Keeplock: A Novel of Crime (16 page)

“Hey, I told him not to move. He shouldn’t have moved.”

“The world been hurtin’ me all my damn life. Ain’t nothin’ wrong with puttin’ a little hurt on the world.”

“I saw the bitch standing there and I wanted to fuck her, so I fucked her. How was I supposed to know she was a cop?”

You never hear anything resembling remorse. Not among convicts, anyway. Remorse is a ritual. When the time for sentencing finally arrives, whether you’ve copped a plea or been convicted at trial, you’re allowed to make a statement. Some choose to remain silent, but many take the opportunity to state their deep sorrow for any pain they’ve caused their victims. The speech isn’t for the judge’s benefit. The judge has already made a decision based on reports sent over by the Probation Department. The remorse expressed by the prisoner before the bar of justice is for the ears of some parole board in the distant future. It will be repeated to the parole board each time the convict is up for consideration. Without an admission of guilt and an expression of deep sorrow, it’s almost impossible to get parole. Your remorse doesn’t have to be sincere, but it has to be stated. In the end, it becomes just another prison humiliation.

I
T WAS SIX-THIRTY IN
the morning. I was on the phone, waiting for Simon Cooper, when Old McDonald came into his office. He took one look at my face, spun on his heel, and left the room.

“Yeah?” Simon didn’t seem too happy either.

“What’s the matter, your corn flakes gettin’ soggy?”

“Who is this?”

“Pete Frangello.”

“Shit.”

“Don’t kill me, Simon. I’m only the messenger.” I gave him a second to respond, but he kept his mouth shut.

“I gotta speak to you as soon as possible.”

“It can’t wait until I get to the office?”

“It can if you leave soon. The thing is, I
have
to be out in Queens at nine o’clock. If I’m not there by nine, I can’t go at all.”

“Damn,” he whispered. Then: “I’ll meet you at the office in half an hour.”

“I’ll bring the corn flakes.”

“Fuck you, Pete. This better be good.”

Thirty minutes later I was sitting across from him in his office, going over my story. I didn’t mention the dream or what had happened to me in Cortlandt, but they were the only things I left out. When I finished, he sat back in his chair and shook his head.

“The problem, Pete, is how do I know you’re telling me the truth? You’ve scammed me so many times, it’s hard for me to believe anything you say.”

I didn’t answer. Just stared across at him. He was massive, his neck bigger than my thigh, his face as blank and empty as my own. “My problem,” I said finally, “is that I don’t know what to do. I can feel the urge to just take off. You understand what I’m saying? I wanna get on the next bus and keep going. I wanna get to Los Angeles, jump in the ocean and start swimming west.”

“You don’t need me for that,” Simon observed, lighting his pipe. “You can do that without my help.”

I ignored him. “If I go back into Rikers and take my chances with the board, Eddie’s gonna find someone else and do the job anyway. What kind of cops do you think they put in a patrol car to guard a witness’s house? You figure they take experienced veterans? You think they use sergeants or lieutenants? Kids do that work, Simon. And I keep seeing a twenty-year-old rookie with half his head blown off. I can’t deal with it.”

I hadn’t mentioned the dream, so I couldn’t tell him that I knew the dream would come back if I let it happen. He wouldn’t have understood, anyway. If you haven’t spent a couple of weeks not caring whether you live or die, there’s no way you
can
understand. Maybe that’s why the psychiatrists deal with that reality by drugging it into oblivion.

“What Eddie Conte does or doesn’t do is a problem for the cops,” he said. “
Your
only move is to walk away. Which, as you say, means going to Rikers for a few months. Of course, the fact that you’ve been bullshitting Condon and Rico makes the deal a little more complicated. If you tell them what Conte’s
really
up to and then refuse to help, they’re gonna do everything they can to bury you. They’re gonna go to the D.A.’s people and they’re gonna go to the parole board. I make it 70-30 you end up in Cortlandt. On the other hand, you could always let the cop die. What’s a pig’s life mean to you, anyway?”

He was pissed, no question about it.

“I thought you didn’t believe me.”

My wise-guy attitude wasn’t helping. I knew it, but I really didn’t have another way to deal with parole officers. Or any other agent of law enforcement. It’s what they expect and what the honorable convict delivers.

“The way I see it, you don’t have a lot of choices.” He didn’t bother answering my question. “That’s
if
you really want to save that cop. If you want to save the cop, you have to go back to Condon and Rico and tell them you lied. You have to tell them what’s really happening and you have to go through with it. You have to become a rat.”

“You enjoying this, Simon?”

“Very much.”

“At least you’re honest.”

“Which puts me one up on
you
.” He wasn’t giving an inch. “Now, maybe you wanna tell me what you’re doing here? Tell me exactly what magic trick you expect me to perform?”

“You blaming me, Simon? If you were in my place, what would you have done?”

“I
couldn’t
be in your place, because I wouldn’t have dealt with Calvin by damn near killing him. I’d have found another way.”

“You can’t change the past. It’s not stored in some computer’s memory. It doesn’t erase.”

“But it
does
crash.” He broke a smile and I followed him into it. “So what’d you come here for?”

“If I told you I needed to talk to someone and I don’t have anyone else, would you believe me? Nobody, Simon. Not a fucking soul.”

He thought about it for a moment. “Yeah, I’d believe it.”

“And if I told you I had a second reason, would you believe that, too?”

“And a third and a fourth and a fifth.”

“I thought
I
was the wise guy.”

“Why don’t you just give it to me?” His voice was gentle now. “What do you want me to do?”

“I want somebody else to know what’s happening. There are gonna be a lot of guns behind that department store. Guns that shoot real bullets that kill people. If something goes wrong, Condon and Rico will let me fry.”

“You told me that last time I spoke to you, but I get the point. Remember what you said about the past? That it can’t be erased? I’m thinking about all the times you came in here and lied. The past being what it is, how could you blame me? Like, for instance, if you can’t defend yourself by telling the truth, what good does it do for me to know it?”

“You work with the prosecutors all the time. You can tell them what’s going on. If they think you’ll testify for me, they won’t go to trial.”

“What if I refuse?”

“You can’t refuse. No more than you could handle Calvin the way I did. You’ve got a conscience, Simon. And you believe in really stupid things like justice. Once you know, you won’t turn your back.”

It was eight o’clock when I left Simon’s office. Winter was taking a last shot at New York and the commuters were hustling along, driven by a sharp wind. Instead of going directly to the subway, I walked back to Tenth Avenue until I found a dealer who needed money bad enough to freeze his butt at eight in the morning. I bought ten bags of dope from him, a bundle, and stuffed it into my jacket.

The ride out to Woodhaven, in Queens, involved two subways and a bus. I’d probably be a little late, but I stopped in a candy store and bought a package of rubber bands and a small box of paper clips. I didn’t have to worry about how I’d pass the time, because there was only one thing to think about at that point—Tony Morasso. The space between controlling Tony and having to kill him or hurt him so bad that he wouldn’t be able to do the job was no larger than a crack in the sidewalk.

I was going away from the morning rush to work, and the E Train I took in the Port Authority was only half full, while the G I switched to in Long Island City was nearly empty. A couple of stops into Queens, a tall kid in a black leather jacket got on the train. His blond hair hung down to his shoulders and he had it tied with a red bandana. He sat down, put his feet up on the seat, and lit a cigarette.

I took out a paper clip, bent it very carefully, fitted it to a rubber band, and let fly. I missed my target, the cigarette hanging from his mouth, but I caught him on the tip of his nose. His first reaction was confusion. He brought a finger up to his nose, then looked down at the paper clip resting on his knee, then across at me.

The shrinks say that depression is just a cover for deep-seated anger. That rage is the real basis for suicide. I sat back in my seat and folded my arms across my chest, putting all of that deep-seated rage into my eyes, then blew the anger through the space between us. He looked back at me, trying to figure out what had happened and what he had to do about it. I helped him along by slowly stretching my lips into a broad smile.

“Get the fuck out of here,” I said quietly. “Get out.” I was making him for a punk, but if he happened to have a piece tucked into the waistband of those greasy jeans, I’d be in a lot of trouble. It’s called “walking the line,” which is what I was going to have to do with Tony Morasso.

“Why are you doing this? I ain’t botherin’ you.”

“Get the fuck out.” I started to fit another paper clip into my trusty rubber band when he jumped off the seat and almost ran into the next car. I think he was crying.

The rest of the trip went smoothly enough. I took a bus up Woodhaven Boulevard to Sixty-ninth Avenue, then walked the four blocks to the two-family home where Eddie had stashed his gang of would-be murderers. It was the perfect spot. The blocks surrounding Woodhaven Boulevard, white working class for the most part, form a narrow tongue that separates the black slums of Brooklyn from the black slums of South Jamaica. Most of the families are either German or Italian and have been living there for generations. They’re far more afraid of the darkies to the east and west than of the mob within their midst. Over the years, they’ve learned to mind their own business and keep their mouths shut.

I stopped in front of the address Eddie had given me, a two-family home surrounded by a narrow strip of lawn, and suddenly realized that I didn’t know which floor he was living on. Eddie had told me that he’d used a phony name when he’d rented the place, but he hadn’t told me what name he’d used. So much for the master criminal. I suppose I could have gone up and pushed a bell at random, but what would I say if some little old lady answered?

My dilemma was solved when Eddie’s wife, Annie, opened the front door and waved me forward.

“Jeez,” she said as I went by, “am I glad to see you. Eddie’s upstairs keeping Tony busy until you come, but you’re here and now we can have breakfast.”

The words flew out of her mouth. For a minute, I thought she was on speed or coke, but her eyes were clear and it didn’t seem likely that Tony would let drugs into the house with the job so close.

“You’re renting the whole house,” I said.

“Of course. It wouldn’t pay to have nosy neighbors, would it? I’m doin’ the breakfast. That’s my job, because I ain’t crazy about guns. I take care of the house, do the shopping and cleaning and like that.”

Eddie’s use of his wife as a domestic servant might seem out of date, but in the old days, Italian criminals kept their families away from the action. I followed Annie back through the lower apartment into the kitchen. She was short and wiry, full of life and spunky to a fault. I realized both that I liked her and that I was going to send her husband to jail for the rest of his life.

Annie didn’t waste any time. As soon as we were in the kitchen, she went to the stove and lit the burners under two huge frying pans. “Jeez, that Tony’s a crazy one. Avi’s gonna kill him, I just know it. Avi ain’t a bad guy, for a Jew, but ya never know what he’s thinkin’. I mean I always heard Jews liked to talk and stuff, but he never says nothin’.”

“What about Parker? How’s he doing?”

“John’s a real doll. He’s showin’ me how to use a computer, keeps tellin’ me about how I can get a good job, but what do I need a job for? We’re gonna be rich, right?”

She was shoving Wonder Bread into a toaster, buttering the pieces as they popped out, turning the bacon in a third frying pan, cracking eggs into a bowl. “Sometimes my husband can be a real dope. I mean bringing an asshole like Tony Morasso here. God, what a mess. Eddie says you can keep Tony under control and I
sure
hope he’s right. You must have a magic wand or something, ’cause Eddie’s been trying like crazy and he can’t get Morasso to lay off Avi and John. I mean, how are you gonna do it?”

“I’m gonna ask him real nice.”

She reached across the table and hit the back of my hand with a wooden spoon. The gesture was affectionate. “Eddie told me you were a wise guy. I said maybe you could handle Tony, but who was gonna handle you?”

“What’d he say to that?”

“Eddie said you were a professional, even if you were too independent. He said Avi used to be in the Jewish army and Parker used to work in a big corporation. They were part of a team and you were always independent, but you wouldn’t screw up the job.”

I heard the sound of footsteps on stairs and turned to face the doorway. Eddie came in first, followed by Parker, Stern, and Morasso. Avi and John smiled. Eddie must have told them I was coming on board. Tony, on the other hand, stopped in his tracks when he saw me.

“What the fuck? What the fuck? What the fuck?” His eyes were rolling in his head.

“I see that freedom hasn’t improved your vocabulary.”

“What the fuck? What the fuck? What the fuck is this shit?”

“But it’s nice to know that you’re trying.”

I
GLANCED OVER AT
John Parker and Avi Stern. Parker wore a look of joyous anticipation, like an altar boy in a Norman Rockwell painting. Avi’s heavy-boned face was impassive, as always. I could understand why Eddie had picked Avi to shoot the cop. Jews are supposed to be great politicians and lawyers, but Avi had no middle ground. When he went off, he tried to kill. I considered him the most dangerous man I’d ever met and I was proud to be able to perform for him. I wasn’t so sure how I felt about ratting him out.