3 Quarters (18 page)

“Help me!” Hanratty shouted.

“ ‘I've fallen and I can't get up,' ” Bobby mocked.

“Do something!” Tuzio demanded, looking alarmed.

As Hanratty hung on to the slick railing, Bobby popped another Tic Tac and offered one to Tuzio.

Bobby detected a scribble of human concern in her cold, antiseptic eyes. She ran to the edge of the boat, got on her hands and knees, and grabbed Hanratty's arm, but he was too heavy for her.

“Help me!” screamed Hanratty again.

“Jeez, Cis, he sounds like he wants to cop a plea,” Bobby said.

“Help him,” Tuzio said. “Please . . .

The boat was ready to follow the rolling tide back against the pier again. Bobby casually reached down and grabbed Hanratty by his thick head of Irish red hair and lifted him straight up. Bobby's strength, from doing jailhouse push-ups, courtesy of Cis Tuzio, paid off. Hanratty howled in pain as his hair pulled from its scalp, contorting his eyelids into cartoony shapes.

Then as the tide lifted the boat to full crest, priming it to crash its rubber bumpers against the stone pier, Bobby grabbed Hanratty by the necktie, twisted it into a tight noose, and hauled him in one fluid motion up over the side and onto the deck. Hanratty landed in a wet, greasy, algae-covered splat, panting as he loosened his tie, coughing and heaving on the deck.

Cis Tuzio helped him to a sitting position and then finally onto his feet. Hanratty's hair stood up straight, making him look like a redheaded Don King.

“I owe you one,” Hanratty panted, his expression belying his words. He was smoothing his hair, trying to brush off his suit but only spreading the grease and the algae.

“Nah,” Bobby said. “I still owe
you
one.”

“See you in court, Emmet,” Tuzio said as she and Hanratty left the boat.

B
obby sat up straight in bed, his face dripping with sweat. He was looking directly into the smiling, squawking face of a seagull that was perched upside down, its feet clamped onto the frame of the open porthole window, eating a Devil Dog out of Gleason's hand. Gleason stood next to the bed, dropping crumbs onto Bobby's disbelieving face.

Gleason took a gulp of some awful-looking chocolate-colored concoction and offered the tall clear plastic cup to Bobby.

“What the hell is it?” Bobby asked, waving it away, squinting.

“I call it a Yoo-driver,” Gleason said. “Yoo-Hoo and vodka. Easy on the Yoo.”

Bobby sat up, mopped sleep from his face. “I know I owe you,” he said. “But we gotta set some ground rules. If you're going to defend me, you gotta do it sober. I don't want you showing up
Yooed.”

“I'm not drunk,” Gleason said, a tinge of defensiveness in his voice.

“And I can't stand the smell of cigarettes,” Bobby said. “Smoke slows me down, and I have no time to waste.”

“So far you're trying to tell
me,
me, the guy who got you out of the joint, that I can't drink or smoke when you're around,” Gleason said, smoothing his sharkskin suit jacket and straightening his red-and-blue silk tie. “Anything else before I give you my reply?”

“Yeah,” Bobby said. “The candy-bar, potato-chip, sugar-jones routine. That has to stop. I'd rather you ate your face. I can't have a normal conversation with you when your teeth are glued together with a goddamned Milky Way.”

“What you're asking me is to—”

“—to act fucking
normal,
” Bobby said, standing, taking a pair of clean underwear from his suitcase and walking into the small bathroom.

“I'll tell you what, Mr. Health Resort,” Gleason shouted into the bathroom, taking another sip of the Yoo-driver and giving the heel end of the Devil Dog to the seagull, who flew off with it. “Find someone who can prove Dorothea is alive, or that someone else had reason to kill her, and I'll be in court, front and center, more sober than the fuckin' judge.”

“I think I might have,” Bobby said, and then told Gleason all about Carlos and the pacemaker he gave to Tuzio.

“Jesus Christ, that could be suppression of evidence,” Gleason said. “I have to check the records to see if she logged it.”

Bobby also told him about the teeth that Carlos gave to an assistant medical examiner named Franz.

“You gotta talk to him,” Gleason said.

“I called, but the receptionist said he was out of town until next week,” Bobby said. “I didn't want to leave my name, so I said I'd call back.”

Bobby turned on the weak shower, soaping himself down, lathering shampoo into his hair, doing it all as quickly as he could, jailhouse style.

“Excellent,” Gleason said. “You should be a cop.”

“You're a real wit,” Bobby said, rinsing off.

“I hope you didn't mention any of this to anyone,” Gleason said.

As he turned off the shower, Bobby assured him he hadn't.

“Now, I need a quick rundown on who else you saw and where you went,” Gleason said.

As he dried off, Bobby told Gleason about meeting his ex-wife and her new husband, Trevor Sawyer. About how his daughter Maggie traced the white Taurus to the Stone for Governor Campaign. About his lunch in John Shine's saloon, the incident with the two cops named Daniels and Lebeche, and then the encounter with Forrest Morgan. He told him about Larkin, who discovered the electronic bug on Gleason's Jeep, and his obscure questions about the Ukraine, and more details about Carlos at the crematorium and about his conversation with Sandy and the visit from Tuzio and Hanratty.

“Busy day,” Gleason said.

“I had a lot of catching up to do on my social calendar,” Bobby said.

“The bastards bugged
my
car?” Gleason said, indignantly. “I take that personally.”

“Yeah, but they were following
me,
” Bobby said.

“I'll wait for you up on deck,” Gleason said. “I got company . . . .”

Seven minutes later Bobby was on the deck, dressed in jeans, a plain white T-shirt, and his work boots. He shielded his eyes from the high morning sun and saw Gleason seated on a chaise lounge chair, with a young woman.

Bobby nodded hello, and so did the girl, who smiled, revealing three badly chipped front teeth, which looked as if someone had hit them with a tack hammer. Gleason flicked his cigarette butt into the river.

“Fish can choke on those filters,” Bobby said.

“But if I put a hook on it, used it as bait, and then
ate
the bastard, that's okay, right?” he asked. “Personally, I like the spotted owl better . . . deep fried.”

Bobby shook his head, waiting for an introduction that was not forthcoming, and finally said, “Hi, I'm Bobby.”

“She's Alison,” Gleason said. “She changed it from Zelda.”

“Really,” Bobby said, trying to be polite. “How come?”

“Alana, not Alison, and I'm not sure why,” the woman said, and smiled, showing the jagged teeth. “I got tired always being at the end of the alphabet.”

“Nice to meet you,
Alana
,” Bobby said, and looked to Gleason, deadpan, hoping for a further explanation. Gleason shrugged and passed the Yoo-driver to Alana. She took several small, deliberate swigs. Gleason patted his thigh, and Alana moved from the stiff-backed chair, slinked over, and plopped onto Gleason's lap. Alana was about thirty, with a hard, athletic body, and wore tight white pants, a dark halter top, and a white denim jacket. She wore heavy mascara and orange lipstick, which stained her chipped teeth. With some dental work and less makeup she'd be a very attractive woman, Bobby thought. Right up Gleason's alley . . . .

“I got your first assignment,” Gleason said, handing the woman a slip of paper. Alana got up and gave the paper to Bobby with nail-bitten fingers before grinding her way back to Gleason's lap. “His name is Herbie Rabinowitz, and he's a little nuts,” Gleason said over Alana's shoulder.

“If he's nuts by your standards, then I should bring a stun gun and a straitjacket,” Bobby said.

“You gotta pick Herbie up at three at that address and bring him here and keep him out of trouble over the weekend,” Gleason said.

“Here? You mean he sleeps
here?”

“What, solitary made you unsociable?”

Bobby sighed.

“He's a payday,” Gleason said. “You meet; we eat.”

“I didn't know the boat was an underground railroad station for all Gleason clients,” Bobby said. “I thought it was where I
lived.”

“Three fuckin' days,” Gleason said. “You could put up with Charles Manson for three days.”

“Hey, Izzy, lady here . . .”

“See, didn't Papa Bear tell Goldilocks that Bobby was all class?” Gleason said, in baby talk, to Alana, who was still sitting on his lap.

“I like that he doesn't curse in front of a lady,” Alana said. “Culture.”

“What happens to this client on Monday?” Bobby asked, exasperated.

“He has a pretrial hearing,” Gleason said. “I promised the Queens DA I'd surrender him there.”

“And who's after him?”

Gleason bent his nose with his left hand and pointed a finger behind Alana's head with the index finger of his right hand and pulled an imaginary trigger.

“We'll talk about that later,” Gleason said. He pinched Alana on the backside, and she stood up. He pointed to a taxi waiting on the rotunda above the boat basin.

“Hey, Alice baby . . .”

“Alana,” she corrected.

“Right,” Gleason said. “Wait for me up in the cab, will ya, babe?”

Alana waved to Bobby, and he waved back.

“We have to talk fast before I go,” Gleason said as Alana walked down the gangplank and along the walkway.

“About what?”

“Who you trust,” Gleason said.

“I hope my daughter is on the list,” Bobby said.

“She might be the only one,” Gleason said. “Let's go through the list again quickly. Barnicle, we know he's a belly crawler and dirty, somehow. Your ex-lawyer, Farrell, unless she has more guts than brains, I'd say she's just an incompetent, but you just never know. She has political connections. Be careful of her. John Shine, he sounds too good a friend to be true. But he has his own money, so I don't know where his motives to fuck you would come from. Still, be careful what you say around him. Ditto this old Larkin fuck. He sounds like a cynical old prick.”

“He's angry, not cynical,” Bobby said.

“All these so-called hunches he talks about,” Gleason said. “How do you know he isn't leading you down some blind alley? He's asking about the fucking Ukraine, while you're trying to stay out of Sing Sing. What better guy to run a bogus three-quarters pension scam than some anonymous, manipulative, old computer geek on the inside?”

“He was with my father when he died, for chrissakes, Iz,” Bobby said.

“Hey, Son of Sam was with his victims when they died, too,” Gleason said. “And this Trevor Sawyer. I'm sure he'd like nothing better than to have you in the joint to keep you away from your ex-wife and your kid. Or to have you whacked out here. He has enough money to frame God for laying down on the job on the seventh day. I also never, ever, since the Three Wise Men, trust ex-wives either. So be guarded around yours. And this Sandy Fraser broad, if she don't sound like a PhD in Advanced Bimbology, then Einstein didn't know his times tables. Behind every beautiful face there is a crime, believe me. As for Forrest Morgan, I don't give a rat's balls how many times you boxed him; any cop who works IAB is as weaselly to me as an MP in the service, and I never trusted one of them since they clubbed me into the brig in the army. He already admitted he's looking for a cheap promotion. Don't let him get it by helping Tuzio put you back in the can. And your buddy Max Roth . . .”

“I haven't even met with him yet,” Bobby said, looking at Gleason in astonishment.

“He'd french fry his own kids just for a greasy headline,” Gleason said.

“You have so much faith in your fellow man it's heartwarming,” Bobby said. “By your thinking, why the hell should I even trust you?”

“You shouldn't,” Gleason said. “Because like the rest of them, I'm using you. But at least I'm up-front about it”.

“You're all heart, Izzy,” Bobby said, “—heart of darkness.”

“I'm just trying to warn you not to trust any of these bindle stiffs,” he said. “Every time they do or say something, you better think they mean or want the opposite. Your motherfucking
life
and my
reputation
are riding on what you believe and what you don't.”

This part sunk in. Bobby nodded.

“I gotta go,” Gleason said.

“Who is this Herbie Rabinowitz?” Bobby asked. “What did he do? The charge?”

“You'll like him,” Gleason said. “He has CIA training. He'll give ya a fill on all the details. Just keep him out of trouble till Monday. He has a rich young brother who is a cash-paying customer. But Herbie don't know the brother is paying, because he hates him. Our kinda guy.”

“Me and you, Gleason,” Bobby said, following Gleason to the edge of the ramp, “we don't have any ‘our kindas' in common.”

“We'll grow on each other,” Gleason said.

“Where the hell are you going?” Bobby asked as Gleason moved to join Alana up in the waiting taxi.

“I know a dentist, who, with a few grand worth of veneers, will make this babe smile like a Steinway keyboard,” Gleason said.

“Where do you find these women?” Bobby asked. “What about Venus?”

“She'll be in the fat farm until she learns some English and fits into a size seven,” he said. “Meanwhile, I'm still a practicing heterosexual.”