by Barry, Mike
Calmly, Calabrese took out another cigarette and broke it with an air of sadness.
Randall sat there, thinking about what the old man had said. When you looked at it the way Calabrese had put it, it was logical, completely pure; why couldn’t everyone see it? The market was dependent upon the limitation of supply. It was from that limitation of supply that all other possibility flowed. Open up the supply, change the rules of the game as they applied to a man in Calabrese’s position, and his position was threatened, possibly destroyed. Wasn’t it? What benefit could Calabrese possibly derive from a million dollars or more worth of junk dumped into his comfortable, carefully-controlled operation? It might, to a much younger or more adventurous man be riskily interesting. But Calabrese was not interested in risk or excitement; as he had already pointed out to Randall, as he doubtless had made clear to Versallo and others many times, he had a business to run.
“All right,” Randall said, standing, wondering if he would be allowed to leave this house. “You make your point very well. I understand. I’ll take it—”
“Sit down,” Calabrese said.
“What?”
“I said, sit down,” Calabrese said again in the tone of a man who in mind’s eye had already placed Randall back in the seat. Randall did so. There was certainly no way that he was going to break out.
“All of that having been said,” Calabrese said calmly, fishing out another cigarette, “I am very interested in the man from whom you took this valise. That is a different issue altogether, that man.”
“I didn’t take it from him,” Randall said. “I came by it indirectly.”
“Did you?”
“I’m interested in him too,” Randall said. “That’s why I’m here. The valise was just an offering.”
“Oh?” said Calabrese and broke a cigarette. “Was it now?”
“I wanted your help.”
“Ah,” said Calabrese. “Everybody wants my help. Everybody wants money, some people like Versallo want money and drugs and some people want money and my help. Everybody however wants something; that seems to be a basic fact of that supply and demand we’ve discussed. Help in what?”
“I want you to help me kill him,” Randall said.
Calabrese put the pack of cigarettes on the desk and leaned forward, looking more patriarchal, whimsical and soothing than ever. “Now,” he said softly, “at last we are talking on common ground. I think we can do business. Tell me what you had in mind.”
Randall’s eyes swept the office, then came back to Calabrese’s.
“Don’t worry about a thing,” the old man said, “for a few million dollars, anyone can have absolute security. Just tell me.”
Randall told him.
Chapter 17
Wulff wanted to see Patrick Wilson. He started in at the door of the precinct saying this, repeated it at thirty-second intervals thereafter and stepped up the ratio when the interrogation began. You set it in their minds what you wanted and you kept on pounding at it. Cops were single-minded but you could meet their single-mindedness with an obsessive cast of your own. At least Wulff was willing to play it that way. Their booking procedures were incredibly archaic and clumsy. He had thought that the NYPD was a rotten deal but Chicago operated as if there were no dividers whatsoever between police and ultimate authority. These people not only wanted to enforce the law, they wanted to administer what they thought of as justice.
Under the Miranda Decision, he did not have to say a word of course. But these boys did not seem to know shit about Miranda. “Name, address, identification,” the booking sergeant said holding a pencil and repeating it when Wulff stood mute. “Name, address, identification please.” He looked sleepy but at the same time capable of going on this way until the end of his shift if necessary. “Name, address, identification,” he said again and one of the cops who had brought him in gave Wulff a little encouraging shove between the shoulder blades. “Come on,” this cop said, “cooperate. It’s just going to get harder if you don’t, not any easier. We haven’t begun to put the pressure on yet.”
Wulff had thought that that stuff had gone out with the 1930’s or at least with Miranda, but it had not. In the NYC stationhouse they were at least interested in getting onto some personal level before they beat the shit out of you; that is, they tried to decide whether you were worth beating the shit out of, if only for kicks, before it started. Then they kept one eye on the door at all times. But Chicago was a different apple altogether. They were both terribly serious and not serious at all. Wulff expected that in just a few moments one of the cops would begin to laugh uncontrollably and the rest of them would snicker along and send him out the door. No chance. No such chance.
“I want to see Patrick Wilson,” Wulff said to the sergeant, “he’s a federal prosecutor—”
“I don’t know shit about federal prosecutions,” the sergeant said. “I’d like some information on you, though.” For a fat, dishevelled man he spoke with a curious precision; indeed his voice had delicacy. Perhaps it was that flat midwestern accent; it threw the hell out of easterners.
“The way to get some information out of me is to get me to Wilson,” Wulff said. “I’ll talk to him.”
“I’m afraid you’re in no position to pick your spots,” the sergeant said comfortably. Someone slammed Wulff with a club in the small of the back. Clumsy, Wulff thought; it had missed the kidney. Usually you went for the kidneys; that was the right spot.
“Nevertheless,” Wulff said, enjoying, even through the pain, the nevertheless, “I want to see Wilson.”
“We want some information on you,” the sergeant said. He picked up a piece of paper in front of him. “Arrested in a one-car accident on US 90, dishevelled condition, bloodstained, would produce no credentials of ownership, no driver’s license, no identification—”
At least he was unarmed, Wulff thought. As usual he had dumped the pistol leaving the warehouse; he figured that he could always pick up that stuff in transit and in the meantime the less he was risking the better off he would be. The sergeant put down the sheet of paper. “I don’t like it,” he said, “I don’t like your attitude for shit, buddy.”
“Let me take him downstairs,” the cop behind him said in a bored tone. “We’ll improve his attitude.”
“Eventually,” the sergeant said. He leaned toward Wulff, assumed a confidential air. “It would be much easier if you cooperated,” he said. “Really, it would be.”
“I’ll cooperate when I reach the proper authorities.”
“You’re making life very difficult,” the sergeant said. “Essentially we’re not looking for trouble, you know. We like things to be quiet and reasonable here. This department has been bum-rapped.”
Wulff stood there, looked at the sergeant levelly and said, “I have nothing more to say, I want to see Wilson,” and something hit him in the small of the back again this time painfully and much closer to the kidney. He turned and the cop hit him again this time on the side of the face on the cheekline and Wulff abandoned the careful control with which he had come into the station, let it slide away from him like a cloak and hit the cop in the forehead, a glancing blow that made him stagger. The other one moved in then, a club suddenly extended from his hands but the cop who had been hit, backing away toward the wall raised a hand and said, “No. Don’t do it.” He was smiling although there was a large, greenish bruise already coming out on the forehead. “This is mine. He’s all mine. Let me take him downstairs.” His eyes glowed with a quality which might have been warmth if Wulff had not known better. “Come on,” he said to Wulff and carefully took out his service revolver, levelled it, “let’s take a walk. I’d hate to have to report that you were shot and killed in the process of attempted escape.”
Wulff looked back toward the sergeant who sat there quietly, hands folded, then he looked at the two cops, finally he moved slowly toward them. He had handled it wrong, he supposed; coming into custody had been a mistake. He had sealed himself in now
. It all started with wrecking the van and letting himself get picked up but, of course, it had happened a long time before that. He had been set on this road from the time he had walked into a building on West 93rd Street. Someone was going to get killed downstairs, he decided, because he was not going to submit. The phone on the sergeant’s desk rang. He stood there; the cop put a hand on his shoulder, the sergeant was talking quietly. The cop started to pull him out of the room.
“Hold it,” the sergeant said suddenly in a voice of enormous disgust and surprise. “Just hold it.” He took his hand off the mouthpiece, continued talking, listened. “All right,” he said, “all right, then.” He seemed to listen some more, shook his head, replaced the phone with a crash. He stood and Wulff noted that the shoulders and chest gave a deceptive impression of mass, actually the sergeant was a rather thin, spindly man below the waist, the legs seeming barely adequate to hold his weight, his pose showing unsteadiness. Probably retired to a desk position for incapacity.
“Would you believe this?” the sergeant said with disgust. “That was federal offices calling. They want to pick this guy up.”
“Who?” the cop said, not releasing Wulff. “Who is this guy anyway?”
The sergeant’s mind was still back, apparently, on the injury of the call itself. “I can’t believe it,” he said, “I can’t believe it.”
“Just downstairs for a few minutes,” the cop said furiously. “Just let me at him for a few minutes.”
“Can’t do it,” the sergeant said. “I cannot fucking do it.” His dismay was total. He turned toward Wulff. “Wulff,” he said, “we won’t forget this. Now sit the hell down.”
So Wulff went to the bench against the wall and sat. And did not know, after all, how he approached the issue of salvation. It was good to know that he was headed out of their hands and that he was, after all, getting where he wanted to go from the first.
But how the hell had they found him here?
Chapter 18
Randall, uncomfortable in the uniform of a federal marshal but otherwise almost at peace, proceeded in the car Calabrese had given him to the city jail, being careful to observe all rules and regulations. Calabrese had made it quite clear to him that once he left the mansion on Michigan Avenue he was completely on his own. “I can set this up and give you what you need,” Calabrese had said, “but that’s where it ends. If anything happens to you it happens to you, and if I’m ever tied up with it you’re finished. You understand that? And I don’t mean any quick easy death. Do you understand that?”
Randall understood that. Now that he had dealt with Calabrese he had a total comprehension of the man. He arranged things at a distance and then he stepped away. And if you did not realize that, if you tried to carry him one step further than he had gone, you were finished.
The way Calabrese had set the whole thing up was amazing. It confirmed the feeling that working for Versallo had given him over the years: that in all the world there were only five or six men who carried absolute power within their individual specialties, and at these top levels everything was arranged very simply and quickly. It was only when you slipped below the very top that life looked confusing and complex; at the summit everything could be worked out with a couple of phone calls.
Calabrese had sent him out of the room; Randall had sat for twenty minutes in a large, bare area down the hall smoking cigarettes and looking at the traffic in and out of the servant’s quarters. Calabrese apparently had a large staff. A woman who might have been Calabrese’s wife came over at one point and asked if there was anything he needed and Randall said no, he was fine, he didn’t want to trouble anyone. He suspected that Calabrese would not have liked the idea that his wife was involved at all with anyone who saw him professionally and that it would be better to keep his distance. At the end of the twenty minutes Calabrese himself had peered out the doorway at the end of the hall and motioned Randall back in, had told him bluntly, “Your man is at a precinct station on the South Side. I’ve told them to hold him for your pickup.”
“That’s good,” Randall said.
“It’s not so good,” said Calabrese, “it’s not so good at all, it’s a little complicated. He’s been trying to see a federal prosecutor named Wilson, your man has. Do you know that?”
“Why?”
“That doesn’t matter,” Calabrese said, “it’s all been arranged. He’s waiting there to be picked up and they think that a federal marshal is going to be the one to get him. You’ll be the federal marshal.”
It was all going a little too rapidly for Randall. “Where does the federal prosecutor come into this?” he said to gain time. “What does this Wulff want with him?”
“That doesn’t matter at all. That is all taken care of. You will pick him up at the precinct station in an hour,” Calabrese said, looking at his watch, “and you will dispose of him.”
“He’ll think that I’m a federal marshal?”
“Exactly,” Calabrese said, and permitted his eyes to take on one, small glint of satisfaction, as if he allowed himself one of these at rare occasions out of some defined quota. “That is all arranged.”
“Will I have any help?”
Calabrese looked at him impassively, the glint gone. Everything back to normal now in that face which was both impassive and at some deep level completely observant. “You do not need any help,” he said. “Help was never spelled out to be any kind of requirement.”
“All right,” Randall said, feeling an uneasy excitement, “I’ll do it alone. I want to get the son of a bitch.”
“I know you do.”
“I’m supposed to be dressed as a federal marshal?”
“You will find clothing in the trunk of the car you’re being loaned. Go to a gas station and change there. Afterwards disposition of the car is entirely up to you, Randall. I would prefer however,” Calabrese said, “that this car not be found. A word to the wise.”
“All right,” Randall said again. “Tell me where he is, that’s all.”
“You will be advised of your destination by the guard as you leave the grounds,” Calabrese said, “which I suggest that you do immediately.”
Randall shook his head in honest wonderment. “You don’t leave anything to chance, do you?” he said.
“I try not to. In my business chance would merely be a complicating factor. Our business is done, Randall, we have finished our discussion and I would prefer that you leave by the door nearest to you at the hallway.” Calabrese went for the pack of cigarettes again, broke one and then, as if allowing himself a special treat, in the first display of emotion which Randall had yet seen from the man, he plucked out another and broke that as well, giving out a little ah! of pleasure.
“What about the valise?” Randall said at the door. “Do I take that with me?”
“The valise? What valise?”
“The valise that I brought in; the valise that I offered—”
Calabrese stood in one casual gesture, looked at Randall. Randall had not realized it; he was quite a tall man, over six feet, slightly stooped in the way that tall men are when they edge above their sixties, holding in his stomach in that tight, self-conscious way which meant that he probably had a paunch. He looked cadaverous in this posture but the way in which he held himself told the tale. Don’t smile, Randall thought and this was really an unnecessary warning because looking at the eyes of the man any impulse to look for humor vanished. He had never seen eyes like this. Calabrese had kept them shrouded throughout their dialogue so far, it was as if he had held himself down, had contrived a look for himself. But now a different Calabrese peeked cautiously out of his face and decided that he did not like what was seen. “I know nothing about the valise,” Calabrese said.
“All right,” said Randall, “that’s okay; I had only offered—”
“I remember absolutely nothing about any valise. Did you come here with a valise? You came here with no valise. You came here empty handed with a request, and out of the good
ness of my heart I listened to you. Now you are about to leave and you mention a valise. You must have a false memory, and this would be a very dangerous thing, Randall, for you to go around giving people the impression that you came here with goods and that Calabrese sent you away without them. That would be a slur upon my reputation, which as you know is excellent. Do you remember any valise, Mario?” Calabrese said, and a short, deadly-looking man holding a gun suddenly appeared behind Randall in the doorway, looking at Randall with great interest. “This man seem to be claiming that he came here with baggage.”
“I don’t remember nothing,” the man said.
“Mario’s memory is excellent,” Calabrese said. “He is paid to notice and to observe many things and I am absolutely dependent upon him for what might be called detail work. You remember no valise, however, do you Mario?”
“None,” the man said.
“You see?” Calabrese said. “Your false impression has been corrected. Surely you admit your mistake now, do you not?”
“Of course,” Randall said. Once again that feeling of being entirely out of his class assaulted him. It was true; it was true. He could not deal with this man; he was not even at a point where Calabrese truly had to acknowledged him. He was, in Calabrese’s mind, merely a construction, like Mario, upon which certain requests like confetti were tossed. Versallo had been tough but not at this level. Randall had never dealt with anything like this.
“I think that Mario will help you to the car in which you came,” Calabrese said. “You appear to be a little confused and in need of an escort.”
“I came with no—”
“This man thinks that he did not drive up in a car, Mario,” Calabrese said, “he seems to have lost his senses completely; claiming not to have a car, claiming to have a valise. What help do you think this man needs in finding his memory?”
“I’m sure we can think of something,” Mario said and gave Randall an enormous smile, one of such sweetness that Randall imagined that he would see flies buzz out of the man’s mouth in an instant, the same flies that would fester around a cake in a decayed room. “Why don’t you come along and we’ll work things out?”
