Midnight Club (21 page)

72

Alexandre St.-Germain; Bedford Hills

INSIDE THE DARK
paneled library of an estate house in Westchester, Alexandre St.-Germain played with a Cuban cigar, which happened to coordinate with the mahogany walls. The layout brought to mind the clubs of London: Boodles, Brooke’s, the Savile, but especially the Hurlingham out in Fulham.

Old money.

Quiet excess.

Respectability.

The polished wood library was the gathering place for an Eastern Establishment group that effectively controlled much of the American banking system, but also the all-important communications industry, and, as much as any clique of Americans could, the major activity on Wall Street. The four regular members were also part of the Midnight Club.

The subject of the meeting that night was an important one—oil prices and the heating of the West, without undue panic or economic collapse, for the coming winter. All those in the room agreed on one thing: it was a decision far too complex and delicate to entrust to the politicians and bureaucrats in Washington, or elsewhere around the world.

As the men stiffly filed out of the library around twelve, Alexandre St.-Germain was aware of an arm firmly sliding around his shoulders. A Wall Street power broker named Wilson Seifer spoke confidentially to him.

“There’s a party planned. Private affair. Why don’t you come with us.”

Seifer led the way down a corridor with resplendent tapestries and medieval heraldry on every wall. Baccarat chandeliers swung overhead, like priceless necklaces and pendants.

The room that the men entered was lit by gold and rouge flames coming from a fieldstone fireplace. Overall, it had the appearance of a mead hall.

The girls inside the room stood in an orderly school row. They were grouped in front of the crackling, blazing fire. Their bare skin and long hair gleamed beautifully in the burnishing firelight. The oldest girl looked sixteen, the youngest might have been twelve.

They were naked. All were shaven between their legs. Each girl wore a black satin sleeping mask.

Old money, Alexandre St.-Germain thought, and had to stifle a smile.

Respectability, indeed.

The best things about the Club never really changed.

73

John Stefanovitch; East Forty-third Street

STEFANOVITCH WAS NERVOUS
as he waited on the corner of East Forty-third Street.

He listened to a cacophony of noise just starting up at six-thirty in the morning—the usual cries and moans of early Manhattan traffic. He was sipping juice from a cardboard box when Beth Kelley finally showed up.

“Long time no see, Stef,” his physical therapist said when she saw him. “What’s it been, nine days?”

“Yeah, but who’s counting,” Stefanovitch shrugged. His face and neck had begun to turn red.

“Nine days, no word. Not even a postcard.” When it finally came, the therapist’s smile was brittle. She was hurt and disappointed. She had invested a lot in Stef’s rehabilitation; more than a year of her time and expertise.

“You didn’t get the card yet? Man, those local mails.”

A slight smile came from Beth Kelley, a real one.

“How do your legs feel? They’re real strong, I’ll bet,” she said. “Upper thighs, calves especially.”

His legs felt terrible, as a matter of fact. He couldn’t believe how much strength he’d lost already, how his legs had atrophied in such a short period without exercise.

“I’m on a case. It’s a huge, complicated mess.”

Beth Kelley said nothing to that. “You coming inside? Or is this just to say good-bye?”

“No, I’m coming inside. I’m here for a workout. If you’ll promise to be nice.”

Kelley said nothing to that either. She turned and walked into the gym ahead of Stefanovitch.

Ten minutes later, he was straining under weights that seemed impossible for him to have ever lifted. Sweat was rolling off his body. His upper thighs were burning. He needed to work out for emotional as much as physical reasons, he knew. He needed a release from the tension.

I’m going to walk, he finally began to repeat over and over to himself. I’m going to walk.

It was like the way he used to issue chants as a boy back in Pennsylvania, as if by force of will he could do whatever he wanted to, or had to.

I’m going to walk.

“Goddamn it, I’m going to walk!”

Stefanovitch yelled the words inside the loudly echoing gymnasium. All the workouts at the Sports Center suddenly stopped.

Heavy Universal weights were suspended perilously in midair. Other weights dropped with loud, clanging noises. The aerobics people—the heavy-weight freaks—the blue-clad, holier-than-thou instructors—were all staring at him, all attention on the man in the wheelchair.

Then they began to clap. What Stefanovitch had said, what he’d shouted above the noise in the gym, had gotten to the usually schizoid and narcissistic exercise group.

“Fucking-A right you are, Stefanovitch!” Howie Cohen, the muscle-bound manager of the center, hollered from his usual sedentary perch, high up on the running track.

Laughter erupted at Cohen’s words. Even the ax-faced D.I.’s grinned. Then the regular grunts and groans of torture resumed in the gym. It was business as usual.

I not only intend to walk again, Stefanovitch was thinking as he strained and lifted and groaned. I even intend to live through the week.

74

John Stefanovitch and Isiah Parker; Central Park West

AT HALF PAST
eight, Stefanovitch sat with Isiah Parker in the front of a light green police-issue sedan. The two of them sipped lukewarm coffee, and ate bialys off waxed paper and the outside of brown paper bags. That morning, the plan conceived at Sarah’s beach house was going into effect. They were trying not to think too much about what the consequences would be.

“It doesn’t get much better than this,” Isiah Parker said, mocking a TV beer ad. He was as cynical as Stefanovitch, almost as bad as Bear Kupchek had been.

Stefanovitch watched the action at a newspaper vending machine across Central Park West. It was being stocked with morning editions of the
New York Times.
A big, sky blue
Times
truck was parked like a moving van in the middle of the street.

Some New York crazy had spray-pained “
LIES
!
TRASH
!
PROPAGANDA
!” in red and black on the sides of the newspaper machine. Stefanovitch was thinking that he wasn’t too enthused about graffiti artists. He kept waiting for the graffiti artists to start up on private cars. He imagined some poor New Yorker crossing the Painted Desert, with “Pepe 122” or “Louis 119” scrawled all over the hood.

That morning, though, he was feeling a little closer to whoever had painted “
LIES
!” and “
TRASH
!” Some national papers had already reported
LIES
and
TRASH
about whatever had really happened at Trump Plaza in Atlantic City.
LIES
and
TRASH
were a sign of the times.

As the morning sun rose over Central Park, Stefanovitch and Parker talked. It was real cop-to-cop chitchat. Laid-back and offhanded and easy. They covered their early days in the police department. Then general fear and loathing on the streets of New York. Both of them were still feeling each other out, slowly and carefully searching for soft spots and also points of connection.

“I went through the Police Academy in ‘seventy-six. Everybody had some version of the same story back then,” Stefanovitch said as he slurped coffee.

“Which story was that?” Parker was wearing a rumpled crimson and white T-shirt that said “Viva Mandela,” plus a black leather vest. He managed to look relaxed, very easygoing, at all times.

“They were all planning to put in their twenty. Get the regulation pension. Then buy a money-maker bar or restaurant somewhere in Florida, out on the Island. But everybody kind of wanted to make the city a little better place to live along the way.”

Isiah Parker laughed. It had been pretty much the same bullshit when he had gone through the academy two years earlier. His eyes narrowed. “They always said you were going to be the P.C. someday. You were supposed to be connected. Rabbi at Police Plaza? That true?”

Stefanovitch shook his head. Now it was his turn to laugh.

“You know how it is, cops like to collect their little stories. I can tell you my own version in about a sentence. I like it on the streets. Right here. Like right now. I keep telling them that down at Police Plaza. They can’t completely envision a wheelchair cop on the street, though.”

“The street gets into your blood, all right.” Parker had to agree. “Outsiders, anybody you talk to, they don’t understand that too much. Only cops understand. Only another cop can listen to a cop and not think he’s crazy.”

Another fifteen minutes slowly passed on the surveillance watch. Then half an hour… Suddenly Stefanovitch pointed through the sedan’s grimy windshield.

“Here we go loop de li. I hope. That’s the car arriving now.”

A long blue limousine was easing into the no-parking zone in front of the canopy at 85 Central Park West. A broadshouldered chauffeur, in a tight black suit, started to climb out of the limo.

“Marco Gualdi,” Stefanovitch said. “An associate of Mr. St.-Germain’s from Sicily. I think they played on the same bocci team or something.”

The heavyset driver stood in front of the Central Park West luxury building, smoking cigarettes and schmoozing with the captain-doorman. Stefanovitch noticed that both of them laughed in the side-of-the-mouth, conspiratorial way high lackies seemed to favor around New York.

His powers of observation were coming back a little. Yes, he did like police work and the streets. Maybe it was an extension of the do-gooder soup kitchen his parents ran? Some kind of quixotic urge to try and do the right thing? He didn’t really know why, but he liked it, maybe he loved the life of a street cop.

“This might even be some fun,” he finally smiled and said to Parker. “Mind if I cover this one myself? Start things off right?”

Isiah Parker pushed his long legs up against the bottom of the steering column and the front dash. He peered over dark sunglasses at Stefanovitch.

“Be my guest. You holler, I’ll come running pretty damn fast.”

Stefanovitch was smiling as he swung open the passenger side door, then the back door of the sedan.

75

IN THE SAME
fluid motion, he pulled his lightweight racing chair out of the car, and set it on the sidewalk. Using the racer on the job was something new and different; it was even vaguely exciting.

There was something that got into your blood about police work, about the streets of New York. He was thinking that as he assembled the chair. Maybe the act of wearing a gun did it? Maybe it was having so much raw power in your hands? So much life-and-death responsibility?…Whatever it was, he needed it right now, and he was getting a good dose.

Stefanovitch slowly made his way down Central Park West toward the parked limousine.

He was about to cross West Seventy-seventh Street, another half block to the Grave Dancer’s limo, when Alexandre St.-Germain emerged from the elegant apartment building, Number 85.

Horns were tooting up and down Central Park West. A manhole cover clattered, then was still again.

Alexandre St.-Germain was there on the sidewalk. The Grave Dancer was walking crisply, looking good in a tailored charcoal gray suit. He motioned for his driver to get back inside the car. Two more bodyguards fell in on either side of St.-Germain as he came out from under the apartment building’s canopy.

A faded red gasoline truck turned down Seventy-seventh Street. It was blocking Stefanovitch’s view of the limousine and Alexandre St.-Germain.

“Son of a bitch. Hey. Get the hell out of the way,” he said out loud, to no one in particular.

His heart had really begun to kick in. His forehead felt hot, beaded with sweat already. He was still thirty yards from the limousine and Alexandre St.-Germain.

Suddenly, he realized he wasn’t going to get there in time. There was no way.

“Son of a bitch.” Stefanovitch squared his mouth and cursed.

A matronly woman waiting on the sidewalk glanced over at him. She saw the wheelchair, and tempered her initial reaction. They always did, and it drove him crazy.

Stefanovitch’s hands bored into the hard, black rubber wheel guards of the wheelchair.

The chair was dropping off the curb, moving into the street against the red light, against the traffic making a right turn on Seventy-seventh.

“Hey!” he shouted up the sidewalk, completely ignoring the traffic. He was moving as fast as a wheelchair could move. “Hey! Hey!”

The racing chair’s wheels were lifting off the ground at each crack. It was dangerous, because the chair was so light it could go over.

“Hey, you!…Hey! Hey!…
Grave Dancer!
”

The two bodyguards had stopped moving. They didn’t seem to believe what they were watching up ahead. They were definitely looking his way, though. Stefanovitch had their undivided attention.

They both touched their jackets, feeling for handguns. What the hell was this coming down the street?

Alexandre St.-Germain slowly turned as he was getting into the backseat of the limousine. The blond hair, the smoothly handsome face, came back into view. The Grave Dancer was only a few yards away from Stefanovitch.

St.-Germain straightened to his full height. He stared up the sidewalk, at the man coming in the wheelchair, coming pretty fast, too.

Stefanovitch could feel the Grave Dancer’s eyes burning into his skull. He was slightly out of control, wired to his limit. He’d been waiting so long for this moment. It seemed bizarre and unreal now that it was here.

“Yeah, you. I’m talking to
you,
” he called out again.

He couldn’t help himself anymore. He was exploding forward on a burst of adrenaline and emotion.

None of his instincts, no common sense was working for him. It was a dangerous time. Christ, St.-Germain was blond and handsome. He looked like the good guy.

Stefanovitch’s thoughts were silent screams. They echoed around the caverns in his head…
Revenge
… Some kind of justice was what he had in mind. Like smashing the fucker’s face for starters.

When the wheelchair got close, Alexandre St.-Germain finally spoke. He talked in a low, even voice, like someone addressing an excitable child.

“Are you yelling at me for some reason?” he asked.

“Yeah, I am. I’m John Stefanovitch with the New York police. I’m yelling at you.”

“Yes? Can I help you?”

“We met a few years ago. We sort of met on the back streets of Long Beach. You gave me this wheelchair to remember you by.”

Stefanovitch’s hands were clamped down hard on the arms of his chair. He was out of line, and he knew it. He just couldn’t stop himself. There was no way he could stop this thing from being played out.

“I never got to thank you in person, to see you like this, man to man. Actually, there are a couple of reasons I wanted to meet you one day.”

The Grave Dancer interrupted. “Well, you’ve had your long-awaited pleasure. I’m afraid that I have some business meetings to attend this morning. You’re very welcome for your present, the one given to you at Long Beach. It seems that maybe you’ll deserve another present soon.”

Alexandre St.-Germain started to slide into the shiny black limousine.

A hand grabbed onto his shoulder. The hand crushed the soft padding of his expensive suit jacket. Then Stefanovitch suddenly yanked St.-Germain backward.

Both of his bodyguards moved forward, but St.-Germain waved them off. His throat and cheeks were bright red, swollen with blood. His blond hair had been mussed in the scuffle, little twists standing on end.

“Take your hand off my arm,” he said to Stefanovitch. “You knew the rules. You decided to break them. You wanted to play in the big game, the big leagues.”

“Those were
your
fucking rules,” Stefanovitch shouted. “Now you’re going to hear my rules.”

Stefanovitch held on to the Grave Dancer as tightly as he could. This was a street fight; there couldn’t be any backing down from here on.

“No matter what else happens, we’re going to shut you down, motherfucker. I’m going to shut down your Midnight Club. I’m going to get
you.
”

Stefanovitch let go of Alexandre St.-Germain. He jerked the wheelchair around, a move he’d seen kids pull on skate-boards.

His back was to Alexandre St.-Germain and the bodyguards. The wheelchair was squeaking—
skee-skee-skee-skee.
The sound was absurd. It was as if the chair were mocking him, mocking everything he was attempting to do, but especially his trying to be a cop again.

Back at the car, Isiah Parker was sitting in the front seat, his legs still propped up. He looked as if he hadn’t moved since Stefanovitch had left.

When Stefanovitch got close, he saw that Parker was slowly clapping his hands. Parker was also grinning. It was the first real smile Stefanovitch had seen from the black detective, a great goddamn smile.

“That was real fine. You’re off to a flying-A start with the man. I like the way you serve notice, serve papers. Now he has to kill you, too.”

Stefanovitch’s heart was beating so hard he could hear it over Isiah Parker’s voice. He was thinking that he still didn’t care enough about what happened to himself.

He felt like he was flying, though, and that was good enough. He felt as if he had been released from some max-security prison where he had been slowly rotting, wasting away, dying of old age at thirty-five.

It was all beginning again.

Maybe it could be revenge against St.-Germain and the Club.

Maybe retribution, some kind of justice finally.

Or maybe it would be something Stefanovitch couldn’t bring himself to imagine—a world where justice no longer had a place.