by Bob Mayer
“What do you know about Sean Damon?”
“Ah, fuck, Will. What you into? Leave it alone if it involves that old fucker. He’ll have his mick friends cut your nuts off. Don’t you have enough trouble already?” A shrill voice was slicing Conner in the background.
“I’m trying to figure out what exactly the trouble is,” Kane said. “I’m involved whether I want to be or not. You know that.”
“Damon is bad enough by himself. But he’s got three buddies from his old neighborhood in Hell’s Kitchen that have been with him since Christ was a corporal. The Unholy Trinity. Nathan can give you their names, but they’re stone cold killers.”
“They got to be in their seventies,” Kane said.
“Which means they been killing folks since before you were born,” Conner shot back. “They can still gut you and dump the body with the best. Stay away from them. Hell, they’re holding their own on the West Side against the Genovese Family. Fucking whackjobs.” Several seconds of silence. “Listen. There’s not much I can do to help. But if there is, let me know.”
Kane was taken aback. “I’m all right, Uncle Conner. Don’t worry. I’m sorting it out.”
“Okay,” Conner said.
Several more seconds of silence except for Aileen’s screeching in the background.
“I’ve got to be going,” Kane said.
“Be careful, kiddo.”
WEST SIDE HIGHWAY, MANHATTAN
Kane needed darkness for his next act. Since it wasn’t dusk, he jogged over to the West Side Highway, skirted the barrier, went up the ramp and onto the roadway. By the time he was on the highway, his gray t-shirt was soaked with sweat. He removed the denim shirt and tied it around his waist.
He walked around the plywood barrier. There were several homeless about, all giving Kane varying looks ranging from wariness to sizing him up to the equivalent of the hatred of South Vietnamese whose village had been ‘pacified’.
Wile-E looked considerably more human, sitting on the edge of the railing, feet dangling, facing the Hudson. His hair was still long but it was clearly blond. He was clean shaven. His field jacket was a shade less dirty. He was drinking from a bottle in a paper bag and had a cigarette in the other hand, smoke curling into the air.
“How’d you like Soldiers and Sailors?” Kane asked as he came up next to him.
Wile-E glanced at Kane then took another slug. “It was a bed and a hot shower. I appreciate it.” He held out the bag, hand shaking. “Want some?”
“Got to work tonight,” Kane said.
“You’re not a cop,” Wile-E said. “But you carry a gun. What’s the story?”
“I work for a lawyer.”
“Must be a tough lawyer.”
“She is. Are you off the needle?”
“Why do you care?” Wile-E asked.
Kane didn’t say anything.
Wile-E sighed. “Trying. It’s hard. What’s the point?”
“That’s something you gotta figure out,” Kane said, “but you can’t do it while you’re using.”
“That’s, what-do-you-call-it? A Catch-Two?”
“Yeah,” Kane agreed. “It’s fucked.”
“Maybe,” Wile-E muttered, more to himself than Kane.
“You want a job?” Kane asked.
“I get disability.”
“That’s not an answer,” Kane said.
“I get a job, I lose the VA disability,” Wile-E explained.
“Who told you that?” Kane asked. “That’s not how it works. You get a job, you get structure. You get structure, it gives you a better shot at staying off the needle.”
“How do you know? What are you some do-gooder?”
“That’s the last thing anyone would call me,” Kane said.
“You hang out in the mornings at that diner at the end of the High Line,” Wile-E said, not a question.
“How do you know that?”
“I asked around about you, Cap’n,” Wile-E said. “Trying to figure out your angle. Nobody does something for nothing. Now you want to get me a job. Get me straight. What’s your angle?”
“I’m not a captain anymore.” Kane sighed. “Someone I knew, a veteran who lost his legs in ‘Nam, was killed earlier today.”
“A friend?” Wile-E asked, giving him his complete attention.
“I guess.”
“You guess he was your friend?” Wile-E shook his head. “Someone is either you’re a friend or they ain’t.”
“How many friends do you have?” Kane asked him.
“None anymore and I ain’t pretending to, neither. Was this guy a Sky Soldier?”
“First Cav.”
“What was his name?”
“Malcolm.”
Wile-E held up his paper bag. “Here’s to Malcolm. He’s probably in a better place.” He took a long slug, draining it. Tossed it off the Highway. It hit the ground with a muted smash. “A friend would loan me some money for a refill. Booze, not smack.”
Kane peeled a twenty off. “Think about the job, all right? At the diner. Talk to a Montagnard named Thao. He’s a good man.”
“Sure, I’ll think about it.”
Kane took a detour south to Dino’s Pizza. The same kid was behind the counter, listening to the Yankees losing to the Baltimore Orioles on a transistor radio. Kane bellied up to the counter.
“Slice?” the pizza maker asked.
“How much do you have in the register?” Kane asked.
“Oh, come on. Give me a break.”
“Get a new line,” Kane said to him. “You remember me?”
The pizza maker squinted. “Yeah.”
“I’m not robbing you. How much in the register?”
The pizza maker checked. “Fourteen bucks and some change.”
“You slip anything over twenty in the safe, right?”
A frown. “Yeah. So?”
“You told me you lost eighty-two dollars the other night.”
The youngster took a step back. “Did I?”
“How much did I leave you?”
“One-twenty.”
“You abused my kindness, didn’t you?”
“Hey. Come on. I been docked twice this month.”
“Did you abuse my kindness?” Kane repeated.
The pizza maker hung his head. “Yeah. Sorry.”
“Okay. Don’t do it again. Stuff like that makes me lose faith in people.” Kane turned for the door, but spoke over his shoulder. “Put more cheese on your pie. It’ll help.”
CIVIC CENTER, MANHATTAN
Dutch had taught Kane how to pick a variety of locks. One of the places where he’d demonstrated techniques was the rear maintenance door to the Chambers-Broadway building. That made entry simple.
Kane took the staircase to the top floor. Entered through the fire door. It was quiet, but most lights were on. Kane did a circuit of the floor, checking to see if anyone at Marcelle, van Dyck, Feinstein and Marcelle was working late.
He entered the boardroom. The ornate oak table was big enough to mimic an aircraft carrier. The walls had more old white men frowning. He poked his head into the library. Lots of law books, but nothing unusual.
He moved through the library to another room. The executive lounge. There wasn’t just a shower; there were four private showers. Lockers. Enough marble to make a dent on a quarry. Not exactly a World War II wooden barracks with open stalls.
Kane returned to the main corridor, which circled the floor. Looked at the door to Toni’s office. Passed. He chose to start with the top.
The door to the inner sanctum was locked, but interior locks were simpler. Thomas Marcelle’s office was twice the size of Toni’s, in the southeast corner. A large desk commanded the room. A table that sat four was to one side. A couch and several comfortable chairs along the wall. A wet bar. A small private bathroom in case Marcelle couldn’t make the walk to the executive lounge or deign to shit with lesser-than’s.
The lights of the Brooklyn Bridge glittered a quarter mile away. Cl
oser, City Hall was dark, a few feeble lampposts battling darkness and losing. The building lights were off to save the city money. From his desk, Thomas Marcelle could look down on the mayor’s office. To the southwest, the Twin Towers shimmered. Aircraft warning lights on top blinked.
The walls were covered with pictures. Thomas Marcelle meeting dignitaries. Many were from his time in the US Attorney’s office, but others were recent. The various mayors he’d outlasted. Governors, senators, congressmen, developers, sports figures.
None with any mafia boss’s or capo’s.
There were several awards honoring Thomas Marcelle for this or that.
No plaques with edged weapons.
There was one weapon, though: Ted’s saber, mounted on hooks.
Kane sat at the desk. The surface was clear, the in-box empty, as was the out. The drawers were locked. Kane opened them and searched. Nothing perked.
Relocked the desk. Contemplated the single three-drawer filing cabinet behind the desk. It had a tumbler lock, much like the ones they’d had back in Vietnam at HQ for classified material. Dutch had introduced him to such locks, but told him that if he had to do a tumbler, he’d be better off finding the combination or bringing some C-4. Safe cracking was a skill even Dutch hadn’t taken on.
Kane checked the desk blotter, lifting it, hoping the combination might be there. Then he saw the footlocker. It was almost hidden on the far side of the couch. Kane walked over and knelt in front of it. The stenciled name was faded and scratched but legible:
MARCELLE, T.J. LIEUTENANT
The clasp was secured with the same Army combination lock they’d been issued during the first week of Beast. Kane dialed the combination for Toni’s birthday and it clicked open. All these years and neither Ted nor his father had changed it.
He swung open the top. In the upper tray, on the left of the single partition, were several blue boxes. Kane opened them, one by one. Purple Heart. Bronze Star. Vietnam Service ribbon. Less than two weeks in country and this was the result. The first week had been the 173rd’s orientation for newbies and jungle training, along with zeroing their weapons. Then he and Ted had been choppered to the 2/503rd as it was deploying to assault the mountains around Dak To.
Two days later Ted was dead.
The right side of the tray held some letters, and a Combat Infantry Badge, the ‘holy grail’ of the Infantryman. It’s a rectangle of Infantry-blue enamel, with a silver musket, Springfield Arsenal, Model 1795. The rectangle is super-imposed on an elliptical oak-leaf.
After branch night at West Point, when cadets picked their future niche in the army according to class rank, Kane and Ted and others who’d chosen the crossed rifles of the Infantry had discussed the CIB as a necessary accouterment to an Infantry Officer’s resume, even more so than Ranger School, given that the country was at war.
Posthumous had not been in anyone’s plan.
Both had also noticed that with Vietnam heating up, a classmate who’d talked incessantly about Infantry for four years had chosen another branch of service, less likely to put him in harm’s way. Nevertheless, there had been more than enough eager for combat that ninety-eight added the option to volunteer for assignment to Vietnam after a short state-side shakedown tour as a platoon leader.
A few letters were from Ted to his father over the four years at West Point. Not many but more than Kane’s single one from R-Day taps. Kane spotted a familiar envelope. The letter he’d written to Thomas Marcelle after Ted was killed. The twisted story he’d inscribed about how Ted had died, fighting to the last bullet. How he’d found Ted’s body with weapon in hand, a single unlucky round in the head, in line with the lies the Regimental Surgeon had written on the numerous hasty autopsy reports after the battle on Hill 1338.
Underneath, in the lower portion, was Ted’s full-dress gray coat with its rows of brass buttons. His tarbucket. Red sash. Kane put everything back and closed the locker.
As he walked toward Toni’s office, something occurred to him. He went back into the boardroom. There was a pair of large blackboards set on rollers. They’d not only been erased, but wiped clean, much like a student had been assigned to do in the classrooms at Holy Rosary, using a bucket and a sponge. He pushed the boards apart, revealing a screen. Reversing direction and crossing the room, he found a narrow door built to look like part of the wood paneling. Inside was just enough space for a chair and a table. An overhead projector, slide machine and projector were on the table. A panel in front of them was designed to be pulled back and slid down. No film was loaded in the projector and there were no film canisters.
Kane walked back into the room, thinking about the barebone spaces A-teams isolated in prior to a mission. Often lined with plywood on which maps and recon photos were tacked for mission planning. Thomas Marcelle had brought Sean Damon in here. Why? Marcelle, Toni and Damon could as easily have convened at the table in Marcelle’s office.
Kane went to the blackboards, checking the tracks they were set in. He pulled a small flashlight out of the map case and shone it in the two-inch space behind them and the wall.
There was something on the back of the blackboard. Kane went to the front and lifted it. The bottom rollers came free of the slot. He turned it around. The reverse side was corkboard. Flat thumbtacks held a construction plan. The plan was six feet long by two wide, taking up the center. Much like the Son of Sam maps, other thumbtacks held strings going to colored index cards pinned on either side. The map projected the future of the lower west side of Manhattan, from 42nd Street to the Battery.
Westway.
The ambitious plan to replace the West Side Highway. 4.2 miles. For most of it a six-lane roadway would be buried underneath landfill along the Hudson after all the dilapidated piers were removed. Parks, shops, and apartment buildings would be constructed on top.
The index cards had numbers written on them and letters in some sort of shorthand that Kane couldn’t make sense of. Except for the dollar signs. Even those were a form of shorthand and it took him a moment to realize the amounts were in millions, ie $1.2 was $1,200,000.
There was considerable money totaled on the cards, over a billion dollars. Construction contracts. The colors and codes? Different companies? Different plans? Different payoffs? Different mafia families?
Kane checked the back of the other board. It had a map of the same area as it currently existed. There were also thumbtacks threaded to index cards on the edges. But the strings went to various, existing locations all about the lower west side of Manhattan.
Kane retrieved his camera and took pictures of the maps, both in total and then sections in detail so the writing would be legible. Finished, he reversed the boards and put them back on the track.
He left the boardroom. Kane could sense Mrs. Ruiz’s absent disapproval as he picked the lock on Toni’s door. Her office was as neat and tidy as her father’s. Empty desk, in and out boxes, no files scattered about. Her desk was easily picked.
A vial was buried in the middle right drawer. Kane opened it. White powder. He put it back. Her engagement ring and wedding band were pushed to the rear of the drawer, neglected. In the bottom right drawer was a stack of faded envelopes, tied together with a red piece of yarn. Kane pulled them out and fanned through, checking the return address. Over five years of Ted’s life. From the one he’d written that first night in Beast through four years at the Academy to Infantry Basic, and a scribbled note during Ranger school. Two from Vietnam during in processing. Kane was surprised to see several in there from him.
There was another letter from in-country. The return address was the unit and its APO:
C CO: 2/503rd Airborne
The stamp was 17 June 1967. The day the battalion had moved out of Dak To on the sweep that would end with the battle on Hill 1338. Two days before Kane and Ted had choppered in and joined the battalion in the field on the 19th.
Kane slid the letter out. The handwriting on the brief note looked familiar. He checked for a name at t
he bottom, but there wasn’t any. Kane reached out and grabbed Toni’s chair to steady himself as he read:
Toni,
Got word from Bn S-1 that your brother is inbound to us. Bn slotted him for a rifle platoon in my company. No way. Did you have anything to do with this? Your father? Some sort of sick revenge?
You’ll be happy to know I swapped him out with Alpha. Getting their West Point butterbar instead. So don’t expect reports on me from little Teddie.
Fuck You and Your Father.
Again.
Kane knew who wrote it: his commander in Charlie Company.
He shouldn’t have been in Charlie. Ted should have. Kane shouldn’t be alive. Ted should be.
Kane leaned back in the seat, closing his eyes, forcing himself to continue breathing despite the hole that was ripped through his chest.
The dots lined up. This was the man Toni said she’d briefly dated when he was a cadet. The reason Toni believed Ted went to West Point. The reason Ted ended up in Alpha Company and Kane in Charlie.
Kane dropped the letter, strode out of the office. Down the hallway, to the right. He circled the top floor several times, trying to gain equilibrium.
He re-entered Toni’s office. Put the letter in the envelope, then pocketed it.
Returned the other letters to the drawer.
Searched the rest of the desk. Relocked it.
He turned to the filing cabinets. They had a different, simpler lock than her father’s. Six numbers.
Kane dialed Ted’s birthday.
The lock clicked open. The Marcelle siblings were nothing if not predictable in certain areas.
The files were in some sort of order, but Kane couldn’t figure it out. Not alphabetical. He searched the labels. Lots of names he didn’t recognize. Some cases he’d worked on. He found Delgado, pulled it out. Standard divorce crap, along with his brief reports; lacking, of course, his recent photos. Put the file back.
Opened another drawer. Scanned the labels.
Another drawer. Nothing on Damon. Nothing on Farrah or 7 Gramercy.
He knelt and opened the lowest drawer. Thumbed file after file, checking the tabs. Stopped when he saw KANE.
