Night Work (26 page)

“Friend? Family?”

“Oh, definitely a friend. Nothing obvious, mind you, but an occasional touch, a smile. People seem to think that when they come into a store they're invisible in some way, and so are the people who wait on them. But we see things. We notice.”

“Thank you, Mr. Leighton.”

“Not at all.”

When they left, Caldwell locked the door and turned the sign in the glass to
CLOSED
.

Cassidy and Orso walked the ten or so blocks to Toots Shor's for a pop. The bar was packed, and a few early diners were at the tables in back. The five-thirty crowd, released from the day's work, buzzed. Toots, big and loud, greeted them as they came in. “Hey, pally, where the hell have you been. I ain't seen you in weeks. What? I owe you money?” He clapped Cassidy on the shoulder and winked at Orso.

“How are you, Toots?”

“I'm great. I'm always great. Hey, Orso, that broad you were in with last week, the brunette with all the equipment, she was in here last night asking for you.”

“What'd you tell her?”

“What I tell all of them come ask about my customers. You're out of town and no one knows when you're back.”

“Thanks, Toots.”

“Any time, pally. Any time.” He led them to the crowded bar and ordered people to make room for them.

The bartender brought them martinis, up with a twist for Cassidy, up with an olive for Orso. “To crime,” a cop's toast. Then they gave the first sips the attention they deserved.

“God, that's good,” Orso said. “It makes the rest of the day worth it if you know you're going to end up with an ice-cold martini.” He took another sip. “So here's what I think about Casey and the shoes. He's up there doing the construction work. He and the missus are alone in the house. They begin sniffing around each other. He starts banging her. She likes it. He likes it. She's bored with elegant Mr. Hopkins and likes the rough-and-tough Casey the carpenter. She starts to buy him stuff. He likes that too. He's got it good. He's getting paid, he's shtupping the lady, plus he's getting some expensive presents. We go back to Brooks Brothers, I bet we find out she's buying him stuff there too. Then the old man finds out. He's pissed. He wants to teach her a lesson. He pops old Casey and leaves him out there where she walks the dog. What do you think?”

“Good story. How does he get Casey out there into the park?”

“Walks him out with the gun. Makes him carry the chair.”

“Skinner says he was shot somewhere else, remember?”

“Right. The piss-soaked couch. So he kills him in the apartment and carries him out there in the middle of the night when no one's around.”

“Casey weighs a hundred ninety pounds, plus he has to carry the chair.”

“Two trips, and the guy's desperate, so he's strong, or maybe he's got a bicycle or something he can use to carry the guy.”

“Uh-huh. Taking a chance.”

“Shoot someone in the head, you're already taking a chance. Besides, he's rich. Maybe he thinks he can get away with it. The rich have been known to skate once or twice, you know.”

“I like the story. When they get back, we'll go have a talk.”

Orso left to meet a woman at P.J. Clarke's while Cassidy finished his second martini. He paid the tab and then used the phone booth in the corridor by the men's room to call Alice. “What are you doing?”

“Painting my toenails.”

“Are you dressed?”

“Come on down and take a look.”

He laughed. “Put on some clothes and we'll go out and eat a steak. I'll be there in twenty minutes.”

He left Toots Shor's and turned right toward Sixth Avenue, and then stopped. “Ah, hell.” Sixth ran one way north now. It had been that way for a year, but he still was not used to it. Why did they have to screw with a city that worked fine? He turned and walked to Fifth Avenue and walked south, glancing behind him every once in a while to see if a taxi was coming. He could have waited on the corner. Walking saved no time, but impatience ruled him. Better to move than to wait. The illusion of progress was often as satisfying as progress itself. The next time he looked back for a cab, he saw a black limousine turn the corner two blocks north. It slid slowly toward him, close to the sidewalk, ignoring the horns of cars caught behind it.

Not for him. Why would it be for him? Still … He turned west at the next corner, walked twenty feet, and stepped into the shallow doorway of a closed shoe store. Moments later the limousine turned the corner and idled down the street. Ten yards past Cassidy's doorway it stopped. A man got out of the front seat and walked back toward Cassidy. He stopped ten feet away, his hands well away from his sides as if to advertise peaceful intentions. He was a big man with a hard face, but his voice was mild and polite. “Detective Cassidy, Mr. Costello asks if you wouldn't mind talking to him for a few minutes. We can give you a ride wherever you're going.” He jerked his head at the limousine.

“After you,” Cassidy said. The man nodded and walked back to the car and opened the rear door. Cassidy stood back and looked in. His godfather waved a hand from the far side of the backseat. Cassidy got in. The door thunked shut behind him. The man got in the front seat, and the limousine moved off.

“How are you, Michael?”

“Fine, Frank. How are you?”

“I'm okay.” Maybe he was, but he looked diminished, as if he had not yet recovered from the bullet Big Chin Gigante had fired at his head in the lobby of his apartment building almost two years before. “Where can we take you?”

“I was headed home.”

“Okay.” Costello leaned forward and gave the driver the address on Bank Street and then closed the window for privacy. “You want a drink?” There was a bar with cut-glass decanters built into the back of the driver's seat.

“No, thanks. I just had one.”

“I'm going to have a taste.” He poured a glass of bourbon and added ice from a small, zinc-lined cabinet. “Ahh, that's good. How's your father? I know he's in rehearsal. I put a couple of thousand into the show for old times' sake. And I get house seats, so Loretta can comp her friends. She likes that.”

Cassidy knew Costello was stalling. “What's up, Frank?”

Costello took another sip before answering. “Do you remember that broad Alice was with Joe Stassi in Havana the night Batista took off? New Year's Eve. Big, good-looking girl.”

“Sure.”

“You seen her since?” Costello's face was friendly, but his eyes were flat.

“She's in my apartment, and you already know that, otherwise we wouldn't be talking about her.”

Costello was unembarrassed about being caught out. “Yeah. Okay. We've been looking for her. Someone saw you with her. They brought it to me, asked me to talk to you. She tell you anything about that last night down there, the night Castro's guys came into the city?”

“No. We haven't talked about it.”

“We had a thing, Lansky, Trafficante, Stassi, me, the guys you saw at The Tropicana. We didn't know what was going to happen next down there. You and I talked about it that night. Was Castro a Commie? How was he going to feel about our business? So we picked up the money from all the casinos, brought it all to Joe Stassi's house, packed it up, and got it out to Miami, some that night, some the next day.”

“How much?” The limousine stopped for a light, and a couple crossing the street bent to look in to see if the people inside were famous. The man shook his head in disappointment and they went on.

“A lot.” The light changed. Costello glanced at Cassidy, but Cassidy said nothing. Eventually the older man would get to the point. “Not all of it made it out of Cuba. A suitcase with half a million in it, give or take, went missing.” He stopped again, but Cassidy waited him out. “We think Alice took it. We went back over it as best we could. Who was where and when. There was a time when the money was packed and ready and she wasn't around for a while. Nobody can say where she was.”

“What, you guys don't think money's important anymore? You didn't have anyone watching it?”

“Don't be a wiseass, Michael. This is serious. A guy thought another guy was doing what the guy was supposed to be doing. You know how it is when things are a little crazy. Then Alice tells Stassi she's going to catch a taxi back to her hotel, pick up her clothes. Stassi says forget about it. It's dangerous. He'll buy her new clothes in Miami, but she goes.”

“Carrying a suitcase full of money?”

“No one sees her get in the cab. We heard a rumor maybe some of Castro's people are coming to the house. Not that it happened, but everyone's running around for a while. No one was looking out for Alice and her cab.”

Cassidy remembered the big suitcase Alice brought to the airport the next day. It was heavy, but what did that mean? How much did half a million dollars weigh? It could have held clothes. It could have held the hotel's towels. “What do you want from me?”

“Talk to her. Find out. If she took it and gives it back, then that's the end of it.”

“And if she didn't take it?”

“Then we've got a problem.”

“With her?”

“We'd go back over it again. We'd check everyone out. But you know these guys, Michael. They can't let it get around that someone's stealing from them and nothing happened. You know how they think. Better to punish somebody could've done it, than punish no one. It's a lesson. Don't even let us think you're stealing.”

“She's with me, Frank.”

“The only reason they haven't picked her up is she's with you, you're my godson. They came to me, asked me to ask you to ask her. Michael, if the money comes back, everything else goes away. My word on it.”

“I'll talk to her.”

“It's a bad situation, Michael. No one wants to piss you off.” But the unspoken message was that the money was more important and they would deal with Cassidy's anger if they had to.

Cassidy asked Costello to stop the limo on Hudson Street. “I'll talk to her. I'll call you.”

“Okay, Michael.”

He got out and walked the last blocks west toward the clearing sky and the sunset over the docks at the end of the street. Was Alice stupid enough to steal from the Mob? He didn't think so, but what he thought didn't count here.

*   *   *

Cassidy took Alice to The Old Homestead on Ninth Avenue and 14th Street. She wore a tight red dress with no girdle and a small black hat with a jaunty white feather, and when the maître d' led them to their table, men turned to watch her pass.

They ordered, and while they waited for their drinks he half listened while Alice told him about going uptown to Lord & Taylor and Bonwits to look at the spring fashions. “I don't know who they design that stuff for. Skinny women, I guess, not for girls like me. And the prices. You'd have to rob a bank or be married to a rich man. But I guess that's it, huh? Good-looking skinny women marry rich men and go there and buy the dresses.”

The waiter brought their drinks and went away, and Alice talked on about working at the department store in Washington and how women would come in and buy a dress and bring it back a few days later, and you could always tell that they had worn it, and then one of the girls who had worked there for a while pointed out that it mostly happened when there was a big ball, or a big holiday party written up in the papers. They'd wear the dresses to the parties and then bring them back for the refund. “Kind of dishonest, it seems to me.” Cassidy said yes, and no, and asked a few questions just to keep the flow going.

The waiter brought their steaks and baked potatoes, and the side dishes, creamed spinach for him, roasted tomatoes and a salad for her. He ate mechanically, tasting little, and wondered how to start.

Alice solved the problem.

She pushed her half-eaten steak away and lit a cigarette from the pack he had left on the table. “Okay, what's up?”

“What do you mean?”

“Come on, Michael. You sit there while I blab on about fashion and shopping, and things you don't give a damn about, and you say yes, and no, but you're not listening. So what's up? What's on your mind?”

“I have to talk to you about something.”

Her face fell, and she stubbed out the cigarette. “Oh, shit, here we go.”

“What?”

“You don't think I've heard that before? You don't think I know where that goes? You take me out, feed me, give me drinks, and then you ‘have to talk about something.' I get it. It's the brush-off. Do it in a restaurant so the silly woman can't make a scene.”

“What?”

“Fun while it lasted, but time to move on.” Her face was set and her voice was steady.
We're both adults. We know how this works. No need for drama.
But her eyes glistened.

“It's not that.” He reached over the table and took her hand. “It's not.” She watched him, waiting for him to go on. “You remember Frank Costello, my godfather. He was down in Havana with Joe Stassi and those other guys.” She nodded. “He came looking for me and he found me. He wanted to talk about you. Alice, they think you took money from Joe Stassi's house down there the last night. They think you took half a million dollars.”

Her eyes widened, and her mouth formed an “O” of surprise, and then she burst out laughing loud enough to turn heads at nearby tables. “How much? Half a million dollars?” She laughed again until she choked, and Cassidy had to get up and pound her on the back.

A waiter approached nervously. “Is everything all right?”

“Yeah. Just fine, thanks. Fine.”

He went away. Alice drank water and regained her breath. She looked across the table at Cassidy, shook her head, and laughed softly. “Half a million dollars. It's true, of course. I mean, look at the glamorous life I've been leading. A hundred bucks a month to stay at the fabulous Barbizon Hotel for women where men are not allowed above the ground floor. And on days when I'm not having lunch with the Rockefellers, I go up to the classy stores and look at the dresses I can't afford.”