Keeplock: A Novel of Crime (33 page)

Avi’s absence meant problems of a different kind. I’d hoped to pursue Condon and Rico on my own, but now I’d have to worry about Avi, who was undoubtedly in pursuit of
me
. Of course there was always the possibility that Eddie had killed Avi, that they’d had a thieves’ falling out. My only problem was that I couldn’t quite bring myself to believe that Eddie would survive a disagreement of that kind. Not that I spent a lot of time considering the question.

I gave Eddie a few seconds to disappear, then drove the Ford out of the lot and back to the Bronx. On the way, I switched my little 9mm for one of the automatics under the seat. I wanted a big gun, a gun to scare people enough so I wouldn’t have to shoot anyone. Condon’s .45 would do nicely. It felt like it weighed ten pounds and threatened to drag my pants down to my knees.

The Ford had to go, because at the very least Condon and Rico would be looking for it. I had three sets of car keys in my pocket. The cars they fit (two of them, anyway) were still parked on Quincy Avenue in the Bronx. I suppose I could have gone to Hertz and used the phony credit card Eddie’d given me, but I didn’t know how long I’d be in New York and I didn’t want to start a paper trail. If I got lucky, I’d end up with an untraceable car.

As I came up East Tremont Avenue, I kept looking for cops. If Morasso’s shooting had been reported, there would have been half a dozen cruisers in front of the garage. There weren’t. The garage door was down and padlocked. The street was quiet.

I parked close to the garage and looked around. There were people on the block, sitting on the stoops. Predation is a fact of life in poor neighborhoods and I didn’t intend to be the prey. I retrieved the 9mm, shoved it inside my belt, and got out of the car with my jacket unzipped. Two-Gun Pete Frangello. Walkin’ tall in the Wild Wild Bronx.

I unlocked the garage door, backed the Ford inside, then relocked the door. Morasso was lying on the concrete. The pool of blood surrounding his body had dried to a deep reddish-brown. It looked like a bull’s-eye. I felt something rise within me. Anger, disgust, fear … whatever it was, I didn’t have time for analysis. I took the canvas bag out of the trunk and looked down at the two assault rifles. They promised enormous firepower, but I didn’t have the faintest idea of how they worked. Or how to break them down so I could carry them without looking like a demented sniper.

I closed the trunk and wiped the Ford down. I’d only been to the garage once before and Eddie had insisted that I wear surgical gloves. For once his paranoia was paying off. There were five suitcases in the backroom. That’s where the money was going. The canvas bag was too conspicuous.

It took me five minutes to fill two suitcases. I added the 9mm before I closed the last one and headed for the street, stepping over Tony on the way. As I bent over to raise the door, I felt a sudden rush of fear. Somebody was on the other side. Eddie, Avi, the cops … it didn’t really matter. With one hand on the door and the other trying to manipulate a couple of heavy suitcases, I’d be a dead pigeon no matter who it was.

I let the suitcases go, pulled the .45, and drew back the hammer. Then I got as far to the side as I could and shoved the door up. There was a man standing right in front of me. His clothes were ragged, his face and neck a patchwork of dirt and open sores, his trousers down by his ankles. He was holding his dick in his right hand, taking a long leisurely leak.

I jumped back, but I wasn’t quite fast enough. My cuffs and shoes got splattered. I raised the .45, more as a reflex than anything else, but the man went right on pissing. He wasn’t blind, just insane. Another homeless wreck in need of the Institution.

S
O MUCH FOR TWO-GUN
Pete. I dumped the suitcases in the back of the Buick Regal Eddie’d been using and headed north, up toward Westchester County. I planned to drive into Mt. Vernon to find a telephone book, but I didn’t have to go that far. There’s a Store & Lock just over the city line. You can see it from I-95. I got off the highway, rented one of the small garages, dumped the suitcases (after filling my pockets), and drove into the gathering darkness. It was seven-thirty. The whole deal, from the arrival of the armored car in the shopping center parking lot until the present, had gone down in two and a half hours.

I needed time to think and now I had it. Everything I’d done up to that point had been absolutely necessary. Getting Ginny out of danger and Eddie off my back, ditching the Ford and stashing the money—a robot could have performed those tasks. They were like the compulsory exercises in a figure-skating contest.

I’d gone through it on automatic pilot, trying not to think or feel, but now I’d come to the point where I didn’t know what to do next. I’d arrived at the “wall” long distance runners talk about.

I drove north, toward Connecticut, and found a shopping mall in the town of Rye near the New York border. I picked up a small suitcase, a change of clothing, and a shaving kit, just enough to pass for a traveler in the eyes of the clerk at the Blue Point Motor Inn, a nondescript motel on Route 1 near the town of Port Chester.

“This here is a proper place,” the clerk muttered into a copy of
Time
. “That means no parties. You bring in a woman or a bottle, keep it quiet. Checkout is ten o’clock. On the dot.”

I opened the door to my room, expecting the worst, but the space was clean and the furniture had been purchased within living memory. A bed, a chair, and a table, a bureau with a portable television bolted on top—it wasn’t much, but it would do. I was tempted to throw myself on the bed, to shut the whole thing out for a few hours, but I knew I couldn’t. At the very least, I had to put together the pieces I understood, to stitch them in a line the way I’d stitched seams in the tailor shop at Cortlandt.

Instead of sleeping, I shoved the .45 into my new shaving kit and went out to get something to eat. I opened the Buick’s trunk before I took off and slid the kit behind the spare tire. There was a diner about a quarter of a mile down the road. It was a warm evening and I was tempted to walk it, but I couldn’t take a chance that a passing cruiser would stop me for a spot check. Not with the 9mm tucked behind my belt. I drove down and parked the Buick in the lot.

I took a booth and ordered coffee. The waitress started to tell me something about a minimum in the booths, but I assured her that I’d be ordering dinner in a few minutes. I just had to make a call first. When she returned, I took the cup off the saucer and carried it to a pay phone by the rest rooms. She didn’t like that, either.

The call was going out to Simon Cooper. This puzzle had a lot of pieces missing. If I could put one back, I’d consider it a major victory. I dialed Simon’s home number.

“Hello?” It was a man’s voice, not Simon’s.

“Is Simon there? Simon Cooper?”

“Who’s this?”

“John Gotti.” I shouldn’t have said it, but I did.

“You a wise guy?”

“Simon’s my parole officer. I’m a client.” “Client” was the word Simon used to describe his customers. I suppose it sounded better than “parolee” or “ex-con.”

“This is Simon’s home you’re callin’, not his office.”

“In that case why don’t you stop acting like his secretary and go find him? I didn’t get his number out of the phone book. He gave it to me.”

“Yeah? Well, I can’t go out and find Simon because Simon’s dead. Some piece of shit just like you shot him down in a tenement on West 48th Street. Those sounds you hear in the background are his wife and kids crying.”

I hung up. Partly because there was nothing else to say and partly out of fear that he might be a cop. My waitress, order book in hand, was waiting for me when I got back to the table.

“Ready to order?” She was skinny and middle-aged, with a smile that carried as much warmth as the grimace of a street prostitute with menstrual cramps.

I ordered a steak and watched her walk away. Simon Cooper’s face drifted through my mind. I heard his voice warning me to be careful, to beware the treachery of Eddie Conte and Avi Stern. He hadn’t mentioned the cops. Most likely, in his own mind, they were above suspicion, the one sure element in a volatile equation. He’d been stupid just like me.

Did they try to deal with him? Did they approach him in some crumbling hallway and offer him a piece if he’d just forget he’d ever spoken to me? Probably not. Most likely they’d come up to him with smiles on their faces. “Hey, Simon, what’re you doin’ here?”

I was angry, but I couldn’t feel the anger. I once spent a twenty-four-hour keeplock with a con who’d just come back from three years in the box. His name was Paulie Sheehan and he’d tried to shank a C.O. Paulie told me the hacks hadn’t stopped beating him for a month.

“Every day?” I asked him.

“No, every shift. After a while I didn’t feel it anymore. I could hear the sound of it. Hell, I could hear myself screaming. But I couldn’t feel it.”

What I felt was weary. I waited for the waitress to refill my cup, then drank it down in a gulp.

“Do it again, dear.”

This time she didn’t bother to fake a smile. I watched her walk away, then forced myself to think. The only important question was whether Condon and Rico would find a way to send the rest of the NYPD after me. I had no illusions. If the cops want to find you and you stay in New York, you’re found. But I couldn’t think of a way Condon could involve his fellow officers without incriminating himself. How, for instance, would Rico explain his battered face?

Most likely they were sitting in some empty apartment, pissing their pants. I was a loose cannon. If I was arrested and spilled my guts, they’d go down for Simon’s murder. The prosecutor might not want to believe me. He might, for instance, put me on a polygraph machine, but in the end he’d
have
to prosecute. Second-degree murder in New York State carries a mandatory sentence of twenty-five to life.

Cops don’t do well in jail. If I was after revenge, I’d have to go a long way to make it worse than twenty-five to life in a Max A prison. I didn’t have to wait to be arrested. All I had to do was find a lawyer and make a phone call. The lawyer would listen to my story and arrange a meeting with the District Attorney’s office. I’d have to testify, but I was already a snitch. Informing on Condon and Rico wouldn’t make my rat whiskers any longer than they already were.

I think I would have taken that option if I hadn’t given half the money to Eddie and the boys. The cops would never believe that I’d casually tossed away half a million dollars, not if I took a
thousand
lie detector tests. Maybe they send the three of us—me, Condon, and Rico—to the same prison, give us adjoining cells. We could hang out with Terrentini’s ghost.

The waitress brought my steak, setting it down along with a plate of greasy french fries and a wilted salad. In the Institution, you always eat. No matter how bad the food is. The chow becomes one more reason for hating the society that put you in prison. If Condon and Rico had kept their end of the bargain, I’d be having dinner with Ginny. I’d be celebrating, looking forward to a life in the world instead of in the Institution.

I finished every crumb, wiping the last of the grease with a piece of mushy white bread. My waitress appeared before I could swallow it.

“Everything okay?”

“Scrumptious.”

“You want dessert?” If she was aware of my sarcasm, she didn’t show it. She didn’t wait for me respond, either. The check floated down onto the table and she was gone.

I drove north from the diner, up into Connecticut, to a rest stop on I-95. There was someone I needed to speak to, and I didn’t want to use a phone within twenty miles of where I was staying. At some time during my last bit, the cops had installed a system that traces the caller’s phone number before the phone is even answered. There was a lot of talk about it among the professors in the crime university known as the Cortlandt Correctional Facility.

Condon had given me a business card with two numbers on it. The first went directly to his desk at the precinct. I didn’t know where the second went, but I assumed it was to a place where Condon could talk to his snitches without being overheard by other cops.

I dialed the precinct number first and was told that he was off-duty. No surprise. I dialed the second number and Condon picked up on the first ring.

“Yeah?”

“It’s Pete Frangello.”

“What happened to you, Frangello? You go crazy or what?” The words came without hesitation. I could imagine him rehearsing his approach just in case I didn’t get out of town.

“You and Rico took me by surprise. What could I do except react?” I kept my own voice apologetic. “How’s Rico doin’?”

“He’ll live. Where are you? We have to get together.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Why not, Pete?”

“Because if I do you’re gonna kill me.”

He hesitated a moment, trying to decide if bullshitting me was worth the effort. I felt like I was inside his mind.

“I can understand why you might think that,” he said, “but we have to work this out. If we don’t, we’re
all
gonna go down.”

“Great, let’s work it out.” I gave him almost a minute to come up with a
way
to work it out, but he obviously couldn’t. “That’s what I thought. That’s
exactly
what I thought. Look, Condon, the way I see it, between you and Eddie I’m gonna be lookin’ over my shoulder for a long time. I don’t see any way out of it unless I get
somebody
off my back. What I’m thinking is that my best move is to contact a lawyer and lay out the whole thing. I’m thinking that if I give the money back and testify, they’ll put me in the witness protection program.”

I hung up and drove back to the motel. On the way, I stopped at a mall, found a Newmark & Lewis, and bought a minirecorder and a package of cassettes. What I was looking for was a way out. Something besides killing two cops and running for the rest of my life.

I
WAS TIRED AND
I wanted to go to sleep, but there was one more thing to be learned that night. I flipped on the TV and tuned in Channel 5 for the local news. The anchorman led off with the Pope, detailing his triumphal procession through the slums of Harlem and the Bronx, then switched over to the armored car heist. The footage included a black body bag sliding into a medical examiner’s van and a statement by a Chapman Security spokesman who estimated the loss at three million dollars, roughly three times the actual take.