Monkey in the Middle (9 page)

Two hours later, from his desk at OCCB, Epstein watches a replay of Radisson's press conference, which took place in the late afternoon. To his surprise, Radisson doesn't flash his hole cards. He goes with the tape alone, running snippets, including the assault that killed Maguire. Held back are the knife and the non-secretor business, the perp surfacing at Columbus Circle and the preceding homicides, of Bousejian, Peterson and Terrentino. It's only after his opening statement, while he's taking questions, that a CBS reporter named Clarence Hartigan suggests a connection. Hartigan speaks precisely when Radisson acknowledges him. The room is crowded and he knows he won't get another chance.

‘Charles Bousejian and Shawn Peterson, both homicide victims, and both with known ties to organized crime, were killed within hours of each other last Friday night. Is there any connection between their killings and the killing of Tony Maguire?'

When Radisson closes his eyes in relief, Epstein smiles. The reporter hasn't connected the victims to Paulie Margarine. Plus, he left out Nomo Terrentino. Radisson most likely feels good about his performance. The tape is raw meat and the public will eat it up.

‘We're not discounting any possibility,' he tells Hartigan. ‘Nothing's off the table.'

The reporters question Radisson for another fifteen minutes before the deputy chief calls a halt. By then, he's admitted that he has no reliable witnesses and no suspects. Not even a person of interest.

‘We're counting on the public to come forward,' he explains, not for the first time. ‘Somebody knows this man.'

Epstein shuts down his computer and gets to his feet. He needs to speak with a pair of detectives assigned to monitor a house in the Queens neighborhood of Ridgewood, another of his cases. And there's a note on his desk, from Sgt. Tina Metzenbaum, she of the Crime Scene Unit, about the possibility that the perp breathed hard enough on the display case to leave DNA evidence. By now, everybody working the case believes the perpetrator's had prior military experience. If so, his DNA will be on file.

An hour later, Epstein knocks on his boss's door. The last stop before he goes home to Sofia. Champliss is seated behind his desk, in shirtsleeves and suspenders. He sniffs as Epstein enters, lifting his nose.

‘Good news?' he asks.

‘CSU thinks the perp might have left DNA evidence when he breathed on the glass.'

‘Might have?'

‘We'll know in a day or two.'

‘What about Marginella?'

Solly Epstein is big on wiggle room. Yeah, you can over-promise, at least most of the time, as long as you don't take it too far. But this isn't most of the time. He needs to deliver.

‘For now, I bought twenty-four hours. But I think Paulie's a reasonable man. I'm trying to sell him on the fact that eliminating Toufiq won't solve his problems.'

‘That's good, Solly. Do you think he's buying?'

‘Actually, boss, I think if he decides not to attack Toufiq, it's because he's already decided to attack somebody else. Men like him, that's all they know.'

Twelve

P
aulie Margarine isn't more than fifty feet from Epstein's unmarked car when the cell phone in his pocket, Thorpe's cell phone, trumpets the opening bars of the
William Tell
Overture
.

Hi Yo fucking Silver. This is Paulie's first thought. Quickly followed by the fear that Thorpe is tracking his every movement, that Paulie's under surveillance right now, perhaps through the telescopic sight of the rifle that killed Bruno Brunale. But even that ugly possibility can't bring Paulie Margarine down. A path has opened before him, thanks to a dumb cop with a big mouth.

‘Fuck you,' he says into the phone.

‘No call for that. Business is business, after all.'

‘You been watchin' too many
Godfather
movies.'

‘Perhaps so. In any event, I thought it time we spoke again.'

‘So speak, asshole.'

‘My message remains simple. If you pay me off, I'll vanish. I bear you no animosity. I hold no grudge against you.'

Paulie shudders as a wave of hatred passes through his body. His eyes literally bulge in his head. But when he finally speaks, his voice is only slightly harsher than matter-of-fact.

‘How much?'

‘That's crude.'

‘You havin' fun, Thorpe? You havin' a good time?'

‘Three hundred and fifty thousand dollars.'

‘And where am I supposed to get that kind of money?'

‘From your account in Banco de Panama. I hear it runs to seven figures.'

Paulie's fingers tighten on the cell phone. Patience, he tells himself. Don't show this scumbag anything. ‘Say, you know about cops and lying?'

‘Illuminate me.'

Illuminate? Paulie imagines removing the flesh from Thorpe's bones with a potato peeler. But again, when he speaks, his voice is under control.

‘The Supreme Court says cops can lie to suspects. Cops can say they found your fingerprints or DNA, or that you ran past a surveillance camera, even if you didn't. But suppose that you wore gloves that night, or you checked the block for cameras? In that case, you'd know the cops are lying because they haven't got any real evidence. Now you, Thorpe, you just showed me your hole card. My account doesn't run to anything like seven figures. If it did, I'd be livin' somewhere else besides Astoria, say on a yacht in the Bahamas.'

Thorpe takes a minute, then says, ‘Well, as we're never to meet and have no way to settle the issue, we'll have to agree to disagree. The question's moot from my point of view anyway. This business I'm conducting, it's not without overhead. And there's also the element of time. Once the bargaining process begins, there's no end to the haggling.'

‘So, it's three-fifty or nothin'?'

‘I'm afraid so.'

‘And how much time do I get?' Paulie is limping toward Ditmars Boulevard where he hopes to find a gypsy cab. His home is less than a mile away, but his knees are on fire. ‘I'm not kiddin' about the account. There's nowhere near that kind of money in that account.'

‘Are you're asking for good will? Are you agreeing to pay?'

‘Do I have a fuckin' choice?' Paulie spots a cab on Thirty-First Street and waves to the driver. ‘Look, I gotta go. I got business. Is there any way I can get in touch with you?'

‘Afraid not.'

‘Then call me tomorrow morning. I'll be home.'

Paulie's about to hang up, but Thorpe is too quick. ‘I don't object to your tone, given the circumstances. In fact, I admire your toughness, as I understand your need to regain equilibrium. Nevertheless, I sincerely advise you not to assume that you're somehow in control when you have no cards to play.'

Home again. Paulie makes two quick calls, the first to Ermine Escorts, the second to a hood named Oliver Havelock. At Ermine, he instructs Phyllis to put Lee Pho in a cab, pronto.

‘And tell her to bring the Tiger Balm.'

‘Your knees again?' Phyllis caps her question with a sympathetic cluck.

‘They're killin' me,' Paulie admits.

Paulie's conversation with Oliver Havelock is even briefer. ‘Get over here,' he commands before hanging up the phone.

Forty-five minutes later, when Lee Pho arrives first, Paulie is more annoyed than angry. Save for a single flaw, Oliver Havelock is everything Paulie could want in an underboss. He's loyal, tenacious, intelligent and utterly ruthless. But not once in his entire fucking life has he been on time.

Paulie escorts Lee Pho into the basement where he's set up a massage bench near the pool table. Lee Pho isn't the best looking whore in Dave Flannery's stable – her legs are too short and she's on the dumpy side – but Lee Pho has the hands of an angel. What's more, the woman speaks almost no English. Even in bed, Paulie has to use sign language to make his wants known.

The bell rings as Paulie strips down to his shorts, a pair of striped boxers. He hobbles back up the stairs and lets Havelock in.

‘I got here as soon as I could.' Havelock is tall and lean, with a hatchet for a nose and eyes so close-set they're practically touching. His nickname is Ollie Owl.

‘Congratulations, you got beat by a whore,' Paulie observes.

‘Say what?'

Paulie heads for the basement without explaining. Already stripped down to bra and panties, Lee Pho is arranging her creams and ointments next to the massage table. Paulie lies down on his back. Lee Pho will do his knees first. He doesn't have to tell her.

‘She OK?' The Owl's lips come slightly apart as he speaks, but his teeth remain together.

‘Yeah, she don't understand English. But do me a favor, turn on the stereo.' Paulie has the room swept for bugs twice a month, but he's cautious anyway. For all he knows, the FBI could be listening to him from a satellite. ‘Just start the CD player.'

A trumpet fanfare precedes Wilson Pickett's gravelly voice. Pickett's doing
Stagger Lee
, loud enough to raise Bruno Brunale from the dead. Havelock kneels at the head of the massage table as Lee Pho applies a glob of tiger balm to the side of Paulie's right knee. Though her touch is gentle, Paulie winces. He winces again as her fingers begin to probe, but then the ointment heats up and he starts to relax. Paulie's not kidding himself. The only permanent cures for what's ailing him are knee replacement or death, and he's not sure which one he's looking forward to least. But Lee Pho and her ointments will get him through what promises to be a long night.

‘The Flab took the bait,' Paulie tells Havelock.

‘Yeah?'

‘Yeah.'

In fact, there's no planned attack on Rachid Toufiq and his little crew. There's only Paulie's near legendary ability to sniff out rats and the obvious fact that Thorpe has to be getting information from somebody. How else would he know that Maguire, Bousejian and the rest were tied to Paulie? Or that Paulie hangs out at Sweet's Bar? Or about Paulie's bank account in Panama? That was a big mistake Thorpe made, mentioning the name of the bank. Only a few months before, Paulie had recommended Banco de Panama to Flabby Flannery.

Paulie can recall the conversation almost word for word. ‘These are bankers who know how to keep a fuckin' secret,' he told the Flab. ‘If you can manage the transportation problem, you won't have to worry about the IRS freezing your accounts.'

The Owl leans a bit closer. ‘So, where do you wanna go with this?'

‘First thing, find me an untraceable cell phone. Then reach out to that kid, the one who knows locks.'

‘Clyde Redman?'

‘Yeah, Clyde.' Paulie groans as Lee Pho begins to massage the sole of his left foot, her little fingers digging into the pressure points. He feels the tension leaking out. The anger, too. He has to get it right this time. The next few days will decide his future and his son's future. And it's not just the three-fifty. Paulie can manage the three-fifty. What worries Paulie is the next three-fifty and the one after that. Because that's exactly the way he'd play the game if he had some asshole where Thorpe has him. He'd suck the bastard dry.

‘Are the Martinez brothers available?' he asks.

‘I think Pedro's still in Rikers.'

‘Then use John Gaglione's crew. We're lookin' for discreet here, right? No shots fired? Because I want that rat fuck alive, Ollie. Me and him, we gotta have a private talk.'

Thirteen

P
aulie's parked on College Point Boulevard, only four blocks from the Flab's house, when he takes out his cell phone at midnight. He punches a number into the phone and the Owl picks up a minute later.

‘You in place?' Paulie asks.

‘We're in the back yard.'

‘What's it look like?'

‘One light, in a front room upstairs.'

‘Good, good. I'll leave the line open. When he picks up, go in. And don't kill him.'

Paulie doesn't wait for an answer. He takes out a second phone, this one supplied by the Owl, and punches in Flannery's number.

‘Dave, you still awake?' he asks when the Flab picks up. ‘Because, me and you, we gotta talk.'

‘What about?'

And that's another thing. Like Solly Epstein and Billy Boyle, Paulie Margarine doesn't care for the Flab's attitude. Flannery's a man without respect.

‘About that thing tomorrow? I want you to take charge.'

‘I thought you said you were usin' talent from out of state?'

‘Dave, I need you to do this little thing for me. The outside talent, it fell through. A bad break, OK, but we gotta move on. Look, I'm comin' over. We'll talk it out.'

‘Comin' over? Where are you now.'

‘I'm only a few blocks from your house. Say, you still get that prosciutto from up on Arthur Avenue? Because I could definitely use a sandwich. I haven't eaten all night.'

The voice that responds is Oliver Havelock's, not Dave Flannery's. ‘I'll see what's in the refrigerator.'

‘He didn't give you any trouble?'

‘Just handed me the phone, like he knew it was comin'. We do have a problem, though. He's got a woman here.'

‘A girlfriend?'

‘A pro.'

‘Take the Flab into the basement and tie him down good. And tell Clyde to keep an eye on him. I'll be there in a minute.'

As it turns out, the prostitute is no problem whatever. Paulie takes her into a bedroom, shushing her as they go. He doesn't want to kill her, but he has no choice. Leave her alive and she'll shoot off her mouth to someone. Whores being whores. She pleads, of course, and cries. A not-so-young blonde with faint stretch marks on her belly.

‘I have a daughter,' she tells him.

‘I got a son,' Paulie replies. Then he nods to the Owl. ‘No blood.'

Paulie heads for the basement, his intention to confront the Flab alone. The questions he needs to ask, about a man named Thorpe, are not for the ears of Ollie Havelock. Paulie's already told the Owl that Flannery is responsible for their troubles.