City Of Lies (8 page)

And then his voice faded, and maybe it was exhaustion, or the sake, or perhaps nothing more than the tidal wave of emotion that seemed to sweep over him and carry him away.

Later he couldn’t even remember leaving the restaurant.

Ben Marcus: simple name, simple man. Ancestors were Polish Jews, perhaps even further back they were people who came out of the Carpathians with names built from too many consonants and too few vowels. Ben Marcus’s grandfather on his mother’s side, hard-edged bastard, all angles and corners – he came to ‘Hamereeca’ with a vision of something that was a world apart from what he found. Man makes shoes in Lodz; comes to the States and dies of emphysema after eleven years of clearing storm drains and sewage junctions for the New York Metropolitan Sanitation Department at one dollar eighty-five cents an hour.

Ben Marcus’s father made different decisions; wouldn’t bow to The Man, so he figured the angles and sidelines, made a handful of dollars on the racetracks, bought himself into a warehouse crew ferrying liquor during Volstead. Volstead was repealed in ’33; Marcus Senior ran lines in silk stockings and cigarettes, and a protection gig for bookies’ runners, and everything went fine and dandy until May of ’55 when he was shot in the throat by a man called Fraschetti, a man with psoriasis and bad teeth. Ben Marcus was ten years old when he buried his father, celebrated his twelfth birthday in a South Brooklyn Juvy, and by the time he was twenty-seven he’d done nine years all told between Fulton Correctional, Sing Sing and Altona. Then he got smart. He got other people to do the wet-work and running. Benjamin Marcus, hard head like a clenched fist, collection of features that seemed to argue about who owned center stage, kind of man who stated the obvious and everyone agreed such a thing was a very new idea. Crew he ran was a mixed bag of stealers and blood-letters. People like Sol Neumann, Raymond Dietz, Albert Reiff. Neumann was the right hand, the one who translated the nods and frowns into words and actions. Marcus would say,
‘That thing Sol . . . that thing with the Williamsburg fuck-up. I don’t think we should leave that behind without an example being made.’ Neumann would say, ‘I’ll take care of it Ben, I’ll take care of it,’ and three, maybe four days later, New York’s finest would find some poor bastard hanging from a fire escape back of a derelict building, his tongue cut out perhaps, his balls in his overcoat pocket. But it was business, always business; never personal with such people. Such people never got close enough to anyone to consider anything personal.

Monday, 15 December, Ben Marcus sat in a wicker-backed colonial chair in a smoke-filled room. The window behind him overlooked La Guardia Place and Bleecker. Sol Neumann sat to his right, and ahead of him a man called Henry Kossoff who carried a bruised and beaten look about him, as if he’d been tied tight, hands and feet, and dragged across rocky unforgiving ground. Kossoff was saying something, something about ‘The asshole didn’t show Ben . . . McCaffrey didn’t fucking show.’

Marcus sighed and shook his head. He glanced towards Neumann. Neumann kept his gaze fixed on Kossoff.

‘Maybe he got himself fucked up,’ Kossoff said. ‘These guys . . . hell these blacks are running their own gangs. They’ve got a different view of things. They shoot people they don’t even know. Maybe he was into something and got himself into trouble,’ and there was something in his tone that suggested he hoped to hell that was the case. There was also something that said he knew it wasn’t.

‘He did a runner, Henry, plain and simple,’ Neumann said. ‘It’s not your fault . . . don’t sweat it.’ He turned slightly and nodded at Ben Marcus. Marcus nodded back, an almost imperceptible shift in expression, and yet it seemed to grant Papal indulgence to whatever Neumann was thinking. ‘See to it Henry,’ Neumann said. ‘Send some people out and bring McCaffrey in. We can’t have this asshole running around all over the city, okay?’

Kossoff nodded, didn’t speak.

‘The other thing,’ Marcus said matter-of-factly, the first words he’d spoken since the meeting began.

‘I don’t know if it was something. Maybe it was something, maybe it was nothing. I had Karl Merrett over at St Vincent’s
keeping an eye on the show. Freiberg was there with the girl, and they had some other guy with them—’

Sol Neumann uncrossed his legs and leaned forward slightly. ‘What other guy?’

Kossoff shook his head. ‘Fuck knows, Sol . . . never seen him before. Karl said he looked just like Lenny—’

Neumann laughed drily. ‘Don’t pay any mind to what Karl Merrett has to say. I know Merrett better than anyone . . . I was down in Five Points with the guy for more than a year. He has his uses, but reliability of information isn’t fuckin’ one of them.’

Marcus raised his hand. Neumann fell silent. ‘Find out who he is,’ he told Kossoff. ‘Find out who he is, and have some people on this McCaffrey as well. I need McCaffrey as a priority. Find out if he has family. Go speak to them. Go shake some favors up and see if we can’t get this matter tidied up in the next twenty-four hours. We got a busy time ahead of us and I don’t want things interfering. I also don’t want any grievances with the blacks.’ Marcus shook his head. ‘The whole thing is falling apart, what with the blacks and the Eastern Europeans. These are things I don’t want to get involved in. When I’m gone I’ll be pleased to leave what’s left of New York to these people.’

‘Yes, Mr Marcus. It will be taken care of.’ Kossoff rose from the chair. He buttoned his jacket and started towards the door. He was on edge, evidently nervous.

‘And Henry?’ Sol Neumann called after him.

Kossoff turned.

‘Call Reiff and tell him Mr Marcus needs him over at the warehouse in the morning. Tell him ten a.m.’

Kossoff nodded and made his way out the door.

There was silence for some while.

Eventually Ben Marcus turned towards Sol Neumann. He smiled, but without humor; a smile befitting Cesare Borgia. ‘He will not lie down.’

Neumann raised an eyebrow.

‘Freiberg . . . he will not stand by and watch the territory taken from Bernstein. Seems to me we may have a bloodier fight on our hands.’

Neumann shrugged his shoulders. He reached for a cigarette and lit it. ‘Whatever,’ he said, his voice almost a whisper. He drew on the cigarette and exhaled smoke from his nostrils. The
grey cloud half-obscured his face. Everything was flat-toned and chiaroscuro, almost monochromatic. ‘He wants a fight he’s going to get one.’

‘We change nothing . . . we run it the way we agreed. There will be ample opportunity to take these things apart either on the day or soon afterwards.’

‘Makes sense,’ Neumann replied. ‘Seems to me we miss the chance for some good returns if we just go to war . . . and like you said, we start a war and we have no idea who’s going to get involved.’

Marcus acknowledged the comment without speaking; stayed silent for a time. He rose from his chair after a few minutes. ‘I have made my decision,’ he said, almost to himself. He turned to Neumann. ‘You come tomorrow as well . . . we will go through some of the details again with Reiff. With Lenny Bernstein laid up in St Vincent’s we have to make busy. I believe the kingmaker intends to become the king.’

‘Of course, Ben. Sure thing.’

Ben Marcus left the room. Sol Neumann, close behind him, turned out the light as he left, and through the window the faint indigo-blue pulse of the external neon sign haunted the glass and made faces on the wall.

A little after five a.m. New York hadn’t woken. John Harper stood at the window of a room on the tenth floor of the American Regent on the corner of Hudson and West Broadway. Room was cold. Raised his hand and pressed his palm against the glass. Spread his fingers, watched the lights from beyond appear in the spaces. Tried to count them. Too many.

He tried to focus on a single thought; just anything at all. He found something, and then it was gone. Like the past he believed he had. There, then gone. You have no father John Harper . . . oh fuck, yes you do, and by the way, he’s seventy years old and laid up in St Vincent’s ’cause someone shot him. Nothing. Then something. What the fuck was that?

Harper walked back and sat on the edge of the bed. He felt chill, the hairs raised on his arms, and he reached for his shirt. As he tugged it around his shoulders dollar bills spilled from the breast pocket. Harper gathered them up – fifties, all of them, and in counting them he remembered that Walt had leaned across the restaurant table and tucked them inside. Seven hundred dollars, the better part of half a month’s salary.

Harper looked at the money, fanned the notes out between his fingers and held his arm up.

‘Seven hundred dollars,’ he said to no-one but himself.

He folded them and set them on the edge of the bedside table. He wondered how much the room would cost – three, four hundred dollars a night, and that was without the mini-bar and the pay-per-view cable movies.

And then he thought about the old man he’d seen through the window at St Vincent’s Hospital.

He wanted to call Evelyn and scream at her down the phone.
What the fuck were you thinking, you stupid fucking bitch! Did you
think this didn’t matter? Did you think you could just leave me the whole of my life without telling me the truth
?

John Harper didn’t call Evelyn Sawyer. He had a shower instead, and then he spoke to room service and asked who was paying the bill.

‘The room is booked in the name of a Miss Cathy Hollander, sir,’ the room guy said, and Harper told him
Thank you
and ordered a breakfast trolley sent up.

While he ate slender crisps of smoked bacon and eggs Benedict, while he sipped fresh-squeezed orange juice and drank coffee that tasted like good Colombian with a hazelnut under-tone, he wondered what he should do. He needed to go back to Evelyn’s and collect his bag, but the impulse to return to the hospital was strong, very strong indeed. His father lay in a bed in the ICU. His own father, seventy years old, and someone had shot him for trying to prevent a liquor store robbery. Harper wondered who the shooter was: how old, what he looked like, whether he actually went away with any money, where he was now . . . was he scared or stoned or drunk, or maybe between the legs of a thirty-dollar hooker in a cheap room in a cheaper hotel somewhere on the Lower East Side . . .?

Wondered all of these things. Had an answer for none of them.

Finished eating. Wanted a cigarette real bad. Thought to call room service and have them send some up. They would’ve done that in a hotel like the American Regent. Couldn’t risk it. Smoke one and he’d smoke the whole pack, and then where the hell would he be? Right back where he started. He possessed more willpower than that; he exercised it and didn’t call.

Thought he should leave New York. Make a call, book the flight, go home. Wasn’t the first time he’d have such a thought. Second time it would be stronger.

Dressed in the same clothes as the previous day. Everything else he’d brought was in his bag at Evelyn’s. Picked up the money Walt had given him, figured he would give it back; couldn’t accept such an amount from a relative stranger. Sure the man had been there however many years before, but Harper had been a kid, a kid all of seven, eight, nine years old. Hell, he was thirty-six now. He had his own money, not a great deal ure, but he wasn’t one to be accepting unsolicited charity.

Harper glanced at the clock on the table near the window. Ten after seven. Before the point of decision arrived the phone rang, right there on the nightstand beside the bed.

Harper frowned; picked it up. ‘Hi,’ he said.

‘Hi.’ A woman’s voice.

A moment as Harper put a name to it. ‘Miss Hollander.’

She laughed. ‘Jesus, no-one calls me Miss Hollander except the police and the IRS.’

Harper smiled. Sharp sense of humor.

‘You’re up,’ Cathy Hollander stated matter-of-factly.

‘I am,’ Harper replied. Remembered the way she looked, the way he’d felt the entire time he’d been with her. Strong feeling, like a dull ache after a hard smack.

‘I checked with room service that you’d called for breakfast . . . they told me you had so I figured you were up and about. How’re you feeling?’

Harper didn’t say anything for a moment, then, ‘Tired maybe . . . a little confused. This has been some twenty-four hours.’

‘I can imagine,’ Cathy replied, but Harper – knowing nothing about her – figured that she couldn’t have known a great deal about how he felt. She was being polite: uttering such words of empathy was basic human nature.

‘The room—’ Harper started.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ she interjected. ‘Walt is taking care of everything.’

‘It’s in your name.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Cathy said. ‘Walt isn’t one to go writing his name down and signing things, you know what I mean?’

‘Sure I do,’ Harper said, and wondered if he actually had any real idea what she meant.

‘So what do you want to do now?’ she asked.

‘Was thinking to go to my aunt’s and get my bag, and then maybe go back to the hospital. After that . . . after that I figured I’d go home.’

‘I can come pick you up and drive you,’ she said, and there was something in her tone that told him she was ignoring his last statement.

Harper smiled and shook his head. ‘It’s okay Miss . . . it’s okay Cathy, I can handle it.’

Cathy laughed. ‘Walt says I’m to take care of you. I’ll come get
you in half an hour. I’ll take you over to your aunt’s and then I’ll drop you at St Vincent’s, okay?’

Harper shrugged. ‘Whatever,’ he said. ‘As long as it’s no hassle for you.’

‘No hassle,’ she said. ‘See you in a half hour or so.’

She hung up before Harper had a chance to respond. He stood there with the receiver in his hand, and then he set it in its cradle and sat on the edge of the bed. He wondered what the deal was between the Hollander woman and Uncle Walt, perhaps more relevantly the deal between her and his own father.

His
own
father.

Harper closed his eyes, took a few deep breaths. He couldn’t stretch his mind enough to make this thing fit inside. After a short while he stopped trying. He’d learned from times past that to push at such a thing only served to slide everything else out of whack.