Love or Honor (24 page)

He felt he was accepted by everybody without being completely trusted by anybody, except, probably, Solly and Frankie. But that was not surprising. In this world, trust was elusive at best, terminal folly at worst. Carlo Gambino, stoop-shouldered and mousy-looking, had helped plan the barbershop slaying of his boss, Anastasia. Two decades later, when Gambinos gathered in that Brooklyn kitchen to choose Don Carlo's successor, one of them took the precaution of taping an automatic under the table.

Chris could never be a “made” guy, because he wasn't Italian, but he could be connected, as long as he was an earner. Chris was proving himself a strong earner, if not as productive as another non-Italian, Jimmy Burke. Chris met Burke at Robert's Lounge, one of the many Queens joints Chris was led to. Under the leadership of Paul Vario, a Luchese capo, Burke handled the day-to-day operations at Kennedy Airport, where a six-million-dollar robbery was carried out at Lufthansa Airlines in December, 1978. Chris was always aggravated that the heist was probably being planned at Robert's and other places, earlier that year, without him catching on.

He knew guns were moving, though, and he bought a couple from a big guy named Rudy, once at Chris's own club and once at a topless bar Rudy had just opened in Astoria. Rudy didn't seem to like Chris when they first met, but as Chris moved up, some of the respect given to Solly, John, and other men Chris knew rubbed off on him. When Rudy offered to sell him a couple of guns, Chris was a willing customer. He wasn't interested, at that point, in making a bust for illegal arms dealing; that was no more a priority than making a drug buy. If he knew beforehand of a crime going down—a hijacking, a killing—of course he couldn't just sit on that information. But in case of a routine gun deal, it was just something that might be useful. Harry would have the documentation, names, dates, and serial numbers, and it might even turn out to be some kind of leverage, someday.

Chris just wanted to buy the weapon, while Rudy insisted on telling him more than he really wished to know. What Chris mostly knew about guns was that he didn't like them. Thanks to movies and TV, people thought cops pulled their guns several times a day, and shot somebody once or twice a week. In fact, even in his early days in the NYPD, when the rules on the use of deadly force were not as stringent as they later became, Chris had been reluctant to wield the weapon. He'd seen a woman who was leaning out a window get shot in the head, from a cop's gun, during a riot in the 4-oh neighborhood, and although he knew it had been an accident, he'd also known there were too many such accidents. That's why cops were not allowed to cock their guns: The trigger on a cocked gun needed to be pulled very slightly, only about one eighth of an inch, with very little pressure.

In the old days, a cop could shoot at a guy in a stolen car: “A fleeing felon.” But why would you want to shoot at a stolen car? There might be kids in that car. Besides, using the gun led to a lot of headaches. You were questioned by the duty captain, who evaluated the situation and filled out stacks of forms. Then they kept you inside, doing desk work, until the whole episode had been investigated. There was the psychological effect, too: Some guys, once they shot somebody, got trigger-happy, others got trigger-shy. Either way, it was traumatic.

Chris wouldn't have minded if he hadn't had to carry a weapon at all, but of course he'd had no choice. He'd even had to buy his gun. His original gun, the blue-black service revolver, had cost him fifty-five dollars. He'd had his choice of the Smith & Wesson or the Colt. Both were .38 caliber, about the same size, but the mechanisms were different.

To open up the cylinder of a Smith & Wesson, you had to press forward, and you loaded the cylinder by turning it counterclockwise. On a Colt, it was reversed: You pushed the cylinder backward, and rotated it clockwise for loading. The difference was small but significant: If a cop had to reload while somebody was shooting at him, it was helpful to know which way to turn the cylinder.

Rudy, on the other hand, was a gun collector and connoisseur, knowledgeable about capability, velocity, and the intricate mechanism of the 9 mm. Walther PPK that he sold to Chris for a hundred and fifty dollars, about half-price. Rudy threw in a box of ammo, too. He was one of Big Lou's sidekicks; Lou had known Chris since Chris first met Solly, and Lou told Chris that both he and Rudy had taken care of a lot of people with machine guns. Although Chris could not pin Lou down to specifics, and could not even be sure if Lou was telling the truth—after all, Chris could have said that about himself, too—he knew from other sources that Rudy was a dangerous guy. So when Lou told Chris, “Rudy's good with a gun,” Chris thought he might just as well believe him.

Some of the men Chris met were just casual acquaintances, no more than an introduction: Anthony Corallo, nicknamed “Ducks” for his skill at ducking indictments, and Paul Castellano—“This is Chris. This is Paul C.” Some he came to know much better, including another of Lou's cronies, Nick Gregoris. Nick lived in Howard Beach, not far from the Bergin, the Gambino satellite club supervised by John Gotti. Nick bragged a lot to Chris, too—“I put away a lot of people in Brooklyn”—and while Chris couldn't be sure of that, either, he knew that Gregoris had done time and that he had indeed been active in Brooklyn until something went wrong. “They chased him out of Brooklyn and gave him to me,” Solly told Chris mournfully. Nick had been involved in the bloody Gallo-Profaci feud. He was the only man Chris knew who carried a stiletto—a push-button knife with an eight-inch blade. Nick showed it to Chris one night at the Kew.

The Kew came to seem like a second home to Chris. He got phone calls there; he was a regular at the corner table, which was always reserved, whether anybody showed up or not. The Kew was an especially secure place for Chris to be, after the night he went with Frankie to a new place Frankie knew.

Only it didn't look new to Chris, as Frankie pulled into the parking lot. It looked vaguely familiar. Chris remembered the bowling alley connected to the cocktail lounge, and when Frankie introduced Chris to the owner, who then called to his wife to come over and meet these people, Chris remembered everything only too well.

The ten years since he'd been here telescoped; as Josie smiled at him now, it felt like yesterday. He and his buddy, both of them in partial uniform, raincoats over uniform pants and shirts … jumping out the window, feeling like Errol Flynn. Here was Josie smiling, holding out her hand, looking at him with an unmistakable look that told him she remembered, too.

Chris hoped he wasn't swaying on his feet as he took her hand. She can't say anything, he told himself. There's no
way
she can say anything! She would implicate herself with her husband. She wouldn't take that chance, would she? How can she possibly say anything?

Josie said hello. She said it was nice to meet him. She said he should sit down and have a drink. But she didn't say anything.

Marty felt good about what was happening between them, Chris knew. She was warm and receptive and loving. Chris was vaguely uneasy when they were at Waterside; he always had a lurking feeling that there was some kind of device in the place that he didn't know about, and that Harry might have been picking up more than Chris thought. Harry had a key to the place, too. Then he told himself he was just being overly nervous, a little paranoid. Still, he felt better when he and Marty went away. She got a few days off from work, and they met at the Eastern Shuttle gate, at LaGuardia, for a flight to Boston. Chris was so anxious to get away that he didn't even mind it, though he disliked flying. Before they knew it, they were settled in at an elegant old hotel, downtown.

Chris was in absolute heaven. He felt liberated. No grid search when he walked into a restaurant; no mumbling to Marty at the sight of a long ticket line, “I don't feel like going here.” No dark glasses, although he was so accustomed to wearing them by now that he wore them anyway.

They spent an entire day at the Museum of Fine Arts, and when they felt their feet were about to drop off, they went back to the hotel and kicked off their shoes and ordered from room service.

They went to a concert and had a long, late supper afterward, as they analyzed the music they'd heard. Chris talked so enthusiastically about music that Marty suddenly smiled brightly, as though she'd just thought of something.

“Did you ever think about opening a music store?” she asked. “You like music so much—you'd be so good at it.”

“Well, no,” Chris said truthfully. “I never did.”

“Or an art shop,” she continued. “Maybe you should go back to school—or art school—and develop that. Have you thought about that?”

“Well, no,” Chris said, again truthfully.

She put her hand over his on the table, as she had a habit of doing.

“Look at me, Christy,” she commanded.

Chris looked.

“You're not like the other men who know my father,” she said quietly. “You can do better.”

On the flight back to New York, Chris was as tense as he'd been lighthearted on the way up. He was withdrawn, so silent that Marty noticed it. “You're a different person when you're out of New York,” she said. Liz had noticed that, too, only Liz had added, “You're more like yourself.”

Except for Zero's, there was no place he could take Marty that was connected with his work, to maintain the notion that even when he was with her, he was doing his job. He didn't even like taking her to Zero's, because guys kept coming over to talk to him, and he had to act at least somewhat like Solly's man. He could tell Marty didn't like it, either.

Every other place was out of the question, either because there was too much going on, as at the Kew, or because they were such dumps. One place on the lower east side, The Still, was a hole. Solly's brother owned a piece of the place, so when Solly asked Chris to drop by and pick up some money, Chris felt he had to go. A cop who'd gone bad hung out in there, Chris heard; he didn't know whether that cop would recognize him, and he hated to take the chance. He made the stop quickly, taking the envelope from behind the bar and scooting out without having the drink he was offered. He didn't look at any of the guys huddled at the bar, though he did admire the old painting of Rudolph Valentino over the bar. He was thinking he'd have to come up with a good reason for Solly why he couldn't make stops for him there, when the problem was solved. The FBI rolled in with vacuum cleaners and hit the basement, where a man had been murdered. They were looking for evidence—hairs and the like—and after they vacuumed, they shut the place down.

A joint on West 22nd Street—far west, in the warehouse section—was a dangerous place, he'd heard. He didn't realize how dangerous until he got just inside the door, past the bouncer, a big black guy.

“You got a piece?” he was asked.

“Yeah, I got a gun, what's the problem?” Chris asked.

“You got a piece, you gotta leave it here,” he was told.

If you said no, they didn't take your word for it; they patted you down. Chris had seen a lot of strange sights in his time, but he still marveled at the sight of a couple of dozen guns stashed in little cubicles, row on row. People checked their guns as routinely as though they were coats or hats. You didn't get a claim check; if you didn't know which gun was yours, you were in such a bad way that a claim check wasn't going to help.

Anytime you have so many guns around, Chris thought, there's going to be a shooting, sooner or later. He didn't stay long, the first time. When he went back, he went prepared. He'd removed the firing pin from the gun he checked—if he got shot, he'd rather not be shot with his own gun—and he tucked another gun in his boot. That gun had the firing pin in place.

The joint didn't have a name, but Chris thought it could have qualified for the quaint old label, “den of iniquity.” Mounds of coke were piled along the bar, with people leaning over, snorting through straws as casually as people lined up at other bars to drink. Unlike other mob joints he'd known, this one was patronized by as many blacks as whites. One black guy with snow-white hair and bright blue eyes had a stable of both black and white women and was of particular interest to Chris.

Blue-eyes wasn't snorting, but he was smoking a joint, and he handed it to Chris, who pretended to smoke it—he was excellent at faking that, by now. Chris had just finished a drink when he heard a commotion at the end of the bar.

A woman was being pushed up against the wall. She was nude. She was crying hysterically, as two men began stubbing out cigarettes on her breasts and on her stomach. One man grabbed a long stick, like a broomstick, and shoved it up her vagina. She gave a piercing scream, but people along the bar, blowing their coke, just looked over at her, as though it were the evening's entertainment. Blue-eyes shook his head mournfully and told Chris the whore was being taught a lesson—she was a junkie who'd lifted somebody's wallet.

Chris felt helpless. He couldn't stop it. Yet he had to stop it. He'd have to pull his spare gun and whatever happened, happened. He got up from the bar stool and felt dizzy. He began to sweat. The man who had been torturing the woman yelled something. Through a sweaty blur, Chris saw him throw her clothes at her. Clutching her clothes, crying, she ran into a back room and the door closed behind her.

Chris weaved his way outside, retrieving his gun on the way, past the bouncer. He was thinking fuzzily that she hadn't come out—maybe he should call the cops—when everything started spinning round and round.

He fell to the sidewalk and vomited. He lay flat on the pavement, thinking: the car—I've got to make it to the car. He never parked directly in front of a place, always two blocks away, at least. If anybody was watching the place, law enforcement or otherwise, he didn't want them to run his plate and cause unnecessary complications.