Hostile Witness (46 page)

IT WAS A COLD GRAY MORNING,
a winter morning at the tail end of the fall. My breath fled in wispy clouds as I walked from the underground parking garage beside the courthouse to the Society Hill Sheraton, where Veronica was hiding out. It was a peculiar place to hide, a large but not tall brick building with a wide and active lobby, from which guests in tracksuits flowed out through the glass doors and around the courtyard to run along the Delaware River. Morris told me he would be in the gray Honda, waiting for me. I spotted it resting at the end of a long line of cars parked across the wide cobblestone street from the front of the hotel. All the cars but Morris’s faced the curb; Morris had backed the Honda in so he could see the front of the lobby without twisting.

“Anything?” I asked.

“You didn’t bring mine coffee?” said Morris.

“I forgot, I’m sorry.”

“The first rule in surveillance, Victor, the very first rule. Never forget the coffee.”

“I’ll get you some coffee.”

“Stop, don’t be worrying yourself. It is the first rule, but it is maybe not such a very good rule, because once it goes in it has to go out, which is very inconvenient, believe you me, in the middle of a following. When are you wanting her in the courtroom?”

“This morning, ten o’clock.”

“Does she want to go?”

“I’ll talk to her, she’ll come. All right, let’s go get her.”

“Hold your horses,” said Morris.

“Hold your horses?”

“Yes, hold your horses. That’s a very fine expression, I think. What, I couldn’t have been a cowboy? I would have been some cowboy.”

“Have you ever ridden a horse, Morris?”

“What’s to riding a horse, you tell me? I can sit, I can hold onto the straps, I can say go and stop, I can ride. Look over there, by the front driveway.”

“The silver BMW?”

“Such a car I should own. Beautiful, no? Except for that it is German it is a wonderful car.”

“Why are we admiring a car?”

“Because it has been parked there all morning. Just sitting there, but for when one of the men left for a few minutes and came back with coffee.”

“You think they’re watching the lobby entrance?”

“The coffee was what gave it away to me,” said Morris. “Already you’re forgetting the first rule of surveillance.”

“They could be waiting for anyone,” I said.

“They could, yes.”

“But they might also be Jimmy’s people.”

“That too.”

“No one but Jimmy and us should know she’s there. Maybe we should go in from the back.”

“I think it’s important that we know who’s in that car, don’t you?”

“Why?”

“You told me there’s a valise full of money missing, floating free, is such a fact?”

“A quarter of a million dollars.”

“Well, Victor, I may be wrong, I’m often wrong, just ask Rosalie and she’ll tell you, just bump into her in the street and…”

“What are you thinking, Morris?” I said.

“I would bet that whoever has that money is the one who sent those people in that fancy car to sit there watching.”

I took a closer look at the silver BMW. “You think so?”

“I just said it, didn’t I? So what I am thinking is that you should walk into the front of the hotel so that who is in that car can see you. Then maybe we will know who is so interested.”

“I’ve been shot at twice already, don’t you think that twice is enough?”

“Don’t you worry about a thing. I am here, Morris Kapustin, and I will be covering you.”

“You’re going to cover me? With what, Morris, with a kosher dill?”

I expected one of his witty retorts about Jews and pickles, but that’s not what I got. Instead, Morris gave me a cold look and from his great black coat pulled out an automatic pistol. Its blued barrel gave off a dull, oily shine. With one quick and practiced motion he ejected the clip and snapped it back into the handle.

“Jesus, Morris, what are you doing with that?”

“You maybe never heard of Jabotinsky?”

“No.”

“There are many things you must learn, Victor. One shouting in court is not enough to prove you have learned all you need to learn. You still must learn about what it means to be a Jew and what it does not mean. You have much thinking to do about your life and yourself and your heritage, but not today. Today you will walk into the front of the lobby, slowly, as if you had not a care in the world. Don’t be looking at the car, just walk in and we’ll see what happens. If nothing happens, I will meet you outside her room, number 4016. Now go.”

I hesitated, but Morris literally pushed me out of the car and I was on my way, headed across the wide cobblestone
street for the hotel. It was still cold, my breath still steamed in the frigid morning air, but I was sweating. I opened my lined raincoat as I walked to the round courtyard and tried not to stare at the silver BMW, sitting by the front, ominous, as frightening as a shark in shallow water. My neck twitched as I approached. Look straight ahead, Morris had told me, and that was what I did even as I passed the dangerous chrome grill. And then I was beyond it, fighting the urge to look back, heading straight for the entrance. But before I could reach for the long bronze handle to get me inside a car door slammed shut to my right and I heard the shout.

“Yo Vi’tor Carl, the man with two first names.”

The voice was familiar, slippery, and thick, it eased its way around the consonants, approaching then veering off just before it would have grabbed hold of them. I stopped in dread and turned. It was Wayman, Norvel Goodwin’s henchman, who had driven me around in the councilman’s limo and then smacked me in the face with the back of his hand. Which meant, if Morris was right, that Norvel Goodwin had the missing quarter of a million. How the hell had he gotten his talons on all that money?

Wayman was wearing a black and purple tracksuit, high-top leather sneakers, a sweatshirt draped over his right arm, hiding his hand and whatever his hand was holding. He was hustling toward me in a kind of a skipping step. By the time my frozen nerves thawed enough for me to even think of dashing into the lobby he was by my side.

“How’s that eye, Vi’tor? It looks like it’s all healed. Maybe you tougher than you look.”

“What do you want, Wayman?”

“Now that’s nice. That’s very very nice. You ’member my name. Where you headed, Vi’tor Carl? You got some fine looking female stashed in the Society Hill Sher’ton? You up for some early morning twist?”

“I have a meeting.”

“I just bet you do. Yes I do. We’d figured you’d be coming to visit Ronnie girl. Couldn’t listen now, could you, couldn’t say no. Even after I dropped that dog on your lap. Well, now, I can’t blame you, she’s not butt-ugly. But Mr. Goodwin, you ’member Mr. Goodwin, he aks’d me to kick it back and wait right here for you, so’s to tell you that he don’t want Ronnie to be testifying in court. He don’t want Ronnie screwing up his plans with our councilman or mentioning his name to the
federales.
There are things you are interfering with that you shouldn’t be interfering with. You still not getting the least idea of what’s going on here.”

“You’re right,” I said. “I’m not.”

“’Course not, or else you wouldn’t been so stupid as trying and make her testify. But now you know, and Mr. Goodwin, he ’xpects you’re going to be a thorough person.”

“I have to go inside, I’m sorry.”

“Now, see man, that’s what I’m talking about, hey? You deaf, Vi’tor Carl, or are you just dissing me right here? I hope not, because if that be it I’m a-gonna kill you, just like I killed your little pigeon buddy Chuckie.”

I stepped back at that, my spine suddenly crawling with so many earthworms they could have dug my back for bait. I glanced behind me, looking for Morris’s cover, but I didn’t see him. Wayman caught my glance and misinterpreted it.

“You can run, Vi’tor Carl, oh yes,” he said, stepping toward me. “If I was you I’d be booking too. Be my guest and run, run away, run, Vi’tor Carl, run as fast as you can. Run anywhere you want, just as so you not be running inside the Society Hill Sher’ton. What’s inside the Society Hill Sher’ton is for us to worry about. You take my advice, Vi’tor Carl, and you start running.”

I stepped back again, stepped out of his reach, and decided I would indeed take his advice. Oh, I hated the idea of turning tail and letting Wayman see me kicking my
butt with my heels as I ran away from the front of that hotel, but I hated the idea of Wayman doing to me what he did to Chuckie a whole lot more. I believe I’ve mentioned before that I am not, by nature, a brave man, but even the least cowardly would have run in the same situation. There was Wayman, with his anger and his tracksuit and his hand curled around who knows what wrapped in the sweatshirt draped over his arm, and there sat a confederate in the silver BMW, a white lug with ferocious eyes and hands tapping on the steering wheel like a drummer, just waiting to come to Wayman’s aid if any aid was needed, and there was my memory of the way Chuckie had died, the way his blood had puddled on the stone before being washed clean by the rain. And there I stood, defenseless, depending on Morris to cover me, Morris, who had apparently disappeared. This Jabotinsky of his must not have been much of a fighter, I figured, if all Morris had learned from him was when to retreat. So I was about to take Wayman’s advice and run from him and the drummer when I heard one of the hotel’s doors opening behind me and a familiar voice.

“Excuse me, sirs, but I was wondering if you might could help me as I am looking for the house belonging once to Miss Betsy Ross?”

Wayman looked over my shoulder and I turned. There was Morris waddling toward us, his great black coat open and flapping, his fedora pushed to the back of his head, a small map, which he was struggling to open, in his hands.

“Mine granddaughter she told me I must take her to this Miss Betsy Ross’s house,” continued Morris. “But this
meshuggeneh
map, which I can’t even begin to open for all the flaps and sections and pages, this map it tells me nothing except that Morris you are a
schlemiel
who never learned to read a map like an ordinary person.”

He was giving me an opening and I took it. “It’s north of here, on Arch Street,” I said.

“North, south, what do I know from directions,” said
Morris. “Thank you, sir, but north might as well be up for all I can tell.” He continued fumbling with his map.

“Come along inside,” I said. “I’ll draw it on the map for you.”

“That won’t be necessary,” said Wayman, his voice deep and precise now, the voice of a college lecturer. “It’s very simple. Go out this little street. Take a right, that’s north, and go down four blocks, until you hit Arch Street. Then take a left. It is a little brick house with a small courtyard on the far side of Arch Street, between Second and Third. There is a colonial flag out front, you can’t miss it.”

I looked at Wayman, flabbergasted by his new voice. He smiled a dangerous smile at me and suddenly, with Wayman having fled from even the shallowest pretense of my comprehension, I was absolutely terrified.

“Aah, thank you, sir, thank you,” continued Morris. “I should write that down but already it is gone from mine head. Mine memory is like a sieve with a hole in the middle, that bad. If you could just show me on the map, if you could just…”

He continued to fumble with the map, struggling to open it, and then, with a sudden, frustrated jerk, his elbows flared and the paper ripped with a quick rasping tear and there were now two confused and jumbled pieces of map where before there had been only one.

“Accht, this is just like me,” said Morris, staring forlornly at the pieces in his hand. “Now I must to get another one inside. And then, if it is not asking too much to help a visitor, then if one of you gentlemen can draw the way on the map, that would maybe let me get there without going first through Pittsburgh.”

“Sure,” I said, grabbing hold of his arm. “Let’s go.”

“That would be just peaches, yes,” said Morris.

“We’re not finished here, Victor Carl,” said Wayman.

“I’ll be right back, Wayman,” I said as I headed for the entrance. “Just wait.”

Morris maneuvered so that he was between Wayman and me as we headed for the doors. In the glass’s reflection I could see Wayman reaching over Morris’s shoulder for me, and then I could feel his hand grabbing the collar of my shirt, could feel the cloth tighten around my neck. My throat let out a surprised little squeak.

Just then a doorman passed us on his way out from the lobby and seemed to accidentally knock Wayman’s arm away. The doorman had huge shoulders, he was dressed in green, he stepped in front of Wayman and said, “Can I help you, sir?” The doorman’s voice was startlingly familiar and even as Morris pushed me inside ahead of him I turned and saw the broad back of the doorman and the yarmulke on his head. The doorman placed his hand on Wayman’s chest. “Is there anything I can do for you, sir?” said Sheldon Kapustin to Wayman as Wayman jerked his head in frustration while Morris and I escaped to inside the lobby.

“Don’t run now,” said Morris. “Like a hawk he is watching.”

“It would have been nice if you had told me Sheldon was inside,” I said. “Sweat stains are so hard to clean. And even so you took your time.”

“Was there a rush?” Morris pointed to the right, where the front desk sat, out of the view of the doors. We scooted around the lobby furniture, wrought-iron tables and thick couches, and headed straight for the desk. “I will be feeling in mine pocket for a pen until we are out of sight from the door,” said Morris as we walked. “And when we are where he can’t see us anymore, then we will run.”

Which is exactly what we did.

“Who was he?” asked Morris on the elevator to the fourth floor.

“He’s an enforcer for a drug dealer.”

“So this drug dealer then has the missing money?”

“Evidently, and he killed a man already to keep me from finding out about it.”

“Ahhh, now this is worse than your original telling.”

“But he shouldn’t know Veronica was here.”

“So how did he learn?” asked Morris as the elevator doors slid open at the fourth floor.