No One Rides For Free - Larry Beinhart (11 page)

"Yeah," he sighed, still regretting it.

"You went straight," I prompted.

"Oh yeah, I went back to school and really got
into it. I realized in a vision. . ."

"A different vision," I interrupted.

"No. No. Same vision, in Grand Central. I saw it
was all a game. I saw that I could play."

"But you didn't give up acid?"

"Of course not," he said definitively. "How
else could I keep my head straight?"

"
Oh."

"You can get lost in those games, man, really
lost. You can become a pinball, getting kicked by the flippers,
bouncing from bumper to bumper, totally out of control, and forget
you're supposed to be the pinball player."

"I see," I said, but I wasn't sure that I
did.

"Every year we go on vacation, somewhere where
there's a deserted beach or up in the mountains, and Priscilla and I
drop. That clears the cobwebs out. "

"Oh. That sounds good."

"
Oh, yeah, it makes for an incredibly healthy
relationship. You know, most couples, all modern couples maybe, talk
about how honest their relationships are, but that is mostly bullshit
and cheap emotional chic. I mean the women learn that that's the way
it's supposed to be from Cosmo, Redbook and Donahue; the men get it
from Penthouse and their wives. Ifyou look at the sources, you
realize what incredibly crossed signals are being sent out. They all
say 'Honesty, honesty, honesty!' but they communicate 'hype,"con'
and 'hype.' "

"I don't know. Glenda, that's the woman I live
with, swears by Donahue."

"Don't they all. But anyway, unless you really
get down, really get out there, where you can look back and see your
bullshit and the fungus that grows in your mind, fear, insectuity,
the deviousness of your own defenses, see the garbage as garbage, you
can't be honest even if you want to."

"And that works?"

"Oh yeah . . ." he drawled as only a true
space cadet can, ". . . it's beautiful.

"
Priscilla," he called out after an
interval of self-appreciation. She came downstairs and Mel made
enthusiastic introductions. Then he asked what had happened with me.

It might have been the space cadet atmosphere that
floated genially behind the gray flannel facade, or a tactical
decision that honesty and openness beget more of the same; whatever
it was, I told more truth than I expected to.

"You were going to law school," he
prompted.

"I dropped out," I said.

"Why? Law school is a terrific game." He
giggled at Priscilla who was in on whatever the joke was. He moved
off the couch and sat down on the floor where he was obviously more
comfortable. She moved over so she could run a stray finger through
what was left of his curly reddish hair.

"My father died. It was during the summer after
my first year. I was doing one of those intern things at a Wall
Street firm. I told myself at the time that I was . . . that I had a
vision, in a way. But it was one that shut things down, it didn't
open them up. They had all the hotshots, the cream of the ivy crop,
and they used them as chickenshit assistants to the senile and venal.
With more chickenshit subservience than the army. The army was a
world of blind obedience and a soldier was expected to try to evade
the rules. The law firm was voluntary subservience and the associates
were expected to love it. In school the law was fun. In a law office,
it was finding forms. That was the reason, the reason I gave myself
then."

I poured myself another drink and settled on the
floor. "But maybe that wasn't true. There was enough money, if I
let my mother keep it all, for her. If she invested it and worked
till she got social security, she could get by gracefully. Or I could
have taken the bread, finished school. But then I would've owed her,
I would have been responsible. Locked in. I would have had to finish,
and finish high, and taken the big law firm job and locked myself
into the money. Maybe that was what it was about."

"Someday," Priscilla said, "you might
want to grow up."

"Lots of days," I replied, unoffended, "I
consider it."

"Wasn't there some other way to score the
bread?" Mel asked.

"Yeah, I had, have, an Uncle Vincent. But then I
would have owed him."

"What he needs," Mel said, looking at his
Priscilla, "is the love of a good woman. To show him the way."

"True, but what I want, is the Edgar Wood
story."

"Poor Edgar," Priscilla said, "he
sounded like such a foolish man .... He took it all very seriously.
Didn't he, Mel?"

"Yeah, no sense of it being a game. No sense of
fun at all."

"Must have been very depressing for you to work
with him," I suggested, trying to get into the warp and woof of
things.

"Edgar Wood," Mel said, "acted as if
everything was real. He was very serious."

"Attica is very real." I argued out of
reflex. "Prison has a way of intruding on your sense of humor."

"I think I understand what you're saying,"
Priscilla said. "You would have to have a very strong core, a
very firm and steady sense of unreality to maintain your sense of
humor in prison."

"Oh wow, prison," Mel said, as if the idea
was palpitating him for the first time. He was getting drunk. "We
were going to keep him out, you know."

"Were you?"

"Oh yeah, that's the way the game is played."
He brightened. "Trading up is one of the basic formats of all
gamesmanship. I mean especially in law enforcement."

"He gave you good stuff then, huh?"

"Honestly?" Mel asked. "Honestly and
truthfully?"

"Yeah, why not?" I said.

"Trade up," he said.

"What?"

"Tony," Priscilla prompted me prettily,
"what can you trade for information about Edgar Wood?"

"Yeah, trade up," Mel repeated, drunken and
impish. I tried the riff about the bereaved, grief-stricken daughter
who could never rest easy until there was proof of why Daddy died.
Maybe it was because I had a thing about her, but I gave a hell of a
performance.

"Tony, that's very interesting. And it's really
great that you're a fellow non-Harvard man. An alumni of old State U
and City High. Just like me. And Priscilla probably thinks you're
cute .... "

"Oh definitely," she said.

"But. But! As an attorney. A man of Honor. A
Gentleman. I am bound and sworn not to reveal an iota, a jot, a
comma, a semicolon of anything that our witness, the late Edgar Wood,
has revealed to me .... Unless! You have something to trade for it."

"
It's hard to know, Mel, what's worth trading
when I don't know what I'm trading for."

"Work at it." Mel was enjoying his game.

"Look, Mel, this is murder. I don't give a
flying fuck about Over & East, and games on the big board, and
I'll even guarantee you that nothing goes back to them from me. I'm
just looking for a motive for murder."

"You're missing the point, old chum," Mel
said.

"I am not, I'm evading it."

"Tony, it's quid pro quo, tit for tat and all of
that. Unless you just want to chat about old times, which I think is
a terrific idea."

"You want something sleazy on Over & East?"
I mumbled and he nodded. They, who had been investigating Over &
East for almost twenty years, didn't have anything solid.

"
I don't know, there might be something. There
might be a cocaine connection."

The gamesman's eyes lit up and came back into focus,
and, I'm willing to swear, one ear actually cocked, like a beag1e's.
He waited for more. I waited for him.

"What is it?"

"What's in the testimony?"

"Tell me what you know, and, if it's good, you
can read the transcripts."

"I'm going to have to track it down, nail down
some details," I said. "It's going to take some time and
money and it's dangerous. But I'll do it. I'll do it for you. Let me
look at the stuff, because I might spot a tie-in that you won't, and
because it'll help me investigating who I have to investigate. Then
I'll do it, and bring whatever I get back to you."

"Tony, I would love to trust you," Mel said
sincerely.

"He would," Priscilla chimed in. "He
loves to trust, but he never does. It's part of the game."

"So here's what I'll do, and only 'cause we go
way back," Mel said, "You give me one single thing that I
can make a case out of, or even that's important as a piece of
building a case, and you can read the transcripts."
 

11
CAPPUCCINO

GENE TATALIA HAD
done his
homework. The guy in the front seat who did the talking, who had all
but shot my ear off, now had a name: Hencio deVega. He worked at the
Colombian Board of Trade and had diplomatic status. Gene's people had
tailed him for two days. The first day he made them nervous. He kept
turning around while he was driving. They thought he was aware of
being tailed, or frightened of being tailed, but they had tagged the
wrong cause onto the effect and finally realized that deVega was
turning around every time he saw a blonde. Any blonde, honey to
platinum to dirty.

To pry him open, Gene had an incredibly complicated
scheme based on the Letelier investigation. Letelier, exambassador
from Chile, had been assassinated in downtown D.C. U.S. Justice
Department investigators traced the bombers to Chile and managed to
extradite them, even though the killers worked for the Chilean Secret
Police. Along the way they brought about the downfall of the colonel
who ran the secret police. As a result, the one person who could
frighten a South American diplomat—criminal was a Justice
Department Investigator. The case, Gene assured me, was an absolute
legend from the Rio Grande south.

“
What this case needs," I said, "is a
blonde and a slug from a .45. That's all these guys understand."

"What's wrong with this business," Gene
bitched, "is no innovation, no elegance, no creativity. I bet
you even want to use Franco Polatrano."

"Whatsamatta wid Franco?" I said.

"Wassamatta wid Franco is he talksalike dis. If
Franco haddanuf taste to gedda silka suit, he could maybe qualify to
be an extra ina Genfadder Tree, ya unnerstan'?"

"That," I said, "is not necessarily a
bad thing."

Gene got Whitney, five feet ten of ash-blonde
refeened hooker—think D.A.R. with cleavage—at the bargain rate of
$350 a night, based on the promise that she would only have to act.
She normally made far more, but at the moment she had a minor
infection and the dentist was doing some work on her gums, so
promises were all that she could deliver in good conscience, which is
something she had, and we were the only ones around willing to pay
for just promises.

The .45 I already had.

The first night we followed deVega, he had company
and stayed with them. The second night, he went out alone. When he
went into a Georgetown restaurant, Gene and Whitney followed him in.
A fair tip to the host got them a table close to Hencio's.

Gene is the kind of guy who does not waste. He waited
until he had finished his entrée before he staged the quarrel.

"You've seen a lot of Anton lately," he
said.

"Oh, Gene, don't be silly, you know there's
nothing between us."

"There used to be," he muttered darkly.

"That was so, so long ago."

"You call six months a long time!"

"Nine months, darling, at least nine."

"You've been seeing him again. I can tell."

"Gene, I swear to you. . ."

"Whenever you see one of those dark Latin types,
you just have to spread your little white legs, don't you . . . don't
you!"

"Stop it, Gene," she whispered. "People
can hear you."

"Let 'em," Gene announced. "I'm not
the slut."

"You really are a bastard, aren't you?" she
said with her head down, hand twisting the napkin and a sniffle.

"That's us, baby, the bastard and the whore."

"Gene, take me home," she said with
repressed sobs.

"What," was the reply, slow and vicious,
"and get another dose of the clap?"

At that point, Whitney, with a ladylike little gasp,
gave Gene a slap as realistic as the accusation. Gene slapped her
back. DeVega rose on cue to defend the lady's honor.

"A man who hits a woman is no man at all!"

"Oh yeah!" Gene stood up and faced him.
"I'll tell you what, you wan' her, you take her. Why not,
everyone else has." Which was his exit line.

"Can I help you?" the horny deVega said to
Whitney anxiously. "That was terrible. A disgrace."

"No, no," she sniffled, "just leave me
alone."

The waiter had seen Gene storm out. As in many
restaurants the waiter was responsible for the bill. He panicked,
moderately and decorously. The check immediately appeared under
Whitney 's nose. On the verge of tears, she went to her purse, which,
as planned, was empty. She began to search frantically. DeVega went
up like a trout for a fly aud snatched the bill.