City Of Lies (28 page)

Duchaunak gestured stop.

Harper fell silent.

The detective reached for his coffee cup. He drank some, set it down, pulled his jacket together and buttoned it in the middle. He started to rise from his chair.

‘What the fuck are you doing now?’ Harper asked. ‘You going to go to the bathroom three times before you can drink any more coffee?’

‘I’m sorry to have wasted your time, Mr Harper—’

‘You’re not leaving.’

Duchaunak frowned. ‘That a question or a statement?’

‘A statement,’ Harper replied. ‘Sit the fuck down for Christ’s sake. Sit down, drink your goddamned coffee, tell me what the fuck is going on here.’

Duchaunak looked uncertain.

‘Sit down,’ Harper repeated.

Duchaunak sat down. ‘You want to hear what I have to say?’

‘No, I don’t
want
to hear what you have to say, but I feel like I’ve got to at least give you the time of day. I’ve been here . . . what? Four days, give or take? You’ve been wandering around the edges of whatever the fuck is going on here the whole time. Every visit I make to the hospital you seem to be there. You went to see Evelyn, right? You’ve either got some weird compulsion playing out here, or there is something going on.’

Duchaunak leaned forward, almost a mirror-image of Harper. ‘I don’t believe there is something going on,’ he said quietly. ‘I
know
something is going on.’ His tone of voice and body language had taken on the air of something conspiratorial.

‘And what is it that you
know
is going on, Detective?’

Duchaunak shook his head. ‘Your father . . . your father is a man with a reputation.’

‘So I understand.’

‘What do you understand?’

Harper shrugged. ‘Hell, anyone who has a tailor has to either be loaded or royalty or something, right?’

‘His tailor,’ Duchaunak stated drily.

‘Sure, his tailor. Where the hell d’you think I got the clothes from?’

Duchaunak smiled. ‘His tailor . . . right. You mean Lawrence Benedict.’

‘Benedict. Mr Benedict. That’s him.’

‘And Walt Freiberg told you he was your father’s tailor?’

‘Sure. Didn’t only tell me. Took me over there and bought me a load of—’

‘Stolen designer suits, right? And before you say anything further, nobody
bought
anybody anything when you went to see Lawrence Benedict. Lawrence Benedict, or Larry as he’s known, doesn’t sell suits to your father or Walt Freiberg. Larry Benedict
runs a business trading stolen designer wear through a storefront, back of which you will find an office where an entirely different business is taking place.’

Harper didn’t say a word. He sat looking at Duchaunak with his unwillingness to face the truth struggling to remain intact.

‘He runs a chain of illegal bookmakers right from the Lower East Side through Bowery, Little Italy, Tribeca, Soho, and as far north as the Manhattan end of Eighth Avenue. And Larry Benedict works for Lenny Bernstein, the conductor, the composer, whatever the hell he wants to call himself.’

Harper shook his head. ‘You’re full of crap. I went to see that guy and he was a fucking tailor, okay? He used all this tailor’s language and he talked about English shoes and the way European people have their clothes different from us . . . Christ, it was a foreign language.’

‘So he knows something about clothes.’

‘Sure, he knows a great deal about clothes, he’s a tailor—’

‘Who’s done two stretches in two different penitentiaries for armed robbery, and has been directly or indirectly involved in at least seven additional heists that we know of.’

‘Heists? What heists?’ Harper shifted uncomfortably in his chair.

‘Heists. You know what a heist is, Mr Harper?’

‘Sure, it’s like a robbery—’

Duchaunak nodded. ‘Sure it is, but it has to involve firearms or violence. That’s the difference between a straightforward robbery and a heist. A heist is an armed robbery, a robbery where people usually lose their lives as well as their money. That’s what a heist is, Mr Harper.’

‘And you’re telling me that the tailor, Mr Benedict, has been involved in these things?’

‘I am.’

Harper was silent for a moment. He looked down at his coffee. It was cooling rapidly, a thin film of skin forming on the top. He felt tight in his lower gut, almost nauseous. He believed his coffee would remain right where it was.

‘And Uncle Walt?’

Duchaunak did the knowing smile thing again.

Harper wanted to smack him.

‘Uncle Walt?’ Duchaunak said. ‘Like Uncle Walt Disney,
right?’ He laughed. ‘Your Uncle Walt is possibly the most dangerous of them all.’

‘Them all?’ Harper asked.

‘Yes, of them all. Walt Freiberg, Ben Marcus, Sol Neumann, Micky Levin, Ray Dietz, Johnnie Hoy, Larry Benedict, a few others who you probably haven’t heard of yet.’

‘And Cathy Hollander?’ Harper asked, almost not wanting to ask the question but somehow compelled to.

‘Cathy Hollander?’ Duchaunak asked. ‘Or Diane Sheridan, perhaps Margaret Miller . . . any one of the dozen or more names she’s used over the years.’

Harper was wide-eyed and disbelieving.

‘Oh yes, indeed,’ Duchaunak went on. ‘Your Cathy Hollander, sweetheart though she may seem, has been a busy girl over the years. Solicitation, check fraud, false identities; skipped a bail bondsman in Brooklyn Heights on a two-count felony eighteen months ago. Used to spend all her time with Ben Marcus’s people, but then she got involved with a scam alongside Larry Benedict, and that’s how she met your father.’

Harper frowned.

‘She was the runner on a whole mountain of illegal books on a game at the tail end of last season. The Cardinals slaughtered the Mets, both ends of a Sunday doubleheader, and Cathy Hollander, though she wasn’t using that name then, was instrumental in ensuring that Larry Benedict kept his show on the road. Rumor has it they turned more than a quarter million dollars on that game alone. That’s how she knew your father, and then something happened and she stopped working for Ben Marcus and started working for Edward Bernstein.’

‘A quarter million dollars,’ Harper said, and even as the words came out of his mouth he was uncertain why he’d said them, didn’t even make sense as words, but he was trying to find something as a point of reference.

‘You ever seen quarter of a million dollars, Mr Harper?’ Duchaunak asked.

Harper shook his head.

‘Pocket change.’

‘You what?’

Duchaunak smiled the knowing smile. ‘To these people a quarter of a million dollars is pocket change. Maybe seven or
eight years salary for me. They made it on one lousy Sunday game. You believe that?’

Harper shook his head. He had no idea what he believed.

‘So that, Mr Harper, is the kind of thing you’ve got yourself caught in the middle of—’

‘Caught?’ Harper exclaimed. His voice sounded awkward, almost as if he was standing over to the right and listening to himself. ‘I’m not
caught
in the middle of anything, Detective.’

‘You’re not?’

Harper shook his head. ‘No, I’m here because I wanted to be here.’

‘Is that so?’

Harper hesitated.

‘Evelyn Sawyer called you, remember? And who was back of Evelyn Sawyer? Walt Freiberg, right?
Uncle
Walt. He was the one who wanted you here. He wanted you here so much that I figure he might have threatened your Aunt Evelyn.’

‘Bullshit,’ Harper said.

‘Maybe not directly, Mr Harper, but Evelyn was the one who said it.’

Harper frowned, shifted in his chair, leaned forward again.

‘She said that Walt Freiberg was not the sort of man you defy.’

Harper shook his head. His throat was dry, his mouth like he’d been touching his tongue to the terminals of a battery. He wanted a glass of water.

‘You’re having a little difficulty with all of this, I understand that,’ Duchaunak said. ‘It isn’t a matter of trust or belief or anything else. I’m not asking you to believe what I say. All I’m asking you to do is open your eyes and look at what’s going on around you . . . ask yourself if all of this doesn’t seem awful strange. You get a call from Evelyn. She insists you come to New York. When you get here she tells you your father, a father you never knew you had, is not only alive but up in St Vincent’s with a potentially fatal gunshot wound. You go over there. You want to see him. You want to find out if the man you thought was dead for the past thirty-something years is in fact alive, is in fact your father, and who do you run into? You find yourself in the company of Walt Freiberg, a man you haven’t seen since you were a kid. With him is a girl, this Cathy Hollander, and she’s all sweetness and light, friendly as hell, and they look after you, put
you in a hotel—’ Duchaunak stopped mid-flight. ‘Who’s paying for the hotel?’ he asked suddenly.

Harper looked away towards the window. Felt like his head was a balloon full of smoke.

‘Mr Harper?’

Harper looked back at the Detective.

‘The hotel? You know who’s picking up the tab?’

Harper sighed. ‘Walt is . . . well actually, I figure he is. The room was booked under Cathy Hollander’s name.’

Duchaunak smiled. ‘Walt Freiberg will be paying it then.’

‘What makes you so sure?’

‘Cathy Hollander never paid for anything in her life.’

Harper closed his eyes. He gritted his teeth. He was silent for a few moments, and then he opened his eyes and looked directly at Duchaunak. ‘How do I know what you’re telling me is the truth?’

Duchaunak nodded. ‘You don’t.’

‘So what on earth is the fucking point of me sitting here listening to what you have to say?’

‘The point?’

‘Yes, what is the point of me sitting here listening to something that you cannot substantiate or prove?’

‘Because I want you to do just that,’ Duchaunak said.

‘What?’

‘Substantiate and prove everything I’m telling you.’

Harper laughed, more an expulsion of nervousness than a laugh.

‘I need your help bringing all of this together,’ Duchaunak went on. He leaned back, and as he leaned back Harper realized that the man was perfectly serious.

‘You’re serious, aren’t you?’

Duchaunak nodded. ‘I am.’

‘You want me to help you . . . help you do what exactly?’

‘Something is going to happen, something big I reckon, and from everything I can tell it’s going to happen before Christmas. I need your help finding out what it is.’

Harper frowned. ‘I don’t get it.’

‘It isn’t rocket science, Mr Harper. These people – Walt Freiberg, Cathy Hollander, whoever else might be involved – they’re going to pull some kind of job before Christmas. We
don’t know what it is, we don’t know who else might be involved . . . all we know is that it’s going to happen, and realistically, facing the fucking music if you like, the only real hope we have of finding out ahead of time is you.’

Harper said nothing in response.

Duchaunak sat motionless, staring right back at him.

‘Me,’ Harper said eventually. ‘The only hope you have is me.’

‘Right.’

‘Then you have no hope at all.’

‘Is that so?’

‘That
is
fucking so,’ Harper said. ‘I didn’t come here to work undercover bullshit for the New York police department for Christ’s sake. I came here to see my father in St Vincent’s after somebody fucking shot him. Don’t you figure I’ve got enough to deal with here considering he’s supposed to have been dead for thirty years already.’

‘I think—’

‘Frankly, Detective, I don’t give a rat’s ass what you do or do not think. I’m here for as long as I need to be, as long as it takes for him to die, or to come out of ICU and say something to me, and then I’m going all the way back to Miami to pick up where I left off, to come to terms with the fact that my father—’

‘Is one of the most highly regarded and successful bankrollers in New York’s criminal hierarchy. He funds these things Mr Harper, he puts up the money for these actions, and Christ only knows what he’s managed to rake off of the top in payback. Your father is—’

‘Dying in St Vincent’s, Detective . . . and that’s as far as I want to take it.’

‘Mr Harper . . . if lying and cheating and robbery and murder are an art then your father is Velazquez.’

Harper frowned. ‘You what?’

‘Velazquez,’ Duchaunak repeated.

‘Who the living fuck is that?’

Duchaunak smiled. ‘Don’t play the fool, Mr Harper.’

‘I’m not playing anything, Detective, I don’t have a fucking clue what you’re talking about. Who is this Velazquez? He’s another of these people, another of these criminals my father and Walt Freiberg are supposed to be involved with?’

‘Velazquez was a painter, a seventeenth-century Spanish painter,’ Duchaunak replied.

‘Velazquez the painter? Jesus, why the hell didn’t you say you were talking about the painter?’ Harper’s tone was sarcastic and sharp. ‘Now . . . hell . . . now it all makes complete sense.’

‘I was drawing an analogy, Mr Harper. I think you know exactly what I was saying.’

‘You were saying that if murder and robbery and whatever the hell else were an art, then my father was Velazquez, right?’

‘Right.’

‘And without any ability to prove this, is that slander or libel or both?’

Duchaunak leaned back in his chair. ‘What do you think of Cathy Hollander?’

‘What do I think of her? I don’t think a great deal, Detective.’

‘I think she still works for Ben Marcus.’

‘And you’re telling me this because?’

‘Because if Cathy Hollander is still working for Ben Marcus then there is every possibility that some further harm may be done.’

‘Further harm? You’re saying that this Ben Marcus might have had something to do with the shooting?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Fuck me, Detective, what the hell is this? For Christ’s sake, is there anything that you
do
know?’

‘I think there is a power struggle going on.’

‘Between?’

‘Your father and Ben Marcus . . . and now your father is in St Vincent’s I believe there will be a power struggle between Ben Marcus and Walt Freiberg. I think there will be a war over the New York territories. Where two sides want the same thing and in order to get it they go out and start killing one another.’