I said, depositing a twenty-dollar bill on top of the paltry collection of dimes and quarters he would take home for supper. It was strange to think that in his own weird way this guy was just as gifted a musician as Sting or David Byrne. But whoever said the world was fair?

  "Swami X . . . Swami X." He looked at me. "Haven't seen that dude in five years. Can't do comedy anymore because of his legs. Can't do stand-up when all you can do is sit down."

  "What happened to his legs?"

  "Some Haitian junkie broke 'em with a baseball bat in Alphabet City. Got maybe fifteen dollars for his trouble. Not that it was a lot of trouble."

  "You know where he is now?"

  "What're you gonna do when you find him?"

  "Ask some questions."

  "Anybody gonna get hurt? Motherfucker's had enough problems, you know. There ain't a lot of jazz lovers left in this park, but twenty bucks don't buy my soul yet." He picked up his sax and played a few bars of a bebop version of the Grosse Fugue.

  "He's not going to get hurt. At least by me."

  "There's a place called Shannon's Bar on Vesey Street in TriBeCa. Try the apartments upstairs."

  I got back into the cab, startling Fouad, who was gesturing with his fingers to a couple of punkettes on the corner of University Place as if they were a pair of stray cats.

  "Vesey Street in TriBeCa."

  "Okay, okay. TriBeCa." He turned on the ignition and I took off. I decided it was better not to mention the Toyota van, which suddenly pulled out about a half block behind us without its lights on. I wondered what kind of arsenal its driver kept in the recesses of his cabin. If he was as much of a professional as he looked, it was likely to be one of the newer weapons you read about in Soldier of Fortune magazine, like the Austrian 308-caliber Steyr rifle. With a good starlight scope, the kind they used in Vietnam to spot elusive VC on dark jungle nights, that sucker could hit a warthog at four hundred meters. And I was about twenty-five times bigger than a warthog.