by Norman Green
Marty could hear a trace of the woman’s Slavic origins. “Me, too,” he told her. “But I prolly need some lessons.”
She reached across with her other hand, plucked the bill out of his grasp, gave him one final squeeze. “Past the men’s room door,” she told him. “Go through the blue doorway. First room on the right. When you finish your business here, I’ll be waiting for you.” She leaned up close again, touched the tip of her tongue to his eyebrow, then released him. She stepped back slowly, turned her back, and walked away.
Marty swallowed, then looked back at Caughlan. “She come courtesy of you?” he said.
“Not me,” Caughlan said. “Seen her coming, though. Man, I love this place.”
“You kidding? You didn’t pay her off?”
“All right,” Caughlan said. “Maybe I tipped her on the way in. Maybe I told her about this lonesome and generous businessman I was meeting here tonight.”
Stiles’s head swam. “Just what is it you want me to do, Mickey?”
Caughlan glanced past Stiles at the departing blonde. “All right,” he said again. “Listen up. Six, seven months ago, one of my trucks picked up a container off a ship down in Port Newark. No big deal, we do that all the time. According to the bill of lading, the thing was supposed to be a load of blue jeans headed for some discounter in Chicago. Okay? So the truck gets hijacked. We find it down by the river in Jersey City a couple days later. Container is empty, except for the driver; poor bastard was inside, deader than last year’s Christmas goose.”
“I didn’t hear nothing about it,” Marty said. “It musta not made the papers.”
Caughlan shook his head. “We kept it quiet,” he said. “There was some brown goo on the floor of the container.”
“Goo?”
“Corn syrup, like. Thick and oily.”
“Yeah.” Marty Stiles felt the hair on the back of his neck rising. “What was it?”
“Chemist I sent it to said it was opium base,” Caughlan said. “Stuff is like crude oil. Couple steps away from gasoline, but still damned expensive. You get me?”
“Yeah, I get you. What’d you do about it?”
Caughlan shook his head. “Nothing. Stuck our heads back in the sand. Hoped it would all go away.”
Stiles stared at him. “For real, man. What did you do?”
“We waited. Figured whoever belonged to that shit would come looking for it, but they never showed.”
“So you’re off the hook.”
“I don’t think so. I got a tip, there’s a secret grand jury looking into Penn Transfer. And into me.”
“Over this? Over dope?”
“Don’t know for sure,” Caughlan said. “But I wouldn’t want to bet against it.”
I don’t want to ask this question, Marty thought, but I have to, because Caughlan knows I should ask it. “You into dope? You get a piece of what moves through Port Newark?”
For a second, Caughlan looked like what Marty knew him to be: hard, cold, merciless. Then he looked away, caught a waitress’s eye, waved his empty glass. He looked back at Stiles. “You and I go way back, Marty,” he said. “You know I never been a altar boy. Joint like this one, maybe the cops think it’s a brothel, and maybe it is, but I ask you: man can’t get drunk and get his ashes hauled, what’s the use in living? I ask you, where’s the harm done? But the drug trade burns everyone it touches. I always kept my distance.”
“So? You think someone’s setting you up?”
“No. I think someone’s using Penn Transfer to move their shit. I think they figure when the cops finally tumble to it, I’ll be the one that swings, not them.”
Marty nodded. What cop would bother looking past a man like Caughlan? “Smart,” he said.
Caughlan leaned over and whispered in Stiles’s ear. “Hundred large,” he said, “you find out who’s doing it. Buck and a half, you give me the score on the grand jury, too. A deuce if you get it all done before the end of the month.”
It was too much money to even consider passing up, even if he was gonna have to walk through a few dark places to get it. “All right,” he said. “But how do you want to work this? What is it that you want Al for?”
“I don’t wanna tell you how to do your job,” Caughlan said. “If I knew how to handle this, it’d be done already. But I figure you probably know every crooked cop and scumbag lawyer in Jersey. You chase the grand jury angle. Let Martillo loose, let her chase it from the other end.”
Clever, Marty thought. Once I start turning over rocks, things will start to happen. Caughlan thinks it’s someone close to him, and figures he’ll have Al watching his back. “There’s one problem with all of this,” he said.
“Yeah? What’s that?”
“Al. Al’s the problem. She ain’t great at following instructions. Matter of fact, she’s prolly the single most annoying female I ever met. The bitch could find a white cat in a snowstorm, but she could never explain how she knew where to look. You get her going on this, she’s gonna go where her nose tells her to go. You hear what I’m saying? You got some closets you don’t want her looking in, that’s your tough luck, she’s gonna do what she wants to do. You better think about that before you pull the trigger here.”
“I can handle her,” Caughlan said. “Besides, I got too much at risk to worry about a few indiscretions coming to light.”
Stiles watched the dancer. Caughlan thinks he knows Al, he thought, but the guy has no idea, not if he thinks he can handle her. Unless he figures he can just bury her once she gets to be too much of a pain in his ass. And good luck with that . . . But I might be putting Al in a tough spot with this, Stiles thought. His stomach rolled once, but the thought of two hundred grand in his bank account had a wonderfully restorative effect. “We need to talk money. I can’t afford to go on spec. I’m gonna need fifty large up front and a guaranteed hundred, minimum, when we’re done.”
Caughlan stared at him for a moment. “Agreed,” he said. “Set up a meeting—you, me, and Martillo. We can go over the details there.”
“Okay,” Stiles said.
Caughlan got off his stool. “The lady’s waiting for you,” he said. “Enjoy yourself, but watch that girl, she bites.”
“She what? What did you say?”
Caughlan nodded. “Something wrong with her head. She bites. She’ll want to blow you, but don’t you let her. You knock her down and give it to her proper.”
Three
“Your biggest problem is that you’re a girl.” That was the first thing he’d said to her back when they started, that first time she could remember him coming back home. Alessandra had been six years old at the time, a bit tall for her age and naturally athletic, but impossibly thin. He was back in Brooklyn after a tour of duty with the MPs on the Hong Kong waterfront. Tall, dark, and forbidding, that’s how she remembered him; quick to anger, sensitive to any disrespect, intolerant of any lack of rectitude in matters of dress or speech or behavior.
She remembered standing in front of him, trembling, glancing over at her mother for support. Like a lot of project kids, Alessandra’s mother had been her rock, her bodyguard, her ever-present protective shield, but right then her mother would not come past the kitchen doorway. “Beektor,” her mother said, pleading, and her father reddened at the mispronunciation. “Beektor, she’s so small. Are you sure . . .”
“How long do you want me to wait?” he snapped. “She’s old enough. Go make dinner.” He did not look in his wife’s direction to see whether or not he would be obeyed. “Okay, Alessandra,” he said. “Now you listen to me. You’re a girl, and everyone is bigger than you. They think they can make you do what they want, you hear me? You have to learn to defend yourself. Do you understand me? You need to be able to stand up for yourself. Now pretend I’m a strange man, I walk up to you on the street, and I grab you. What do you do?” He approached her then, got down on one knee, wrapped a thick arm around her in slow motion. “I’ve got you now. What do you do?”
Sh
e had heard his voice on the phone many times, but this was the first time she had been confronted with the physical reality of the man. He was clearly in charge, and she was terrified of disappointing him. “I would scream,” she said, after a minute. “I would scream for a policeman.”
“That’s good,” he said, but he did not release her. “You should scream. But what if there’s no policemen around? What if they’re too far away to protect you? You need to be able to take care of yourself.” She was afraid to look at him. “You have something to fight with. Tell me what it is.”
She could smell the aftershave he used, feel the smooth warm skin of his arm. She considered his question. “I could hit you?”
“No, you can’t hit me, you’re too small and you don’t know how yet. But you can poke my eye out.”
She looked at her hand, resting on his arm. “Would that hurt?”
“Never mind that. I’m a strange man, remember? I just grabbed you, and bad things are going to happen unless you can make me let you go. Do you understand?”
She did not, but she sensed that he wanted her to say yes. “Yes, Papi.”
“Good. Now we’re going to try it. No, not like The Three Stooges.” He released her then. He held his hand out in front of her, fingers straight and stiff. “Make your hand like this. No, hard, hard, feel mine. Just like that, hard. Now watch this.” Still down on one knee, he pushed her back a half step. “Now you pretend you’re the bad man, and you try to grab me.”
She smiled at that, just slightly.
“No,” he said, “just pretend. I’m the little girl, you’re the bad man. You’re way bigger than me, I can’t hurt you. Try to grab me.” She inhaled, took a half step, her hands raised, and quicker than anything she had ever seen, he jabbed at her face with his stiffened fingers. “Boom!” he said. “Now tell me what just happened.”
“You poked me.”
“I scratched your cornea. What that really means is if you were a bad man and I was a little girl, the bad man is hurting so much he can’t see the little girl anymore, and she’s running away. Do you understand?”
She did not. “Yes, Papi.”
“Good. Now we’re going to practice. First in slow motion. I grab you with this hand, slow, like that, and I’m going to hold up my other hand and you pretend it’s my face, and you jab at it, slow, slow, hold your fingers stiff. Good. Now a little quicker.” He reached for her again, holding up his other hand, and she poked at it. “No,” he told her, “keep those fingers hard and stiff, and jab harder. As quick as you can. Ready? Okay, go. That’s better. Let’s do it again. Okay, good. Again.”
That’s how it started.
The bus let her out at the corner of White Plains Road and East Tremont in the Bronx, steps away from the building where her father lived now. White Plains Road had two traffic lanes in each direction, but only in theory because there were cars perpetually double-parked on both sides. She watched the bus pull away, shaking her head. Three years ago, when he’d finally gotten out of prison, he’d chosen not to go back to Brooklyn, moved up here to live in anonymous isolation. She stepped into the vestibule of his building, rang the bell next to his name, Victor Martillo. “It’s me, Dad.”
He buzzed her in without comment.
She climbed the steps to the third floor. The place always looked like a dark and dusty hole to her, although she knew he would never countenance dirt or disorder. He had a bedroom that also served as a sitting room, a bathroom, and a Pullman kitchen in what amounted to a closet. His front door was open. She knocked, pushed it open the rest of the way and stood in the doorway. “Hello, Dad.”
“Hello.” He sat on the other side of the room in a stiff-backed chair in the dim light of the single shaded window. “What brings you all the way up here?”
“I’m on my way to work,” she said. “I wanna go to the hospital up on Eastchester Avenue to check on Tio Bobby. Tonight, after work.” She stopped, knowing the answer to her question before she asked it. “I thought you might wanna come with me, just to say good-bye. The nurses don’t think he’s going to last much longer.” Say it, she told herself, call him out, tell him about himself . . . But she didn’t, because that would upset the delicate balance between the two of them. She had never been quite sure how she felt about him. He had betrayed her once, turned on her exactly at the point when she’d needed him the most. It still hurt her, if she let it, but she tried not to dwell on the past. Tried not to wonder how he felt about it, or if he felt anything at all.
“Maybe next time.” He’d never talk about it, either. He never talked about anything real.
“All right. I gave you the chance.”
“Yes, you did.”
“Is there anything you need?” She knew the answer to that one, too. He had his job with the MTA, he had this cocoon of an apartment, and he had his buddies, the guys he played cards with at the social club a few blocks away. Those were the things he needed, and all he could cope with. He’s pruned back his life this far, she thought. He’s down to this.
“No, I’m fine, honey.”
“All right. I’m gonna go. Let me say good-bye, first.” She crossed the room, embraced him as he sat there. Time and cigarettes might have taken his wind, might have even slowed his reflexes some, but he was still the same hard man she remembered; she could feel it. He was still the wrong guy to mess with.
He accepted her embrace awkwardly, the way a man does when one of his friends has gotten suddenly and unexpectedly emotional. She held on for a few seconds, until he patted her on the back, letting her know.
Enough already.
“All right. Bye-bye, Dad.” She could barely see his face in the gloom.
“Bye, now. You take care.”
“I will.” She looked around once, then headed for the door.
“Alessandra,” he said, and she turned to look at him. “Thanks for coming,” he said. He meant it, too, she knew that. He was always happy to see her come, and just as happy to see her go.
Outside, a group of young men were gathered around an old green Camaro parked by the curb with its hood up. They got a little raucous when they spotted her, voicing their appreciation of her form in English and in Spanish, glancing at one another for reinforcement. One of them, larger than the rest, blocked her way. “Hey, mami,” he said. “Que pasa? You want a beer?”
She just stared at him. “You gonna move?” she said, adding silently, or should I move you? She didn’t have much to fear from this guy, or from all of them together. Her father had seen to that.
The guy stood aside, hands raised in mock surrender. “Hey,” he said. “Easy, baby. Just trying to be friendly . . .”
“Don’t waste your time.”
She walked past him, through the gate, and out onto the sidewalk. The guy’s friends hooted, berating him loudly for his lack of success, all but one. He’d been leaning over the car, his hands in its internals, but he stood up and looked at her. “Forget her,” he said to his friend. “That one looks good, but she’s cold, man. She got nothing for you.”
Yeah, well. That’s just the way it was.
She stopped on the corner of East Tremont, looking for the bus, wondering if she ought to spend her lunch money on a cab.
Four
“Jesus, Mickey, I don’t know where the hell she could be. I apologize.”
“The name is Daniel. That nickname is old news. I wish you’d forget it.”
“Yeah, sorry about that. Daniel.” Marty Stiles, obviously nervous, wiped his red face with his napkin. Caughlan watched him gulp at his beer.
“The goddam bitch is supposed to be in at noon,” Stiles said. “She works noon to eight. I’m telling ya, she didn’t type so goddam fast, I’da fired her ass a long time ago.” He swabbed his face again, then spotted someone just inside the bar entrance. “There she is! Goddam little—”
“Marty, shut up.”
Stiles clamped his mouth closed, glanced at Caughlan. “Call her over,” Caughlan told
him. “I want you to introduce us, and then I want you to be quiet.”
Stiles nodded, then waved at the woman standing by the door. Caughlan watched her walk across the room, noticed the way her eyes took in the entire place as she threaded her way through the throng of half-loaded bar patrons. Stiles rose unsteadily as she approached. “Goddammit, Al, where the hell you been? Ain’t we talked about this? Of all the days you gotta show up late . . .”
Caughlan cleared his throat, and Stiles ate the rest of his tirade. “Daniel Caughlan,” he said, “this is Alessandra Martillo. Al, Mr. Caughlan.”
Caughlan stood, reached out, took her hand. “Very pleased to meet you,” he told her. “I’ve heard about you.”
She looked at him warily. Stiles sat back down, reached for his beer. “Al is the one—”
“Marty, I’m gonna ask you a favor.”
“Anything, Mickey, you name it.”
Caughlan grimaced at the sound of his old nickname. “I want to talk to Miss Martillo in private for a little while. I’m sure you have other things to do anyway, so why don’t you go back to your office? I’ll hook up with you later.”
“Whatever you say, Mick,” Stiles said, his face reddening. He glared once at Alessandra before draining his beer. He stood up. “Catch ya later.”
“Yeah, okay.” Caughlan watched Stiles walk away.
“He’s gonna make me pay for this,” Martillo told him. Caughlan turned and looked at her. She was staring at Stiles’s departing back. Caughlan, a man who believed in doing his homework, had made inquiries about her. Rican, pale brown skin, black hair, good muscle tone, nails like talons. Got a temper, he’d been told. Mouthy. Smart, but if you piss her off, she’ll swing first and think later. Stubborn. Doesn’t scare. And she can take a punch. Jesus, what a piece! Another time, he’d have been interested. Very interested.
“You got nothing to worry about from Marty,” he told her. “Please, Miss Martillo, have a seat.”
