‘Cathy, sweetheart,’ Marcus said, and stepped aside to greet her.
Cathy Hollander smiled, took Marcus’s outstretched hands, and stepped towards him. They paused there for some moments, and then Cathy said, ‘You’re doing good, Ben? You’re taking care of yourself?’
Marcus laughed hoarsely. ‘Taking care of myself? When did I ever take care of myself? Take care of everyone else more like it!’ He shook his head. ‘No, I’m good, I’m okay.’ He looked away for a second. ‘Hell, I know things were never great—’
Cathy Hollander smiled. ‘Ben, it’s okay . . . things move on, right?’
‘Right,’ he said. ‘But I’m sorry about Edward . . . I am so sorry about Edward.’ Marcus turned to Freiberg, his face sympathetic. ‘Walt, I don’t know what to say. This has been a tough time for everyone concerned. We have this thing tomorrow, right?’
Freiberg nodded. ‘We’ll meet tomorrow, Ben, we’ll meet tomorrow and straighten out the details.’
‘And the kid is good?’
Freiberg smiled. ‘He’s fine, Ben . . . don’t you worry about him.’
Walt Freiberg looked directly at Marcus and said nothing for a second or two. Cathy Hollander felt a chill of unease across her skin, as if someone had opened a door and a cold breeze had crept in unawares.
‘So be it,’ Freiberg said, and then he smiled, and Marcus was smiling too, and then each of them turned to face the gathered crews. Marcus leaned towards Freiberg and asked him a question that Cathy Hollander didn’t hear. Freiberg responded, and Marcus nodded at Sol Neumann. Neumann stepped forward. Marcus and Freiberg took seats behind him and to the left.
‘Okay!’ Neumann shouted above the noise. ‘Okay, okay, okay . . . enough of the small talk and bullshit. We got a lot of things to talk about and we haven’t got much time!’
The room fell silent. It was almost eerie, the sudden cessation of noise and commotion.
‘Right then,’ Neumann said. ‘You all know each other too well already. Any of our people caught talking nice to any of the Bernstein crew is going to get fired!’
Laughter broke out in the far right-hand corner of the room and spread across both tables.
Cathy took a seat, on her left Joe Koenig. Ron Dearing handed over glasses, a bottle of Scotch, pushed an ashtray towards Cathy. The mood was more relaxed than Cathy had imagined it would be. Perhaps the calm before the storm.
Neumann remained standing. All eyes turned towards him, and for everyone present – regardless of their affiliation – Edward Bernstein was evident in his absence.
‘So we have these things to do,’ Neumann said. ‘We have sixteen people and four teams. We’ve been through this over and over, but we’re going to go through it again. Four teams of four, each team consists of the driver and three others. Two drivers from our people and two from Lenny’s.’ Neumann looked down at Freiberg. ‘Walt Freiberg . . . he’s here in Lenny’s place. We’re going to keep it simple. We’ve talked about this thing for long enough. Myself and Mr Marcus met with Lenny Bernstein on numerous occasions, and out of respect, out of acknowledgement for all that Lenny has done in this town, we’re going to keep it as Lenny’s family even though Lenny cannot be with us at the moment.’
Freiberg raised his hand and nodded. ‘Lenny’s family it has always been, Lenny’s family it stays,’ he said.
‘Good, so we’re agreed on this. We got two people from our crew, two people from Lenny’s on each team. We got four hits. West Twelfth, Bethune and Greenwich, West Ninth and Washington and West Broadway. You all know which teams you’re in and who you’re working with. You have the times and the locations, you got your vehicles, your artillery; we even have the names of those officials inside the banks that have access codes . . . you have everything you need, and the reason we’re meeting this evening, the only reason we’re meeting this evening is because this is the last time one crew is going to be in the same room as the other crew. All of you people will never be in the same place at the same time again. Ever.’ Neumann paused and looked around the gathered faces, each of them intently looking back, each of them implacable, almost without expression. ‘You get that? You understand that this meeting I’m talking about will never take place?’
There was a murmur of consent and acknowledgement from the men at the tables.
‘You really understand what the fuck I’m saying here, people?’
A chorus of ‘Yeses’ came back and Neumann seemed satisfied.
‘Right then,’ he said. ‘So – no words, no meetings, no high school reunions in Atlantic City for old time’s sake. I hear any one of you getting back to someone from the other crew for any reason then I’m going to have a great deal to say about it, you get me?’ Neumann looked at Freiberg. Freiberg rose and stepped forward.
‘After Christmas Eve,’ Freiberg said, ‘none of you knows anyone else. The Bernstein crew will disappear. You guys from Ben Marcus’s family are going to have a great deal more country to walk in. There will be no reason for any of you to speak with one another. That’s the simplicity of it. Once this thing is done everyone goes home and never says another word.’
‘Good, we’re agreed,’ Neumann said. ‘Everyone is agreed, right?’
‘Right,’ Joe Koenig said, and others followed – emphatic and definite.
‘So, we have a drink now,’ Neumann said. ‘We have a drink in recognition of what we are about to do, and then we go over the whys and wherefores, we iron out any little details that have been overlooked, and then we go home. Next time any of you see anyone else it’s going to be Christmas Eve. We go out there, we cause some trouble, and we have the best fucking Christmas we ever had!’
Riotous cheers, applause, raising of glasses; the room thick with smoke and the heady sweat of alcohol; sixteen men, one woman, between them a collective six centuries of violence and bloodshed, shootings and robberies, murders, beatings, grievous assaults and mayhem.
‘To Christmas Eve!’ Walt Freiberg shouted, and he too raised his glass, though his eyes never left Ben Marcus, seated there behind Sol Neumann and never saying a word.
For a long while Evelyn didn’t breathe – a minute, a minute and a half.
She stood there in utter silence, perhaps aware of the eggshell-fragile tension of the situation. Her hands were buried in her overcoat pockets, her right clutching the .38, the metal now warmed to body temperature. She had gripped it tightly all the way to the hospital – determined, gritted teeth, purposeful, fully cognizant of what she was to do, of why, of how long it was overdue. Perhaps destiny had dictated that Edward Bernstein was to die, but she was not content to leave such a thing in destiny’s hands. He had taken too much away from her, and she had steeled herself to set the balance straight.
But now she was there; now Evelyn Sawyer was there at St Vincent’s, standing silent and breathless, looking through an eight-inch thick sheet of glass at Edward Bernstein, a window that would not have even delayed the bullet on its passage to his brain; the brain of an old man at death’s door, an old man who should have been dead already but for some unknown reason was hanging on by a thread . . .
But now she was there, she no longer believed she could kill him.
For a time she cried; not so much cried as stood with tears filling her eyes, one of them tracking a lazy route down her cheek to the corner of her mouth. She remembered Anne as a little girl; she remembered Garrett as a young man, all of twenty-one or two, the way he laughed, the way he had the last word, always the last word; the way everything seemed like it would go in the right direction.
Never had; perhaps was never meant to. Wasn’t that the way of the world?
Finally, with a sense of overwhelm and defeat in everything about her, she turned and made her way back towards the corridor that would take her away from Edward Bernstein, away from St Vincent’s, all the way back to the house at 66 Carmine where everything had started, where everything was destined to end.
She wondered if she would ever summon
the courage to tell John Harper the truth. Tell him the whole truth. The facts of Garrett and Anne, the events of that night when John Harper’s mother had disappeared from the world.
She didn’t know. Until the moment came she would never know. And until that moment there was nothing to do but wait and see what happened.
Perhaps God, in His infinite wisdom, would let Edward Bernstein die, and at least some of the difficulty would be solved.
Outside, standing on the hospital steps, Evelyn Sawyer looked up at the sky just as the snow returned.
She released her grip on the gun in her pocket and buttoned her overcoat.
She started walking back the way she’d come, hesitating at the junction and looking back as if having a second thought – as if, even now, she might turn and walk back, walk right in there with her .38 and shoot the man who’d killed her sister.
But she did not, and it was not for lack of courage, or determination, or any sense of imagined injustice she might perpetrate; it was because she believed the moment might come when John Harper needed the truth, and this was something only she and Edward Bernstein possessed. If Edward was dead then she would have to die too, and then John Harper would never find out.
She continued walking, the cold wind fighting her every step of the way.
FIFTY-SEVEN
It was a nothing place, could have missed it had he not been looking. When he found it he was surprised: surprised at its size, its insignificance, its apparent irrelevance in the face of everything else that was happening around it. Down the street a man argued with a taxicab driver; the man was drunk, the cab driver stretched to the limit of his patience, standing with his hands down by his sides, his fists clenched, everything twisted up inside him like the turns of a noose; a bag-lady wheeled a shopping trolley along the edge of the curb, her voice sharp, insistent, berating some invisible child for ‘Goin’ on and spoilin’ everythin’ again like y’always do’; the sound of cars, the sound of human passage, the rush of life as it came down Desbrosses and Canal, from Hudson and Vestry.
John Harper stood at a small junction of some other vast and consequential world, and yet it was here, here where nothing seemed important, that the most important event of his life had taken place.
Right here – in this awkward and senseless place – someone had shot his father.
After a few minutes, perhaps for no other reason than to step out of the increasing fall of snow, he walked to the door of the liquor store. A tattered dark green awning shielded him for a moment, and then – looking up – he realized that there were holes in the awning and it provided little if any cover.
Stepping back he was against the door, and before he had a chance to move someone opened it from within and he nearly fell backwards.
‘What the fuck—’ the person started, and then they were gone, hurrying away from the door clutching a brown sack filled with bottles.
Harper turned and stepped inside. The place smelled like cigarette smoke and five-spice. There were aisles down the left and right of the store, a counter to the side, a Korean man reading a newspaper, a cigarette parked in the corner of his mouth. He looked up, looked down at the paper, and then shook his head momentarily and looked up once more.
‘You!’ he said suddenly, his tone sharp, almost accusatory. He tilted his head to one side and then frowned. ‘No . . . I am sorry,’ he said. ‘I thought you were someone else.’
‘My father?’ Harper asked.
‘Your father?’
‘My father was shot here last week . . . Sunday night someone robbed your store and they shot my father.’
The Korean man looked suddenly concerned. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I see your face, I think it is him! I am sorry. So sorry, yes. Yes, he was shot here . . . he tried to help us. He tried to stop this man and the man shot him and ran away. You are his son?’ The man came out from behind the counter. He took the cigarette from his mouth. ‘You are his son, yes?’
Harper nodded.
‘He was shot here . . . he is okay?’
Harper shook his head, and then realized that he had not been to the hospital for . . . for how long? He couldn’t even remember. He did not know how his father was.
‘He’s in the hospital,’ Harper said.
‘Right, yes, yes, yes,’ the Korean man said. ‘You must take him flowers from us or something.’ He hurried back to the counter. He took a twenty-dollar bill from the cash register, and then hurried back. He pressed it into Harper’s hand even though Harper was unwilling to take it. ‘Please, please,’ the man said. ‘You must buy some flowers or something . . . your father, he tried to help us, he tried to stop the man from robbing us.’
‘Did you speak to the police?’ Harper asked.
‘Yes,’ the store owner said. ‘I spoke to the police, but there is not much for me to say about this. I could not see the person who shot your father. I did not see his face, you know?’
Harper nodded. He looked down at the twenty-dollar bill in his hand and wondered if it represented the true value of Edward Bernstein’s life.
‘So you must tell him we are grateful for what he did,’ the owner said. ‘Me and my wife . . . you must tell him that we are very thankful for what he tried to do. You will tell him, yes?’
‘He came here?’ Harper asked.
‘Sunday, yes . . . he came here,’ the owner replied.
‘Regularly?’
The owner frowned. ‘Just on Sundays.’
‘Every Sunday?’
The owner nodded. ‘Most Sunday, yes. He doesn’t come one time, maybe two time in the last few month, but he always come the next week and tell us that he been away visiting friends or something. He was nice man, your father. He never say much, always friendly, and he would give me extra money than his purchases, sometimes ten dollar, twenty dollar. A good man, yes . . . a very nice man.’
‘You have his wine?’
‘Yes, yes . . . you want some for him. Help him get better perhaps?’
The store owner turned and hurried down the left-hand aisle to the end. He returned a moment later clutching a bottle which he gave to Harper.
Harper held it for a moment, and then looked down at the label. It was Cabernet Sauvignon, just as Walt Freiberg had told him.
Harper closed his eyes for a moment and gritted his teeth.
Nothing was ever as it first seemed. Perhaps Freiberg had been right. Perhaps Duchaunak had been taken in by the illusion created.
‘You want another bottle for him?’
Harper shook his head and turned towards the door. ‘No,’ he muttered. ‘No, no more.’
Once outside he handed the twenty-dollar bill to the woman with the shopping trolley.
She looked at him in amazement.
‘For the child,’ he said, and then he handed her the bottle of wine. ‘And this is for you.’
She started laughing, a sound that was almost painful.
The sound of her strange and unfamiliar laughter followed him as he hurried back towards the corner, away from the scene of his father’s shooting.
*
The meeting was concluded. The room was nothing more than empty chairs and tables.
The memory of voices hung like a ghost amidst the cloud of smoke that pressed against the ceiling.
Ben Marcus sat at the far end of the room furthest from the door, to his right Sol Neumann.
‘So there’s no word?’ Marcus asked.
Neumann shook his head. ‘No, nothing else.’
Marcus smiled. ‘He’s a face isn’t he? Nothing more than a face.’ He laughed drily, but there was little humor in the sound. ‘Got to give Walt Freiberg some credit . . . acted fast, took the initiative didn’t he? Got the kid up from Miami and made everyone think he was some kind of player.’
‘He could be,’ Neumann said. ‘We don’t know who the fuck he is. Word has come back. He’s this, he’s that . . . hell, no-one seems to know for sure.’
Marcus shook his head. ‘He ai
n’t nothing. He’s Lenny’s son, and that’s all I’m prepared to believe right now. There’s no crew down there. We’d have heard by now. We’ve had a week, all the people we have connections with and no-one has come back with anything substantial. Walt Freiberg has given us a ghost Sol, he’s given us a ghost and we’ve bought it.’
‘So what d’you want to do?’
Marcus leaned forward in his chair. He reached into his pocket and took out his cigarettes. Every movement he made seemed considered and decisive. ‘You have someone who can take Freiberg’s place on this thing?’
Neumann shrugged. ‘Sure I have . . . I can always get someone in for something like this.’
‘So make the call, eh? Get someone in and have Ray and Albert get them up to speed.’
Neumann nodded, didn’t speak.
Marcus lit his cigarette and leaned back.
‘So we’re going through with the meeting tomorrow?’ Neumann asked.
‘Sure we are, Sol . . . we’re going to meet with Walt Freiberg . . . but he’s gonna bring the kid with him.’
Neumann smiled. ‘Oh shit . . . this I gotta see.’
Marcus turned and nodded his head slowly. ‘I’m going to give them the time of day, Sol, that much at least . . . and then I’m going to kill the fucking pair of them.’
FIFTY-EIGHT
Freiberg came early, a little after dawn. Cathy Hollander with him. Had Reception call Harper and wake him, told him to get dressed, they’d be up in minutes.
Harper let them in, stood there for a moment in his tee-shirt and his shorts.
‘We need to talk,’ Freiberg said, a cigarette in his hand. Absent-mindedly he stubbed it in the ashtray and then lit another one.
‘Talk about what?’ Harper asked.
‘We need to talk about the meeting I have with Ben Marcus.’
Harper frowned. ‘What about it?’
Freiberg sat down at the desk, seemed to hesitate for a moment, and then he rose to his feet and walked to the window.
‘What?’ Harper asked again. ‘Will one of you tell me what the fuck is going on for Christ’s sake?’