The Winter of Her Discontent (19 page)

“Jack.”

“Think about how you'd like someone to treat Jack if he were far from home with nothing to look forward to.”

“Thanks.”

She struggled back to her feet. “See you tomorrow.”

Jayne was set free a half hour later. She and I walked toward the subway station at Forty-sixth and Broadway, and I caught her up to speed on my thoughts about what could've been occurring in the room downstairs.

“You think it's like a murder room?” she asked.

“Why not?” I said. “If Garvaggio gets to use the space for whatever he wants off-hours, I don't see why murder should be excluded.” To our left a sign told us that codfish cakes at Longchamps were only eight-five cents.

“But why?” asked Jayne. “What's the use of killing someone here?”

“Less likely to be found, maybe. Closer to wherever the mob hides the bodies.” It was starting to sound like a bad real estate ad: “Efficiency in Theater District. Close to Hudson River. Perfect for members of Mangano crime family.”

“Yeah, but more likely to have witnesses. Think about how many people come and go through this building each day.”

We passed a magazine stand that had given up half of its kiosk to selling war bonds. A phonograph had been rigged up on the counter, and from it Bugs Bunny's voice asked us, “Any Bonds Today?” The stand was plastered with ominous commands: S
TAMP
O
UT THE
A
XIS
, A
MERICA
W
AKE
U
P
, Y
OU
M
UST
H
ELP
. The most upsetting sign of all read B
UY
M
ORE
W
AR
S
TAMPS
, only beneath the word
war
you
could still make out where it used to say “defense.” The good old days: when the only thing we thought we'd have to do was defend ourselves.

“I don't think Garvaggio's people do what they do during the daytime,” I said. “Somebody was opening the loading dock when we were rehearsing, and it made a terrible clatter. There's no way they could regularly be doing that while rehearsals are going on in the theater.” Something Jayne had just said was echoing in my mind. Witnesses. “What if that's what happened to Paulette?”

Jayne pulled on a pair of gray wool mittens. “She was killed at home.”

“No, I mean why she was killed. What if she walked in on what was going on downstairs and Garvaggio decided it would be better to get rid of her than run the risk that she might tell the cops?”

“Then why not do to her what they're doing to everyone else down there? Why kill her in her own home?”

“She was Friday's star and too well known to just disappear. That would've brought more questions than Garvaggio would've wanted to deal with, so they kill her at home and make it look like an intruder got to her.” My mind continued racing through all the possibilities. “Garvaggio's worried that she might've squealed to someone before he bumped her off, so he decides the best thing to do is to pull out of the theater before the authorities get wind of what's going on.”

“Where does that leave Al?” asked Jayne.

“He could've found out what was really going on downstairs, so they decided to frame him for Paulette's murder. That way, no one would believe anything if he did squeal.”

Jayne let that roll around in her head for half a block. “That's not how those guys play, Rosie. If Al saw something he wasn't supposed to, he'd be gone. They wouldn't take that kind of chance.”

Hearing her say it, I realized she was right. Al was nobody to Garvaggio, and even less to the coppers. If he disappeared tomorrow, the only people likely to care were Jayne, me, and Tony, and it looked like at least one of us had already given up on him.

“I think we need to consider another possibility,” said Jayne.

“What's that?”

“Paulette, like you said, saw something she shouldn't have, so Garvaggio sent someone to take care of her. That someone did, but he didn't do a very good job covering his tracks and ended up in the bin.”

“So you're saying not only is Al a murderer, but he was stepping out on Tony too?”

“It makes sense,” said Jayne. “I can't think of another reason why Tony would turn his back on him.”

I
SPENT THE NIGHT WORKING
on my lines to make sure I'd be ready to wow everyone the next day. When my brain had had enough, I went down to the parlor and rifled through a weeks' worth of newspapers Belle had left sitting by the fireplace. I was looking for missing persons and found bodies, the kind of news relegated to the back pages since neither the missing nor the found were people of import. There was a name here and there—a missing child, a confused elderly man, a thug last seen in Hell's Kitchen—but none of them jumped out at me as the kind of victim that would end up in the basement of the Bernhardt paying for whatever crime they'd committed against the mob. They could've been out-of-towners, brought to New York to make it less likely that they'd be traced to where they'd come from. Maybe the Chicago mob was calling in a favor from their brothers out east. Did different syndicates do that kind of thing?

I turned the page and caught up with the news I'd managed to miss. The USDA and the OPA had finally reached an agreement regarding livestock price ceilings. When those went into effect on April 1, so would two new rules to curb the black market: all livestock dealers would have to obtain permits to continue their businesses and all slaughterers would be issued permit numbers and would have to stamp that number on each cut of meat.

Between the meat ration and the USDA rules, beef was going to be harder to get than a waiver from the draft board.

I flipped over the paper and landed on the social announcements. Smiling couples posed for the camera while brief blocks of text de
clared their intentions to wed. Every man depicted was military; every woman beside him desperate to take his name before the war took his life.

I tossed the paper into the fire someone (most likely Belle) had laid.

Jayne's explanation for what was happening at the Bernhardt kept drifting into my mind with the same insistence that lines I thought I knew kept coming back to me. I had to admit that it was the first theory that actually made sense. Al was desperate for dough—he always was—and so he must've cut a deal with Garvaggio. He works for him on the side, and if something goes wrong, Al agrees to take the fall. Why, though? Was Garvaggio offering him so much coin that he was willing to take responsibility if he got caught? And what had gone wrong with Paulette's murder? As far as we knew, there were no witnesses, and no one close to Paulette had any idea who he was. Unless his own conscience was the culprit, there was no reason why he couldn't have gotten away scot-free. Unless…

If a witness wasn't causing problems for Al, maybe Tony was. If he'd gotten wind of what Al was doing and let Al know that he didn't appreciate him stepping out, Al may have been forced into confessing to Paulette's murder in order to keep Tony happy. But that didn't make any sense. Why would Tony care if Al owned up to a clip job when they were both devoted to a life of crime? Al was out of commission now and Tony was out a man, a good man who'd saved his girl. Surely that couldn't be the reason.

When Al had been watching me for Jim McCain, he was terrified Tony was going to find out. He told me, “When you work for Tony B., you work for Tony B.” The unspoken consequence of violating this rule was that there was some kind of retribution. Loyalty was everything to Tony, and it may well have been that when he found out Al was working for Vinnie Garvaggio's gang, he decided he'd rather have a dead friend than a live traitor. And Al, knowing that, did the only thing he could to save his own life. He confessed to murdering Paulette and went to jail to make sure that he was safe from Tony.

 

Our rehearsal wasn't set until two that afternoon, so I decided to forgo whatever sleep I could've gotten and visit Al instead.

“Do you want me to come?” asked Jayne.

I couldn't be positive if Tony was the one who put Al in the pen, and until I was, I wasn't about to share my theory with Jayne. “I think I want to go alone this time. Every time we've gone together he's clammed up. Maybe seeing me one-on-one will make him more willing to spill.”

I made it to the 19th Precinct by ten a.m. and went through the same motions I had in the past to see Al. This time, though, the dame at the desk told me the visit was a no go.

“Why?” I asked.

“He's gone, sweetheart.”

We were living in a time when
gone
was the kindest euphemism for death. A dozen soldiers I knew were gone, and Jack was halfway to getting there himself. “How?”

“They take them there by bus.”

I shook my head clear. “I mean, where did they take him?”

“Rikers Island. This isn't a hotel, you know. They don't stay here indefinitely.”

“Can I visit him there?”

“Sure. And you can stick your hand in boiling water too. Doesn't mean you should.” She sighed and shuffled through a stack of papers on her desk. “You're going to need a visitor's pass to get on the ferry and to the island. When do you want to go?”

“Today.”

“I'll call ahead and get the paperwork taken care of. If I were you, I'd keep my coat on and buttoned. Nothing gets a prisoner more riled than a pair of pins sticking out of a short skirt.”

I thanked her for her advice, such as it was, and stepped outside the station to hail a cab. As I named my destination, the driver started to laugh, an asthmatic chuckle that sounded less like merriment and
more like one of Zelda's vocal exercises. Still, he took me, guffawing all the way about how a girl like me should be able to get herself a decent fellow who hasn't done time. The soldiers will be coming home soon, he assured me, as though desperation for romance had led me astray. Why date a criminal when you can date a hero? Was there a difference? I wanted to ask him. Could Garvaggio's basement crimes really be that different from what was taking place on the battlefield? I kept my mouth closed, though. I needed this guy to come and collect me later on.

We arrived at East 134th Street in the Bronx, and I approached the guard at the ferry and told him who I was. The lady at the 19th Precinct had, as she'd promised, paved the way for my voyage, and I boarded the ferry and took a gray, foggy journey across the East River to the island that now housed the state-of-the-art penitentiary.

Rikers Island was pretty impressive to the naked eye. It spanned some four hundred acres, many of them made by dirt from subway excavations and other refuse. For years fires burned beneath the ground and people claimed that the only thing that lived on the island were rats. Most of the rodents were gone now, though it seemed fitting that a place that once burned and smoldered and served as a residence for vermin was now the hell on earth known as our penitentiary.

For a miniature Hades, the place was deceptively attractive. Dozens of acres were given over to a pig farm that produced a healthy portion of the state's pork supply (pity it wasn't beef). The grounds were landscaped with the kind of care usually given over to royal gardens. The buildings were new and modern, designed to house a unique vocational, educational, and recreational system for the prisoners. It was, in many ways, a better place to live than Manhattan.

It also wasn't the kind of place that one planned on staying in long term. Most of the men at Rikers were serving two to three years. I hadn't heard of anyone being sent there while awaiting their trial, though it was always possible this was common practice and I simply wasn't aware of it, my prison knowledge being what it was. Part of me
was happy to know that this was where Al was staying. It was a much more optimistic place than the 19th Precinct.

I went through another security check upon my arrival and told a formidable-looking guard stationed at the main doors who I was and whom I wanted to see. He didn't ask me my relationship to Al, only if I was bringing the prisoner anything. I assured him my presence was my present, and he directed me to another room where I would again announce myself to a guard and wait until the prisoner was ready to see me.

This room was more physician's waiting room than penitentiary purgatory. A radio buzzed in the corner, relaying the scores for the Rangers' game. A handful of people sat on comfortable-looking couches while reading that day's newspapers and outdated magazines. I gave the bull at the desk my name, and he crossed off some sort of prepared list he had waiting in front of him.

“Al's a popular guy today. There's someone in there with him now. They'll probably be another few minutes. Take a seat and I'll let you know when you can go in.”

I figured Al's visitor was probably his long-suffering mother, a woman I'd never met, but whom I pictured as tiny and furrowed, with the sort of perpetually weepy eyes that made you feel guilty for things you hadn't done yet. I busied myself with a copy of
Life
magazine that had a photo of W
AV
ES at the navy training center in Oklahoma on the cover. Inside the magazine was an extensive photo essay detailing the contributions of the W
AV
ES and the WAACS, those brave young women who were willing to don uniforms and fight the war for themselves. They looked so happy as they posed while training. Their uniforms were tailored and feminine as though they needed to be further distinguished from their male counterparts.

“Rosie Winter. Long time no see.”

I closed the magazine with a start. A man in a chalk-striped suit stood in front of me, blocking my view of the guard at the door.

“Hiya, Tony. You're looking well.” I stood up as though he were the queen and found myself uncertain about what I should do with
my hands. He embraced me and planted a kiss on my cheek that sent me off balance. “What are you doing here?” I asked. It wasn't a completely stupid question. Given Tony's line of business, the odds were good that he knew more than one inmate staying at Rikers.

“I came to see how our boy was getting on in his new accommodations. You?”

“The same,” I said.

He nodded at this news. I felt very small. He could crush me between his thumb and forefinger. “Jayne with you?” he asked.

“No. No. She didn't want to come. Seemed to think it was a bad idea.”

“That's my girl.” Tony was a big guy. Not Al big, and certainly not the size of Vinnie Garvaggio, but large enough to make you plan out your path when you were trying to walk by him. In the past, he never intimidated me, even though I knew that given his job and his connections he was someone to fear. The people Tony may have killed (and I wasn't positive he had) were Jimmy Durante caricatures in my mind—comic-book gangsters drawn to die and completely deserving of whatever fate served them. Now with the idea of why Al was really in jail ringing in my head, I no longer saw Tony as some innocuous tough guy. He could do real harm to real people. Including me.

“How come you didn't see things the same way?” he asked.

“Al's my friend, Tony. I owe him big for what he did for Jayne and me.”

I expected him to hold me by the collar of my blouse and whisper a threat in my ear about why I might want to stay away from Al from this moment forward. His body language would be subtle enough that the others in the room would assume it was just two old friends embracing. He didn't do that, though. Instead he leaned toward me and in a low voice said, “Tell him to do the right thing.”

“Excuse me?”

“When you see him. Tell him to do what's best.”

“What does that mean?”

“He knows.” He put on an overcoat that had been draped over
his arm and applied a gray fedora. “You, me, and Jayne should get together some time.”

“Sure. That'd be swell.”

Tony left, and the guard called my name and said I could see my prisoner now.
My prisoner,
as though I had any claim to Al. The bull led me into a big open space that was dotted with tables and chairs. Men in striped jumpsuits emblazoned with the numbers they used instead of names sat scattered about the room, some smoking, some engaged in quiet conversations with well-dressed mouthpieces or conservatively attired women.

The guard directed me to a table marked 21. “Al will be with you in a minute,” he told me with a wink. “He needed a potty break.”

I sat on a wooden bench and felt like I'd just been put into the meat case at the butcher. Men glanced my way, not with suspicion or any desire to do me harm but with a strange longing. Maybe I resembled their wives or girlfriends, or just embodied something they hadn't seen since they started serving their sentences. Whatever it was, they gazed at me, then forced themselves to look away as though I was too painful a reminder of something they might never see again.

“Rosie.”

Al stood opposite me. The tone of his voice made it clear that he hadn't been expecting to see me and wasn't thrilled by the surprise. Still, he was stuck until the guard came back to retrieve him.

“Hiya, Al.” I stood up too quickly, and the bench banged against the floor. Al gestured for me to sit down, and we both did so at the same time. “You look good.” He did too. The exhaustion that had marked his face at the 19th Precinct was gone. “How's this place treating you?”

“I've been in worse.”

“I didn't realize they held people here until their trial.”

He clasped his hands together and set them on the table. “There ain't going to be a trial, Rosie. It's all done.”

“But…” I stopped myself from protesting. Had Tony done this?
Had he delivered Al's sentence behind the scenes and then come to gloat that that's what he got for messing around behind his back? If he did, then why had he told me to urge Al to do the right thing?

“I saw Tony in the visitor's lobby,” I said. “I guess he'd just gotten through with seeing you.” Al nodded, and I realized I hadn't given him much of an opening to say anything more. “Does he come to see you a lot?”

“When he can. No one likes to visit this place, especially if they've been on the other side of this table before.”