Feelers (14 page)

Mamma said she already paid protection and would make a call.

The laborers complained that she would ruin their fun. Mamma was a tough woman, no doubt, but when it came to the men, she really did care, really did want them to have a good time. So she looked at Pitu.

He turned his head this way and that, thinking, or working his neck muscles, I am not sure which. Pitu asked if they had guns, which would mean he would need to use the sawed-off, and pointed out that if there were gunshots, the police might come, and then there would be a lot of explaining to do.

Speedy assured him these two punks had no guns. Perhaps baseball bats or brass knuckles.

Pitu chuckled. He was not afraid of baseball bats or brass knuckles. The sound of their heads being crushed in his hands would not draw the police.

So as they say, the game was on the foot, and up the ladder we went to the roof. Approaching the red SUV from the ground was impossible. With the way the laborers were dressed we would have been spotted in a second.

Speedy was in the lead, I was at the end. He led them along this rooftop to the next one, jumping down about five feet, past roof vents that looked like giant rusty mushrooms. Soon we were behind the SUV, and at the far edge of the single-story manufacturing plant. Beyond was a vacant lot, mounds of stray rubble piled randomly. One was up against the side of the building. One by one the thick little brown men, our brightly clad commandos, jumped to the top of the rubble pile and then turned to the chain-link fence along the road.

When we were all assembled in the shadow of the vacant lot, we surveyed our target.

An arm dangled lazily out the red SUV passenger window, a cigarette burning between the fingers. Some sort of twangy, warbly music wafted through the humid night air from the vehicle, like something you might hear playing in a Russian coffee shop in Brighton Beach.

The quarry was still unaware.

It would have been too noisy for all of us to climb the fence. Instead, one of the men found a length of angle iron from a scrap pile and used it to pry the fence fasteners at the post. A squad of men peeled the fence back.

We would have to be quick. So quick that the Balkan Boys would not have time to exit the vehicle. Our festive commandos did a little pantomime of what they would do, communicating in silence, all squatting and then raising their arms as they stood.

Speedy held up his five fingers and counted down.

Four . . .

Three . . .

Two . . .

Crouched, the men ran toward the vehicle and collected behind the SUV where they could not be seen in the rearview mirrors. Fortunately, the streetlight was in front of the vehicle, so they were mostly in shadow.

I remained back in the vacant lot—I was too tall and would have risked being seen.

Speedy held up his five fingers again and counted down.

Four . . .

Three . . .

Two . . .

All at once they crowded the SUV’s passenger side, squatted, put their hands under the quarter panels, and heaved.

They may be small, these thick little brown men, but they are powerful for their size.

Up went the SUV—the hand hanging out the window vanished, the cigarette landing on the ground.

The car flipped and crashed over onto the driver’s side. You could hear the safety glass pop and shatter, and the Balkan Boys begin to shout angrily.

Back came the colorful laborers, laughing and chattering. I stood atop the pile of debris and boosted them one by one back up onto the roof, Speedy last.

Four of them had hands down for me to grasp, and we locked grips. I used my feet on the brick to get traction, and as I did so, I saw the four of them strain, and heard them curse, from the burden of my weight.

Just as they grabbed me by the elbows, I felt a hand latch on to my shoe from below. I also felt the cold terror of falling back to the ground, of having the Balkan Boys standing over me with baseball bats, of being beaten within an inch of my life.

“
Arriba!
” Speedy shouted.

I wiggled my foot, trying to shake free, but I was wearing calf-high boots. I could feel someone trying to grab my other foot, too, so I lifted it.

“Speedy, lift! Lift!” I shouted.

“
Arriba!
” he growled. I think more of the laborers were now pulling on the ones who had me. So you had me being pulled by a bunch of munchkins on the roof while at least one Balkan had me on the ground, and I could feel myself getting stretched, my joints cracking, my tendons thrumming.

I was hissing with pain and anxiety when a shape appeared to
one side above me. I could not see what it was, but it was about three feet around, circular, and a few of the laborers threw it in my direction.

I ducked my head, heard a metallic bang, and was suddenly released from below. I catapulted up onto the roof.

A cheer sounded among the men, with no shortage of laughter.

Wobbling to my feet, I looked at Speedy in the night’s orange glow. He was clapping me on my shoulder and pointing down.

Those thick little brown men had yanked off one of the rusty mushroom cap vents and thrown it at my attackers. The Balkan Boys were now rolling around on the ground in their overalls, cursing in a Slavic tongue.

That is when Pitu and Mamma turned the corner, into the vacant lot.

They had baseball bats.

I told you Mamma looked like a tough customer.

I watched for a moment, long enough to see Pitu and Mamma go to work and to hear what sounded like a bone breaking. Perhaps an arm.

“Thank the men for me, Speedy.”

He rattled something off to them, and they all cheered, drowning out the shouts and cracks of bats from below.

“But Speedy, this is our time to get going. So let us make tracks. Yes?”

“
Yes
.”

CHARLIE BINDER WAS WAITING IN
a canyon of four-story brick apartment buildings for me to come home. He was in his black SUV outside my apartment building. Thinking.

How do I know? Because Speedy and I drove up to the intersection three doors behind him, that is how. And he was sitting in the SUV I’d seen him get into outside Oscar’s. And I think it is reasonable to assume Charlie, like most people who wait, was awake and thinking about something.

Like about the call he got from somebody not ten minutes after I left Oscar’s. Charlie would have been just about to look in again on 901 East 109th Street, where the lightly torn screen door was locked, the inner door open, and nobody answered.

The place where Clara Kessel used to live, and where he was hoping the current owner had seen Danny.

Of course, the rude man at 901 East 109th Street
had
seen Danny, which was his misfortune. The rude man was just out of sight of the front door, around the corner in the hallway, his body in a fetal position and stiff with rigor mortis. He wasn’t a very nice person, as we know, and so it wasn’t like a lot of people
were dropping by and calling. So Rude Man was dead, Danny had killed him, and nobody knew about it.

Yet
.

The call Charlie received from Oscar’s kept him from investigating and finding Rude Man dead in a fetal position in the hallway of 901 East 109th Street. Charlie drove by all the police activity off the boulevard, where Mary had been stabbed with an ice pick, not knowing about that, either. Had he learned of that, he might not have been waiting at my place.

How much had the person who called from Oscar’s told him? Had they told Charlie that I found the money or simply that Danny might be found looking for me? I did not know.

“Man,” Speedy began with a heavy sigh from the passenger seat, “everywhere you go there’s someone looking for Morty, waiting in an SUV.”

“If I am going to lie to the furry cop, I need to know what he knows,” I said, squinting at the black SUV. The clock on my Camaro’s stereo read 12:30. They would be kicking Mim out of Oscar’s about then. She stays past closing, right up to where they turn out the lights and pry the old owl from her perch.

“So we’re not going to go get the money, Morty? Make a run for it?”

“True, the Balkan Boys are out of commission, for now. We could go get the money. We could start driving. But while we have a little breathing room, I would like to try to see if I can turn the furry cop—”

“Furry cop. He sounds like a wolfman.”

“—and Danny Kessel away from us. Like I said, Speedy, we’d still be looking over our shoulders if we went now.” Also, to be honest, I was not all that sure I wanted to tie my future to Speedy.
I did not really know how far I could trust him with eight hundred thousand dollars in cash.

“Morty, I gotta get home. My dog, she has probably shit all over the place by now.”

I thought a moment. “It is unlikely they will be looking for you yet. They only know about me for now.”

So I dropped him off at the house where he rents a room.

The light in his room was on, and a shadow went across the shade. I had a moment’s panic. Had someone already targeted him? Was Danny in his room with pliers, ready to make him talk? I watched the window a minute longer, and the shadow passed again. I laughed softly to myself for my worry. It was the shadow of a woman’s form. Of course, the lipstick on his neck. She was waiting up. He would probably get scolded for staying out so late.

I drove to Oscar’s.

Sure enough, there was Mim and her beehive wig tottering down the boulevard with her cane. If she was sober, she did not use the cane, but after toppling over a few times on the way home, she had started arriving at Oscar’s with the third leg.

I drove up behind her, pulled over to a sleeping meter, and got out.

“Mim,” I called. I could hear her huffing and puffing as she struggled to stay upright after twelve hours of continuous Canadian and colas. How some people take that kind of punishment and survive never ceases to amaze me. Then you have all kinds of people who think their bodies are delicate, that if they are deprived of their wheat germ, honey, and green tea their bodies will go to pieces. You have to wonder whether the human body is a lot tougher than many of us think.

To get Mim’s attention, I had to stride over to where she was passing a shuttered bagel shop and put a hand on her shoulder. I think the surprise almost killed her right on the spot.

“Christ, Morty, you scared the ever living shit outta me!” Mim was choking on her fright.

“I am sorry, Mim. Please, over here, lean against a car. You do not look good.”

She staggered over to a car and pushed her bony frame up against it. I think this was one of the few times I had ever seen her off of that stool at the far corner of the bar.

I did not spend a lot of time waiting for her to recover. She might croak before I got any answers.

“So who made the call?”

“Morty, look—”

“Mim, I don’t care that somebody
made
the call. The cop would have found out one way or the other anyway. I would want a friend of mine to score a hundred bucks.” I tried to keep the sarcasm out of my voice when I said “friend.” “What I need to know is how much one of you told him.”

“We talked it over after you left and drew straws.” She gasped, still trying to recover. The orange streetlight made her pale, creased face look like a rubber mask. “Slim Jim won. He called the cop, the cop came back to Oscar’s, gave Slim the C-note.”

“Yes, but what did he tell the cop?”

“That you cleaned the uncle’s house, and the word on the street was you found money in the house, and so we figured Danny Kessel might come looking for you. Can I go home? I’m abouttah puke myself.”

“Is that all?” Was that not enough? I could have wrung all their necks for this.

“The cop asked how much money.”

“And?”

“We said we didn’t know but that it was a lot. Morty, did you find the five million?”

“Five million?”

“Yeah, that’s how much they stole from the Fargo truck.”

“Five million?”

“Five million, that’s what I said. How many fucking times I gotta say it? Excuse me . . .” Mim leaned over and shot a stream of Canadian and cola puke at the car’s tire. I jumped back to keep from getting splattered.

Five million? So where was the other four million two?

“Mim, I will tell you honestly, I did not find five million, not even near that amount. I do not have these people’s money. I do not have the money from that truck heist.”

Reeling upright with a groan, she drew her sleeve across her mouth. “They gonna think you did.”

“What do you think I should do?” You must be wondering why I would ask an old puking tottering mask-faced drunk a question such as this. Mim had been around a long time, that is why. While I am not a complete idiot, and had genuine hope that I could work this out myself, I was open to suggestions from just about anybody. When you are in a jam, a third party sometimes has a useful perspective, even with puke on their sleeve.

“You hafta tell ’em you ain’t got their five million. Or prove someone else does. Shit, Morty, I gotta get home before I fall over.”

So I took her arm and walked her around the corner to her building. She only puked once more, and I was thankful she lived on the first floor so I did not have to try to drag her puke-spraying body up several flights of stairs.

Back at my Camaro, I thought about what she said. Now,

perhaps my money was just part of the five million, and maybe it was not. A variety of possibilities presented themselves. First of all, it was not certain that the five million was ever hidden in the house I cleaned. This was the best possible alternative because Danny would not have any reason to come looking for me.

Ah
.

Mary was killed for some reason, though. Perhaps this was a coincidence. Then again, perhaps Danny killed her to get keys to the house, or to make her tell him who cleaned the house.

Second, if the five million had been hidden in the house, and I did not find it, could it still be there, and Danny just hadn’t gotten it yet?