I liked my days in this shop not only because it was less of a schlep back and forth from home. I liked it because I once again got to hang out with Klaus. Klaus, the store manager, had been with us since ‘79 and was sort of a cross between Calvin Klein and Johnny Rotten. He knew more about the fashion and the music scenes than most people whose business it was to know. Klaus came from out west somewhere, from a family who found the distance now between them a convenient tool for ignoring their son’s homosexuality.
Klaus liked Wednesdays as well. He missed working with me as much as I missed working with him. I was a far more receptive audience for his antics than my brother. Popular culture still really interested me, whereas Aaron’s interest had come to an end during the early years of LBJ’s presidency. “I love your brother,” Klaus had once confessed, “but he is more a fugue than a frug kind of guy.”
But it was another man, not Klaus, waiting for me on the front steps of the old brownstone. He was a pudgy little man in a cheap brown suit speckled with dandruff and old sweat stains. He had a pasty, humorless face and a fat vinyl briefcase in his paw. His one concession to convention was his unsuccessful attempt at camouflaging his civil service karma with a quarter bottle of Aramis.
“Mr. Prager?” he asked, reaching into his pocket.
“Yes.”
“Moses B. or Aaron F.?”
“Moses B. Who wants to know?”
He handed me a card. “Leon Weintraub,” he said, not offering me his hand. “I’m an investigator for the New York-”
“-State Liquor Authority. Yeah, that’s what the card says.”
Now he showed me his official ID. I finished opening up the shop and asked him in before getting to the subject of his visit. As I opened my mouth, Klaus came through the front door.
“Klaus,” I said, cutting off any possibility he might start in on our guest’s sartorial ineptitude, “this is Mr. Weintraub from the state liquor authority.”
Klaus turned on the charm. “Can I get you gentlemen some coffee? Some pastry?”
Weintraub did something with his mouth that was his excuse for a smile. “Black, two sugars. Seeded roll, extra butter.” A civil servant was never born who could turn down free anything.
Klaus was shrewd enough to not bother waiting for a please and thank-you. He’d lived in New York long enough to know better. “Usual for you, boss?”
I nodded, but as Klaus retreated he could not help pulling a face behind Weintraub’s back. He pinched his nose with the fingers and feigned gagging. I almost bit through my tongue trying to keep my composure.
“Come on into the office, Mr. Weintraub. What can we do for you?” I asked as I showed him downstairs.
“Just a routine spot check.”
Routine spot check my ass! I’d been around the block enough to know better. Go ask Pete Parson if you don’t believe me. The liquor authority was one of the most politicized institutions in the Empire State. In a state where “Patronage, Nepotism, and Influence” is the unofficial state motto, that’s really saying something.
“Fine,” I said. “Have a look around. Let me know how I can help you. Here’s the office. Klaus will be down with your breakfast in a minute. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to finish opening up.”
Klaus quickly tracked me down once he’d delivered the complimentary continental breakfast to our uninvited guest.
“So what’s that grubby little man doing here?”
“A spot check?” I sipped my coffee.
“A spot check indeed. He needs to do one on that hideous suit of his. Oh … my … God! I thought that color brown was outlawed by the Geneva Convention. I know several homeless men who wouldn’t be caught dead in-”
“All right, I get the point.”
“But what’s he really doing here?”
“Sending a message, Klaus, sending a message.”
It didn’t take long for the other shoe to drop. About an hour after Weintraub waddled out the front door, the phone rang. I didn’t race to pick it up, but I knew it would be for me.
“Boss, pick up!” Klaus called on the intercom.
I pressed the flashing button and put the receiver to my ear. “Prager, Moses B.,” I spoke into the mouthpiece. “Message received loud and clear.”
There was an almost imperceptible laugh on the other end of the line. “I’d like you to meet me at Spivack and Associates, Suite 1404, Forty Court Street. Are you familiar with the building, Mr. Prager?”
“I am.”
“In an hour?” It might have been phrased like a question, but it wasn’t.
I didn’t bother putting the phone back in its cradle. It was my turn to start making calls.
“Intelligence Division, Detective Steptoe,” a woman answered.
“Sorry,” I said, going over the number I’d dialed in my head, “I thought this was Detective McDonald’s line.”
“Who?”
“Larry McDonald, Detective Larry-”
“You mean Captain McDonald?”
“If you say so.”
“Let me transfer you.”
With the passing years my contacts in the NYPD had withered. Some of the guys had, like me and Pete, gotten hurt on the job and been put out to pasture. Many made their twenty years, trading in their badges for golf bags. To the kids coming up as I was headed out the door, I was a relic, a fossil who didn’t understand the job or the day-to-day bullshit they had to put up with. I remembered feeling the same way about the guys who’d come up before me. Whenever they started a sentence with “In my day …” I, too, would roll my eyes. But I could always depend on Larry McDonald. We’d worked together for years in Coney Island, and he owed me, big-time.
“Captain McDonald. Should I just genuflect or do I have to kiss the ring, too?”
“You gimpy Jew bastard, you couldn’t genuflect if your life depended on it. Shit, I haven’t heard a peep from you in years. I thought you were dead.”
“Wishful thinking.”
“Wha’d'ya need, brother?”
“State Senator Steven Brightman.”
There was a long silence on the other end of the line.
“I’m the one who’s supposed to be dead, Larry, remember? Hello …”
“This a fishing expedition, Moe? ‘Cause if it is, I can’t have any part in this. A politician and the missing daughter of an ex-cop; it’s not a winning combination for anyone.”
“Calm down. Calm down. I’m not out to fuck the guy. Fact is, I might be working for Brightman. Someone’s got his ear that thinks I might have some luck finding the girl.”
“Come on, man. You know what happened to her. You were a fucking cop before that piece a carbon paper fucked up your knee. She’s a pile of bones somewheres out in Bethpage State Park or in the Gowanus Canal.”
“Probably you’re right, but I don’t think I’m gonna have much of a choice about working the case. I need everything on both Brightman and the girl, Moira Heaton.”
Again, there was an uncomfortable silence. The last time Larry helped me out he hadn’t yet made rank and the information had come from departments outside the city. Now the landscape had changed. This was Larry Mac’s own little fiefdom. Traditionally, each bureau or division within the NYPD jealously defends its turf. It was hard enough getting these various entities to share information with each other, let alone a guy like me.
“Christ, Moe, I don’t know,” he hemmed and hawed like a man asked to pick his own pocket. “It’s not like back in the day. They keep closer track of things than they used to.”
“Yeah, yeah, Big Brother and all that, but 1984's still six months away. Why don’t you just see what you can do and I’ll check back with you, okay?” I knew not to argue with him.
“All right, let me see. Gimme a day or two.”
“Thanks, Larry.”
“Don’t thank me yet and don’t send me good champagne either. My wife just makes mimosas with it.”
When we were done, I thought about making a second call, a much harder call to make. I put the phone down instead. There’s an old baseball adage about some of the best trades being the ones you don’t make. I didn’t fool myself that it applied here. The call was going to get made, just not yet.