Keeplock: A Novel of Crime (13 page)

“Tony’s a complete asshole. You knew that when you brought him in.”

“What could I say, cuz? Maybe if I could do it over again, I’d do it different.”

It was an amazing thing to admit, but I wasn’t sure whether his confidence in me was genuine or just part of the hustle. Maybe he was catching flies with honey. Eddie, though he didn’t say it, couldn’t very well dump Morasso at this stage of the game. He’d have to kill Tony and that would lead to the kind of complications that blow jobs apart.

“I take it you got the two of ’em holed up in some apartment,” I said. “Nice and cozy.”

“You figure correct. I was afraid to let Tony out of my sight, but I couldn’t put him under my thumb unless I made it the rule for
everybody
. Which is what I did. We’re all stayin’ together until the job is done.”

“Except me, Eddie.” I repeated it in case he missed the central message. “Except me.”

“No exceptions.” He forked half a mushroom into his mouth.

“I already explained my situation. If I’m not back in that shelter every night, my P.O.’s gonna put out a warrant. What if Tony blows before the job comes off? What if Parker has a heart attack and can’t push the keys on his computer? What if you get hit by a truck? What if
any
fucking thing goes wrong? You could always walk away and start over, but my ass would be up in Cortlandt.”

“You got a point,” he admitted. “Lemme think about it. Where the fuck is Mario with the dinner?”

“Forget the goddamn dinner.”

He looked hurt. “I been eatin’ Annie’s cookin’ for the last month. With Tony Morasso for company. Gimme a break, already.”

As if on cue, Mario knocked softly, then led a waiter into the room. He served us personally, sighing over the platter of meat and the bowls of rigatoni. I had less than no interest in the food. Maybe I have an Italian name, but the only culture I absorbed in my youth was criminal culture.

Eddie cut a piece of meat and swirled it in the sauce while Mario waited like a child with a good report card. “Outta sight, cuz,” Eddie said. “As usual.”

“Thank you. Thank you.” Mario left in triumph, taking the waiter with him.

“You think you could handle Tony?” Eddie spoke as soon as the door closed. His voice was sharp, his interest plain. He needed me badly and he’d make whatever compromises were necessary to bring the job off.

“Not forever, Eddie. But we’re only talkin’ about a couple of weeks. I’ve been thinking about how to control Tony since you mentioned his name. The way I see it, I can make Tony understand that if he wants to fuck with Parker, he has to take me out first. That way I become the target. Don’t forget, Tony’s
already
afraid of me. Like I said, we’re only talkin’ about a couple of weeks. If you think about it from that angle, it doesn’t hurt us if I go back to the shelter every night. The fact that I’m getting a special deal will make him hate me all the more. It’ll eat him up. And it’ll take his mind off Parker.”

“And you don’t mind whackin’ him when the job’s done?”

I’d never killed anyone and had no desire to kill anyone. And the simple fact that I might be able to kill in a moment of anger didn’t mean I could perform an execution. But that’s not something you can admit in the Institution. The myth is that every con is a merciless killer with all the conscience of a cat digesting a canary.

“Well, don’t worry about it, cuz,” Eddie continued before I could respond with the obligatory display of prison macho. “I decided to hit the cocksucker myself. And I’m gonna make sure he’s lookin’ at me when I do him. I want him to see the shit coming.”

I burst out laughing and, after a moment, Eddie laughed with me. “Morasso must be giving you a very hard time,” I said. I didn’t add
and you’re afraid of him, too
, but I filed the information away for later use. “By the way, I have a little room at the shelter. They’re using residents on the security desk. I could be a little late gettin’ back without causing problems. Might even be able to spend a night out, somewhere down the line.”

He nodded and went back to the food, shoveling it into his mouth and smacking his lips in appreciation. “We’re stayin’ in Queens, cuz. Got an apartment in Woodside. My old lady’s stayin’ with us.”

That admission was the last piece of the puzzle. The thought of Tony Morasso alone with his wife must have been driving Eddie crazy.

“So how come April 30?” I asked.

“The Pope’s comin’.”

“You gettin blessed, Eddie? You gonna buy a fuckin’ rosary?”

He took a yellow piece of newspaper from his shirt pocket and passed it to me with the solemnity of a priest distributing communion. It contained an article someone had cut out of the newspaper several years ago. The article was undated, but the paper was yellow with age. It was about the security measures taken to protect the Pope on what I assumed was a prior visit to New York. According to the article, the Pope’s security had required the use of 15,500 cops, more than half the force.

“What’d you tell me a minute ago?” Eddie asked. “Didn’t ya say our only problem was if the cops happen to come on us while we’re doin’ the job? You was right, cuz, but that don’t mean we couldn’t reduce the odds.”

I handed the newspaper back to him. “Nice touch, Eddie. Very nice. It’s like taking advantage of the terrain in a war. You don’t have to do anything. It’s already there.”

“True. We don’t gotta do shit to make the Pope work for us. He’s comin’ and we’re gonna take advantage. But there’s still a
chance
we’ll get caught in the act. Even a small chance is still a chance.”

He leaned forward, staring at me through cold eyes. It was time for the kicker he’d been holding in reserve. “This is my
last
job, cuz. One way or the other. And I don’t wanna have to consult a gypsy before I do it. I got somethin’ I want ya to hear. Listen close.” He took a small tape recorder out of his jacket pocket and flipped it on. A series of sharp beeps sounded, followed by a voice.

All available units. Ten-thirteen in progress. Officer down. Shots fired. Eleven Forty-three Union Turnpike in front of the Burger King. All units, k
.

“That’s the dispatcher,” Eddie said. “The rest of it’s the cops responding.”

Fifteen Charlie, going.

Fifteen Bravo, going.

C-POP, going.

Crime One, going.

Crime Two, going.

Fifteen Sergeant, going.

Fifteen George, going.

Second Sergeant, going.

The tape became a blur of overlapping voices. Not that it mattered. I stopped listening as soon as I got the point of the exercise. Eddie continued to stare at me and I had a sudden flash that if I pulled out now, there was the distinct possibility that my life would end sometime in the next two weeks.

“You ain’t talkin’, cuz.” Eddie rewound the tape without taking his eyes off me.

“You’ve a got a way with surprises, Eddie. I’ll give you that. Never know what you’re gonna do next.”

“I know what you’re thinkin’. I’m readin’ ya mind. You’re thinkin’ about how much time you could do for killin’ a cop. You’re thinkin’ how you’d be lucky to get out in forty years. Me, I’m forty-one. That would make me eighty-one before they opened the gate. But I got three felonies on my record, cuz. Three. If I go down for this job, I’ll do twenty without the cop. That’d make me a sixty-one-year-old con with lifetime parole. No job, no education, no money. I’d rather stay in prison.”

He paused, waiting for a response, but I just shrugged my shoulders. “The point is not to get caught,” he continued. “I got new i.d.’s for all of us. The best, cuz. Passport, social security card, driver’s license. Yours’ll be made as soon as you say you’re comin’ in with us. After the job is done, we’re gone. The cop I got in mind is guardin’ a witness on the other side of the precinct from where we’re doin the job.”

“Wait a second, Eddie. You told me you didn’t know where the job was going down.”

He wasn’t happy to be interrupted, but he couldn’t very well dispute my right to ask the question. He took a deep breath and let his eyes drift away from me.

“I got a target, but it’s only
probable
.” He leaned forward, jabbed his fork in my direction. “For the last month there’s been a truck that makes pickups at department stores. They do Alexander’s, A & S and Macy’s on Queens Boulevard, then three Waldbaum’s supermarkets, then Stern’s in Bayside. I haven’t been sittin’ on my ass, waitin’ for April 30. That’s not my way of doin’ things. I study, cuz. I study all the fuckin’ time. Like you used to put your face in those books when you was gettin’ your school? That’s the way I been with those schedules.”

“I believe you, Eddie. There’s no other way to do it, if you wanna do it right. But why the cop? What’s the point of doin’ the cop?”

“You worried about a pig, cuz?”

Of course, I
couldn’t
be worried about a “pig.” I might be worried about the consequences, but not about the human being wearing the uniform. “It’s too much, Eddie. You wanna control everything and you can’t do it. Maybe the armored car’ll break down before it gets to us. Maybe we should have a tow truck ready, just in case.”

“It ain’t that simple. This Stern’s I got in mind is set in a little valley. The loading docks are behind the store, and the only customers who go back there are pickin’ up shit too big to come through the front doors. There’s a steep hill back there, too.
Very
steep. That fuckin’ dock is completely hidden from the street unless you walk right to the edge of the hill, which is I what I been doin’ every Saturday for the last month.

“The first time I was there, I thought the setup was a gift from fuckin’ God. The truck pulls up, the guards come out and go inside the store. They don’t even have their weapons drawn. Twenty minutes later, they come out with two canvas bags and their .357s in their hands. They walk back to the truck and signal the guard inside, who opens the door and takes the bags.

“What could be better? We’ll know the schedule exactly. Twenty minutes before they pull up, we walk back to the loading dock like ordinary customers and persuade the two assholes workin’ the platform to wait in the closet while we’re doin’ the job. Then we take the two guards
before
they go into the store, when they’re walkin’ around with their dicks in their hands.”

“Back up a second, Eddie. You know for a fact there’s only two workers on the loading docks?”

“Two workers, cuz. Except when they take a delivery. When the big trailers drive up, they pull a few boys out of the stockroom to unload. But they don’t get deliveries on Saturday afternoon,
capisch
?”

I looked down at my plate, found it as clean as it had been when Mario laid it in front of me. “There’s a problem somewhere,” I finally said. “It’s like getting hustled. When it sounds too good to be true, it usually is.”

“Smart, cuz. Very smart. The bullshit here is that two out of the four times I been there, a fuckin’ cruiser came by while the truck was pickin’ up the money. Bayside’s a low-crime neighborhood and I guess the pigs ain’t got much else to do. Well I’m gonna give ’em somethin’ real intrestin’ to occupy their time.”

“Why not go somewhere else? Find another target?”

“Couple of reasons. First, it ain’t that easy to get into a computer. I thought all Parker had to do was press a few buttons and we’d know what kind of toilet paper they used to wipe their assholes, but it turned out to be a bitch, so we’re stuck with this company. Now I been through
all
the schedules and this route gives the most bucks with the least risk. In fact, what I think is that, if we take the pigs outta the picture, we don’t run no risk at all. There’s a school up on a hill two blocks from where that cop is sittin’. You got a clear view from the roof. I been up there and I know. Figure it like this, cuz. Half the fuckin’ cops are out protectin’ the Pope and the rest of ’em are pickin’ up the pieces of a dead pig. We’re lookin’ at three quarters of a million bucks. Maybe more. We’re talkin’ about two days’ receipts from Macy’s, A & S, Alexander’s. We’re talkin’ about a
minimum
of three supermarkets. We’re talkin’ about gettin’ rich and gettin’ the fuck out.”

I wanted to ask him why he had to kill the cop. Why couldn’t he fire a few shots through the cop’s rear window? Or blow out the tires? But I could see that his mind was set and I knew I couldn’t refuse. I could accept the deal and then take off the minute I was alone, but I couldn’t turn it down outright.

“It works,” I admitted.

“Ya fuckin’ right it works. Every inch of it.”

“But I gotta say I hope you’re not thinkin’ of me to pull the trigger on the cop, because I couldn’t hit an elephant with a shotgun if I was six feet away.” This was a complete lie, but there was no way for Eddie to know it. Actually, I was a pretty fair shot with a handgun.

“Your primary job is to handle Morasso. I got someone else for the pig. An old friend of yours. Avi Stern.”

“Avi Stern? It’s startin’ to sound like a high school reunion.” Avi and I had done a number of jobs together before I went up to Cortlandt, then met again inside. He was the quietest man I’d ever known. Quiet and steady. There’d been any number of jokes about the “silent Jew,” but none had drawn more than a cold smile from Avi Stern.

“You know that Avi grew up in Israel, right?”

“Sure.”

“Did ya know he was in a special unit?”

“No, he never talked about it.”

“The fucker never talks about anything, cuz. Except last night when he told me if I didn’t do something about Morasso, I was gonna wake up with Tony’s body in my bathtub.”

“He means it, Eddie.”

“This I already figured out. Anyway, Stern was in some kind of antiterrorist unit in Israel. It had a Jew name that sounds like you got dog food stuck in your throat and you’re tryin’ to cough it up. I couldn’t say that word if my life depended on it, but one of things they taught him was how to kill from a distance.”

“Sounds like they taught him to
be
a terrorist. How’d you find out about this? How’d you get Avi to talk about his past?”