Forced Entry (30 page)

“Marie, stop cleaning and come over here a minute, please.” Marek’s voice was deliberately calm, almost caressing.

“Yessir.”

He chuckled at her eagerness. She knew (all puns intended) that the endgame was coming. When she was standing quietly in front of him, he made a gesture with the palms of his hands and she casually lifted the hem of her skirt above her waist.

“You know, Marie, I was reading in the paper the other day about a woman who boiled her baby. She was an impoverished Negro. Like you. Authorities say she was trying to get the devil out of her baby’s soul. What do you think about that?”

“I don’t know, sir. I don’t know about those things.”

“Oh, you must, Marie. Didn’t you grow up in that world? Didn’t your mother beat you? Doesn’t George Wang punish you when you’re bad?”

“Yessir,” Marie whispered, as if the information were being drawn against her will. “My momma did beat me.”

Marek shook his head, chuckling softly. There was nothing they wouldn’t do for money. “Move your legs a little further apart,” he ordered, noting that she followed his instructions without changing expression. That was the one thing she had going for her—her control. She never lost control.

“Why did your momma beat you, Marie?”

“She beat me because I was bad.”

“Isn’t that why the Negro boiled her baby?”

“Yessir.”

Casually, suppressing a yawn, he put his right hand between her legs and caressed her with his index finger, gently running it between the lips of her sex. She sighed, of course, but Marek knew her passion came from relief, not desire. She couldn’t wait to get rid of him.

She was wet, though. She was always moist by the time he got around to the sex and that was pretty amazing. It was like trying to get an erection with a woman who didn’t turn you on. Maybe she did what he would do in that situation. Maybe she closed her eyes and dropped off into fantasy. Maybe she dreamed of an enormous black cock laying against a black thigh…

“Have I ever told you how grateful I am? How much I owe you and your momma and the woman who boiled her baby?” Marek heard the breathiness in his voice. He wouldn’t be able to draw it out much longer.

“No, sir.”

“You’ve heard of ‘the top of the heap’? It’s a cliché, of course. Even Frank Sinatra sings about it. According to rumor, life at the top is so beautiful that people who get there refuse to consider what they’re standing on. They never, for instance, think they’re standing on poor, little Marie. I guess that’s because their eyes have been riveted to the top for so long they can’t look down anymore. What do you think?”

“I don’t know about that, sir.”

This time he pushed inside her and she groaned a little louder, her knees trembling slightly. He was tempted to dig his finger into her inner flesh, to break the careful pattern of the charade. Instead, he pressed his lips to her belly, licking at the top of her tightly curled pubic hair.

“But that’s what you do when you’re on top. You press down on whatever’s below you. On all the human beings who want to take your place. I’ll never know what it’s like to be on the bottom, Marie. That’s why I keep you around. To remind myself of the absolute depths, of all the alternatives to the life I intend to lead.”

Marek allowed his thoughts to drift momentarily. The middle class, he knew, tried to avoid the boiling heap of struggling human beings by maintaining an illusion. They disavowed any claim to the top, using their money to create an artificial island of calm. All they wanted was escape and sometimes they achieved it. Sometimes they managed to live their whole lives in the eye of the storm. And sometimes the eye moved on, unpredictable as a hurricane, and they were smashed by the winds.

What had the two hundred and forty families living on his property done to deserve him? (What did
anybody
do to deserve
anything
?) Most people thought of the “top of the heap” as a place of delicate balance, but people really survived there by crushing anyone threatening to break into the light. The people in Jackson Heights looked at inner city footage every night on their TV sets. They enjoyed the violence the way peeping toms enjoy sex. They never thought the violence would come out to them. Just like they never expected sickness or addiction or child abuse or any of life’s sharper realities.

“Lie down on the floor and pull your legs up,” he ordered. He was angry now, thinking about the tenants’ association and the problems it was causing him. “You could probably take on a rhinoceros without feeling a thing, but for what it’s worth, I hope you walk bowlegged for a week.”

The whore, Marek decided as he dressed, was a definite good luck charm. He’d had her before every meeting with Martin Blanks and the partners hadn’t had a problem yet. The meeting he was heading for that evening was particularly important. It had been set up at the last minute, an emergency meeting called to formulate a response to the negative events surrounding Mike Birnbaum’s arrest. It was their first setback and Marek was anxious to see how Blanks would take it. It would also be his first visit to Blanks’ home and he supposed that had to be considered an honor. Certainly it meant they’d reached a higher level of trust, which was just what he wanted.

Marek went through his closets carefully. He needed a look that wouldn’t be totally out of place at a dealer’s pad, that wouldn’t offend. (He absolutely
did not
want to appear to patronize Marty Blanks, who wouldn’t appreciate
that
at all.) Finally, he chose a pair of stone-washed Wrangler jeans, a $70 off-white cotton dress shirt, and a pair of custom-made lizard-skin boots he’d picked up at a convention in Amarillo, Texas. A carefully rumpled lamb’s wool-and-cashmere jacket (a lustrous, dark-gray beauty he’d pulled off the rack at Barney’s for a miraculous $350) completed his wardrobe. He admired himself for a minute, then took his wallet and the change from his pants pocket and put them in the right-hand pocket of his jacket. The bulge they made was properly casual.

“Lookin’ good, Mikey,” he said, smoothing his hair. But he wasn’t really looking so good. Mike Birnbaum’s vigorous self-defense was creating a number of problems for Bolt Realty. The biggest involved a state law which allowed for the seizure of drug-infested buildings if the landlord wasn’t making a “sincere effort” to evict known dealers. The tenants (no, not the tenants—the bitch and her giant companion) were pushing the issue with the fat cop from the 115th Precinct and
he
was offering a list of dealers apartments to the narcotics unit. Several days ago, Marek had decided that Bolt Realty would have to postpone its goals for the time being. They would have to cooperate.

Marek’s driver, sent by Martin Blanks to guide him through the hell of Hell’s Kitchen, showed up exactly at seven-thirty, so punctual that Marek suspected he’d arrived early and parked in front of the house. He led Marek to a nondescript Buick sedan (Marek, in his more fanciful moments, had envisioned a stretch Mercedes for Martin Blanks) and held the door while Marek got inside.

“My name’s Mike Powell,” the chauffeur said as he pulled the car into the traffic heading toward the Brooklyn Bridge. “I work for Marty Blanks. I known him since we were little. We was foster kids in the same family for about two years.”

“That right?” Marek responded uneasily. He didn’t really know how friendly he should be under these circumstances. For instance, was Powell a servant? Or an executive? His suit, at least a size too small, had discount written all over it and his manner reeked of neighborhood bully. On the other hand, Powell’s sapphire pinky ring was easily worth a thousand dollars and he seemed much too confident to be a servant. Marek finally decided on a test. “I suppose you know
my
name,” he said.

“Absolutely. Do you mind if I call ya Marek? I ain’t used to no formality.”

“Sure, Mike. Whatever you want.” He arranged his mouth into a smile, but was troubled by this dope dealer knowing of his association with Blanks. Presumably, Powell had no inkling of Marek’s actual business with his boss; he almost certainly believed Marek to be another dealer. If Powell was ever arrested and had to give up a name or two…Najowski made a firm decision to arrange his affairs so that he could desert his Brooklyn Heights apartment on a minute’s notice.

“Marty said I should tell ya that he can’t meet you at his apartment. A problem came up and he’s gonna meet ya at his office.”

“And where would that be?” Marek asked.

“Uptown. At 133rd Street off Madison Avenue. But don’t worry, ’cause I’ll be with you all the way and I guarantee there won’t be no problems.” He turned and tried to grin reassuringly.

“We’re not going to a place where drugs are sold, are we? I don’t think I’d like that.”

“Sold?”
Powell shook his head decisively. “We don’t sell no drugs out of Marty’s office. Never. But if ya wanna postpone or somethin’, I could take ya back to ya house. Marty says I should do whatever ya say. I’m at ya disposal. Only do me a favor and don’t dispose of
me
. Get it?”

Marek, watching the big man intently, came to the obvious conclusion that his chauffeur was a moron. Probably an enforcer of some sort with pure muscle instead of brains between his ears. That was the trouble with taking a criminal as a partner—they solved every problem by killing it. How could he trust a fool like Mike Powell to keep him safe? 133rd Street was in the heart of Harlem. It was the absolute bottom of the heap, a place where he
never
went, with or without a bodyguard.

“What time will Martin be free?” Marek asked. “Maybe we can meet later in the evening.”

“That I don’t know. All he said was I should bring you up to him if you wanted to come.”

“Can I call him?”

“He don’t give that number out. Even I don’t got it.”

“Shit.” He desperately wanted to turn around and go home, but the meeting was really urgent. He’d been procrastinating for several days, hoping their problems would disappear, but conditions had grown steadily worse. Now a city councilman was sticking his nose in, probably sniffing around for the publicity—a liberal with a longtime reputation for representing the little guy. Bolt Realty was going to have to convince him, and everybody else, that it was committed to preserving the tenants’ “quality of life.” Of course, he could always call the lawyer and make the necessary adjustments without conferring with Blanks. Instructing Holtz was his job, and Holtz wouldn’t hesitate to put his orders into effect. But Marek felt it was important to preserve the illusion of partnership. And who knew how Blanks would react if he felt Marek was cutting him out?

“All right,” he said finally. “Let’s go visit the underclass.”

In the course of his real estate life, Marek had looked at a number of slum buildings, marginal tenements that could be gotten for next to nothing and kept profitable by withholding basic services whenever possible, but he’d never bitten. The simple truth was that he didn’t want to deal with blacks. Even when you managed to show a small profit, they filled your life with misery. Still, despite the simple fact that his financial investments had gone a different way, he’d been in all the big slums: Bed Stuy, Brownsville, Hunts Point, Mott Haven. He’d seen the devastation firsthand, but he’d never seen a series of buildings as close to collapse as the three abandoned tenements that greeted him on 133rd Street. The facades had broken away on all three and big chunks of stone had fallen to the sidewalk. The easternmost building was actually leaning away from the building in the center (Marek could almost see it swaying), while every apartment in the building on the west bore the scars of a serious fire.

“That’s where we’re going,” Mike Powell said casually, indicating the fire-damaged tenement. “That’s where Marty’s office is, but we gotta go in through here.” He pointed to the eastern building, the one that leaned out into space, walking casually toward the door (or where the door should have been) as if he was out for a Sunday stroll. When Najowski failed to move, Powell turned and smiled. “C’mon. It ain’t that bad.”

Marek followed without a word. He was beginning to feel that the whole situation was designed to test him in some way. Or perhaps it was a kind of insult. In any event, he concluded, his resolve hardening, it was imperative that he find out the reason for the show. He’d invested two million dollars in this project and if his partner was insane, he wanted to know it.

They walked through the empty doorway, pausing in the lobby to let their eyes adjust to the darkness. The building stank of dust and mold, but lacked the urine and garbage smells that usually announce the presence of squatters or junkies. The banister for the stairway to the second floor lay in the first floor hallway. It could only have been removed deliberately.

“Ya wanna be careful here,” Powell announced casually, leading Marek through the lobby and up the stairs.

The second floor landing was even darker than the lobby with only a faint gray light drifting in from the streetlamp. Marek, struggling to see where he was putting his feet, was startled to hear Powell offer a greeting. “Hey, boys. How’s it hangin?”

Peering along the hallway, Marek could just make out two men, both carrying military-style rifles, seated on wooden chairs. The guards were in deep shadow and they didn’t move a muscle, didn’t crack a smile, or return Mike Powell’s greeting. Their lack of reaction meant they knew it was Powell coming up the stairs and Marek realized there had to be a spotter (or spotters) hidden in one or more of the rooms. He had entered a paramilitary complex.

There were sentries on every floor, but Powell ignored them as he led Marek directly to the roof, then across to the center building and down two flights of stairs before entering one of the apartments. Marek, following, was caught off guard by the activity inside. From the street, the tenement had appeared to be deserted, but the interior of this apartment was brightly lit. Someone had knocked down the wall between the living room and the kitchen and hooked up another stove to the single gas line. Every burner was lit and the apartment was unbearably hot. Glass bottles, half-filled with a thick bubbling white paste, sat on the flaming burners. The crackling sound of boiling cocaine was clear even over the hiss of the gas. As Marek stared in amazement, realizing that he was in a crack factory, a worker snatched up one of the bottles and ran to a sink full of water, where he quickly immersed it. The water sizzled against the glass, sending up a cloud of steam.