Deutsch, pale and rigid, watched the double row of poplars streak by for the last time. No more Jersey roads, he thought. No more “Pretty Boy” Prescott. No more playing the cowed chauffeur to a loudmouthed mobster. He smiled tightly.
Prescott’s Cadillac, hearse-quiet at 60 miles an hour, flashed south on the Palisades Parkway. Deutsch took pride in his driving. He was quick, alert, canny, a perfectionist behind the wheel. In seven years of driving for Frank Prescott he had never so much as scratched a fender.
The day was sunny, crisp, and bright with promise. Two miles south of the Alpine exit, with the road clear in both directions, Deutsch made the decisive move of his life, the culminating act of his 53 years. Bracing himself under the shoulder safety belt, he slammed his foot down hard on the brake pedal. The tires screamed.
Prescott, unbelted as always, rose from his seat like an Apollo at liftoff. His head ricocheted off the ceiling, smashed into the plastic partition that separated him from Deutsch, and the boss of northern New Jersey, unconscious, sagged to the floor like a strand of boiled spaghetti.
Deutsch, nervously humming an old tune, resumed his normal driving. At the Englewood Cliffs exit he left the Parkway and headed south on Hudson Terrace. He passed a dozen large apartment buildings before turning in at the entrance to the Quebec. He drove to the back of the building, where an 800-car parking lot, whose spaces were unnumbered and unreserved, stood half empty at this hour on a Tuesday morning.
Pulling in beside a new dusty dark-green Plymouth, Deutsch opened the rear door of the Cadillac, removed Prescott’s suitcase, smiled again at the motionless form, nodded quietly and triumphantly, and closed the door on his past life.
Unlocking a new door, he slid behind the wheel of the Plymouth.
Ray Deutsch’s drive to a tiny A-frame house at the northern edge of the Catskills took less than two hours. He owned the A-frame. He had bought it, along with the ten wooded acres surrounding it, six months before in the name of Alfred A. Stocker. The green Plymouth also belonged to Alfred A. Stocker. So did Deutsch’s new driver’s license, a small checking account balance at the Hancock National Bank, and an oil-company credit card.
The A-frame offered ideal seclusion. The nearest town, Roscoe, was eight miles away and had about 900 people. The nearest house, half a mile away, was occupied by a retired couple in their seventies.
Deutsch carried the suitcase into the living room and set it down before the brick fireplace. He ran his hand through his thinning gray hair, reached tentatively toward the lock on the suitcase, then turned away. Too much of his future rested on the contents of that bag for him to be hasty. He could take a whole year, if he wanted to, before looking into the suitcase, a whole year to sit by the fire and read the hundreds of paperbacks that lined the walls of the living room.
Why hurry? Besides, there were things to get rid of. The chauffeur’s uniform had to go. All those identifying cards and papers, all the bureaucratic biography of Ray Deutsch had to go. All 53 years of Ray Deutsch had to disappear up the chimney, dissolve into the blue September sky.
He moved the suitcase to the one chair in the room, a lush leather easy chair that a chrome Kovaks reading lamp pointed down on. A year of one’s life deserved such a luxurious throne, Deutsch had decided when he was furnishing the house. The chair and lamp were the only extravagant items he had bought in years.
Except for the driver’s license in Deutsch’s name, he had packed his identifying possessions two weeks earlier in the trunk compartment of the Plymouth. In the days prior to that a number of unmistakable signs had told him that a Prescott payoff was in the offing.
After starting a fire in the fireplace, Deutsch removed the cards and papers of his lifetime from the Plymouth and piled them in a neat stack on the floor. He then crossed to the kitchen, stepped outside, and removed a bottle of Moet from under the wooden step. Its temperature seemed correct.
Back in the living room, as he was about to pop the cork, a thought crossed his mind. He paused, his foot on the stone hearth. Had the hour arrived? Should he really destroy Ray Deutsch, destroy him totally, before he learned how much Alfred A. Stocker was worth? (The genuine Alfred A. Stocker had died at the age of two and was buried in Newburgh, New York — an element that he had picked up from Frederick Forsyth’s The Day of the Jackal.)
Deutsch considered the matter. He decided that his timing made little difference. Ray Deutsch was dead anyway — the sooner he was completely eliminated the better.
Memories of a radio commercial passed through his head. The commercial advertised a movie designed to leech on the success of “The Godfather.” It said something about not stealing the syndicate’s money — “stealing the mob’s money isn’t robbery, it’s suicide.” Deutsch shuddered. He knew it could be suicide. He had taken that into account. He had taken everything into account.
He released the cork. The bubbling champagne flowed from the bottle in a golden fountain. He stood facing, the fireplace, the remnants of his old life at his feet. The only thing he regretted losing was the last photograph of his wife, taken a year before she had died. But the image of Flora Alvarez Deutsch had to go too. Stocker intended to be a bachelor.
Picking up the pile of computer-pulp and paper nostalgia, he flung it into the blazing fire, blowing a final kiss to his wife’s picture. Then he clinked his glass gently against the blue-stone mantelpiece. “Ray Deutsch is dead. Long live Al Stocker.” He said the words aloud, in a low hollow voice. They sounded more like a benediction than an invocation, but the somber tone was wrong. Deutsch was giddy with anticipation.
Alfred A. Stocker knew he was rich. He had no idea of the exact amount of money, but he did know that Frank Prescott’s personal payoffs were big. Lieutenants and sergeants handled the small change. When Prescott took a trip with his small brown suitcase the balance of payments in the underworld was notably affected.
The Moet was brut and glorious. Deutsch — no, Stocker — poured himself another. This time he toasted the unopened suitcase. “To Pretty Boy Prescott. May he take his loss like a man.”
Alfred A. Stocker giggled. He seldom giggled, but at this moment he had reason to be cheerful. Prescott could hardly report the incident to the police. The money that he handled he handled in secrecy. Income-tax evasion was a concept well known to him. More than that, more them the origin of the money, the intended purpose of the money should stop any publicity. It was payoff money, bribe money. It was almost certainly headed for a big-time official. “Why were you carrying X-thousands of dollars in your car, Mr. Prescott?... Well, er, you see...” No, it was not going to be reported to the police.
But it was going to be reported to somebody. There would be clever men, resourceful and dangerous men, looking for Ray Deutsch. And they would look hard, if the suitcase contained what it must contain. There would probably be Lou “Sonny” Visconti, an ex-longshoreman who was now a small-arms expert and Prescott’s bodyguard. There might be Arnold “Hatchet Man” Fein, a recent favorite, whose methods were messy but effective. Others came to mind. Lars “The Lip” Swenson. Mike “Teddy O” O’Brien. Others.
Alfred A. Stocker. Yes, it was Alfred A. Stocker, no one else, who poured a third glass from the bottle. He toasted Visconti. “Good luck, you stupid — no, make it bad luck.” And he sat down at the side of the hearth to preview his future.
One year in the A-frame house. He was safe — he was sure of it. They could never find him here. He was untraceable. He had laid his plans with utter precision, had confided in no one. He was a perfectionist, and he had overlooked nothing.
The suitcase was an unimpressive piece of luggage, the kind a college student might take on an overnight trip to his parent’s home. But Ray Deutsch — no, not Ray Deutsch, Alfred A. Stocker — had wagered his life on it. And he had done it with style, not like Deutsch at all who for 53 years had never gambled. One big gamble now — the only one he would ever make.