The Old Turk's Load (10 page)

elly spent a few hours in his office assembling the information he’d gathered, which consisted of the photographs Jarkey had taken, each one with the date and time printed in a white rectangle at the bottom, to correspond with his field notes.The man was brilliant. As he sifted through them Kelly thought back on what he’d seen of Gloria at Lloyd’s party. It was hard to imagine a rich girl like her working as a stoolie for the FBI. Harder still to imagine
why
she’d do such a thing. Whatever the reasons, it was a risky place for her to be. Her father would not be happy to hear about it. But he was going to hear it anyway, and soon. Kelly dialed Mundi’s office and made an appointment for late afternoon. Then he took a long, hot shower.

Kelly’s office, with its efficiency unit adjoining, was in a venerable building on the corner of Fifty-Third and Madison. The place had formerly been occupied by a shady business type who, after a wrangle with the IRS, was forced by bankruptcy to vacate. Mr. Hurst, the landlord, then cut Kelly a deal on the remainder of the lease. The truth was, Hurst owed him. He’d hired the detective when he’d begun to suspect his soon-to-be third wife of serious gold-digging. Kelly ( Jarkey, actually) had uncovered a forgotten husband to whom, it seemed, she was still married. Hence the break on the office.

As he buttoned his shirt, Kelly thought about Mr. Hurst and his encyclopedic knowledge of Manhattan real estate, how he must’ve known Richard Mundi back in the old days. He might even have something to add to Sandy’s sad narrative and the stark facts contained in the clippings Jarkey had gathered. He picked up the phone.

Fortunately Mr. Hurst was just about to step out for his daily constitutional when Kelly called. They met on the corner of Fifth and Seventy-Sixth, and hiked together up to the Met where, with no one but yawning guards to overhear them, they discussed Richard Mundi.

Mundi, Hurst recalled, had married Agnes Day at the beginning of his career.There’d been a society wedding, quite a do. She’d had some kind of show business connection, and the papers made a fuss about it all. But he’d never seen her perform.Then some scandal, but, unfortunately, Hurst wasn’t exactly certain what it involved. She died young, he knew that much. Mundi himself had been a comer when he’d first arrived on the scene, brash but appealing. A solid man to drive a deal with. Of the daughter, Gloria, he knew nothing.

They were back on the street by this time, and the older man watched with something approaching awe as Kelly inhaled a hot dog, a Yoo-hoo, and two non-filter Kools. Then they shook hands and parted company, Hurst to a meeting with his accountant, and Kelly—though his friend had told him nothing he didn’t already know—deeper into the misguided certainty that Agnes Day Mundi’s untoward death was the key to the entire case.

he phone was ringing, ringing. More to stop it than anything else, Chamberlain grabbed it, held it to his ear. The voice on the line was ghastly, doomed. At the raw end of a binge, Lloyd didn’t feel much better himself.

“Lloy. Lloy, is dat eeeh-yeww?”
“Who is this?”
“Lloy. Z’mee. D Mayomann. Member mee?”
“Jesus God.” Survival instinct took over. Lloyd humored the

Took barbiturates, tried to sleep, got sick, knowing he’d dreamed it, knowing he hadn’t.Tried to masturbate, couldn’t. Drank fluids, suddenly ravenous, thirsty. Drank more, ate, felt sick, got sick, slept for a few seconds.

Woke to an electric jolt of terror.Picked up the phone and dialed. “Kelly, it’s Lloyd.”
“Lloyd. What’s going on?”
“He called me, Kelly.
He
fucking called me up an hour ago.

He told me who he was, and I knew it was
him
. I mean I knew he was this guy I used to know back in Massachusetts. But it wasn’t.” “What the hell are you talking about?”
“It was
him,
Kelly.”
“Who, Lloyd?”
“The guy I told you about last week. The guy they fucking

put the
brain
into.”
“Oh, him.”
“He got my phone number, Kelly.
Nobody
has my phone number, you dig? He must have gotten it from the computers.” Lloyd could hear Kelly thinking. He knew what those thoughts must be. He didn’t care, though. He was too scared. “I need your help, man.
He
says
he’s
coming here.”

“Tonight. Just a few hours. Says
he’s
got something he fucking wants to
show
me.”
“Well, maybe he does.”
“Kelly, I need a place to stay for a while. Can you help me?”
“You got any downers over there?”
“Of course.”
“Take them. And a bunch of vitamins and hot soup. Hot soup is good. I’ve got one appointment uptown, then I’ll be over. I’ll talk to him for you. You won’t even have to be in the room. He probably won’t show up anyway.”
Kelly wasn’t thinking about the guy with the brain. He was thinking about Helen, imagining her being there with Chamberlain. Maybe he’d send Lloyd over to his place after all, then wait around with Helen to see what happened next.

loria and Jarkey were still sitting in Kelly’s car outside her apartment. The rain had not let up. It was the warm, tropical kind, so they had to keep the windows cracked to prevent the car from fogging. Gloria took off the scarf and shook her hair out. She’d regained her composure and dropped the flirty stuff. Jarkey explained to her who and what Kelly was, how he’d come to Richard Mundi’s attention, and what Mundi had hired him to do.That, while Kelly was off investigating other aspects of the case, he’d been given the job of tailing her. His only other option to this lengthy explanation would have been silence, and Jarkey now did not want silence with this woman.

“I found out about Gallagher and the Feds that first night. It was just luck. And he was sloppy.”
“He’s always been sloppy.”
“So I had what I needed on him, but I thought I’d better make sure about you. I assumed you were in on the deal. When I found out you were working with Kornecki, it all seemed to fit together. I guess I was sloppy myself.”
“No, you were fine. It was the car, actually. I’ve got a thing about cars. Yours has a ding on the front fender. I knew I’d seen it down by Kevin’s place, and I thought I remembered it being parked on this street before. I was just standing there trying to figure out what to do and you walked along.”
“How did you know to yell at me?”
“You had this incredible look . . .”
It had been more than half an hour and Jarkey was still enthralled. “Kind of you to put it that way.”
“Meanwhile I’ve been letting that asshole spy on us for the Feds. Talk about sloppy. And that’s not the worst of it.”
“There’s more?” He was surprised to realize that she seemed on the verge of trusting him, which only enhanced the attraction of her lovely, quirky eyes. Jarkey was quirky himself in that respect: While most American males had breast or leg fixations, he was a face man. Gloria had the kind of face that did things to him.
For her part, Gloria was equally surprised at the turns this meeting was taking. Discovering that she was being followed pissed her off. She’d intended initially to hassle Jarkey, verify her suspicion that Daddy had sent him, then humiliate him. But taking in his earnest, toothy face behind those glasses, his nonconfrontational attitude, and his thinly disguised fascination with her, she realized she’d hit the jackpot with this guy. If she wanted, she could have him on all fours, barking like a dog.
But she didn’t want that. In an inspired moment of improvisation she saw that some use might be made of him and that she ought to keep him around for a while, see what developed. So she gave him a conditional half-smile, as if deciding whether to come clean. She waited a beat, then let go.

“It’s the craziest thing. Right in the middle of the Newark riots there was some kind of accident, and my father’s people came into a load of heroin. From what I can figure, it was a delivery that went bad. The long and the short is that Daddy’s holding now. In his safe at the office. It’s worth a lot of money. A whole lot.”

Jarkey, who’d been listening carefully, nodded. Pushed the glasses back on his nose. He understood without her saying any more. “Port of Newark. Has to be Mob stuff. They must be looking for it.”

“Umm. Daddy knows. Or rather Julie Roth knows. His righthand guy. He actually runs the company. But that’s not the real problem.”

“Oh?”
“The problem is that I told Kevin. I had this brilliant idea that we could get it from Daddy, fence the stuff off, and set up a legal aid fund. Sort of what Irene and I are doing, but on a far bigger scale. I didn’t think about people coming after Daddy.”
“Well, they’ll be after him, all right. Right now they’re probably squeezing everyone in Newark. Someone’s bound to talk sooner or later.”
“Actually, that was when it started getting truly weird with Kevin. I mean, after I told him, he got real squirrelly. Wanted me to shut up about it. Pretended he was waiting for exactly the right time to tell the rest of the
foco
. But it didn’t take me long to see through that. He wanted it for himself. The big score.”
“And now the FBI knows your father has it.”
“God, I’m such a dope.”
Jarkey took a chance and reached across the seat and touched her arm. “You’re not a dope, Gloria. We can figure this out. There may be time. For one thing, Kelly’s probably briefing your father right now. When he hears Gallagher’s working for the Feds, he’ll dump the drugs fast.”
“But he’s got no idea Kevin knows about the drugs. I doubt he even suspects I know.”
“That’s something you need to fix.”
Gloria wore a suitably worried expression, but in her private assessment things were shaping up nicely. These two detectives would create a diversion, some kind of mess. Then the FBI would show up, get real busy with Daddy, and she’d be in California turning a deal with her Berkeley people before anyone was the wiser.
“Let’s go inside a minute. I’ve got to get my head together. Then we’ll go uptown and talk to Roth. Can you drive me?”
“Sure.”
Now she touched his arm. “You will keep quiet about this, won’t you?”
“Count on it.” He was thrilled.

No way hiring this gumshoe had been anything but a colossal mistake. Getting rid of Gallagher wasn’t going to fix anything with Gloria. In fact, putting a snoop on her was likely to make it worse. He’d meant to call Kelly off the day after their interview, but he’d gotten so distracted by the problem in his safe that it slipped his mind.

Julie was right, of course, about what to do with the stuff.The best thing for Mundi Enterprises, and the safest thing for himself, would be to give it back to the Newark boys. But Richard Mundi was having a hard time caring about Mundi Enterprises anymore, especially if it was going to turn into a Mob money-laundering operation. Even Murchison could see that. If he made any kind of a stink about anything, they’d kill him. So why not just steal the heroin himself ? If he fucked up, they’d kill him. But he was as good as dead anyway.

So after that frustrating meeting with Murchison and Kraft and, despite their disapproval, he’d authorized Roth to make inquiries of Mr. DiNoto. This bought him time to solidify a deal with an independent in Chicago who’d take the smack and all the risk it entailed, and pay him $50K. A joke, but still better than nothing.

And all this time Kelly had been out there snapping photos of Gloria like some fucking paparazzi after Jackie K. As he flipped through them, Mundi’s irritation shifted to deep antipathy.

“What’s this?”
“That’s Gallagher leaving the offices of the FBI on Chambers Street. He and your daughter have infiltrated a cell of activists on the Lower East Side. Gallagher’s just reported to his handlers.”
“You saying my daughter’s a rat?”
“No.”
“What, then?”
“Most likely she’s protecting Gallagher.Though she does have some involvement with Lloyd Chamberlain, a known drug dealer. I’ve seen her at his place. Maybe the Feds are holding that over her. Some kind of connection with this pusher Chamberlain.”
“A drug rap?”
“I said ‘maybe.’”
Mundi looked up at Kelly, bent over the desk beside him. Shiny gray shave, whiff of Skin Bracer and Ipana covering stale booze breath. A born fucking loser.Trying to tell him his daughter was a stoolie, strung out on drugs.This creep had his head up his ass.
“You know this other girl?”
Kelly nodded. “A member of the cell. She does their legal work.”
In fact, Mundi recognized her. She was Irene Kornecki, one of Gloria’s Columbia buddies. Smart as a whip. Gloria had brought her around once and she’d put the bite on him for a donation to some lefty legal aid fund.
Then, a photo of Gloria and Gallagher. “This one was taken just after Gallagher left the federal building. He’s probably briefing her on the meeting. That opens another possibility.”
Mundi looked at him, hard, as mere dislike escalated into loathing.Was it something chemical, psychological? Did Kelly’s face, physique, or odor trip some old bad memory in Richard Mundi? Humans could explain it any number of ways. To the old Turk’s load, from its exalted perspective over in Mundi’s safe, the matter boiled down to simple physics. Kelly was spinning and Mundi was standing still.Their collision released strange energy.Though it felt like hatred to Mundi.
Kelly caught the vibe. He read it as intense guilt on Mundi’s part. The man had to be hiding something. He decided to run the Agnes angle up the flagpole and see how Mundi reacted.
“The other possibility is that the Feds know about your wife. They could be holding it over Gloria’s head somehow.”
“My wife?”
“The manner of her death. The, umm, overdose? I’ve done some research. I’ve talked to Dennis Hurst.”
“Who?” But Kelly saw him stiffen slightly.
Mundi didn’t say anything more because, at that moment, he was incapable of speech. The room faded to a distant spec and the universe roared in his ears. He stared past Kelly with an intensity that propelled him beyond Gloria and Gallagher, to Gloria graduating from college, to the painful years the two of them spent together after Agnes’s death, to that death and his own guilt, to Agnes and himself in the brief moments of their happiness, to his wedding, to the first time he saw Agnes, and down, down time’s dark shaft. A man alone in an elevator whose cable had snapped.
Kelly looked at Mundi, pale and perspiring, and believed he’d somehow been the messenger of bad tidings regarding the late Agnes.The man probably thought her suicide, overdose, or murder —whichever nasty end she’d come to—had been successfully covered up. Now he was going to have to deal with the idea that the authorities were wise to him.
But Kelly didn’t know the half of it.
At that moment, as the elevator plunged on, Mundi was seriously contemplating shooting the messenger—not because his tidings were bad, but because the messenger was such a colossal idiot, and because his message had so rudely poked a tender spot in Mundi’s otherwise leathery psyche. He had a little .22 with a silencer in the second drawer, good only up to a few feet, but if he held it right against whatever this moron had for brains. . . . Then he took a calming breath and thought about Agnes in her best moments and how, as soon as he settled this business with the Mob, he’d do right by her and be the cause of Kelly’s slow and painful death.
Then he’d go after Gallagher. No, Seamster could handle that one. Or even better, they’d set it up so that Kelly would walk in on it, and they’d hang Gallagher’s murder on him.
Maybe Gloria would figure it out, maybe not. It hardly mattered. It was too late with her, anyway. It was too late with everything. Before he left he was going to take Gallagher out, and Kelly, too. This nitwit was going to help with his own execution, somehow. It’d just take a little planning.
“Okay, Kelly, here’s what you do. Drop the surveillance on Gloria and set something up for Gallagher. Something messy. And this time keep me informed. Every day. I want to know what’s going on. Understand?”
“Sure. It’ll take me a few days. But it shouldn’t be a problem. A brick of pot in his pad ought to do the trick. The cops’ll have him busted before the Feds get wise, and that’ll be the end of his cover. Meanwhile, do you need any help managing the situation with the FBI and your wife?”
Shoot the messenger. Absolutely.