Madman's Thirst (4 page)

***

Pearsall had his back to the
elevator when Everett Harvey walked in. He swiveled his chair only when he
heard some other staffers greet the police reporter. Anticipating that Harvey
was headed his way, he quickly folded the Hagstrom with an accomplished
flourish. But the police reporter headed straight into the managing editor’s glassed-in
corner office. That’s strange, Pearsall thought; Ev always checks in with me first.
He watched the two men converse quietly. Popp looked out at the city desk and
picked up the phone. A few minutes later the elevator opened and Jennifer Fish,
the
Register’s
publisher, walked quickly into Popp’s office, looking
neither left nor right. Suddenly the intercom on Pearsall’s phone bank buzzed.
It was Popp.

“Bob, can you come in here,
please.” He sounded tense.

Puzzled, Pearsall got up and
slowly made his way to Popp’s office. Two minutes later, curious staffers were
shocked to see him slump to the floor before any of the others with him could react.

CHAPTER 5 – LAWS OF GOD AND
NATURE

Jake Scarne leaned on the railing
of the deck outside his apartment. He’d slept badly and felt lousy. He’d had
another dream. Or, rather, the same dream. In it he was swimming in a warm
tropical lagoon when someone grabbed his ankle and pulled him down. When they
reached bottom the hand let go and he saw it was a beautiful woman, blonde
tresses waving in the current. He tried to kiss her. Her lips parted and a
trickle of blood swirled from her mouth. Then she floated backwards, her dead
eyes accusing him. Scarne had woken, gasping for breath, sweating profusely.
He’d not been able to go back to sleep.

Below him on Fifth Avenue the
traffic was beginning to pick up. He watched an elderly woman walking two
rat-like dogs struggle with a pooper scooper as one of the hairless animals
wrapped its leash around her legs. The other creature strained to reach a tree
where a tail-swishing squirrel was poised, head down, staring at it. If that
leash breaks, my money is on the squirrel, Scarne thought. It’s bigger. A fruit
vendor was setting up his stand nearby. Kids with backpacks ambled out of the
NYU dorms just up the street. A Lincoln Town Car from a livery service pulled
into the circular driveway of his building and disappeared under the
scaffolding and net that had been installed to protect pedestrians from falling
bricks.

Scarne took a deep drag from his
cigarette and immediately felt a slight constriction in his throat. Time to cut
back, maybe even quit. He reached down to extinguish his cigarette in the coffee
mug that served as an ashtray on the small plastic table that, along with a
dusty lounge chair, was the deck’s only adornments, if one didn’t count the
foot-high weeds growing through cracks in the cement. How did they germinate
eight stories up? He knew he should pull them, but, admiring their tenacious
grip on life, kept putting it off. Maybe they weren’t all weeds. One looked
suspiciously like a sapling.

The mug on the table was full of
butts, and Scarne felt a momentary disgust, exacerbated by the fact that it was
a beautiful day. He looked down the street to Washington Square and its famous
arch. The 10-acre park was a neighborhood treasure and a magnet to residents,
tourists, students and film makers. The brownstones on the north side, in
particular, had appeared in innumerable movies and TV dramas, mostly police
procedurals. Scarne was pretty sure every character actor in Manhattan had been
murdered or arrested in front of one of those brownstones. The Square’s grass,
benches, mature trees, street performers and chess players were magnets that made
it a people-watchers’ paradise.

Scarne thought the park perfect as
it was, and had recently signed a petition decrying the city’s plan to redesign
its fountain and move it 11 feet, six inches to line up exactly with the arch.
He had never noticed that the park’s layout was “asymmetrical,” as the redesign
proponents claimed, and frankly didn’t give a damn. The park had served
Greenwich Village well for more than 150 years. Robert Lewis Stevenson and Mark
Twain had conversed on one of its benches, and Scarne was fairly certain they
never noticed the fountain was a bit off-center.

From his vantage point he could read
the inscription on the arch’s façade:
“To commemorate the one hundredth
anniversary of the inauguration of George Washington as the first president of
the United States.”
He wondered how the Father of the Country, whose
barefoot soldiers froze in the snows of Valley Forge, would have felt about
spending $16 million to move a fountain.

Scarne also wondered how long he’d
be able to afford his view of the park. He’d gotten a letter from his
building’s co-op board breaking down the cost of repairing the façade that was
shedding all those bricks. The whole project was going to cost residents $31
million.  Since he had a one-bedroom apartment, the letter noted, Scarne’s
assessment, based on square footage, was “only” $84,500! Where is George when I
need him, he thought sourly.

Scarne’s cell phone began playing
Aura
Lee
. It was Dudley Mack.

“You want to get drunk in a
church?” his friend asked without preamble.

“How is anyone expected to say no
to that?”

“Get the 5 o’clock boat. I’ll pick
you up in front of the one-two-oh.”

***

Scarne was standing outside the
ancient St. George’s 120
^th
Precinct house – the “one-two-oh” to
everyone on Staten Island – talking with Abel Crider when a black limousine
pulled up to the curb. Or rather, he was listening to the police detective; he
could barely get a word in edgewise. Crider was the fastest talker Scarne ever
met. There were no pauses between words, no places where a comma could fit. The
rear window of the limo rolled down and Dudley Mack said, “Rescue any more
hostages lately, Abel?”

Crider grimaced. “Up yours.”  (It
came out, “Uproars.”) 

Mack laughed good-naturedly as
Scarne got in the back seat. Behind the wheel Bobo Sambucca, now Dudley’s
official driver, smiled a hello in the mirror and pulled away.

“Give it a rest, Duds,” Scarne
said. “Abel’s a good guy. He’s off that detail now.”

“What a surprise.”

All three men had known Crider
since college, but had lost track of him until Scarne spotted an article in the
Post
about a hostage situation in a Queen’s Hooter’s. A man put a gun to
the head of a waitress and demanded to see the manager. The girl had previously
dumped the gunman for said manager, who wisely locked himself in the freezer.
The restaurant was soon surrounded by police, accompanied by a hostage negotiator,
who went in to talk to the distraught suitor. Minutes later there was a shot
and the hysterical girl ran out. The frozen manager, smelling like shrimp, soon
followed. A SWAT team found the hostage negotiator standing over the gunman,
who had taken his own life. The negotiator was Abel Crider and it was
suggested, half in jest, that the poor bastard killed himself so he wouldn’t
have to listen to Crider talk.

Scarne and Mack laughed at the
memory.

“All the Criders talk like that,”
Bobo said from the front seat. “I knew Abel’s mom. Talked faster than him. When
they argued it sounded like dueling machine guns. Pentagon should draft them to
run our communications. Enemy would go batshit trying to figure anything out.
They could talk on regular phones, for Crissake! Be like them Iroquois code
talkers the Marines used against the Japs.”

“I think they were Navajos,” Mack
said.

“I screwed a Nava ‘ho’ once,” Bobo
said. “She was awesome.” 

***

“Is this one of your new funeral
cars?”

They were driving along Richmond
Terrace.

“Can’t get anything by one of the
city’s top private dicks. Like it?”

“Yes,” Scarne said. “It still has
that new dead body smell.”

Unlike many funeral home
operations, the Mack-Sambuca chain (now up to four sites on Staten Island and
one in Sea Girt, New Jersey), had its own fleet of limousines and hearses.
Dudley Mack was proud of his modern fleet and was famous for occasionally using
the cars for his non-funeral enterprises, most of which were illegal. Mack
believed the vehicles “set the right tone” for conversations in the back seat.
Being taken for a ride in one of them was an unnerving experience for even the
toughest of men. It was a home field advantage that turned many a deal in
Mack’s favor.

They drove past the abandoned U.S.
Gypsum plant that stretched almost a quarter of a mile along the Kill van Kull.
Before its closing, the huge facility had provided some of the filthiest and
highest-paying jobs on Staten Island’s waterfront.

“Remember that bar, Jake,” Dudley
said, pointing to a small stand-alone shack across the street from what had
been the main entrance to the plant. The bar’s windows were boarded up and
graffiti was scrawled along its entire length. The roof was fire-scorched. “I
worked at Gypsum one summer. The old man thought it would do me good. Guys
coming off their shift would go across and drink a few million beers to get the
dust out of their throats. I can still taste those beers. There was a hooker
from Port Richmond who would come up on payday and some of the hard cases would
bang her right on the pool table in the back. Maybe ten guys a night. She was a
good sort, and made a fortune, but she’d be so covered in gypsum she looked
like a ghost when she left.”

“Great story. I can’t wait to tell
my grandkids.”

“I was going to buy the place,
just for old time’s sake. I don’t have enough gin mills on the North Shore. But
the guy who owned the building, a lawyer, torched it for the insurance.”

“They catch him?”

“Nah. He’s a judge now. But he
knows I know. I bankrolled his campaign. He’s a better investment than the bar
would have been, if you think about it.”

 “Where are we headed?”

“St. Stan’s, on York Avenue. Ever
been there?”

“No.”

“You’re in for a treat. By the
way, how’s the façade thing working out?”

“Not too well. But some people are
being dunned two, three times as much as I am.”

“You need help with the
assessment?”

“No, but thanks, anyway.”

“I know some union guys. Maybe get
you a deal.”

Just what he needed, Scarne
thought.

“Pass.”

“Suit yourself.”  

They pulled up to Saint Stanislaus
Roman Catholic Church, a red brick building that fronted York but sloped down a
steep hill to Jersey Street.

 “You know, this does look
familiar,” Scarne said.

“You probably saw the movie,
Working
Girl
. Used St. Stan’s for a wedding scene.”

They walked to the front entrance,
where Scarne stopped to look at the inlaid stones and art work framing the
doors.

“Are these swastikas?” He pointed
at several small bent crosses that were mixed in among other strange looking
symbols.

“Yeah, but that stuff isn’t
supposed to be political. All those symbols and signs predate the Nazis.
Something to do with Eastern influence on the Polish church. At least that’s
what Jarecki, the pastor, tells me. Who knows? Poles had pogroms long before
the Krauts.”

“Are there that many Poles still
living around here?”

“Nah. Most of the original
parishioners moved to the south shore or Jersey years ago. The neighborhood is
full of Hispanics, Haitians and Jamaicans now. A few Indians, of the dot, not
feather, persuasion. But the old folks come from all over for the
Polish-language mass on Sunday. I hear they sometimes get a thousand people.
It’s followed by a great pot-luck luncheon. Kielbasa heaven.”

They entered the beautiful, dark
church and Scarne followed his friend to a door behind the altar. It opened to
reveal a long spiral staircase.

“What is this,” Scarne said after
they descended two stories. “The road show of
Angels and Demons?
”

“Oh ye of little faith,” Mack said
over his shoulder.

Scarne didn’t say anything else.
Dudley liked his little surprises and rarely disappointed. They reached the
bottom. Mack pressed down on a heavy brass latch on a thick wooden door and
pushed it open. Scarne didn’t know what to expect, but it certainly wasn’t the
sight of a beefy Catholic priest sitting on the nearest of a dozen wrought-iron
swivel stools lining an oak and mahogany bar, smoking Marlboros and drinking
from a tall, thin double shot glass. It was a real tavern bar, which ran almost
the length of the room. Behind it stood a small forest of beer taps: Budweiser,
Heineken, Amstel, Harps, Miller, Sam Adams. An old-style cash register was flanked
by dozens of liquor bottles. There was a large man wearing a white apron
standing under a TV at the far end watching the local news.

“How’s it hanging, Jerry?” Mack
said.

“Celibately,” the priest
responded, with mock sadness.

Mack laughed and slapped the
priest on the back.

“Jerry, this is my pal, Jake
Scarne. If he looks spooked it’s because he came close to the altar upstairs.
Expected a bolt of lightning. Jake, this is Father Jerry Jarecki.”  

 Scarne shook hands with the
priest, who called down the end of the bar.

“Stash, my friends are thirsty.”

The bartender walked down to them.
He had the crumpled face of a man who had spent too many unproductive hours in
a ring.

“Stash?” Scarne said.

“You have a problem with that?”

“No. What’s your real name?”

“Stash.”

 Without asking, he put out two
more double shot glasses and poured Polish vodka for the new arrivals from a
bottle in an ice bucket below the bar.

“You want a twist?”

He made it sound like a form of
excrement. When they declined he nodded, put the bucket and bottle on the bar and
went back to the TV, which he turned up to give them privacy. The three men
raised their glasses to each other and downed the shots. The ice cold vodka was
superb. Scarne said so.

“My parishioners bring it back
from the old country.”

Scarne looked at the array of
liquors behind the bar.

“Your parishioners get around.”

“He’s got a better selection than
most of my joints,” Mack said.

Jarecki laughed and said, “This
used to be a speakeasy in the 30’s, with an entrance on Jersey Street, right
out that door over there. Prohibition was against the laws of both God and
nature. The police agreed. Particularly those that drank here.” He poured
another round. “We’re not open to the public, of course. That door was sealed
closed years ago. But after parish functions people are allowed down here. And,
of course, certain friends.” He nodded at Mack. “I trust you will keep our
secret, Jake.”

“Who would I turn you in to, the
bishop?”