(2004) Citizen Vince (22 page)

“Get back to the business of blah blah blah.”

He looks back out the window, where the sun is up and the clouds have faded back to gray and white. On the other side of those clouds is Washington. Two days. He has the sense of being a general in the final days before riding upon a great city. Like they’ve ridden all the way from Sacramento to Washington. Be a good movie. He returns to the doorway, likes this vantage best. “Numbers? Do we have numbers yet?”

The fellas turn to one another and smile. “They’re still preliminary…”

“But we have them?”

“Wirthlin wants to present them himself.”

“But we have numbers?”

“Yes. We have numbers.”

He waits.

The fellas can barely contain. “Eleven.”

His arms fall to his sides. My God. This is going to happen. “Eleven?” He stands dumbly in the doorway, the Duke cum Gomer Pyle.

“I mean, there’s a margin of error and it doesn’t factor in…”

“Eleven?” With two days?

“Yes, sir. It’s ours to lose.”

The others shoot a glance—Ours to lose?—bad form, especially given the late summer fuckups on the KKK and Taiwan and the way he said trees cause most of the pollution and that they shouldn’t waste money investing in intellectual curiosity, the way he can veer dangerously off point and talk out of his ass, the way he lost eight points in a week. The fellas cannot allow him to drift again. But he doesn’t seem to notice their concern. He is blessed with a short memory. He is blessed with deep stores of confidence. He is blessed, most of all, with an 11 percent cushion. Two days before. “What was that you said before? About us having deep hope?”

“It is our deepest hope…”

“No. Wait.” He smiles; his whole face smiles, the pure joy of a seventy-year-old kid. “It is MY deepest hope.”

They all look. This is it, then. This is what it feels like.

“It’s about me now. It’s
MY
deepest hope.”

He stands in the doorway a minute longer, watching them do their jobs. He wanders back down the hall to his room, turns off the light, and lies on his back in bed, in the dark, listening to his own breathing and wondering which tie they’ve picked out for him today.

1980 / November 3 / Monday / 7:20
A.M
.

David Best struggles to extricate himself from the driver’s seat of a champagne-colored Mercury Bobcat, his belly carved like a plump roast by the edge of the steering wheel. When he’s finally out he looks back at the car contemptuously, pushes the door closed, turns in the parking lot, and finds himself face to face with Vince Camden.

David jumps back and covers his chest. “Vince. Jesus. You scared me to death.”

“I can’t believe you brought Ray Scatieri here.”

David still looks scared; takes a step back. “What? What are you talking about?”

“Ray Scatieri. You put him in the witness protection program and brought him to Spokane. Jesus, David. Do you have any idea who this guy is? He’s an animal.”

David’s big cheeks flush red and he looks all around, then clenches his lips. “Goddamn it, Vince. You are not to have contact with anyone else in the program—”

“Oh, we’re having contact all right,” Vince says.

David looks grim. He glances over his shoulders, both ways. “Come with me.”

Vince follows David into the building. It’s early and the lobby is empty. The steel doors slide open on the elevator and they ride in silence to the sixth floor, David refusing to make eye contact. Vince fights a yawn. Hasn’t slept more than a few hours in a week.

The marshals’ oak lobby is empty. They go into David’s office and he sits at his desk, puts his hands out to the side—a gesture of surrender, or of endless possibility, or there is no difference: “Okay,” David says. “Where now?”

“What?”

“When witnesses come in contact with each other we move one. So…where? Your pick. Where do you want to go?”

“I don’t—” Vince looks out the small window: an overcast morning. He hadn’t thought of that. Sure. Why not just let them move you somewhere else? Get away from Sticks and Lenny and from this thing that Gotti wants you to do and just…disappear. Start over. Fresh. Just fly away.

David reaches in a drawer and pulls out a map, unfolds it on the desk between them. “You told me once you wanted to start a restaurant? Okay. We’ll help. You pick a city and we’ll find a building for you.”

The map shows the entire country, veined with highways and rivers, mottled with mountains, the states eyelined in black, separated by different colors, capitals marked with stars. There is solace in these familiar shapes; you run your fingers over the borders and remember a grade school puzzle—and it’s like that, like it’s your pick: each state a puzzle piece, the smooth, parallel edges of Tennessee, all those rectangles in the center, the jagged surfaces of the river-border states. When you were a kid, you used to take the little wooden Florida and Idaho from the puzzle and pretend they were guns—the panhandle barrels. You used to shoot the other kids with Florida, for God’s sake.

“Hawaii?” David suggests, as if he’s offering a drink. “California?”

Vince’s eyes drift up from the map to the photo of President Carter—even four years ago, you could see the burdens of choice and fear on his face—and Vince knows.

A single moment can sometimes connect you to your time. President Carter stares in solemn agreement. It’s like this: You’re out there living your own life, and then, every four years, they give you a say—a tiny say in how this moment should proceed, and it is both real and abstract, like the black borders around the states, a creation of the very thing it is—a small say in which incremental direction we will go, and sure, it’s a cynical process: reactive, reductive, misguided—but goddamn it, if every four years it does nothing more than make you stop and realize that you’re part of something bigger, then maybe every time it’s a tiny fucking miracle.

Vince touches his own head with his fingertips and says, quietly: “Why did you bring Ray Sticks here, David?”

David pushes away from the map. “Vince. I can’t talk to you about this.”

“David, the guy is bad—”

“That
guy
is potentially the most valuable witness in the country, Vince.”

“But here? Did you have to bring him here?”

David raises his big shoulders in a full shrug. “What do we do, Vince? Three thousand people in this program, a good number of them wise guys, and we can’t put ’em in New York. Or Detroit. Or Cleveland. Or anywhere the mob operates. Okay, so take out the twenty biggest cities and their suburbs. Take out Vegas. And Atlantic City. What’s left? Lexington? Des Moines? Phoenix? Spokane? You tell me. Where are we supposed to put the dump, Vince? Whose neighborhood gets the garbage? Where are we supposed to put a guy like that? Where are we supposed to put a guy like you?”

Vince deserves the sting. “Are there others?”

“Here?” David considers before answering, then shrugs. “Sure. Any given time, there might be four or five. This is actually a good city for us. Italian community. Affordable. Isolated. Lots of service jobs. Federal offices. Big enough that you guys can blend in, but not so big that you can get into a lot of trouble.”

Vince wonders if he knows any of them, and immediately begins thinking of the type: that dishwasher at Geno’s, the short limping guy who used to play cards at Sam’s. He remembers the word Officer Dupree used:
Ghosts.
“You just can’t put someone like Ray Scatieri in a place like this, David. He’s a criminal.”

“Oh yeah?” David sighs. “What’s he do? Gamble? Steal credit cards? Sell dope?”

Vince looks away, at the picture of Jimmy Carter.

“How about you, Vince? You live pretty well making donuts?” David’s face betrays no emotion. “Look. We know it’s a challenge to go straight. When you’re in the fox business, sometimes you lose a hen.

“And sometimes you gotta move a fox twice.” David leans forward and pushes the map in front of Vince. “Come on, Vince. Pick a new town. Pick a new name. Leave all this paranoia and your little scuffling operation behind.”

Of course he’s right. It’s the only way to escape both Ray Sticks and Johnny Boy. And maybe himself. After a moment, Vince picks up the map. Start over. Really do it this time. Evaporate. Vince looks down at the map.

“Good.” David smiles. “I’ll start the paperwork.” He walks into the outer office. Closes the door behind him.

Vince stares at the southeastern point of New York State, where the island of Manhattan looks like the tip of a sliver…a tiny, harmless speck of a place. The world. Benny is on that speck, and Tina. Just a day ago he was on that island, in a car with Ange, talking about how to kill Ray Sticks. That’s the problem with a
map like this—it can only show the surface of things, not the truth beneath. How does David know about the dope and credit cards—his
scuffling operation?

Vince stands, looks around the office, and when he opens the door to the lobby David’s thick back is to him and he’s on the phone, whispering: “I’ll keep him here until—” David straightens up and aware that he’s being watched, turns, and sees Vince standing in the doorway. David mumbles something about having to go and hangs up. He looks up at Vince as if seeing him for the first time. “You cut your hair.”

“That the police?” Vince asks.

David stares, as if trying to decide whether he can get away with lying. Finally, he shrugs. “They sent a cop to New York. He figured out you were in the program. This Detective Phelps called me last night, said they wanted to talk to you. They’re on their way, Vince.”

“What did he say?”

“Phelps? Said you were involved in some stuff—stealing credit cards. Selling dope. And they want to question you about a homicide.”

“I already talked to them about it.”

“Well, they want to talk to you again.”

“I didn’t kill anyone, David.”

“When he gets here, we’ll tell him that.”

“I already told him.”

“We’ll tell him again.”

“Are you detaining me, David?”

“I’m asking you to stay here and cooperate with the police.”

Vince looks around the office. “And what are my chances of making it to the lobby and out the door before they get here? Before you call security?”

“Come on, Vince.” David laughs.

“One in five? One in ten?”

David doesn’t blink.

“My move, David?” Vince backs out of the office and walks casually to the elevator. He expects David to pull a gun or tackle him, or at least call building security, but the big man simply tags behind like a younger brother.

“Aw, come on, Vince,” he says. “Wait and talk to the police. We’ll straighten this out and then we’ll get you relocated again. Come on. Just talk to them.”

“I’ll turn myself in tomorrow.” Vince steps onto the elevator. “There’s something I have to do first.”

“Vince. Think! Don’t be stupid.”

Funny. Those were the exact words Ange used at the airport after he laid it all out: The FBI had Ray Sticks over some shit in Philadelphia and he’d been wearing a wire for the last few months while he supposedly cooled it in New York. And then, one day, he was just gone. Sticks potentially knew enough to put Gotti and his crew away for years, so Johnny Boy’s deal for Vince was simple: fly back to Spokane, kill Sticks, and the rest of his debt would be cleared off the books. You’d be doing the world a favor, Ange said, and Vince knew that was true enough. And if he didn’t kill Sticks? Well, they’d come collect on both of Vince’s debts. It was when Vince said that he wasn’t sure he could do it that Ange smiled:
Don’t be stupid.

The elevator doors close on David’s worried face and Vince pushes the button for the second floor. He gets off and walks casually down the hall to the stairwell, goes inside, and climbs down the stairs, past the first floor, to the basement. The door opens on a concrete-floored hallway. Vince walks until he reaches a custodial closet, opens it, and finds a pair of coveralls. He slips into them and keeps walking through a door to the loading dock in back of the building, grabs a huge box of toilet paper, and holds it on his shoulder, above his face. He emerges on a ramp in the back of the building, climbs it to the street level, and is about to cross the street with the box when an unmarked police car squeals around the cor
ner. As it passes, Vince sees the big mustached detective, Phelps, and another cop in the front seat. They roll past and Vince walks casually across the street, angles into Riverfront Park, sets the toilet paper on a park bench, unzips his coveralls, steps out of them, and walks calmly through the park.

IN HIS SMALL
office, beneath a diploma from Fordham and a handful of framed photos of himself with acquitted gangsters, Benny DeVries seems more relaxed and cocky than he was the night Dupree questioned him on the street. Dupree takes the chair across from Benny’s desk and thanks the lawyer for seeing him again.

“This shouldn’t take long. I just have a couple of follow-up questions.”

Benny looks impatiently at his watch. “I told you everything I know.”

Dupree shakes his head. “Well, no. You didn’t.”

“What are you talking about?”

“That night you said you hadn’t seen him—”

Benny leans back, smiling, entertained. “Yes.”

“—I asked you to call me if you saw Vince?”

“And I said I would. Look—”

“It just hit me this morning. I said
Vince,
not
Marty.
I never told you that his new name was Vince. You said you hadn’t heard from him since the trial and yet you knew his name in the program was Vince.”

Benny DeVries stares at him for a moment, and then breaks into a broad smile. “Yeah. That’s funny. I mean…it’s worthless: I could have inferred that you were talking about Marty, or maybe you used the name Vince earlier in the conversation. But yeah…that’s pretty good.”

Dupree leans forward and makes his pitch. “Look, Benny, the
last thing I want to do is drop out of the sky and cause you a bunch of trouble.”

“Trouble,” Benny repeats, the smile still on his face.

“I just thought we should talk once more
before
this gets to the prosecutor or the bar association—”

The smile grows. “The bar association!”

“See, I might be able to help you out if you tell me where Vince is, but you gotta do it now, before the shit starts to rain down.”

Benny laughs, then lights a cigarette, still smiling. “You really need to get yourself a
bad cop.
” He draws on the cigarette. “Now…what’s your name again?”

“Dupree.”

“Okay, Detective Dupree. First, let’s assume that I had seen our friend and I lied to you about it. My dick will climb out of my pants, grow wings, and fly across this room before you find a prosecutor in New York to wade into the issues of privilege and charge me on something as small as this. Number one. Two, the prosecutors wherever the fuck you’re from—assuming they walk upright—don’t have jurisdiction. And three, as far as the bar association, I can give you the phone number for the head of the disciplinary committee, if you want, because I was the best man at his fucking wedding!

“And even if you
could
charge me, it would be your word against mine, and in the end, it doesn’t even matter. Do you want to know why?”

Dupree is quiet.

“Because you didn’t ask if I’d seen
Vince Camden.
You asked if I’d seen Marty Hagen. Well, there is no Marty Hagen anymore. You guys took care of that. So either way…I told you the truth. I haven’t seen Martin Hagen since his trial. Have I seen Vince Camden? You didn’t ask me that. Now get out of my office and don’t come back without a warrant, you piece of shit!”

“I don’t think you understand what I’m telling you—”

“Oh, I understand someone trying to put the screws to me!” Benny is worked up, red-faced, and doesn’t quite want this to end yet. “How long you been a cop?”

Dupree looks down at him. “Five years.”

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-seven.”

“How long have you been a detective?”

Dupree considers lying, but doesn’t want to give the guy the satisfaction. “Three weeks. I’m temporarily assigned.”

“You’re a rookie.” Benny leans forward on his desk and smiles. “How do you like my city so far, rook?”

Dupree smiles. “It was a long weekend.”

Benny laughs, and leans back in his chair. “You want some advice, you stupid simple bastard?”