No One Rides For Free - Larry Beinhart (29 page)

"Tony, can we cut the crap? Is this serious or
not?"

"When did you start talking like that?"
Joey said.

"When I started living with him," Glenda
told him.

"It's really not a question of whether it's
serious or not. I just want to know that you are out of harm's way
while I'm finding out."

"
You told me that there have been threats
before, and they never came to anything."

"Glenda," Joey said, "if something
were to happen, to you or Wayne, Tony could not live with that. You
gotta see that. So if you stay or Wayne stays, it means you gotta be
cooped up in the apartment with one of us tied up here too. Until
this thing shakes down."

"
Is this one of those macho things," she
said, "where the women and children hide while the men go out
and play with guns?"

"Yeah, if you gotta put it that way, yeah,"
Joey said.

"
I think I'm glad I have a macho man," she
said, coming close to me, "at least about this."

In bed we talked about, argued about, how to handle
things with Wayne.

"Don't worry," I told her, "kids love
to play hide-and-seek."

"Don't be flippant. "

"Look," I said, "I know, I'm a kid."

"That's part of the problem, not a solution."

When Wayne got up and saw Unc'e Joey snoring on the
couch he knew something 'citing was happening. He jumped around while
I made breakfast and tried to explain, with delicacy and restraint,
the way Glenda would have done it, that he and his mom were going to
Grandma's because someone had threatened me.

"Oh wow! Did they put out a contract on you?"

"Well, it's nothing as dramatic as that, Wayne."

"Wow! Wow! Wait'll I tell the kids at school,"
he said and ran into the living room. "Unc'e Joey, Unc'e Joey, "
he yelled, bouncing on top of Unc'e Joey, "we're going to the
mattresses. We're going to the mattresses." He bounced off and
rolled under the convertible. He came up on the other side with his
hand folded in the shape of a pistol. He fired his finger at
point-blank range, yelling, "Pow! Pow!"

"I'm glad," Glenda said, "that this
sort of thing doesn't happen very often."

I left the building first, through the front door.
Joey, Wayne and Glenda went out the service entrance. The street was
quiet; nobody shot at me, threatened me or even gave me a dirty look.
I walked down to the deli on the comer and bought some beer, just to
look like I was doing something. Then I went upstairs and waited for
Joey to get back from Grand Central. While I waited I rang Christina.
I didn't leave a message on her machine. Then I put on a fresh pot of
coffee.

"You got what you want? You got what you were
after?" Joey said when he got back.

""Well," I said, "I meant to
shake somebody up, but not to the point where they would pay to see
me dead."

"Don't bullshit me. I know you better than you
know you."

"What are you talking about? Are you saying I
want a contract out on me?"

"Yeah, you do, " he said with disgust. "You
just won't be happy until you're all the way out there on the edge,
until you put it all on the line."

"You know what's funny? This still doesn't tell
us who did it. We have to find out who put this thing out, then who
they did it for."

I thought we could cover more ground moving
separately. Joey thought we would survive better moving together. I
yielded graciously.

We headed out to Brooklyn, looking for Johnny "Jeans"
Licavollo, a small-time bookie comrected to what's known as the
Colombo family. Johnny used to run a scam in the garment center. It
still gives me great pleasure to know that half the people strolling
around in designer jeans, on which they spent anything from forty
dollars to eighty dollars, are wearing five-dollar rags from Hong
Kong with a forged label sewn on. Of course the other half are
wearing exactly the same thing, from the same oriental sweat shops,
identical except for the authentic label. We busted the operation,
but we didn't bust Johnny Jeans, so he owed us one.

He was home with his family. His wife set out fresh
espresso and anisette cookies, then left the men alone to do their
business, in the line old-fashioned style. He had not heard anything,
but he promised to ask around. We moved on.

"Scooter" Siegal, the fence, "Butch"
Dominici, who made hot cars into cool ones, and Murray Lipshitz, who
converted stolen securities, hadn't heard anything. Oddly enough, our
attorney, Gerald Yaskowitz, had.

We didn't get Gerry's message until late in the day,
and then couldn't reach him until after nine.

Late on Friday, Gerry had talked a judge into
reducing the bail on Francisco "Frankie" Montoya, dealer in
heroin and cocaine, from a quarter-million down to a mere one hundred
thousand dollars. Gerry and Frankie had lunch on Saturday to discuss
the case. They agreed that it was open and shut, a second felony
conviction that would result in a significant length of time spent at
Attica. Frankie asked Gerry if, given sufficient time, the D.A.'s
case might fall apart. Gerry's opinion was that that might indeed
happen, given four or five years. Frankie decided, on the spot, to
spend the necessary time in Mexico.

Having made that decision, Frankie felt deeply
grateful to Gerry for getting the bail down to a level that he could
comfortably afford to lose. As a token of his gratitude he passed
along the tip that there was a contract on Gerry's favorite PI. The
price was a "crummy five grand," and it came from one of
the old-line Italian groups. Gerry asked Frankie if he could be more
specific. All Frankie could add was that it was one of "them
Godfather-type organizations, one of the families, like, you know,
the Mob."

That was all Gerry knew, and by the time he reached
us, Montoya was way up high, in a 747, waving good-bye. Joey insisted
on escorting me back to the apartment. There, like everywhere else we
had been, he insisted on going in first with his gun in his hand. In
his grim and grumbling way, he was enjoying himself. There was
something in all of us, just like old Franco, that had the hots for
handling a piece. It took me an hour to get him out of there. I
promised I would keep the door triple-locked, that I would not go
out, that I would sleep with my gun in my hand. When he left, I gave
it ten minutes, went downstairs and jumped in a cab to Christina's.

When I told her, through the intercom, who it was,
she told me to go away. I leaned on the buzzer. I had been pushing
all day and I was not about to stop. When she finally answered again,
I said I had to talk to her.

When I got upstairs she was waiting in the hall, her
door closed behind her. I could hear music from inside. I sensed that
there was someone else there. "My heart lurched" is a
statement with no physiological validity, but that is exactly what it
felt like.

Our eyes met and they said what our eyes always said
to each other, no matter where we were, no matter who else was
present. Want, hunger, a rage of lust, a melting tenderness.

"Why are you here?" she asked, hurting.

"
Because I can't get you out of my head. Even
when there are people gunning for me or I'm falling off a cliff, I
can't get you out of my head."

"Are you thinking about me when you 're in bed
with her?"

"I'm trying to keep my life sane. But I'm not
sure I can. I did not want this to happen, but I can't stop feeling
like I'm in love with you."

I took her in my arms. She turned her head from my
mouth. My hand reached into the fine soft hair of her head and turned
her mouth back toward me. "No. No," she said as her mouth
opened to mine. The tension left her body, her body said only "Yes."

"Go home, go home," she said sorrowfully,
"go home to her."

"She's away."

"For how long?" was her immediate response.
Telling me again exactly what she did not want to be saying.

"At least a couple of days, maybe longer."

She stood up straight. "Not tonight. Call me
tomorrow, and . . . we'll see. But . . . but I don't think so."

"Why not tonight? Is there someone here with
you? Another boyfriend?"

"Yes .... And that's probably for the best,
isn't it . . . and why not? You're not alone when you're not with me.
Go home."

"I'll call you tomorrow," I said, as if it
were all right. She followed me to the stairs. "You know what,"
she said, "it's no damn good. Stefan is a very good lover. I
used to enjoy him. But now I don't feel a damn thing, not with him or
anybody else. Since I met you. I don't like that."

I turned away from the things she was saying. Then I
wanted to reach out, to hold, hug, kiss her. But by the time I turned
back, she had already fled toward Stefan. Who was no damn good.

Friday 's storm had not cleared anything up. The air
was thick and moist. I just wandered for a while until I found myself
in Sheridan Square. "Hiya, Phil," I said to the statue
there, "how do you like it, surrounded by all these gay blades?
" He kept morosely silent. The bookstore on the corner was open
so I went in to look for Kenneth Patchen, to ask about this thing
with Christina. He was there on the shelf, and I found the poem I
thought about the first time:

They were wise that this man—business was just a
matter
Of putting it in and taking it
out, and that went all the way
From
throwing up cathedrals to getting hot pants over Kathy.
Maybe there was something to get steamed about,
maybe it was
Baseball to grow a beard
and end up on a cross so that a lot
Of
hysteria cases could have something to slap around;
Maybe
the old Greek boy knew what he was doing when he
    
hemlocked
It out,
loving the heels who hobbled him; maybe little French
    
Joan
Got
a kick out of the English hot-foot; the boys at the comer
    
bar
Were
willing to believe it. No skin off their noses ....

And all things considered, it sounded about right.

When I called from the pay phone I found Laurie the
stewardess at home. She was glad to hear from me, she said, but she
had just flown in from the coast and her arms were tired. My old
connection was just a few blocks from where I was standing, over at
Perry and Fourth, so I told her I had just the thing to take care of
tired. She was very interested. Excited even.

It had been a long time since I had even spoken to
the man on Perry Street, but it turned out that he was still alive,
still at the same address, still doing the same trade, and he was
currently holding. My bank's cash machine was in equally good order,
so the man was happy to see me. I got an eighth. The price was fair
and the quality at least adequate.

It felt greedy and stupid, soulless and harsh. Laurie
and I went at it eagerly. We did it every which way. Putting
everything anyplace it would go, pushing for more than more. Long
before we stopped at 4 A.M., everything was sore. When I left, I
figured it was an experience that she would cherish forever in her
diary, or wherever she kept score, and be pleased if she never saw me
again. It was also possible that she took it that way as a regular
thing and would be ready anytime I was able.

As my cab cruised up my block, I noticed a couple of
guys slouched down in the front seat of a car. I told the driver not
to stop at the address I'd given him and to take it around the
corner. He didn't care.

I have some neighbors, in 16B, that I don't
particularly like. So when I called 911 to report a domestic
disturbance and a possible gunshot, I said it came from 16B.

The response was relatively prompt. I didn't have to
wait more than seven or eight minutes, hugging the shadows so I could
watch around the corner for the cruiser without being seen myself. As
the squad car pulled up, I made my move, timing it so that I went in
the front door at the same time as the two men in uniform.

Whether or not the men slouching in their car were
there for me, I will never know. If they were, I foxed them; if they
weren't, at least I annoyed the folks in 16B.

I only got two or three hours sleep. Glenda called at
eight, Joey a few minutes later. He asked where I had been. I claimed
that I had just turned the phone off. He invited himself over for
breakfast. A couple of lines and an icy shower more or less got me
moving.

I asked him if he had heard anything further. Johnny
Jeans had called him and confirmed what we knew, with more detail
than Whelan, but less than Montoya.

"What do you wanna do?" he asked.

"I could leave town," I shrugged, "but
I won't."

"I don't think we're gonna find out who, what
and where too quick."

"Even if I knew who was handling the contract,"
I said, "what could I do about it? Go into some Don's fortress
in Englewood, both guns blazing, and explain that I'm too tough to
kill, too mean to die, so he better call it off?"