Winter Kills (24 page)

So when Murray Davidoff invited him to Detroit he was glad to go. Murray met him at the airport. They drove to Murray’s house for a real New England boiled dinner, which, thank God, was boiled flanken, chicken, and tongue with horseradish, and not just corned beef with a lot of boiled vegetables, like plenty of places tried to palm off. Gloria Davidoff was a nice little cook even if she couldn’t stand him.

After dinner Cary Davidoff, who was fourteen and
who was going to be a song writer when he grew up, played sixteen or fifty of his latest tunes and sang them in the style of Eddie Fisher, or it could have been Eddie Cantor. When Cary finished, with his mother smirking all over everything, Murray took out the watch from the grateful members of the Used Box and Paper local when he had retired and told Diamond that Vonnie Blanik wanted to meet him.

Diamond had never met Vonnie Blanik, who was, by any standards, the most famous man in the American labor movement. It gave him the stab of a thrill. For more than three years he had been consumed with the idea of organizing a national police union. When Murray had sold him the Box and Paper local to join up on Vonnie Blanik’s personal staff, Diamond had tried to get up the nerve to lay the proposition on Murray to have him lay it on Blanik. But who could trust Murray or Blanik? Diamond knew that if he could be international president of a national police union, with an international charter from the Tubesters, he would like practically come in his pants twice every day. But he knew all the stories about Blanik. They were greedy stories. Diamond was not greedy. He would take care of Blanik and Murray. He didn’t care about money in this instance. The restaurant and the shit traffic in Philadelphia were throwing off plenty. His goal was a national police union.

They drove to the Tubesters’ national headquarters. It was almost half past eleven. They were greeted by Vonnie himself in his personal office anteroom, but because of a lot of trouble the Justice Department had made with a wire tap they had put on Vonnie’s car telephone and which he had just found out about, he and Murray only got to see Vonnie for about two minutes, if that. And it was something Joe Diamond could just as well have postponed for a week, he thought, while the meeting was happening.

Vonnie grabbed him by the necktie, which meant he had to reach away up to get to Diamond’s necktie, because
Blanik was no giant—in fact maybe even the opposite. He pulled down hard on the necktie, so Diamond had to bend way over while Vonnie was standing straight up. Vonnie yelled straight into his face, “You do what Murray tells you, you hear, you fink?” He put the heel of his hand on Diamond’s chin and pushed. He ran out of the room.

“What kind of a meeting was that?” Joe asked Murray.

“Pay no attention. He is very upset. The White House is persecuting him.”

“What did I do? I didn’t even vote for Kegan.”

“Don’t worry. I know Vonnie. You’ll see. He will feel terrible and he’ll send you a gold cigarette case.”

Murray drove them to his son-in-law’s office building downtown. On the way Murray explained how Kegan never let up on Vonnie. There were twenty-four hours a day of pressure because Kegan was out to break up the American labor movement. If Vonnie hadn’t been made of iron he would have had a complete breakdown long ago. Never, Murray said, had one man—and that included Hitler—persecuted another man the way Kegan was persecuting Vonnie Blanik.

Diamond wasn’t listening. He was thinking about what Murray had said about Blanik making it up to him. This could mean an opening. He might get a chance to present his idea, his ideal, with maybe also a chance to break even on it.

Murray led the way down to the cellar of the son-in-law’s building. The kid had a whole seven-story building on a Tubesters’ mortgage. There were two bent-noses waiting for Murray in the cellar. Murray introduced them. The first was Herm Levin—Hermie the Mole, a legend! The other man was Silk Gabel, who looked like a jewelry salesman Joe knew in Philadelphia. They didn’t say much. Everybody sat down. It was like being in the whoopee room of somebody’s house. Murray offered a drink. The Mole and Gabel,
who were sitting on either side of Diamond on a green plastic sofa, didn’t take any. Joe took a Seven-Up. Murray sat behind a dinky wooden desk. He said, “I know you must be wondering why I invited you all the way to Detroit, Joe.” He had a very soft voice, because Murray lived on tranquilizers, and was therefore very considerate.

“Listen, it’s great to see you again, Murr.”

“Vonnie has this friend who he owes a favor to. He hates to be obligated.”

Diamond nodded because he couldn’t think of anything to say.

“So he asked me to find the best man to help this friend out. So when I heard what it was, I immediately thought of you.”

“It’s nice to hear it.”

“I want you to do a special job for this fellow, the friend of Vonnie’s.”

“A job?”

“A hit.”

“You called me all the way to Detroit for a hit when an absolute legend for hits is sitting right beside me?”

“Joe, the job is so special that it has to be somebody who is not connected in any way, shape or form. You are a man who comes out of the labor movement, who is a respected restaurant owner and a friend of the entire Philadelphia police department, and a man who never made a political statement in his entire life.”

“Why political, Murr?”

“The contract is for a certain politician.”

“What politician?”

“First I gotta make something clear. This is not Vonnie’s contract. It is not my contract. And certainly, God forbid, it has nothing to do with the International Tubesters’ Union.”

“Whose contract is it?”

“This friend of Vonnie’s.”

“Who gets hit?” Diamond liked all this talking and he didn’t like it. He didn’t like it, because Murray was
stretching everything out like he couldn’t bring himself to say who the politician was, which could be bad. But he was making such a thing out of it that the contract had to be very important to Blanik. Since the big necktie greeting he didn’t like Blanik, but life wasn’t a popularity contest, and Blanik could issue a charter for a national police union. Joe lighted a big cigar, very calm. Murray waited for him. He puffed on the cigar. He said, “What politician, Murray?”

“Tim Kegan.”

Diamond leaped to his feet. He started for the door at top speed. Gabel shoved his foot out. Diamond fell down.

Murray said, “Just take it easy, Joe.”

Diamond got up and brushed himself off. He didn’t look at Gabel. He didn’t look at anybody. Murray said, “You didn’t give me a chance to tell you, but we have the total cooperation of the Philadelphia police.”

That was Diamond’s heartland. “Which police?”

“Captain Heller of the Political Squad.”

Diamond sat down on a wooden chair. “Frank Heller?”

“I think so.”

Diamond puffed on the cigar elaborately. He was thinking and he didn’t care who knew it. He had a feeling. If he handled this right he would get his charter. They were handing him the keys themselves. If he had gone to Murray with the idea, without them begging him for something, Blanik would have given the charter to some stooge. He, Yussel Diamond, would end up like a ninth vice-president. No more than that. But even if they didn’t know it, they had just made him international president. He had to make it very hard for them. He had to make them persuade him so that he could later on bargain and set a compromise.

He said, “I won’t do it, Murray.”

Levin and Gabel got up from the sofa and took off their jackets. They kept their hats on. Both men were
classy dressers. Classy dressers are dainty about everything. They might be willing to shoot him, but they wouldn’t beat him up, because it made a big mess.

Gabel dragged out a galvanized washtub full of water. He poured in a third of a bag of cement. He dragged the tub to Diamond’s chair and put Joe’s legs in the water—feet, shoes, socks and the bottoms of his pants. Gabel stirred it all up, then poured more cement in.

“Stir with your feet,” Gabel said.

“What the hell is this?” Diamond asked Murray indignantly. “He ruined my suit and my shoes.” After a while, the way Gabel worked, the cement got very thick all around Joe’s legs.

“Murray!” Diamond said. “What are you doing?”

“Joe, I am personally sorry,” Murray said with that soft voice. “We are going to leave you down here to think everything over for about twenty-four hours. If you decide it is yes, then with the shoes and the pants it won’t hurt so much when we knock the cement off.”

“What is this
if
?” Diamond asked.

“It’s up to you, Joe.” The three men left. Diamond felt scaled with bitterness that Murray could do this to him. He could have assigned it. They had been good friends for eleven years and he could have assigned it. He reconsidered, because he had plenty of time. Maybe Murray figured he would take the deal right away. After all, out of all the guys there were, Murray had picked him for what was essentially a very big job.

In a way it was the rottenest twenty-four hours Diamond had ever spent—from the view of physical discomfort. But he was able to stay happy mentally. He kept himself euphoric, and sexually excited, with the thoughts of being the head man among all the police in the United States. He would be on a first-name basis with four hundred thousand local police and with troopers in every state of the union, except never mind Hawaii and Alaska because he hated long flights. Wherever he went in God’s country he would have
pals, people he really cared about. He thought, Jesus, there will have to be plenty of situations where they get themselves in such jams that only I can get them out. They will have to be grateful. They will have to like me. They will understand me and I will understand them. So in a lot of ways it wasn’t the rottenest twenty-four hours he ever spent. Except he wondered if he would ever be able to walk again.

***

They were right on time. The mechanics sat on the plastic sofa, facing him. Murray went behind the crappy desk again like he was some kind of honest used-car dealer. “What did you decide, Joe?” Murray said, a kindly man.

“I have a conditional answer, Murr.”

“What kind of conditional answer, Joe?”

“First: yes, I will do that certain job for you.”

Murray slammed his hands together. “Wonderful, Joe!”

“But I will only do it if Vonnie Blanik will do something for me.”

“Vonnie has nothing to do with this.” And Murray was suddenly not the kindly man.

“I want a charter—I mean a charter made out to me as international president—a charter from the International Tubesters Union that gives only me the right to organize a national police union.”

Silence followed. After a while Murray poured a drink—one large bourbon. Someday he was going to take a drink of booze with all those tranquilizers in him, and good-bye Murray, Diamond thought.

“That is what I call an idea,” Murray said. “It has so many angles I am dizzy already. Let me make a call. It might take an hour or two, because Vonnie can’t use the phones. Okay?”

“Certainly.”

“The boys will keep you company.”

“Don’t bother. Hey, just a minute. When does the cement come off? It doesn’t feel so good, believe me.”

“Take it off, Herm,” Murray said and left the cellar. Diamond found out why there were two men. Gabel put the cement on. Levin took the cement off. They had to have a union. Blanik must have given them a charter. The job took almost two hours. His shoes and pants were a wreck, never mind his socks. Levin had a pack of cards, so they played klob until Murray got back. He was jovial all over.

“You got yourself a deal, Joe,” he said. “Vonnie admires you for that idea. The charter will be in your name.”

“A dream realized is all I can say,” Diamond told them.

“And I was right about the gold cigarette case. It’s already on order.”

Diamond pretended it wasn’t the happiest day of his life. “Come on,” he said, “let’s take a sannawitch.”

MONDAY NIGHT, FEBRUARY 4, 1974—APOSTLE ISLANDS

When Frank Mayo left the hospital wing Pa told Eve to rush the tape to Cerutti. He lit a cigar, chewing on it as if it were a steak, then climbed down from the high hospital bed like a mauve spider in pajamas. He jammed his feet into a pair of baby-blue quilted mukluks, shucked on a woolen robe and walked Nick into the large corner living room with its magnificent view of beautiful Queens.

“Siddown, kiddo,” he said. Nick chose a stern, upright chair. Pa sank into the cushions of the sofa. “You’re doing a great job,” Pa said.

“At what, Pa?”

“As an investigator.”

“I would have done better as a designer of hot cross buns,” Nick said.

“Don’t underestimate yourself. We’re getting close here. What we have to do now is to trace back to show who hired Diamond through the Tubesters Union.”

“How do we do that?”

“While we sleep, I got guys working on this thing. You’re going to the Apostle Islands, on the short Wisconsin side of Lake Superior. That’s Cerutti country.”

“An Indian tribe?”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh. You meant Professor Jim Cerutti. The man who thinks for computers.”

“You think you’re kidding, but I can prove that Cerutti thinks better than computers, and he’s been analyzing
our problem here on a very intensive basis. I talked to him early this morning. He says he’s ready to make the connection with whoever went to the Tubesters to get them to find a hit man to kill Tim.”

“What else has Cerutti been thinking about? I’d like to have an opinion on Chantal Lamers and why she faked the
National Magazine
and why she went to such useless lengths to set that comic meeting in a Cadillac in Cleveland. Obviously an operation that elaborate couldn’t have seemed useless when it was planned, so the normal thing would be to question why it was planned.”

“I’ll put him on it. You never saw anything like this guy, no kidding. But I think I ought to warn you. He has his peculiarities. Anybody who lives alone that much has to be some kind of an oddball. He just happens to be an egomaniac.”