I picked up another piece of paper from the file. It was just a copy of a subpoena, but I wanted to have something to look at so the question would seem offhand. “Where’d you get the cash?”
“You know, just lying around.” He-he-he.
I dropped the subpoena and looked up and put on my most annoyed look. I kind of squinted and twisted my lips and pretended I had just eaten a lemon. Then I waited a bit for his chuckling to die down, which, surprisingly, it did. “Maybe you are confused,” I said. “Maybe you are color blind. The guy in the blue suit, black shoes, red tie, that’s the prosecutor. He wants to put your butt in jail for a decade. My suit is blue and my shoes are black, sure, but look at my tie. It’s green.”
“Where’d you get that tie anyway, Woolworth’s?”
“Why not?”
“You know, Vic, your whole sense of style is in the toilet. Who shines your suits, anyway? And then you got them shoes. You should let me set you up with something new. I know a guy what got some flash suits might change your whole look. You might even get laid, do you some good. They’s a little warm is all, but you being a lawyer, what do you care, right?”
“Something wrong with my shoes?”
His sneer lengthened.
“What I’m trying to say is that I’m not the prosecutor here, I’m your lawyer. I’m here to help you. Everything we say in this room is confidential, you know that, it’s privileged, and no subpoena on earth can drag it out of me. But I can’t defend you properly unless I know the truth.”
“I’m not sure what you want I should tell you here, Vic. I thought you lawyers didn’t want to know the truth, that it limited what you could do, stopped you from bobbing here and weaving there, turned you from a Muhammad Ali, who was always dancing and sliding, to a Chuckie Wepner, from up there in Bayonne, getting hit like a speed bag, bam-bam-bam, and whose face was a bloody slice of sausage after round two. I thought the gig was that you would get the truth from me once you, like, knew what the best truth it was to tell.”
He was right, of course, which made everything a little more difficult. Cressi was an idiot, actually, except in the three things in which he had the most experience, screwing, shooting, and the criminal justice system. “It’s different,” I told him, “when there’s an undercover cop with tapes. When there’s an undercover cop with tapes I need to know everything or we’re liable to get blasted at trial. So I’m asking you again, and I want you to tell me. Where did you get the money?”
Cressi looked at me for a while, head tilted like a dog that was trying to figure out exactly what he was looking at. Then he shrugged. “I boosted six Mercedes off a lot. Just came in with a carrier I borrowed from a buddy what knew nothing about it, waived around some paperwork, and just took them. Drove them right to Delaware. Some Arab sheik and his sons right now they’re probably riding around in circles in the desert, smiling like retards.”
“You touch base with Raffaello on that deal?”
“You working for him or you working for me?”
“I’m working for you,” I said quickly, “but if you’re crossing him I have to know. I’m not going to create a defense for you that gets you out of trouble with the law but gets you dead when you hit the street. I’m trying to watch your back and your front, but you’ve got to level with me.”
Cressi turned his head and started bobbing, but there was no chuckle now. “We gave Raffaello his fifteen percent, sure, soon as the deal was done. It went through Dante, his new number two.”
“I thought Calvi was number two?”
“No, no more. There was a shake-up. Calvi’s in Florida. For good. Things change. Now it’s Dante.”
“Dante? I didn’t even know he was made.”
“Sure he was, under Little Nicky,” said Cressi, referring to the boss before the boss before Enrico Raffaello.
“Dante,” I repeated, shaking my head. Dante was the loan shark who bailed out Cressi yesterday morning. I had thought him strictly small time, just another street hood paying into the mob because he couldn’t count on the police to protect his illegal sharking operation, nothing more. He had moved up fast, Dante. Well, moving and lasting were two different things. I had liked Calvi, an irascible old buzzard with a sense of humor, a vicious smile, and a taste for thick, foul cigars that smelled of burning tires and rancid rum. I had liked Calvi, but he apparently hadn’t lasted and I didn’t expect Dante to last either.
“What about the guns?” I asked. “Did you touch base there too?”
“Nah, it was just kind of a hustle for a while. I didn’t think the guy could deliver, so I was going to play it out and see. I had a buyer, but I wasn’t sure of the seller.”
“Who was the buyer?”
“This group of wackos up in Allentown. Aryan bullshit, shaved heads and ratty trailers and target practice getting ready for the holy race war.”
“Who set it up?”
“I did.”
“Who else?”
“It was my gig, like, completely. Met this broad who took me to one of the meetings. Tits like cantaloupes, you know ripe ones like you get on Ninth Street. She talked about a retreat and I thought it was going to be hot. I thought an orgy or something. Turned out to be this militia-Nazi-bullshit-crap. I drilled her anyway. Then this tall, weird-looking geek started talking about guns and we set it up.”
“Just you? You were solo on this?”
“That’s what I said.”
He looked away and bobbed and his Adam’s apple bobbed too.
“All right,” I said. “That’s all for now. We have your preliminary hearing next week. We’re scheduled for ten, you get here nine-thirty and we’ll walk over together.”
“You don’t want to prepare me or nothing?”
“You’re going to sit next to me and not say a word and when I am done you’re going to leave with me. You think we need more preparation?”
“I think I can handle that.”
“I think maybe you can too. Tell me one thing more, Pete. You know Jimmy Vigs Dubinsky?”
“The bookie, sure. I done some favors for him.”
“You ever known him to whack someone who stiffs him?”
“Who, Jimmy? Nah, he’s a sweetheart. He cuts them off is all. Besides, you know, you can’t clip nobody without the boss’s approval. That’s like bottom line.”
“And he doesn’t approve much.”
“Are you kidding, you got to go to New York nowadays to get any kind of good experience. Up there it still rocks.”
“Thanks, that’s what I figured,” I said as I walked him out of my office into the hallway. Beth just happened to be at Ellie’s desk, talking about something oh-so-important as Peter walked by. They were both polite enough to hold their giggles until he was out of earshot.
“You too, huh, Beth?” I said, looking through a stack of mail on Ellie’s desk. “Well forget it, ladies. He likes women with cantaloupe breasts and empty minds.”
“Don’t you all?” said Beth.
“Come to think of it,” I said. “I’m going to step out for a cup of coffee. I’ll be right back. Anyone want anything?”
“Diet Coke,” said Beth. I nodded.
Down the hallway, past the accountant’s office and the architect’s office and the design firm that shared our office space, out the door, down the stairs, out to Twenty-first Street. I walked a few blocks to the Wawa convenience store and bought a cup of coffee in blue cardboard and a Diet Coke, which I stuck in my pocket. Out on the street, with my coffee in my hand, I looked both ways. Nothing. I walked a few more blocks and turned around. Nothing. Then I found a phone booth and put the coffee on the aluminum shelf. I dropped in a quarter and dialed and waited for the ringing to end.
“Tosca’s,” said a voice.
“Let me talk to table nine,” I said.
“One’a moment. I see if it available.”
About a minute later I heard a familiar voice, older and softer, peppered with an Old World accent. “Table nine,” it said.