Two Jakes (43 page)

CHAPTER
2 – OCCUPATIONAL HAZARD

The
bus made several stops, disgorging kids along the way. The men carefully
watched passengers disembark. There was a remote chance the girl might go to a
friend’s house. But she was still on the bus when after a mile it turned left
up Lafayette Street, the van a discreet block behind. She got off at Lafayette
and Henderson with two friends, as usual. The three kids liked to hit the candy
store on the corner for an after-school treat before walking to their
respective homes nearby. Banaszak watched them enter the store.

“I
wonder if you can still get an egg cream there,” he mused aloud.

“An
egg what?”

Banaszak
sighed.

“Let’s
go. You’ll have at least a half hour.”

They
headed up Henderson, past St. Peter’s Boys High School on the corner of
Clinton, and four blocks later made a left onto a tree-lined street, pulling to
the curb in front of a well-kept, two-story colonial in the middle of the
block. Houses on both sides of the street had sloping lawns. Some, like this
one, were bordered by hedges. The hedges had been neatly trimmed and the
well-fertilized grass was mowed to an even half inch. The plants and azalea
bushes along the driveway were surrounded by newly turned soil.

“Spics
did good work,” Gallo said, adjusting his cap.

Gallo
and Banaszak had taken exceptional pains on their surveillance, given their
time constraints. Lacuna pushed for a rush job but they had insisted on at
least a week to figure out a plan. Their caution had paid off in one respect.
The prior day a landscaper’s truck had unloaded a working party of gardeners at
the house. The two men had estimated that their own job would take 20 to 30
minutes, tops. But only if they were uninterrupted. They had no desire to
tangle with four illegal Ecuadorans, at least one of whom wielded a
nasty-looking power hedge clipper.

The
block was quiet. Nobody would give their cable van a second glance. The Bronx
crew that had provided the vehicle had done an inspired job on short notice. In
addition to the “Inter-Boro Cable Company” logos, there was an “Always at Your
Service” slogan plastered below a large rendition of a smiling brown-uniformed
repairman walking up to a house with a white picket fence. There was even an
“800” phone number and official-looking city licenses. A call to the number
would get a recorded message promising a “speedy” return call, which never
materialized. Since it was a cable company, no one would expect anything else.

Both
men wore brown, UPS-like uniforms, with caps and workingmen’s shoes. There were
clipboards on the dash. A clipboard can get someone into more places than an
Uzi. Gallo reached back into the van for a toolbox.

“Don’t
forget to stack stuff,” Banaszak said. “I’ll make sure she is coming home
alone, then wait for your call.”

Gallo
walked up the elevated driveway and disappeared behind the house. Banaszak
drove down the street. They had agreed that it would be prudent to limit the
amount of time the van was on the block. Somebody with a cable problem might
stop to chat. He slowed as he neared the boys high school. Students, all
wearing dark slacks and light blue shirts, were beginning to file out. They
were, of course, louder than the girls had been, with plenty of adolescent
jostling.

He
spotted her immediately, gliding slowly, hips swaying, past the front entrance
of the school. Jesus, she’s a pretty thing, with great legs. And she knows it.
Banaszak disliked the crap public school kids wore, especially the girls, some
of whom looked like sluts. Parochial school uniforms left a lot to the
imagination. But given a teen-age boy’s limitless imagination, it made the
girls sexier.

He
suddenly realized that this particular girl probably had another reason for
stopping at the candy store every day. If she stayed on the bus, it would have
dropped her off past where the boys came out of school. Some of them glanced at
her and quieted down. A couple of the older ones said something and she
laughed. It was obvious she knew them. Some parents picking up kids also said
hello. Even at a distance, Banaszak could tell she had a sweet way about her.
Finally, she broke away. One of the fathers kept his eyes on her as she walked
away, shaking his head in middle-aged resignation.

Banaszak
made a U-turn and stopped at the end of her street. She walked to her house and
up the driveway. For the briefest of moments he thought about honking the horn
to warn her. Jesus! What’s gonna go first, my body or my mind? Looks like a
horse race. Get yourself together! The girl was on a list she’d never get off.
It’s Gallo and me, or the next two meatballs. He started driving through the
neighborhood.

“The
Manor,” as it was commonly known to residents, was named for Captain Robert
Richard Randall, a wealthy seafarer who died in 1801. With its trees, ponds and
parks it was an oasis of green on the North Shore of Staten Island. Banaszak
turned down Kissel Avenue to the entrance for the 83-acre Snug Harbor Cultural
Center. The stone-arched guardhouse was untended and he drove through, heading
past a small pond where parents were watching their children feed ducks. He
knew this section of the Harbor well and despite his tension the memories
flooded back as he pulled up to the Music Hall, which looked much as he remembered
it.

“Sailors
Snug Harbor” had been established as a retirement retreat for “aged, decrepit
and worn-out seamen” established in the community by the last will and
testament of Captain Randall in 1831. Over the years the complex grew and by
the 1960’s contained dormitories, a music hall, a chapel and other buildings
noted for their Greek-Revival and Anglo-Italian architecture.

But
when Staten Island’s real estate began to boom, the city fathers broke Captain
Randall’s will, piously claiming that its “white only” codicil was
unconstitutional, and quickly formulated plans for a series of high-rise
apartment buildings on the property. The last of the retired sailors were
relocated to what one of the octogenarians called a “malarial swamp” in North
Carolina. But the intercession of preservationists – including Jacqueline
Kennedy Onassis – prevented the land from being sold to developers and Sailors
Snug Harbor became a cultural center, with art galleries, botanical gardens and
museums.

Banaszak
had heard the story first-hand, with appropriate obscenity-laced
embellishments, from the last of the residents. In high school, he and his
friends snuck into the Music Hall on Thursday nights to watch movies with the
old seafarers, some of whom weren’t averse to sharing a flask with the boys. He
was still a fan of
Miss Marple
.

Banaszak
continued his tour and was startled by the property’s transformation. He headed
down a road that he knew led back to Henderson Avenue, passing a Botanical
Garden with a huge greenhouse, a Chinese Scholar’s Garden and finally a Secret
Garden, complete with a maze of tall hedges. None of them had existed in his
youth. After that, the road, now flanked with huge trees, narrowed to barely
one lane. He reached the 12-foot-high double wrought-iron Henderson Avenue
gates. They were securely fastened with rusty but sturdy chains. Banaszak
cursed his carelessness in assuming the gates were still open after all the
years that had passed. He was boxed in. If Gallo called he would lose precious
minutes finding his way out.

He
was barely able to turn the van around on the narrow road and had a bad moment
when the rear wheels became stuck in a rut. But he finally made it and drove
out the front entrance of the Harbor. He checked his watch. It had been 45
minutes since he dropped Gallo off. Had something gone wrong? He headed back to
the house. The pain in his stomach seemed worse. Maybe it’s an ulcer, he
thought. I’m getting too old for this. He was two blocks away when he got
Gallo’s call on his throwaway cell. When he reached the house, the front door
opened and Gallo walked quickly to the van. His cap was askew and his shirt
rumpled. He threw the tool box in the back.

“Make
fuckin’ tracks!”

“What
happened to your face?”

“Nothing,
man,” Gallo said, but his hand automatically went to the long bloody scratch on
his left cheek. “She was a fighter. Now get me to the airport. I’m gonna
change.” He clambered into the back, giving off a slight but unpleasant odor as
he brushed against Banaszak, who grunted in pain. “Sorry.”

The
only other people visible on the block were an old woman walking briskly up the
street carrying a large canvas bag and a mailman coming from the opposite
direction on the other side. They waived to each other. Neither gave the van a second
glance as it pulled away.

“If
she scratched you, she’lll have shit under her nails. They’ll DNA you.”

“Man,
I gave ‘em plenty.” Gallo laughed harshly. “And it ain’t under no fingernails.”

“What
the hell did you do, Lucas? It was supposed to be a burglary gone wrong.”

“What’s
the fucking difference? They’ll chalk it up as a burglary that really went
south. I told you that was some fine quiff. Give me a break with the conscience
shit. I’m tired of hearin’ it. What did you think I was doin’ in there man,
fixin’ their mother-fuckin’ cable?” Gallo saw that his partner was steaming, so
he adopted a reasonable tone. “C’mon, I ain’t in the system.” He scrunched into
the passenger seat. “Besides there’s always DNA. Occupational hazard. That CSI
shit on TV is bogus. They ain’t that good.”

CHAPTER
3 – CHECKMATE

Neither
man knew how close they had come to catastrophe. The old woman with the canvas
bag was a cleaning lady. Sophia Radice worked in the girl’s house every other
week for four hours, 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. That’s all the place needed. It was
remarkably well kept. Sophia, who was in great demand in the neighborhood,
loved this job best. Both father and daughter were very neat. The girl was so
sweet, and did most of the vacuuming and laundry. Her mother had done a good
job with her. What a shame, that nice lady dying. A girl needs her mother.

Sophia
walked up the driveway. She picked up a small branch and threw it at a
three-legged raccoon sitting boldly on a garbage can. The raccoon was a
neighborhood institution, forced by its injury to scavenge during the day. The
crippled little bandit ignored her, as usual. Using one of the keys the family
had given her, Sophia opened the side door.

She
knew something was wrong almost immediately. A television, stereo and computer
were piled in the vestibule off the kitchen. She looked into the dining room; a
pillowcase sat upright on the table. The drawers in the credenza were open. She
looked in the pillowcase; it was loaded with silverware. Her chest constricted.
Breathing was hard. She wanted to run out of the house. But the girl was always
home by now.

“Betta!”
The girl’s name was Elizabeth, but the old lady could barely speak English.
There was no answer. She yelled louder, “Betta!” She was not leaving until she
knew the girl was all right. She walked back toward the kitchen, shaking.
Stairs to the basement were to her right. The door was open. As she passed it
she noticed something on the landing. It was a shoe. She recognized it. She
picked it up and looked down the stairs. The lights were on, and she could see
another shoe at the bottom. She called the girl’s name again. Hand trembling on
the wooden railing, she headed down the stairs.

***

Freddie
Keller was used to raccoons – and dogs, cats and possums, not to mention ducks,
geese and even the occasional reticulated python that escaped from the zoo near
his route. He loved his job. After walking all over Afghanistan, the physical
aspects of mail delivery were a breeze. And he liked the people he worked with.
None of them looked even remotely capable of going “postal.” At 22, with a job
serving the neighborhood where he grew up, Mom’s cooking and three taverns
where everybody knew his name, Freddie – as he told anyone who would listen –
knew he had it made in the shade.

Elizabeth’s
house was his favorite stop. He always put the mail inside the side door, on
the off chance that she would hear him and come out to chat. Truth be told, on
most days he slowed his route to make sure she’d be home from school. He made
up the time later and was always done early anyway.

A
group of girls at St. Peter’s sent cards and packages to Staten Island boys in
war zones. Something about Elizabeth’s letters touched him, and they became
‘pen pals.’ It was pure luck she was now on his route. The first time she
opened the door, he was stunned by her beauty. Despite their age differences,
they had a lot to talk about. He was going nights to the Staten Island campus
of St. John’s University and, like her, was interested in journalism. He never
got out of line, but he intended on keeping in touch when she went away to
college. You never knew.

Funny,
the side door was wide open. Keller tentatively opened the screen.

“Hey,
Lizzie, you there?” She hated that name, but tolerated it from him. No answer.
“Sophia, that you downstairs? Where’s Elizabeth?”

Nothing,
not even combat, had prepared the young mailman for Sophia Radice’s shrieks.
They were even too much for the raccoon, which clambered off his garbage pail
and scampered up the nearest tree as if he had all his limbs.

***

There
was a backup on the Goethals Bridge to New Jersey, an infrastructure
anachronism with two narrow lanes in each direction that barely let cars pass
each other, let alone thousands of trucks streaming across the borough.

“Man.
I can’t believe they want to build a NASCAR track our here,” Gallo said. “Are
they fucking nuts? Look at this traffic. But I guess it means a shitload of
money to Lacuna.”

“What
are you talking about?”

“The
stock car track, man. That’s the reason we just aced the kid. Her old man might
have screwed up the deal. Jesus, you had me read the local rag every day and
you didn’t pick that up?”

“Lacuna
told you that?”

Banaszak
was incensed. He was the senior man. If Lacuna was going to confide in anyone
it should have been him.

“Nah.
But I heard some of his boys talking about how much money they were going to
make when the track was finally built. I told you these wops can’t keep their
mouths shut. It’s why most of them are in jail. It’s just so damn obvious. Like
chess. You’ve got to kill the queen to topple the king. Or, in this case the
princess, I guess. Great game. You should play more.”

Fucking
chess, again, Banaszak fumed. But he admitted to himself that the NASCAR
connection made sense. The thought unsettled him. Reasons were dangerous.
Knowledge was dangerous. All one needs to know is the target.

“Maybe
they’re checking the bridges,” Gallo said nervously as they slowed to a crawl.

“You
mean roadblocks? You’ve been watching too much cable. It’s like this all the
time.”

“I’m
gonna miss my plane.”

“Don’t
worry,” Banaszak said easily. “It will open up on the other side.”

It
did, and a few minutes later they passed Exit 14 on the New Jersey Turnpike.

“Hey,
wasn’t that the exit for the airport?”

“Shit!
The pain is killing me. I can’t think straight. What time is your flight
again?”

“I
got about an hour and 15, man. But the security lines at Newark are a bitch.”

“No
sweat. I’ll get off at the next exit and take a back road I know.”

The
next westbound exit was six miles up the turnpike, and Gallo kept looking at
his watch and complained the entire way. After exiting, Banaszak found a local
road. Soon a heavily industrialized area gave way to a vast stretch of vacant
land crisscrossed by small toxic-looking dull grey streams and yellowish
marshes. An occasional smokestack could be seen in the distance and passenger
jets roared overhead with lowered landing gear.

“Well,
we’re headed in the right direction,” Gallo groused. “Just follow those
planes.”

“Maybe
they’re going to JFK,” Banaszak said.

“Don’t
even fuck around.”

Suddenly
Banaszak pulled over along a deserted stretch flanked by high weeds and rushes.
An abandoned car was just barely visible in the bushes. He grabbed his stomach
and moaned.

“I
think I’m gonna puke. Can you drive?”

“Oh,
shit. Sure, anything to get there. And you better get checked out. This could
have happened an hour ago and we’d be fucked.”

“I
know. I’m sorry. Listen, grab my cigs in my jacket in the back. I’m just gonna
slide over.”

Gallo
climbed into the back and started going through pockets.

“Where
the hell are they? They’re probably what’s fuckin’ you up. OK. Got ‘em.”

He
turned. Banaszak was holding an automatic pistol.

“What
the ….?

Banaszak
pulled the trigger. The explosion in the confined space of the van reverberated
off the corrugated siding.

“Shit,”
Banaszak said, his ears ringing. But he wasn’t worried about anyone else
hearing the blast. Most of it would be contained inside the van, and muffled
shots among the reeds were not rare in this part of New Jersey.

Gallo,
for his part, never heard a thing. The bullet, traveling faster than sound,
entered his forehead. There was no Hollywood splatter. The dum-dum mushroomed
to a stop mid-brain and effectively turned Gallo’s skull into a blender. With a
brain suddenly the consistency of a smoothie, his eyes crossed comically and
his mouth popped open and stayed that way. He squatted onto his haunches and
farted, long, loud and posthumously, then toppled backwards.

“Great,”
Banaszak muttered, opening a window as the interior of the van turned a noxious
mix of cordite and intestinal methane. He immediately regretted having talked
his ex-partner into kielbasa and sauerkraut dinner the night before. “She was a
nice kid, you stupid prick. Not worried about DNA, were you? This ain’t
Memphis.”

Banaszak
pried the cigarette pack from Gallo’s fingers and lit up. He took a deep drag
and exhaled in a long, satisfying cloud over the corpse, waving his hand to
spread the smoke and cut the odor. After a few more puffs, he leaned over and
casually dropped the cigarette into Glover’s gaping mouth. It hissed and a
small stream of smoke eked out.

“Checkmate,”
he said aloud. “Now let me show you how we deal with DNA in New York.”

Climbing
back into his seat, he pulled out his own cell phone and hit a speed dial.
After a brief conversation, he headed north, spending another uncomfortable
hour in traffic listening to Gallo’s body settling and gurgling obscenely
before crossing the George Washington Bridge. Twenty minutes later he pulled
into a combination junk yard and chop shop in the Bronx. A trio of snarling
dogs, a Doberman and two shepherds, hurled themselves maniacally at a fence as
he walked toward a construction trailer. A man came out of the trailer and they
shook hands.

“Nice
dogs,” Banaszak said. “Can I pet one?”

The
man laughed, and said, “Michael Vick rejects.” He pointed at the van. “The full
treatment?”

“Yeah.
The compactor and acetylene torches.”

“Too
bad. The boys were proud of their artwork.”

“Tell
them it will be messy. It may squirt. They shouldn’t wear their Sunday best.”

“What
about the tires. They look pretty good.”

Banaszak
thought about it. He knew what the man was getting at. Probably could make a
couple of bills selling the tires.

“Van
was heisted anyway,” the man said encouragingly.

“The
tires are yours,” Banaszak said. “How about a ride back to the city?”

“No
problem. Take you myself. You can wait in the shack while I get this started.
Coffee is fresh.”

In
an hour, the van, gun, toolbox, uniforms and 225 pounds of stiffening DNA were
compressed into a two-ton cube, then cut into shards dripping a gruel of
gasoline, oil and blood that would be shipped to various landfills outside the
state.

Lucas
Gallo would be spread over a dozen zip codes.