Rackets, page 10
The woman scattered the crumbs about her in a half-moon pattern. The first pigeons, fattened and scarred, landed and strutted back and forth for a few seconds, spinning to look as if they were checking for signs of ambush, then started to feed-hungrily. The flock descended from the few sparse trees and the cornices of the old bank building. They were dirty animals, Cronin thought, rats with wings. As a kid, in Washington Heights, he would go on his roof with a pellet rifle and kill a couple dozen at a time, the birds tottering, stunned by the projectiles, before falling dead to the courtyards along St. Nicholas Avenue. They were swarming at his feet now. The bugged-out eyes and the beaks programmed to peck. He fought an urge to kick one of them.
Cronin took out a toothpick and began to clean the hot-dog meat from between his teeth. As kids, he and his buddies would slide the air rifles into the sleeves of their fathers’ pea coats or army jackets and head to the park. Squirrels, crows, more pigeons, the occasional skunk or raccoon, thick rats, stray cats, city wildlife, urban vermin. They were stealth hunters. He was always the best shot, the truest eye, and he amassed the highest body count, sixty-six in one day. He guessed that was how it all started.
The woman reached down into her bag. Cronin noticed a jagged scar along the back of her hand and wondered about its origin. Scars told a lot about a life. The woman rummaged a bit, her secret stash. She pulled out a battered paperback and spread it open on her lap. Cronin strained to make out the title. The Murderer Next Door. He fought down a flash of something, paranoia. Coincidence. With a capital C. The pigeons had picked the path clean, and most were leaving. The weaker ones wandered around, hopeful of another windfall. The woman, wrapped in her gray coat, was not obliging. She was absorbed now, her head down, her knees firmly clasping the bag, poring over the book as if it might lead her to buried treasure.
Cronin sported Roth as he emerged from the IRT station. He wore a wool porkpie hat pulled down to his brow and a long trench coat. Cronin stifled a smile. Roth was dressed for the part. He carried a folded-up Times under his arm and was opening a package of Twizzlers. He looked as if he were on the way to a Cold War rendezvous. The light changed and he moved along with the crowd crossing Broadway. He was six and a half feet tall, one of the few men Cronin worked with who was taller than he was, although he outweighed Roth by a good seventy pounds. Ichabod Crane they used to call him. Ichy for short. His Adam’s apple was the size of a baseball.
Cronin watched Roth enter an apartment building next to a Mexican restaurant. He watched to see that no one was tailing Roth, then followed him into the building. The smell of greasy fried meat was thick in the air. He used a key to open the door and made his way up to the third-floor landing. He let himself into the apartment and passed through a hallway into the small, sparsely furnished living room. There, Roth was sitting on the edge of the table looking out the window. Without turning he said, “Panic in Needle Park. Hard to believe this was Needle Park.”
It was not hard for Cronin. He remembered the seventies all too well. He was a city cop then. Before the yuppies, before gentrification and the boutiqueing of Amsterdam Avenue. There was the fiscal crisis, the blackout, the gang violence, the scorched earth of the early drug wars, rampant corruption.
Roth seemed to read his mind. “Those were simpler days, no? The bad guys were a lot easier to keep tabs on. Not so diverse. We’ll end up spending half our budgets on translators and language schools.”
Cronin was not sure of Roth’s age but he knew it was shy of fifty. His carriage was of a much older man. He attached gravity to his language, remembered things he was too young to know about. A man who reveled in the shadows. He was a true believer, a patriot who had never dodged a bullet for his beliefs. In Cronin’s mind this made him more than slightly dangerous.
“This Dolan. Keefe is important. He may be unsavory, but we need to keep him there. What do they say? He’s an asshole, but he’s our asshole.”
Cronin wondered who Roth might define as they. Lately, Cronin had started to worry about the security of his position. Roth was his contact, and if push came to shove, they would admit he was a contract player, maybe bail him out on something noncapital. At least that had always been the deal. Even though he had been shit-canned by the Bureau, he had never stopped working for the government. Most of his colleagues and superiors were sympathetic, knowing he had been burned at the stake of lousy politics. But Roth he wondered about.
Roth was the head of a group that was established during the Reagan era, a time of smaller government except for intelligence and law enforcement. Wonder years for spooks of all stripes. They were supposed to monitor unions, present criminal opportunities, compromise leadership in order to legitimize federal takeovers of organized labor. Kind of an ABSCAM program writ large. It had become an entity of its own, and in New York, Labor City, Frankie Keefe was its prized asset.
“It’s safe to assume Dolan’s agenda is not in line with ours.”
“I’d be surprised. He’s got principles.”
Roth regarded him. “Let’s not confuse the issue. Principles can be overrated. Held to false esteem.”
Cronin wanted to laugh at the irony of it all. The government and Keefe wanting the same thing. One Mike Dolan was fast becoming an unpopular guy. Keefe had brilliantly played both sides of the fence for years. As a top-echelon informer he fed Roth friends and enemies alike to keep himself in power. All the while he was Tommy Magic’s number one moneymaker. That was obvious to Roth, but it didn’t matter, because Roth was more than willing to turn a blind eye to Keefe’s rackets as long as he produced. And as far as the local cops were concerned, Keefe, with Roth as his rabbi, was untouchable. American Justice.
“We need to dissuade Dolan.”
“Dissuade.” Cronin knew that meant it was time for him to get physical, to intimidate Dolan into dropping out of the race. It was mighty convenient for the government to have men like him at its disposal. Easy to keep its hands clean. He was beginning to tire of violence. Maybe he was getting soft.
“Aren’t we counting the votes?”
“We is a relative term. It is a lot easier to fix an election before it happens than after.”
Cronin knew Roth had some experience in this. Ichy had spent time in Third World flash points before taking over the labor rackets task force. The skinny man had some State Department shenanigans under his belt.
“You should know you have a great deal of leeway on this one.”
“Leeway. Roger that,” Cronin said.
Roth pulled on his coat. As he reached the door, he turned and said, “What do we know about Dolan’s kid?”
Cronin shrugged his shoulders. “Used to work for the Mayor, and he’s not high on Keefe’s list of favorite people, after their little tango the other day.”
Roth stroked his Adam’s apple as if he was plotting something. “I see,” he said, and was gone.
Cronin, just to be sure, waited twenty minutes before leaving. He was in the mood to stretch his legs, so he headed west. Soon he found himself walking past the Transit Workers headquarters on Sixty-third Street. His father had been a charter member of that union back in the dismal days of the Depression when the subways were privately owned and the workers were treated with a harshness few Americans today might grasp. His father, a man with few words for his offspring, was fond of the stories. If you wanted to work, it was twelve hours a day, seven days a week for take-home pay of about thirty dollars. Mention the word “union” and you were gone, lucky not to catch a sap behind the ear. No wonder he was a committed Communist, a German Jew who gave up his religion for the masses. He even changed the family name from Kronenberg to crush his past. He and some of his pals had banded with the Irish farm boys, most veterans of various Hibernian wars, to grab hold of much that moved in this city. He married a sister of one, an enforcer for the union.
Cronin made his way back to Broadway and descended onto an IRT platform that had changed little since its opening in 1904. His father had played out his days as a conductor on this line, a bitter and defeated old man, a victim of the Red baiting after the war. He stood in the front car as he used to when he was a child on the rare day his father would let him ride along. He thrilled at the rush of the tunnel, the light and shadows, the speed. He was a boy then and proud of his father in a way he would never be again.
Tara O’Neil folded herself at the waist and grabbed her toes. She enjoyed stretching before a run, took the occasional yoga class, was committed to flexibility. She spread a towel on the oak floor of her living room and brought her knees to her chest, then twisted her trunk from side to side. Her apartment in Stuyvesant Town was roomy and spare. A couch, a bed, an old and worn dining table of heavy hardwood, a desk that held her computer, no more than the essentials. She abhorred clutter.
As her back loosened, she thought about Jimmy Dolan. Her trip back to Johnny Mac’s, the incident with Liam, Jimmy’s face on the news, all this led her to focus on him whether she wanted to or not. She pulled on her running shoes and tied the laces. She was pounding out thirty-five miles a week, three days on, one day off, but had missed several runs because of work. She was eager to get back on the road, craved the endorphin rush, the rhythm, the clarity that came to her when she was running.
She drank two glasses of water, washing down a vitamin pill. Since moving downtown, she found herself going back to Inwood less and less. It was not a conscious decision. Most of her girlfriends had moved out, which was part of it. But the place was tainted for her, held too many bad scenes, and was certainly not the Inwood of her youth. Her generation had mostly abandoned the place for the green lawns of the suburbs, some north to the gentler parts of the Bronx. The older generation was dying off, and each trip back she learned someone else was gone. It was as if only a sketch of her home remained, an outline, and within a few years there would be nothing left but the brick buildings where they had lived, populated by strangers from other places. It was her own private ghost town.
Jimmy, that asshole. There were nights when she lay awake and felt sorry for herself, sorry for both of them, sorry for all that never was to be. She remembered the night he left. The moment she needed him most. She had missed her period, and, after six weeks, was praying for blood. She could hardly sleep or eat, was abruptly faced with the big questions of life. She had never known such confusion. Jimmy did not even want to talk about it; he just insisted on an abortion. He explained to her in rational and measured ways all the reasons a child was a bad idea. They were too young, too poor, not married, not ready; it was not fair to bring a baby into this. Each one made eminent sense, but when she was not swayed, the rational deteriorated into a hot and angry fight. Every slight and hurt they had inflicted on each other was served up loud and hateful until he simply turned and walked out.
It was as if he had disappeared. She waited a week, then went to the clinic herself. She was too ashamed to even tell her friends. The social worker soothed her, provided wise and informed counsel, sent her home to ponder her options. She considered seeing Father Keith, but did not. She returned to the clinic, steeled herself. Jimmy was right; he had to be. She let them put her on the gurney, her ankles in stirrups, her legs spread, the doctor poised for work. Then she panicked, started kicking at the nurse. She could not do it. She left the clinic. Jimmy had his life to live, but she had hers too. She decided she wanted the baby, regardless. She never regretted the choice. Not even later, when she miscarried at six months.
Back then she considered Jimmy Dolan a coward. But in the seven years that followed, she softened a bit. She wondered if he thought of it at all, if he too lay awake some nights and pondered what might have been. She guessed he felt more relief than anything else, the bullet dodged, the chains of wife and child too young eluded. Losing the baby devastated her. She shut Jimmy out of her life for a year afterward, had shut out everyone. She would wander the streets in a daze, ride the subway going wherever it took her. That year was lost to her, a black hole of sorrow from which she could summon no detail, no memory.
She pulled her blond hair back into a thick ponytail and secured it with an elastic. She strapped on a fanny pack, in which she had her off-duty piece, a five-shot 38 caliber, and her ID. She left the apartment, took the stairs down to the lobby, ran over to the FDR, and crossed the footbridge to the park. The night was clear and crisp. Tugboats whispered up the black expanse of the East River. The wind came from offshore and brought with it the cloying sweetness of the Domino Sugar plant over in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
She ran. She thought about the beaten boy, Johnny, from the other night. When they passed him off to Children’s Services, his face was heavy with betrayal. As bad as he’d had it at home, he was at home; now he was being plunged into the unknown. Even at his age he could sense what that meant. She determined to check up on him, to see that he didn’t get lost in the system. She picked up speed, passing beneath the span of the Williamsburg Bridge. Rounding a bend, she came upon two junkies in full narcotic swoon. They were bent at the waist, arms against their sides. One was a woman, whose long hair brushed the ground. They were held up by some incalculable, poppy juice physics.
Around another curve a dazzling view lay before her. There was the Manhattan Bridge, beyond it the Brooklyn Bridge, and the financial district skyline, ablaze with the red light of a magnificent sunset. In the distance, rising from New York Harbor, the Statue of Liberty stood against the sky, its torch upraised. She remembered her grandmother’s telling the story of passing through the harbor on the deck of a ship when she was seven and the thrill the statue provided, how much it meant to them. Whenever Tara saw the statue she thought of her grandmother as a girl, at the gateway of the New World, full of wonder and fear.
She decided then to make a long run of it and head for Brooklyn. She had no problem running alone after dark. She always kept to the middle of the path, which was fairly well lit. She was fit and armed. She made her way down to the Brooklyn Bridge. On the boardwalk there were only a few pedestrians; beneath her on the roadways the traffic was light and fast. She ascended to the peak of the span and stopped for a moment to stretch some more. The East River swirled beneath her, its tricky and lethal currents etched on its surface. She had a relative who was killed sinking the caissons into the muck of the riverbed, and she felt proprietary about the structure, as if somehow her family was in this link between two boroughs. She followed the decline of the bridge into downtown Brooklyn, then turned around and, with her muscles rich with blood, retraced her steps at the same vigorous pace.
Liam walked down Sherman Avenue bouncing a tennis ball he had found on the subway platform, a duffel bag over his shoulder. Ralphie Fernandez, his neighbor’s kid, was sitting on the hood of his car. “Ralphie. My main man. What’s the story?”
“You said you were gonna take me to the Bronx Zoo.”
“I did?”
“Yep.”
“All right then. We’ll go on Saturday. Make sure it’s okay with your moms.”
The lobby smelled of old meals and cat piss. Mrs. Ramirez in IB had at least a dozen of the creatures; Mrs. Fisher in ID had six. He often had to hold his breath until the third floor to keep from puking. Liam entered his apartment and went into his bedroom, where he took four Glock nine millimeters from his gym bag and hid them under his bed. His mother often insisted on cleaning his room. He returned to the living room, where she was sleeping quietly on his chair in front of the television, her mouth hanging open, like the stupid or the dead. He fought the urge to lean over and nudge it shut. An infomercial was blaring, from the TV. A pair of tan but nearly forgotten sitcom stars gestured enthusiastically, hawking a New Age vitamin pill they guaranteed would make the user feel like a kid again. Liam stood for a minute wishing it could be that easy for his mother. There were clips of the aging stars, jogging, biking, and playing tennis. Liam scoffed. It wasn’t no friggin pill you needed; it was a country-club membership and a ton of leisure time. He clicked off the TV and got a blanket from the closet. He pulled it over his mother and kissed her lightly on the forehead.
He went to bed and lay in the quasi darkness of a city night. He thought of calling Tara to apologize for making a move on her. A dog barked on the street; a car alarm went off. He hoped Jimmy did not find out he had hit on his old girlfriend. Jimmy was about the only friend he had left. He pulled the pillow over his head to block out the wail of the alarm. Going back to humping concrete had actually been fun. Tomorrow he was going to make a little side money. Worn by the day’s toil, he was soon gone.
Liam woke at 5:50, ten minutes before his alarm was to go off. He stood stretching and felt a heaviness in his shoulders, his legs sore. It was a good feeling. He had been idle all winter collecting workers’ comp. He had called the union and was working the following morning. He liked hard physical labor. The way it made the day pass, his sleep heavy. The sense of accomplishment. There were a few dozen buildings around the island of Manhattan he could point to and say, I built that place. He knew they would be there long after he was gone. Someday, if he ever had kids, he would drive around and show them where he had labored. This is what I do for a living. Not like the yuppie assholes who lived in and worked in the places he built. He almost felt sorry for those people. He could not imagine working in an office, that dead air. Wearing a suit and tie, uptight and pasty-faced like life was one big Catholic school.
He opened the refrigerator and drank deeply from a half gallon of orange juice. He ate a chocolate-flavored protein bar. He went over to the window and looked upon the predawn quiet of upper Broadway. No people, no cars moving—stillness. No merengue music. The Dominicans had pretty much taken over the neighborhood. He got along all right with them. At least, they did not think they were better than him, like so many of the Irish assholes still left.
