by Howard Fast
“Yeah. Thanks.”
I walked through the detective room and downstairs and out of the police station, and I left behind me seventeen years of my life, and if I were given to crying, I would have cried like a baby. I was a New York street kid. The kid fought day in and day out, first with his fists to cover his brother, Oscar, who never knew how to use his fists, to beat up every bastard who called him a damn Jew, and then with his head to make something of himself when there was no money to make anything of him, and who for some freakish reason always wanted to be a cop. Now I wasn’t a cop anymore. If they had the power to do this to me, then they had the power to keep me off the force—one way or another.
I left the car at the station, and walked away from there. I was quite certain that I was not being tailed, but I went through the motions of evading a tail. My original conclusion was correct. I was not being tailed. They didn’t even have to kill me. Whatever fangs I had were drawn.
The rain had finished, and the wind was tearing the remnants of the dark, angry storm clouds to shreds. In New York City, the March air is electric. Breathe in and you have life and energy. The shock and trauma began to recede, and by the time I had reached 57th Street, a notion that had been nibbling at my mind for days now began to grow and take shape. It pushed my misery aside. There is nothing more elevating to the spirit than a proper decision, but while it elevated my spirit, it did not decrease the rage I felt against these bastards who had killed Finelli and who could kill me or frame me or remove any human being whom they felt was in their way.
Fran was reading a copy of The New Yorker, which she’d bought at the hotel newsstand. She put it aside and looked at me. Afterward, she said she had never seen me appear so woeful before. Fifteen minutes ago, my spirits had been elevated; now they were back at rock bottom. I still knew what I had to do, but it gave me neither excitement nor hope. I told her that Finelli was dead and how it happened.
“Poor man,” Fran said. “I must ask God to forgive me for all the rotten things I said about him and his wife.”
“He was an angry bull. I never let him get close to me. I wish I had so that I could remember him better. But however you cut it, he was a good cop.”
“Yes. What else happened to make our morning bright?”
I had stopped on my way down to buy sandwiches and beer. The sandwiches were corned beef, favorite for both of us, and with the sandwiches, a container of coleslaw. I suggested that we eat first. The sandwiches were excellent, thin rye piled high with lean corned beef. The beer was imported Pilsen.
“I’m glad you’re here,” Fran said. “I didn’t think I’d see you all day, and I didn’t know whether it would be here or in the morgue. It’s no way to live, Harry.”
“Amen.”
“So you might as well break down and tell me why you’re here and not back at the station.”
I told her. She listened, and then I asked her what she thought of it.
“Well, it makes a kind of dumb sense.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I mean the Edgar Wallace story you told me about. If you hadn’t read that story by Edgar Wallace, Harry, would you have thought of reaching under the bench?”
“I don’t know.”
“Harry, about ten or twelve years ago, another small painting was stolen from the museum, and it was never recovered, and no one ever thought of looking under the bench.”
“What are you trying to tell me, Fran? You mean to say you think this garbage could add up to a viable case?”
“Yes,” she said unhappily. “If we don’t stop it—and if we couldn’t, Harry, what would it mean?”
“I don’t know. It’s grand larceny theft, but nothing was taken off the premises. It was only moved from one place to another. But the ransom note makes it bunco, fraud, attempted fraud, and if they could make a jury case out of that—Fran, I just don’t know, except that I could go to jail. But who would believe a crazy story like that?”
“A lot of people who hate anyone who’s a little bit smarter than they are. I found myself wondering for a moment—”
“Oh, Jesus Christ, Fran, not you.”
“No, no, Harry. I threw the thought away. But it had to leap into my mind.”
“You know, I was at my desk in the squad room when the call came in. That was about noontime. You know, it was one of those mornings. If I remember right, there was a sort of big bust over on Lexington Avenue near the hospital, two men selling dope to kids, and the same morning there was a flare-up at Hunter College where two black students jumped a dope dealer and beat him half to death, and while that was going on, a professor had her purse snatched. On top of the usual parade, so it added up to one of those mornings, and in the middle of everything, the museum called in that the Vermeer had been stolen. You know I don’t have any kind of regular office, just the two tin and glass panels to make the corner, so everyone in the squad room saw me sitting there and the detectives were in and out of my office—so how on God’s earth could I have lifted the Vermeer?”
“Harry, did you tell this to Internal Affairs?”
“No. They can’t do a damn thing to help me, so why tell them?”
“And you didn’t tell them about the Edgar Wallace story?”
“Oh, no, you can be sure of that.”
“All right,” Fran said, “they told you to get a lawyer and see the D.A. with him. We’re going to get us a lawyer right now.”
“Who? We don’t have a lawyer.”
“My brother Charles Murphy. Charley’s with one of the most prestigious legal firms in the city, and that’s what we need—a prestigious legal firm.”
“Honey,” I said, “you’re sweet and loyal. But we haven’t spoken to Charles for over a year, and we can’t just descend on him and tell him that he’s hired with all of twenty cents as a retainer.”
“Harry, Italian families see each other every day, Jewish families, once a week at the Friday night dinner table, but with an Irish family, it can be five years and there’s still love or if not love, dues to be paid. Now, see whether I’m not right.” She took her address book and dialed a number. “Mr. Murphy, please.” Pause. “His sister—yes, love, his sister; he has one sister, Francesca O’Brian Murphy.”
Then I heard Charley’s deep voice booming over the phone, “Francesca O’Brian Murphy, is it? And what in hell made you remember that you had a brother on this side of purgatory? Is it that miserable cop you married that stole you away from a brother who cherished you?”
“Charley, we’re in terrible trouble. When will you be back from lunch? We must see you.”
“Sister, I’m having a sandwich at my desk. I’m neck-deep in work and meetings all afternoon. Maybe tomorrow.”
“Charley, today. Don’t you understand me? Today. We could be dead by tomorrow, all of us, Harry, myself, and the two kids. I’m not kidding, Charley, if my life is worth it, cancel the appointments and give us the afternoon.”
“What have you gotten into? I thought Harry was riding high on that Vermeer caper.”
“Please. When can we come?”
“Now. You haven’t forgotten the address—Twenty-five Broadway. Should I order a sandwich for you?”
“We’ve eaten. Oh, thank you, Charley.”
I threw on my coat and got hers from the closet, but she drew back and said, “Just a minute or two, Harry. You didn’t ask me what I did today.”
“No, but you were here.”
“I called Sean in Dublin.”
“Good. That’s all right. Did you have Bill Hoffman put the call through?”
“Yes.”
“Did you talk to the kids?”
“No.” She hesitated. “Harry, the kids aren’t in Dublin.”
“What! What do you mean, they’re not in Dublin? Where are they? What happened to them?”
“Harry,” she said, gripping my arms, “I’m all right. So the kids are all right. Now cool it and listen. The father of one of Sean’s s
tudents has the cab concession at Shannon. He had heard about the two American kids who were with Sean, and when he found an American asking his drivers whether he had driven two kids fitting the description, which he had down pat, he got in touch with Sean. First he threw the man out of his garage. He thought it was a CIA man, and they don’t love the breed in Ireland. The next day, Sean noticed someone watching the school, a man he had never seen before. Mary, Sean’s wife, has an uncle who’s second-in-command of the Dublin police, and Sean gave him some story that got him to pick up the man, and he had a gun on him, so they were able to hold him for at least a few days. Meanwhile, Mary called her sister, who runs a little seaside hotel in the south of England. You remember her sister. She came over to visit when we were in Dublin, a tall, skinny lady, very sweet, but she never married. Anyway, she said, of course, bring the kids over. And I think Sean is wonderful to handle this himself.”
“He is wonderful,” I agreed. “He’s a great human being.”
“You can say that again, and when I told him that the kids were running from the same gang who murdered those poor nuns in Santa Marina, he said that he was given a deed of grace, and that’s just like Sean.”
“Where are the kids?”
“In England, with Molly Flannigan, Mary’s sister.”
“Did Sean cover his track?”
“Oh, yes. They flew to England, and then by cab to London. In London, they made sure to lose anyone who might have been following them, and then they went down south by bus. Sean knows how to do that and it was a great treat for the kids.”
“He didn’t give you any address or telephone?”
“No. He was very careful.”
“All right. The kids are safe for the time being, and we’ll end this thing tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow? You want to talk about it?”
“No. Let’s get down to Charley’s office.”
Chapter 14
IT WAS LIKE a long double take, or perhaps the words hadn’t registered, or perhaps her mind was in the south of England, but it wasn’t until we were in the subway on our way south to 25 Broadway that Fran seemed to realize what I had said and demanded, “What is going to end tomorrow? What thing?”
“I told you. We talk about it later.”
“About what?”
“I told you, later.”
She didn’t like that. She kept glancing at me, as you might with someone on the way off the deep end. She knew me too well, and I’m sure that following the steps she suspected my mind would take, she could guess at something close to what I intended. I hoped not—at least not until I could sit down and persuade her.
By now, it must be fairly clear that Fran and I come from a pair of interesting families. We share an origin in one of the city’s more tolerable slums on upper Amsterdam Avenue, and we’ve come a long way since then, myself able to point to Oscar, and Fran connected to two remarkable men, Sean and Charles Murphy. Charles put himself through Columbia and Harvard law, and then broke his mother’s heart by marrying Constance Webber, a very stylish daughter of the Webbers, who have all the money that the Rockefellers and the Morgans don’t have, but happen to be Episcopalians. Fran always claimed that Charley was in love with Constance, and that his alliance was no more unusual than hers with a cop.
Howsoever that may be, Charles Murphy was one of six partners in a very important law firm. They occupied three full floors at 25 Broadway, and underneath the names of the partners, graven in a bronze plaque that faced you when you stepped off the elevator, were several dozen names of juniors. It always impressed me.
I must admit that I was very fond of Charley, even though we traveled in two different worlds. Unlike Sean, who was dark and slender, Charley was an oversize, overweight bull of a man, with a barrel chest, a lot of stomach and Fran’s coloring, red hair going white here and there and the red beard of a buccaneer. He embraced Fran in a bear hug and his handshake with me was as bone-crushing as ever. Then he poured three shots of Irish whiskey, and would listen to nothing until we put it down.
“It’ll do your heart good,” he said to me, “even if you’re on duty. And thank God there’s one cop left in this family of ambitious shanty Irish.”
I said, “I appreciate the sentiment, Charley, but I’m not even sure I’m a cop at this point. I’ve been suspended and I’ve handed in my badge and gun.”
“Jesus God, no! What are the bastards up to?” That was the wonderful thing about Charley. He always knew what side he was on.
“I don’t think we can start there, Harry,” Fran said. “We told Charley that this is life and death. It is. I think you must start from the very beginning—from the lecture at NYU—and then tell the whole story, every bit of it. It has to be that way. He has to hear all of it. We can’t leave anything out.”
“That’s at least an hour.”
“I have nothing to do but listen,” Charles said soberly, picking up his phone and saying, “No calls, Sally, not for two hours. I don’t care who it is, no calls.”
Fran said, “Thanks, Charley.”
“Did I tell you you’re prettier than ever?”
Fran began to cry. “It’s a reaction,” I told Charley. “We’ve been through a lot. Even without that, she cries when you tell her how beautiful she is. But she’s right. I have to tell you the whole story, Charley, and don’t think I’m crazy, because she’s sitting there to back up whatever I say.”
“Go on,” Charles said.
“It began just—my God, only a couple of weeks ago. Oscar asked me to talk to his class at NYU on the question of homicide, from a policeman’s point of view. That’s how it began.…”
And from there, I went on, leaving nothing out. Charles hardly moved all through the story. We sat on two chairs facing his desk. He was seated in a big swivel chair, facing us, his eyes half closed, turning a pencil between the thumbs and forefingers of his hands. It took over an hour to spell it all out. “And that’s it,” I said finally. “The kids are in the south of England with Molly Flannigan, I’m suspended, and a lot of good people are dead.”
“You’re sure the kids are all right?”
“You know Sean,” Fran said.
“Yes, I do.”
“Do you believe us?” I wanted to know. “That’s the main thing—do you believe us.”
“Well, you can’t put it quite that baldly. Do I believe that you’re telling the truth? Of course I do. Why should you lie to me? And since my sister is the best of the lot of us, I believe her. Are your lives and the lives of your kids in danger—no doubt about that. Your apartment was bugged, your phone was tapped, and attempts were made on your lives. But, on the other hand, am I ready to say that this enormous spiderweb you feel exists, this plot to become the power center of the United States through a combination of cocaine trade, industry, and stolen millions appropriated for Santa Marina—that this exists and is factual? Well, I don’t know. A death squad, Santa Marina style, operating here for years, killing what may amount to hundreds of people if your theory holds—” He shook his head. “And with Wabash Protection as the private army and executioner of Al Porfetto, who sits on top of this pyramid—Franny, I know Al Porfetto. Not too well. He isn’t too social and he doesn’t mingle much, but I know the man. You just can’t do in America what you describe. The Arabs can’t do it, and they could buy and sell Porfetto five times over. I’m a lawyer, and the evidence just isn’t there.”
The evidence was there. Charley was a lawyer, but I was a cop and I looked at evidence somewhat differently. But I didn’t argue with him. Actually, that was only peripheral to my problem—which was what does a cop do when he’s being framed and dumped. It’s true that Fran and I had both expected more of Charley. He knew the people with power, and we thought he might reach out to some of them and that way help us. We were tired. Tired of running, tired of always being afraid. Finally, four decades after Nazi Germany, I was learning what it meant to be hunted, to fear death from hour to hour, and to have no one
to turn to.
I knew anger or petulance wouldn’t help, but Fran was his sister and now she let go with, “Damn you, Charley Murphy, you’ve become like all the rest of these lousy Establishment fat cats. If some swine has twenty cents and a charitable handout, he becomes a member of your club. Well, your club stinks. Harry and I are fighting for our lives and for the lives of our kids, and you tell us the evidence isn’t in.”
Charley sighed, and I said, “Stop it, Fran. He’s helping. We asked for help. He’s giving it to us. To hell with that. I want to know what I do now.”
“Good, good,” Charley said softly. “Just take it easy, Fran, let’s see what we can do with the pickle Harry’s in. That’s what you came here for.”
“Yes, I suppose it is,” Fran admitted. “I’m sorry, Charley.”
“Ah, you’re right. We had a great uncle of my name, Charley Murphy, who died fighting in the Sinn Fein Easter, and look at me here now. Oh, the hell with that. We each keep body and soul in our own fashion. Now let’s touch it point by point, and mind you, I’ll never call you a liar, but I must question you.”
“Of course.”
“So first, the Edgar Wallace business. We have the spiffiest literary establishment in the country, and the most bookstores and the Times book section and The New York Review of Books, to mention the snottiest of the lot, and apparently several million people reading like the very devil, and you’re telling me not one of them recognized that Edgar Wallace story?”
“I can’t say, Charley. Maybe the thief’s a reader.”
“Hey, you didn’t tell the shoeflies about Edgar Wallace?”
“No.”
“It dies here. No one is to be told. Ever.”
I nodded.
“Now, about Grogan. I know him. One of those rich, eager creeps who pushes onto public service where he need not be elected or appointed. Give a million to Lincoln Center, and get on the board of this or that, theater, opera, Philharmonic. They’d put a monkey on those boards if he’d ante up a million. Committee to plan the revitalization of TriBeCa. They have the experts; now they need funding and up steps someone like Grogan—Paul Grogan—oh, wait one red hot minute!” He sat with his eyes closed, hands pressed to the desk. “Ha! Oh, what a memory your brother Charley has!” He picked up his desk phone and almost in a shout, “Sally, find the last annual report of Wabash Protection.” Then he turned to me and said, “The two others, the men actually engaged in running the museum, they never brought up the possibility of you being engaged in shenanigans?”
