City Of Lies (38 page)

Cathy paid the cab, and once through the doorway of the restaurant they had waited no more than five or six minutes before Freiberg arrived.

He seemed in good spirits, shedding his overcoat, laughing with the maître d’ joining them at the table towards the rear of the room.

It was Cathy who mentioned Duchaunak’s name, commented on the fact that Harper had encountered the man on more than one occasion, that the detective had been telling Harper all
manner of things, that Walt should perhaps clarify the facts, take away the uncertainties, put everything right.

It was then that he’d said the thing about Duchaunak, that the man’s heart was in the right place, that his mind wasn’t.

‘Addiction,’ he went on. ‘The power of an addiction is always greater than the addict’s loyalties. So it is with Frank Duchaunak.’

Harper frowned. ‘He’s on drugs?’

Freiberg laughed. ‘No, John, he’s not on drugs. I was about to give you an analogy.’

Harper leaned back in his chair just as the waiter arrived.

Freiberg ordered – hot chicken salads, fresh granary rolls with Normandy butter, other things – and once the waiter had stepped away he edged his chair backwards, crossed his legs and lit a cigarette.

‘Frank Duchaunak carries an obsession—’

‘I spoke to Duchaunak,’ Harper interjected. ‘He told me a great deal of things. He told me that I should go and see Evelyn and clarify things about my mother . . . and at the same time he told me to leave New York.’

‘For any particular reason?’

‘Because there was going to be a war.’

‘A war?’

‘Between my father, or at least you . . . a war between you and a man called Ben Marcus.’

Freiberg smiled, looked like he was going to laugh but didn’t. ‘And when did he tell you this?’

Harper thought for a moment. ‘Thursday.’

‘And he came to see you at your hotel?’

‘No, I met him at the hospital, and then we went to a coffee shop.’

‘Right, right,’ Freiberg said quietly. ‘And what else did Frank Duchaunak tell you?’

‘He told me about Mr Benedict, said he traded in stolen clothing, and that he runs a chain of illegal bookmakers from the Lower East Side to Eighth Avenue. He said that he worked for my father.’

‘He did, did he? And what did Evelyn say?’

Harper shook his head. ‘This hasn’t been easy Walt . . . this has been one helluva couple of days.’

‘I know, Sonny, I know . . . tell me what Evelyn said.’

‘She told me about my mother . . . that she didn’t die of pneumonia, that she took an overdose. Duchaunak knew about it, he knew the truth about her.’

‘What makes you think that?’ Freiberg asked.

‘Because he was the one who told me to go over and see her. He told me to go and ask Evelyn how my mother was like Marilyn Monroe.’

‘Jesus Christ, this guy has a nerve. I can’t see how he can say this shit and get away with it.’ Walt looked angry. His fists clenched and unclenched. He suddenly stopped and took his cellphone from his jacket pocket.

‘What’re you doing?’ Cathy asked.

‘I’m going to call Charlie.’

Cathy shook her head. She put her hand on the phone even as Walt was punching in the number. ‘No,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing that Charlie’s going to do that isn’t going to cause more grievance.’

Walt Freiberg looked at her. Cathy looked right back at him, didn’t look away.

Harper watched Freiberg’s profile, could see the knot of muscle beneath his ear that swelled and relaxed as he gritted his teeth.

‘Okay,’ Freiberg said, almost a whisper, and then he turned back to Harper.

‘Seems everyone has had a go at telling you a story,’ he said. ‘Don’t know about you, but seems to me one of the oldest rules in the game applies here.’

Harper shook his head. ‘Oldest rules? What oldest rule?’

‘Thirty minutes,’ Freiberg said. He sort of smiled knowingly. ‘Thirty minutes into the play, if you haven’t figured out who the fall guy is then maybe it’s you.’

Duchaunak glanced at his watch. ‘Just before one,’ he said.

The telephone receiver was tucked beneath his chin and against his shoulder. He was seated on the edge of the bed trying to tie his shoelace while he spoke.

‘Don’t go over there,’ Faulkner said. ‘Leave it be.’

‘I don’t want to leave it, Don, I want to go see the guy now.’

Duchaunak took the receiver in his hand and stood up. With his free hand he pressed his temples between thumb and middle
finger. Everything about his body language spoke of exhaustion, frustration, irritability. He paced back and forth as he listened.

‘What’re you going to tell him? That you’re there officially?’

‘Of course I’m not going to go over there officially,’ he said, interrupting Faulkner. Silence for a moment.

‘I can’t have you fuck this up any more than it’s already fucked up, Frank—’

‘For Christ’s sake, Don, give me some credit. I can go and speak to the guy. Jesus, he’s on his own in the hotel . . . as far as I know he’s on his own. I can go over and speak to him, one human being to another. I’m perfectly capable of going over there and holding a civil conversation with him.’

‘McLuhan called me in and put me on something else you know.’

‘You what? He took you off suspension?’

‘No, he didn’t take me off suspension . . . he pulled me in to help Sampson on this double murder thing. He put me on a desk, taking calls you know? Following up the cranks, the usual kind of crap that goes along with such a thing.’

‘What double murder?’ Duchaunak asked.

‘You remember, the one with this brother and sister . . . Darryl and Jessica McCaffrey?’

‘He didn’t call me, Don . . . McLuhan didn’t call me.’

‘I know Frank, I know . . . and he told me to dissuade you from any attempt to harass Bernstein or Harper, anyone at all.’

‘I am going to go over there, Don. I’m going to go to the Regent and see Harper.’

‘I know you are Frank . . . be careful for fuck’s sake, will you?’

‘Okay . . . okay, Don. Tonight. I’m going to go over there tonight.’

‘Call me . . . okay? Let me know what the hell you’re doing.’

‘I will, Don, I’ll call you tomorrow.’

‘Okay, Frank. You take care now.’

‘I will.’ Duchaunak stepped back, set the receiver in its cradle, sat down on the edge of the bed and put his head in his hands.

‘Never figured it would be this hard,’ he said to himself. ‘Never figured it would be this fucking hard.’

*

‘Tell you something about your father,’ Walt Freiberg said. He took a warm roll from a basket in the center of the table and broke it in half. He spoke as he buttered it thickly.

‘Couple of years back, when exactly doesn’t matter, Frank Duchaunak came and found Edward in a restaurant not far from here. I was there with him. Me, Edward, another couple of guys just having some dinner, minding our own business.’

Freiberg tore a section from the roll, put it in his mouth, raised his serviette and wiped his lips.

‘So Frank comes over, right to the edge of the table, and he says hello to us, he shakes Edward’s hand. He knows the guys around the table. There’s no strangers there, right?’

Harper nodded, aware of little else but Cathy Hollander beside him.

‘So Frank is standing there. Edward asks him if he’d like to sit down, perhaps have something to eat. Frank smiles, he shakes his head. “I’m not hungry,” he says. “Shame,” Edward replies. “Food here is really good.” It kind of goes back and forth like this for a minute or so, and I look at Edward and I can see that he doesn’t really get why Frank is standing there. So eventually Edward asks him. He says, “What d’you want, Detective? Why are you here? You come over and speak with us, you don’t want to eat. What’s the deal here?”’

Freiberg smiled, reached for his glass and took a sip of wine.

‘So we’re all waiting for what Frank has to say. He hesitates for a moment, like for some kind of dramatic effect, and then he says, “You know a man was killed today?” “A man was killed today?” Edward asks him. “Yeah, a man was killed. Don’t worry Edward, he wasn’t an important man. He was just a guy in a jewelry store on West Houston. Hell, I don’t think he would’ve lasted much longer anyway. He was pretty old, getting on in years, you know?” “No, as a matter of fact I don’t know,” Edward says to him, and Frank says, “Sure you do, Edward . . . little jewelry hit your people pulled on West Houston. Security guy there, got himself hit in the head real fucking hard . . . Well . . . I figured it wouldn’t have been polite not to let you know what happened to him.”’

Freiberg reached for his glass again, took another drink.

‘So Edward says, “And why would this concern me Frank? What does this have to do with me?”, and Frank says, “I don’t
know Edward. I just figured you might want to know. I just spent four and half hours by the old guy’s bedside in the hospital, waiting for him to come round so he could tell us something about what happened. Only problem is he never did come round. He gave up less than an hour ago, and I thought it was only common decency to come over here and tell you.” “Common decency,” Edward said. “What the hell are you talking about?” “Talking about one of your people,” Frank said . . . stood right there at the end of the table and said that to your father. “Talking about one of your people . . . some no-good two-bit asshole who works for you . . . works for you on one of your robberies. He gets a little unruly, a little freaked, and he whacks some poor old guy in the head and the guy dies. Not a word. Not a single fucking word and he’s dead. That’s what I’m talking about Lenny,” he says. Calls him Lenny right there in front of his friends. “That’s what I’m talking about Lenny.” And Edward sits there and doesn’t reply. Doesn’t say a goddamned word.

‘I was with him the whole time. We’d been living out of each other’s pockets for, like, two, three weeks, and if there was a robbery on West Houston then it was news to me. But Edward doesn’t challenge Duchaunak. He knows that if he challenges him, riles him, then Duchaunak will just go off into left field and never make it home. He lets Frank Duchaunak stand there for a little while longer, and then when Frank starts to feel awkward, when he starts to look like he’s made an asshole of himself, Edward stands slowly, walks around the edge of the table and takes Duchaunak’s arm. He walks him to the door, smiling all the way, and if you’d seen them they would have looked like long-lost catching up on stories from home. Edward walks him out into the street, right out into the street, and then he calls a cab. The cab comes, he puts Frank inside it, and just as he’s about to close the door Duchaunak leans towards the open window.’

Freiberg leaned forward, almost in echo of what he was describing.

‘Edward sees Duchaunak leaning towards him, and he bends down to hear what the guy has to say. “Given the time again,” Frank says. “Given the time again . . . with hindsight, with everything behind you, with everything that has happened, would you make a different choice?” And Edward thinks for a
moment, almost like he’s teasing Duchaunak, and then he says “Choice, Frank? What the hell made you think that this was ever a matter of choice?”’

Freiberg smiled and leaned back in his chair. ‘That, John Harper,’ he said, ‘is the kind of person your father is, and if you want to know the truth about him then you ask me. You don’t ask Frank fucking Duchaunak, and you sure as hell don’t ask Evelyn Sawyer. You ask me. And you want to know why?’

Harper raised his eyebrows.

‘I’ll tell you why, Sonny. You ask me because I was there . . . all the way along the line, regardless of what happened . . . good, bad or indifferent, I was there. That’s the facts, my boy . . . those
are
the facts. I was there. No fucker else was. You want to know something about Edward Bernstein then you’ve come to the right place, okay?’

Harper nodded. ‘Okay.’

‘So you want to know some stuff?’ Freiberg asked.

‘Sure, Walt, sure.’

‘Shoot,’ Freiberg said. ‘You ask me whatever the fuck you like and you’re going to get an answer. May not like it, but hell, you find me anyone on God’s green earth who likes everything that goes on, eh?’

‘Anything?’ Harper asked.

‘Sure as hell, Sonny, anything. Ask away.’

Ben Marcus, Sol Neumann. Both of them standing back of the desk. Neumann standing to the right, Marcus leaning forward, hands on the back of his chair, a chair he would ordinarily be seated in.

Ahead of them sat Raymond Dietz and Albert Reiff, other regulars – Maurice Rydell, Henry Kossoff and Karl Merrett. Seated, chairs gathered together in a sort of half-circle, and already the room was filled with smoke as they sat and listened to Marcus, listened and never questioned.

‘Easy is not in this vocabulary,’ Marcus said. ‘Easy is for other people – kids, schoolteachers, people who work in libraries. What we have in front of us is an asshole of a thing. No bones about it. No questions. Maybe the toughest thing you ever done. All of you.’

Marcus pulled out his chair and sat down. He rested his forearms on the desk, hands together, and he took a moment to survey the faces in front of him.

‘Johnnie Hoy. Micky Levin. May they rest in peace. Just because they messed up doesn’t mean they don’t deserve a moment of respect now they’re gone.’

A murmur of consent.

‘This is a tough business. We all know that. People walk between the lines. Lines are very easy to see. Step over the lines and you have to set things right again. You don’t get things right, then you have to be put someplace where you aren’t going to interfere with business. Johnnie, Micky, they knew where the lines were. Maybe they believed that there was room for a little sidelining. Maybe not. Doesn’t matter now.’

Marcus turned and looked up at Sol Neumann, standing there at the side of the desk, arms folded, face implacable.

Marcus turned back to the small audience.

‘Mouse Jackson. We had some words with him.’ Marcus looked at Dietz and Reiff in turn. ‘He wasn’t able to give us anything. From all appearances, Lenny Bernstein got himself shot up in a liquor store robbery. Wasn’t anything. Some wild kid with a .38 as far as we can tell. They have Lenny in St Vincent’s, but his son is here, and as far as we know, simply because we’ve heard no word to the contrary, everything is going to roll forward on the twenty-fourth. Seems everything is going to make time, just like we figured with Lenny. And then when the thing is done we’ll have what we always wanted, and Lenny . . . well, Lenny would have done whatever the hell he wanted, but now?’ Marcus shook his head. ‘Maybe he’ll make it, maybe he won’t. Doesn’t matter a great deal to me. I respect the man.
Have
to respect the man after everything he’s done, but just ’cause I respect him doesn’t mean I’m going to be sorry he’s dead.’ Marcus waved his hand in a dismissive fashion. ‘Whatever,’ he added. ‘These things always have a way of working themselves out.’