Love or Honor (10 page)

Chris got a beer and they went back into the living room. He sat on the sofa and opened the newspaper while Liz went to the piano. She didn't play well, just enough to pick out the notes in a piece she was learning, but Chris liked the way she looked, sitting there. They'd had a good time shopping for the piano as soon as they got back from their honeymoon. Usually Liz didn't want him to go shopping with her—she always knew what she was looking for, and didn't need him.

“Did you have a good day?” he asked.

“So-so,” she said, not looking up. “It could have been better.”

“Well, hey, you're good, you're really good,” Chris said. “So you'll have a better day tomorrow.”

“I hope so,” Liz said. She looked over at him. “How was your day?”

“Busy,” Chris said. He paused. “Ah—one more thing, about my work. I'll be getting a new phone in the—in my office. If it rings when I'm not here, don't answer it. Just let it ring. Don't ever answer that phone.”

“Will it interfere with our phone?” Liz asked. “I get business calls here, too.”

“No, it won't interfere with our phone,” Chris said.

“Are you sure?” Liz continued. “Is our phone going to be monitored?”

“No, no,” Chris said impatiently. “It has absolutely nothing to do with our regular phone. It's on another wave length or something.”

Liz didn't say anything more. She kept working on the piece, picking out the notes with two fingers. Chris hoped she was satisfied about the phone, and he assumed she was, but it wasn't always easy to tell what Liz was feeling. She wasn't a demonstrative person, probably because of her German background, he thought. It was hard to tell when she was angry. He thought she probably had never been really angry at him, just as he had never been really angry at her. They'd never had a serious argument. They got along fine.

The phone itself looked perfectly ordinary, a plain black telephone that he put on a small table next to an easy chair. But the workings of the phone were so complicated that Chris never knew how it worked, just that it was all electronic. It took the man from the phone company a whole day to install the equipment in a big box in the den closet. Harry came out that day and stayed to supervise the installation. All Chris knew for sure was that the phone was hooked up in such a devious way that if someone tried to trace the number—even someone from the phone company—they'd end up in Brooklyn. So Chris felt safe in giving the number to guys he was beginning to know, though he never told anyone where he lived. Most of the guys he met spent most of their lives in bars and clubs and restaurants, so the question had come up only casually, once or twice. He'd shrugged it off by mumbling that he lived in Valley Stream with his aunt, who was very sick and needed rest and quiet.

Gene seemed to like Chris, whom he called “Curley,” and Chris liked Gene. He was a bad apple, no doubt about it. He'd spent time in the can, though he didn't say for what. But he seemed to Chris to be a good family man, too, at least in context. He was separated from his wife—only temporary, he said—and was living in an apartment in Astoria. He talked of his children with wistful pride, and showed Chris a wallet stuffed with their pictures.

Gene was low-level, too, but he was a step above Bennie. And Chris felt that the way to get to the higher-ups was through the lower guys, who always owed them money. Gene owed a lot of money to the shylocks, he told Chris. He needed to make a lot of money to pay them off, and to give to his wife, for the kids. Gene intended to solve his financial problems by winning big at the Greek dice game,
barbouti,
and when he invited Chris to come with him to The Grotto, a cocktail lounge in Astoria, where a high-stakes barbouti game ran, Chris was delighted to go.

The Grotto was Kostos's place. Chris wasn't introduced to him that first night, but he recognized him at once. Kostos wasn't very tall, about five ten, but he was very stronglooking, powerfully built, and muscular. He had a friendly yet commanding way about him. He looked very Greek, yet he looked what Chris called “Americanized” too. He acted the way Chris thought any capo in the Italian crime community would act, with the Cadillac, the pinky ring, the gambling, the women, the whole ball of wax.

Gene had told Chris something about Kostos, not realizing that Chris could have told him a lot more. Chris had heard at his Intel briefing that Kostos was thought to have had a role in the ten-million-dollar jewel robbery at the Pierre Hotel a few years earlier. Kostos's friend Sammy Nalo—“Sammy the Arab,” who spoke Greek—had been convicted for that massive job and was doing time at Attica, where Kostos visited him. Kostos was suspected of having gotten a piece of that action; a lot of the loot was still missing. Nothing had been proven, though Chris had heard that when the police called on Kostos at that time, Kostos had greeted them at his front door wearing a bulletproof vest, carrying an automatic weapon.

Kostos was known as a kind of Robin Hood in Astoria. If a woman with, say, three children and no husband was about to have her rent raised, and word got to Kostos that she couldn't make it, Kostos was likely to arrange that her rent would stay the same or perhaps even be lowered. He gave generously to charities from one of his profitable businesses, which included a gas-skimming operation. Altogether, Kostos was most interesting, and as Chris became a regular at the Grotto, his life became more interesting, too. He met Kostos's brother Pete, whose violent tendencies seemed to border on the psychotic. One night Chris was sitting at the bar when Pete and Kostos got into a loud argument. Before anyone could stop him, Pete pulled a gun and shot the barmaid—Kostos's girlfriend—in the arm. Chris was stunned. He was dismayed that he couldn't react as a cop, even though he was carrying a gun. He wasn't carrying his service revolver, which he liked—that .38-caliber weapon was too big, too recognizable as the “detective special.” He had a little .25 Titan automatic, which he could slip into his jacket pocket as easily as though it were a hard pack of cigarettes. He didn't have a bullet in the chamber because automatics were notoriously unreliable, likely to go off at any time, so if he'd had to use it, he'd have had to take time to load the chamber. Still, it was better than nothing. After so many years as a cop, carrying his weapon everywhere he went, he felt insecure without it, as most cops did. When his partner Phil got married, after only a year and a half on the force, he'd worn his gun under his tuxedo.

Chris hadn't anticipated a time when he'd want to pull his gun and not be able to. Still, the incident wasn't terribly serious—the girl had only a superficial wound. But Chris couldn't help thinking that the episode illustrated the widening gap between his regular life and instincts, and his undercover life. Perhaps because the gap was growing, he tried hard to maintain both lives as fully as possible. On nights when he stayed in Astoria, he tended to stay all night, both at the Grotto and at other neighborhood bars and clubs, when the mothers with toddlers and the fragile white-haired old women of daylight were replaced with what Chris termed “night crawlers.” Many of them were Greek, but there was a sizable smattering of Italians, too. Chris met an Italian, Jimmy, whom he didn't like, but who became a good source. Sometimes Chris would end up at Jimmy's joint, help him close the place, then go out to breakfast with him, usually with Jimmy's gofer, Dominic, tagging along.

Then, on other nights, Chris would try to get home to Forest Hills reasonably early, to be able to spend at least part of the night in a normal way. He was wary of calling friends, who were sure to ask what he was doing. But if anybody called him, he almost always got on the phone and chatted, just to stay in touch.

When an old friend called him at home one night and asked him to drop by—he and his wife wanted some advice about adopting a child—Chris said sure, he'd drive out to Great Neck the next night. He spent part of that night at the Grotto with Gene and some other people, then drove out to visit his friends. When he got into their neighborhood, he stopped at an all-night diner to say he was running late but he was nearly there, did they want him to bring over some sandwiches, or a chunk of pie? He reached their house about midnight, and stayed about two hours before driving home to Forest Hills.

He saw Gene the next night, and the next. Then he took another night off. He and Liz were stretched out on their bed, watching a movie, eating popcorn, when the phone in the den rang.

“I need to see you,” Gene said abruptly. “I'm in your neighborhood. C'mon over and meet me at the diner.”

Chris stalled. “Well, where exactly are you?” he asked.

“I told you, out by your place,” Gene said impatiently. “I'm calling from the diner on Little Neck Parkway. I was going to just come by your house, but I'm hungry, so I came here. Hey, I need to talk, Curley, c'mon over.”

Chris made up the best excuse he could think of, instantly—he had a girl with him, they were drinking, having a good time—“You know how it is, pal? I just can't get away now, you know?” Gene laughed knowingly and accepted it. But when Chris hung up the phone, he was chilly with sweat. Thank God the night they followed me wasn't the night I went straight home, he thought. When he'd gone inside his friends' house, and hadn't come out right away, they'd apparently been satisfied that he lived there. He wasn't sorry that they thought so; it worked to his advantage that they thought he lived so far from his real place. But it scared him. What if Gene hadn't been hungry, and had just turned up on the doorstep?

“I need another place,” he told Harry. “I'm jeopardizing my wife, and myself, and my friends, and this whole operation, by living at home.” Harry was dubious. “That'll cost money,” he said.

“Harry, I'm telling you, I've
got
to have another place,” Chris insisted. “Besides, I've been to Gene's apartment, and Bennie's place—they're going to wonder why I don't ask them to stop by my place sometime.”

Harry nodded. “Okay, I'll see what I can do.”

Chris was annoyed at Harry for not giving the immediate go-ahead; hadn't the inspector said he'd have carte blanche? But he was even more annoyed at himself. He'd been careless for driving out to Great Neck without checking his rearview mirror. The casual days and friendly nights had lulled him into a sense of security that he now saw was unfounded and dangerous. If he was going to make any headway in this operation, he would have to disassociate himself more clearly from his former life. No more visiting old friends. No more spending so many nights at home, pretending life was normal when it wasn't.

But was he making any headway? He had to admit he doubted it. The ninety days had come and gone, and although he felt he'd done his best, about all he had to show for it was evidence of some drug deals and the hustling of merchandise that guys thought was swag. The highlight of his life in deep cover had been meeting Kostos and, he recalled wryly, getting the Big G's plate number. Instead of spinning his wheels, maybe he should drop out now and head back to the 4-oh. No questions asked.

All this was running through his mind when he saw Gene again. Gene grabbed him by the arm, talking fast and enthusiastically. He had decided he could make the money he needed by opening an after-hours joint. But he didn't have the cash. He needed a partner.

Chris tried to look doubtful. “For that kind of joint to make it, you need to be able to pull in a lot of people,” he pointed out. “You know the people?”

“I know a ton of people, but I haven't got the money,” Gene said.

Chris grinned. “If you've got the people, I've got the money,” he said.

He got twenty-five hundred dollars from Harry and went on a shopping spree down in the Bowery with Gene, buying bar stools, fixtures, glassware. Gene liked working with his hands, and built a beautiful curving bar of mahogany. They set up shop on the second floor of a nondescript little building, cream-colored stucco in front, red brick on the sides, on 23rd Road in Astoria, about four blocks from the Grotto. They had to give a percentage to the guy who owned the building and who operated a bar on the first floor, a dingy little place with a tacky awning over the sidewalk entrance. Their place upstairs could be reached either by going through the downstairs bar, or directly from the sidewalk, through a side door. Chris preferred using the outside entrance, because he didn't like the owner; Gene called him a weasel. The weasel didn't want them to open their place until two
A.M.,
so as not to cut into his business. When Gene told Chris he'd persuaded him to let them open at one o'clock, Chris didn't ask how.

They called their place the C&G Club, using their initials, which looked good on the cards they had printed, and sounded good when they said it: the Cee-Gee Club. They had a grand opening. Then, to drum up business, they spent a lot of time in the evenings “making a drop”—dropping cards and conversation, along with their money, at other bars and clubs.

Their work paid off, as their place became popular, sometimes filled with customers from opening time till daybreak, or even beyond. Some of the guys who came were smalltime hustlers; some were waiters who just came by to relax after a night's work. Pretty girls came, drawn to places where men with money and power might be found, and some of those men came, too. “Johnny the Gent” always had his overcoat draped over his shoulder, continental style, when he sauntered in, always smoking a cigarette in a silver holder, always with a couple of flunkies trailing in his wake. Johnny was tall and pencil-thin, with long, straight, oily hair that he wore combed down to one side over his forehead, nearly into his eye. Chris felt especially good when he was able to finger Johnny as a major heroin dealer, because he hated the way the guy swaggered, boasting about the deals he was making, the money he was raking in through some diners he had going. Chris thought of his father and the coffee shops he'd worked so hard to buy and then keep going, without having time to enjoy his money.