Redemption Street (27 page)

Good old dependable Molly, sitting at her table, looked like salvation to me just then. I kissed her hello on the cheek and she blushed. It was a small thing, her blushing like that, but I don’t suppose I’ll ever forget it. Did people blush anymore?

“Is he in?” I asked, nodding my head toward Hammerling’s office.

“Sure,” she said, brushing her hair with her fingertips. “You’re not leaving, are you?”

“Soon, but not yet. There’s still some unfinished business to take care of. Maybe you can help. How would you like to play Mata Hari for a night?” Molly was all ears, eagerly leaning forward. “After I talk to Hammerling, I’ll fill you in.”

Dick Hammerling was seated behind his mission-style aircraft carrier, head buried in a book, when I walked into his office. His face said he was happy, but wary to see me. I imagine anything having to do with the fire produced extraordinarily mixed feelings in him. If things played out the way I hoped they would, those mixed feelings would become even more jumbled.

“Mr. Prager.” He turned on the politician’s charm as he stood. “Good to see you. Have a seat.”

“Call me Moe,” I said, closing the door behind me. “I’ll sit in a minute. First, I’ve got something to ask you.”

“Ask.”

“I’m sorry to have to bring this up, but I know about what happened to your father.”

Hammerling’s face soured. “That’s not a question.”

“I’m getting to it,” I promised. “And I think I understand how much solving the Fir Grove fire means to you, but I’ve gotta be sure. If I were to explain what happened that night, how it happened, and why, could you leave it alone? Would that be enough for you?”

He didn’t answer right away. I liked that. He sat down quietly in his chair and spun it slowly about so that he faced the window. The sun was high and strong today, and he tilted his face upward to stare directly at it.

His back still to me, he wondered: “How can I be sure you’re telling me the truth?”

“Because I’ll give you my word, just like you’ll give me yours that what I say in this office goes no farther.”

“Further.” He laughed sadly. “Goes no further. ‘Further’ is more correct.”

He turned the chair back around, stood up, and held out his big right hand to me. In the end he realized this was about his dad and not about him. Only the truth mattered.

I took his hand. “I give you my word that what I’m going to tell you is the truth.”

“I know,” he said somberly. “Nothing you say to me in this room will ever be repeated.”

I told him the story—the essentials, at least, but for obvious reasons there were details I was forced to omit or fudge over. I admitted as much. The only thing I actually lied about was the status of Karen Rosen’s health. The way I explained it, the girl who set the fire was already dead. And, I rationalized, that would soon enough be true.

“So you see,” I said, “your dad was right. It wasn’t some idiot smoking in bed. The fire was intentionally set, and an accelerant was used. Not a lot was used, but that bunkhouse was just such a shithole it went up like kindling.”

“This girl, the one who set the fire, is dead?” he asked.

I skillfully avoided answering. “Whatever price there is to pay, Councilman, she’s paid it in full.”

He spun his chair back around to the window and hung his head. “Thank you, Moe,” he whispered, choking back years’ worth of uncried tears.

“I’ll wait in the outer office,” I said.

Even through the closed door I could feel his anguish. I had a strange thought. I recalled that just recently an old Imperial Japanese soldier had been found on some isolated Philippine outpost. What, I wondered, would his life stand for now that his war was finally over? What would Dick Hammerling’s life stand for now that he had his answers? Maybe that fierce energy he’d used to fight the good fight in the name of his father could be put to better use. I hoped it would. I hoped some good might come of this. Then, as I sat there trying not to listen to Hammerling’s sobs, I thought of Arthur Rosen. Selfishly, I was relieved not to have to tell him. I don’t know that I would have been able to tell him if he were still alive. That was one less secret, thank God, I wasn’t forced to keep.

When Hammerling opened the door to invite me back in, he looked more upright, less constricted. One of us had had a load lifted off his shoulders.

He leaned over a liquor cabinet. “Drink?”

“Sure.”

“My dad loved vodka,” Hammerling said, waving a dusty old bottle at me. “But if that’s not—”

“Vodka’s fine,” I said. “Let’s drink to your dad, and mine, too.”

We had two shots apiece and got back down to business. I did most of the talking. He was slightly suspect of my motives and confused by what I asked of him, but I was unwilling to share any more information. Sam and his accomplices were my responsibility, mine alone.

“So let me get this straight. All you want me to do is go down to the police station with you and stand outside the door while you have a conversation with Lieutenant Bailey.”

“That’s right. That’s all you have to do.”

“Okay, I owe you more than that, but if that’s all you want …”

While Hammerling waited in my car, I had that little talk with Molly. She was also a bit reluctant, but couldn’t resist a shot of intrigue into her mundane life.

“All I have to do is have a drink with him?” she asked warily.

“It wouldn’t hurt to flirt with him a teeny-tiny bit, but that’s it!” I wagged my finger at her. “I just need some time to set up a little surprise for him.”

She agreed.

You’d have thought Lieutenant Bailey would shit his pants at the sight of me, fearing I was walking into his station house to swear out a complaint against him for false arrest and police brutality. I knew better. It was the same with cops and perps. When your hands have been dirty for so long that no one ever tells you to wash them, you start thinking you’re Superman. No one can touch you. You’re above it, beyond it, you’re invincible. There are plenty of corrupt old-timers on the job with that aura about them. But it’s that hubris that always brings them down. After the Knapp Commission, finger pointing and gun eating became popular pastimes among the old guard.

Bailey almost relished the chance to rub what he’d done in my face, and was glad to have a little chat with me in his office.

“What can I do for you, Mr. Prager?” He smiled smugly. “I see you’ve hurt your wrist. How that happen?”

“Sorta like how I hurt my kidneys.”

“What’s that you say?” He cupped his ear. “I’m not getting you.”

“You’re not? Okay. Maybe this’ll help your hearing.”

I sunk my left foot so deeply into Bailey’s groin that you could see the imprint of my shoelaces on the skin of his ass. He went down like a sack of potatoes. Even as he struggled for air he called me a cocksucker.

“No,” I corrected, pulling him up to his knees by the hair, “I’m a ball buster.”

“Fuck you!”

“You won’t be fucking anything but yourself for quite some time. So listen carefully. You’re gonna put your papers in today, right now!”

“Get the fuck outta here,” he said, a bit more strength returning to his voice. “No one’s going to buy your stories. I’m a respected man in this town.”

“Oh yeah? How respected you gonna be after Sam rolls over on you, asshole?”

He didn’t like that. If it were possible for him to get any paler than he already was, he got paler. I had little doubt Bailey was a Grade A schmuck to begin with, but I didn’t think he’d gotten in bed with Sam of his own accord. No, Sam had something on him.

“Whatever he’s got on you, Bailey, he won’t hesitate to use it to save his own skin. Think about it—you know that old fuck better than me. He’ll roll over on you like that! They won’t have to ask him twice. I was a cop, Bailey. Cops don’t fare too well in prison, especially dipshit, small-town assholes like yourself. What’s he got on you?”

I had him worried, but he tried stonewalling. “Eat shit!”

“You think I’m kidding, huh? You think maybe I’m bluffing. Councilman Hammerling,” I called out, “will you stick your head in here a second?”

Dutifully, Hammerling complied. He was taken aback some by Bailey’s disheveled state, but said nothing.

“Thank you, Councilman,” I said. “Can you give us a few more minutes?”

“Does he have stuff on you?” I repeated when the door closed.

“Yes,” Bailey admitted, “enough to put me away for a long fuckin’ time.”

“Now, if you want to save your shitass pension and any self-respect, this is what you’re gonna do. You’re putting in your retirement papers today. You’re not gonna say word one to Sam. You’re gonna write down the names and addresses of the other two clowns who helped kick the shit out of me in the woods that night. If they’re cops, you make sure they put in their papers today, too, or you’ll all fry. And I want my guns back that you took from me that night, especially the .38. If not, Councilman Hammerling will introduce a bill to bring in the State Police Internal Affairs Division to investigate your department. The higher-ups will offer your ass up faster than Sam, and you know it.”

“The .38’s in the bottom drawer over there,” he said, pointing at a medal desk. “The .22’s still out in the woods somewhere.”

I checked out my old .38 while he wrote down the names of the men who’d helped him attack me in the woods that night. I folded up the paper and put it in my back pocket.

“Remember,” I said, “put your papers in today, and not a word to Sam.”

“What about the shit Sam’s got on me?” he asked.

“You let me worry about that.”

It was about 9:00
P.M
. as I watched Sam’s Cadillac pull out of the Swan Song parking lot and onto the main road out in front of the hotel. Good thing he was prompt. It was freezing in the damned bushes. Given his apparent affection for women of Molly’s build, it was no wonder that he wanted to be on time for their tête-à-tête. He probably had the first erection he’d had since the Battle of Bull Run. Who knows, maybe he was letting it steer the car while he was lighting up one of those ridiculous cigars of his. I’d learned to take my time, and waited another fifteen minutes before heading inside. Once inside, I’d wait for Molly’s signal before beginning my search.

At 9:27, the front-desk phone rang three times. Then it stopped. Then it rang twice again. It was Molly letting me know Sam had arrived at Hanrahan’s.

Though Sam was a smarter man than Bailey, I was hoping Sam was as susceptible to the foibles of success as the corrupt cop. Success breeds complacency, and complacency leads to carelessness. I had little doubt that at one time Sam had made certain to stash his blackmail leverage safely away where only he could have access to it, but that sort of thing can get expensive. Access can be problematic if the goods are in your lawyer’s office or in a safe-deposit box in a bank that closes at 3:00 P.M. Eventually, your victims get so whipped, you barely need to threaten them if they don’t comply. Compliance can become as habitual as anything else.

That was all well and good. Now the problem was finding the goods, if they were here to be found. The Swan Song wasn’t exactly the size of Windsor Castle, but it was a lot bigger than your standard suburban ranch. I came up empty at the front desk. Sam had even removed the big bell. My search of the office was equally unproductive. It’s a shame I wasn’t looking for ten years of hotel bill receipts. There were plenty of those. The kitchen was a waste of time, as were the dining rooms. I checked my watch; almost an hour had passed, and unless Molly succumbed to Sam’s charms, which was not altogether impossible, I didn’t have that much time left.

Then something Karen Rosen had said earlier rushed through my head. I had to get to Sam’s room. I raced up to the sixth and top floor. Sam had a suite of rooms with a roof deck and views of the entire area. Once upon a time, this had probably been the bridal or presidential suite. The walls, not unlike those of Dick Hammerling’s office, were covered with autographed pictures of the once-, near-, and no-longer famous. Though pressed for time, I just had to look. Sam had known them all: Crosby and Hope, Al Jolson, Eddie Cantor, Abbott & Costello, Sammy Davis Jr., Berle, Youngman, Myron Cohen, Jackie Gleason, Steve and Eydie, Redd Foxx, Mort Sahl, Woody Allen, Barbra Streisand, Goulet, Dean Martin, Bill Cosby, Lenny Bruce, Joey Bishop, Frank Sinatra. The list was endless. It was like the roll call for the old
Ed Sullivan Show
. I had to stop myself.

It was nearly eleven when I found what I hoped I was looking for: a piece of junk mail with Sam’s name on it, but sent to a Monticello, New York, address. Sam still owned the cabin he had hidden Karen in those sixteen summers before.

I was more concerned about finding the cabin in the dark than about how I was going to get in. The butt end of a .38 is great for breaking glass. The map I picked up at the Shell station in Ellenville was a nightmare. Folding maps must have been invented by the Marquis de Sade. I was just about to stop and ask directions when I stumbled upon the road leading to Sam’s cabin.

Rolling carefully down the dirt-and-gravel lane, I could barely make out the shape of a cabin here and there. But as I came around the curves, my brights illuminated several of the tiny wooden houses. They were all boarded up for the winter. Some looked as if they were boarded up till the end of days. Even in the mid-sixties, when the Catskills was still a somewhat happening place, these cabins would have been fairly isolated. It would have been easy for Sam to hide Karen away here without fear of being found out.

As I approached the area of Sam’s cabin, I got a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. It didn’t seem quite as dark as it should have been, as the rest of the road had been. The glow of house lights rose out of the darkness. I tried unsuccessfully to convince myself that Sam kept the porch light on, but it was just too bright for that. The silhouette of Sam’s antique Caddy stuck the knife into any fleeting hopes I might have had left. I was expected. I didn’t keep my host waiting.

Even though Sam had the TV playing rather loudly, the gravel beneath my feet rendered moot any chance I might have at achieving some level of surprise. The front door was slightly ajar, and I pushed it open with the nose of my .38. I didn’t, however, walk right in. I guess I was going to dance this dance with Sam whether I was in the mood to dance or not, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t try to step on his feet every now and then.