City Of Lies (44 page)

‘You got canned,’ Harper said matter-of-factly. ‘You got fucking canned, didn’t you?’

‘I didn’t get canned, Mr Harper, as you so elegantly put it.’

‘So what’s the deal here? You’re not on this officially, are you? You’ve come here without a warrant, without any official sanction, haven’t you?’

‘I’ve come here to ask for your assistance . . . to appeal to your sense of civic duty.’

Harper sneered. ‘You’re telling me I should do what you want out of civic duty?’

Duchaunak nodded.

‘And why the hell should I do anything you want me to do?’

‘Because helping me would be the right thing.’

Harper laughed coarsely. ‘The right thing? According to whom? According to you? Walt Freiberg? Or maybe Evelyn Sawyer?’

‘According to the law, Mr Harper.’

‘Oh, come on! You’re going to have to do an awful lot better than that to get my vote, Detective. You want me to do anything you’re going to have to give me one helluva good reason.’

‘Because these are bad people—’

Harper cut in. ‘And I’m supposed to have a conscience about what other people have done?’

Duchaunak shook his head. ‘I’m wasting my time, Mr Harper. I came here because I thought you might have some degree of common sense, some vague semblance of responsibility—’

‘What d’you mean, responsibility? I haven’t done anything.’

‘But your father has. People in your family have. That carries with it some sense of responsibility.’

‘That’s your viewpoint,’ Harper said. ‘That is your viewpoint and your viewpoint alone. What these people have done is their business, not mine.’

‘It’s your business when you can do something to help stop it and you choose not to.’

‘And what makes you such an expert on this thing? Why are you so driven when it comes to my father and Walt Freiberg?’

Duchaunak shook his head. ‘I have my reasons.’

‘Because of Lauren Sachs?’

Duchaunak inhaled suddenly. His eyes widened and he looked at Harper as if Harper had shot him.

‘Walt Freiberg told me,’ Harper said.

Duchaunak did not respond.

‘I spoke to Walt and he told me that Lauren Sachs was killed, but that the robbery was organized and perpetrated by Ben Marcus and his people.’

‘He would tell you that,’ Duchaunak said. ‘Of course he would tell you that . . . you think he would admit to having been involved in something like that?’

‘You see what I mean, though?’ Harper asked. ‘What I said about being told one thing, and then being told something else which sounds just as plausible. My father’s dead. No, he’s not dead. He’s alive and well and living in New York. Oh fuck, no he’s not. Someone just shot him in a liquor store robbery. My mother died of pneumonia. Did she, fuck . . . she committed suicide in the Carmine Street house and my Aunt Evelyn found her and never told me. Then I’m told about this girl, the one you were going to marry. Evelyn implied that someone had died, and that was the reason you were so obsessive about my father. She said that you attributed all your unhappiness to something my father had done. Then I find out from Walt that it was your fiancée Evelyn was talking about, but he said that Ben Marcus was responsible for her death.’ Harper smiled. His expression was bitter and filled with resentment.

‘I understand, Mr Harper—’

Harper laughed. ‘No you don’t. You haven’t got a clue what I’m talking about.’

Duchaunak didn’t reply.

‘Go on, Detective, tell me one more time how you understand.’ Harper leaned forward in the chair. His movement was meant as nothing but a challenge.

Duchaunak shook his head and looked down. ‘I don’t understand. You’re right. I don’t understand.’

Harper leaned back, reached for the cigarettes he’d ordered from room service and lit one. ‘I quit smoking,’ he said. ‘I’d quit for the best part of three months before I came here, and now I’m smoking again. I am so fucking pissed off with you people.’

‘You people?’

‘Yes, Detective,
you people
. You and Evelyn Sawyer, Walt Freiberg, this Cathy Hollander or whatever her name is. I’m even pissed off with people I don’t know and people who are already dead . . . that’s how mightily fucking pissed off I am.’

Duchaunak rested his elbows on his knees and placed the palms of his hands together. He moved his hands as he spoke to emphasize what he was saying. ‘I’m not going to tell you that I understand how you feel, Mr Harper. I don’t, and I’m not going to pretend to. I have been working on these people for seven years. What they have done, the things that have happened around them . . . this is the stuff of nightmares. These are crazy, evil, destructive people. I am sorry to speak to you like this, sorry that this is your father we’re talking about, but the truth is the truth Mr Harper. Edward Bernstein, Lenny as they call him, has been one of the most prominent New York criminal underworld figures for the past thirty or forty years—’

‘I don’t want to
know
, Detective.’ Harper started to rise from his chair. ‘I want you to leave now—’

‘Sit down, Mr Harper!’ Duchaunak snapped.

Harper dropped back into the chair as if he’d been forcibly pushed.

‘You sit back down and hear me out,’ Duchaunak said, his tone just as direct. ‘You listen to what I have to say, and then you make a decision. This isn’t something you can run away from. This is the truth, goddammit. This is the truth and you’re going to listen to it whether you like it or not. I could have you arrested—’

‘Arrested?’ Harper said. ‘Have me arrested? What in God’s name are you talking about?’

‘Aiding and abetting a known felon. Withholding information directly related to an ongoing criminal investigation. Obstructing justice. You want me to go on?’

Once again Duchaunak and Harper stared at one another in silence.

‘Right then,’ Duchaunak said. ‘You listen to what I have to say, and then you make a decision about what you want to do, okay?’

Harper did not reply.

Duchaunak nodded. ‘So, like I said, this
is
what it is, Mr Harper.
These are the facts. Your father, Edward Bernstein, has been involved, directly and indirectly, with many of the most lucrative armed robberies in New York during the last thirty or forty years. It has been estimated, and there’s no way in the world this could ever be accurately determined because he’s probably been involved in a great deal more than even we know about . . . but conservative estimates put the total financial damage somewhere in the region of a hundred to a hundred and twenty-five million dollars. Like I said, that’s just the stuff we know about. The body count is somewhere in the region of forty-five people. Once again, those are just the ones we know about. No doubt there are a number of good citizens and assorted criminals weighted down and sunk in both the East and Hudson Rivers. We don’t know for sure, and in all honesty we probably will never know. Your father has also spent a considerable number of years in the care of the state at two different times in his life. Walt Freiberg has also done two terms of imprisonment, one for aggravated assault, another for possession of a concealed weapon with intent. Third time we get him he gets the deep six.’ Duchaunak looked up at Harper. ‘That’s the expression we use for—’

‘I know what it means,’ Harper said. ‘Third strike he gets life without parole.’

Duchaunak nodded. ‘Your father is a clever man, exceptionally so, and his cleverness is matched only by his ruthless nature and his seemingly limitless greed. Walter Freiberg is his right-hand man, his consigliere, the one who organizes things when someone needs to disappear.’ Duchaunak leaned back in the chair. He seemed to relax a little, perhaps because he believed Harper was listening, perhaps because there was something reassuring in the sound of his own voice as he reiterated the reasons for his own tenacity. ‘When your father and Walt Freiberg have set their minds on something there has been nothing sufficient to stop them. The law is irrelevant, a mere inconvenience they pay lip service to every once in a while. They want something, they go and take it. As far as they’re concerned it’s as simple as that.’

Harper slid back in the chair. He felt smaller, like he’d been crushed.

‘There have been killings, Mr Harper, killings that really
warrant the term “executions”. People have died because they disagreed with your father, because they said some word that upset Walt Freiberg. Lives have been used up as if they had no value at all. This is what we’re dealing with here . . . these are the kind of people we are involved with.’

Harper sat up a little; he edged forward and rested his elbows on his knees. The smoke from the cigarette curled up around his face and made his eyes water. He did nothing to stop it.

‘There have been gangland shoot-outs over streets, blocks, parts of New York that your father believed he controlled, and those who challenged that ownership.’

‘Marcus,’ Harper said, his voice strained. ‘You’re talking about Ben Marcus, right?’

‘Ben Marcus, yes,’ Duchaunak replied. ‘You know about Ben Marcus?’

Harper looked up at Duchaunak and shook his head. ‘No, not really. Like I said before, Walt told me that the robbery where your fiancée was killed was carried out by Ben Marcus, and that Marcus was the one who had my father shot.’

Duchaunak opened his mouth to say something, and then closed it. He shook his head, seemed puzzled.

‘What?’ Harper asked.

‘Ben Marcus . . . Walt Freiberg told you that Ben Marcus arranged to have your father shot?’

‘Yeah, that’s right,’ Harper replied. ‘Hell, let’s be blunt eh? Walt told me that Marcus put a tap on my father.’

Duchaunak smiled knowingly and shook his head slowly.

‘What?’ Harper asked.

‘Cannot be, Mr Harper. I’m afraid that Walt Freiberg did not tell you the truth.’

‘You what?’

‘There is no way Ben Marcus ordered the shooting of your father.’

‘What’re you talking about? Of course he did. That’s what all this is about isn’t it? A battle over the territories. Ben Marcus wants my father’s territory . . .’ Harper stopped suddenly, sort of half laughed, but it was a strange and humorless sound. ‘Jesus, listen to me. I cannot believe I’m sitting here saying these things.’

‘Go on, Mr Harper.’

‘Right, yes . . . a battle over the territories. Ben Marcus ordered the shooting of my father because he wants to take his territory.’

‘Not possible,’ Duchaunak said. ‘Like I said, that’s just not possible.’

‘How so?’ Harper said. ‘How is that not possible?’

‘I’ll tell you exactly how it’s not possible, Mr Harper . . . and then maybe, just maybe you’ll listen to what I have to say.’

Nine-sixteen a.m. Longshoreman called Danny Fricker stands on the edge of the steps near one of the Pier 42 loading platforms and lights a cigarette. Leans on the railing, rusted and wet, smells the all-too-familiar odor of garbage and hopelessness that comes up from the river. Back and to his left is the Christopher Street Station, ahead of him and across the water he can see Castle Point, Elysian Park and Hoboken. Once went with a girl from Hoboken, name of Sally Tomczak; Polish girl with a voice like an angel, used to sing in a club called The Rosa Maria until her parents found out the kind of men who went there. That was ten years before, and as far as Danny Fricker knew she married some dumb Polack and now the only singing she did was lullabies for her babies. Helluva shame. Helluva waste. Life seemed to have such things down cold, the way it could give you something grand and then snatch it right away.

Danny Fricker smokes, he thinks, he smiles nostalgically, and then he glances down to the edge of the water and sees a gunny sack come to rest against the stonework.

Takes him twenty-five minutes and the assistance of two other guys to drag that thing out of the water. They use long wooden poles with metal hooks on the end, the things they employ to catch hold of netted cargo coming down on a crane. Slits open the sack with a boxcutter, and the sight and smell from within is enough to turn everyone’s breakfast to mystery meat and spraypaint the dockyard. Ironic in some small way, though they wouldn’t have known that at the time.

Danny Fricker calls the deputy chargehand, brute of a man called Bill Rissick. Rissick radios the dockmaster, dockmaster comes down and immediately calls the police. Despatch sends a black and white, an ambulance and a deputy coroner. Deputy Coroner is the only one who can do on-site examinations and
authorize the movement of a body. He’s the one who opens up the gunny sack and turns the body onto its back, notes the ballpoint pen protruding from the eye socket of the victim, and once his initial evaluation is complete he instructs the driver and attendant medic to take the body to the central morgue where a forensic pathologist will perform an autopsy.

Police Detective Gary Sampson takes statements from Fricker, his two buddies, the deputy chargehand and the dockmaster. He gives them leave to resume their day, tells them not to worry about it. They will, undoubtedly, because such a thing as this is rare within a lifetime, and once experienced there is little one can do to forget it. The images, the sounds, the smells, the feelings – such things are held in perpetuity within the memory, and they can backflash unexpectedly. And it’s Christmas for God’s sake. Kind of a world is it when shit like this happens so close to Christmas?

‘Fucked-up world if you want my opinion,’ Fricker tells Sampson.

Sampson nods, thinking not only of a man in a gunny sack with a biro in his eye, but also of Darryl and Jessica McCaffrey, a brother and sister murdered, related by blood but seemingly unconnected, a case that appears to be going nowhere, more than likely never will.

‘You’re right there,’ he tells Fricker. ‘Really very fucked up indeed.’

‘Not a question of luck,’ Walt Freiberg told Joe Koenig. ‘It’s never a question of luck. Relying on luck, attributing anything to luck, good or bad, is merely a way of excusing your own lack of preparation.’ Walt smiled. ‘Edward used to say that . . . he’d say, “Walt, you have to understand that luck is a stupid man’s way of telling the world he couldn’t figure the odds.”’