The Old Turk's Load (7 page)

cross town Richard Mundi was having a private, high-level meeting with his partners, Jimmy Murchison and Harlan Kraft. They’d ordered in from Ruby’s and were sitting around his desk eating pastrami sandwiches and talking, just like old times— except it seemed to Mundi more like feeding hour at the nursing home.

Murchison had gotten white and gaunt, like a starving Frankenstein, the flesh pulled back from his face. It had to be the Big C, though Jimmy didn’t talk about it. Maybe they weren’t telling him, but still. As for Kraft, Mundi’d had to drag him kicking and screaming off the golf course, all wizened, a little lizard with hooded eyes.

Mundi now had a plan, simple and direct. He’d pitch Roth’s scheme about going into partnership with DiNoto. Murchison and Kraft, of course, would rubber-stamp it. Then the three would call Roth in and tell him to start the negotiations. Murchison would go back to bed, Kraft would go back to the links, and while Roth bounded off like a golden retriever—or as much like a golden retriever as a Jewish thug could be—Mundi would off-load the drugs to a guy he’d already lined up, grab some cash in return, and hop on a plane. He’d work the deal so fast, it’d make their heads spin. And if Julie or Jimmy or Harlan got caught in the blowback, tough shit. Maybe it’d wake them up.

After the usual preliminaries about Jimmy’s grandchildren and Harlan’s short game, Mundi got around to explaining how they’d happened to come into some valuable contraband and that soon the owners would be applying for its return.

Mundi allowed as how that sounded like the sensible thing to do, except there were complications. As they all knew, the corporation was belly-up. Cash flow was zip because there were no new jobs, no acquisitions. They were consuming themselves in leases, fees, taxes, financing costs. Not to mention salaries.

Kraft wiggled in his seat. “Come off it, Richie. We all oughta be on Social and you know it. We’ve had a good dance for thirty years, made our money. But now this thing is dead meat around our necks. We’re too old for this shit.”

“Harlan’s right, Rich. Look at that last deal. A couple more like it and we’ll be in the poorhouse.”
That was the Weehawken Mills project. Mundi Enterprises had gone into partnership with a developer who planned to turn a half-mile of Newark mill buildings into apartments. They’d raised their share by refinancing their Long Island properties. In the end they were undercapitalized. Real estate took a dip, rates went up, the banks came calling, and they lost the project to the marketing company. Assholes in BMWs with cashmere sweaters tied around their necks. It had been Mundi’s play, for the most part, and it had cost him and his partners a lot.

There was little else to say about the episode. Kraft said it for him, as gently as he could. “Times are different now, Richie. Let’s cash in our chips.”

“So what are we going to do, live off this missing dope of yours? It
is
dope, isn’t it?”
“It’s heroin. It’d get us millions on the street right now.” He waited for the number to take effect, to head their thoughts in the right direction. “But we’re not gonna sell it ourselves. We’ll use it as earnest money. Roth has a scheme worked out where he thinks we could turn this contraband into a more or less permanent arrangement. The original owners have a lot of free cash they’re looking to place. Roth thinks they could be persuaded to see Mundi Enterprises as a gold mine of unrealized write-offs, bad debts, depreciations, and similar accounting bullshit. All we need is to pitch it the right way to the right people. We return the merchandise we’ve been safeguarding for them and they buy an interest in our construction operation, with periodic payments for maintenance, depreciation, whatever.We provide them with a legitimate business with a real track record and they boost our cash flow in return. After a few years we’ve paid our nut down and property values go back up. By then the government will be sending millions in grants to prop Newark back on its feet. Urban renewal in the worst of the slums.You know what that means?”
No response.
“It means we’ll be selling Newark to the Feds! Isn’t it sweet? That’s when we clear out, Jimmy.”
The color rose in Murchison’s cheeks, but it didn’t make him look much better. “Launder money for the fucking Mafia? Rich, have you lost your marbles?”
“It’s twenty pounds of heroin, Jimmy! You wanna sell it yourself ?”
Murchison and Kraft stared at him as if he’d gone mad. They were fossils, he thought sadly. They’d been useless for years. What was the point of even talking to them, except about old times?

own at Kevin’s they were trying to organize some street theater for a high school in the Bronx. Juan’s cousin was a sophomore there, and that was how they found out that an army recruiter was scheduled to give the student body a lecture about Vietnam. The idea was to dress in clown suits and run through the halls distributing water balloons, squirt guns filled with blood-red food coloring, antiwar leaflets, and general mayhem. They knew a certain number of students would respond, helping spread the chaos, thus making the event a revolutionary teaching exercise. Juan went in with the cousin one day and got a layout of the building. They’d already decided who would enter which doors. Then they hit a problem.

The assembly was scheduled for nine a.m. If they waited until after it started, there wouldn’t be any students in the hallways to catch the riot. On the other hand, if they launched their onslaught before the assembly began, they’d probably be ejected before the army guy took the stage, which would defeat one of the major purposes of the event, which was to stand at the back of the auditorium in their clown suits making a ruckus with New Year’s Eve noisemakers while he was trying to speak.

They broke for a joint, giving Kevin the opening to start in again on his dynamite scheme. It was the moment Gloria was waiting for. She had it all planned out. She’d let him talk, then dissect the idea, showing how ludicrous it was. However, the more Kevin talked, the more annoyed she became, until finally she was so angry, she couldn’t have dissected anything, except maybe him. She couldn’t even shout. She hissed instead.

“Do you seriously expect anyone to carry dynamite into a police station while you sit on your fat ass two blocks away? You couldn’t even get one of your twelve-year-old Chicana groupies down the street to pull a stunt like that. You’re full of shit, Kevin. Your plan is full of shit.”

Gallagher, sensing unusual danger in this attack, would not meet her eyes. He shot a “what a bitch” appeal to the other three men. Leo nodded. But Juan said, “You’ve been on this one all week, man. It’s not going to fly. Give it a rest.”

Lloyd, who’d just delivered an ounce of Acapulco Gold to Gloria, was standing on the other side of Gallagher’s big front room, about to make his exit. He’d been cranked out, doing deliveries for two days, and still had a few more people to see. After that he was planning to tone it down a little, mellow out. He surveyed the scene with a judicious air and delivered his parting benediction. “You
both
need to take a break. I don’t know what’s wrong with you two, but everything’s personal all of a sudden. You’re creating an atmosphere that is not conducive to optimum results.”

Kevin called him a bourgeois asshole. Gloria freaked. She went into the kitchen, gathered up the folders regarding pending trials that had accumulated on the table, marched through the front room with her eyes brimming, and pushed past Lloyd into the street. She felt like her brain was about to explode.

The journey up to 116th Street calmed her, and she thought she’d gotten it pretty much back together. But the instant she stepped into the office Irene looked up from her desk and said, “Gloria! What’s the matter?”

“That jerk . . .” It was all jammed up, same as back at Kevin’s. She dropped the folders on the desk and slumped disconsolately on the couch.

Irene came and sat beside her, gave her a hug and a reassuring pat. “Just start with one piece and tell it. The rest will come. Then you’ll feel better.”

So she started with the dynamite business, Irene watching her, smiling, listening. And by the time she got to the part about realizing that Kevin was manipulating her, Gloria realized she
did
feel better, except for one confusing thing.

“I just don’t understand myself. Why couldn’t I call Kevin out in front of the others? He’s such a rat. But I just froze. And my father . . . first I couldn’t stand him, and now I don’t care. I don’t have any feelings for him at all. It freaks me out.”

“Gloria, I wish you could hear yourself.”
“What do you mean?”
“What you’re talking about is the way people
expect
you to

react. It’s like a big signal getting broadcasted all the time. Not in a paranoid way, it’s just what happens in society, in the world. You’re freaking out because you don’t think or feel the way the world expects you to think or feel. But that’s not a bad thing. It means you have your own thoughts and feelings. You have to trust them. You’ve probably got Kevin and your father and . . .
everything
figured out already and you don’t even realize it. Just relax. Trust yourself.”

They talked on in this manner, and Gloria was surprised and happy to discover the dreadful weight lifting from her shoulders. Could it be this simple? Was it possible that Irene was able to dispel her misery with just a few words? “How did you do that?”

Gloria looked at her friend’s lovely face, trusted it, trusted herself, kissed it.
Irene returned the kiss. Gloria kissed her again. Irene’s tongue sought her lips, parted them. Her long gentle hand had come around to the side of Gloria’s breast. All tongues then, tender hands, soft breasts, slick dark moistness, tang of Irene’s perspiration. Slow stroking, pressure and yielding, and Irene’s vast, deep rush, right there on the couch in her office, as if it were any other business they’d transacted over the past two years.
Their lovemaking had exactly that likeness, with Irene’s fingers working her just so, tongue on nipple completing the circuit that slid her so far into orgasm that she lost track of everything except the awareness that they were simply getting something done between them, as they always had, something fun and exciting and good for the world.
She could tell it was exactly that because when it was over— though it would never
really
be over, would it?—and Irene was splayed there on the couch, slender arms and legs in every direction, saying “Whew!” again and again—when it was over it wasn’t like after Kevin or any man she’d ever been with, because even the best carried a vibe of possession or conquest, no matter how sweet or gentle. But not Irene, whom she loved, and would happily fuck again, anytime—or not—and with whom she would never have an affair, or be the partner of, because that wasn’t what it was about.
It was the culmination of an evolving transaction during which, somehow, Irene had given Gloria her self, and in so doing had opened the world to her. The way Gloria would repay Irene would be to give that same thing to someone else, someday, not necessarily in Irene’s way, but in her own. She saw all that in one instant, as if the world had opened up before her, and she was the first woman upon it, to see what she could make of it herself.That’s what she saw. All at once.
And she said, “Whew.”

wo of Mundi’s crisp C-notes settled Harry Jarkey’s doubts, temporarily. Kelly, riding his hunch, had convinced him that the first thing to do was dig up background on Agnes Mundi. So Jarkey called Genzlinger at the
Times
and spent several hours that night in their morgue assembling a detailed report on Mundi’s dead wife.The next day he handed the stack of photostatted clippings to Kelly, who accepted them with a serious, distracted air, undoubtedly hungover again. It was just about perfect, Jarkey thought. I go after the girl and her boyfriend while he stakes out a dead woman. Kelly fished through his pockets to no avail, glanced at the empty hook on the wall behind his chair, then rummaged through his desk drawers. He found a .38 police special; half a book of fivecent stamps; a jar of Tang; a jar of instant coffee (both unopened); a bottle of aspirin, which he placed on top of the desk; a
Playboy
magazine; a pint of Wilson “That’s All” blended whiskey; a pair of argyle socks; and a box of shells for the .38. He was beginning to get seriously interested in this excavation when Jarkey interrupted him. “They’re probably at the lot. With the car. Didn’t you start leaving the keys at the lot?”

“Well, while you look for them, I’ll get the car and stake out the girl’s place out, do a tail, see what kind of routine she’s got.”
“Right,” Kelly said. “And the camera.” He began looking around the room again.
“In the car. The trunk. Remember?”
How did this man survive?
Kelly had a black ’65 Fairlane, which he kept in a lot on the West Side. He liked it because it was inconspicuous in a crowd, perfect for tails, and could be mistaken for a cop car in the right circumstances. Jarkey liked it because Kelly hardly ever drove it, which made it, in effect, Jarkey’s vehicle. He kept it cleaned and gassed and oiled and used it whenever he landed a freelance assignment that took him out to the Island or upstate. Late that afternoon he got a thermos from home and went down the street for coffee, sandwiches, film, and the day’s papers. Then he took a cab to the lot, retrieved the car, drove down to Bank Street, and circled the block until nearly dark, when a space opened up a few doors from Gloria’s apartment. A parking place was always the hardest part.
Beneath his crabby exterior, Jarkey was a gentle, thoughtful man. He’d fallen hopelessly in love with a selfish Julie Christie lookalike who didn’t deserve him and who dumped him the moment his career in journalism hit a bump. He was still reeling from her cruelty, trying to understand how love could hurt so badly, and thus needed shelter while he learned his way through such difficult terrain. Kelly provided that, seeing to his material needs and helping to insulate him from most of society’s expectations and demands. Tailing people was so far outside the norm that it hardly seemed