Night Work (22 page)

“Good morning. Coffee?”

“Please. Cream and sugar if you've got it.” She stretched until her spine cracked. The robe's belt pulled loose, and the robe opened to show her heavy breasts, round belly, and long legs. She finished stretching, sighed in contentment, and pulled the robe closed without self-consciousness. She leaned against the counter and watched while he poured her a mug and found the cream and sugar. She took a couple of sips. “Hmmm, good.” She took a cigarette from the pack on the counter and lit it with his Zippo. His gun rig was on the counter, and she poked it with a finger. “Going to work?”

“Yes. Can I drop you someplace?”

“Do you mind if I stay and take a bath? I haven't seen a tub that size in a long time.”

“Go ahead. Make yourself at home.”

She sipped at her coffee and watched him over the rim of the mug while he slipped on the shoulder holster and covered it with his jacket. “So, hit-and-run, or are we going to see each other again? Either way is fine with me. I had a great time.” But he could sense a note of anxiety under the brightness.
Does he want me?
No.
Does he
like
me?

He did like her. “How about dinner tonight?”

“Sure.” A big smile.

“Where shall I pick you up?”

“Do you know the Barbizon on Sixty-third between Lex and Third?”

“Sure. What are you doing there?” The Barbizon was a hotel for women, a temporary home for young women starting their adventures in the city.

“Sometimes a girl needs a refuge. You know the rules there—no men allowed above the ground floor, and they have dragons guarding the gates. Sometimes I just want to be someplace where I can close the door and be quiet and no one can get in.”

“Seven o'clock. I'll call you if I'm going to be late.”

He came around the counter, and she pushed back and straightened, and he slipped his hands inside the robe and pulled her close and felt the heat coming off her and the solid weight of her against him. They kissed and she put her arms around his neck and pressed against him, and he could feel himself rise. She pushed back and laughed and said, “I'll see you tonight.”

He walked the blocks toward Hudson Street whistling. For the first time in months he eagerly faced the day.

 

12

The conference room on the fifth floor of One Centre Street was full when Cassidy and Orso entered. There was a lull in the buzz of conversation as men turned to check them, and then turned back into their groups to exclude them. Orso raised his eyebrows and smiled.

Cassidy shrugged. “That's what happens when you're the best-looking guy in the room. The green-eyed monster of envy.”

“Sure. That explains me, but what about you?”

It wasn't the first time Cassidy had walked into a room full of cops and felt the frost. He did not set out to make enemies, but he had a knack for it. He asked questions where others were quiet, pushed when others stood back, disregarded rules and customs that others held dear.

And he did not take the money.

The Japanese had a saying: The nail that stands up will be hammered down. Cassidy understood there were many men on the force who would like to be his hammer. Some he knew about, some he didn't. Some were in this room on the fifth floor of Police Headquarters.

“Check the corner by the window,” Orso said.

Two men stood apart from the uniformed cops. They both wore double-breasted suits, dress shirts, and ties, and their fedoras lay on the broad windowsill near them. Carl Susdorf and Paul Cherry, FBI agents he had banged up against before. Susdorf was tall and lanky with a sallow complexion and narrow face, and his brush-cut dirty blond hair had thinned. Cherry was still twenty pounds overweight and wore a suit he must have bought with the idea that he had a few more pounds to gain. His wide hand-painted tie was a mess of purples and yellows. His face was florid, as if there was too much blood below the skin and he looked at the world through angry eyes. Susdorf saw Cassidy looking his way, and nodded. Cherry jerked his head as if inviting a fight.

“Old friends,” Orso said.

“Yeah. Well, the Feebles were bound to show up for this one.”

Five years before, J. Edgar Hoover had assigned Susdorf and Cherry to bring Cassidy to heel and to retrieve some photographs the FBI Director wanted. They had failed. If Cassidy had any leverage in their world, it was because Hoover and his number-two man, Clyde Tolson, thought he still had the photos. He didn't. He had kept his end of the bargain he had made with Hoover, but Tolson and Hoover were hardened conspirators who could not believe that a man would willingly give up an advantage. If they ever came around to the understanding that he had no leverage, they would probably have him killed.

“Do you know many of these guys?” Orso waved a hand at the men in the room.

“Some, not many.”

“Do you see any street cops? I see the Pig and the Nig, but who else?”

“Barzani over by the other door. Wilcox. Dunne.”

“Yeah, but who are the rest of these dopes?”

The men in the room were, for the most part, cut from the same cloth. They were alert, bright, trim, with short-cut hair, good posture, and tailored uniforms. Eager beavers, strivers, ambitious men with bright futures in the Department, attuned to every political zephyr that might blow to their advantage. They had spent time on the beat early in their careers, because that looked good on the résumé, but they were office cops, and their goal was to rise in the Department. They paid lip service to the icons of Law and Justice, but they understood that the only mission worth anything was advancement. They were masters of bureaucratic infighting, eager to lick the boot of the man above them and to step on the face of whoever was pushing from the rung below.

“Do you know why we're here?”

“To do the heavy lifting,” Orso said.

“Yes. And if something fucks up, they're going to need scapegoats.”

A door at the back of the room opened with a bang, and Deputy Chief Clarkson charged in followed by aides carrying charts and notebooks. The room went quiet. Clarkson took a stance behind a lectern. “Seats, please.” Chairs scraped as the men settled, and then the room went quiet. Orso and Cassidy leaned against the wall near the door.

Clarkson shuffled papers on the lectern and then looked out into the room without saying anything until he was sure he had everyone's attention. “As you all know, Fidel Castro, who seems to be the de facto leader of Cuba at the moment, will arrive in this country on April 15. He will spend six days visiting our nation's capital, and will come to New York on April 21. This is not an official visit by a head of state. Mr. Castro has been invited by the American Society of Newspaper Editors.” He paused. “Guys will do anything to sell a paper, eh?”

Dutiful laughter ran through the room.

“The Department has the job of providing security for Mr. Castro while he is in the city, and we will do that job with the efficiency and professionalism that is the hallmark of the New York Police Department.”

Orso leaned over to whisper, “Then the guy's dead five minutes after he hits the streets.”

“Mr. Castro's party will consist of about fifty people. We have been informed that nineteen of them will be members of his security detail. We have no idea of their training or competence, and therefore we will proceed under the assumption that they lack both. We will confer with them as a matter of diplomacy, but all tactical decisions will be made by Department personnel. Many of you in this room have worked security detail for visiting dignitaries. You know the drill. However, this situation presents a special set of problems. Mr. Castro, as you know, took power from the elected government of President Batista after a prolonged armed struggle. We have evidence that those animosities have surfaced in New York. Three days ago four people were assassinated in a restaurant in Williamsburg that caters to Cubans. Those killed were supporters of Mr. Castro. There have been rumors, so far unsubstantiated, that there will be an attempt on Mr. Castro's life while he is in this country. I have asked Special Agent Susdorf of the FBI to speak to us on this point. Susdorf.”

Clarkson stepped aside and Susdorf took his place behind the lectern. He started to speak, coughed to clear his throat, and started again. “Our Intelligence unit has received reports that former members of President Batista's security forces intend to mount an attempt on Castro's life. As Chief Clarkson said, these are unsubstantiated reports, but we have been hearing of them from multiple sources, and we are not, at this point, willing to discount them. FBI Intelligence units are following up what leads we have, and we will keep you apprised of any new information as we receive it.” He nodded to Clarkson and stepped aside to let the chief back behind the lectern.

“As of yet we do not have a schedule for Mr. Castro's visit. We have asked his people to provide us with a list of activities, but beyond a visit to the UN on the Wednesday, and a courtesy visit to Mayor Wagner at City Hall on the Thursday, we have received nothing. We must be prepared for every eventuality. This will be a difficult five days, but we will rise to the occasion. One more thing before we discuss structure and command. There is a rumor that Mr. Castro has Communist sympathies. This will have no effect on this department's resolve to do its duty. We are not here to judge him, God will do that. We are here to protect him. I loathe the Communists and everything they stand for, but I have put aside those feelings for the duration, and I expect every man here to do the same.”

As Clarkson droned platitudes, Cassidy let his mind wander. Why listen? No one in the room had any idea of what was going to happen in the week that Castro was in the city. They would flood his movements with cops. They would erect barriers to hold back people eager to see him. They would do what they could. But they knew that anyone determined enough to give up his own life could reach Castro and kill him. The Department could plan. The Department could anticipate. The Department could reassure. But in the moment, it would be up to the men on the ground around the target to react, and few of the cops in this room would be there, and of those who were, fewer still would know what to do.

Clarkson introduced the four captains who would command different aspects of the security structure, and each was allowed his minutes of limelight behind the lectern. Cassidy closed them off and drifted.

Alice lying on the bed smoking a cigarette after making love, one arm behind her head, her big breasts flattened by gravity, one leg across his. Passing him the cigarette and raising herself on one elbow to look down at him. “My lucky night, Michael Cassidy.”

“Mine too.” Meaning it.

Something had been torn out of him in Havana when Dylan walked away and got in the car. Maybe Alice would close that rip. Could she? Yes. Maybe.
Don't think. Just go.

“Let's get out of here,” Orso said, and Cassidy realized that the room was alive with talk, that the briefing was over, and that most of the men clustered toward the front of the room to bask in the light of Deputy Chief Clarkson.

*   *   *

Someone called “Hold it” before the elevator doors closed, and the operator clashed them open again. The Pig and the Nig got on.

Alfie Bonner and Clive Newly, the Pig and the Nig, as they were known, though not to their faces. Bonner did not care what you called him, but he would hear no disrespect for his partner. Bonner was an old-fashioned street cop who knew every punk, grifter, con man, pickpocket, stick-up artist who worked Broadway and Times Square. He believed in back-alley blackjack justice, and more than one hood left the city nursing broken bones. Wops, chinks, hunkies, dagoes, niggers, spics, his disdain was democratic, and nobody could figure out how Newly, a Negro, escaped it.

Bonner was built low to the ground, five nine, two hundred ten pounds, square, indestructible. His head was a keg with one blue and one hazel eye, a small nose, a thick-lipped mouth, and fine white hair buzzed short. He looked like someone had built him on a hangover Monday after a long, hard weekend. His usual cologne of whiskey and cheap cigars filled the elevator.

“The guinea and Park Avenue.”

“Good to see you too, Bonner.”

Clive Newly was a tall, thin black man with a narrow face that rarely changed expression, a mask of calm. Cassidy wondered if the calm was real or cover. Being a Negro was hard enough, being a Negro cop was harder. How did his people think of him, as ally or as enemy? Newly, who lived with prejudice, went about his business quietly and dispassionately and seemed to hate nobody.

“How're you doing, Detective Newly?”

“I'm fine, Detective Cassidy. How are you?” He had a low, smooth voice. Newly had risen to the rank of detective outside the usual quota for Negro officers. He had been the hero in a shootout during an election year, and some bright young politician understood that the Negro vote might swing the election and had engineered Newly's promotion.

“Buy you guys a drink?” Bonner asked.

An unusual invitation.

Orso looked to Cassidy. “Sure,” Cassidy said.

Bonner took a cigar stub from his hatband and lit it. It smelled like burning dung.

They walked out of Police Headquarters and across the park in front of the columned arcade at City Hall. An old woman in a stained housecoat and fake fur slippers, her hair wrapped in an orange dish towel, sat on one of the benches and fed the pigeons stale bread out of a brown paper bag. She called them by name, “Here, Florence, you let Peter in to get some. There you go, Henry, there's a nice big piece. Now, Willy, don't be greedy. You have to share.” The pigeons didn't seem to be listening.

They went west on Chambers Street, crossed Church Street, and turned into a building halfway up the block. The windows were painted black to keep passing citizens from looking in, and the dingy metal door with small gold letters—Hanno's—did not invite curiosity. The barroom was dimly lighted by the back bar light and hanging globes that had once been gas fixtures. Sawdust and peanut shells muffled the worn oak floor. The place smelled of spilled beer and whiskey, and tobacco smoke trapped for decades. There were a few booths along the wall opposite the bar, and some round oak tables and mismatched chairs in the area between, and if you had the courage, you could order food from the kitchen in back.