Material Witness

by Robert K. Tanenbaum

  He smashed her across the face, forehand, backhand. She felt his rings cut into her cheek. “You like that?” he asked. “You wanna be a tough guy, hey? Hey, I’m a tough guy too. I got a knife here. You wanna see your baby? I’ll do a delivery right here, a whachamacallit. You won’t have to stretch your cunt.”

  As he talked, he was twisting her hair tighter, pulling her downward. She was on her knees. She could feel the wire hangers digging into her through the thin cotton of her jeans. “Oh, yeah, you’re gonna talk to me. You’re gonna tell me everything I want to know, but first we’re gonna have some fun.” He told her in some detail about the fun they were gonna have.

  While this was going on, part of Marlene’s mind was cranking away, under the pain and the fear. They were trashing the place, to make it look like a robbery, which meant they were not going to leave her alive, which meant there was no point in playing for time. She knew now without a doubt that these men had murdered Francine Del Fazio. She wondered briefly why they wanted her to tell them where the diary was. It was right there on her desk, open.

  Then it hit her: the old purloined letter. Nobody looking for a secret, hidden, valuable diary sees a diary open on a desk. She felt the faint stirrings of hope. If she couldn’t outsmart these bozos …

  He was saying, “Look at it! Open your fucking eyes, cunt!”

  She focused her gaze in front of her. He had taken out his penis and it was staring her in the face, faintly twitching, erect. Her head jerked reflexively in surprise, and he tightened his grip. “I bet you never seen one like that before,” he said, laughing.

  It was true. She hadn’t. Joey Castello had two slanted eyes tattooed in blue on the head of his penis, one on either side of the slit. “You like that, hey? Start sucking, bitch!” he said.

  This was a break, thought Marlene. The other guy was down at the bedroom end of the loft, wrecking the closets. If she could break this asshole’s grip, it was a clear run to the lift shaft. He would have to be distracted. Marlene imagined that having the end of one’s penis bitten off would be a sufficient distraction. It would have to be one swift, devastating bite.

  She licked her dry lips and opened her mouth.

  At that moment the lift motor roared into life and threw its belt. The loose belt flapping at three hundred rpm filled the loft with a sound like a machine gun. Joey stiffened, screamed, “What the fuck … !” and twisted his body to see the source of the incredible sound. Marlene felt the fierce burning in her scalp ease off as his grip relaxed. She gathered her feet under her.

  Then the great alarm bell went off, eighteen inches above Joey Castello’s head. They had bells like that in prison and in places where robberies have gone bad. He let go of Marlene’s hair and fumbled in his waistband for his pistol.

  Marlene rose to her feet. Her movements seemed slow to her, too slow, like something in a bad dream. She had a bunch of wire hangers in her hand. With all her strength she whipped the ends of the hangers across Joey’s fast-fading erection, then brought them backhanded across his eyes.

  Joey let out a noise like a semi-trailer full of live hogs locking its brakes on a twelve-degree grade. Carmine was at this moment up in the sleeping loft emptying Marlene’s jewelery case artistically across the bed. In an instant he absorbed what had happened and dropped down the ladder in two jumps. He could move fast for a big middle-aged man. He thought he could beat the goddamn woman to the door of the loft.

  To his great surprise, however, she did not head toward the door but away from it. He thought, Ah shit, she’s going to throw herself down the shaft. That fucking kid! He pounded after her.

  Marlene felt like she was running through water. Another spasm struck and she bent almost double as she ran, her jeans soaked to the ankles with amniotic fluid. She was no longer in any doubt as to what was happening to her.

  Joey was still bellowing behind her, scrabbling, trying to get to his feet, comfort his bleeding organ, and pull a heavy automatic out of his waistband at the same time, without the benefit of clear vision. As a result he stumbled into the path of his onrushing partner, and they both went crashing down on the rough wooden floor.

  Marlene grabbed the diary off her desk, shoved it into the elastic waistband of her maternity jeans and swung out onto the ladder. A pang took her midway. She bore down and panted, as she had been taught, although hanging out over a fifty-foot drop was not an approved Lamaze position.

  It passed, and she completed her descent. She staggered into Stuart Franciosa’s studio, swung shut the heavy steel doors to the lift shaft, shot the two securing bolts, and fell to the dusty floor, groaning.

  The sculptor heard the noise of the clanging doors and hurried out from the apartment section of the loft. He stopped when he saw Marlene. “My God! What’s wrong?” he cried.

  “Killers! Gangsters! Lock the front door!” she gasped.

  “What? What are you saying? My God, you’re bleeding. And you’re all wet—”

  “Stuart! Lock the fucking door!” Marlene shrieked, then yelled, “Larry!”

  Larry Bouchard came out of the apartment at a trot, took in the scene at a glance, and quickly knelt beside Marlene. Franciosa went to throw the locks on the loft’s steel front door, also dropping a broad steel bar across thick brackets welded to the door and the metal door frame. Then he went back to where Larry was helping Marlene to her feet.

  “Will somebody please tell me what’s going on?” he said.

  “Stuart, get the shutters,” said Marlene, “the ones to the fire escape. Bar them. And call 911. Burglary in progress.”

  Franciosa didn’t move. “The windows? I’m sorry, but will you—”

  Bouchard broke into this dithering in a tone of voice that Stuart had never heard him use: “Stuart! Do what she says! Move! I mean stat!”

  Stunned, Stuart raced off to draw and bolt the steel shutters giving on the fire escape. The loft was now as physically secure as any place in Manhattan that was not owned by a major bank. He rang 911, waited long enough to have been murdered, raped, and pillaged half a dozen times, gave his message, and dashed back to the apartment section.

  Larry had moved Marlene to his bedroom and laid her on his antique four-poster, on which she now writhed and groaned. With the exception of some small sculptures of Stuart’s, Larry Bouchard’s bedchamber was a reasonable imitation of Scarlett O’Hara’s.

  “What happened to her?” Stuart asked.

  Larry was working Marlene’s jeans and underwear off her legs. “Well, Stuart,” he said, “that’s a long story. You see, first the little boy bee goes to the flower …”

  “She’s having a baby? Here?”

  “It’s a possibility.”

  “I’ll call an ambulance,” cried Stuart.

  Marlene uttered a louder hoot. Her face was contorted and damp with sweat mixed with blood from the cut on her cheek. She said weakly, “It’s really labor, isn’t it?”

  Larry rolled his eyes. “No, baby, it’s just a little acid indigestion.”

  “Christ! How long do I have?”

  “Hard to tell yet, sugar,” said the nurse. He turned to his friend. “I need some help here,” he said, his voice unstressed and workmanlike.

  “You want me to boil water? I can’t believe this is happening.”

  “Yes, boil water, as a matter of fact. Life follows art, don’t y’know? I need that vaginal speculum I gave you, and the O.B. forceps, and some big hemostats. You know what they look like? Good. Get the clay off them and throw them in the spaghetti pot with water to cover. Put the lid on and weight it with something heavy, like a brick. Turn the flame on high. When the cover starts to jump around, it’s done.”

  Marlene yelled again and Larry looked at his wrist-watch. “My, my, my!” he said. “Pant, honey, pant your precious heart out. That’s so good!” He washed the cuts on Marlene’s face and swabbed her brow and slipped out.

  Stuart went to do his companion’s bidding. As he picked the instruments from his workt
able, he heard a heavy weight being thrown at his door, then the sound of violent cursing. He tried to ignore it and went into the kitchen.

  Labor was a surprise to Marlene, as it always is, even to women who have had a number of children. She had heard that the pain of labor was not really pain but something unique, and she found it so. She indeed saw wonders, which she would never tell anyone about, nor would she remember them herself. Sirens sounded, far off.

  Larry returned with a steaming pot, which he placed on the floor. He placed a cloth-wrapped suture set on a cherrywood sideboard, broke the seals, snapped on rubber gloves, and used the large hemostat in the set to pull hot instruments from their sterile bath. He laid these on the suture set’s sterile green cloth to cool.

  “OK, sugar, let’s take a peekie, shall we?” Marlene felt the warm instrument slide into her. “Christ on a crutch!” exclaimed Larry.

  Marlene felt a pang of pure terror. “What’s wrong?” “Not a thing, sweetness. We’re just movin’ molto rapido heah.” He removed the speculum. “We’re lookin at full dilation. You’re in second stage. Would you tell me what the hell y’all were doin’ durin’ the first stage of this heah labor?”

  “I was interviewing a witness.”

  “And weren’t you having contractions?”

  “I guess, but they were no big … aaagh!”

  “OK, honey, let it through, just pant, just pant.”

  Carmine cursed and picked himself off the floor and raced down to the lift shaft. He descended the ladder, pushed against the steel door unavailingly, and climbed back up to the loft. Joey was doubled over, clutching his crotch and moaning an unimaginative string of obscenities, which were nearly lost in the continuing sound of the bell.

  “Get up!” commanded the older man.

  “I got a splinter in my dick, Fish,” whined Joey. “I’m all cut up. My eye hurts, it’s all blurry.”

  Fraschetti said, “It’s Carmine, not Fish. OK, get up, stop crying!” He heaved Joey to his feet. “Stand up! C’mon, be a man, goddammit! Put yourself away there. The silly bitch took the diary. We got to get into that loft downstairs.”

  But this was easier said than done. When they arrived at the door of the loft below, Joey cursed and heaved his body against it, and kicked it, and yelled. He drew his gun and would have shot at the locks had Carmine not restrained him. “Joey, it’s a steel door, in a steel frame. We got a brick hallway here. You can’t shoot the locks off a steel door. You’ll get yourself a ricochet in the head. Besides, the building’s full of people.”

  “I don’t give a flying fuck—” began Joey, and stopped when they heard the sound of pounding footsteps. Two Latino men in greasy blue overalls came up the stairs. They stared at the two gangsters curiously. Joey was about to brandish his gun at them and ask them what they were looking at when he felt his gun arm gripped with ferocious strength by the older man.

  Carmine smiled and gestured to the locked door. He said, “Repo.”

  The word was familiar. The workmen grinned and went upstairs to fix their hoist. The sound of sirens penetrated the building. Fraschetti said, “Come on, we’re out of here.”

  “But, fuck! What about—”

  “We’ll do her later,” said Carmine. “We know where she lives.”

  “Alert Guinness,” said Larry Bouchard. He was crouched at the foot of his bed, looking at Marlene Ciampi’s vulva and the crowning head of her nearly born child.

  “What’s the matter?” asked Stuart, hovering nervously in the background.

  “Nothing, just fast is all. This child wants out. Bear down now, babe. Good, once more. Good, we have rotation. Stuart, be a darlin’ and go fill the blue dishpan with three inches of tepid water—skin warm, mind—and get my old Black Watch plaid flannel from my closet. Oh, and drop an alligator clip in a cup of rubbin’ alcohol and bring it heah.”

  Franciosa had barely returned with these items when there was renewed pounding on the door and shouts of “Police!”

  “Would you deal with that, sweet thing?” said Larry. “Ah am otherwise engaged.” Stuart hurried away. Marlene was red as a Coke sign, breathing through clenched teeth. She heard Larry say, “Push, push!” and she found breath to say, “I am pushing, goddammit!”

  Larry said, “One more, good! One more, head, and one more, one more, here’s the little shoulders. Get yo catcher’s mitt, Bouchard! One more, and, well, it’s a girl!”

  Carmine and Joey made it around the corner of Crosby and Broome before the blue-and-white arrived, but not that much before. It had been many a year since Carmine had literally run from the cops, and he did not like it at all. He regarded his companion with unconcealed distaste.

  “Oooh, shit!” said Joey, “I gotta see a doctor. The bitch ruined me.”

  “In a while,” said Carmine. “Look, here’s what we got to do. I’ll hang around here and see what goes down. You go get the car and bring it back here and pick me up.”

  “What? Hey, how come I gotta go get the car? I can hardly fuckin’ walk here.”

  At this, Carmine turned on the younger man a look of cold malice, a gaze as inhuman and terrifying as that of a mako shark. That’s why they call him the Fish, thought Joey vaguely, and before he really knew it, he was halfway to Lafayette Street.

  Carmine watched him go with relief. He turned and walked in the opposite direction, toward Broadway. Carmine’s other motto was: When in doubt, get the fuck out. This whole operation had been under some maledizione from the beginning, and he had stayed with it against his better judgment.

  Something else would have to be arranged to cover Jimmy Tona. As he walked, the germ of an idea began to grow. A subordinate would have to be sacrificed. Carmine could think of several candidates. Whack him out, and saddle him postmortem with the point-shaving mess. Of course, Chaney would have to be whacked too, but he could arrange that by phone. He began filling in the details. It could work, and the beauty part was, he would never have to come back here, and never have to screw around with that goddamn woman again, the witch. As for Joey, he would have to fend for himself.

  He hailed a cab on Broadway and got in. “La Guardia Airport,” said Freshie the Fish.

  The Chevy was parked on Lafayette. Never park where you live when you’re on a job, was what the Fish said. Joey was sore and tired and resentful, and as he walked, his limited brain power was entirely occupied with thinking about what he was going to do to that cunt when he got hold of her again. Fuckin’ go in with the fuckin’ knife right away, he thought, get her in the fuckin’ gut and twist. Let’s see her fuckin’ try something then.

  These pleasant musings were interrupted by the sight of the blue Chevy, sitting where they had left it at Lafayette off Prince, but additionally decorated with several parking tickets under the wipers, and on the hood, a young black man in a long coat and a red-green-black knitted tarn.

  Joey bristled and moved toward the car. “Hey, fuckhead! Off the fuckin’ car!” he shouted.

  The young man did not move. Joey approached more closely. The youth just stared at him, expressing nothing. “Hey! You fuckin’ deaf? I said get your ass off of my car!”

  At that, the young man slid off the hood, opened his coat and shoved the barrel of an Uzi submachine gun into Joey’s belly. A large yellow man who had been leaning against a building hustled forward, gave Joey a swift and expert pat-down, yanked his automatic pistol away, took his car keys, opened the door of the Chevy, and threw Joey face forward into the backseat, like a duffel bag.

  “So, am Ah to be introduced to the new person?” asked Larry Bouchard. He was tucking in the bottom of the fresh sheets he had laid on the bed. Marlene was lying back on crisp, newly cased pillows with her eyes closed. Her daughter, wrapped in a soft flannel shirt, sucked noisily at her breast. On her face was the traditional tired but blissful smile.

  “Lucy Dora Maria Theresa Karp. Is that a mouthful or what?”

  “Ah love Lucy, so to speak. A nice old-fashioned name. Why did you
pick it?”

  “Personal reasons at first. But also, as it turned out, today is St. Lucy’s day. The winter solstice, the shortest day. And, of course, St. Lucy was Sicilian too. A beautiful virgin. Her violator complimented her on the beauty of her eyes, so she plucked them out and had them sent to him. My kind of girl—her intercession is asked for ailments of the eye. Get it? Dora is for Butch’s mom and Maria Theresa is my dad’s mom.”

  “Charming,” said Larry. “You’ll be wanting to tell Butch. Where is he?”

  “Playing basketball. The son of a bitch,” said Marlene and drifted off again.

  This was not true, the basketball-playing part. Butch Karp was in fact in an interrogation room at the offices of Manhattan North homicide on West 57th. In the room also were Harry Bello, Sonny Dunbar, Roland Hrcany, a police stenographer, and the man the two officers had just brought in, Doobie Wallace.

  Wallace smiled when he saw Karp, and walked across the room toward him, not swaggering exactly, but at ease, with a loose-jointed stride, bouncing off his toes, with the toes turned outward.

  “My man!” he said and was at the point of extending his hand for a high-five when the expression on Karp’s face registered. It was not a high-five expression. Wallace converted the gesture to a wave.

  “Hey, Butch, what’s this about? We got a game starting soon.”

  “Sit down, Doobie,” said Karp.

  Wallace pulled out a slatted wooden armchair and sat in it, crossing both his legs and his arms. Karp looked at him intently, as if trying to psyche out which way he was going to break for the basket.

  “So? What’s this about? They said you all had some questions.”

  “Yes. Look, Doobie, first let’s forget about the game. You’re not playing pro ball anymore.”

  Wallace smiled, as if at humor. “What’re you, joking? What is this, man?”

  “We know about the point shaving, Doobie,” said Karp. “All about it.”

  Wallace’s smile stayed on his mouth, but Karp observed something else creep into his eyes. He was game, though: “What do you mean, point shaving? You think I’m shaving points? Me?”