Feelers (6 page)

A man in thick glasses, a sleeveless T-shirt, and several days’ beard stubble came to the screen door suspiciously. “Who the hell are you?”

“I’m sorry to disturb you, but I just called. My sister Clara used to live here, and I’m wondering if you know where she may have moved to.”

The man stepped up to the screen. “What am I, the goddamn yellow pages? Get the fuck out of here, creep.”

At first the owner of 901 East 109th Street thought that the stranger had punched him in the chest through the screen. As he staggered back, he looked down and saw blood soaking his T-shirt. When he lifted his hand from his chest, he saw the blood pumping out.

“Fuck! You stabbed me!” His vision swam as he dropped to the floor, more from alarm than the wound. He didn’t know what else to say to the retreating stranger other than: “Asshole!”

Danny looked back. “Sorry.” He had been conditioned not to allow himself to be talked down. In prison, where status is everything, it can amount to a demotion, especially by someone of a lower standing, like the rude man who lived in his sister’s house. If you let yourself be talked down, the prisoners sense weakness and take advantage. Take food. Take you.

As he walked back to the avenue, Danny knew he should not have killed the man. Then again, there was no reason the man at 901 East 109th Street had to be so rude and hostile. Well, there was nothing to do about it, and probably no consequences. The man didn’t know him, he didn’t know the man, and Danny knew he’d got a good shot in, right into the aorta, the major artery sticking down from the heart. Rude Man would be dead in a minute or so. Danny dropped ice pick number three down a drainage basin.

The sun was getting low. Danny needed a place to stay, so he
walked over near the highway where he knew there used to be a motel on the service road. It was still there, a bump and thump called the Luna Motel. They call this kind of motel a bump and thump because those are the sounds you hear through the wall from the other rooms. I’m told some call them Motel No-tell. So the desk clerk was not surprised that Danny had no luggage, just that there was no woman in tow.

The place was cleaner than Danny remembered. Yes, he’d been there with the woman who ruined him, with Delores, and even the girlfriend before that. In Brooklyn, most kids live in pretty close quarters with their family in row houses, apartments, or small houses with several kids to a room. It’s hard to make love to your woman with any privacy, and it becomes tiresome doing it in the park on the picnic tables. So once in a while you spring for a bump and thump.

The clerk was actually a polite teenager with close-shaven scalp who looked like he was chewing an entire pack of gum.

“OK, Mr. Roberts, here you go.” He handed Danny a plastic card. “Down there, up one flight, make a right, five or six doors on your left.”

“Thank you.” Danny held up the card. “What about a key?”

“That is the key, sir. Just slide it in the slot on the door.”

“Thank you.”

Danny managed to get into his room with the card. Then he called the front desk and said he wanted pizza and beer, and the nice kid at the desk dialed the number for him.

Pizza and beer. Danny had dreamed of it for fifteen years as though it were pure ambrosia. When it came, it was.

It was nice to flip the channels by himself and watch anything on TV that he wanted. After drinking all six beers, he slowly reclined on the bed and dozed.

Mostly, though, Danny lay awake, listening to the bumps and thumps, remembering the times he’d been there before. Remembering sex, the female kind. And it struck him how those muted sounds were not much different from those in prison, where he’d been just the night before, unable to sleep. In Sing Sing, there are all sorts of subtle sounds at night of men doing things they shouldn’t, just like at the bump and thump. At times Danny could not be sure he was not still in Sing Sing and would reach out to touch the pizza box, just to be sure. One program after the other flashed on the TV, and Danny was happy just to have the companionship. A TV can be a companion to someone who is isolated. Popular culture is sitting there talking to you, including you.

The early years in prison, his family of course came to visit—but eventually his mother died, his father became frail, and gradually, like the sun setting lower and lower each autumn day, winter set in and they stopped coming entirely. They stopped responding to his mail. It was almost better that way. There was no reminder that there was any existence other than the daily routine at Sing Sing. And if you are to survive the ordeal of prison, you must embrace the routine and ride it out.

The motel room windows brightened, and the morning shows came on. The hosts on these shows were very friendly and inclusive, and he enjoyed them more than he ever expected he could. Danny had forgotten about these shows—the prisoners only got to watch TV in the evenings in Sing Sing.

Switching off the TV, Danny felt refreshed, more human, less like a prisoner and criminal, and he patted the cell phone in his pocket for reassurance.

Then, of course, he also felt the missing ice pick and was reminded of what he’d done to the man at 901 East 109th Street. Rude Man.

He left the motel at around nine and found himself standing in front of Uncle Cuddy’s house. It was empty, with a Realtor’s
FOR SALE
sign out front.

That’s the exact moment I drove by, after dropping Fanny at Tangles.

Tall, in his dark suit and turtleneck, Danny stood staring at the house and sign, hands down at his sides. I took note of him because he looked out of place, and I wondered then if he was somehow thinking of buying the house on Vanderhoosen Drive.

THEN I DROVE ON WITHOUT
another thought about the tall, out-of-place man on Vanderhoosen Drive. My thoughts were still on my good fortune, both in money and in love. Truly, the fates were shining favorably upon me, and I was intent on seeing how these new fortunes would develop and what my next move would be.

First, I had a few bits of business to take care of. The carting company was first, and I had to pay them in cash.

New York’s solid waste removal industry has had a somewhat unsavory history. The legacy of the Mafia years was that the carting companies still liked being paid in cash and gave a discount for doing so. Either that or they charged twenty percent more for not paying in cash, depending on how you looked at it.

Carting companies are the ones who make commercial refuse vanish. They come by and place large Dumpsters for me and my men to fill with all the crappy furniture, appliances, and belongings I am asked to clear out. Then they come with a large truck, upload the Dumpster, and drive it to a disposal site, usually somewhere out of state. I do not ask; I do not care. So I dropped by their offices, handed over the envelope, and got my receipt—which
had the twenty percent larger figure for me to use to inflate my business expenses come April 14.

Next, I stopped by my post office box that I use for business, and then on to the real estate agent office that had brokered the house cleaning. The owner pays the agent, they take seven and a half percent, and I get mine—it is that simple, and it is how I scooped the other feelers to win the bid. Perhaps “broker” is too nice a word for it. I paid the real estate agent an extra two and a half percent to let me win, is what I did. They do not like Pete the Prick any more than I do—he is too pushy, and often unreliable. Frog is too naive to think to bribe them the extra two and a half percent. Not all real estate offices will play this game, but Mary knows how to butter her bread.

I parked in front of the Upscale Realty storefront off the boulevard and walked in. Not a very upscale place, just rows of desks, bulletin boards full of listings, files stacked atop filing cabinets. The place was a disaster, and how they managed to keep their properties straight I could never imagine. All the agents were out except Mary.

“Mary—how are you today!” I approached the woman at the desk in the rear. She looked over her reading glasses at me.

“Ooo. Morty. Good. How did it go?” She struggled to her feet. Regrettably, Mary was not a small woman, and gravity was taking its toll on her knees. I tried not to look at her legs beneath her shorts—fat hung down on them, and they were dimpled and veiny and generally made one consider giving up eating meat. Lord knew what the rest of her looked like under the T-shirt, and let the Lord be the only one. An elaborate eyeglass chain hung around her neck, and she let her glasses fall to her waist, right about where her breasts ended.

“It went well.”

“So I hear,” she said, gasping from the exertion of just standing. Her sweaty eyes beheld me mischievously from under her bushy eyebrows.

I had hoped that maybe, just maybe, the rumors had not reached her. Why? Because it was also my custom to “tip” her if I found tight ones. As a businessman, I have to grease the wheels of industry to make them turn in my favor. So I was ready.

“There was some extra.” She took the envelope from my hand and peered inside at the cash bonus—ten one-hundred-dollar bills—and ten percent check covering her cut.

Mary grunted with satisfaction. “Nice.”

“But not as nice as rumor may have it. At Oscar’s last night they told me I had scored a hundred tight ones. Crazy. The workers got drunk after I paid them and they exaggerated. You know how it is.”

She smirked. “So how many were there?”

I put a hand on her shoulder and laughed softly. “How long have we been friends?”

Chuckling, she said, “Long enough to know you’d never tell me the truth, were it one or fifty. Was it fifty?”

I put a hand on my heart. “I can honestly say it was not fifty.”

“More?”

“Or less.” I shrugged. “I have profited, and you have profited, yes?”

“
Yes
.” Waddling back to her desk, she heaved into her poor chair, unlocked a desk drawer, and placed a strongbox on the desk. From a string around her neck she took a key that had been nestled in her bosom and unlocked the box. Flipping through a pile of paper, she found a check and handed it up to me. Then she dropped the envelope I gave her into the box and returned it to the drawer.

I glanced at the check for accuracy, folded it, and slid it into my wallet.

“Look, Morty, youse better be careful.” Her look was ominous, and I wasn’t sure if it was because she did not feel well or it was genuine concern.

I merely cocked an eyebrow, awaiting an explanation.

“If youse found the mother lode, the Prick’ll be after you, know what I mean? I hear he’s got his panties in a twist over this.”

“Do I begrudge him when he finds good fortune? Besides, what is he really going to do?”

“You don’t have it in your apartment, do you?”

“I never keep accounts anyplace but in the bank or somewhere safe. Not good business.”

“Because I’ll bet he’s going to toss your place.”

“Mary, I am counting on him doing just that. I didn’t fasten the top lock before I left to make it easier for the Balkan Boys to get in. There’s nothing there for them to find. And when they do not find what they are looking for, what will they do? Capture and torture me, try to make me talk? Pete is a prick, to be sure, but I really do not think he would go that far. Do you?”

“So you did find the mother lode.”

“Mary, my friend, it does not matter if I did or did not. What matters is that there is a rumor that I did. They will believe the rumor—not me. So what can I do? I can let them look.”

“And your car?”

“Nothing there, either. I will leave it unlocked until this rumor dies.”

Mary grumbled something I couldn’t hear and then added, “Well, be careful, willyah? I hate to see bad things happen to good people.”

“I am taking all precautions.”

“Ooo.” She began rummaging through a pile of paper. “Where the hell did it get to? The guy was just here this morning.”

“Who was here?”

“Some guy. Like a cop, you know?”

“
Like
a cop?”

“He smelled of cop. Or a detective. He was looking for a guy.”

“I don’t understand. What has this to do with me?”

“He was asking about the house you cleaned on Vanderhoosen.”

I put a thoughtful hand to my chin. “Yes?”

“
Yes
. He wanted to know if somebody had come around asking about the owner of the house. Aha.” She slid a crumpled piece of paper at me. “He said he’d reward anybody who could help him find this guy. Did anybody like that come by the house while you were cleaning it?”

“You didn’t tell him I was the—”

“What? Am I an idiot? If you have seen the guy, I want ten percent of this reward.”

It was a photocopy, with a grainy mug shot of a dark-haired young man. Below was a full description—height, weight, age—but no name. “It says this man is my age, thirty-three. This picture does not look like—”

“Morty, didja see him or din’t you?”

I shook my head. “Nobody came by as we were cleaning.”

“Sure?”

“Positive.” The man I saw standing in front of the house on Vanderhoosen Drive was not eighteen years old and did not look like the mug shot to me. I had no reason to connect the two.

Mary looked unhappy.

“You could ask Frog. He was working in the neighborhood, at
the place next door. Maybe he saw this man, and you could get the ten percent from him?”

“Hmm. Long shot, but . . .”

“Worth a try. Look, I better be going. We haven’t seen you over at Oscar’s. I owe you a drink.”

“A drink? Probably a hundred drinks is what you owe me, Morty, you lucky bastard. Get out of here.”

As I went out the door I heard her call after me, “And for Christ’s sake, be fucking careful, willyah? I hate to see bad things happen to good people.”

IT COULD NOT HAVE BEEN
long after I left when Danny walked into Upscale Realty. Mary was still alone. It was maybe ten in the morning.