Trouble Is What I Do Page 7

  Catfish Worry’s story and his immediate impact on me and mine had brought light to a lifelong blind eye turned toward my own grief. That sharecropper, that poor black man from Mississippi who dared to stand up to the oldest oppressors this nation had to offer, Catfish had given me drink and song and trust. These were sacred gifts and, in a way, I was born again.

  “We better get to bed,” I said. “Tomorrow’s gonna be a long day.”

  I was sitting in the little front room waiting for the sun to rise when my cell phone rang. The caller was listed as UNKNOWN.

  “Hello?” I said to the sneak who had gotten around all my protections.

  “Somebody has put a hit out on you,” a man’s voice said. Then the call was disconnected.

  That might have been the biggest surprise I had in the entire Catfish case. Captain Kittridge actually called and warned me. I didn’t know if that was good luck or bad.

  The wedding was to be an intimate affair at the Abbey of Christ’s Redemption on a private estate in the Bronx. The property was so removed from the mainstream that not one out of a thousand New Yorkers would have known where to find it or, for that matter, that it even existed. I, as Lonnie Rudolf, had been selected to stand security outside the church, but that was cutting it too close for me to get the letter into Justine’s hands before the ceremony. Even if I was technically successful, she might not have read it before saying I do.

  Luckily the bride-to-be had decided to have a dinner for thirty-one of her closest girlfriends a few nights before the ritual. The restaurant was called Fancy Dan’s, an establishment that specialized in haute cuisine and occupied the top floor of the China Citizens’ Bank building near Park and Sixty-Fifth Street. The only problem was that Lonnie wasn’t slated to work that event.

  At 3:16 p.m. I was going through the office door of Alberghetti Security Services; they never used the acronym. The receptionist was a petite and lovely Asian woman in her early twenties. She sported turquoise tips and bright orange hair—heavily drenched in product. Her nameplate read LINDA.

  Linda was chewing gum, studying her computer screen from under lashes not quite a foot long. I stood in front of her desk, waiting as she tapped long scarlet nails on the keys.

  To my right, a sallow-skinned youth in a camel-colored suit sat on a sofa of similar hue. The camouflage made him at least partly blend with the upholstery. This young man was, of course, security for the security office. They didn’t want to hide behind a locked door because that would make them seem weak. But they still needed to be safe. Therefore a living, breathing sentry had been provided.

  I cleared my throat.

  “Yeah?” said little Linda. She was none too pleased at being nudged.

  “I’d like to speak to Antonio,” I said as pleasantly as nature allowed.

  If I haven’t made it obvious before, I’m a brutal-looking man. Most women under the age of forty usually find me somewhere between off-putting and downright scary. It was the former with the fashion-plate secretary.

  “You have an appointment?” she questioned. “Because if you don’t, there’s nothing I can do for you. We’re very, very busy today.”

  “The Sternman thing, I know.”

  Linda stiffened while the camel camouflage sentry sat up a little straighter.

  “Antonio is not seeing anybody,” the young woman managed to say.

  “Tell him it’s Leonid McGill.”

  “You heard her, right?” Security inquired.

  The young white man was still seated, but when I turned my head to regard him, he rose to the challenge. I didn’t mind. After more than a week in the gym, I felt my testosterone levels running high.

  “Mr. Alberghetti, we have trouble out here,” Linda was saying.

  At the same time, the slender youth in the bulky brown suit took a step in my direction. My age and height lulled him. The welcoming smile that crossed my lips came without a hint of what was about to happen.

  “What’s going on?” a pleasant tenor inquired.

  That was Antonio. He didn’t look like an Antonio. For that matter, he didn’t much resemble my notion of somebody with the name Alberghetti. A man with a moniker like that should design men’s suits or run an upscale Italian restaurant. He should have been tall and elegant, with silver-fox hair and manicured nails.

  But this Antonio was five foot eight, with a bald head, bulging gut, and bowling balls for shoulders under a herringbone sports jacket.

  Camel-flage took another step toward me.

  “Hold it right there, Junior,” Antonio said. “This man you’re walking up on is Leonid McGill. He’ll break half the bones in your body for business and the other half for fun.”

  Junior bridled a bit.

  I dismissed him with a glance.

  “Antonio,” I said.

  “Come on in before I have to find a new babysitter for Linda,” the boss man replied.

  Antonio had one of those rare midtown offices that came with an outside deck. It was open-air and furnished with padded chairs, a small table, and a liquor cabinet.

  “Whiskey?” my host offered after I was seated.

  “Not right now.” I wanted a drink. I wanted many drinks. But I had a job to do, and that task would brook no inebriety.

  “What can I do for you, Leonid?”

  “You can call me Lonnie to begin with.”

  “Lonnie?”

  The name meant something to him, but he couldn’t quite place it at first. Then the muscular security expert’s eyes hardened like any creature coming upon a natural enemy in the wild.

  I tried to look apologetic, but that didn’t work.

  “What the fuck are you trying to pull here?” he said.

  “A simple delivery job,” I replied. “I need Lonnie to work security for the party the bride-to-be is giving at Fancy Dan’s. The entire process will be nonviolent, noninvasive, and in the end Justine Sternman would probably thank you. That is, if she ever knew you had anything to do with it.”

  “No,” he said. “I will not compromise my principles, my livelihood, over some back-alley shit you’re puttin’ down.”

  I let the words and anger settle a bit. Then I nodded, trying to placate him. After all, he was bigger and stronger, and on top of that, he was well trained in the misnamed arts of self-defense.

  “Whatever you say, Antonio. It’s just that I hate to tell my client that I couldn’t perform this simple, peaceful task because you slammed the door in his face.”

  “I don’t give a fuck about you or whoever it was hired you,” Alberghetti preached. “This is a goddamn honest business and I will not, will not be bullied, pushed, or intimidated.”

  When he quit the mob, Antonio went to college, “to learn how to talk bettah,” he’d say to anyone who would listen.

  He had succeeded—except when he lost his temper.

  “You got some bourbon in the bar?” I asked.

  “Fuck you and ya mothah.”

  “That an off brand?”

  Antonio had a good sense of humor. He gave a two-syllable chortle, then went to the stand-up bar. Why not? He had the upper hand and the moral high ground too. He poured a ten-year-old, hundred-proof shot and a half of Barrell whiskey. It wasn’t like the stuff Catfish paid me with, but I liked the taste. And I needed to cut the edge.

  Antonio watched while I downed the whiskey.

  “Anything else, Leonid?”

  I took a deep breath and then stood looking out at the tall buildings that obscured the view of the East River.

  “I guess not,” I said. “Thanks for the drink. Gives me the strength for the next call.”

  “Okay,” he said. “All right. I know you wanna tell me, so just spit it out. Who hired you?”

  “Out-of-town gentleman name of Eckles.”

  Alberghetti gave me that natural-enemy look again, only this time it seemed more like he wanted to run than fight.

  He looked around at the various corners of the patio; maybe Ernie had sn
uck in under my jacket.

  “What’s a Mississippi sodbuster got to do with a Daughter of the Mayflower?”

  “That’s his business, like this here is yours.”

  I did not enjoy threatening the self-made security man. He was a solid citizen who had done better than I at rehabilitating a life of crime.

  Slowly, he lowered onto a chair, looking at me as if I was the bad news he’d been waiting for his entire life. Behind his eyes, Antonio was trying to find the exit, the magic words to end the spell.

  “So what is it you want?” he asked, the final capitulation.

  I explained my need for Lonnie to be on guard near the diners.

  “And what is it you plan to do?” he asked.

  “I’ll have a very official and sealed envelope with me. Inside will be a letter that the client wants young Miss Sternman to read. It’s personal information with no threat of violence whatsoever. I’ll pretend that someone hand delivered it down on the first floor.”

  “That’s all?”

  “That’s it.”

  “What’s the letter say?”

  “Like I said, just some personal information. What she does with it is completely up to her.”

  “So there won’t be any dead bodies found in the kitchen of Fancy Dan’s?”

  That was just Antonio trying to justify breaking an oath of protection. But it reminded me that, for all the bad men and bad intentions Catfish had stirred up, no one had actually died.

  “If anybody gets killed,” I said truthfully, “it will most probably be me.”

  “In that case,” Alberghetti said on an up note, “go on. Knock yourself out.”

  I went to my office and changed into a black suit, white shirt, and blue tie. Before leaving, I placed two sheets of paper into a blood-colored leather briefcase. Then I took a taxi to the New Amsterdam Housing Project on West Twenty-Second. The man I’d come see lived on the eighteenth floor of the low-income apartment building. The monolith’s elevators had been closed for repairs for at least seventeen months, so I had to rely on my feet.

  There were two zigzag sections of eleven and then twelve stairs for each floor. The graffiti was entertaining, and there was hardly any smell at all.

  “Hey, mistah,” a young woman hailed when I was rounding the tenth floor. She was black-skinned with bright blond hair, half in braids. In her early twenties and built for trouble, she was swathed in a skintight maroon dress that wanted to find a party somewhere, anywhere.

  She was the personification of an unwritten pop song, “Dead Man’s Curves.” But I appreciated the chance to stop and catch my breath. I had a penchant for trouble too.

  “Hey, li’l sister,” I said on a deep exhalation. “What can I do for you?”

  “You got a cigarette?”

  “If I did, I wouldn’t be tryin’ these damn stairs.”

  Her teeth were perfect, especially the left-side upper front; it was made from gold.

  “That’s a nice suit,” she said. “You goin’ to a party?”

  “No. But if I was, I’d have a girl just like you on my arm,” I said, thinking about the hormones my morning workouts churned up. “What’s your name?”

  “Esty.”

  “Never heard that name before.” My breath was coming a little easier, but it was just as deep.

  “Mama named me Ecstasy for its religious meanin’. But you men get so excited that I say Esty. And when they aks what it means, I tell ’em it got somethin’ to do with Easter.”

  “You tellin’ me what it means,” I pointed out.

  She shrugged and asked, “So where you goin’?”

  “Up to see a man about a letter he got for me.”

  “Oh. Mr. Indigo.”

  “How could you tell that?”

  “He a printah. Mama said he used to be a counterfeiter. They put him in jail, and aftah he got out, he just do invitations and like that.” Esty had eyes that would follow you down into your dreams.

  “Well,” I said, “I better get back to it.”

  “What’s your name?” she asked.

  I told her and then continued my climb. She had nothing to do with Catfish’s case, but I think of Esty from time to time. I remember her words and understand why young men put their lives on the line in everything from gangbanging to mountain climbing, from riding the roofs of subway cars to marching off to war.

  “Come on in, Mr. McGill,” Jacob Indigo said.

  I didn’t have time to ring. He was waiting just behind the door because we were both men who stuck to their schedules.

  The entrance led into a large living room. It was hideously bright in there, but that had nothing to do with the sun. Indigo’s windows were covered with thick black plastic sheeting affixed with electrical tape. The light came from six incandescent lamps designed to illuminate construction sites. The powerful twenty-four-hundred-watt lanterns stood on bright orange metal stalks like some kind of futuristic, robotic sunflowers.

  All that wattage made the room stiflingly hot.

  Along the wall of blacked-out windows stood a table at least eighteen feet long. It was high enough to work on while standing and was crowded with etching, printing, editing, and viewing devices.

  “How you doin’, Jake?”

  Indigo was a smallish man with small palms that sported long fingers. His posture was slightly hunched over. He had tree-bark-brown skin with a lot of brick red folded in, and his gray-brown hair most resembled a heap of rags.

  “Been thinking about getting a videocassette player,” he said thoughtfully.

  “VCR? Don’t you know that they’ve graduated from DVD to thumbnail technology?”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. But I just bought twelve hundred twenty-nine videocassettes off’a Craigslist from a cat in Milwaukee. I want to start experimenting with false audiovisual images.”

  “Why don’t you move to a nicer building first? I know you got the money.”

  Mr. Indigo stood up straight to answer that question.

  “This was my mother’s home,” he said, his eyes entering a bad dream. “She cooked and cleaned, slept and had Bible meetings, right here in these rooms. While I was up at Attica, she died on this very floor. Asthma attack. Didn’t find her for six days. If I wasn’t such a fool, I might’a been here to save her life.…”

  Signs of remorse are one of the intangibles they consider in the so-called justice system. It was no surprise that Jacob had been paroled sixteen months after his mother’s death.

  “You got what I need?” I asked, in part to distract him from the pain my previous question caused.

  “The royal crest of Monaco was no problem. There was one on exhibit at a show at the Met last year. Calling Cards of the Mighty—Crests, Seals, Devices, and Invitations.”

  He went over to the heroic table, donned a pair of latex gloves, and lifted a nine-by-twelve black envelope that was gilded around the edges. There was a pale-sapphire-colored label affixed to the face of the envelope. This was written upon in flourished script that read Justine Penelope Sternman. In the lower left corner of the back side, PPN was embossed in pink.

  “You have the letter?” Indigo asked.

  From my briefcase, I brought out the two sheets. One was the handwritten letter on the back of the ancient journal leaf. On top of that was an epistle I had penned.

  Sad little Mr. Indigo inserted the pages. They fit perfectly into the counterfeit royal sleeve. Then he situated himself at the one clear spot on the table and went through the ritual of melting part of a wax stick on the fold at the back. After making enough of a hot-wax puddle, he applied a square black seal to make its false impression.

  While going through this age-old process, he lectured:

  “The envelope, handwriting, and dimensions were all pretty simple. It’s this wax that was the hardest thing to approximate. It had to be the right mix of red and lead white with just a hint of turpeth brown to make it creamy like raspberries.”

  He blew on the hot
wax, appreciated his creation for a moment, then handed it to me.

  I pretended to examine the workmanship, but I had no idea what it should look like. That’s why I hired an expert.

  “How much?” I asked while turning the royal missive from one side to the other.

  “Twenty-three hundred sixty-two dollars rounded up from sixty-one thirty-five.” Jake had that in common with Ernie Eckles—he knew to the penny what his work was worth.

  The entrance to Fancy Dan’s was at the north side of the China Citizens’ Bank building. For once I eschewed the straightforward approach and went to the delivery entrance on the opposite side. There was a large truck parked in the loading dock and six or seven men unloading unwieldy office furniture from its trailer.

  I walked right up to the guy who was overseeing rather than undertaking the heavy lifting.

  “You in charge?” I asked the smallish supervisor. He was in his forties and dark-skinned, most likely from somewhere on the subcontinent of India.

  “Who are you?” he asked with no accent or sympathy.

  “McGill,” I said, my PI ID in hand. While he studied the card, I kept talking. “They got that Sternman event at Dan’s tonight. My boss wanted me to go over any possible entrance other than the front door.”

  “Building supervisor already gave them the tour,” the man said, shoving the identity card back at me.

  “They asked me to double-check,” I said patiently. “You know how it is.”

  You know how it is is a phrase that calls for its own interpretation. The little-big boss knew that giving me trouble would cause turmoil among the petty fiefdoms of the skyscraper. Private security would complain to Fancy Dan. Fancy Dan would call whatever party planner worked for the Sternmans, and then the supervisor would come back down and take away any overtime scheduled for the next month.