Authors: Reggie Nadelson
After I'd seen Nancy and Max in the park, I hadn't seen either one of them again. In September she went to Fire Island with her family. I didn't know if Max Ostalsky went with them.
The sickness I had been feeling since I saw them in the park together came over me again. “Anything else?”
“Not that I seen,” said the super.
I held out some money.
“What's that for?” he said. “No thanks, man. This here is my job. You a cop or something, cause a few of them's been around lately. Some kind of cops, or something.”
I slammed through the door of the station house, and into Murphy's office; nobody looked up. It was as if I was an outcast.
“What are you doing here, Wynne? I thought you were sick. I thought I told you to take some time off,” said Murphy when I was in front of his desk.
“I'm getting to feel somebody's giving me the goddamn runaround. I been feeling this way all week since I caught the case on the pier. Matter of fact, I been getting some mixed signals from you, Murph, the last three, four months.” I tried for a neutral tone. I didn't want to push too hard, but I was mad as hell.
My boss put his cigarette in a cracked green plastic, and unwrapped some candy. “Nothing beats a Chunky,” he said, and stuffed the whole thick square of chocolate into his mouth. He was a greedy man. His drawer was always full of candy bars that he offered you if he felt you were deserving. He never offered me anything.
Murphy's suit jacket was over the back of his chair; his tie looked like it would choke him, he knotted it so tight. He left me standing in front of his desk. Never told me to sit down.
I said, “I know who the victims are, the girl on the High Line, the man out on Pier 46. I got the IDs.”
“What are you doing here? Didn't I tell you to take some time off?”
“You want the case for yourself?”
Murphy was always up for a possible collar that would enlarge his reputation. My boss was a creature of the New York Police Department, like his father, and his grandfather.
“Go home, Pat. We got Cheeks Farigno for the dead girl last summer, he killed her, and we'll get him on this one too. Same style. Same signature. You would know that if you damn well paid attention.”
“Fill me in, then.” I sat down and looked at the picture of Robert Kennedy on the wall. Murphy was pissed Bobby was his personal friend, he had often pointed out to anyone who would listen. I loved Bobby. He was the runt of that litter, but he had brass ones, and he was ferociously loyal to his big brother.
“Did you know Bobby used to go on patrol with us at night,” Murphy said. “Great guy. We let him ride with us. Sometimes he came along when we questioned thugs, and he loved it, playing cops. Call me whenever you need something,” he tells me, and I say, Bob, you ever want a change, you'd be a great cop. He loved that. And he took on the Mob, and the rackets, he had no goddman fear at all.”
“So you're charging Farigno to please Bobby Kennedy?”
Murphy didn't like Italians. He didn't like the way they had taken over Greenwich Village. Like a lot of Irish who came to New York earlier, he thought they were all low-lifes.
“Listen to me, OK? I know who the victim is,” I said. “He's Cuban like the girl last summer on the High Line. His name is Riccardo. He was her boyfriend. It's all connected up, Murph. I got it.” I slapped the desk, expecting some kind of praise, which was stupid, so I helped myself to some Goobers from a bowl on the table, ate them, and lit a cigarette.
“I told you that you were out of line on the girl when it occurred, I told you to let it go. Now, this poor bastard dead as a dead fish on the pier, and we got it, right, you read me, Wynne? We're ready to indict Luca “Fat Cheeks” Farigno. Like I told you, his signature is that Spalding rubber ball, he likes to stick it in their mouths, shut them up, for Christ's fucking sake. But you just keep making trouble, and now you got Captain Logan all riled up.”
“He calls the shots for you, this Logan? Who the hell is he?”
“Don't be so smart. Listen the fuck to what I'm telling you. You are not required on this case. It's under control. Go home.”
“I have names. The girl is Susana Reyes, the guy is called Riccardo.”
“We had her name back in August. You think you're the only cop that knows his way to Union City? We met Mrs Alicia Reyes after the girl's picture went into the paper, she was not helpful, but one of her sons, he was more forthcoming, more, what should I say, easy to persuade, so yeah, we know who the girl was. We also knew you tried to see her during the summer, and we know you were out there yesterday.”
I lit a cigarette to hide my surprise.
“You didn't think she told us you'd been pestering her? She was uneasy about your connections with that Russki you hang out with, so she calls after you leave, and she says to me, is Detective Wynne on their side, and I say, no way, he's a good detective, he's a patriot, I give her the whole line of horseshit. I protected you, Wynne. Soon as I find out the dead fish of a guy on the pier has the tattoo, that worm, that motto Cuba Libre, I get somebody on to Mrs Reyes. You're a day late and a dollar short, so they say, Wynne. Leave it be.”
“Why didn't she tell me you knew?”
“What is this, boo hoo, you got left out? We told her you were on vacation. I told her not to talk to you. It would only upset her. Now ease up, Pat.” He tried his little tight smile on me to keep me calm. “You're wondering if she told us about the tattoo, about all that political crap? Sure, she did. You think I believed it? What crazy person is going to take a worm for a symbol, I ask you? It was a couple of crazy kids, maybe on dope. I humored the woman because she lost her girl, and you gotta feel for her. But these are both Farigno's, and I've been wanting him for a long long time. Captain Logan is with me. I would put it down to Vincent the Chin, but he's in the slammer, they got him for trafficking heroin, you remember, OK? You hear me?” Murphy rose to his full height, which even with lifts in his shoes was around five five. “Pat, listen to me,” he said, and again he was surprisingly soft. “You're sick. You need rest. You look terrible. Do me this favor. Go home for a week or two. Why don't you see if you can borrow that shack you love in Montauk. Take your little friend, Tommy Perino, and get out of town.”
“What's it got to do with Tommy? You threatening him?”
“I just don't want to see a kid get caught up in anything. Pat, I'll call it sick leave. We caught a couple of homicides with the same MO. It happens. This is New York City. People get killed. Why in God's name do you have to make it something bigger? Cubans. Russkis. You hanging out with that damn Ostalsky. Going with girls who love Cuba and hate America. Yeah, yeah, I know all about you and that Nancy Rudnick. Father's a real Red.”
“Some things are bigger,” I said. “You remember that spy ring, those people out in Brooklyn? They got caught because somebody burgled their house, and found the radio they used to send messages to Moscow. Sometimes it's like that.”
“Not this time, you understand?” Murphy said. “I'm your friend, Pat, OK? You think too much. You read too much. If I let you work this, you'll be telling me next there's some kind of world conspiracy. You used to be a fine detective, you still are, but you're making me nervous. You make other people nervous.”
“Like Logan?”
Murphy reached in his drawer for a Clark bar. “Listen to me, Homer Logan is a player. He has the ear of some important men, you grasp this? He was a war hero, he flew planes, he bombed the goddamn Japs in Tokyo, and after that he became a cop, and now he's connected big time. So when he says jump, you jump.”
“You jump for him?”
“Logan doesn't like you. For whatever reason, he doesn't like the sight or the smell of you, maybe he noticed you don't take kindly to authority, but if you're smart, you'll take some time off and stay away from him, and from these two homicides, you hear me?”
“And if I don't?”
“Logan will put the word out so nobody will talk to you, you understand? He'll ask your buddies if you been seeming unstable. Jesus, Pat, can't you just go along for once? It's the Mob. It's Farigno. It's a done deal.”
“What about Mrs Reyes and the Cubans?”
“It's baloney. Poor Mrs Reyes needs to think her daughter died for something, that the tattoos stood for something. They didn't. They died for nothing at all. They were in the wrong place.” He came around the desk and stood over me. “Detective, please give me your weapon, just for a few weeks, while you're off duty. You understand?”
I figured I had nothing left except to play his game. I got up. I gave him my gun.
“Good. That's good, Pat. Your badge too.” He held out his hand. I did what he told me.
If Murphy and the Feds had known about Mrs Reyes all along, if they were going to indict Farigno and his Mafia pals no matter what they found out, I had no cards left.
“There's been some cops visiting Ostalsky's building, did you know that?” I said.
“You think he's maybe less than kosher, Murph?”
“I thought he was your pal.”
“Let's just say I saw the light. He's a Red bastard like the others,” I said. “Maybe worse.”
It was done. Murphy would not forget. Then I called Seamus Brennan, my nebbish brother-in-law, who mostly does paperwork at the FBI. I asked for information on a Maxim Ostalsky. I put it out there in a way I could never take back.
Was I so jealous that I'd want Max accused of espionage, thrown out of the country? Sent back to the USSR in disgrace? Didn't they shoot you over there in Russia if you screwed up?
CHAPTER EIGHT
October 19, '62
N
OBODY TOOK MY CALLS
after Murphy told me to beat it. He must have phoned around as soon as I left his office. Thursday, the rest of that day and night, I called friends on the force, trying to find out what was going on. Max Ostalsky had been involved but nobody wanted to hear it. Not even my oldest friend or my cousin who worked at headquarters would talk. My own sister said Seamus was out, and I said where was he at one in the morning, she said, “You woke us up, Pat. I can't talk now. Come for Thanksgiving, Pat,” and hung up. At best I got evasive; at worst, threatening.
Stay away from Wynne. The word got around fast. I had seen it happen before. The year after I joined the force, rumors went out that a certain captain midtown was unfit for duty. I knew the guy a little from around. He was a brilliant detective, a few years from retirement. Somebodyâit was never revealed whoâtook against him. Said he had a copy of
Spartacus,
the novel Howard Fast wrote when he was in jail for being a Communist. That was it. The captain had a book.
Within a few days, everyone is talking about this fine cop, and saying he's some kind of Red, a corrupt policeman who uses local whores, and snorts horse, and privately the other cops say this is bull, he's a good guy, but they're scared to say it aloud. Somebody wants him out, somebody up high, and by the end of the week he's gone. Turned out, the book had been left on his desk by somebody else. I ran into him about a year later, and he looked bad, shriveled by the experience, and sad, and he begged me to go for a drink. He had no friends left.
Now it was me nobody was talking to, not even the sergeant in Chinatown who had taught me the ropes way back. I'd been cut off by my own boss, and probably by Logan who didn't like me the minute he saw me on the pier. I was out in the cold, except maybe for that kid I had met the night of the murder. What was his name? Joe? Jim? That was it, Jim, Jimmy Garrity. He had been pissed off at Logan using him for a chauffeur. I'd give him a call. See if I could make him mine. But when I reached him at home, he told me he had been transferred to the Bronx, and then he got off the phone as fast as he could.
Nobody believed me. Nobody believed Ostalsky had been involved in the homicide. He was not at his place on 10th street. Nobody else was home either. Nobody answered the phone. At NYU his professors said they had not seen him all week long. If I found him, I couldn't arrest him; I had no badge, no weapon. Where the hell was he? Was he with Nancy? Was he hiding at Saul Rudnick's house?
Late Thursday night, not Thursday, it was already Friday morning around three, when I looked out of my window, there was a car parked across the street I had never seen before. Nobody parked on Hudson Street at night, unless you lived here. Outsiders didn't trust it. Gangs sometimes wandered downtown, drunks too, and dopers. Most of the time I parked in a garage a few blocks away, if I had the dough.
After I shut off the lights, I stood for a while. A blue Impala looked out of place. Two-tone. Big. Times I did surveillance, I never went in the Corvette, a real pain of a car I bought second-hand off my Uncle Jack. It was sweet, though, and I took good care of it, but you didn't do surveillance in it. You got hold of a department car.
This, what was he, a cop, a Fed, on my tail?
It made me sweat. If they watched you, they could do anything. You'd come home and find they had planted something, a left-wing magazine, or a book about Civil Rights, or a letter from a friend with seditious material. A friend like Max Ostalsky. We didn't do black-bag jobs; but the Feds did them.
It wasn't fear that got me drinking that night; it was terror, a small potent dose of it, of something unknown, something about to happen that I couldn't control, but that I had set in motion. I had no friends, either.
The next morning at six, the phone woke me up. It was Nancy.
“Is he with you?”
“What? Who?”
“Max. I need help, Pat. Can I come over, please. I'll be there in ten minutes, please. Just let me in.”
She was wearing denim overalls spattered with red paint, a rumpled pink blouse, and blue sneakers when she arrived at my place. “Oh, Pat, thank you,” she said. “Thank you.”