by Ann Aptaker
I answer his question with the venerable New York tradition of asking a question right back at him. “You familiar with the boys in Mickey’s outfit? Particularly a pointy-faced guy, and a husky guy with a nose like a Christmas lightbulb?”
“Not sayin’ I do.”
“And you’re not saying you don’t. Spill it, Eddie.”
“You’re lookin’ to get y’self killed, Cantor,” he says, sour as stale beer. “And get me killed, too.”
“I’m not looking to get anyone killed. I’m looking to keep Lilah Day from maybe getting killed.” He gives me a look a little less sour, but a little more worried. I wonder if he has a soft spot for Lilah, or at least for the good old days Lilah recalls to Eddie’s mind, when he was a young player, before he was just an old gofer for the big boys.
“Yeah,” I say, “they grabbed her. So I want to know who they are, and where they live.”
He doesn’t answer me right away, just looks at me, then looks around, nervous, like he’s scared of being marked a rat.
“Listen, Eddie, if it’s any comfort, you won’t be telling tales behind Loreale’s back. I just spoke to him. He didn’t order the grab on Lilah. Pointy Chin and Bulby Nose aren’t working for him, and he couldn’t care less what happens to them.”
“Yeah, but does he care about Lilah Day?”
“Personally? Probably not. But he cares about the mess she’s in the middle of. He wouldn’t mind if I cleaned up the mess of Mickey’s murder and Lilah’s grab. So give me a hand, Eddie. Sig won’t mind. I’ll even put in a good word to him about you.”
The old guy straightens up a little, says, “You’d better,” more a plea than a command.
I nod my promise.
He wets his lips, takes another moment or two to get a little more sure of himself. “Yeah. The guy with the pointy face. That’d be Al Berg. And the other guy sounds like Frankie O’Byrne.”
“Know where they live?”
“You won’t find Miss Day at O’Byrne’s place. He’s got a room in a flophouse on Kensington. His room’s barely big enough for himself and maybe a pet roach. Better off tryin’ Berg’s joint. He’s got a bungalow in the Gut, on Third Street. A real tumbledown place, green with brown shutters. Be careful, Cantor. They’re real tough boys. That Berg, he’s plenty—”
“Handy with a knife, not bad with a gun. Yeah, I know. Thanks, Eddie.”
He answers with a joyless chuckle that rubs against my nerve ends. “Don’t thank me yet. I didn’t do you any favors. When I buy you a nice coffin, then you can thank me. G’night, Cantor.”
Chapter Sixteen
Sig owns most if not all of the cops in the Coney Island precinct, so I’m gambling that maybe a badge boy or two might give me some help cleaning up the mess Sig wants me to clean up, or at least help me find Lilah. I don’t make a habit of working with cops. In fact, the number of times I’ve worked their side of the street has been exactly zero. But as much as I don’t trust cops, I trust the current Coney Island players even less; that is, if I could even get a handle on who the hell they are. With Mickey gone, I don’t know who’s trying to pull the local strings behind Sig’s back. Eddie Janko has one story, Mona Carlotti has another, and I wind up talking to myself and bumping into my own reflection over and over again. I might as well be trying to work my way through Coney’s funhouse mirrors.
So if I want to find Lilah, I’ll need a little insider help. And since I don’t know if Lilah’s being held by only Pointy Chin Al Berg and Bulby Nose Frankie O’Byrne, or if they’ve surrounded her with Mickey’s reconstituted little army, getting her away from whoever’s got her could be tricky, so the more guns backing my play, the better. If I’m lucky, maybe Sig’s Coney cops will figure that if it’s in Sig’s interest, it’s in their interest.
The police station over on Eighth Street, built during the Gay Nineties, is as weirdly phantasmagorical as so much else in Coney Island. Its turrets, arches, and fake timbered facade conjure up a fantasy Alpine castle, not a house of billy clubs and guns. But don’t let the fairy-tale exterior fool you. Plenty of blood stains its history; its jail cells breed madhouse dreams. When I was a teenager, I endured one of my first police beatings in there, dragged in by a couple of patrol guys who gleefully pointed out that my dungarees and sport shirt buttoned on the wrong side. It seems to be in the nature of cops to beat you up, or drive you crazy, or be driven crazy themselves by all the savagery they see, which may be why they beat people up. Or maybe they’re nuts to start with. Maybe it’s a job requirement.
Any resemblance to a fairy-tale castle stops inside the station. It’s dingy inside, busy and noisy with middle-of-the-night hauls of drunks hollering obscenities or crying for their dead mothers, hookers screaming from their cells for their lawyers or pimps, and bad boys with tattoos who’ve just knocked over a gas station yelping their innocence. Only the pros like me stay quiet in their handcuffs. Pros get our phone call, call our lawyer, get a little shut-eye until we’re sprung, and if all goes well—and that’s a big if—no one gets hurt, unless, of course, you’re someone like me, wearing those wrong clothes. Of all the scars on my face, some are souvenirs of my outlaw life, and some are from cops who’ve taken issue with my fashion sense.
The plainclothes cop who snares me when I walk in probably looked better in uniform. His suit, an off-the-rack gray number that hasn’t been sponged or pressed in weeks, is up-to-date for a date sometime around V-E Day, and neckties haven’t been that wide since the Roosevelt administration. After he looks me up and down, gives me that cop sneer, I figure I’ll have to talk my way out of my own night in the cells. But all he says is, “You’re Cantor Gold, ain’t you. Been hearin’ about you all damn day. I didn’t figure you to be the type to just drop into a police station.”
“I never lack for invitations, if you know what I mean.”
“Uh-huh. Well, if you’re lookin’ for a welcome—”
“Nope, just looking for a little help, like any other citizen.”
A familiar voice behind me says, “Since when are you a regular citizen?” The guy with the voice comes around: it’s Esposito. He’s in his shirtsleeves, his tie—a cheap red and blue one but more up-to-date than the other guy’s—hangs limply open. He’s got a juicy cigar stub between his fat lips. The smoke veiling his chubby face makes his olive complexion look sickly and his steady stare from his brown eyes seem humane.
“What are you doing here, Lieutenant?” I say. “I thought you were a day-shift guy. Shouldn’t you be home in bed?”
“I got two murders on my hands, Gold, Mickey Day and that other guy, his tattoo flunky, Gus. Until I clear those up, home will have to wait. Captain pulled me in on this last night. I’m the senior detective, see? And Mickey Day was a big deal killing.” He adds with a shrug, “Too bad about Gus. The guy was just in the way, I guess. But what the hell are you doing here, Gold?”
“Is there someplace where we can talk?”
He eyes me like I might have head lice under my hat, but finally says, “My office.”
One thing that could result in attracting a better class of cops to the ranks is a better class of furniture. Nothing says you’re worthless like crappy furnishings supplied by the boss—the boss, in this case, being Joe Taxpayer. Inside Esposito’s cramped office, there’s a crummy chipped desk, lumpy desk chair, an old-fashioned coat stand with Esposito’s coat and hat, and a rickety wooden guest chair. The pale blue walls need painting, and the only thing relieving all that sooty blue is last month’s calendar pinup for December 1951, a very buxom blonde severely underdressed for Christmas, her Santa hat notwithstanding. If I didn’t find the pinup so tasty, I might say the picture’s insulting, treating the dame like a Christmas gift for the taking. But I don’t kid myself; if Miss December 1951 came gift wrapped to my door, I wouldn’t take her to the returns counter.
I’m pulled back from my arousing daydream by Esposito plopping his chunky bulldog frame into his chair, making the miserable contraption
squeak its pain. He plunges his cigar stub into an ashtray, says, “Okay, Gold, whatever’s on your mind, it better be good.”
“I need your help.”
The chair squeaks plenty as Esposito slowly sits up, never taking his eyes off me, his expression like he’s just heard the worst joke in the world by the worst baggy-pants comedian. “To do what?” he says. “Maybe you’d like me to help you rob a bank? Or maybe run a bunco job? How about we set up a murder, like we ain’t got enough of them around here lately.”
“I’m not trying to be funny, Lieutenant, and you shouldn’t either. Lilah Day was grabbed off the street, right in front of me, by two guys who mean business when it comes to killing. One of them killed a doorman in Manhattan. Yeah, I know, that’s outside your jurisdiction, but not Sig Loreale’s. And he’d like the whole mess cleaned up.”
“Oh, would he? Well, in that case, I’ll jump right on it.” He drips enough sarcasm to strip whatever shellac finish remains on his battered desk. I’ve seen cops resent their paymaster overlords before, but never this bad. And besides, the money lining their pockets tends to take the sting out of their betrayal of their badge. Maybe Esposito’s just all clutched up about being stuck out here in the Siberia of police precincts, hauling in drunks and carny hucksters, instead of working one of New York’s big-time precincts, putting steel bracelets on big players. He can’t spill his resentment on Sig, but I guess he figures he’s pretty safe spilling it all over me. “Okay, so who are these two bullies who stole Miss Day from you, Gold?”
“Al Berg and Frankie O’Byrne.”
The lieutenant stops playing the fool. What he thought was a bad joke suddenly hits him with the punch line of an even worse one, one that’s not funny at all. “Mickey Day’s muscle,” he says. “Yeah, I can see why Loreale would want this business cleaned up. Mickey was in his way, but—”
“But you and I both know Sig didn’t order the hit on Mickey.”
He stares at me like he suddenly knows me, suddenly knows I have the goods on him that he’s Loreale’s man. It takes him a minute, but his stare loosens, gets more comfortable. Maybe he’s come around to realize I don’t care if he’s Loreale’s man. When he finally gets back to being his cop self, he says, “Sure, Mickey wasn’t worth it. And besides, Loreale’s hits are cleaner than that, and Mickey’s hit was a sloppy job, taking Gus out like that, blood all over the place.” Esposito shakes his head, tsks his disapproval like a connoisseur of finer murders. “You think it was Berg and O’Byrne? You think they turned on Mickey to take over his operation?”
“It’s starting to look that way,” I say. “And now they’ve got Lilah. Maybe they figure she’ll challenge them for leadership of Mickey’s outfit, and now they want her out of the way, too. And you know Loreale. All these loose ends floating around in all that blood aren’t good for his new plans for Coney Island.”
“Yeah, he wants to clean up his money with real estate.” He says those last two words, real estate, like they’re the punch line of a dirty joke.
“So what do you say, Lieutenant? You gonna help me find Lilah, get her away from Berg and O’Byrne? It may be just the two of them holding her, or maybe she’s surrounded by more of Mickey’s thugs, if he has any more. I don’t know. I’ll go it alone if I have to, but an extra gun would improve the odds.”
Esposito sits back in his chair, the contraption’s squeak like a shriek of the damned. The minute he takes to eye me up and down while he thinks things over crawls slow as an hour. His thick satchel lips finally move, opening slowly, like he’s not altogether convinced that saying whatever it is he’s planning on saying is a good idea. “Okay,” he finally says, drawing it out, giving himself that extra second to change his mind. “Okay, I’ll back you.” The chair gives a dying shriek when he gets up and gets his hat and coat from the stand. “I don’t like murderers on my beat. And even though I don’t like you, Gold—I think your life is disgusting—I get the feeling you don’t like murderers, either. Let’s go.”
“Where’s your shadow? Where’s Pike?”
“Home in bed, if he’s smart. Just because I can’t let go of this case doesn’t mean he has to.”
Seems I found the one decent bone in Esposito’s bulldog body.
*
Eddie pegged Berg’s place, all right: a tumbledown green bungalow with brown shutters, the colors muddy in the streetlight. The Dodge Berg drove away with Lilah and O’Byrne is parked at the curb. I mention it to Esposito, who only nods as he walks to the side of the shack, then back to me. I can’t see his eyes too well under the brim of his hat, but his thick lips are pursed like leather bags.
“What’s wrong, Lieutenant?” I say.
“Something’s goin’ on. There’s a lotta lights on for one thirty in the morning. Looks like a parlor light, maybe a kitchen light, and a back bedroom. We won’t have much cover.”
“Could you see inside? Could you see where they’ve got Lilah?”
“Shades are down. Just saw shadows, couldn’t make ’em out.”
“Then the hell with cover. We’ll have to take our chances and just get inside.” I head for the stairs to the door.
I’m on the first of the three sagging steps when Esposito tugs me back. “Okay, I’m gonna ask you a stupid question. You got a gun, right? You’re not walkin’ in there empty handed?”
If he throws me stupid questions, I can’t pass up the fun of pulling the guy’s leg. “Don’t you know, Lieutenant, I’m not the kind who tells?”
“Very funny. Cantor Gold, comedian.”
I start up the stairs again, open the screen door, ready to knock, but the bungalow door opens and a gun barrel’s in my face. A revolver, long barrel.
The guy holding the gun is silhouetted against the light inside. A little guy: Pointy Chin Al Berg. “Get in the house,” he says. I’ve had more cordial invitations from funeral directors. “You, too, Esposito.” Berg’s even less polite to him.
Inside the door, with Esposito next to me, Berg maneuvers behind us, his gun at our backs. “Keep walking,” he says. “Hands where I can see ’em.”
Esposito’s face is sweating under his hat. It’s not sweat from heat, not in January. It’s sweat from anger, his cop’s blood boiling at being bested by a lowlife like Al Berg.
Berg marches us through the shabby parlor into an even shabbier greasy yellow kitchen. But the mood in the kitchen is lively, the laughs supplied by three people enjoying a bottle of whiskey at the kitchen table. One of them doesn’t surprise me. One of them I didn’t expect and didn’t think he had the stones to mix it up with this crowd. And the third is one of those horrible surprises that knocks the light out of life from time to time. The no surprise is Bulby Nose Frankie O’Byrne, who seems to be more interested in the whiskey than in the company. The one I’d never expect is Sergeant Pike. Without his hat, his long face looks longer, his big ears even bigger, his dull eyes duller, and his bad haircut of lifeless brown hair makes them all even uglier. And the surprise throwing the shadow across my soul is Lilah, still in her black high-necked sweater and black-and-green plaid skirt, the jazz club outfit even more out of place in this shabby kitchen with this shoddy crowd than it was in Mona’s parlor.
Lilah wasn’t being kidnapped outside Mona’s. She was being rescued. From me.
Esposito doesn’t seem surprised by any of it, or if he is, he’s hiding it inside a stony coldness veteran cops develop. He just stands there, hands raised, staring at Pike, who ignores him.
Berg says, “Get their guns, Frankie.”
Bulby Nose O’Byrne gets up, but Lilah gets up, too, and steps in front of O’Byrne. She says, “You get the lieutenant’s gun, Frankie. I’ll get Cantor’s.” Her smile, seductive and cunning, wants to strip me naked. I like the smile; I have second thoughts about the woman. We stare at each other, I match her smile for smile, but there’s no seduction in mine, just wised-up chill. She reaches inside my coat, slides her hand inside my suit jacket, and slips my gun out, her fingers a
s confident and sure as they were last night, when those fingers slid all over my body.
“You killed him, didn’t you,” I say. “That was quite an act you put on, screaming to set the scene for Eddie and me when we saw Mickey with a knife in his back. You killed your own brother so you could take over his racket, then slit the sleeping Gus’s throat just because he was there and could snitch.”
Lilah holds my gun the way a kid would hold a favorite toy, though there’s nothing childish about the way she’s looking at me. She still has that strip-me-naked smile, except there isn’t much in the way of warmth behind it. But there’s some. Just enough to hook my attention. “You’ve got it all wrong, Cantor,” she says. “I didn’t kill Mickey. And I didn’t kill Gus. I actually liked Gus, a sweet guy. I feel bad he’s gone, but I guess he got in someone’s way.”
“Yeah, just another citizen who meant nothing.”
Her smile dries up. She looks uncomfortable, like I just shoved her into a lumpy chair. But her discomfort doesn’t last long, and though she’s not exactly smiling again, she’s not far from it. With a shrug, she says, “Anyway, whoever put that knife in Mickey’s back did me a favor.”
“Sure, I guess so.”
“I don’t think you understand, Cantor,” she says with a puffed up defensiveness, but it quickly loses air. “Well, maybe you do, a little. You saw how Mickey spoke to me, how my own brother treated me, like I was nothing more than flesh for his profit. And his pleasure.” There’s pain in her eyes, in her voice. It’s no act. It’s real and raw, and it claws at me, begs me to believe she’s not a killer.
O’Byrne’s back at the table pouring himself another drink, Esposito’s gun in his pocket. Berg’s joined him, pouring himself a whiskey with one hand while he holds his gun on us with the other. Pike continues to drink silently. I wonder if those big ears of his are taking in everything on the Q.T. I bet Esposito’s wondering, too.
