Two Jakes (45 page)

“It’s
a nice human interest story,” the reporter argued.

“Bimm
isn’t human,” Pearsall retorted. “Just find out what he’s up to.”

After
he hung up he berated himself for his unforgivable lack of objectivity. The
damn Pulitzer had obviously gone to his head. But the kid’s story idea was
dumb. Who cared about a project so asinine that it was abandoned in the 1920’s?

***

Pearsall
had his back to the elevator when Everett Harvey walked in. He swiveled his
chair only when he heard some other staffers greet the police reporter. Anticipating
that Harvey was headed his way, he quickly folded the Hagstrom with an
accomplished flourish. But the police reporter headed straight into the
managing editor’s glassed-in corner office. That’s strange, Pearsall thought;
Ev always checks in with me first. He watched the two men converse quietly.
Popp looked out at the city desk and picked up the phone. A few minutes later
the elevator opened and Jennifer Fish, the
Register’s
publisher, walked
quickly into Popp’s office, looking neither left nor right. Suddenly the
intercom on Pearsall’s phone bank buzzed. It was Popp.

“Bob,
can you come in here, please.” He sounded tense.

Puzzled,
Pearsall got up and slowly made his way to Popp’s office. Two minutes later,
curious staffers were shocked to see him slump to the floor before any of the
others with him could react.

CHAPTER
5 – LAWS OF GOD AND NATURE

Jake
Scarne leaned on the railing of the deck outside his apartment. He’d slept
badly and felt lousy. He’d had another dream. Or, rather, the same dream. In it
he was swimming in a warm tropical lagoon when someone grabbed his ankle and
pulled him down. When they reached bottom the hand let go and he saw it was a
beautiful woman, blonde tresses waving in the current. He tried to kiss her.
Her lips parted and a trickle of blood swirled from her mouth. Then she floated
backwards, her dead eyes accusing him. Scarne had woken, gasping for breath,
sweating profusely. He’d not been able to go back to sleep.

Below
him on Fifth Avenue the traffic was beginning to pick up. He watched an elderly
woman walking two rat-like dogs struggle with a pooper scooper as one of the
hairless animals wrapped its leash around her legs. The other creature strained
to reach a tree where a tail-swishing squirrel was poised, head down, staring
at it. If that leash breaks, my money is on the squirrel, Scarne thought. It’s
bigger. A fruit vendor was setting up his stand nearby. Kids with backpacks
ambled out of the NYU dorms just up the street. A Lincoln Town Car from a
livery service pulled into the circular driveway of his building and
disappeared under the scaffolding and net that had been installed to protect
pedestrians from falling bricks.

Scarne
took a deep drag from his cigarette and immediately felt a slight constriction
in his throat. Time to cut back, maybe even quit. He reached down to extinguish
his cigarette in the coffee mug that served as an ashtray on the small plastic
table that, along with a dusty lounge chair, was the deck’s only adornments, if
one didn’t count the foot-high weeds growing through cracks in the cement. How
did they germinate eight stories up? He knew he should pull them, but, admiring
their tenacious grip on life, kept putting it off. Maybe they weren’t all
weeds. One looked suspiciously like a sapling.

The
mug on the table was full of butts, and Scarne felt a momentary disgust,
exacerbated by the fact that it was a beautiful day. He looked down the street
to Washington Square and its famous arch. The 10-acre park was a neighborhood
treasure and a magnet to residents, tourists, students and film makers. The
brownstones on the north side, in particular, had appeared in innumerable
movies and TV dramas, mostly police procedurals. Scarne was pretty sure every
character actor in Manhattan had been murdered or arrested in front of one of
those brownstones. The Square’s grass, benches, mature trees, street performers
and chess players were magnets that made it a people-watchers’ paradise.

Scarne
thought the park perfect as it was, and had recently signed a petition decrying
the city’s plan to redesign its fountain and move it 11 feet, six inches to
line up exactly with the arch. He had never noticed that the park’s layout was
“asymmetrical,” as the redesign proponents claimed, and frankly didn’t give a
damn. The park had served Greenwich Village well for more than 150 years.
Robert Lewis Stevenson and Mark Twain had conversed on one of its benches, and
Scarne was fairly certain they never noticed the fountain was a bit off-center.

From
his vantage point he could read the inscription on the arch’s façade:
“To
commemorate the one hundredth anniversary of the inauguration of George
Washington as the first president of the United States.”
He wondered how
the Father of the Country, whose barefoot soldiers froze in the snows of Valley
Forge, would have felt about spending $16 million to move a fountain.

Scarne
also wondered how long he’d be able to afford his view of the park. He’d gotten
a letter from his building’s co-op board breaking down the cost of repairing
the façade that was shedding all those bricks. The whole project was going to
cost residents $31 million. Since he had a one-bedroom apartment, the letter
noted, Scarne’s assessment, based on square footage, was “only” $84,500! Where
is George when I need him, he thought sourly.

Scarne’s
cell phone began playing
Aura Lee
. It was Dudley Mack.

“You
want to get drunk in a church?” his friend asked without preamble.

“How
is anyone expected to say no to that?”

“Get
the 5 o’clock boat. I’ll pick you up in front of the one-two-oh.”

***

Scarne
was standing outside the ancient St. George’s 120
^th
Precinct house –
the “one-two-oh” to everyone on Staten Island – talking with Abel Crider when a
black limousine pulled up to the curb. Or rather, he was listening to the
police detective; he could barely get a word in edgewise. Crider was the
fastest talker Scarne ever met. There were no pauses between words, no places
where a comma could fit. The rear window of the limo rolled down and Dudley
Mack said, “Rescue any more hostages lately, Abel?”

Crider
grimaced. “Up yours.” (It came out, “Uproars.”)

Mack
laughed good-naturedly as Scarne got in the back seat. Behind the wheel Bobo
Sambucca, now Dudley’s official driver, smiled a hello in the mirror and pulled
away.

“Give
it a rest, Duds,” Scarne said. “Abel’s a good guy. He’s off that detail now.”

“What
a surprise.”

All
three men had known Crider since college, but had lost track of him until
Scarne spotted an article in the
Post
about a hostage situation in a
Queen’s Hooter’s. A man put a gun to the head of a waitress and demanded to see
the manager. The girl had previously dumped the gunman for said manager, who
wisely locked himself in the freezer. The restaurant was soon surrounded by
police, accompanied by a hostage negotiator, who went in to talk to the
distraught suitor. Minutes later there was a shot and the hysterical girl ran
out. The frozen manager, smelling like shrimp, soon followed. A SWAT team found
the hostage negotiator standing over the gunman, who had taken his own life.
The negotiator was Abel Crider and it was suggested, half in jest, that the
poor bastard killed himself so he wouldn’t have to listen to Crider talk.

Scarne
and Mack laughed at the memory.

“All
the Criders talk like that,” Bobo said from the front seat. “I knew Abel’s mom.
Talked faster than him. When they argued it sounded like dueling machine guns.
Pentagon should draft them to run our communications. Enemy would go batshit
trying to figure anything out. They could talk on regular phones, for Crissake!
Be like them Iroquois code talkers the Marines used against the Japs.”

“I
think they were Navajos,” Mack said.

“I
screwed a Nava ‘ho’ once,” Bobo said. “She was awesome.”

***

“Is
this one of your new funeral cars?”

They
were driving along Richmond Terrace.

“Can’t
get anything by one of the city’s top private dicks. Like it?”

“Yes,”
Scarne said. “It still has that new dead body smell.”

Unlike
many funeral home operations, the Mack-Sambuca chain (now up to four sites on
Staten Island and one in Sea Girt, New Jersey), had its own fleet of limousines
and hearses. Dudley Mack was proud of his modern fleet and was famous for
occasionally using the cars for his non-funeral enterprises, most of which were
illegal. Mack believed the vehicles “set the right tone” for conversations in
the back seat. Being taken for a ride in one of them was an unnerving
experience for even the toughest of men. It was a home field advantage that
turned many a deal in Mack’s favor.

They
drove past the abandoned U.S. Gypsum plant that stretched almost a quarter of a
mile along the Kill van Kull. Before its closing, the huge facility had
provided some of the filthiest and highest-paying jobs on Staten Island’s
waterfront.

“Remember
that bar, Jake,” Dudley said, pointing to a small stand-alone shack across the
street from what had been the main entrance to the plant. The bar’s windows
were boarded up and graffiti was scrawled along its entire length. The roof was
fire-scorched. “I worked at Gypsum one summer. The old man thought it would do
me good. Guys coming off their shift would go across and drink a few million
beers to get the dust out of their throats. I can still taste those beers.
There was a hooker from Port Richmond who would come up on payday and some of
the hard cases would bang her right on the pool table in the back. Maybe ten
guys a night. She was a good sort, and made a fortune, but she’d be so covered
in gypsum she looked like a ghost when she left.”

“Great
story. I can’t wait to tell my grandkids.”

“I
was going to buy the place, just for old time’s sake. I don’t have enough gin
mills on the North Shore. But the guy who owned the building, a lawyer, torched
it for the insurance.”

“They
catch him?”

“Nah.
He’s a judge now. But he knows I know. I bankrolled his campaign. He’s a better
investment than the bar would have been, if you think about it.”

“Where
are we headed?”

“St.
Stan’s, on York Avenue. Ever been there?”

“No.”

“You’re
in for a treat. By the way, how’s the façade thing working out?”

“Not
too well. But some people are being dunned two, three times as much as I am.”

“You
need help with the assessment?”

“No,
but thanks, anyway.”

“I
know some union guys. Maybe get you a deal.”

Just
what he needed, Scarne thought.

“Pass.”

“Suit
yourself.”

They
pulled up to Saint Stanislaus Roman Catholic Church, a red brick building that
fronted York but sloped down a steep hill to Jersey Street.

“You
know, this does look familiar,” Scarne said.

“You
probably saw the movie,
Working Girl
. Used St. Stan’s for a wedding
scene.”

They
walked to the front entrance, where Scarne stopped to look at the inlaid stones
and art work framing the doors.

“Are
these swastikas?” He pointed at several small bent crosses that were mixed in
among other strange looking symbols.

“Yeah,
but that stuff isn’t supposed to be political. All those symbols and signs
predate the Nazis. Something to do with Eastern influence on the Polish church.
At least that’s what Jarecki, the pastor, tells me. Who knows? Poles had
pogroms long before the Krauts.”

“Are
there that many Poles still living around here?”

“Nah.
Most of the original parishioners moved to the south shore or Jersey years ago.
The neighborhood is full of Hispanics, Haitians and Jamaicans now. A few
Indians, of the dot, not feather, persuasion. But the old folks come from all
over for the Polish-language mass on Sunday. I hear they sometimes get a
thousand people. It’s followed by a great pot-luck luncheon. Kielbasa heaven.”

They
entered the beautiful, dark church and Scarne followed his friend to a door
behind the altar. It opened to reveal a long spiral staircase.

“What
is this,” Scarne said after they descended two stories. “The road show of
Angels
and Demons?
”

“Oh
ye of little faith,” Mack said over his shoulder.

Scarne
didn’t say anything else. Dudley liked his little surprises and rarely
disappointed. They reached the bottom. Mack pressed down on a heavy brass latch
on a thick wooden door and pushed it open. Scarne didn’t know what to expect,
but it certainly wasn’t the sight of a beefy Catholic priest sitting on the
nearest of a dozen wrought-iron swivel stools lining an oak and mahogany bar,
smoking Marlboros and drinking from a tall, thin double shot glass. It was a
real tavern bar, which ran almost the length of the room. Behind it stood a
small forest of beer taps: Budweiser, Heineken, Amstel, Harps, Miller, Sam
Adams. An old-style cash register was flanked by dozens of liquor bottles.
There was a large man wearing a white apron standing under a TV at the far end
watching the local news.

“How’s
it hanging, Jerry?” Mack said.

“Celibately,”
the priest responded, with mock sadness.

Mack
laughed and slapped the priest on the back.

“Jerry,
this is my pal, Jake Scarne. If he looks spooked it’s because he came close to
the altar upstairs. Expected a bolt of lightning. Jake, this is Father Jerry
Jarecki.”

Scarne
shook hands with the priest, who called down the end of the bar.

“Stash,
my friends are thirsty.”

The
bartender walked down to them. He had the crumpled face of a man who had spent
too many unproductive hours in a ring.

“Stash?”
Scarne said.

“You
have a problem with that?”

“No.
What’s your real name?”

“Stash.”

Without
asking, he put out two more double shot glasses and poured Polish vodka for the
new arrivals from a bottle in an ice bucket below the bar.

“You
want a twist?”

He
made it sound like a form of excrement. When they declined he nodded, put the
bucket and bottle on the bar and went back to the TV, which he turned up to
give them privacy. The three men raised their glasses to each other and downed
the shots. The ice cold vodka was superb. Scarne said so.