Manhattan 62 (4 page)

“How did you get to come to America?”

“There have been quite a few exchanges the last three years or so, an effort for our countries to know each other better.” Max looks at me. “Do you know something funny, Pat? Do you know if it was not for another student, who breaks his leg and cannot take up the fellowship, I may not have been so lucky to come to the United States. It is whispered he fell in love for a Rumanian ski champion. One day, my advisor says to me would you like apply for this Graduate Exchange Fellowship? Would I like to go? Yes, I tell him, yes, of course. May I have another one of those lovely whisky drinks?” he says to Kevin, who obliges.

“Do you know what I wanted to be most of all?” Max adds.

“What's that?”

“A cosmonaut. Yuri Gagarin, do you know what he says, just as he takes off into the unknown, he says
‘Poyekhali!'
I think this translates as ‘Let's go.' Let's go. Just like that, no worries. But my cousin, Sasha, he says ‘you can't be a cosmonaut, Max, you wear glasses, you're too tall, also you have never even been in an airplane. Perhaps you could be the new space dog, Laika. You shall be Max, the space dog.' Pat, these are good times in my country. We are making so much progress. We feel now, there will be peace and justice and equality for all, and material goods too, and so forth.”

Max Ostalsky is a Commie, of course. Every time I get drawn into his story, it comes back to this, all this Commie crap. He's probably a Party member, but I let him talk.

“This trip, it was my first time in an airplane.”

“No kidding. How old are you?”

“I am not kidding. I am twenty-nine.”

“Do you know about John Glenn,” I say, as if somehow to preserve the honor of the USA. Glenn went up in February. Who could forget it, the ticker tape and all, especially coming on the day an American Airlines plane crashed in Queens. “John Glenn circled the globe,” I add. “He didn't just go up, he circled the whole damn world.”

“Yes. This was excellent news,” says Max. “Let us toast to Gagarin and to Glenn, our space heroes.”

In the bar that lazy hot afternoon, Max talks and I encourage him. All I know about the Reds is, like the priests say, they live in an atheistic nightmare; that the people are oppressed, and are often sent to prison camps to die; that the system is committed to espionage and sabotage, and a desire to take over the United States and enslave us; also the unavailability of nice clothes and cars. This character is something else.

This Max Ostalsky walks and talks like a regular guy. He even glances at one of the tourist girls, the one with the big bust in the very tight sleeveless yellow blouse. He tells me he learned English from the time he was a little boy, with his grandmother, who learned it before the Revolution. “We call her Sunny. She says she does not want to be regarded as an old grandmother with a scarf on her head. My grandfather says the English language is the family business.”

“You were fond of them? Are they still alive.”

“Sadly, my grandfather died only a few years ago.”

“And your grandmother?”

“My grandfather told us wonderful stories of the Revolution,” he says, not answering my question about his grandma. “His own father, who was a sugar merchant of Leningrad, had traveled often to America, after your Civil War. He was in New York City and San Francisco, New Orleans, too, and he told me stories about attending lectures by Mark Twain, and listening to music played by Scott Joplin. In summertime, he wore suits like Mr Twain, made of white linen.” Max pauses and says something half to himself in Russian.

“Us?”

“Yes, me, my cousin Sasha, who is also his grandson, the son of my mother's sister. My best friend. To me, Sasha says you will have conversations and drink rum cocktails with Papa Hemingway. I tell him Hemingway is in Cuba with the fishermen.”

“He's a teacher?”

“Sasha is an engineer.”

“And your grandmother?”

“I have been talking too much, Pat,” he says, and I get it that he doesn't want to talk about his grandma; why, I think? Why the hell not?

“Don't worry, man. It's the Scotch. Loosens the tongue. Your secrets are safe with me.”

“Secrets? I'm sorry, what secrets?”

By the time we leave the bar, it's evening, a balmy June evening with couples emerging from the Cookery, or the art movie house. Max seems a little tipsy. He tells me some joke about sausages, and laughs to himself. I don't get it. It doesn't matter. I've had plenty to drink. I walk him to 10th Street where he says he has a room.

“Thank you again, Pat. I can now buy a hot dog with some expertise, though I must apologize for my condition. Would you call it sodden?”

“Cheerful. It's nothing, man. You can chalk it up to experience, you know, your first American bender.”

“Yes. But thank you for your kindness in showing me around,” he says, as we reach the apartment building, the front door covered in a ornamental pattern of wrought-iron leaves. “Good night, Pat,” Max adds, as he pulls open the door and disappears inside.

And me, I'm thinking, Jesus, I've been drinking with an honest to God Communist who talks about his pretty wife, and gets drunk, who willingly tries out new kinds of booze, even laughs. Maybe he's not one of them. Maybe he's looking to come over to our side. Maybe I can win him over. But I'm a little bit soused on Scotch, and truth is, I don't think I'll ever see Max Ostalsky again.

At the deli on the opposite corner, I get myself a fresh pack of Chesterfields, then head north on University Place, thinking about looking for a plate of spaghetti. Maybe I'll go up to Gene's. I'm hungry.

You can spot a Fed a mile away, especially in the Village. Across the street, I see him, right then, a young FBI agent, the bad crew-cut hair—his barber must use some garden shears to cut it—yellow and standing up from his head. In his wrinkled tan summer suit, he's standing in front of the Hotel Albert, pretending to read a copy of the
Journal-American,
but looking at the building where Max Ostalsky lives.

This one has to be Ostalsky's tail. All Soviets who come over to America get an FBI tail. Ballet dancers. Students. Diplomats. They're Commies, after all; you have to watch them.

After all, as my pop, ass that he is, says, “Mr Hoover says ‘Communism is not a political party, it is a disease.'”

The agent lowers his paper, glances at me, and because I'm plastered, I wave at him and grin. We're on the same side, I think. Right? He looks startled. Behind him, the red neon Eiffel Tower out front of the Albert restaurant blinks on and off.

CHAPTER TWO

October 17, '62

T
HE SIRENS TORE UP
the cold wet night. From the pier, I could hear them coming closer. Tommy must have phoned the precinct like I told him. Who was the man he had seen? Who was Tommy's devil?

I looked at my watch. Two in the morning. Wednesday already. Cold out. Cold as a witch's tit in a brass bra, like they used to say. Winter coming.

Hurriedly, I zipped the body bag. I didn't want anyone asking why I messed with the crime scene. I shoved the silver medal Tommy had found into my pocket. The sirens screamed louder, and I heaved myself to my feet, tried to light up a cigarette and failed. The wind was whipping me good.

Lights flashed. A dark blue car appeared, bumping over the pier. When it stopped, a pair of detectives got out, and stood waiting while a second car pulled up. I didn't recognize them. They were not from my station house. They wore cheap suits and had the dogged look of men who take orders without question. I went over and told them I was the lead detective, I had found the body, called in the case.

“Where's the kid?” I said.

“What kid?”

“I need the phone in your car,” I said and showed my badge.

“We have to ask,” said the taller one, indicating the second car.

“Sure, go get permission,” I said.

From the second car, two more men, also in plain clothes, got out. I didn't recognize them either. If the guys at my precinct were off duty or on other cases, maybe my boss, or whoever took Tommy's phone call, had contacted other houses for help. Two of them. The older man probably a senior cop from downtown, wore an expensive navy blue topcoat—alpaca, I figured—over his suit. The heavy silver tie gave him the look of a Mafia capo or a corporate vice president. He was pushing fifty. The air of authority went with the big shoulders, the well-fed belly, the black hair; on his left pinky was an engraved gold signet ring. Family crest, perhaps. He had a face that told you nobody got in his way. He made it known right away that he was in charge and worked out of the Commissioner's office. Strode up to me, hand out, though it was a perfunctory gesture.

“Logan,” he said. “And you are Detective Wynne.”

“I need to make a call.”

“Thanks for your help, Detective Wynne. You look done in, like you'd be glad to hit the sack just about now. We're fine here, we have more men on their way, so, let me say thank you again for responding.”

I tried not to let Logan rile me. “Will you be working this one, too?” I said.

He stared at me, half irritated, a little amused. “I just came from your station house, Wynne. I have a message from your Lieutenant Murphy.”

“What message?”

“You won't be working this case. Murphy said to tell you.”

“I think you got that wrong.”

“I don't get things wrong. You want to call Murphy? Please. Use my phone. Get Detective Wynne to my car,” he said to his driver who hovered near him like a servant waiting for orders. “Let him use the phone all he wants.”

Logan towered over me, looking down as if he wanted to punch my face, but was holding himself back.

“Detective, as I said, you won't be working this case, so if you wouldn't mind, please, just get your little car—it's that banged-up little red second-hand Corvette, I believe—and go home. Your boss thinks you need a break. I spoke to him, and he says, Lieutenant Murphy says to me, ‘I agree, Wynne could use a break.' Very accommodating your lieutenant, a man who understands how things are done. He said to tell you you're off for the rest of the week. Take some time. Get a little rest. We already know this is a Mob hit. That's how we'll work it. Now, before you go, is there anything you want to tell us about this particular case? Anything you found? Anything you happened to pick up? Any evidence you might be squirreling away? I've seen your record. I know you like to get in on a case first, and sometimes that means keeping certain items to yourself.”

“You know all about me.”

“Yes, indeed. I know you worked that homicide on the High Line during the summer until it damn well wore you out and you started making mistakes.” I felt the bile rise. Logan was the kind of guy who made me want to punch somebody. If I punched Logan, they'd fire me. I'd wait.

“They're connected,” I said. “That girl. This man.”

“So you say.”

“Just who the hell are you?”

“Special squad,” said Logan. “Not that it's any of your business. But we take precedence. Call your boss, if you want. Call the chief, if you think it's worth waking him up. Here's my card, Wynne.”

I looked at the card. Captain Homer M. Logan.

“What kind of special squad?”

“On a need to know basis. You have no need,” he said. “Unless you have something to tell me. Or the kid, Tommy Perino, isn't it? Father's name is Giuseppe. A wop kid, on his way to a record. You don't want to see him in some facility for juvenile deliquents, do you? He lives in your building over on Hudson Street? Maybe he stole something from the scene. I could send somebody by.”

“He didn't take anything.”

“Well, that's copacetic then, wouldn't you say?” He turned to the young cop who was his driver. “Officer Garrity, take the detective to my car, let him use the radio. You hear me?”

“Yessir.”

Cold rain had begun falling. I followed Garrity, the young cop in the brown sack suit, no coat, to the car, and out of earshot of Logan, I said, “I know how it is, man, those bastards ordering you around, what's going on? This your first homicide?”

He nodded. “I was doing regular foot patrol, you know, I been on the job a year, and then Logan needs somebody, and they put me on this, they tell me to buy a suit. I'm supposed to take care of whatever he needs. I don't know why, or what the hell I'm doing.”

“You feel like some kind of chauffeur, he has to be thinking you're only good to wipe up after him? Wipe his ass, so to speak?”

“Yeah.”

“Don't worry. By the end of tomorrow, you'll be working with me.” There was no way I could actually fix this, but I wanted the guy to talk to me. I lied in a tone of voice that conveyed I understood, that we were brothers and that if he played ball with me, he didn't need to take any shit from the brass. I lied. I was good at it.

“You need a smoke?” I asked. “What's your first name?”

“Yeah, thanks. It's James. Jimmy.”

I got out my pack and handed it over.

“You want to use the radio?”

“Sure,” I said and called my boss who told me I was on leave. Didn't explain, just parroted what Logan had said.

“Thanks,” I said, handing the phone back to Jimmy who put it in its cradle in Logan's car. “Anything you want to tell me? You look like a smart cop, and I could sure use some help.”

Finally, puffing on the Chesterfield I gave him, he leaned close to me. “I think the Feds are in this. I saw the boss with an agent earlier. I could tell. I heard the word sabotage. National security. I hear them talking about subversive activities. There's long-distance calls coming in from Washington DC and Miami. I'm supposed to stay in the outer office, but people talk. They're keeping the telephone operators on late. FBI agents are coming in, people slamming doors, those hush hush conversations, you know?” Jimmy Garrity gestured to the end of the pier. “Then this homicide comes in a few hours ago, and they're all over it. You think this has to do with Cuba? You think the Russians are going to bomb us? I hear planes at night, I can't sleep.” In the dim light, he looked young and scared.