Authors: Mike Barry
The man known as Gerald did most of his contact work over the phone too. The phone was fast and convenient and even though the tap was probably omnipresent Gerald knew that it came down to a matter of auditing these tapes. Who listened? With five million phone taps in existence and still growing, they would need half the population of the country just to cover.
But for this one, he figured, it was best to show up in person. He did not want to take any chances at all with the passage of this kind of information. So although Gerald looked with distaste upon going out of his home or offices or car at all, much less face-to-face dealing with lower echelon personnel, he put on his jacket and met the contact downstairs in a back booth of a Wall Street luncheonette. The contact could be identified only by the white jacket he said he would be wearing. He was an information man, bland and colorless behind rimless glasses and as far as Gerald was concerned he would never see the man again so there was no need to make a further personnel inventory. If it ever became necessary to get rid of him he could do that over the phone. You simply did not have to get involved with the lower echelons.
“I got what I could,” the contact man said. He slid a dossier underneath the table. Gerald took it. “It’s all there, pretty much, as far as I could go.”
Gerald looked at the waitress and ordered coffee. Nothing for the contact man; there was no need to feign sociability. He would never see the man again. “Sum it up quickly,” he said. Gerald disliked reading. He could read perfectly well, even intricate and detailed materials, but talk was simply easier for him. If you talked you could manipulate people and get to the sense of things.
“He’s an ex-narco who got himself busted off the squad,” the contact man said. “The official story is that he was back-talking lieutenants and couldn’t take discipline but it looks like the truth is that he was taking suspects into back rooms and beating the shit out of them. Also he wasn’t turning over stash except under pressure.”
“User?”
“Not at all. He didn’t trust security. Didn’t like the idea of turning stash over so it would go right back into the dealer’s hands he said. He got a little bit noisy about it.”
“Interesting,” Gerald said, “sounds like a dedicated man.”
“They’re all dedicated at the beginning. This one looks like he played it straight all the way through, though. On the force ten years. Two years of that off, military duty, Vietnam. Volunteered.”
“Volunteered for the draft? Cops are draft-exempt.”
The contact man shrugged. “Dedicated,” he said. “Maybe he wanted to take a look at the trade firsthand too. Who knows? Riot training, was on the TPF squad before he got into narco. Streetwork, drove a radio car, special detail; fact is that he practically did everything. Worked Harlem during the ‘64 riots in the front lines.”
“A career man.”
“Looks that way,” said the contact man. He looked longingly at Gerald’s coffee as the waitress put it down but said nothing, then shook his head. “Never made sergeant, though. Was on the list but somehow they kept on going around him.”
“Usually do with these types,” Gerald said. He stirred his coffee, put in some sugar, stirred it again, unaware of the contact man’s gaze. “Sounds pretty tough,” he said, “but so far he doesn’t sound crazy.”
“Oh?”
“Man would have to be crazy to do what he’s doing,” Gerald said. “Wouldn’t he? Somehow, I don’t see that yet.”
“One other thing,” the contact man said, “which might explain a little more. He had a girl. She was found OD’d in a tenement over in the West Nineties.”
“That’s interesting,” Gerald said. He balanced the spoon delicately in his fingers, sipped the coffee. “Now that’s very interesting.”
“Nice Queens girl, someone named Marie Calvante. Can’t get much on her; he knew her for a long time though.”
“How did she get to the West Nineties?”
“That’s the point. It doesn’t show. She was found OD’d in a tenement over there. It might have been suicide or the girl might have been put down. You know how these things are.”
“Yes,” Gerald said, “I know how these things are.”
“Wulff took the call.”
“What’s that?”
“A blind tip came into his precinct while he was in a radio car.”
“Going a little too fast for me,” Gerald said. Very cautiously he put down the coffee cup. “Last I heard he was a narco. Back to radio car?”
“They didn’t know what the hell to do with him so they put him back on patrol in his old precinct. He was just too hot to handle.”
“And he was on duty when the tip came into the precinct?”
“He took the call himself,” the contact man said. “The girl was dead.”
Gerald thought about it for a moment, looking at the ceiling of the luncheonette which looked oddly enough like the ceiling of his office. “That might make a man crazy,” he said judiciously. “I can understand that.”
“Yeah.”
“How did the girl die? Was she a junkie? Or was it murder?”
“That’s the thing,” the contact man said. He leaned closer to Gerald, his knee brushing for a horrid instant before he retracted it, “That’s a blind alley altogether. All that I can say is that nobody I can reach or that is known by anyone I can reach had anything to do with it at all. Whatever it was, it came from outside channels.”
“But he thinks it came from inside.”
“Obviously.”
“So he’s going to patch up his girl that way,” Gerald said. He pushed the coffee cup away from him and succumbed to a sudden, pointless anger as he was already poised to stand. The contact man had nothing more to offer him. “It’s goddamned ridiculous,” Gerald said.
“What’s that?”
“This guy is trying to shake the whole city loose and it doesn’t even have anything to do with us. The girl probably was a junkie. How the hell she got into the nineties from Queens is something you can research but she probably OD’d herself. But he’d rather kill every dealer in the country than face that fact.”
“I don’t know anything about that,” the contact man said cautiously, “I just deal in information, you know. I try not to think. Mind if I finish your coffee?”
“I don’t give a damn what you do.”
“Don’t get mad at
me
” the contact man said, holding up the cup defensively, “I did the best I could. I can’t tell you what you like to hear; you got plenty of guys for that. I deal in the
truth.
”
“Take pride in your work, huh?”
“What’s that?”
“Sincere, dedicated, highly motivated, can’t be bought off for anything; you and your truth. You’d never make sergeant you know.”
“I don’t understand that,” the man said, blowing steam off the cup, “I just don’t know what you’re talking about. Hey, don’t forget the folder. I put it all down for you in detail. There’s a lot of stuff in there I didn’t even discuss; details and so on. Just gave you the high points.”
“No low points?”
“What’s that?”
“Any decent file should have the low points too, don’t you think? High points and low points.” Gerald put the dossier under his arm. He found himself struggling with an insane impulse, one he had not felt toward anyone for twenty years. It made no sense but this only rendered it the more tempting. He wanted to hit the contact man a doubling-over blow in the solar plexus and then finish him off with a right to the mouth.
“I don’t understand,” the contact man said, sitting over the coffee, “I just don’t understand.”
“Don’t make me help you,” Gerald said, “just don’t make me help you.”
He got out of the place quickly before he could give in to the impulse. It would not do him any good if he yielded. Gerald’s entire life was based upon the avoidance of confrontation. Confrontations made trouble. Better to do it behind closed doors or at levels of suggestion.
He took the elevator up to the heights, went into his office, locked the door and looked over the dossier with disgust, shaking his head, biting his lips now and then. As the contact man had said, it was all there. It was all there.
Stupid son of a bitch.
What got Gerald, he decided, what was
really
infuriating him was the feeling that if they only had been able to get to this Wulff themselves at an early stage of the game and has a chance to deal with him, he might have worked out to be a hell of a useful man for them. There just wasn’t much of this kind of dedication nowadays.
Forget it. Too late.
With a sigh of regret, Gerald put in the necessary call. Wulff was prey for anyone now.
But he would have made them a hell of a good man.
Williams came in less than three hours, jolting Wulff out of sleep, shaking his head but carrying a huge tube in which were rolled documents. He was a good man, there was no question about it. Either the rookie had matured enormously or Wulff was seeing strengths that he had been unable to appreciate before. “Son of a bitch,” Williams said, “don’t ask me to do something like that again. I’ll have half of civilian review on my ass for the way I charged through there. I knocked down clerks like bowling pins.” Then his face turned serious and he said “I don’t know what you’re planning but I want to help you.”
“No good. No deal.”
“I’m ready.”
“I know you’re ready,” Wulff said, “and I believe you. But this is mine. This one I’ve got to do on my own.”
“Why?”
“Because it has to be,” he said. He did not tell Williams about the appearance of the townhouse or how impregnably Peter Vincent had sealed himself in. If Williams was half a cop he had already studied those blueprints and knew it himself. “This one is mine,” he said.
“Doesn’t have to be.”
“Yes it does. There will be others,” he said to Williams. He doubted it. His best calculation was that he was going to break himself open on Peter Vincent and end a promising career. Be that as it may. He wasn’t going to drag down anyone like Williams on this kind of shot. “Lots of others,” he said.
“I hope so.”
“I’m in business now.”
“I believe it. I believe you really are.”
“But this one has got to be on my own.” He realized that he had more than committed himself to Williams for future ventures. If there were future ventures. That was a spotty commitment indeed. But looking at the man, sensing not only the appeal but the strength in those eyes, he knew that he had a man he could trust if he wanted him.
“I believe you mean that,” Williams said.
“I believe I do,” Wulff said and put out his hand.
Williams took it and there was almost the feeling of pact in that handshake. Melodrama, posturing, made Wulff vomit but he could sense the significance of what had just happened. “I appreciate this,” he said, motioning to the plans to break the moment.
“Ah bullshit,” Williams said and very quickly went out of there, closing the door. So he too hated scenes.
Wulff looked over the prints. They did not make him more optimistic. There were viaducts, piping, tunnels, small chinks in the armor which Peter Vincent had constructed but none of them were significant and all were pretty well under cover themselves. It was a question of having to penetrate the defenses, virtually, in order to penetrate the defenses. The intricacy of the network surrounding the seemingly impermeable townhouse was interesting of course. The intricacies of urban life. But Wulff did not feel that he was in a position to take much comfort from this.
At length studying, tracing, calling on the reserves of some almost-forgotten army reconnaissance experience, Wulff noticed that there were exposed gas lines there. They traced themselves out of the house like snakes and wound up very near street level at the rim of that abandoned lot. That was interesting.
He bent over and became completely absorbed. It seemed impossible, no way that something like this could work and yet, be damned if it did not look like those lines could be reached by simply going for them with a shovel. They were close to the surface, they may in fact have gaped open like little mouths in the ground there, releasing their vapors to mingle with the odors of East Eighty Third Street—
Fascinating.
Terello waited around until nine in the evening. Then he decided he couldn’t stand it anymore. Hanging around the apartment, waiting for the ax to drop was impossible. He couldn’t go on this way. His principles were founded upon getting out of the apartment and into the world, solving whatever problems arose with action, and he simply could not nod off in here like a junkie with the feeling that outside, people unknown to him in ways completely outside of his control, were deciding his life.
He had to see Vincent. The man simply could not do this kind of thing to him, put him under wraps for the duration. Who was Peter Vincent? His boss was Albert Marasco; he had always taken his orders from Marasco, now this Vincent was muscling in and talking as if he took it for granted that he owned Terello. He did not own Terello. No one did. Terello was no man’s fucking property. Whatever happened to him now he was not going to check out with the feeling that he was owned by someone.
Terello got out of his bathrobe and pajamas and got dressed. Instantly he felt better. He was assuming some control of his life now; he was in action again. He went into the small living room where his wife was watching television, laughing a little and talking back to the screen. “You tell ‘em, Merv,” she said, leaning forward, elbows on knees, forehead almost against the screen, “you show them up. They may have thrown you off Channel 2, baby, but you’re still number one in my heart.” He literally could not stand the woman. All right, it wasn’t completely her fault. If he had had a different kind of life, taken more interest in her and in being around the house, maybe she would have gotten away from the television and talked to him a little. Not let herself go to hell like this. But on the other hand that had been his choice and decision. Terello knew that it could have been no other way. He had things to do.
“I’m going out,” he said.
She did not look up. “Merv,” she said, “you are a wonderful creature.”
“I said I’m going out,” Terello said more loudly. He would have simply walked out except that he needed to leave a message. “Tell anyone who calls that I’m asleep and can’t be disturbed.”
She looked up, finally. “You’re going out, Joe?” she said, her eyes blanked. “Are you supposed to do that?”
“Sure I’m supposed to do it.”
“Weren’t you supposed to stay around for a few days?” She looked guileless. “Didn’t you tell me you’d be staying home for a few days?”
“Change of plans,” he said, “the deal came through after all and now I have to go.”
She shrugged and turned back to the television set. “Okay,” she said, “but I thought you were supposed to stay at home.”
“Shut up now, will you?”
“All right, Joe,” she said mildly, “you don’t have to scream at me.”
“Anybody calls, remember, I’m fast asleep. I can’t be disturbed for anything.”
“What if they really want to talk to you? Should I wake you up?”
Terello felt himself convulsing with rage. “Didn’t you
listen?
” he said, “I told you I’m going
out.
”
“Oh,” she said, “oh, that’s right, I forgot. You’re going out.” She paused. “But weren’t you supposed to stay in for a few days, Joe?”
“The hell with it,” he said and went out of the apartment. All right, maybe he should have left her a long time ago. It wasn’t as if there weren’t women around, all of whom would have been a hell of a lot better looking than the pig this woman had turned into in the slow twenty years they’d been married. But what was the point? He had never thought of getting out. Getting out took energy and ambition and in relation to his home life Terello had none. Just a little peace, that’s all he wanted and this at least the woman gave him. Hell, she made no demands at all. The only time she showed emotion was when the television set broke down or there was one of the frequent Queens power failures. Otherwise she co-existed with life and Terello without difficulties of any sort.
Hell, she was better off than he was. Terello knew himself to be a sensitive man. Hell, he wasn’t the run of the mill kind of guy who got involved in this sort of stuff. He had feelings. He suffered. He took a longer view of what was going on and he kept his eyes open. If he didn’t keep his eyes open he would not have lasted so long and he certainly would not be in the trouble that he was now because they knew that when you were dealing with Joe Terello you were dealing with a shrewd kind of a son of a bitch, a guy you couldn’t put things over on. Of course they’d want to keep him under wraps. Otherwise he might find out too much. He even might find out that his boss had been double-crossed and take a terrible vengeance. Everybody was afraid of Joe Terello. Damned right He was no ordinary kind of man.
He went to his garage and got the Electra 225 started. Just listening to the motor, being behind the wheel again made him feel better. There was nothing like being behind your own car, controlling your life making your own choices. The Electra was a 1964, hell, nine years old but it was still a better car and a better looking one goddammit than the newer stuff or the foreign shitboxes that some of these guys drove. With the depreciation being the way it was on all of those cars it made the most sense to get one five or six years old which had been nicely broken in and which some other guy had already taken the complete beating on. He had picked this one up for just five hundred dollars two years ago. Sure he had a little transmission trouble and the shocks had had to be replaced and the exhaust system wasn’t all it should be, but where were you going to get a car like this for five hundred dollars? Hell, buying new you couldn’t get the wheels off a Volkswagen plus the hood for five hundred dollars. It was all rigged, the whole thing. The only way to beat it was to buy used.
Terello drove through Rego Park on Queens Boulevard, heading toward the 59th Street Bridge. That was the best way to go this time of night; not much traffic build-up on Queens Boulevard, the street of high-rises. All right, he should have gotten out of Rego Park years ago. The area was going to hell with all the black stuff starting to move in on the edges and who wanted to live in fucking Queens anyway? He would have wanted a little house in Jersey, not too far out from the abridge but far enough so that he could have gotten some decent air but he had been so caught up in the job that there was never time to sit down and read the papers and really take the time and trouble to think out a move. Besides, without kids it didn’t particularly matter whether they stayed in Rego Park or not. Who cared about the school system? And his wife would have lived anywhere at all with four walls and a television set.
Hitting the bridge he picked the Electra up to fifty. It skittered and knocked a little but fifty was a good speed for a nine-year-old car. He felt a little twinge of anticipation and fear: what would Peter Vincent say when Terello confronted him face to face? Exactly what would Peter Vincent do?
Terello did not know. Nor did he particularly care. He had never met this Vincent clown nor after this one confrontation did he expect to see him again. But he was going to make it clear to Vincent that the Joe Terellos of this world could not be put under wraps, locked away under cover like dogs in a pound.
No. No sir. He would not stand for it nor would he permit Vincent to get away with this. He had worked with Marasco in good times and bad for ten years now. Marasco was his boss; Marasco was the man who told Terello where to go and what to do and he was not taking orders from
any
clown who in the absence of Marasco thought that Joe Terello was property.
In fact, he thought, pulling the car off the bridge and taking the sweeping turn onto First Avenue at thirty miles an hour, the hell with the traffic light, in fact, he would not be surprised if Vincent was simply some kind of sharp operator himself, a guy who thought that with Marasco out of the way he might be able to wedge in a little bit on the line of succession.
He might even be trying to keep Terello from the job which was rightfully his. Terello might succeed Marasco.
“Son of a bitch,” Joe Terello said aloud. Now that he had had a chance to get behind the wheel of the Electra and really think this situation out, all of his senses had returned to him and he was beginning to understand the situation. Of course. What had happened to Marasco was unfortunate but it sure as hell had nothing to do with him; he had worked loyally and without question for ten years. Now everybody knew that it was Joe’s turn to move into the position which had been vacated by Marasco. Wasn’t it? That was the way it worked when a man was a loyal soldier.
Except that this Vincent had horned in from outside, some sharp guy, an operator on the fringes of the line of succession who thought that now he had a chance to take advantage of the situation by cutting a piece for himself. All that he had to do was to keep Terello out of the picture for a couple of days until he had had a chance to make his moves and that would be the end of Terello’s possibilities. He wouldn’t be there at the funeral, he would not have shown proper loyalty, he would be passed right over.
And there would go the ten-year, waited-for, down-the-line chance.
“Son of a
son
of a bitch,” Terello said again. He burst the car up York to 82nd Street, started the long drive toward the river, went back three blocks and came up 83rd. Six-eighteen Eighty-Third Street, there it was. Did this Vincent really think that he had no understanding at all? Did he take him for such a fool? Didn’t he realize that Terello had contacts, friends, moves and a brain too and that he would be able to dig out the address of this silky mother-fucker just as quickly as he wanted?
He grunted, putting on the foot brake and bringing the car to a halt across the street from six-eighteen. Illegal parking all the way up and down both sides of the block of course; trust the sons of bitches in the high-rent district to treat their streets like private property. That was all right, he wouldn’t be here that long. His business might be very simply accomplished. He was going to get face to face with this clown and show him where he stood and if the clown got funny with him … well, he would have to get a little more serious than that. This was the ten-year down-the-line chance and it was not likely to come again.
He used the trunk key to open the glove compartment of the Electra and took out the point thirty-eight. In ten years he had had to use it only four times, each for a distinct reason. He was not a violent man; he knew himself to be in fact a man of great gentleness and basic compassion who could only become violent regretfully and with much pain. But he was as tough as he was gentle, as firm as he was compassionate. Nobody was going to take his ten-year chance from him now.
Nobody.
And he had been able to work all of this out on his own too. That certainly showed that he had far more brains than he might be generally credited with at least by the likes of Peter Vincent. They thought he was some hired man, some bully and fool, some errand boy who carried the late Albert Marasco’s coat and wiped his nose for him. Little did they know that it was Terello’s right, his absolute
right
, to be the next in the line of succession.
He came out of the Electra brutal and quick, ready for any kind of attack, doubling himself over and hitting the side of the car, then whirling with the gun, but the street was quiet. There was simply no sign of life whatsoever. For a moment he felt like a little bit of a fool, carrying on with a gun on a perfectly empty street but then he reminded himself that nobody ever fell behind in his work because he was cautious. Or took preparations.
Now to get the job done. He holstered the gun inside his jacket, gave the Electra a last affectionate look, started across the street. It gleamed in the streetlight. It got maybe seven miles to the gallon and had a hell of a dent in the left rear door but from this side it looked absolutely flawless. From bumper to bumper the right side of the Electra 225 was magnificent. And some day he would get the necessary body work done on the left side too.
Boy, he thought, this was some townhouse. For the first time he got a good look at six-eighteen. A massive yet somehow squatty building hulking by the river, dangling ornaments and brass. This was some security trap that Peter Vincent had gotten for himself. Maybe the guy wasn’t such a small-timer after all.
Didn’t matter. Terello reconnoitered, got onto curbside, paused a minute before heading for the stoop. Absolutely quiet, no light from behind the windows of six-eighteen although it was probably set up on dead shades. Sure, he had heard of something like that. They probably had him under observation. So what? They must have known that sooner or later Terello would come to settle out his side of the bargain.
A few scraps of paper wafted down the street, moving lightly in the August breeze. He felt them brush his ankles as they continued their strange journey to the river. A foghorn sounded from far to the North; something probably going under the Triborough Bridge. He vaulted the four steps of the stoop quickly, lightly, and seeing the huge knocker on the door lifted, hit. Hit that door once. Twice. Three times. Let there be no doubt in their minds but that Terello was here and that he was heading in. He felt the point thirty-eight inside his jacket and smiled at the weight of it. It was a good one. It had never failed him. There were dead men, a couple, who would testify to that.
The foghorn again. That was a big motherfucking ship or at least a loud one. Probably come to think of it it was some little tug with a big sound like a tiny woman with a big ass and mouth. The door opened and a short man with grey eyes wearing flowing robes was looking at Terello from what appeared to be some kind of vestry. Cold, impermeable, measuring eyes.
“Yes?” he said.
“I’m here to see Peter Vincent.”
“Peter Vincent is not at home now, I do not think sir.”
“You don’t understand. My name is Joe Terello.”
The eyes seemed to glint. “Ah,” the man said, “perhaps there was some kind of misunderstanding in that event. Would you like to come in, Mr. Terello?”
“Maybe Mr. Vincent would like to come to the door.” He was no fool. What did they think he was; a fool to walk into a blind entrance like this?