A Dance at the Slaughterhouse

Chapter 17

I walked over to where Richard Thurman lived and stood in a doorway across from his building. I got there ten minutes early for our four o'clock appointment and I spent the time watching the sidewalk traffic. I couldn't tell whether or not there was a light on in his apartment. His building was on the uptown side of the block and the windows on the upper floors caught the sunlight and reflected it back at me.

I waited until four, and then I waited another two minutes or so before I crossed the street and entered the vestibule next door to Radicchio's entrance. I pressed the button for Thurman and waited to be buzzed in. Nothing happened. I rang again and waited and again nothing happened. I went next door and checked the restaurant bar. He wasn't there. I went back to my station across the street, and after ten more minutes I walked to the corner and found a working pay phone. I called his apartment and the machine answered, and at the tone I said, "Richard, are you there? Pick up the phone if you are." He didn't pick up.

I called my hotel to see if there had been any calls. There hadn't. I got Five Borough's number from Information and got a secretary who would tell me only that he was not in the office. She didn't know where he was or when he was expected back.

I went back to Thurman's building and rang the bell of the travel agent on the second floor. The buzzer sounded immediately and I walked up a flight, waiting for someone to come out on the landing and challenge me. No one did. I went on up the stairs. The Gottschalks' door had been secured since the break-in, with the doorframe reinforced and the locks replaced. I climbed another flight to the fifth floor and listened at Thurman's door. I couldn't hear anything. I rang the bell and heard it sound within the apartment. I knocked on the door anyway. There was no response.

I tried the door and it didn't budge. There were three locks, although there was no way to tell how many of them were engaged. Two had pickproof Medeco cylinders, and all were secured by escutcheon plates. An angle iron installed at the juncture of door and frame rendered the door secure against jimmying.

I stopped at the two second-floor offices, the travel agent and the ticket broker, and asked if they'd seen Richard Thurman that day, if by any chance he'd left any sort of message with them. They hadn't and he hadn't. I asked the same question in Radicchio's and got the same answer. I went back to my post across the street, and at five o'clock I called the Northwestern again and learned that I hadn't had any calls, from Thurman or from anyone else. I hung up and spent another quarter to call Durkin.

"He never showed," I said.

"Shit. What is he, an hour late?"

"He hasn't tried to call me, either."

"The cocksucker's probably on his way to Brazil."

"No, that doesn't figure," I said. "He's probably stuck in traffic or hung up with some client or sports promoter or sponsor."

"Or giving Mrs. Stettner a farewell hump."

"An hour's nothing. Remember, he hired me. I'm working for him, so I suppose he can stand me up or run late without worrying that I'm going to throw a fit. I know where he's going to be this evening. I was supposed to go out to Maspeth with him for the boxing telecast. I'll give him another hour or so and if he still doesn't show I'll look for him at the arena."

"You'll keep on wearing the wire."

"Sure. It won't start recording until I turn it on and I haven't done that yet."

He thought it over. "I guess that's okay," he said.

"Except there's one thing."

"What's that?"

"I was wondering if you could send somebody over to open his apartment."

"Now?"

"Why not? I don't think he's going to show in the next hour. If he does I'll cut him off downstairs, drag him someplace for a drink."

"What do you expect to find?"

"I don't know."

After a short silence he said, "No, I couldn't get a court order. What am I gonna tell a judge? He had an appointment with a guy and he didn't show so I wanta kick his door in? Besides, time it took to get a court order you'd be out in Maspeth."

"Suppose you forget to get a court order."

"No way. Worst thing in the world. Say we find something, it's fruit of the poisoned tree. Could be a signed confession plus an eight-by-ten glossy of him strangling her and we couldn't do shit with it. It's not admissible because we got it through an unauthorized search and seizure." He sighed. "Now if you were to go in on your own and I didn't know about it-"

"I haven't got the skills. He's got pickproof cylinders. I could spend a week and not get in the door."

"Then forget it. It's his confession's gonna hang the bunch of them, not any evidence sitting in his apartment."

I said what I'd been thinking about. "Suppose he's in there."

"Dead, you mean. Well, dead's dead, you know? If he's dead now he'll be just as dead tomorrow, and if you still haven't heard from him by then I'll have enough grounds to hunt up a judge and get in legally. Matt, if he's already dead he can't say anything to you that he can't say tomorrow." When I was silent he said, "Tell me straight out. You were standing in front of his door. Did you get the sense that he was dead on the other side of it?"

"Come on," I said. "I'm not a psychic."

"No, but you got cop instincts. How would you call it? Was he in there?"

"No," I said. "No, the place felt empty to me."

BY six he still hadn't shown and I was tired of lurking in doorways. I called my hotel again, and while I was at it I wasted two more quarters on calls to Paris Green and Grogan's. Not surprisingly, he wasn't at either of those places.

Three cabdrivers in a row made it clear that they weren't going to Maspeth. I went into the subway station at Fiftieth and Eighth and studied the map. The M would get me to Maspeth, but it seemed enormously complicated to get to it and I wouldn't know which way to walk when I got off it. Instead I took the E train two stops into Queens, getting off at Queens Plaza where I figured there would be taxis waiting. I got a driver who not only knew how to get to Maspeth but was able to find the arena. He pulled up in front of the entrance and I could see the FBCS vans parked where I'd seen them a week ago.

The sight was reassuring. I paid my cabby and walked over to the vans but didn't see Thurman. I bought a ticket and went through the turnstile and found a seat in the same spot where Mick and I had sat a week earlier. The first prelims were under way and a couple of listless middleweights were swinging at each other in the middle of the ring. I scanned the ringside seats of the center section, where I'd seen Bergen Stettner. I didn't see him now, or the boy either.

The four-rounder went to a decision. While the official was collecting the scorecards from the judges I went over to ringside and got the cameraman's attention. I asked him where Richard Thurman was.

"I don't know where the hell he is," he said. "He supposed to be here tonight? Maybe he's in the truck."

I went outside and nobody knew where Thurman was. One man watching the telecast on a monitor said he heard the producer was going to show up late, and another man said he had the impression Thurman wasn't coming in at all. Nobody seemed greatly concerned over his absence.

I showed my stub and went through the turnstile again and returned to my seat. The next bout matched two local featherweights, a pair of scrappy young Hispanics. One was from nearby Woodside, and he got a big hand. They both threw a lot of punches but neither of them seemed capable of doing much damage, and the fight went six rounds to a decision. It went to the kid from Brooklyn, which seemed fair to me, but the crowd didn't like it.

There were two eight-rounders scheduled before the ten-round main event. The first one didn't go any distance at all; the fighters were heavyweights, both carrying far too much flab, both given to telegraphing their punches. About a minute into the first round one of them missed with a roundhouse right, spun around full circle, and caught a left hook right on the button. He went down like a felled ox and they had to throw water on him to revive him. The crowd loved it.

The fighters on the top of the undercard were in the ring waiting for the introduction when I glanced up the aisle toward the entrance. And there was Bergen Stettner.

He wasn't wearing the Gestapo coat a few people had described, or the blazer I'd seen him in last week. His jacket was suede, light brown in color, and beneath it he wore a dark brown shirt and a paisley ascot.

He didn't have the boy with him.

I watched as he chatted with another man a few yards from the turnstile. They finished the introductions, rang the opening bell. I went on watching Stettner. After another minute or two he clapped the other man on the shoulder and left the arena.

I walked out after him, but when I got outside I didn't see him anywhere. I drifted over to where the FBCS vans were parked and looked around for Richard Thurman, but he wasn't there to be seen and I didn't really think he was coming. I stood in the shadows and saw Bergen Stettner come around the side of the building and approach the vans. He talked with someone inside the van for a minute, then returned in the direction he'd come from.

I waited a few minutes before approaching the van. I stuck my head in the back and said, "Where the hell is Stettner? I can't find him anywhere."

"He was just here," the man said without turning around. "You just missed him, he was here not five minutes ago."

"Shit," I said. "Say, did he happen to say where Thurman went to?"

Now he turned. "Oh, right," he said. "You were looking for him earlier. No, Stettner wanted to know where he was, too. Looks like Thurman's gonna catch hell."

"You don't know the half of it," I said.

I showed my stub and went through the turnstile again. They were in the fourth round now. I didn't know anything about the fighters, I'd missed the introductions, and I didn't bother to reclaim my seat. I went over to the refreshment stand and got a Coke in a paper cup and stood in back drinking it. I looked around for Stettner but couldn't find him. I turned toward the entrance again and saw a woman, and for a second or two I thought she was Chelsea, the placard girl. I looked again and realized I was looking at Olga Stettner.

She had her long hair pulled back off her face and done up in a sort of bun on the back of her head. I think it's called a chignon. The style accented her prominent cheekbones and gave her a severe look, but she probably would have looked fairly stern anyway. She was wearing a short jacket of some dark fur and a pair of suede boots that reached to the tops of her calves. I watched as she scanned the room. I didn't know who she was looking for, her husband or Thurman. She wasn't looking for me; her eyes passed right over me with no flicker of recognition.

I wonder how I'd have reacted to her if I hadn't known who she was. She was an attractive woman, certainly, but there was something about her, some magnetism, that may have owed a lot to what I already knew about her. And I knew too goddamned much about her. What I knew made it impossible to look at her, and impossible not to.

BY the end of the fight they were both standing there, Bergen and Olga, looking out over the big room as if they owned it. The ring announcer gave the decision and each fighter in turn, along with a three- or four-man retinue, made his way from the ring to the stairwell off to the left of the entrance doors. After they'd dropped from sight two other fighters emerged via the same set of basement stairs, fresh where the outgoing fighters had been spent, making their way in turn down the main aisle to the ring. They were middleweights and they had both had a good number of fights in the area. I knew them from the Garden. They were both black, both had won almost all of their bouts, and the shorter and darker of the two had knockout power in either hand. The other kid wasn't as strong a puncher but he was very quick and had a reach advantage. It figured to be a very good matchup.

Like the previous week, they introduced a handful of boxing figures, including both scheduled participants in next week's main bout. A politician, the deputy borough president of Queens, got introduced and received a chorus of boos, which in turn sparked some laughter. Then they cleared the ring and introduced the fighters, and I glanced over at the Stettners and saw them making their way toward the stairs.

I gave them a minute's head start. Then they rang the bell for the start of the fight and I walked down the stairs to the basement.

At the foot of the stairs was a broad hallway with walls on either side of unfinished concrete block. The first door I came to was open, and inside I could see the winner of the previous bout. He had a pint bottle of Smirnoff in his hand and he was pouring drinks for his friends and taking quick nips from the bottle for himself.

I walked a little further and listened at a closed door, tried the knob. It was locked. The next door was open but the light was out and the room empty. It had the same interior walls as the hallway, the same floor of black and white tiles. I walked on, and a male voice called, "Hey!"

I turned around. It was Stettner, with his wife a few steps behind him. He was fifteen or twenty yards behind me and he walked slowly toward me, a slight smile on his lips. "Can I help you?" he asked. "Are you looking for something?"

"Yeah," I said. "The men's room. Where the hell is it?"

"Upstairs."

"Then why did that clown send me down here?"

"I don't know," he said, "but this is a private area down here. Go upstairs, the men's room is right next door to the refreshment stand."

"Oh, sure," I said. "I know where that is."

I moved past him and mounted the stairs. I could feel his eyes on my back all the way to the top.

I went back to my seat and tried to watch the fight. They were mixing it up and the crowd loved it but after two rounds I realized I wasn't paying any attention. I got up and left.

Outside, the air was colder and a wind had blown up. I walked a block and tried to get my bearings. I didn't know the neighborhood and there was no one to ask. I wanted a taxi or a telephone and had no idea where to find either.

I wound up flagging down a gypsy cab on Grand Avenue. He didn't have a meter or a city medallion and wasn't supposed to pick up fares on the street, but once you get outside of Manhattan nobody pays too much attention to that rule. He wanted a flat twenty dollars to take me anywhere in Manhattan. We settled on fifteen and I gave him Thurman's address, then changed my mind at the thought of spending another hour in a doorway. I told him to take me to my hotel.

The cab was a wreck, with exhaust fumes coming up through the floorboards. I cranked down both rear windows as far as they would go. The driver had the radio tuned to a broadcast of polka music, with a disc jockey who chattered away gaily in what I took to be Polish. We got onto Metropolitan Avenue and went over the Williamsburg Bridge to the Lower East Side, which struck me as the long way around, but I kept my mouth shut. There was no meter ticking away so it wasn't costing me extra, and for all I knew his way was shorter.

The only message waiting for me was from Joe Durkin. He'd left his home phone number. I went upstairs and tried Thurman first and hung up when the machine answered. I called Joe and his wife answered and called him to the phone, and when he came on the line I said, "He didn't show in Maspeth but Stettner did. Both Stettners. They were looking for him the same as I was, so I guess I wasn't the only person who got stood up tonight. Nobody on the TV crew had a clue where he went to. I think he flew the coop."

"He tried. His wings fell off."

"Huh?"

"There's a restaurant downstairs. I forget the name, it means radish in Italian."

"Radicchio's not radish. It's a kind of lettuce."

"Well, whatever it is. Six-thirty or so, you must of just got on your way to Maspeth, guy goes out back with a load of kitchen garbage. Way in the back behind two of the cans there's a body. Guess who."

"Oh, no."

"I'm afraid so. No question about the ID. He went out a fifth-floor window so he's not as pretty as he used to be, but there's enough of his face left so you know right away who you're looking at. Are you sure it doesn't mean radish? It was Antonelli told me. You'd think he'd know, wouldn't you?"