“Stu.”
“You tryin’ to catch a cab? A cab, you’re never gonna catch in this fuckin’ weather, okay? C’mon. We’re goin’ uptown. We’ll give ya a lift.”
Stu headed for the Town Car but I hesitated.
Stu looked back. “C’mon! Get in, before your balls freeze off out here!”
I followed him into the car.
Behind the wheel was another slab of beef who looked at me in the rearview mirror. If it wasn’t a hostile look then I would not particularly care to see a hostile look from this hombre. Stu leaned forward and said, “Jimmy. On the way uptown we want to stop at 200 Park.” Stu looked at me. “That’s where this fancy bank of yours is, right?”
I did not even want to know how Stu came by this information. “Yeah.”
“Okay.” Stu sat back. Adjusted his overcoat. “How’s Katy? She doin’ any better?”
“Thanks for asking. I’m afraid not.”
Stu folded his arms over his chest and looked at me ternly. “She wants that you should be around more often. This she says to my wife.”
“We’ve been real busy at work lately.”
“This she also says to Carmen. So. Tell me about this problem of yours.”
“You mean Hiram?”
Stu dropped his hands in his lap. “Who?”
“My brother-in-law.”
“Naw.” Stu slapped at the air with a paw that was covered in black leather. “Get to him in a minute. I’m talkin’ about this crazy woman at the bank. Your boss.”
I looked out the window. We were crawling up Park Avenue. If I had just trusted my instincts and walked I would have been there by now. And my throat was starting to feel scratchy. Need to stop off at the newsstand, get some lozenges before I go upstairs. I cleared my throat and looked at Stu. “She’s just a little high strung, is all.”
“High strung, huh? Show me a woman that’s not. They’re all outta their fuckin’ gourds, you ask me. And it’s made worse by this thing. This women’s liberation, so-called. Now they want to be lawyers and doctors and priests and shit. They even got their own professional basketball league. It’s bullshit, you ask me. I can promise you this, we ain’t never gonna have no women partners in my line of work.”
“What exactly is your line of work, Stu?”
“Oh, this and that, this and that. Which brings me to this other thing. Tell me about this brother-in-law of yours.”
I shrugged. “We’re not exactly what you’d call close.”
“My wife says your wife says he’s a good Joe.”
“I suppose. For an ex-con.”
“So the guy has done some time. Doesn’t mean he’s a bad person. Personally, I liked him. He and Katy, they came over for coffee yesterday.”
“I heard.”
“He’s from some place I never heard of before and he talks funny. Aside from that, nothin’ wrong with him that I can see. My wife comes to me, she says, ‘Stu. Maybe you can help him out.’ And I say, ‘Sure. Why not?’ My wife likes your wife, you know?”
“Glad to hear it.”
“We’re neighbors. At least we are until they’re done with the construction at our house in Great Neck, see. Then we’ll be movin’ out.”
“We’ll miss you,” I said, as convincingly as I could.
“Yeah. Same here. Been nice gettin’ to know you some, these last coupla months.”
I looked out the window and thought, Stu, you don’t know me at all and I intend to make sure it stays that way. But I said nothing.
“So, anyway, neighbors should help one another out. Do favors. Like that. So I say to myself, ‘Stu. You should help the man out, this Hiram from Nowhere with the funny manner of speech. Find him some gainful employment.’”
I looked back at him. “I’m sure Katy will be very grateful.”
“Probably just minimum wage starting out. But maybe some, you know, possibility for advancement along the way.”
I went back to studying the snowscape. We’d only gone as far as the lower 30s. Traffic had slowed to a crawl. I toyed with making some comment about Hiram being the first made guy ever from Arkansas but decided against it. “If he clears enough take-home pay to move out of my apartment, I’ll be grateful too.”
“Happy to do you a favor. Now I got to ask you about somethin’ else.”
I looked his way. He was studying me like a man might study the angles on a three-rail bank shot. “Okay.”
“This deal you’re workin’ on. The air rights thing up on Park.”
My ears were suddenly humming. “How’d you know about that?”
“Was in the papers.”
“The fact that I’m working on it wasn’t.”
“All right. Have it your way, then. The Gerstens and my family, we go way back, see. And Ray Gersten comes to my old man and tells him you and this woman boss of yours are breakin’ his balls with this thing. This right to back out after a year, they don’t get their development plan through the P and Z. My old man comes to me and says, ‘This young Texan. He’s your neighbor at that nice apartment you just moved into, right? Maybe you should speak to this young man. Ask him to show a little flex on this. Do a favor for us and our old friends Ray and Ed Gersten.’ ”
I tried to think what to say but the humming in my ears had matured into a roar and my head felt like it was full of pea gravel. “Stu, I—”
He leaned over and put a hand on my arm. “If you could give us a little help here, my family would never forget it. Meantime, I’ll talk to my people. Find something for this brother-in-law of yours to do. Get him out from under foot.” Stu took his hand off my arm, pointed out the window. “I think this is your building.”
I hadn’t realized the car had stopped. I looked out the window and back at Stu. “Thanks for the ride.”
“Don’t mention it. But get back to me on this air rights thing. One way or the other. So I’ll know what to tell my old man.”
Fifteen minutes later I was sitting at my desk sucking on a cherry throat lozenge and staring into space. I don’t remember getting out of the car or going into the building or buying the package of lozenges or going up the elevator. Somehow I had done all those things without having to think about anything other than the fact that I’d just had the arm put on me by a member of a known organized crime family concerning a real estate transaction on which I was the second chair lawyer.
The Gerstens and the Spagnolettis. Shithouse mouse.
My clients in this air rights transaction were what we euphemistically referred to as a “high net-worth family.” This is Wall Street jargon for richer’n shit. You’d recognize the name if I were to mention it, but that I will not be doing. They’d made their money in tobacco and sold out long before the class-action lawyers came storming out of the sewer grates and sued that business back to the Stone Age. They’d invested a part of their fortune in Manhattan real estate, including a building on Park Avenue that had excess air rights. Rights that could, under the applicable zoning rules, support a building larger than what had been built there.
So my clients had done the smart thing and made a deal to sell these unused air rights to the Gersten Brothers, for hundreds of dollars per buildable foot, payable in part at closing and in part at substantial completion of the condo project the Gerstens aimed to construct. Condos in the East 60s, with views of Central Park West on one side and all the way to Long Island on the other. Condos with blue granite finishes and gold fixtures in the bathrooms. Condos they’d sell to rock stars and Saudi princes and captains of industry for three thousand dollars a foot if they sold them for a dime.