Watch Your Back! d-13 Page 12

"Beverage?" asked the stew.

  "Yes," said Dortmunder.

  "I will have a frosty beer," Medrick said.

  "Me, too," said Dortmunder.

  "A Bloody Mary for me," said the Barbara Pym lady. Smiling sweetly at Dortmunder and Medrick, she said, "It's called a bust-out joint, and I hope you pin those cocksuckers good."

  24

  BIG JOSÉ AND LITTLE JOSÉ, as the most recent security hires at the Imperiatum apartment house at Fifth Avenue and Sixty-eighth Street, got all the drudgery. They were the ones who had to carry Mrs. Windbom's groceries from the lobby to her apartment, since she was afraid the supermarket's delivery boys would rape her. It was they who periodically checked the anti-pigeon electric tapes on the roof, and who carried to its separate disposal bin the hazmat materials from the two doctors' offices with their own street-level building entrances around on the Sixty-eighth street side, and who walked the two stairways once a week in search of blown lightbulbs or other anomalies. And twice a month they did a security sweep of Penthouse A.

  Monday, August 16, ten a.m. Big José wrote P-A sweep in the security office logbook, and he and Little José rode the elevator to the top. The uniformed elevator operator this trip was a surly Serb named Marko, who saved his smiles and chitchat for the tenants, so on the way up, the two Josés continued in Spanish their lies about their sexual conquests over the weekend, ignoring Marko, who just as thoroughly but more silently ignored them right back.

  Penthouse A was empty yet full, vacant yet occupied. The owner was some rich guy named Fareweather who was out of the country somewhere, and had been out of the country for so long that neither of the Josés had yet been hired for this job the last time Fareweather had been in residence. Imagine, a guy so rich he can own a huge penthouse on top of a big, rich building on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan and not even live in it. Not even sublet. Not even have a cousin in to house-sit.

  Since on the top floor of the building this elevator only served Penthouse A, it opened not into a public hall but into a small reception room with white marble floor, Empire chairs, twisty-legged little occasional tables, and four Picassos on the walls. Pocket doors, always kept open by the Josés, led to the main living room beyond — a huge space with big, bright windows straight ahead and to the right, to give views of Manhattan and the park as though you were in a low-flying plane.

  From the Persian carpets through the plushly antique furniture and the marble statues on pedestals and the old masters in massive dark frames all the way to the elaborate plaster moldings on the ceiling, this living room screamed money and luxury and comfort. Big José had been known, at slow moments, to come up and nap on that eight-foot-long golden sofa; Little José would beep him if a problem came up.

  Anyway, the security sweep was not the time to stretch out on any sofas. For the next two hours, as they did twice every month, they went through a standard routine. They checked to be sure that the refrigerator, empty but running, was still doing its job, with trays of ice cubes waiting in the freezer. They flushed the toilets and ran water in the sinks in all four bathrooms, they made sure all the windows were still firmly shut and locked, they verified that the two alarm systems — a simple electric eye for the entrance from the elevator, a more complicated motion sensor in the long corridor down the apartment's north side, with its doors opening onto the south-facing bedrooms — were both working properly, and they saw to it that the two fireplaces, in living room and master bedroom, had not let in any dirt or rodents and that the flues were still properly shut. Also, they checked that the answering machine was still functioning, responding to any callers but also letting those callers know that no messages would be taken.

  There were two bars in the apartment, one off the living room and the other at the far end of the place, next to a kitchen big enough for a hotel, with the equipment to match. There was hard liquor in both bars, though no wine or mixers. The Josés knew better than to tap into that supply, and in fact they weren't even tempted. This job was too good and too easy and too low-stress to risk.

  Steadily they made their way through the apartment, which they figured they must know by now better than the actual owner did. The master bedroom was full of the missing master's clothes: a dozen expensive suits ranging from dark blue to light gray, drawers of shirts and sweaters, racks of neckties. Trying on some of the nicer pieces, they came to the conclusion that Fareweather was shorter than Big José, taller than Little José, and fatter than either of them. Also, there was not much by way of casual wear. If the guy played golf, either he did it in a suit or he'd carried his golf stuff with him when he left.

  The other bedrooms were obviously all for guests, not live-ins, though the owner did treat those guests very well, if he'd ever had any. Wrapped toothbrushes in the bathrooms, white terry-cloth robes and backless slippers in the closets. All of the beds were kept made, with an extra-large sheet over each to catch dust; the cleaning crew that came in twice a month must change those from time to time.

  At the very rear of the vast apartment, past the kitchen and next to the small but completely equipped bar back there, was another entrance, never used. Or at least never used when Fareweather wasn't around. This was an ordinary door that looked like a closet door, except that it had a small rectangular window in it at eye level, at Big José's eye level, that is. He'd shone his flashlight in there one time and had seen a small, dark squarish space with what looked like grimy metal walls, and thick black cables hanging down in the middle. It had taken him a minute to figure out that he was looking at an elevator shaft. At the top of the shaft, that is — angling the flashlight beam upward, he could just see the bottom of the big metal wheel up there with the cable wrapping around it.

  So this was some private entrance of Fareweather's, not used by anybody else. What was clearly the button to summon the elevator was mounted discreetly in the wall near the doorknob, but when Big José experimentally gave it a push, nothing happened, so it must be shut off while the boss was gone. But he would use it, all right. That's why there were an extra two alarm keypads next to that button, matching the keypads beside the elevator up front.

  The Josés had no idea where the elevator went, but occasionally would make up salacious stories about it anyway. Even though they had not yet seen doors to that elevator in any of the other apartments they'd entered in the course of their duty, which was nearly half of them by now, they liked to tell each other that Fareweather used to sneak down in his private elevator to 4-C, where that hot television news-woman lived with her rich fashion designer husband that anybody could see with half an eye wasn't straight.

  Or maybe there was a Batcave in the basement, and back in the old days off he'd go, late at night, to fight crime. But if so, where were his capes? You don't take your capes along on vacation.

  Anyway, among the grunge duties the Josés were handed on account of being the newbies around here, the twice-monthly sweep of Penthouse A was certainly the easiest. Finished again today, they buzzed for the regular elevator, and both of them hoped the bad-tempered Marko would be on his break by now, replaced by Teresa, fat and too black, but at least with a sense of humor. You could kid around with her.

  Thinking about what they might say if it did turn out to be Teresa running the elevator, trying to remember some good dirty jokes they might have heard recently, they looked back through the open pocket doors at what had to be one of the premier living rooms in all of New York City. And to think that man stayed away from it for years at a time. Good. Let him stay away forever. Big José and Little José — they lived here now, as much as anybody. And no reason to change.

  The elevator door opened, and they turned away from the view of their living room. "Hey, Teresa! Listen, you hear about the Russian lady and the dog?"

  25

  HOWIE CARBINE, CAPO of southeast Morris County, New Jersey, part-owner of several restaurant chains — Grandmamama's Fish 'n' Fillet, six outlets, New Jersey; Salty Pete's Sea-tacular, four outlets, Staten Island
; Leaning Tower of Pizza and Pasta, seven outlets, Queens and Brooklyn; many more — sat at his kitchen island in his very nice if slightly gaudy McMansion, dressed in bathrobe and slippers and peach jockey shorts, and scoffed down some Cap'n Crunch with half-and-half. He looked over to watch as down the stairs from all the bedrooms above came Mikey, fourth of his five sons and, if truth be told, not the brightest apple on the tree. "So," said the father, "how'd it go last night?"

  "It didn't," muttered Mikey. He'd been born sullen, he would die sullen, and he was doing a whole lot of sullen in between.

  Howie paused with a spoonload of Cap'n halfway to his mouth. "It didn't go? Didn't the fuckin truck show up?"

  "The fuckin truck showed up," Mikey said, as he poured Froot Loops into a bowl and came to join his father at the island. He was dressed in shiny black swimming trunks with red flames coming out of the crotch, and a gray sweatshirt that read nypd in blue.

  The father waited, but the son merely loaded up with some Froot Loops and glowered at the countertop, so at last the father said, "So? What happened?"

  "The fuckin truck showed up," Mikey said, speaking through pastel pieces of grain, "but then somebody fuckin wrecked it."

  "Fuckin wrecked it? What, the fuckin driver was drunk?"

  "It wasn't the fuckin driver," Mikey complained, taking on more pastels. "He got outa the fuckin truck, some other fuckin guy got into it, drove it the fuck off. We never even got a look at the fuckin guy."

  "Drove the fuckin truck off?"

  "Ran it two fuckin blocks," Mikey explained. "We're racin the fuck after it, you know we are. Then this other fuckin guy shows up, some other fuckin car, gets out with a fuckin axe, takes the fuckin axe to the fuckin tires, cuts them all to fuck."

  "And what are you fuckin guys doin?" demanded the father. "Standin around with your fuckin thumbs up your fuckin asses?"

  "Nicky and Petey went after them in the Audi," Mikey said, "but then this monster fuckin guy with the axe, he throws the axe at Nicky and Petey in the Audi, and the Audi rams into the back of the fuckin truck and the whole thing goes up in fuckin flames."

  "Anybody killed?"

  "No, everybody got out."

  "Too fuckin bad. And these other guys, these fucks, they got right away from there? You never got any idea who they were?

  "Not a fuckin clue," Mikey said. "Unless it was Pauly and Ricky and Vinny and Carly, tryin some kinda fuckin mind game on me."

  Howie pointed his milk-dripping spoon at his number four son: "Your brothers got fuckin orders from me: lay the fuck off. They know, Mikey, this is important to you."

  "Fuck, a course it is."

  "It's your own operation," Howie told him. "You conceived it and you're runnin it yourself, and nobody's gonna fuck with you. All right? You hear me? Nobody's gonna fuck with your operation, take it from me."

  "Well, yeah, but, what the fuck," Mikey mewed, "somebody did fuck with my operation, they fucked with my operation last night, and now those fucks out in Pennsylvania are pissed off, they blame me for the fuckin truck, they say they can't get some other fuckin truck here until Wednesday, and now, because of the insurance and the cops, they gotta make up some manifests, what the fuck was this truck supposed to be anyway and how come it was in New York on Amsterdam Avenue at two o'clock in the fuckin morning. Meantime, my fuckin customers in Ohio, they're pissed off, too, and that was the best part of the whole fuckin plan, I've got my middlemen in fuckin Pittsburgh, for Christ's sake, I've got my end buyer in Akron, nobody's ever gonna find this shit or trace this shit, and I'm sittin pretty on nothin but fuckin profit."

  "With a little slice over here," the father said.

  "Well, sure," Mikey said, "naturally a little slice over there, I know how the world works, you didn't make yourself my old man for nothing."

  "I'm glad to hear it."

  "Only now," Mikey said, "we got these three extra fuckin days to wait, the fuckin bar's supposed to be padlocked by now, but I can't do it, the fuckin goods are still in there. We squeezed the fuckin customers out, but we still got the shit, stacked up all over the fuckin place in there."

  "What about the owner?"

  "What, Raphael?" Mikey offered a scornful laugh. "He don't know shit from green soup," he announced. "He's off there in some Dumb Fuck, Queens, with his head full of this faggy fuckin music, when it's all the fuck over, he still won't know what the fuck happened." Mikey shook his head. "I don't know what went on last night," he said, "I don't know who the fuck or what the fuck, and I'd like to know, but one thing for sure, Raphael Medrick I don't got to worry about."

  26

  RAPHAEL VERY SLIGHTLY lowered the speed of tape number two, and the Tibetan temple bells took on a fogbound aura, mournful tolling lost in a gray swirl of nothingness, and a shadow moved across the table.

  Oh, not again. Were those four people back? I will not permit distraction, Raphael promised himself. This is a critical moment, a critical—

  Was he going to get pinged again? The memory of the large man returned to him, that finger cocked, then fired, ricocheting off Raphael's skull. Through the clouded temple bells, he could almost hear again that painful ache in his head. Should he give it up for now and hope to get back to Voyij once the four had left, hope he was still at that point in the zone? What a shame.

  A balloon face appeared, very close, coming in like a dirigible from the right. It was sideways; it was smiling; it was speaking; its glasses were starting to drop off its head; it was female—

  It was his mother.

  "Hiy!" cried Raphael, recoiling. But it wasn't as though he'd sprung back; it was as though that dirigible had abruptly receded, still smiling, still talking, becoming somewhat smaller but also regaining its body, bent sideways in a pretzel shape over his table, dressed in a high-neck white blouse and loose golden slacks, twisting down to get that balloon into Raphael's line of sight.

  Raphael's bounce had taken him, on his castered chair, immediately to the limit of the cord attaching his earphones to his editing equipment, which gave him an immediate choice: reverse, or lose your ears. Meanwhile, his mother was definitely losing her glasses, and then, in an effort to grab them before they hit his control panel, her balance.

  Mother and son did quick, separate dances of survival, and then stopped, she with her glasses on, he with his earphones off. "Ma!" he cried, shutting everything down with both flailing hands. "What are you doing here? What are you doing here?"

  Because his mother had never set foot in this house before. No member of his family had ever set foot here, or even close to here. This was his retreat, his nest, his safety net. But now, his mother. Here?

  Wildly staring around, still shutting things down, not waiting for an answer to his first two questions, he stammered, "I was about to sweep, uh, laundry, I figured tonight I'd get, uh…"

  "Raphael."

  "It isn't always like this, Ma, I've been working very—"

  "Raphael."

  "A lot of times the place looks just like any—"

  "Raphael, I've come to get you, dear."

  He blinked. "Get me?"

  "You'll want to dress nicely," she said.

  He gaped at her, trying to understand what she was talking about, trying to read her mind, but of course that was doomed to failure, because of the smiley face.

  Raphael's mother always smiled, day and night, in sickness and in health, in warm sun or wintry blast, stuck in a traffic jam or just sailing along. Apparently, she'd started taking the medication for stress way back when she was carrying Raphael, and somehow had never quite stopped taking it, and quite obviously was still taking it today.

  There had been times in Raphael's childhood when he had envied the other kids he knew whose mothers lost it, went ape, freaked out, dissolved into bitter tears, screamingly accused their children of everything from leaving the toilet lid up to attempted matricide, threw things, slammed doors, drank before lunch. There was none of that at Raphael's mother's house. In her house, e
verything was serene.

  And now she was here, in his house, talking about «getting» him, talking about "dressing nicely." The way he dressed, in fact, was so that he wouldn't feel his clothes and wouldn't be distracted by them. He liked his loose T-shirt and baggy shorts. What could be nicer than that?

  The question he asked, though, was slightly other: "Why do I have to dress nice?"

  "Because you're going to court, dear. Come along," she said. "Your father is waiting in the car. He's afraid people will steal it. This is not a very nice neighborhood. Come along, Raphael."

  "Court?" He'd said that word three or four times, while his mother had just kept calmly speaking on, and when at last she finished, he said it again: "Court? Why? What court?"

  "Well, it's all to do with your uncle Otto's bar," she told him. "You know the one, you're taking care of it now that Uncle Otto lives in Florida."

  "Everything's fine there," he said, but he did feel a moment of queasiness, thinking again about those four people.

  They'd been here because of something to do with that bar, too. Oh, why couldn't the O.J. just go out of business and leave Raphael Medrick alone?

  Meanwhile, his mother smiled and said, "Well, there does seem to be a little problem, dear, and Uncle Otto has flown up from Florida to do something about it. As I understand it, if this problem with the bar doesn't get fixed, your Uncle Otto will have to stay up here and not go back to Florida, and move in with your father and me."

  "Why would he do that?" I'm not frightened, Raphael assured himself. There's nothing really wrong.

  "Let's hope he doesn't have to," his mother said. "So, to help, your job is to go to this court and explain everything to the judge."

  "What judge?"

  Ignoring that, she said, "And remember that nice Doctor Ledvass, from when you were on probation? He'll be there, too, and he'll help you with the questions."

  "Doctor Ledvass?" A droning, yawning, boring man, who'd been assigned by that other court, and couldn't have cared less about Raphael, and was only doing it for the money, and made no bones about it. He and Raphael had come to an understanding of mutual disinterest at once. Why would he come to help?