Past Due (19 page)

I
WAS STILL
on the vestibule floor when the Good Samaritans arrived. A man and a woman, they put their hands on me and raised me to a sitting position and inquired with calm voices as to my well-being.

“I’ve been better,” I said.

They told me I was bleeding from my head.

“At least no place important,” I said.

They asked me where I lived and I told them I lived in that very building and they offered to help me up the stairs so I could call the police and I told them I didn’t need any help but they insisted, like Good Samaritans will. I thanked them and let them scoop up my mail and let them hold on to my arms as I struggled to my feet and let them steady me as we climbed up the stairs to my apartment.

I dropped my jacket onto the floor and loosened my tie and stumbled into the bathroom to take a look at myself. The hair above my forehead was matted with blood, a trickle had slid down my temple, smeared into my right eye, dropped onto my white shirt. I rolled up my shirtsleeves, washed my face and hair clean. The water swirling down the drain was a sweet rosy pink.

When I came back to the living room the Good Samaritans were still there. They bade me sit upon the couch and I sat. The
woman offered me a towel filled with ice cubes from my freezer and I took it and placed it upon the wound on the top of my head.

“Dude, let us look at the cut,” said the man, his voice hoarse and hearty.

I lifted the ice as the woman stepped toward me. She leaned into me, separated my hair with her fingers, bent forward to peer closely at the wound. She smelled of vanilla and spice, her gauzy shirt brushed my cheek.

“Nothing too serious,” she said. “You’ll live. What happened?”

“Just a mugging. They wanted my wallet. The money I didn’t mind, but I’m partial to the photograph on my license. It makes me look dangerously deranged, which is helpful in my racket. Did you see them?”

“Only from behind,” said the man. “They were running away. Two dudes. One older, the other taller.”

“Do you want us to call the police for you, Victor?” said the woman.

My chin lifted, my eyes opened wide. “How do you know my name?”

“From your mail,” said the man, quickly.

“How did you happen to be at my apartment building?”

“We were just walking,” said the man.

“We’re only trying to help,” said the woman. “Do you want us to call the police and report what happened?”

Through the fear and pain and sudden paranoia that had enveloped me, I peered more carefully at the two Samaritans standing in my apartment. The man was stocky, bearded, dressed for a motorcycle rally with a T-shirt, boots, denim vest. He wore a ponytail and was as hyperactive as a teenager, but the gray in his beard and lines around his pale blue eyes put him in his forties.

The woman was tall and thin, with long straight hair and bell-bottom jeans. She was older than me, but not by much. To get a sense of the state of my condition you need only know that just then was the first time I noticed how startlingly beautiful she was, with a narrow face and big brown Asian eyes that held a lovely sadness. It was a strange sight, the two of them, the woman, who could have been a model, and the motorcycle man, utter strangers, dressed
as if the eighties and nineties had never happened, standing in my apartment, standing over me as I slumped on the couch, and it sent my already jagged nerves into a jig.

I looked at them for a moment longer and tried to think things through and failed. My head ached, my ribs hurt, I still felt pressure on my nose, yet even as I struggled through the pain to make sense of everything that had happened that night, one thing became clear, one thing shone with absolute certainty.

“No,” I said, finally. “Don’t call the police. It was just a spoiled mugging. They got nothing, so there’s nothing the police can do. But thank you for helping. I don’t know how long I would have lay there if you hadn’t come along.”

“We were glad we could help,” said the woman. “Do you want something to drink?”

“Yeah, sure. That would be great. There are beers in the fridge. Why don’t you take out three?”

“Dude,” said the man.

His name was Lonnie. Her name was Chelsea. He fixed motorcycles in a small shop he owned in Queens Village. She worked in an insurance office. They were just old friends, out for a walk, and I liked them, I liked them both. Lonnie was jittery and funny and his eyes were bright. Chelsea was like an ocean of calm, sitting lovely and straight in her chair, her long legs together, her hands in her lap. When I told them I was a lawyer they groaned good-naturedly, but she started asking me questions about her landlord. And then, watching them carefully, and without mentioning any names, I told them about what happened to Joey Cheaps and about the deposition of Derek Manley and about the crime that was committed twenty years ago. I told it well, used my jury skills to keep it dramatic, stretched it out, watched the reactions. Lonnie leaned forward as I did the telling, his knee bouncing. Chelsea kept glancing at Lonnie.

“So that wasn’t just a mugging, was it?” said Chelsea.

“No.”

“What did they want?”

“To scare me off, to stop me from looking into the past. They said I was trespassing, as if the past is piece of land governed by the laws of property.”

“So what’s it all about?” said Lonnie. “You got any idea?”

“Some,” I said. “I asked some questions of an important man today and that seemed to get a lot of people rattled.”

“Who was he?” said Chelsea.

I looked into her pretty eyes, saw there a curiosity that was more than idle.

“He’s a State Supreme Court justice,” I said. “A long time ago one of his friends was the head of a huge cocaine ring. The ring was busted by the FBI and the friend disappeared. I think the ring, the friend, the long-ago crime, the murder on the riverfront, I think everything is related.”

“What are you going to do?” said Chelsea. “Are you going to stop asking questions like they told you?”

“What do you think I should do?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “We have a friend who lives in New Mexico and has become kind of a spiritual mentor. He always says that the past can be a pretty dangerous place.”

“And, Dude, think about it,” said Lonnie. “You could be getting into something way way over your head. You could be stepping into a serious firestorm. If two dudes came up to me and started playing handball with my head, I’d be doing more than wondering what the hell I was getting myself into. I’d be thinking it might be a good time to check out the Baja for a while, work on my tan.”

“That’s a bit extreme, don’t you think? I’m sure nothing I’m involved with is as dangerous as a tan.”

Chelsea flicked her hair and laughed.

“If you want, some of my customers are definite muscle heads,” said Lonnie. “You need any backup, give me a call.” He reached into his vest, pulled out a card.
THE CHOP SHOP
.
LONNIE CHAMBERS, PRO-PRIETOR
.
WE FIX EVERYTHING SO LONG AS IT’S A HARLEY.

“No need to turn a little collection case into Altamonte,” I said, “but I appreciate the gesture. I appreciate everything.”

That was the cue, I suppose. Lonnie stood and then Chelsea stood and then I stood, towel still on my head, the water from the ice now dripping down my temple in a steady stream and onto my bloodied shirt.

At the door I shook Lonnie’s hand, hard, rough, and then
Chelsea’s hand. She smiled at me and her eyes lit and she squeezed my hand, softly but still hard enough to convey a message of sorts.

“Thank you for everything,” I said.

“It wasn’t nothing,” said Lonnie.

“Oh yes, it was. I’d like to show my appreciation.” Chelsea smiled at me and I felt it in my chest. “How about if you let me buy you both a drink in gratitude. There’s a place in Lonnie’s neighborhood. You guys know the Continental?”

“Not my usual hangout,” he said.

“Mine neither, that’s what will make it fun. Say tomorrow night? Nine?”

“I don’t know,” said Lonnie, but then Chelsea spoke up.

“That would be great. Really. We’ll both be there.”

“Terrific,” I said. “See you then.”

I stood at the door and watched them go down the stairs and listened for the front door to open and close and then I went inside and peered out the window and watched as they made their way, side by side but not holding hands, definitely not holding hands, east on Spruce, back to the section of the city where they lived, with all its bars and restaurants, far from this mainly residential edge of center city.

As soon as they left my sight I put down the bloody towel, picked up the phone, and dialed.

“Telushkin here,” said the voice on the other end.

“Mr. Telushkin, this is Victor Carl.”

“Oh, Victor, yes. I’m so glad you called. How are things going? Have you checked out that lead I gave you?”

“I called about something else,” I said quickly, not wanting to discuss with Telushkin my meeting with the justice. “Was there anyone in Tommy Greeley’s crew named Lonnie Chambers, or was there a woman named Chelsea?”

“Let me think, let me think. Oh yes, of course. There was a man named Chambers, I think they called him Lonnie. He was a mule, mostly, and a debt collector when that was needed.”

“Was he indicted?”

“Oh yes, convicted too. Conspiracy. Drug trafficking. I think there was a racketeering count along for good measure. Ten years,
but he wasn’t a kingpin and so was eligible for parole and time off for good behavior. He’d be out by now.”

“And the girl?”

“I remember her, remember her quite vividly,” he said. “Her name was Chelsea Cartland. She helped with the money, helped break down the big shipments, added the cutting agent, bagged it into salable quantities for the customers. She pled guilty, received only sixteen months. A slap on the wrist, really, nothing more. But she was very pretty, very young, and the judge seemed smitten with her.”

I could understand that, how a judge could be smitten with a woman like Chelsea, I could understand it completely.

It was starting to come clear, the crimes of the past that were visiting themselves upon the present. Amidst the warning from Dante and the violent threats from the thugs that night, and the gentle caution issued by my Good Samaritans, who had come into my life, I now was sure, to deliver their message just as clearly as had the goons who had come before them, it was all starting to come clear. A drug conspiracy awash with money. A friendship turned bitter. A lovely sad-eyed woman with a perfect body. A small-time loser who fell into something from which he never recovered. And between everything was a single link holding it all together, a link that could provide some of the answers if I could squeeze it just enough.

Derek Manley.

I had seized from him already a car, a stack of stolen electronics, and I had my man out searching for more. He wasn’t going to like that, no he was not. And I had the feeling, yes I did, that it would not be long before Derek Manley got hold of me.

Unfortunately I was right.

“W
HAT THE HELL
you want from me, Vic?”

“How about,” I struggled to gasp out, “you letting go of my crotch.”

“Not until we get this straight,” said Derek Manley, his angry face an inch from mine, his foul breath warm on my cheek, one huge hand grabbing hold of my lapels, forcing my chest up against a brick wall, the other, well, you ever see the back of a garbage truck close down on a sack of trash? “Tell it to me, Vic. What the hell you want?”

“To sing bass again?”

“You a singer?”

“No.”

“Then that makes you a smart-ass. You a smart-ass, Vic?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t like smart-asses.”

“Please.”

“You ain’t so funny now.”

“No.”

“Shut up.”

“Okay.”

“You got a red face, you know that. You must got some Irish blood in you. You got some Irish blood in you, Vic?”

“My grandmother.”

“She was Irish?”

“Ukrainian.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Let go and I’ll explain.”

“I don’t want no explanation. I want you to stop your squeezing.”

“Me?”

“You’re killing me, you son of a bitch.”

“Me?”

“You.”

“Let go.”

“You let go.”

“You.”

“You.”

“Please.”

“Fuck.” Manley’s face twisted in some sort of fearful rage and he let out a bellow that deafened me with its frustration.

In response, I let out a scream of my own, filled with pain and fear.

And so there we were, in that dank and stinking alley, face-to-face, screaming and bellowing like a couple of wild apes.

Then he let go.

I fell onto the wet cracked cement like a limp bag of mush, pulled my knees to my chest. My hands covered my crotch as I tried to catch my breath amid the sickeningly thick snakes of pain twisting through me. I felt like throwing up, I felt like crapping, I felt like checking to see if my soldiers had survived the battle.

Manley himself, seemingly exhausted by his rage, slid down against the wall until he was sitting beside me.

I manfully tried to stop my sobbing.

He shook his head, ran his fingers through his crew cut, let out a whoosh of breath.

If someone had looked in at that very moment, they might have misconstrued.

“Yo, Vic,” he said softly, “you want a cigarette?”

“I’m having a hard enough time right now breathing without one, thank you.”

“Funny how that works, ain’t it?” he said as he shook out a cig.

“Yeah. Funny.”

“They wouldn’t seem to be connected to the lungs.”

“They’re connected to everything.”

He flicked open a lighter, spun the wheel, leaned over to light his cigarette. “I guess I got a little carried away.”

“A little.”

“But you have no idea how I’m getting squeezed here.”

“I think I have an inkling,” I said.

“No hard feelings?”

“Screw yourself.”

“Fuck it, then. So sue me.”

“Don’t worry. I will.”

“Yeah, well, stand in line. Twenty years busting my gut and I got nothing to show but debts I’ll never pay, a company that’s owned by the bank, a pint-sized mobster chewing on my butt, and a girlfriend what won’t even let me pinch her tits no more because I can’t no longer take her out in the style to which she’s grown accustomed, even though it was me what accustomed her to it in the first place. And it ain’t like they’re the greatest tits in the world neither. But a man likes to get in a pinch or two, you know? Oh, Jesus, ain’t life a poke in the gut? This ain’t the way I planned it all when I was starting out, I’ll tell you. I had different ideas than this. But the thing is, Vic, the thing is, and I know’d this from the start, I ain’t all that smart. That’s the problem right there. I just was never smart enough.”

The snakes slowed their twisting and the pain eased just a bit. I carefully pushed myself up until I too was sitting, right beside Manley. His legs were stretched straight ahead of him, his basketball-sized belly was flopped on his lap, and he was sweating. He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand, coughed, inhaled.

“I’m too old for this,” he said.

“We got the Eldorado.”

“Rothstein told me. And my piece of the club, whatever that’s worth.”

“Not much, I figure.”

“Tell me about it. Most expensive hand job in the history of the world. What else you looking for?”

“Whatever you got.”

“Why?

“We’ll stop if you give us a name.”

“Whose?”

“The guy who hired you to rough up that guy with the suitcase twenty years ago.”

He laughed lightly, blew out a thin stream of smoke. “You’re a stupid son of a bitch. You don’t understand what the hell you’re messing with.”

“Why don’t you tell me, then?”

“Take everything I got. It don’t make no difference. I can’t give you what you want. Take my balls. Go ahead. What with my new situation, they’re not doing me no good no more. Take them.”

“No, thank you.”

“It don’t matter. I can’t give you what you want.”

“Why?”

“ ’Cause I give you that, I’m dead.” Manley shook his head, stubbed out his cigarette. “It’s complicated. You know I got a son. Stashed away some place in Jersey. Hidden from everyone. Whatever I’m into, it don’t affect him. Except that I’m his sole support. I fall behind in my payments, the little bugger’s begging in the street. And he’s got this problem with his eyes. And he don’t breathe so good. That’s the only thing I keep up, even before the girlfriend who ain’t letting me near her tits no more. The support and the insurance, in case something happens to me. And I’m good as gone, already. No place left to go. I knew it, soon as you asked them questions in that deposition. I been hiding out ever since, but it’s closing in on me, I can feel it. Why are you being such a prick, anyway?”

“I’m a lawyer. I get paid to be a prick.”

“It’s nice for you that you found your calling. But what are you really in this for? I mean really. And it’s not the money, ’cause I ain’t got none.”

“Joey,” I said.

“Cheaps?”

“Yeah.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“What a putz.”

“Me?”

“No, Joey.”

I didn’t say anything.

“We was kids together, Joey and me. You think he was a putz as an adult, you should a seen him when he was seventeen. You want to know the only reason I ran with Joey when we was kids? His mom. You went over to that house, you ate like a god.”

“Her veal.”

“Forget about it. The best. And it’s not like she skimps on the servings either. She the one gave you that picture?”

“Yeah.”

“Joey Cheaps.”

“Why’d you take him along on the waterfront thing?”

“I started out by doing some small things for the boys, when Bruno was still in charge and things they made sense. Small things, you understand, nothing major. And Joey was always begging me for a chance to do something, anything, like he always did. Then when Bruno was whacked and the Scarfo craziness started, I wanted nothing more to do with them, none of them. So I got the job, the trucking job. And then this thing came along, right out of the blue, and I needed help with it, but the guy what set it up didn’t want to get the boys involved, and I understood that. Once they’re involved, Jesus, you know. So I thought Joey, he could be my help.”

“This wasn’t mob work?”

“No. Something else. Something for a friend.”

“And it turned bad.”

“Yeah.” He rubbed his hand again through his hair.

“If you can’t tell me who hired you, can you tell me what happened to the suitcase?”

“The suitcase. Now that’s a story. Wouldn’t mind having that back, it would solve a lot.”

“What happened to it?”

“Who knows? Gone, I guess. Look, Vic, you’re all right. You do what you got to do, that’s up to you, but Joey, what you were saying in that deposition thing about me. You’re off base. I didn’t whack him.”

“Who did?”

“Beats me. But you find out who it was, you give me the name, that’s all you got to do, and I’ll take care of it.”

“You want to help me, Derek, you tell me who hired you twenty years ago.”

“I can’t. Leastwise not now. Maybe if things change. But I’ll tell you this, it wasn’t him who did Joey. That I can promise. It wasn’t him.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yeah, I’m sure. He’s dead, for a long time now.”

“Dead?” That didn’t make sense. Too many people still cared too much for the guy who set up Tommy Greeley to be long dead.

“So, Victor,” said Manley, “now, you gonna leave me alone?”

“No.”

“I ought to wring your frigging neck.”

“Next time,” I said, “that would be preferable.”

“Yeah,” he said with an appreciative chuckle. “I bet.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“I don’t know. It don’t look like there is nothing I can do. But I got to find something, some way to get out of this, don’t I? Take the pressure off, take care of my kid in Jersey. You know, in a life turned to shit, he’s the only bright spot. I need to take care of him. Leastwise, I got the insurance, right?”

“Health insurance?”

“You are a smart-ass.” He reached out a hand and I shook it. Then he pressed himself to standing. “Take care of yourself, Vic. Be careful, right? Don’t expect you’ll be seeing my mug again.”

“You’re not going to…”

“I got to do something, don’t I?”

“You’re really not going to…”

“Desperate situation, desperate measures.” He laughed lightly, leaned out of the alley and scanned the street beyond.

I felt sorry for him just then, as sorry as you could possibly feel for a man who had just placed your balls in a vise and twisted the handle. But as he looked both ways and then hitched up his pants, shot his cuffs, slid out of the alley like a boy sneaking out of trouble, he didn’t seem so formidable, or so rotten. All his life he had
tried to short the system, and though he had a bit of a run, nothing had worked out in the end like he had hoped, starting with a rough-up that had turned into a murder, and now here he was more than twenty years later with nothing left but his sad resignation and his failures. And the only answer he could fathom was a life insurance policy with his son as beneficiary.

I wondered if maybe, like with Joey, what had happened two decades ago at the waterfront had ruined Derek Manley too. That strange traumatic event was like a Charybdis whose dark swirl sucked in and destroyed everyone who ventured too close to it, starting with Tommy Greeley and moving outward. And I was getting closer, not close enough yet to glimpse the root of that swirl of destruction, but close enough to feel its pull. And it felt to me, just then, that it was Tommy Greeley himself who was pushing me into its nihilistic grasp.