The Old Turk's Load (11 page)

he Street Brothers and Mr. Fungu double-parked at the corner of Fifty-Second and rumbled through the lobby of the Tishman Building like a line squall crossing Long Island Sound. Woody was making a list of Jewish ballplayers while Vince was scrupulously avoiding thought. Mr. Fungu was a brain-dead sociopath who couldn’t think at all, which was why his associates referred to him as
u fungu—
the Mushroom.

Julius Roth had indeed approached Mr. DiNoto in Newark via an intermediary, but the initiative had come far too late. Mr. D. did not respond. Instead he had told the Street Brothers that Richard Mundi was holding the smack that had gone missing in the Newark riots. Now they were taking the Mushroom over to Mundi’s office to trash the joint and frighten—not kill—Mundi. Then they were to keep an eye on Mundi’s operation—seeing who came and went. If—as Mr. D. was almost certain—Mundi was personally holding the goods, he’d try to move the stash somehow. Or maybe if they frightened him enough, he’d simply give it back. Then they could kill him.
As they rode the elevator to the thirtieth floor,Woody considered the mighty Hank Greenberg, who had movie-star looks and a couple of great home run seasons to his credit but who may have looked like a better player than he was, since he never, in the course of a rather short career, learned to catch the baseball. Al Rosen was another Hymie with a short career. But he’d proved himself a good defensive player with a sweet swing and a sterling character. Always seemed to come through in the clutch.

They found the door with the golden me monogrammed on it and swarmed in, upsetting the coffee table piled with magazines and barging through to the main office where the receptionist sat. Seamster came out of his office, sized the situation up, and reached around back for his gun. Vince kicked him in the knee before he got to it, then frisked his crumpled form and confiscated the weapon. Woody swept the front desk of its contents, ripped the phones out, and kicked Seamster’s knee again just to keep him occupied.The Mushroom stood by the door, a promise of worse to come. Of course, Woody thought, there was Larry Sherry, who’d shut down the Go-Go White Sox in the ’59 World Series. Had one or two good years at the end of the fifties, then what? Must’ve been arm trouble.

The Brothers surveyed the damage they’d caused, then walked into Mundi’s office unannounced and sat down. Vince had Seamster’s gun in his lap.

Mundi surveyed them, grim and red-faced.“Who are you and what the fuck are you doing in my office?”
Woody did the talking.“This is a courtesy call on behalf of our employer, Mr. DiNoto of New Jersey. Maybe you’ve heard of him.”
“Let’s get something straight. You guys don’t scare me. If DiNoto wants to talk to me, he can get his own ass over here.”
“Mr. D. doesn’t care if he scares you or not. He happens to know you’re holding some property of his and he wants it back.”
“Why don’t you tell him I’d be happy to talk with him about that very thing.”
Then the Mushroom entered the office, lumbered between the two chairs, and pushed the huge mahogany desk toward Mundi, steadily and effortlessly, like an earthmover, pinning him against the tall glass window with one arm under the front of the desk, where it had been trying to extract the silenced .22. Mundi thrust his free arm out in an involuntary effort to fend off the looming monster. The Mushroom cracked it at the wrist.
Woody waited until lack of breath forced Mundi to stop screaming. Then he said, “We’ll give you a day to think about it.” And the squall moved on. The greatest of them all, of course, was the incomparable Koufax, recently retired, totally dominant.

hile Mr. Fungu and the Street Brothers were doing their thing in the Tishman Building, another office drama was taking place downtown, where Agent Spaulding was reading Kevin Gallagher the riot act. It’d been more than a year and Gallagher hadn’t turned up shit. Now Spaulding’s superiors were getting ready to terminate the operation, unless Gallagher provided something dramatic enough to make them pay attention.

“You’re really pushing it, Gallagher. That bomb idea of yours was a complete dud. I think you need to get that kid Leo and . . . are you listening?”

Gallagher tilted his head toward the ceiling and launched three perfectly formed smoke rings. Spaulding liked to think he was tough, but he had freckles and pink skin and was running to plumpness, with a spare tire already gathering itself around him. Gallagher detested fat.Took it as a sign of moral weakness. He also had issues with authority. He ached to bust Spaulding’s nose into his face, just as he’d once done to his father. It had felt so good. You could almost see the splat like in
Batman
. Of course there’d been no choice after that except to leave home, and some of the things that had happened subsequently were difficult. But he’d survived. The experience had toughened him and he’d learned about people, learned how important it was to make deals. Like the one he and Spaulding had going.

He’d been running with a bad crowd in Wilmington, and they’d busted him for grand theft auto—a cheesy, trumped-up rap worth eighteen months, which he could do standing on his head, except he’d already been in once and this would make him a two-time loser. The next time they popped him, they’d put him away till his teeth all fell out. So there he was, in the county lockup waiting for his useless court-appointed counsel, when Agent Spaulding showed up in his cheap suit and shiny black shoes with a deal.

It had sounded pretty good in the context of the New Castle County detention facility. Spaulding showed him a photograph and asked if he’d ever seen the guy before, and Gallagher tumbled right away to what the deal was. He was supposed to rat out this hippie-looking guy in the photo.Then maybe Spaulding would help him cop a plea. So he told Spaulding what he knew—that the guy had approached Gallagher in a bar. Laid all this political shit on him and persuaded him to attend an antiwar rally. No big thing. The hippie had been buying the drinks.

Then Spaulding told him he wouldn’t have to bargain a plea because the beef was going to go away. Disappear. All charges dropped. The only thing Gallagher had to do was help Agent Spaulding gather some information about this guy and his friends and their activities. In return Gallagher would get immunity and witness protection if he needed it. He’d be helping his country and he’d be paid for his time. The money would go into an escrow account.This would be his chance to turn his life around, a life they both knew was headed nowhere. It was a no-brainer. For his part, Gallagher figured he’d string Spaulding along for a while, then give him the slip.

But Spaulding had an answer for that. In the course of working his way into the antiwar movement Gallagher amassed a series of trespassing and disturbing-the-peace charges. Then in New York, with the Motherfuckers and the radical SDS wing who wanted to “Bring the War Home,” he landed a breaking-and-entering beef. Next there was an arrest in a Vietnam protest, which produced a
Times
photo of him in handcuffs, between two burly cops. Spaulding let him know that if he walked on the FBI now, he’d be a fugitive. A man with a record and half a dozen charges outstanding. The escrow account, already up to seven grand, would disappear.

Talk about short hairs. The part that made Gallagher perversely think of his dad was how this exercise of absolute power was so small-time. Maybe there really
were
bomb-throwing revolutionaries out there, but Spaulding could never have penetrated their ranks because they were too smart. Instead, he was going after idealistic college kids, hoping to goad them into some desperate action that the FBI could thwart at the last minute, all in service of proving that bomb-throwing radicals existed and thus putting Spaulding’s people in line for more funding. It was a pathetic, sick joke, with Gallagher trapped in the middle of it.

n her Bank Street apartment, Gloria and Harry were smoking a quick joint and listening to
Revolver,
which they agreed was more innovative than the long-awaited
Sergeant Pepper
.They intended to find Roth and let him know about Gallagher and the FBI.

“Do you think I could just tell him on the phone? I mean, we’ve got to call him anyway and find out if he’s even there.” She gave it her kittenish best. Let this guy think he was in the driver’s seat.

Jarkey sat across from her, feeling the reefer hit, uncertain in that stoned way, willing enough to be in her company, and seriously happy to have his every muscle and nerve telling him that he was back in the game, a sexual being once again, rather than a wounded animal. Finally he’d emerged from the shadow of his miserable ex. He watched Gloria blow a strand of hair from her face with exhaled smoke and concentrated on keeping the situation in the moment, hardly daring to hope what might come next. He told her, “You definitely need to talk to him in person. There could be a lot of questions. Maybe you should try to get your father in on it, too. ”

“It’s just so hard to talk to Daddy. I know he’ll freak. Julie will explain it rationally.”
“Yeah, I can see that. Roth’ll keep it clean. Figure out what to do.”
“Exactly. Then Daddy can blow his top at me.”
“What’s his problem, anyway? It’s not like you joined a motorcycle gang.”
“I might as well have. Daddy thought I’d get my law degree and run the company.”
“Umm, Kelly told me about that. And . . . ?”
“I always thought I would, too. I just changed, I guess.”
“Changed?”
“Okay. Not changed. I turned out to be somebody neither of us was expecting.”
“Who was that?”
Jarkey wasn’t a handsome man. His looks might have been “interesting” in the best possible light. But he had one great ability with women. He knew how to listen. Gloria, starting slowly, spun it out for him—the early happy nuclear family, her mother’s deterioration. The chaos that followed her death. Daddy’s loss, and the strange sense of guilt he carried.The bond she’d formed with him in those early teenage years.Then,inexplicable to them both,her equally intense rejection of him. His increasing disapproval. His distance.
“So that’s where it’s at. I couldn’t even tell you how I feel about him now. There’s just so much history in the way.”
Gloria never said the word
remorse,
but Harry thought he could hear that feeling in her voice, as if they were having a second, unspoken conversation. She really was quite beautiful. The doorbell rang.
Jarkey, yanked from his erotic reverie, hit the ceiling, then slumped back on the couch, paradise in shards around him.Whoever this was, the shape of the evening would now change, along with the outcome he was so ardently trying not to hope for.

elly had picked up Lloyd’s paranoia. He could hear the visitor clumping up the stairs to the apartment and could not fight off visions of a Frankenstein creature—big scar, spikes and wires coming out of the head. His fingers trembled as he unbolted the door, and the visitor’s black beard and drug-worn face did not set him at ease. The gargling noises that came out of the man’s mouth made Kelly jump, despite himself.

He peered from inside the still-chained door, .38 at the ready, and shuddered as the other man leaned his head back and pointed to the long scar that ran up his throat and terminated in a black hole beneath his chin. Lloyd had been right! No, he hadn’t. “Droat cancer,” the guy rasped. “Droat cancer. Gan’t dalk.” Kelly undid the chain and let him in, pistol squarely on him, frisked him, found him clean except for a half-empty bottle of pills, pointed him and his shabby suitcase to the couch.

Beyond delivering the medical report, the visitor would not state his business, indicating he’d talk only to Lloyd.With that horrible non-voice, taciturnity was inevitable. The man seemed glum, tired, sunk down inside himself, but utterly resolute. Kelly didn’t doubt he’d sit there till the cows came home, suitcase between his knees.

Then, to Kelly’s surprise, Lloyd emerged from the bedroom. Apparently he was sufficiently rested, hydrated, or sedated that his neurons had resumed firing along their accustomed circuits. The vision of the brain-in-the-jar had faded, for the time being, to its alternate status as a tortured imagining. Lloyd gave the man a thorough, cautious look, nodded, and sat down across from him. He turned on the floor lamp beside his chair, which only seemed to enhance the murk that pervaded the room.The rain had stopped and now it was getting dark. Grayish brown light was leaking in the big front window.

The Mailman threw his head back, gestured, and burped his way through the throat cancer story one more time.
“How’d you find me?”
“Eardon. CIA.”
“How’s Schultzie?”
“Okay.”
Kelly put his gun away.
As Lloyd grilled his visitor about Gloucester and old times, the interrogation became a reminiscence.The Mailman had his pad and pencil out, scribbling answers to Lloyd’s inquiries about various people, where they were, what they were doing. Then the big question again. The Mailman looked at Kelly and shook his head.
“It’s okay. This guy’s a friend of mine.”
Kelly gave a reassuring smile. “I’m his bodyguard.”
The suitcase stood there like the fourth person in the room. The Mailman didn’t say anything.

Lloyd got an idea. He went into the kitchen and came back with a little silver box. “You guys want to do a couple of lines?”
The Mailman gummed his. Kelly demurred. Lloyd fetched a bottle of rye and a greasy tumbler. Kelly eyed it. Then, after Lloyd had done his own toot, the Mailman said, “Zomeding do choe you,” and opened his suitcase and propped the two paintings on the couch beside him.
Even to Kelly, uncranked, they glowed like gorgeous Technicolor movies.
“Vitz Euww Lane.”
“Holy shit. Holy fucking shit.”Lloyd was kneeling in front of the couch, face right up against them.“Where did these come from?”
It was easier to understand him now, as he unrolled the narrative of his retirement, the cancer, the part-time job. Kelly flashed on the pill bottle, made him for an addict. The poor guy had never had a chance.
Lloyd was having a different reaction. He beheld the paintings for a long time, then sat back in his chair, exhaled. “You know who John Wilmerding is?”
Head shake on the
no
axis.
“He’s the expert on Fitz Hugh Lane. Wrote the book a few years ago. Catalogued every Lane painting and drawing in existence. If these came from Harrison Crowe and the Gloucester library, they’re in Wilmerding’s book.They’re known. No gallery will touch them. No auctioneer. Not in this country, anyway.”
The Mailman wasn’t getting it. Wasn’t wanting to get it.
“They’re too good,” Kelly interpreted gently. “Too famous. They’d be impossible to fence.”
The Mailman burped his disbelief.
“Plus which, you’ve already taken them across state lines. So it’s a federal beef now. Even if I could find a buyer, it’d be pennies on the dollar. Too much risk for the return.”
“Lloyd’s right,” said Kelly again, as gently as he could.
“But you could still get out clean on this if you got in your car right now and put them back where they came from.”
Kelly consulted his watch. “What is it, Friday? You got all weekend to fix this, pal.”
The Mailman looked like somebody had shot him.