Authors: Joseph Garber
He turned north on Broadway. It had been years since he had been in this part of town. Yuppie gentrification had infested the neighborhood. The bars he passed sported potted ferns and campy names. What used to be junk stores now sold antiques. The clothing shops’ mannequins looked like Cher on a bad night. The streets were still dirty, though, littered with the very special detritus that only accumulates on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.
Walk like a cop, pal, not like a tourist
.
Dave slowed his steps, forced himself into a rolling John Wayne gait, and made a point of looking watchful.
That’s more like it
.
He was north of Ninety-first Street before he found what he wanted. Green neon above the entrance announced “McAnn’s Bar and Grill.”
If you can’t trust an Irish pub, what can you trust?
He pushed the door open. The place was dim. It smelled of draft suds, old sawdust, and hot corned beef. The joint’s patrons weren’t yuppies, never had been and never would be. They looked like they’d been at their tables
a long time. One or two gave him the eye, and then went back to nursing their beers.
He walked to the bar. The bartender was already pulling him a Ballantine. Dave hated the brand. He accepted it anyway.
“Can I help you, officer?”
Dave lifted his mug. “This is help enough.” He took a sip. The slightly metallic taste reminded him … so long ago … reminded him …
Ballantine was Taffy Weiler’s favorite beer. The redheaded refugee from New York had carted who-knows-how-many cases of the stuff up into the Sierras. Afterward, just before they left, Dave had made him collect all the empties. Taffy wanted to leave them where they lay. Dave had been furious at the idea of the least blemish marring the beauty of …
“Want a shot to go with it?”
“Pardon?” The bartender had broken Dave’s chain of thought.
“I asked if you wanted a shot to go with your beer?”
“Not on duty.”
The bartender snorted. “That hasn’t stopped your partners. Say, you’re new on the beat, aren’t you?”
“Temporary duty. Usually I’m out in Astoria.”
“My name’s Dunne. Call me Jack.”
Uh … right, pal, so what’s the name on that nameplate you’re wearing? No peeking!
“Hutchinson. Everyone calls me Hutch.”
“Figures.”
“You got a phone book, Jack?”
“Sure.” The bartender reached beneath the bar and lifted a thick Manhattan White Pages. He watched while Dave flipped through the C’s. Cogan, Coggin, Cohan, Cohee, Cohen … Lots of Cohens. Pages of them. Cohen, Marge? No listing. Cohen, Marigold? Ditto. Cohen, M.? A couple of dozen. But only one on Ninety-fourth Street. Just off of Amsterdam. It had to be her.
He passed the directory back to the bartender. “Thanks. Is there a phone—a private phone I can use?”
“In the back. Local call, I presume.”
“Very.”
“Be my guest.”
It wasn’t Marge Cohen that he called, and it wasn’t a local number. It was AT&T International information. Dave wanted a telephone number in Switzerland.
Marge’s building was a four-story brownstone, the sort that native New Yorkers find charming, but that reminds out-of-towners of the Great Depression. No lights shone through its grime-streaked windows. A flight of pitted concrete stairs led to its grilled front door. Dave heard the sound of snoring. Someone seemed to be sleeping among the trash cans beneath the stairs.
According to the bank of tarnished mailboxes in the foyer, M. F. Cohen’s apartment was on the ground floor and in the rear. Apartment 1B.
Dave looked for the buzzer and intercom system. Somebody had ripped it out of its mountings. He shrugged, and shimmed the lock with his credit card.
Inside the walls were grey with inattention. The carpet was worn and stained, the hall lights dim. The building smelled of age, mold, and indifference. The landlord didn’t spend much on upkeep, and probably wouldn’t until the tenants threatened a rent strike.
Dave knocked on the door to apartment 1B.
Light winked through the peephole in the door. Somebody was looking out. A lock clicked, the latch turned, the door swung open, Marge Cohen sprang at him hissing like a cat. “You sonofabitch!”
What fresh hell is this?
Her hands were hooked into claws; her nails—neither long nor enameled—were aimed at his eyes. Dave jerked back. She missed, but not by much. He held up a palm, “Now wait a minute …”
Marge crouched, ready to spring. “You rotten prick!” She leapt. Her nails came at his eyes again. Dave snatched her wrists, and held her rigid. This was the last thing he had expected.
“Bastard, bastard, bastard!” She writhed in his grip, and landed a hard kick on his shin. Dave knew he’d have a bruise.
Strong for such a little thing, isn’t she?
Marge screamed, “How dare you! How dare you fucking people!” Dave lifted her, pushed back, forced her into the apartment. She kicked him again.
He shoved the door closed with his hip. “Who do you fuckers think you are, just who the fuck do you think you are!” Twisting furiously, she tried to pull away from him. Dave tightened his grasp, drawing her close. She spat in his face.
“Marge? Hey, look, I don’t …” White fire, Indiana summer sheet lightning, scorching pain. Dave’s lungs emptied. He slumped to his knees, fighting for consciousness.
Marge had driven her knee into his groin.
Ransome and his thugs are one thing, pal, but 110 pounds’ worth of infuriated New York womanhood is another thing entirely
.
Dave put a hand on the floor to steady himself, and tried to shake his vision clear. It didn’t work. He lifted his head, drawing deep shivering breaths. Marge came at him with a vase heavy enough to kill. As she brought it down, he fell left, sweeping her feet out from under her. She tumbled beside him, cursing. He rolled over on top of her, using his weight to hold her down. She screamed and swore and promised to kill him.
Shouldn’t have swiped her cash like that, pal
.
“Mrfpf ahmm serrie …” Dave forced his mind away from the agony between his legs, concentrated on breathing, concentrated on having enough breath to sound coherent. “Marge, I’m sorry about taking your money. I thought it would make it look more authentic and …”
“Money?” she screamed. “Money! You sick bastard, I’d forgotten all about that, you and your goddamned sick perverted friends, I’ll tear your balls off you, you …”
It took him ten minutes to calm her down. By then she was weeping, wretched, trembling like a terrified bird.
Four men, big men, had been waiting at her door. One of them flashed a badge. Fifteen minutes earlier she had ditched the radio Dave had given her, leaving it in a litter bin outside the neighborhood D’Agostino’s. She thought she had nothing to worry about.
“Can we come in and talk to you, Miz Cohen? We want to follow up on the mugging today at your office.”
“Sure. How long will it take?”
“Not long. Here, let me carry that grocery bag for you.”
When she opened her apartment door, only three of them came in. The fourth stood in the hall outside. One of the three turned, fastened all her locks, and rested with his back against the door.
That door was the only way out. Marge backed away, putting a sofa between her slight body and the other two men. One of them carried a black leather satchel. He set it on the coffee table.
The second man, the one with the badge, spoke. “I’m Officer Canady. This is Doctor Pierce.”
“Doctor?”
“A gynecologist.”
“…?”
“We have reason to believe that the man who assaulted you this afternoon may have raped you while you were unconscious.”
“No. Don’t be silly. I’d know …”
“We are here to make a determination. The doctor will now examine you.”
The doctor pulled on a pair of latex gloves.
Marge’s face was clean, she’d washed her makeup off earlier. Her tears flowed clear, each transparent and
bright. “Swabs,” she gasped. “Specimen bottles. A needle. The other two watching. Their faces didn’t move. The big one …” She shuddered and sobbed in Dave’s arms.
“Easy, Marge.” Dave couldn’t think of anything else to say. “It’s over. Just take a deep breath and …”
“He held me down. He had his hand over my mouth. He pulled off my things. The other one, the one who said he was a doctor, oh God, it was as bad as, it was worse than …” Her whole body shook, racked with sobs and humiliation.
Dave wrapped his arms around her, nestling her head against his chest. It seemed to comfort her. Besides, it was better that she didn’t see his face, white with rage and bearing the look of a man who was planning vengeance.
9:23
P.M
.
Dave had been with her more than an hour. He’d found a bottle of brandy, cheap stuff, Christian Brothers. The liquor had calmed her down. Apart from the bruised circles beneath her green, emerald green, eyes, she was again the pertly attractive woman he’d met that afternoon.
They were no longer talking about the men who had violated her. She couldn’t talk about that. It might be months before she could. Now, they spoke of Dave, trying to find some sense in what had been happening to him.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I can make some guesses, but guesses are all they are.”
She was wearing some sort of powder blue smock. Dave wasn’t quite sure precisely what it was supposed to be—a nightie perhaps, or more likely a top to be worn loosely over slacks. But she wasn’t wearing slacks. And her legs were nice. Dave forced his eyes to focus on her face.
“What? Give me a for instance.” She held a Salem Ultra Light 100 between her fingers. Blue smoke curled up
to the ceiling. Dave almost asked her for one. He really wanted a cigarette.
“Okay, first point. It’s the government, or something to do with the government.”
“That’s the looniest thing I’ve ever heard. Hey, I saw this movie on HBO last month. Secret chambers underneath the Pentagon, shadowy men in anonymous uniforms, spooky no-name organizations with ties to Odessa. Lousy movie. I canceled HBO.”
“But it has to be …”
“Don’t be silly. That stuff doesn’t happen—secret plots, fiendish conspiracies …”
“Conspiracies happen. If you don’t believe me, ask Julius Caesar.”
“Oh come on! That was two thousand years ago.”
“How about Iran-Contra or Whitewater or Watergate? Yeah, Watergate. Remember Gordon Liddy?”
Marge studied him. Her eyes were large and bright, her lips pursed. Dave liked the way her lips looked. He thought … He shook his head. He didn’t know what he thought.
Oh yes you do
.
“Who? Watergate? Hey, how old do you think I am? That thing was over before I was in grade school.” She waved her hand. A streamer of smoke hung in the air.
“Liddy was one of the Watergate conspirators. He wrote a book after he got out of jail. In it he said that for a while he was sure he was going to be silenced. He said he was ready for it. And Liddy was a Fed. He was an insider. He knew how things worked.”
“Sounds like a nut case to me.”
Dave sighed. When he inhaled he tasted the smoke from her cigarette. “Other covert operations people were involved. Hell, even the courts and the judges called Watergate a conspiracy. Conspiracies are real.”
She shook her head.
“The other thing …” Dave swallowed. “… Aw hell, the guys who do these things, the Gordon Liddys and the
Oliver Norths and all the rest, believe, really and truly believe, they’re on the side of the angels. Just like they believe that the guys who are against them are the enemies of truth, justice, and the American way. I’d bet money that if you asked Ransome, he’d tell you that he’s the good guy and that I’m the villain. And he’d be sincere. Hell, I know I was …” Dave dropped into silence.
Marge tilted her head, eyes a little wider. But she was too smart to speak.
“Look, Marge, a long time ago, almost before you were born, I was one of them. They took me away from the Army … No, that’s a lie. They didn’t take me. The truth is, I volunteered. I thought it was the right thing. I thought a lot of things were right back then.” Dave closed his eyes. These were not good memories, and it hurt to bring them back. “Anyway, they sent me to a place in Virginia. I was there for months. Special training. Special weapons. Special intelligence. Special warfare. For a while we thought we were being trained to work with the ARVN, the army of South Vietnam …”
“Vietnam?” The expression on her face changed. He couldn’t read it.
“My war, Marge. I was in it.”
“Was it as bad …”
“Yeah. Worse, actually.” Dave decided the look she was giving him was genuine concern. He was grateful for that. She was too young to remember the war, and too young to be among the ranks of those who hated everyone and everything associated with it.
Likewise too young for you
.
He emptied his brandy glass, and poured himself another two fingers. There had been plenty of haters in the old days. Going to war had been bad. In some ways coming back was worse.
“Dave?” She was leaning forward. He could see her breasts shift beneath her smock. She wasn’t wearing a bra and …
Put it out of your mind, buddy
.
“Sorry. Old memories.” Dave smiled faintly. “Anyway, I was saying that they trained us for all sorts of dirty work—hundreds of us. Camp P had been in business for ten or twenty years when I was there. It probably still is. Thousands of people have gone through it, a whole army of secret warriors. And now they’re out there somewhere. Maybe they don’t work for the government. Maybe they don’t even work for the outfits who work for the outfits who work for the government. But if you know the right people, you can find them, and they’ll do any job they’re paid to do.”
She frowned. “No way. The government doesn’t kill taxpayers. The deficit is too big. Besides, I can’t believe anyone would give an explicit order …”
Dave spat, “They don’t give orders. They just drop hints. Remember Becket? The king says, ‘Who will free me of this turbulent priest?’ and next thing you’ve got a dead bishop on the floor.”