New York Minute

by Bob Mayer

  “Depends on your definition of success,” Kane said.

  “Excuse me, gentlemen,” Morticia said. She eased between the two men and put another plate in front of Kane, next to the first. “Chef Thao apologized for the peppers.”

  “Come on,” the enforcer said, taking Delgado’s elbow with his left hand.

  Delgado ripped his arm out of the grip. “I go when I want to go.”

  The enforcer removed his sunglasses and stared into Delgado’s eyes. That ticked the clock to ‘want to’ and Delgado bee-lined for the door. The enforcer looked back at Kane.

  Dead brown eyes. The enforcer waited a few heartbeats, nodded at Morticia while still fixed on Kane. “Ma’am. Mister Kane.” Then he followed.

  “A step to the left, please,” Kane quietly said to Morticia.

  She slid out of his line of fire.

  The weightlifter opened the door and they were gone.

  “What was that?” Morticia demanded.

  “Lately I’m having problems getting food without being interrupted,” Kane said. “Tell Thao thanks.”

  Thao was watching over the bar, standing a crate. Kane nodded and Thao nodded back, a smile briefly splitting his dark brown face, revealing a single gold tooth among the white, then he hopped down, out of sight.

  Morticia watched the exchange. She placed her hands on her narrow hips. “You can put your gun away, Kane.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Kane clicked the safety in place and re-holstered.

  “You’re messing with the mob,” Morticia didn’t phrase it as a question. “That’s not smart.”

  “I’m not known for my smarts,” Kane said, picking up a pepper from the first plate with his fork, still using the right hand. “Or my sense of humor.” He turned the pepper to and fro, examining it. “Ever wonder who was the first person desperate enough to eat one of these?” His hand was shaking ever so slightly.

  “Oh, screw you.” Morticia said it casually, not really caring.

  “I don’t like condiments,” Kane said.

  “Peppers aren’t condiments.”

  “I put them in the same category,” Kane said. “Ever see the sunglass guy before?”

  “Nope. A flashy dresser and he gets a good haircut. A stylist. Sounded like he was from down under.”

  “Kiwi,” Kane said. “New Zealand.”

  She indicated Kane’s hand. “At least they made both of us nervous.”

  Kane noticed. “That’s not nervous.” The hand became steady.

  Morticia turned away, but then stopped. “What’s with the Times every day?”

  “Old habit from school.” Kane bit into the pepper, producing tears. “The thing that really puzzles me, is who ate a pepper the second time?” He put the remains on the plate and pushed it away.

  “Catholic school?” Morticia asked.

  “What?”

  “The paper?”

  Kane shook his head as he forced a swallow. He took a deep drink of water and cleared his throat. “We got the NY Times every day at Hudson High. Delivered to our doors.”

  Morticia frowned. “’Hudson High’.”

  “My Rockbound Highland Home,” Kane said.

  “Speak English.”

  “West Point.”

  “Bull,” Morticia said. “You went to West Point?”

  “Even graduated.”

  “By who?” Morticia asked.

  “By who what?”

  “Who delivered the Times to your door every day?”

  “The plebes. The freshmen,” he clarified. “But we never called them freshmen. Plebes.”

  “Sounds screwed up.”

  “It was. For some. Some loved it.”

  “You ain’t the kind that loved it,” Morticia said with authority. “What’s his name?”

  “Whose name?”

  “The young man who brings you the paper?”

  “The Kid.”

  “I know you call him that.” Morticia persisted. “His name?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You give him five bucks for a twenty-cent paper every day and you don’t know his name?”

  “Ten on Sunday. He wants me to know, he’ll tell me.”

  Morticia shook her head. “You’re a piece of work, Kane. And I don’t mean that in a good way.” She glided away.

  CIVIC CENTER, MANHATTAN

  “I don’t get to go inside and sit in the comfy chair?” Kane asked the secretary.

  “Not if Ms. Marcelle isn’t in the office.” Mrs. Ruiz kept typing as she spoke, an earpiece whispering dictation from a microcassette recorder she controlled via foot pedal. “No one goes in there alone.”

  “I bet you do,” Kane said.

  Ruiz, a heavyset, dark-skinned, older woman, replied by putting an extra pop in her typing.

  Kane leaned back in the hard-plastic chair those made to wait had to endure, stretching his legs out, heels on the marble floor. On the opposite wall portraits of old, white, distinguished men in suits stared back with implicit disapproval. He was outside Toni’s office at Marcelle, van Dyck, Feinstein & Marcelle. Her father’s name led the way and Toni was the last and most recent addition to the firm, bookending the descendant of the old blue blood New York City family, and the Jewish attorney every New York law firm seemed required to have.

  Each of the partners had a corner office on the uppermost floor of the 18-story Broadway-Chambers Building. The center of the top floor held the boardroom and law library. The firm occupied the uppermost three floors. The 16th and 17th floors were abuzz with associates, paralegals, and clients coming and going. Here, things were quieter and the deals were bigger. Clients that made it to the top floor didn’t have to wait in the chairs; summoned employees were another story.

  The building was on the corner of Broadway and Chambers, designed before the turn of the 20th century. The same architect had gone on to design the Woolworth Building and the United States Supreme Court, which was a factor in Thomas Marcelle headquartering his firm here. It was within walking distance of the US District Court, the Court of Appeals Second Circuit, the County Clerk of New York, and the New York City Criminal Court. It looked down on City Hall. Chinatown was to the north, Tribeca to the west, the Financial District to the south, and the East River where it’s named. Thus, it was at the center of the legal structure of the city and north of the financial hub of Wall Street, so designated because it had been the line of the original defensive wall built by the first Dutch settlers, one the many pieces of trivia that Kane loved about his home town. The fortification was delineated on his framed 1660 survey of New Amsterdam.

  Kane had the map case on his lap, ounces lighter than when he’d left his apartment this morning. He was still sweating from his jog east across the Brooklyn Bridge, workout at Gleason’s Gym, and fast walk back across the East River to Manhattan. The air conditioning was a bit extreme. His arms and legs burned from sparring and the heavy bag, a satisfying feeling.

  The elevator dinged. Thomas, never Tom, Marcelle, lord and master of this domain and beyond, exited, his daughter at his side. Thomas Marcelle had been Assistant U.S Attorney for the Southern District of New York before Toni reached her teen years and everyone who was anybody had assumed the District’s top job was his in a few years and eventually a good shot at Attorney General with the correct administration. Fate had intervened and Thomas Marcelle had ditched that life for these more lucrative trappings via the other side of the courtroom. He was one of the top defense attorneys in the City with clientele ranging from upstanding, wealthy citizens in need to the rich, darker side of society always requiring a legal shield. He was bald, swarthy, barrel-chested and wore an expensive, tailored suit the way Kane had worn his full dress as a cadet and nothing since.

  Antonia Marcelle never went by her full first name, except for her mother, and she’d eviscerate anyone who tried. In her late-thirties, Toni turned heads when she walked into a place. She had lustrous, thick black hair that cascaded to her shoulders a
nd an angular face. Her nose had originally been eagle-like in a Roman patrician manner but sometime during Kane’s time away had gone under the knife and was thinner and less pronounced. Kane didn’t like the change.

  She was 4 inches shorter than Kane, her body intriguingly out of proportion with long, athletic legs. She wore a gray pants suit that emphasized the legs, and a white blouse under the sharply cut jacket. Her outfit was completed with a gray scarf that cost more than Kane’s entire ensemble minus the custom-modified .45 on his hip, not that he’d bought it.

  Father and daughter had been arguing but quieted when they came out of the elevator. They faced each other and Marcelle said something to his daughter in a low insistent tone. Then he spotted Kane and his face went from stone to steel. He said something else and she glanced over her shoulder. She shot a quick, tense smile, then returned attention to the man who commanded it.

  Kane stood and waited. Thomas Marcelle was the first to turn away, marching toward his office, thus dismissing his daughter.

  “Mrs. Ruiz has never seen Monty Python,” Kane said as Toni approached, loud enough for the secretary to hear. Ruiz typed away.

  Toni didn’t respond, opening the door, ushering Kane in and shutting it behind him. He headed for his usual corner chair angled toward the door, the desk and the windows beyond, with a wall behind him as she went behind the desk, taking off her jacket. There was a hint of black bra visible through the thin white blouse.

  She had the least favorable office of the four corners. Behind her, northwest, toward Duane Street, was primarily a display of taller, newer buildings. Her wood desk was antique, the front facing engraved with blindfolded Lady Justice holding the scales in one hand and a sword in the other. The surface was crowded with files and papers, one framed photo facing her, and a phone. The walls were unadorned with several empty hooks where the previous occupant had dangled his pedigree and she hadn’t placed her own. Four steel filing cabinets lined the wall, combination dial on the front of each drawer.

  “Your father doesn’t like me,” Kane said.

  “You came back,” Toni said as she sat down with a sigh. “Ted didn’t.”

  There was nothing he could say to that. There was a reason he didn’t like small talk.

  A red, white and blue New York City Needs Bella Abzug button was on her desk, half covered by some papers.

  “What does your father think of you backing Bella?” Kane asked, at a loss for something else to say. According to the Times, Abzug currently topped the polls for the Democratic nomination to this fall’s mayoral election, which meant she led the polls for mayor. The run off was the deciding factor, not the actual election, with the Democratic candidate a shoe-in for years.

  Toni tossed the button in a drawer. “He doesn’t know. There’s nothing for him to think about. And just because I have a button doesn’t mean I’m for her.”

  “Right,” Kane said.

  “Are you sweating?”

  “I was at Gleason’s. I didn’t run back, I walked. But it’s hot out. Sunny though,” he added.

  “Ever hear of a shower, Will?”

  “You wanted me here at eleven unless Thao got the message wrong, and Thao doesn’t make mistakes. Hey, do you guys have a shower?”

  “The executive lounge next to the boardroom,” Toni said, “and you are not getting a key.”

  “Do you have one?”

  Toni stared at him for a few seconds. “You know there’s a gym right around the corner.”

  “Yeah. I’ve done some sparring there. But then I wouldn’t get my run in. I like going across the Bridge. Thinking about the men who built it. You know the city used to rent out some of the open space in the anchorages to store wine? Always exactly sixty degrees.”

  “Fascinating.”

  “Plus, Gleason’s has an aura. You know who—“ Kane halted as Toni held up a hand.

  “What did you get on Delgado?” She indicated the map case.

  “I had pictures of Alfonso Delgado getting blown by two male hookers in the Christopher Street pier.”

  “I don’t like that past tense,” Toni said.

  “Delgado showed up at Vic’s this morning. Now he has the pictures.”

  Toni frowned. “You gave him the negatives too?”

  “They were requested. It did not seem a fortuitous time to argue the request, given I was in a lose-lose situation with his help.”

  Toni looked at the ceiling of her office. “Lord, give me patience.”

  “He ain’t listening, Toni,” Kane said. “You need to go to mass more often.”

  She snorted. “Coming from you? What do you mean lose-lose?”

  “His associate and I had guns drawn on each other in the booth. No instant kill shot that low on the body and I doubt I could get an accurate one through the top of the table. If one of us fired, the other would too and we’d be shooting each other for a while, a second or two at least. It wouldn’t have been pretty.”

  “A second or two is a while?”

  “When you’re pulling a trigger, it is. Everything okay here?” Kane asked, nodding his head toward the door.

  “Father’s wound a little tight lately,” Toni said, “which means all of us are wound a little tight. It’ll pass.”

  “I don’t think anything just passes around here,” Kane said.

  “You said Delgado had help? The guy in the lose-lose?”

  “He’s the one who remembered to ask for the negatives,” Kane said. “Tall, about six-four. Thin. Red hair combed straight back. Dressed in a white suit of some weird material. Black pointy boots. New Zealander. Who is he?”

  Toni slumped back in the chair. “That’s Quinn. You were right to give it up. He’s Cappucci’s right hand man.”

  “The Cappucci of the Cappucci family? The old man?”

  “Not the old, old man,” Toni said. “After a nasty go around in Queens with the Rosado’s, the eldest Cappucci was forced by the Five Families to relinquish his position and retire a few weeks ago. He’s gone to molt in Phoenix, but it’s a lucky mobster who makes it to his age so he shouldn’t complain. Actually, did him a favor. Maybe he’ll die in his bed. This is his son, old enough, somewhere in his fifties. He inherited Quinn from his dad. Quinn’s the family’s enforcer.”

  “You say ‘Five Families’ like it’s a religion,” Kane said. “Up there with the Holy Ghost and the Twelve Apostles and the Stations of the Cross.”

  “To them it is a religion,” Toni said. “They burn a picture of the Virgin Mary as part of their ceremony to be a made man.”

  “You might not know this, but in my previous life I was an altar boy,” Kane said. “That ceremony sounds a bit sacrilegious, you know, given the—“

  Toni cut in. “Best to treat it like a religion because they do. There’s been a lot of turmoil in the mob since Carlos Gambino’s heart attack last year. Power plays.”

  “Why would Cappucci send his enforcer with Delgado over some pictures?” Kane asked. “And why does Cappucci have a foreigner as his muscle?”

  “What did I tell you about Delgado?”

  “You don’t remember?”

  “I’ve got a lot on my mind, Will.”

  “You told me to get dirt on Delgado. Said he was a capo in one of the families. You didn’t even tell me which of the ‘Five Families’,” he said, mimicking her tone, “other than he hangs out at the Triangle Social Club, which is actually run by Vincent ‘the Chin’ Gigante, a progeny of the Genovese family, so that might have confused me a tad. You said it was normal, routine surveillance to find cause for divorce. Found that, just don’t have the evidence anymore.”

  Toni held up her hands defensively. Jewelry glittered on several fingers. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry. You’re right. Delgado is married to Boss Cappucci’s daughter.”

  “Gee, that helps. And?”

  “She came to me.”

  “For?”

  “Same thing every woman who comes through my door wants. A divorce. That�
��s why father gave me this swanky office. I handle the women of means who desire to terminate their marital relationship.”

  “That sounds very formal and professional,” Kane said. “So Cappucci’s daughter wants to divorce Delgado. Who is Cappucci siding with? Daughter or son-in-law?”

  “Do I have to give you a lecture on how the mob works?”

  “In the Bronx, where I was growing up naïve and innocent, the mafia meant old, fat guys in wife-beaters at the corner social club making book and playing cards outside when the weather was nice.”

  “The Bronx is the dark side of the moon,” Toni said. “Even mobsters are afraid to go there.”

  “Not the entire Bronx,” Kane hedged. “I’ll admit even cops are afraid of the South Bronx. And it’s hell for FDNY. My Uncle Liam is stationed at the firehouse on 138th and—“ he stopped upon seeing the look on her face. “Okay. That’s the extent of my mob knowledge. I was in the Army a while in case you forget.”

  Toni’s eyes went to the lone picture on her desk, now that her ex-husbands was deep-sixed. “I remember very well that you were in the Army, Will.”

  Kane didn’t have to see to know what was inside the frame: Taken in front of Battle Monument on Trophy Point at West Point. Toni in the center wearing a knee length green dress. Kane to her right, her younger brother, Ted, to her left, both in full dress gray, ‘tar buckets’ on their heads. It had been snapped right after graduation parade. The two cadets held their sabers over her head, the tips crossing, her knights who’d sworn that day to protect her forever after she’d spent the four years the two men had attended the Academy being the older, wiser sister to both of them. She’d written letters, sent ‘boodle’ packages of food via the mail, and answered when one or the other, sometimes both, crowded together in a phone booth, called. She’d been their desperately needed lifeline to the outside and ‘real’ world. But it had turned out that she couldn’t protect either of them, nor could they save each other.

  “Sorry, Toni,” Kane said. “It was a long night.”

  They were quiet for some moments.