90 Church Page 22

  It was the wrong thing to say. Silkey never showed any compassion or any emotion at all. He began to work Pepe over with his little dumbbell. He swung it again, cracking Pepe’s rib. Pepe was tough; he fell to his knees, but there was never any of that “please stop” kind of language. Compared to what he had done to his victims, this was probably nothing. He only groaned when Silkey whacked his kneecap. When he bent down to grab his leg Silkey kneed him in the face. Blood spurted from his nose and mouth. He hugged the ground for safety. I pulled him up by his shirt and said, “Tell me where Leah is, or you will die right here.”

  Through his yellow teeth, his bad breath and bloody mouth, he glared back at me and said, “I don’t know where the fucking tramp is. She left. I will kill you and the old cunt.”

  I threw him against the side of the car. He collapsed and lay motionless. Ed kicked him in his broken ribs. Pepe was silent.

  Silkey shook his head and said dryly, “You’re not making any new friends here. Now what do we do?”

  I looked down at the limp heap and then said, “I really don’t know what to do. I don’t even know why I’m doing this. Let’s get out of here.”

  Before I dropped Silkey off at his car, he gave me some advice. “I don’t know what we just did here but you need to get straight with Dewey and Michael. Vigilante bullshit over some broad can cause a lot of trouble. That guy’s not dead, he’ll want to come after you. It’s like Dewey always says, we gotta think and get organized. Maybe you should find another girlfriend.”

  Now I was scared, frustrated, and desperate.

  ANSWERS

  The next morning, rather than go to the Medalley mansion, I went to the office around noon. Dewey was in one of the small conference rooms and had told everyone that he should not be disturbed. I didn’t care. I walked in to find Dewey with an old man kneeling in front of him. There were swatches of fabric strewn all over the table, and the man was measuring the pants for a new suit. He looked at me. “What do you think? It’s a soft plaid. It’s a little different. Great fabric. I also got a new navy blue suit, because someday I may even get a chance to meet with the FBI like you get to do.”

  I looked in disbelief and wondered what Blanker and Pike would think of an agent being attended to by his tailor in government offices, but in view of everything else that I had seen, it all seemed normal.

  “I gotta talk to you, Dewey. I’m in trouble. I need your help.”

  “Go ahead. What do you need? Don’t worry about Bruce here, he’s almost done.”

  “Leah is gone,” I blurted. “I have to find her. I think they’re going to kill her.”

  Ignoring me, Dewey said, “No, Bruce, just a little longer. I want a break here. Have you tried Pepe? I never did trust him. Did you notice how he dresses? Not like Hermes or Orlando, those guys have class. Why don’t you talk to Pepe? I’ll bet he knows. If anybody is going to kill her it will be him, he likes that sort of thing … That’s it, Bruce, right there. Pin it.”

  I tried to hold back my anxiety while Dewey fooled around with his tailor.

  “Dewey, I’ve already tried that. We’re not getting anywhere. I have to find her. Please help me.”

  Dewey saw how serious I was. “Okay, this must be true love.” Then he turned back to the tailor. “That’s all, Bruce. Get all of this shit out of here. You know what I need.” And then back to me he said, “A pretty girl like that can’t stay lost very long unless she’s already dead. Let me think about it. Let’s get together after lunch.”

  “Please, Dewey, it’s important. We have to move now.”

  “All right,” he said. “All right, but I need a little time. I have a lunch date in Midtown. I’ll see you back here at two.”

  At two-fifteen I returned from lunch. Dewey, Michael, and Pike were laughing at a dirty joke when I walked in. Michael turned away when he saw me. Dewey knew I was worried and we walked into a conference room for privacy. He looked at me and said, “This is getting out of hand. You’ve got to work with us. You’re not alone. Michael told me that you’re coming apart. This is not good. We’re your friends, and we’re all you have. Don’t you see that? 90 Church is your home, it’s your life.”

  I tried to hold my temper. “Dewey, I don’t want a fucking lecture. I’ve got to find Leah. Are you going to help me or not?”

  Dewey looked back at me. “Silkey told me that you ‘tuned up’ a spic last night. It was Pepe, wasn’t it? What was that all about? We just don’t go around beating up people. I would expect that from Silkey, he likes that kind of thing, but you’re a lot smarter. You don’t see Michael hurting people, do you? We here at 90 Church don’t go around beating up people; we have style! You’ve just got to get organized.”

  I was out of patience; I bowed my head, shaking it back and forth, and started to leave the room. Then Dewey reached in his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. “Here.” He handed it to me. “I think you’ll find her here.”

  The address was in the East Village, at Avenue C, the same area where Pepper lived. I was surprised. “Where did you get this address? How do you know she’s there? Tell me, how do you know?”

  Dewey smiled. “You’re not thinking. I told you we have to get organized. Look at you! Michael’s right, you’re coming apart.”

  “What is this address?” I almost screamed. “How did you find this? What is this? This is a slum. Why would she be there? Where did you get this?”

  Dewey looked at me and shook his head. “We’ve been pulling the phone records on the Medalley house for weeks. Someone has been calling this address and talking for a long time, sometimes as long as an hour, almost every day. Who at the Medalley mansion would talk for hours?”

  He shook his head again and walked out of the room. I sat there staring at the little scrap of paper, feeling stupid.

  A BETTER PLACE

  At about four o’clock I drove down to the East Village to find Leah.

  The neighborhood was just as I remembered it when I was living with Pepper: trash on the sidewalks, junkies. It was a strange pocket of poverty in lower Manhattan, not far from Washington Park, with the upscale East Village only a block away. The address led me to the second floor of a typical four-story walk-up. The hallway stank of marijuana and garbage. In my shiny suit, deerskin boots, and silk shirt, I looked as out of place as a nun in a whorehouse. I walked down the hallway, scanning the door numbers, and wondering how I would get inside. Then I saw a hippie come out of the apartment and walk down the hallway toward me. He seemed harmless. As he walked past I turned around and grabbed his long hair and yanked him back toward me. I pulled my automatic and reached around in front of him, shoving the barrel under his chin. He froze. I whispered to him, “Do you have a key to that apartment that you just came out of?” He nodded. “Good.” Still holding his hair and the gun under his chin, I pushed him back toward the door and he unlocked it.

  As the door opened, I shoved him sprawling face down on the floor, and walked in to find Leah. I couldn’t believe the filth. The furniture was so dirty and badly broken that I couldn’t make out if the shapes were a chair, a couch, or a bed. There were food wrappers and garbage strewn everywhere. The smell of marijuana almost choked me. I scanned the room with my blue automatic, and found two people huddled together, sitting on the floor, both of them dressed in what should have been colorful rags: bandanas around their heads, sandals, wildly-colored torn T-shirts. And there on the floor, hugging the dirtiest and ugliest hippie of them all, sat Leah. I almost didn’t recognize her. The beauty, the elegance, the culture, the sophistication, the money, her future – everything was gone. She was just a hippie child holding onto another wild-eyed, misguided teenager hiding from the world. They held each other and shuddered with fright as they turned their eyes away from me and my blue automatic.

  Then Leah’s eyes, almost unrecognizable, glared at me with burning hatred. “I’m not going back. You can’t make me. I would rather die here than go back.”

  I tried reas
on. “But your mother loves you. You’re all she has.”

  “My mother?” She tried to laugh. “I would rather die and go to hell than be with my mother! I can’t live with her and her vampires. I would rather die right here. You’re not going to take me back. I belong here. This is my life. I hate you.”

  Before I could answer, the hippie that I’d grabbed in the hallway started to reach for a fireplace poker. I kicked him in the ribs. He just groaned and lay there in silence, pretending to be dead.

  “You’re one of them,” Leah said. “You’re a vampire, just like my mother. You’re a vampire, a vampire!” she screamed as she held her hippie boyfriend even tighter.

  There was nothing I could say. I’d lost all credibility I had with her.

  I don’t remember leaving the apartment, or even walking down the flight of stairs to the lobby. I had lost Leah, lost her to a way of life that I could not even imagine – yet, compared to mine, it seemed peaceful and inviting.

  REGINA

  The next afternoon I sat by the Medalley pool all afternoon, drinking frozen margaritas. I told Regina that her daughter was safe, but wasn’t coming home. She disappeared into the house and I just sat there, working on my third frozen pitcher of green slush and wondering what to do next. At least Leah was safe from Pepe. I remembered the hatred in his face as he had called her an “old cunt” and said how he planned to kill her. I knew I had to renew my relationship with 90 Church, and bring this case to a close. Then Regina and Leah would be safe.

  Finally, when it was almost dark, I went to the bathhouse across the pool from the mansion to get dressed to leave. From the window I saw Regina strolling by the pool with Orlando and Hermes. What beautiful people they were, so sophisticated, yet it was widely known that both brothers were illiterate. I deeply respected Regina’s style and culture and how she imparted her grace to those around her, and how she turned a blind eye on the family business, in exchange for her art, lifestyle, family and dignity. All three of them disappeared into the house.

  There was no need for me to say good-bye, but as I left, I chose a route around the pool close to the house, rather than through the backyard gate, which I normally used. The door was partly open to the study and as I walked past I could hear the conversation. They were screaming and angry. I heard Orlando say, “She was to be your symbol of trust. We don’t know exactly what happened, it doesn’t matter, but she was a symbol of trust and look how it’s turned out! Pepe was beaten to a pulp. He was on crutches. After they broke his ribs, his knee, and he was on crutches! Then they shot him down in the street while he was on crutches, like a dog they shot him four times. You did this, Hermes. How could you do this to your own people? How could you violate the trust? You’re my brother, why do you listen to her?”

  After a brief silence I heard a voice I didn’t at first recognize. “You’re both fools. I didn’t trust Pepe with Leah, I sent her there as security, but he was going to abuse her. He drove her away; she left for her own safety. What kind of trust is that? The issue was not who beat Pepe, but who killed him. I didn’t kill him. I may have had him beaten, but I didn’t kill him. If you two clowns continue to fight, the entire operation is going down. We’re flush. Now’s the time to be cautious and wait. I can’t work with you two idiots.”

  I was stunned to hear a woman’s voice, calling the two most vicious and powerful drug lords in New York “idiots and clowns,” berating them and telling them what to do. The voice belonged to Regina – the doting mother, the obsessive housekeeper, the sweet, innocent, and devoted wife! Of course she was the “cunt” that Pepe hated, not Leah. Regina was in charge. She was behind it all. She was the one who sent me against Pepe; she knew I would beat him up. She was the one who had watched me in the shadows the first day when I met Hermes, and she was behind the curtains at the party. I was her “ace in the hole” against her husband, or anyone else, and she baited me with her beautiful daughter. But of course it was Regina! She gave these illiterate thugs style, culture, manners, and, above all, a fraternal macho “honor code” for them to do business without cheating and killing each other. Shell-shocked, I just stood there, unable to move.

  After more shouting, Orlando left. Hermes and Regina were alone, and I heard her again. “You must act. You must act now. He’s weak, he’s a party boy, and you’ve always known it. Don’t you see, everything hangs in the balance? You must go tonight, go after him, kill him. When we were younger, you wouldn’t hesitate. You were a man then, you had nerve, you were brave, you were smart. You built this organization by yourself, with your own courage; you never failed to act; now you must do it. You know it. I sacrificed my child to keep the honor, but Orlando and Pepe killed Mercedes, an innocent child. Those fools. You can’t take two children for one crime.”

  Then I heard Hermes’ soft voice, “He’s my brother.”

  Regina exploded. “Mercedes was my daughter! He’s in the way. He’s broken the code! He’s not going to kill Leah too; he cannot live. Enough I tell you … Go now.”

  Now I began to worry about being discovered. I could get killed for overhearing what I had just heard, so I quietly walked out the back gate. I drove away from the mansion and pulled over to the wooded picnic area, the same place that Michael and I had stopped to talk on my first day of the case. I sat in the darkness, staring into space. How wrong I had been about Regina. I had been unknowingly protecting the ringleader! No wonder Pepe hated her. No wonder Leah wanted to escape. Regina controlled everything in secret through their macho honor code. When everyone thought Leah stole the coke, Regina was willing to sacrifice her “because anyone who steals dies,” but when the wrong daughter was killed she had had enough. It tore the whole organization apart. What could they do? The horrible irony was that Leah was really innocent and I knew it but couldn’t tell them because they’d kill me. This terrible dilemma exposed Regina and the organization couldn’t handle that either. Now Regina didn’t care about the rules anymore; she was making her own. As these thoughts stormed over me, I saw Hermes’ car pass in front of me. I knew where he was going.

  CLEAN-UP

  I found Michael in the office. I had to find out about Pepe. I was also anxious to know when the new drugs would be coming in from South America. It would close the case with a grand finale of more killings. Michael and I met in one of the private conference rooms. He got right to the point.

  “Someone almost got killed yesterday. This is the second time you fucked up. Silkey was on stakeout outside the Medalleys’ Brooklyn apartment. Pepe tried to kill him. Dewey took him down, shot him about four times, all the way across the street. Dewey’s unbelievable with that gun of his. How would Pepe know Ed Silkey? You told Ed to beat him up, didn’t you? You’re endangering the case; people are starting to get hurt.”

  “People are starting to get hurt?” I laughed. “Michael, you want everybody dead! I thought I was doing the right thing. I had to save Leah’s life.”

  Michael just glared at me in disbelief. “Listen to me, they’re all going down – Hermes, Leah, Regina, the whole family, all of them. Do you understand me? Who the fuck gave you the job of saving the lives of these murderous dope dealers?”

  “Michael, when is the shipment coming in? I want this case to be over with. I can’t stand it. I have to get out.”

  Michael shook his head with disgust. “You hang around the Medalley pool all day long; you don’t even know what’s going on. The shipment came in four days ago. Dewey was right, the dope comes in at night and they throw it over the side. We got word from the Feds in South America. We waited and watched them fish it out of the water and deliver it to Brooklyn, just like Dewey said. We anchored a three-mast sailboat right in front of the Brooklyn shore. Then Dewey hung huge beer signs on trees along the shore so they couldn’t see anything from Staten Island.”

  “You got the drugs? That’s great, how many kilos?”

  Michael shook his head with more disgust. “Why would we do that? We don’t seize drugs. Tha
t’s nonsense. That’s the bullshit you hear from Pike and Blanker. Cops seize drugs. Have you ever read the charter for 90 Church? We are charged with the responsibility of curtailing the flow of drugs by stopping major dealers by all means possible. Besides, haven’t you read the newspapers? The Medalley case is already over. We killed four major dealers, and seized eight ounces of coke – never mind that it was your cocaine for your services around the pool, trying to fuck their daughter. While you were trying to get laid, we set up surveillance on the Brooklyn apartment and busted everybody that carried anything out of it. We have cases on everybody: Regina, Leah, Pepe, Sprague, everybody. Now we’re going to pick them up.

  “Dewey was right, there’s nothing special about these people. They just wear fancy clothes and cheap jewelry, and shake each other’s hand all the time. Anyone who is still alive is an informant for us now. Dewey’s already got them organized, ratting out people all over the city. You wouldn’t believe the shit – murders, robbery, everything. So much for their bullshit family code of honor. Dewey’s little file clerks are working around the clock. Speaking of Dewey, why do you think he’s buying all those suits?”

  When I didn’t respond, he added, “Don’t go to the Medalleys’ tomorrow. We’re going to pick Hermes and Regina up in the morning, along with your little girlfriend. She’s a coke dealer just like the rest of them. She was with Chevy, trying to sell dope to Louie, remember? We got Hermes for killing McDermott’s son. Dewey took the prettiest girl we caught carrying dope from the Brooklyn apartment and gave her a choice, fuck Hermes and get him talking on tape about killing McDermott’s kid, or go to jail for ten years. You wouldn’t believe what Hermes said in bed. He did it, alright. He and Pepe. We got two others who were there. We cut a deal with them too. Hermes is going down for murdering a federal officer. He’s going to fry in the chair, and McDermott’s going to be watching.”