Condemned (67 page)

In a short while, Vasily Marcovich and Tatiana came into the foyer of the restaurant. They walked together up the stairs, pausing on the low platform. They both looked over toward Sandro and Becker. Tatiana stared fiercely at the man on the couch.

“She grown quite a bit, don't you think?” Sandro said to Becker.

Becker looked calmly toward the two people on the platform, sipped his drink. “They've both recorded their recollections of Leningrad,” said Sandro. “Thank you,” he called toward the platform. Vasily started up the stairs. Tatiana remained staring at Becker, her hands balled into fists. Vasily walked back, accompanying Tatiana upstairs.

“Is this a long dog and pony show?” said Becker.

“Not really a dog and pony show, more like, “This Is Your Life'” said Sandro. “Vasily said that he was introduced to you in Leningrad by Uri Mojolevsky, who was doing heroin in Moscow either for the C.I.A. or for you personally. He didn't. Uri, didn't have that part of it down clearly. Doesn't matter much, I don't think. There's a little more. Uri Mojolevsky told us that he's continued to deal for you in Brighton since he got here.”

“Who's us?”

“Did I say
Us?
I meant me.”

“If Mojolevsky's here, I'll arrest him. He's wanted in connection with an indictment,” said Becker.

“He said you've been supplying him since he's been here.”

Becker made a dismissive sound as he picked up his glass. “You wasted your time recording this horseshit. Where in hell do you think you can go with it?”

“I don't expect to go anywhere with it,” said Sandro. “I'm just here because my friends, Red Hardie and Tony Spacavento, couldn't be.”

“Two more dirty druggies,” said Becker. “How can an experienced professional like yourself, believe this nonsense?”

“They might have been involved in drugs, but that didn't warrant either of them the death sentence,” said Sandro. He put the radio near his mouth. “Uri, please.”

“Who are you radioing?” Becker leaned forward to look toward the entrance, then twirled to look out through the glass doors.

Uri Mojolevsky came through the doors and walked up the few steps to the platform, standing, hands clasped behind his back, as he faced Becker and Sandro. Becker stared back solemnly. After a few seconds, Uri turned and disappeared up the stairway.

“Anna and Svetlana say that after their trip from Romania with Sascha Ulanov, you wanted them to kill Uri to make amends for turning on you,” Sandro said to Becker.

“Anna and Svetlana who?” Becker said sharply. He sat back on the couch, annoyed with himself for letting any emotion escape.

“Anna and Svetlana,” Sandro said into his radio.

“You have Jimmy Hoffa out there by any chance?” said Becker, smirking.

The two women entered the restaurant and walked up to the platform. Anna gave Becker a middle finger.

“That's some kind of bitch you're dealing with,” Becker said to Sandro, amused. “I don't know her.”

“That may very well be so,” said Sandro. “As I tell all my clients, I'll believe anything you tell me, but horseshit me, you're horseshitting yourself.”

“I don't happen to be one of your clients, Counselor.”

“I think you're going to wish you were,” said Sandro. “Last but not least, I have Awgust Nichols, of Penn Station fame—now how would I know that—from the Sport's Club, from Romanoff's, from Kennedy Airport, where he was with you and your agents. Nichols, please,” he said into the radio.

Awgust Nichols walked into the restaurant, handcuffed behind his back. Marty Geraghty directed him up to the platform. Nichols stood there, gazing down.

A second later, J.J. Dineen walked into the restaurant. Becker stared as Dineen walked toward him. Another supervisor who had been brought in for today's arrest, accompanied by two agents, walked into the restaurant, moving in behind Dineen.

Becker stared in disbelief at the array confronting him. “You really buying all the horseshit that these people have been feeding you?” Becker said defiantly to Dineen, then looking at the agents. “You think that I'm going to cave in because of what some drug addicts and sickos have been telling you?”

“Maybe not,” Sandro said, rising to his feet. “Maybe everything you say is true and correct. In which case, you'll come out of everything all right.”

“Come out of what all right?” Becker said testily, looking from Sandro to Dineen.

“The indictment and trial,” said Dineen.

“You're going along with the hare brained idea that this disgrace of a lawyer just conjured up out of the cesspool of his clients?”

Dineen half turned, nodding to the Supervisor behind him.

The Supervisor stepped forward. “Stand up,” he said to Becker. “You have the right to remain silent—”

“Don't start that Miranda shit with me,” said Becker.

“Stand up,” the Supervisor repeated. “You have the right to retain a lawyer of your choice—”

“This is horseshit,” said Becker, standing.

“If you cannot afford a lawyer, one will be provided for you. We're going to take your gun and your badge. Stand easy.”

An Agent was now standing next to Becker. A second agent, the front of his jacket brushed aside, his hand on his weapon, stared steadily at Becker. The first Agent removed Becker's weapon, handing it to the other Agent, who unloaded it. Becker was turned around and cuffed. His badge was removed and handed to Dineen.

Sandro walked up the stairs to the bar area. Tatiana was staring out the window, crying. Vasily was at the bar, downing a vodka.

“Did Anna and Svetlana go?” Sandro said to Tatiana.

“They went down the back elevator. Their plane leaves at seven fifteen. The Agents were driving them and putting them on the plane. Just as you worked out for them.”

“Better they're voluntarily deported to Romania than sit in a jail here.”

“Let that son of a bitch sit in the jail for all of them,” Tatiana said angrily as she saw Becker in the street below, being placed inside a government vehicle. “For the rest of his miserable life.”

Astoria : September 11, 1996 : 8:30 P.M.

The door to the small party room at Pontecello's on Broadway in Astoria was closed. Inside, Supervisor Becker, Mulvehill, Geraghty, Castoro, Santiago, and A.U.S.A. Dineen sat at the table. It was a private farewell party for Mike Becker who submitted his retirement papers shortly after hiring Jay Goldberg as his defense counsel. In order to work out a bail package which would keep Becker out of jail during the pendency of the case, Goldberg offered A.U.S.A. Rambeau—for appearance and personal reasons, Dineen asked to be replaced as prosecutor—a bail package which included surrender of Becker's passport, his immediate retirement from the Agency, waiver of the ten day period within which an indictment had to be obtained, and two hundred and fifty thousand dollars bail, secured by a stock account of Becker's worth ninety thousand dollars, title to his condominium apartment in the Village, and two PRBs (personal recognizance bonds) one signed by Becker's brother, the other by Becker himself.

The hush-hush party was arranged by Geraghty and Mulvehill in Astoria, since the Agency had admonished the members of the squad to save themselves embarrassment, and because they were, technically, potential witnesses against Becker—although with the evidence available from co-conspirators, the Agents' testimony would hardly be necessary—not to associate with Becker.

“Here's to the best damn Agent, regardless of whatever, if you know what I mean, which I'm sure you do, I ever met,” said Mulvehill somewhat foggily, raising his beer bottle toward Becker. Actually, it was Mulvehill's sixth beer since he arrived at the restaurant, and he and Becker had stopped off for a couple of drinks before they arrived.

“Here, here,” said Geraghty. He, too, had already had several drinks.

Dineen raised his scotch on the rocks.

Becker nodded and smiled, raising his Stoli. “I want to tell you, I really appreciate this dinner. Most of the other bullshitters—ah forget it. I won't even dignify them by talking about them. Here's to us.” Becker lifted his glass.

Everyone drank.

The dinner proceeded, with everyone drinking, toasting each other, and everything else in the world. Santiago, not much of a drinker or carouser, was the first to leave, about 10 o'clock. Castoro tried vainly to keep up with Mulvehill, Geraghty, Dineen, and Becker, but left about 10:30.

The remaining celebrants continued the evening in various ways. Geraghty and Dineen, now standing, drinks in one hand, an arm around the other, harmonized, ‘My Wild Irish Rose'. Mulvehill joined in the song sporadically as he leaned back in his chair, eyes closed, stopping to draw air through a half smoked, unlit cigar propped in the corner of his mouth. Becker, still seated at the head of the table, stared straight ahead. His eyes were red and moist. About fifteen minutes earlier, noiselessly, tears had begun to run down his cheeks. Dineen and Geraghty urged him to join their singing, but he just stared straight ahead, crying, not responding.

“I've got it, lad,” said Geraghty, when he and Dineen had finished their song. “Danny Boy.” As always, when he drank, Geraghty's brogue became more pronounced. He never noticed this phenomenon as he drank, and the next day, he never remembered.

“Come on, Mike, Danny Boy,” Dineen urged Becker enthusiastically.

Becker didn't react.

“Pete?”

“Great,” Mulvehill responded without opening his eyes, starting to his feet. Half way up, he collapsed back into the chair. He balanced there for a moment, then the weight of his head tilted him forward until his face came crashing down onto the table top. He still held a beer upright with his left hand on the table. He didn't stir.

Geraghty and Dineen stopped singing, studying Mulvehill.

“Is he dead?” said Geraghty.

Geraghty shook his head. “Unless you can snore when you're dead.”

“Oh, Danny Boy, the pipes, the pipes are playing …”

Stephan Malevic, the owner of the restaurant, opened the door slowly, peeking in. Everyone except the bus boys waiting to clean up had already left. Over the years of his patronage—the bar downstairs being the place to which Geraghty escaped from his nearby home for a quick shooter toward closing hours—Geraghty and Stephan had become friendly. Often, they'd go drinking together further along Broadway after Stephan pulled down the iron gates in front of the restaurant.

“Hey, hey, my buddy, come in, have a drink,” said Geraghty. He pointed to the bottle of vodka on the table in front of Becker.

“Let's go down the street for a drink,” said Stephan. “I'll buy. The bus boys are waiting to clean up in here. They want to go home.”

“Close my ass,” emanated from Mulvehill's mouth. His eyes were still closed, his head on the table.

“One drink, then we'll go, lad,” Geraghty said to Stephan.

“One,” nodded Stephan.

Geraghty began to pour a tumbler full of vodka.

“Whoa, whoa” laughed Stephan. “I'm not a horse.”

“You're a horse's ass,” mumbled Mulvehill. “Guinea fuck.”

Stephan, from a Serbian town so close to Trieste that the native also spoke Italian, smirked at Mulvehill, raised his glass, clinked it against Geraghty's wine glass, Dineen's beer bottle, and drank.

“Is he okay?” Stephan said, looking toward Becker whose silent crying jag had begun again.

“Absolutely fine,” said Geraghty. “Having a hell of a time. Just a bit nostalgic.”

Stephan nodded and drank.

After a rendition of ‘I'll Take You Home Again, Kathleen', Geraghty and Dineen tugged and hoisted Mulvehill to the upright. One on each side of him, they balanced Mulvehill's heft as he swayed his way slowly toward the door.

“We getting the bum's rush from the Dago fuck?” Mulvehill said, one arm around Geraghty's neck.

“Not at all, not at all,” replied Geraghty. “We're going down the street for another drink.”

“Good. This place is a shit house anyway,” Mulvehill said, trying to glance around.

“It is that,” Geraghty said, winking at Stephan. Stephan shrugged, amused.

Becker had stopped crying, had straightened his tie, and now, wordlessly, followed behind the group.

Dineen went first down the stairs, half-turned to hold Mulvehill from falling forward. Geraghty tried to stay on the same step with Mulvehill, holding him upright. Step by step, they descended. At the bottom of the steps, there was a short wall, a right turn through a doorway, to the dining room. About three steps from the bottom, Mulvehill's heft surged as he tumbled forward.

“Thar she blows,” shouted Geraghty.

Dineen jumped deftly through the doorway at the bottom of the stairs as Mulvehill surged forward and down, crashing into the wall. “Oh shit,” he groaned, beginning to sag at the knees. Dineen reached for him and, with Geraghty, pulled him to his feet, turning him toward the doorway.

“Here we are. Let's have a drink,” said Mulvehill.

“We're still in the first joint,” said Geraghty.

“The wop's place?”

“The very one. Come on, lad, make it toward the door.”

“Yeah, let's get out of this greaseball joint.”

Geraghty and Dineen slowly guided Mulvehill out to Broadway. Becker came out, silent, austere, and stood on the sidewalk, looking in each direction along a deserted Broadway.

Stephan pulled the iron gates down in front of the restaurant, slipping heavy locks through holes in each side.

“My cigar. I forgot my cigar,” said Mulvehill, twirling back toward the bar. “What the fuck?” he said as he faced the closed gates. “I forgot my cigar, meatball,” he said harshly to Stephan. “Open the fucking gate.”

“Come on, Pete. You finished that rope already,” said Geraghty.