AHMM, October 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Russians, Arabs, and Jews. Judah had meant the remark as generic shorthand, I thought. He might as well have said Danes or Canadians, but Denmark wasn't fighting a war with Canada. In late 1948, the United Nations had recognized the partition of Palestine, the establishment of Israel, and the neighboring Arab states had attacked. They got their ass handed to them, much to everybody's surprise. Or perhaps not. My own benighted people had been underwriting the IRA since before the Troubles, and why shouldn't American Jews help smuggle guns into Haifa?

  The problem with this scenario was that it was too damn general, like the UN construction project. What did it have to do with the murder of a fourteen-year-old street kid? How could she have put any of it, or anybody, at risk?

  The wrong place at the wrong time, I'd said to Judy. Which meant I should be looking at it through the other end of the telescope. Who and where. Opportunity first, motive after.

  Dede's husband. Not the avenue I wanted to pursue, but where was I going to go next? Even a van Rensellaer needs his ashes hauled, I'd said to her. He never felt the lack, Dede had said to me. I had to wonder. What lack had he felt?

  I decided to ask. Not that it proved easy.

  He was a man with no visible means of support. He was a creature of inherited money. Which didn't dispose him in my favor, but neither did it condemn him. The world is as it is, or how we find it, and if we're not disposed to change it, then we've got no beef. I'm no Communist. A man takes the advantage he has, and fortune favors the brave.

  I wanted to catch van Rensellaer at a disadvantage.

  How otherwise? you might well ask.

  Most of us are creatures of habit. Even if we don't report to work on an assembly line, or go to an office, we develop a routine. Tinker to Evers to Chance. August van Rensellaer was cut from the same cloth as any commoner. He rose early and went for a walk along the river, taking a small, well-mannered dog. She was, I believe, a Bichon. He went back to the apartment house, dropped the dog off with his doorman, and headed inland, to Second Avenue, where he visited a hotel barber shop to get a facial of hot towels and his morning shave. The hotel was the Mont Royal, an old-fashioned kind of place, where half the rooms were let to long-time residents, and it had a cafeteria, where van Rensellaer took a breakfast of dry cereal and coffee, black. The problem lay not in opportunity, but in my approach.

  And there was a further complication.

  He was under surveillance by somebody else.

  I was simply trawling his wake when I noticed. I broke off immediately.

  They weren't private detectives, and they weren't NYPD. Hanging back, I made a team of three, working fore and aft, one ahead of him, one behind, one working laterally, from across the street. Their discipline seemed almost military. They treated the urban environment as hostile territory, like infantry, going house-to-house. And they were too furtive to be in van Rensellaer's employ. If he'd felt in need of personal security, they would have stayed closer, where he'd recognize their presence, but they kept their distance. Van Rensellaer was the kind of man who imagined himself safe in any circumstance, insulated from harm because of money and position. He wasn't a man to watch his back. He had no need.

  I should have been watching mine.

  They weren't a team of three. They were a team of five. It was the woman who took me off guard. Late middle age, Jewish, enormous handbag, typical New York. She looked to be waiting for a bus. She swung back abruptly from the curb, into my path. I shifted course automatically, to slither past her. I was looking half a block ahead, and got jammed from behind. A kid stepped on my heels, I bumped into the woman, we all stood there looking at each other stupidly, and the apologetic Jewish mom stuck a .380 up against my belt buckle. The boy had another gun screwed into the base of my spine.

  "Your dance, ma'am,” I said to her, hands down at my side.

  "'Bei mir bist du schon,'” she said, grinning.

  * * * *

  "We don't trust one another worth a damn, but we might find each other useful."

  I've known some tough Jews in my time. Benny Siegel, Meyer Lansky. They never shrank from the necessary. But this was the toughest bunch of Jews you'd ever want to meet.

  They took me to a brownstone in the East Fifties, between Third and Lex, a leafy, upscale neighborhood, mostly residential, with the occasional discreet consulting surgeon's office tucked into the ground floor. This was one such, with a brass plaque not so much advertising any particular medical service as announcing its exclusivity. There were no patients in the reception area. I was escorted into a small windowless examining room, where the frisk was thorough. Then they left me.

  The room was perhaps twelve feet by eight, brightly lit. There were no cabinets or other built-in furnishings. There was a stainless steel table, on casters, big enough for a recumbent body, which I found a little sinister. There was a drain in the tiled floor. There was a single utilitarian folding chair, like something from a parochial school annex.

  In my present circumstance, I was at the whim of somebody else's schedule. I'd learn soon enough what was required of me. I sat down to wait.

  Five minutes went by. Then ten. I allowed my metabolism to slow, lizard-like, and let my imagination cool. There was no point in making ill-educated guesses.

  The door clicked open. I looked up.

  The man in the doorway studied me for a moment. Then he stepped inside, closing the door behind him. He was short, thick through the upper body, with the heavy forearms of a boxer or a weight lifter. Lean in the hips, though, he walked on the balls of his feet, carrying himself almost like a dancer, but he had a specific gravity that kept him earthbound.

  "My name is Wolf,” he said. He looked it, gray around the muzzle. I put him in his middle to late fifties. I disliked the fact that he'd told me his name, which suggested I might not live to repeat it. There was that drain in the floor.

  "Mine is Mickey Counihan,” I said. “I work bare knuckles for the Hannah mob, on the West Side. You look like a man who'd know that line of endeavor. My guess is Irgun, or whatever you call yourselves these days, since Partition. Israeli hard boys with a recent grudge."

  "Not so recent,” he said, smiling. He hiked himself up on the steel table. The casters shifted under his weight. “I have a question for you, Mr. Counihan."

  "Only one?"

  He shrugged. “It depends how you answer it,” he said.

  "Van Rensellaer,” I said.

  He lifted one hand, palm up. It was a gesture centuries old.

  "I've got no reason to waste your time,” I said.

  "Let's not waste it, then,” he said.

  "Why are you following him?” I asked.

  He looked surprised, or disappointed in me.

  "It's going to waste less of our time,” I told him.

  "Our time?"

  "A girl was murdered last night. Her name was Maggie. She was all of fourteen years old. Van Rensellaer had, let's say, made her professional acquaintance."

  "This girl in your stable?"

  "I'm not a pimp."

  Wolf thought about it a beat. “What are you?” he asked.

  "I'm muscle,” I said. “I run a numbers bank."

  He got down off the table. “Give me a minute,” he said.

  "I'm on your clock,” I said.

  He nodded, and left me in the room.

  I put myself to sleep again.

  The wait must have been a good twenty minutes this time.

  The door opened again. It wasn't Wolf, it was the kid who'd jammed me on the street with the older woman. He motioned me out. I went.

  He kept me in front of him. We took two flights of stairs. He ushered me into a study on the third floor.

  The door closed behind me. I looked around. It was better appointed than the examination room, walls of books, a sturdy partner's desk, tall windows looking out front and back. It ran the depth of the house. In the back, enclosed inside the block of buildings, there was a garden, shared and secret.
The tulips and crocuses had a good start against the late spring. Lilacs were blooming early, the forsythia already wilting. I took none of it for a sign.

  Wolf came in. He put my guns down on the desk. “In for a penny, in for a pound, Mickey,” he said. “We don't trust one another worth a damn, but we might find each other useful. Does that suit your purpose?"

  "Our purposes might still be at odds,” I said. “What's van Rensellaer to you?"

  "He's a banker."

  "I didn't know he worked."

  "He's a trustee on several boards."

  "Serious money begets even more serious money."

  There was a pause. “What do you think about Jews, Mickey?” Wolf asked me.

  "Jews put their pants on one leg at a time, same as the rest of us,” I said.

  He pushed my guns toward me.

  I picked up the .38 Super. “Christ-killers,” I told him, fitting the gun to the small of my back. “That's what the priest used to tell us, back at St. Aloysius. But he was an ignorant barstid, getting drunk on Communion wine.” I scooped up the 7.65, lifted my shoe onto Wolf's desk, and tucked the gun inside my ankle holster. I put my foot back on the floor.

  "Not something you care about, then, one way or the other?” Wolf asked me.

  "I didn't say that."

  "What are you saying?"

  "I never met a Jew that didn't keep his word."

  "I never met an Irishman who wasn't slippery,” he said.

  "Tell me about van Rensellaer,” I said.

  "He's a rock-bottom anti-Semite."

  "Jew-haters are a dime a dozen."

  "That's been my experience,” he said.

  "Excuse me,” I said. “I meant, give me something that I can use for leverage."

  "There's the dead girl you spoke of."

  "You've got your reasons to compromise van Rensellaer, I've got mine,” I said. “I already know what mine are."

  He reached down, pulled one of the desk drawers open, and came up with a fifth of rye, shy a few inches. He fished around some more and came up with two mismatched tumblers. He offered me one, and we each apple-polished them on our sleeves. Wolf poured himself a decent three fingers and handed me the bottle. I did the same. We lifted our glasses and clicked rims. I knew he was only giving himself time to think, but I appreciated the companionable peg, and it was good, smoky Canadian.

  He put his glass down. I saw he'd made up his mind. He turned and went to the windows overlooking the street. “Israel needs money and weapons,” he said, his back to the room. “Small arms are problematic, still, but not the main issue. I'm talking about field artillery, crew-served machine guns, tanks. We need diesel, replacement parts, tools and dies. The industry for modern, mechanized war."

  "And you're running on rubber bands and spit."

  He turned around. “The choke point is financial,” he told me. “If we had gold on deposit with the Federal Reserve, we could borrow against it, but for the moment, we're begging hat in hand for credit. In six months, the situation might have changed, but in six months, the state of Israel might not exist, if the Arabs drive us into the sea."

  "So van Rensellaer's anti-Semitism isn't academic,” I said.

  Wolf went to a sideboard and unlocked it. He took out a package wrapped in oiled paper, the thickness of a telephone directory, a foot and a half long. He dropped it on the blotter of the desk with a solid, metallic thump.

  I knew what it was. I could smell the Cosmoline.

  "Open it,” Wolf said.

  I unwrapped the paper. It was an ugly thing, but it looked extremely functional. I picked it up. Maybe seven pounds.

  "Based on the Sten gun,” Wolf told me. “For its method of manufacture. Stamped receiver, forged barrel. Fires the 9mm Parabellum, from an open bolt. Six hundred rounds a minute, on full auto. Designed by a man named Uziel Gal. If we had the factory capacity, we could produce a hundred a day, and on the cheap."

  I locked the bolt back. The recoil spring felt like a good twenty pounds, but the bolt moved like butter.

  "Friends up in Hartford,” he said, answering the question I hadn't asked him.

  Hartford, Connecticut, was home to Colt. They made the gun I carried. I squeezed the grip safety and pinched the trigger, and the bolt slapped shut on the empty chamber. Ten rounds in a second, I thought. Like a water pistol with real bullets.

  "You take my point,” Wolf said.

  I put the gun down, reluctantly. “I do,” I said.

  He spread his hands, inviting comment.

  "Okay, let me see if I've got this right,” I said. “Van Rensellaer can choke you in infancy, because his influence extends to a consortium of New York banks. Once they turn you down, you can't get financing from Switzerland or Hong Kong, for the simple reason that bankers don't make bad loans."

  "We'd be blackballed."

  "How can one man make that decision?"

  "Let's say he's the swing vote. Elections have turned on less.” Wolf shrugged. It seemed a gesture of habit, something he did for lack of an expressive vocabulary, the way another man might smile, reflexively, and not exactly mean it.

  "And if you could catch him in an embarrassment—"

  "It would be preferable if we swung his vote our way, yes."

  "Better than arranging a happy accident,” I said.

  He gazed at me with what I took for placid candor. “Things have a way of redounding,” he said.

  "The shortest way between two points is a straight line."

  "Perhaps."

  "Then why haven't you had him killed?” I asked.

  He smiled wolfishly. “That was my first thought,” he told me. “I was second-guessed."

  "We're of like minds, then,” I said to him, “but neither of us is free to act according to our instincts."

  "We accept discipline,” he agreed.

  "Grudgingly,” I said.

  He knew what I was suggesting. “I might trade you mine for yours,” he said.

  "Except that I don't want van Rensellaer dead."

  "I'm willing to split the difference,” Wolf said.

  I picked up my whiskey glass again. There were two fingers still left in it.

  "Absent friends,” he said.

  We clicked rims a second time.

  * * * *

  Of course, I had no reason to want van Rensellaer dead, so far as I knew. And it would be awkward to explain to Dede. But if Wolf had been telling me the whole truth, or as much of it as he judged wise, van Rensellaer was a wolf in sheep's clothing.

  Which didn't make him a murderer.

  By the time I left the Israeli safe house, it was getting on toward noon. I went to Midtown, to the Horn & Hardart. Lunchtime, and close to Grand Central, it was a rendezvous point for my numbers runners. I already had a fistful of change from the cashier, and I doled out coins as they trickled in. It didn't bother me that they went straight for the Indian pudding and the Boston cream pie; I wasn't interested in the condition of their teeth. Judy, though, had sense enough to pick pot roast with a side of succotash. She made her sidekick Roger get American chop suey. She knew the value of a hot lunch.

  I never thought of the automat as a marvel, but I suppose it was, from the number of visitors from out of town who made it a destination. To me, it was part of the climate, the weather of a place I knew. Of course it's gone now, like so much of the New York that I once inhabited.

  They sat down with the thick china plates in front of them and tucked into their food. I gave her the chance to take the immediate edge off her hunger, but I suppose I was waiting in vain, metaphorically speaking. Judy's hunger wasn't physical—not in the sense of being satisfied by meat and potatoes.

  It didn't take her long to inhale the pot roast.

  "Anything of use?” I asked her, when she came up for air.

  She began mopping up the pan gravy with a piece of buttered bread. She shrugged, still chewing, and cut her eyes at Roger.

  I glanced over at him too.
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br />   He had his mouth full, as well, but that didn't stop him. The difference between the two of them was that Judy played her hand close to the vest until she needed to show her cards, but Roger wasn't as artful. He was the sort, man or boy, who turned the deck faceup on the table. His eagerness was all, and his attention to detail. It had an advantage, however. He gave everything equal emphasis. He didn't interpret, or leave one thing out at the expense of something else. He left it up to me to decide.

  She'd worked only the three or four blocks south of Sutton Place, he reported. She did her business in empty doorways or vacant lots. The professionals had access to cheap hotels where the desk clerks took a piece of the action for an hour's use of their sheets, and the tough older whores had chased her off more than once. It was a buyer's market.

  Something about it didn't sit right. “The older women, the prossies,” I said to him, “they've likely got a cold-water flat they go home to, or a hotel room, anyway. The street kids, what do they have to call home?"

  "The subway,” Judy said.

  "A hobo jungle, in the tunnels?"

  She nodded.

  "Find it,” I said.

  Judy and Roger exchanged a quick glance. They already knew where it was, I realized, but were reluctant to tell me.

  "No harm's going to come to them, Jude,” I said.

  She said nothing, although her doubt was easy to read. I'd meant Maggie no harm either.

  The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

  * * * *

  I tried not to trade on my friendship with Johnny Darling. We came from different worlds. He was married now and recently a dad, no longer the devil-may-care boy of those reckless days we'd shared before the war. He carried fragments of Japanese shrapnel in one knee, too, from the Pacific, and the barely perceptible limp added to his gravity. Not that he gave himself airs. Oh, and there was his father, the so-called Black Cardinal, an outright market monopolist who harked back to the robber barons of the Gilded Age. I'd foolishly made an enemy of him, and it was an injury he'd be unlikely to forgive.

  Johnny wasn't cut from the same cloth. He was a democrat with a small D, or what you might call a natural aristocrat, one of a dwindling number.