City Of Lies (23 page)

McCaffrey nodded furiously, his eyes wide, already his bladder ready to release onto the linoleum or explode upwards into the base of his gut.

‘Good, so now we’re introduced we can get down to the matter at hand. We need to find your brother.’

McCaffrey frowned, eyes wide, started shaking his head.

‘Thomas, right? We need to find Thomas . . . and if you
co-operate everything will be fine. You don’t . . . well . . . if you don’t, we’re going to kill you.’

Darryl McCaffrey’s eyes widened even further. For a second he wondered if it wasn’t some sick practical joke.

Then Ray Dietz drove a fist into his chest and he knew no-one was kidding.

No-one called. Not Walt, not Cathy, not Frank Duchaunak. Left Harper alone at the American Regent for the entirety of Wednesday evening. He’d eaten alone, right there in the hotel restaurant, and then he’d sat in his room watching TV until he fell asleep. Early hours of Thursday morning he’d woken, still fully dressed but for his jacket and shoes. Shed his clothes, left them where they fell, and crawled beneath the bed-covers. He remembered the sound of rain against the window, little else, and only for a handful of moments before exhaustion folded his thoughts quietly, neatly, and stowed them somewhere beneath consciousness. One day closed, another opened, and he slept through the space in between.

Perhaps the most disturbing moment occurred when he stood in the bathroom a little before nine. For seconds, perhaps as many as ten or fifteen, he had no awareness of his own name. Had he attempted to describe the sensation to someone it would have seemed utterly impossible. But it took place, and took place with such clarity and definition it left him unnerved and disturbed for much of the morning. He wondered if his real identity was being submerged.

He called room service. They told him a number of items had been left at the desk for him; they would bring them up. He ordered some eggs and toast, a jug of coffee. A bellhop came with the trolley, carried the travel-cases and boxes within which his other clothes had been stored. Cathy must have driven them over. Why hadn’t she called? Why hadn’t she sent a message up, even brought them up herself? Of everyone in New York she was the only one he
wanted
to see. Couldn’t get the girl out of his mind. She’d invaded his head and established camp. Harper asked what time they’d been delivered, the bellhop was unsure. Harper thanked him, gave him ten bucks.

He ate in the chair by the window. Looking down from ten floors up, New York seemed like something from a movie. He was detached from it, separate and distinct. He was not part of the city, at least not all of him, and very little of the city was part of him. To let go of that belief was to consider the possibility that Miami was not his home. To consider such a thing meant that he had nowhere to return to. Such a thought worried him. He felt in limbo.

He sorted through the clothes; three suits, a half dozen shirts, two pairs of shoes, four ties, two pairs of silver cufflinks, some silk handkerchiefs, a cashmere double-breasted overcoat and an arran scarf. Tucked at the bottom of one of the boxes was a pair of calfskin gloves, as soft as cotton.

Harper dressed in a navy suit, white shirt, didn’t wear a tie. Ties were for business people and gangsters. He felt a little out of character, but the feeling was not unpleasant. He wished he could have called Cathy, was acutely aware that he had no means by which to contact either her or Walt.

It was gone eleven by the time he left. He took his overcoat, the scarf and gloves, and as he left the Regent the commissionaire raised his hand and touched the peak of his cap. Harper acknowledged the man’s gesture, remembered that there had been no such greeting when he’d left the previous day. Now he looked like a man with a reason for being, a man with sufficient wherewithal to walk into New York dressed in a couple of thousand bucks’ worth of clothes. Judgements were made on how things appeared, not how they were. Harper was reminded that he had, until now, chosen to see exactly what he wanted to see and nothing more. He did not feel equipped, either mentally or emotionally, to go digging beneath the surface. Not today. Not until he acquired some bearings. He turned right onto Hudson, looked up at the Western Union building, and then kept on walking. He possessed no clear purpose or direction, and for the time being that seemed the safest option. The sound of his footsteps seemed to match his heartbeat.

‘So what the fuck we got?’

‘What we got is a whole load of nothing dressed up as something.’

Duchaunak rubbed his eyes with his clenched fists. He hadn’t
slept. The conversation with Harper had travelled around and around in his mind like a yellow cab on an open meter. The kid – thirty-six years old but a kid nevertheless – seemed to have no idea who these people were. Five minutes caught up in the lives of people such as Edward Bernstein, Walt Freiberg, Sol Neumann and Ben Marcus, and Harper would willingly have run back to Miami barefoot. And Evelyn Sawyer? Woman seemed to have more secrets than a pyramid.

‘So tell me.’

‘Well,’ Faulkner said. ‘There was nothing in the autopsy of either Anne Harper or Garrett Sawyer that indicated they were anything other than suicides. Garrett had a sheet behind him, nothing to get a hard-on about, and aside from the fact that he married Evelyn Harper, sister of Anne, mother to our Junior Bernstein, and was therefore the boy’s uncle, there is no other apparent connection to Edward Bernstein.’

‘Except we know there must have been.’

Faulkner nodded. ‘Saying prayers to intuition and hunch, yes, there must have been.’

‘You have no question about that?’

Faulkner shrugged. ‘Who doesn’t have questions? Course I got questions. Hell, most of this stuff runs on what you think, what you feel, right? What do I reckon? I reckon Garrett was a cog in the machine someplace, maybe even hooked up with Evelyn and was the indirect connection between Lenny and Anne Harper. Makes sense that Bernstein didn’t marry the woman, and seems from what Evelyn said that there was no love lost between them.’

‘She said that Bernstein pretty much packed his gear when he found out Anne was pregnant.’

‘No wonder she wished him dead.’

Duchaunak frowned. ‘She never said she wished him dead.’

‘You tell some kid their father is dead for thirty years then you have to wish it was true, right?’

Duchaunak nodded. ‘Yeah, I suppose so.’

‘So we got this kid playing footloose and fancy-free in the middle of all of this,’ Faulkner said matter-of-factly. ‘He plays by their rules or they’re going to do one of two things.’

‘Send him on the first plane back to Miami—’

‘Or shoot the dumb asshole in the head.’

‘He isn’t dumb.’

‘I know,’ Faulkner said. ‘I read his book.’

‘And?’

‘Not my kind of thing.’

‘But evidence that he isn’t dumb.’

Faulkner laughed. ‘He sees what he sees Frank. What’s the deal with the clothes, eh? You tell me he’s gotten himself all kitted out like his father. Where did they take him? Benedict’s place?’

Duchaunak shook his head. ‘I guess so.’

‘He’s selectively dumb. He sees what he wants to see, hears what he wants to hear. When things get uncomfortable he’s going to go with them or he’s going to run. Freiberg starts dealing with Marcus, Marcus gets the idea that Bernstein’s son is nothing more than a newspaper hack from Miami, and I guarantee we’ll find him and Walt Freiberg in half a dozen pieces floating in the river.’

‘I don’t get that he’s on their side,’ Duchaunak said. He leaned forward and picked up a can of Dr Pepper from the desk.

‘There’s no sides any more,’ Faulkner said. ‘The line that separated the good guys from the bad guys got blurred a long time back . . . blurred by the number of people that walk back and forth across it every day of their lives. There is no distinction any more. You show me a guy, any guy anywhere in this city, who didn’t take some stolen gear off of his neighbor, didn’t buy a carton of smokes at work and pay no mind to the absent duty sticker, eh? You show me one guy who’s clean and clear and I’ll pay my taxes in full this year.’

Duchaunak smiled. ‘The Diogenes routine.’

Faulkner frowned.

‘Diogenes. Walked around in daylight with a lantern looking for one honest man.’

‘So we can pretty much guarantee that whatever they’re planning is going to happen before Christmas. It has to. Bernstein is in the hospital, but Bernstein was never the action hero, not for the last twenty years. Bernstein was always the money man, the arranger for contacts and backhanders. Freiberg is going to run this show, I guarantee you, and I think it’s going to be big, and there’s going to be a lot of noise, and some people are going to get hurt.’

‘And if Harper gets in the way?’ Duchaunak asked.

Faulkner shook his head, turned his mouth down at the edges. ‘He gets in the way that’s his own fucking problem. He should’ve been wise enough to see what was in front of him and not persuaded himself it was something else.’

‘Agreed,’ Duchaunak said. ‘The tail goes on Freiberg. I have to know, Don, I have to know what the fuck these people are doing. This shit fucking eats me alive.’

Don Faulkner smiled, the smile of a weatherworn and veteran cynic. ‘Whatever puts wind in your sails Frank. I’ll see what I can do about a tail.’

Duchaunak rose to his feet. ‘This time, Don, this time I’m going to get ’em so help me God.’

Faulkner nodded understandingly. ‘They got a make on Lenny’s bullet by the way . . . not that it makes a great deal of difference to anything.’

‘What they got?’

‘A very old case . . . armed robbery, 7–11 back in January ’74. Gun was fired, no-one was hit. Bullet lodged in the wall. The bullet recovered from Lenny Bernstein’s chest had the same land and groove marks as the 7–11 bullet.’

Duchaunak frowned. ‘Thirty years ago . . . that’s fucking bullshit. They’ve made a mistake, Don . . . they’ve fucked up for sure.’

‘They checked it twice just to make sure,’ Faulkner said. ‘They came back to me and confirmed that Lenny’s bullet was the same gun that was used back in ’74. I mean, that in itself counts for nothing. Black market and untraceable guns are constantly circulating; apparently you can still buy G.I. Issue .45s that soldiers never handed back at the end of the war.’

Duchaunak nodded but said nothing. He walked to the small window of his office and looked down into the street. He was silent for some moments, and then – without turning to face Faulkner – he started talking. The way he spoke he could have been alone, and Faulkner sat listening, stayed silent so he didn’t interrupt him.

‘Thing about New York is it never gets dark,’ Duchaunak said. ‘It’s got to do something to you . . . can’t be natural, right? I mean, it gets dark, of course it gets dark, but not the same kind of dark you remember as a kid. Now you got streetlights and all-night stores, bars and strip-joints with neon displays . . . and all
of them together add up to it never really being dark enough to sleep properly. Like Vegas . . . you ever been to Vegas?’ Duchaunak didn’t wait for a reply. ‘Seems like daylight all the time, and there’s no clocks . . . not in the hotel lobbies, not in diners . . . no clocks. People just lose track of time, they forget to sleep, they just keep on pushing quarters into slot machines until they pass out.’

Duchaunak turned and looked at Faulkner. He smiled, one of those strange and quiet smiles that suggested nostalgic recollection. ‘Sometimes I don’t sleep until three, four in the morning.’ He shook his head and looked down the floor. ‘I get so goddamned tired, Don, so utterly and completely exhausted I find it hard to think straight.’ He laughed, a short dry sound. ‘You won’t believe this – you really won’t believe this – but I woke up this morning after about two or three hours’ sleep and for the life of me I couldn’t remember my own name. It was really like that, like I had no awareness of who I was. It didn’t last more than maybe five or ten seconds, but I swear to God that I couldn’t remember my own name.’

Duchaunak put his hands in his pockets and turned to the window once more. He lowered his head and sighed so deeply it seemed he might empty out and disappear.

‘Maybe,’ Faulkner said quietly. ‘Maybe you should take a couple of days off Frank . . . get some rest, you know? Get your thoughts back on track—’

Duchaunak turned back towards him suddenly. ‘My thoughts are on track, Don, my thoughts are completely on track. A little one-lane highway granted, but they’re on the fucking money, okay?’

Faulkner raised his hand; a placatory gesture. Duchaunak seemed tied up tight, wound like a Swiss watch.

‘This has been going on for seven years, Don, seven years since that whole thing went down. You saw what these people did, you know what they’re capable of, and if this John Harper doesn’t have the sense to see what’s going on and get the fuck out of here then it’s his own goddamned fault.’

‘You think Freiberg had Bernstein hit?’ Faulkner asked.

Duchaunak shook his head. ‘I don’t know, Don, I don’t know. I hope to fuck he didn’t.’

Faulkner frowned. ‘Why? Why would it matter if it was Freiberg or Marcus or whoever?’

‘Because if it’s Freiberg then Lenny Bernstein has been betrayed by a man who is in some way a great deal more dangerous. Bernstein kept the reins on Walt Freiberg, kept him in check. If Freiberg has a mind to run the business then it’s going to be a great deal louder and messier than it ever was before.’

‘Fact is we don’t know,’ Faulkner said.

‘And until we do know there’s not a great deal to say about it.’

‘I’ll see if I can get this tail organized.’

‘I’m going to go over to St Vincent’s and check on Lenny.’

Faulkner nodded. ‘If you see the son you going to say anything?’

Duchaunak shrugged. ‘Don’t know that it’ll make a deal of difference.’

Faulkner sighed audibly. ‘Christ, if he only knew. If he had the slightest idea about his father, about people like Sol Neumann and Ben Marcus . . .’ His voice trailed away into silence.

Duchaunak didn’t reply. He put on his overcoat and opened the office door. ‘Later,’ he said.