Levine

After I’m Gone

Afternoon visiting hours at the hospital were from two till five, so when Detective Abraham Levine of Brooklyn’s Forty-Third Precinct got off his tour at four P.M.., he took a Rockaway Parkway bus to the hospital and spent thirty-five minutes with Detective Andy Stettin. Levine and Andy had been together when Andy was hit, a bullet high on the left side of the chest, fired through a closed door. Andy, a promising youngster, a hotshot, one of the new breed of college cops, had been close to death for a while, but was now on the mend, and very bored and impatient with hospital routine.

It wasn’t really necessary for Levine to go through this ritual every day, nor did he have that much to say to the youngster, and in fact he knew full well he was only doing it because he so much didn’t want to. There was a certain amount of guilt involved, since Levine was secretly happy that the bullet had ended his brief partnership with Andy Stettin, but in truth Andy wasn’t the main point here at all. The main point was the hospital.

To Andy Stettin, a young fellow, healthy and self-assured, the hospital was merely a nuisance and a bore. To Abraham Levine, fifty-three years of age, short and stocky, overweight and short of wind, with a tired heart that skipped the occasional beat, the hospital was a horrible presentiment, an all-too-possible future. Those sad withered men, shrunken within their maroon or brown robes, shuffling down the wide featureless corridors in their Christmas-present slippers, were a potential tomorrow that could be very close indeed. Going to the hospital every afternoon was for Levine a painful repeated confrontation with his own worst fears.

Today, a Thursday, Levine told Andy that there continued to be no break in the case of Maurice Gold, during the investigation of whose murder Andy had been shot, by a drug dealer who unfortunately was not Gold’s killer. Andy shrugged, not really interested: “Gold is gonna stay Open,” he said.

Levine had to agree. With some sort of reverse logic, when a case became inactive the Police Department phrase was that it was Opened. “Open that,” meant in reality to close it, to cease to work on it. The reason behind the Newspeak phraseology was that only an arrest could Close a case; an inactive case could always be reactivated by fresh evidence, and therefore it would remain — unto eternity, most likely — Open.

Levine and Andy also talked awhile about Levine’s regular partner, Jack Crawley, a big shambling mean-looking harness bull with whom Levine had a very easy and reassuring relationship. Crawley had just come back on duty this week after his convalescent leave-he had been, several months ago, shot in the leg-and the long spell of inactivity had made him more bristly and bad-tempered than ever. “I think he’ll arrest me pretty soon,” Levine said.

Andy laughed at that, but what he mostly wanted to talk about was a nurse he had his eye on, a pretty young thing, very short and compact, squeezed into a too-tight uniform. Both times the girl passed by while Levine was there, Andy did some elephantine flirting, very heavy-handed arch remarks that Levine found embarrassing but which the girl appeared to enjoy. The second time, after both men had watched the provocative departure of the nurse, Andy grinned and said, “The sap still rises, eh, Abe?”

“The sap also sets,” Levine told him, getting to his feet. “See you tomorrow, Andy.”

“Thanks for coming by.”

Levine was walking down the wide corridor, not meeting the eyes of the ambulatory patients, when a hand touched his elbow and a gravelly voice said, quietly, “Let’s just walk around here a while.”

Surprised, Levine looked to his right and saw a short, blocky, pugnacious-looking man of about his own age, wearing an expensive topcoat open over a rather wrinkled suit, and an old-fashioned snap-brim hat pulled low enough to make it difficult to see his eyes. Levine noticed the awkward bunchiness of the man’s tie-knot, as though he had got himself up in costume like a trick-or-treater, as though his real persona existed in some other mode.

The man gave Levine a quick sidelong glance from under his hatbrim. His hand held firmly to Levine’s elbow. “You’re a cop, right? Abraham Levine, detective. Visiting the cop in there.”

“Yes?”

“So let’s talk a little bit.”

They had reached an intersection of corridors. The elevators were straight ahead, but the man was pulling Levine to the right. “Talk about what?” Levine asked, trying to shake loose.

“Cops and robbers,” the man said. “I got a proposition.”

Levine planted his feet, refusing to move. Peeling the man’s fingers from his elbow, he said, “What sort of proposition?”

With darting movements of his head, the man shot wary glances along the corridors. “I don’t like it here,” he said. “Exposed here.”

“Exposed to what?”

“Listen,” the man said, moving closer, his breath warm on Levine’s chin, his hatbrim nearly touching Levine’s face. “You know Giacomo Polito,” he said.

“I know who he is. Mafia chieftan. He controls one of the five families.”

“I’m a soldier for him,” the man said, his voice low but harsh, pushing with intensity. “I know Giacomo’s whole life story.”

Levine frowned, trying to see this too-close face, read meaning into the tone of the husky tense voice. Was this an offer of information? The setting was unusual, the manner odd, but what else could it be? Levine said, “You want to sell that life story?”

“Don’t rush me.” Another darting glance. “Giacomo disappeared my son,” the man said, still in the same breathy way. “He knows I know.”

“Ah.”

“You take your bus, like you do,” the man said. “Look out the back window. When you see a green Buick following, you get off the bus. There’s a — kind of a flower on the aerial.”

“And who are you?” Levine asked him. “What’s your name?”

“What’s the dif? Call me Bobby.”

“Bobby?” The incongruity of that name with this man made Levine smile despite himself.

The man looked up, facing Levine more directly than before. He too smiled, but with an edge to it. “That was my son’s name,” he said.

The green Buick with the red plastic chrysanthemum taped to its antenna followed the bus for a dozen blocks before Levine decided to follow through. Then he got off at the next stop, stood at the curb while the bus drove off, and waited for the Buick to stop in front of him.

The delay had been because Levine wasn’t entirely sure what he thought of “Bobby” and his story. A Mafia soldier who decided to defect usually did so when under indictment himself for some major crime, when he could trade his knowledge for softer treatment from the courts. Simple revenge between criminals rarely included squealing to the police. If Bobby’s son had been killed by Giacomo Polito, in the normal course of events Bobby would simply kill Polito, or be himself killed in the attempt. The Mafia tended to run very much along the lines of a Shakespearian tragedy, with few roles for outsiders.

In addition, if Bobby had decided that his vengeance required selling Polito to the police, why not do it the simple normal way? Why not simply drive to Manhattan and go to the Organized Crime Unit in Police Headquarters and make his deal there? Why talk to some obscure precinct detective in the depths of Brooklyn, and in particular why do it in a hospital corridor? And why all this counterspy hugger-mugger?

What finally decided Levine to take the next step was that he couldn’t think of any rational alternative explanation for Bobby’s actions. If someone had decided to murder Levine, of course, this would be an excellent ploy to put him in a position where it could be done; but Levine could think of no one at the moment who would have a motive. He wasn’t due to be a witness in any upcoming trials, he hadn’t made any potentially dangerous arrests recently, nor had he received notification within the last year or so of any felons, arrested by himself, who had been released from prison. Also, if Bobby’s story were merely a charade for some sort of con game, how could it hurt Levine? He wouldn’t pay anything or sign anything or even necessarily believe anything. And finally, there had been the real brimstone aura of truth in that last direct stare from Bobby, when he’d said, “That was my son’s name.”

So for all those reasons Levine had ultimately stepped off the bus and stood waiting until the Buick pulled to a stop in front of him. But, before getting into the car, he did nevertheless check the floor behind the front seat, just to be absolutely certain there was no one crouched back there, with a pistol or a knife or a length of wire.

There was nothing; just some empty beer cans. So Levine opened the front passenger door and bent to enter the car, but Bobby was leaning over toward him from the steering wheel, saying, “Uh, would you take down the — get rid of the flower?”

“Of course.”

Masking tape had been wrapped around both antenna and flower stalk; Levine tugged on the plastic stalk and the tape ripped, releasing it. He then got into the car and shut the door, feeling vaguely foolish to be sitting here with a red flower in his lap. He tossed it stop the dashboard as Bobby accelerated away from the curb, checking both the inside and outside mirrors, saying, “I did shake ‘em, but you never know.”

“You’re being followed?”

“Oh, sure,” he said, shrugging as though it were an everyday event. “They wanna know I’m not going anywhere before the big day.”

“What big day?”

“Wipe out,” Bobby said, and ran a finger along his neck. “Giacomo’s got a contract out on me.”

“You’re sure of that?”

Bobby gave him a quick glance, almost of contempt, then went back to his fitful concentration on the road ahead and both mirrors. “I’m sure of everything,” he said. “When I’m not sure, I shut up.”

“So you want police protection, is that it?”

“Why don’t I tell you what I want, okay?”

Levine smiled at the rebuff. “Okay,” he said.

Bobby turned a corner. He seemed to be driving at random, though trending northwest, away from the hospital and in the general direction of Manhattan, several miles away. “Giacomo’s got a young wife,” he said. “The old Mama died, all over cancer, right? So Giacomo went to Vegas to work out his grief, he come back with a bride. A dancer at the Aladdin, calls herself Terri. With an I.”

“Uh huh.”

“My son—”

“Bobby.”

“My son. Got hooked on this Terri. He was like a dog, there’s a bitch in the neighborhood in heat, you cannot keep that dog in the house.”

“Dangerous.”

“She says he raped her,” Bobby said. “He didn’t rape her, she was asking for it.”

Levine kept silent. He watched Bobby’s fingers twitch and fidget on the steering wheel.

“A bodyguard found them at it,” Bobby said. “Naturally she had to cry rape. My son told his story, the bodyguard said forget it, my son went home. Terri with the I, she went to Giacomo. She talked to Giacomo, but Giacomo didn’t talk to nobody, not to me, not to my son, not to nobody. The bodyguard got disappeared. My son got disappeared. I said, ‘Giacomo, we know one another a long time, why don’t you talk to me first, ask me a question?’ He still don’t talk. I go away, and he puts a contract on me, he puts shadows on me to be sure I’m still here for the hit.”

“There’s a special time for the... hit?”

“Saturday night. Day after tomorrow. I still got friends to whisper me things. At Barolli’s Seafood House in Far Rockaway, upstairs in the private dining room, there’s gonna be a banquet. It’s Giacomo’s first wedding anniversary.” Bobby spoke the words with no apparent irony. “That’s where they’re gonna take me out. By the time they’re at the coffee and cigars, I’m at the bottom of Jamaica Bay.”

“Pretty.”

“Businesslike,” Bobby said.

“If it’s police protection you want—”

Levine was stopped by Bobby’s cold eyes looking directly at him. “You gonna explain life to me, Mr. Levine?”

“Sorry.”

“I know about police protection,” Bobby said. He lifted his right hand from the steering wheel and rubbed his thumb back and forth over the pads of his other fingers. “With this hand,” he said, “I have paid protective police to be blind and deaf while the subject of their concern was falling out a window. You are an honest cop, Mr. Levine, and that’s very nice, that’s why you and me are talking, but let me break you the sad news. There are one or two rotten apples in your crowd.”

“I know that.”

“I also know about the Feds and their witness protection plan,” Bobby said. “They will give me a new name, a new house in a new city, a new job, a new driver’s license, a whole entire new life.”

“That’s right.”

“All they take away is my old life,” Bobby said. “That’s what Giacomo has in mind, too. I like my old life.”

“So far,” Levine said, “I’m not sure why you’re telling me all this.”

“Because I have a scheme,” Bobby said, “but my scheme is taking too long. I won’t be able to leave town until the middle of next week. I’m okay until Saturday, but when I don’t show at the celebration they’ll start looking for me. It’ll be tougher for me to move around town.”

“I can see that.”

“I need a courier,” Bobby said. “I need protection and assistance. I need an honest cop to run my errands and see that nobody offs me.”

“Tell me your scheme,” Levine said.

“I am assembling information,” Bobby told him. “I am talking into a tape recorder, I am giving facts and names and dates, I am nailing Giacomo to the cross. And I am getting the physical evidence, too, the contracts and the photos and the letters and the wiretaps and everything else.”

“Giacomo shouldn’t have killed your son,” Levine said.

“Not without talking to me.”

“You’ll turn over all this information next week?”

“To the law?” Bobby grinned, a kind of distorted grimace that created deep crevices in his cheeks. “You got the wrong idea,” he said.

“Then who do you give it all to, all these proofs and information?”

“Giacomo’s partners,” Bobby said. “His friends. His fellow capi. His business associates. What I’m putting together is what he’s done to them over the years. I have stuff Giacomo himself can’t remember. I have enough to get him offed ten times from ten different people.”

“I see,” Levine said. “You ruin Giacomo with the mob, and his contract on you ceases to matter.”

“And he’s dead. And the Terri with him.”

“Why do you think I would help you?” Levine asked.

Again the wrenching grin. “Because I’m gonna give you some scraps from my table,” Bobby said. “Just a few things you’d like to know.”

“About Giacomo.”

“Who else?” Under the wide-brimmed hat, under the darting, dashing anxious eyes, Bobby smiled like a death’s head. “Just enough to put Giacomo in prison,” he said. “Where it’ll be easier for his friends to kill him.”

For forty minutes Levine sat at Lieutenant Barker’s desk and looked at pictures, front and side views of Caucasian males, page after page of tough guys behind clear plastic. The infinite variety of human appearance became confined here to variations on one theme: the Beast, without Beauty.

“Him,” Levine said.

Inspector Santangelo leaned over Levine’s shoulder and whistled. “You sure?”

“That’s him, all right.”

It was Bobby, no question. Without the hat, he was shown to have a low broad forehead, thick pepper-and-salt hair that grew spikily across his head, and cold eyes that seemed to slink and lurk behind half-lowered lids. Without the hat he looked more like a snake. The name under the photos was Ralph Banadando.

Inspector Santangelo was visibly impressed. Crossing the lieutenant’s office to resume his seat on the sofa, he said, “No wonder he knows where the bodies are buried. And no wonder he called Polito by his first name.”

Lieutenant Barker, chief of the precinct’s detective squad, whose office this was, said, “Who is he?”

“Benny Banadando,” the inspector said. “He’s Giacomo Polito’s righthand man, they came up through the ranks together. He’s the number two man in that mob.” Grinning at Levine, he said, “That’s no soldier. He told you he was a soldier? That’s a General.” Nodding at Barker, seated in what was usually the visitor’s chair, he said, “You did right to call me, Fred.”

“Thanks.”

It was Friday morning, nearly noon. Yesterday, saying he would get in touch with Levine sometime today to hear his answer, whether or not he would accept the proposition, Bobby — Ralph “Benny” Banadando, now — had let Levine off six blocks from his home, giving Levine ten minutes to walk and think. At home, he had at once phoned the precinct to give Lieutenant Barker a brief recap of the conversation. Given the truth of Bobby’s remark about the “one or two rotten apples” in the Police Department, they’d agreed not to spread the story very widely, and Barker had phoned his old friend Inspector Santangelo, now assigned to the Organized Crime Unit. This morning Santangelo had come down to the Forty-Third Precinct with his book of mug shots, and now Levine had a name for Bobby. He said, “Does Banadando have a son?”

“He did,” Santangelo said in a dry tone. “Fellow named Robert, not very sweet. What do you want to do, Abe? Can I call you Abe?”

“Sure.”

“And I’m Mike,” Santangelo said. “You want to turn this thing over to me, or do you want to follow through yourself?”

“You mean, do I want to tell Banadando yes or no.”

“That’s what I mean.” Grinning at some private thought, Santangelo sat back on the sofa, stretching his long legs in the small office. “Before you answer,” he said, “let me say this. I don’t want to bring this news back to my shop, because if I do it’ll get to Polito and he won’t wait for the symbolic moment of his anniversary dinner.”

Levine nodded. “That’s what we thought, too.”

“In addition,” Santangelo said, “you’ll be marked yourself, Abe, because Polito won’t be sure how much Banadando told you.”

Lieutenant Barker said, “He won’t try to kill a cop.”

“Probably not,” Santangelo said. “But if he’s nervous enough, it’s a possibility. From our point of view, it’s better if Banadando can work his scheme in peace and quiet. But what that means, Abe, we can’t provide backup.”

“I can,” Lieutenant Barker said. “Abe’s partner, Jack Crawley, can back him up.”

“That’s not quite the same as three busloads of TPF,” Santangelo said. “You see what I’m getting at, Abe? This could be dangerous for you.”

“What happens if I tell Banadando no?”

“I pull him in,” Santangelo said. “I try to convince him his scheme is busted anyway and he might as well cooperate with us.”

“He’ll say no.”

Santangelo shrugged. “It’s worth a try.”

Levine said, “You won’t have to. I’ll tell him yes.”

“Good,” said Banadando’s husky, low, insinuating voice on the phone. It was twenty to five on Friday afternoon and Levine was in the hospital again, visiting with Andy Stettin. Andy’s phone had rung and it was Banadando, for Levine.

Conscious of Andy’s curious eyes on him, Levine said into the phone, “What happens now?”

“Nothing. I can still play my own hand till tomorrow night. You know Long Island well?”

“Pretty well.”

“About fifty miles out there’s a town called Bay Shore. On the Great South Bay.”

“I know it.”

“Go there Sunday morning, around nine. Go down to the end of Maple, park there.”

“What will I—” But Banadando had hung up.

Levine replaced the receiver and Andy said, “What was that? Sounded like a real sweetheart.”

“Mobster,” Levine said. “He’s gonna give some evidence, for some reason he made me the intermediary.”

“Why’s he giving evidence?”

Levine was reluctant to hold back — it wasn’t as though he mistrusted Andy — but he had to maintain a habit of reticence in this situation. “Some of his pals have a contract on him,” he said.

Andy’s lip curled. “Let ‘em kill each other off. Best thing that can happen.”

“I suppose so,” said Levine slowly, but the words were ashes in his mouth. He understood why what Andy had just said was the common, almost the universal belief among the police; whenever one mobster killed another, great smiles of happiness lit up the faces in the precinct houses. But Levine just couldn’t take pleasure from the death of a human being, no matter who, no matter what he had done in his life. He supposed it was really selfishness, really only a matter of projecting their deaths onto himself, visualizing his own end in theirs, that made him troubled and sad at the cutting short of lives so stained and spoiled, but nevertheless he just couldn’t bring himself to share in the general glee at the thought of a murdered mobster.

A little later, as he was leaving Andy’s room, he paused in the doorway to let a wizened ancient man pass by, moving slowly and awkwardly and painfully with the help of a walker. That’s me, Levine thought, and behind him Andy said, “If they start bumping one another off, Abe, just step to one side.”

Levine looked back at him, bewildered, his mind for an instant filling with visions of doddering oldsters bumping one another off: “What do you mean?”

“Your mobster pals. They love to kill so much, let ‘em kill each other. It isn’t up to us to stop it, or to get in the way.”

“I’ll stay out of the way,” Levine promised. Then he smiled and waved and left, walking around the ancient man, who had barely progressed beyond the doorway.

Maple Avenue in Bay Shore ended on a long wide dock, covered with asphalt and its center lined with parking meters. Levine found a free meter, got out of the car, and strolled a bit, smelling the salt tang. Once or twice he glanced back the way he had come, without seeing Jack Crawley; which was as it should be.

Out near the end of the dock, several small boats were offloading bushel baskets and burlap bags, all filled with clams. Two trucks were receiving the harvest, and the men working there called cheerfully at one another, talking more loudly than necessary, but apparently filled with high spirits because of the clarity and beauty of the day.

Nine A.M. on the third Sunday in October. The air was clear, the sun bright in a sky dotted with clouds, the water frisky and glinting and cold-looking. Levine inhaled deeply, glad to be alive, barely even conscious of the straps around his shoulders and chest, under his shirt, holding the recording apparatus.

He strolled aimlessly on the dock for about fifteen minutes and then turned at the sound of a beep-beep to see a small inboard motorboat bobbing next to the dock, with Banadando at the wheel. Banadando gestured, and Levine crossed over to stand looking down at him. “Come aboard,” Banadando said. “We’ll go for a run on the bay.”

Clammers and fishermen were in other small boats dotting the bay. Long Island was five miles or so to the north, the barrier beach called Fire Island was just to the south, and Banadando’s boat — Bobby’s Dream was the name painted on the stern in flowing golden letters — was simply another anonymous speck on the dancing water.

Bobby’s Dream was compact but comfortable, its cabin — where Levine now sat — containing a tiny galley-style kitchen, cunning storage spaces, a foldaway table and a pair of long upholstered benches that converted to twin beds. “Nice, huh?” Banadando said, coming down into the cabin after cutting the engine and dropping anchor.

“Very clever,” Levine said.

“That, too,” Banadando agreed. Today he wore a longbilled white yachting cap edged in gold, the bill shielding his eyes as yesterday’s hat had done. In blue blazer, white scarf and white pants, he was almost a parody of the weekend yachtsman. Sitting on the bench across from Levine, he said, “After dark I take the inlet, I go out to the ocean, I sleep in comfort and safety. Nobody knows where I am or where I’ll be next. I land where I want, when I want. Until I leave town, this is the safest place in the world for me.”

“I can see that,” Levine said.

“You wired?”

“Of course,” Levine said.

Banadando shook his head, smirking a bit. “We all go through the motions, right? You know I know you’re gonna be wired, so I know you know I won’t say anything you can use. But still you got to go through the whole thing, strap it on, walk around like a telephone company employee. You broadcasting or taping?”

“Taping,” Levine said, wondering if Banadando would insist on being given the tape.

But Banadando merely smiled, saying, “Good. If you were broadcasting, we’d be too far out for your backup to read.”

“That’s right. Mr. Banadando, we—”

Banadando made a face. “I figured you’d find that out, who I am, but I don’t like it. How many cops know about our little conversation?”

“Four, including me. We’re already aware of the existence of rotten apples. Don’t worry, we won’t alert Polito through the department.”

“Don’t tell me not to worry, Mr. Levine.”

“Sorry.”

“You’re a long time dead.”

“I agree,” Levine said.

Banadando took from an outside pocket of his blazer a sheet of white typewriter paper folded into quarters. Opening this, smoothing it on the tabletop, he turned it so the handwriting faced Levine. It was large block-printed letters in black ink. He said, “You see all this?”

“Yes?”

“I’m not giving you this paper, you’re remembering it. Or you’ll listen to your tape, later. You see what I mean?”

Levine looked at him. “Why do you think I’m going to be in that much trouble, Mr. Banadando?”

“Because I don’t know how smart you are,” Banadando said. “Maybe you’re very dumb. Maybe one of the three cops you talked to is right now on the phone to Giacomo. Maybe you get nervous in the clutch. Maybe all kinds of things. I can’t see the future, Mr. Levine, so I protect myself from it just as hard as I can. Okay?”

“Okay,” Levine said.

Banadando’s fingertip touched the first word on the sheet of paper. His hands were thick and stubby-fingered, but very clean, with meticulously-groomed nails. The effect, however, was not of cleanliness but of a kind of doughy unhealthfulness. “This,” Banadando said, his sausage finger tapping the word, “is a telephone number.”

Levine frowned. The word, all alone near the top of the sheet, was THIRSTY. “It is?”

“The phone dial doesn’t just have numbers,” Banadando reminded him. “It has letters. Dial those letters. You’ll call just after noon today; this is back in the city, it’s a city number.”

“All right.”

“You got to call no later than ten past twelve, or he won’t be there.”

“All right.”

“When the guy answers, you tell him you’re Abe. That’s all he knows about you, that’s all he needs to know. He’ll tell you does he have the stuff yet or not. If it’s no, he’ll tell you when to call again.”

“What is this stuff?”

“Let it be a surprise,” Banadando said.

Levine took a breath. “Mr. Banadando,” he said, “I have to tell you something you should already know. If any evidence of crime is put in my possession, I am going to turn it over to my superiors.”

“Sure you are,” Banadando said. “You’ll take the package, you’ll sniff all over it like a bird-dog, you’ll get nothing out of it. The next thing that happens, you’ll bring it to me.”

“But you realize we’ll study it first.”

“I am not here to be stupid,” Banadando said. His finger moved down to the next item, below THIRSTY. There was the word KOPYKAT, and under it an address: 1411 BROADWAY. “This is a copying service,” he said. “It’s a chain, there’s Kopykats all over the city. This is the Broadway one, you got it?”

“Yes.”

“They’re open on Sunday. This afternoon, any time this afternoon, you go there and pick up the package for Mr. Robert. If there’s no package, don’t worry about it.”

“All right.”

The stubby finger moved down to the last item on the sheet of paper: BELLPORT on one line, and under it HOWELL’S POINT. “Tomorrow morning,” he said. “It’s farther out from the city, so let’s say ten o’clock. You bring me the Kopykat package and the other package, and I tell you what next.”

“And the scraps from your table?”

With a thin smile, Banadando shook his head. “We pay at the end,” he said.

“No,” Levine said. “We have to have something now, to prove it’s worthwhile.”

Banadando sat back, brooding. The small movements of the boats were comforting at first, but then insistent. A large white ferry went by, on its way to Fire Island, and its wake made the Bobby’s Dream heave on the water, like something alive and in pain.

“Upstate in Attica,” Banadando said at last, “in the state pen there, you got a guy named Johnson, serving five consecutive life terms. He’s never coming out. He’ll be the only Johnson there with that sentence.”

Levine smiled faintly. “I guess you’re right.”

“In Vermont,” Banadando said, speaking slowly, picking his words with obvious care, “there used to be a ski lodge called TransAlpine, had a big Olympic indoor skating rink. Burned down. No link between that and Johnson at all, right?”

“You tell me,” Levine said.

“Johnson did things for Giacomo sometimes,” Banadando said. “Giacomo had a piece of TransAlpine. Not right out in front, but you could find it.”

“And?”

“Johnson hired the torch.”

“It was arson?”

“Nobody ever said it was,” Banadando said. “Not up there in Vermont. All I say to you is, Johnson hired the torch. Johnson and TransAlpine, there’s no link there, so nobody ever talked to Johnson about that. Now all of a sudden I’m giving you a link. And what has Johnson got to lose?”

“The same as the rest of us,” Levine said.

The man who answered the Thirsty phone number had a thin raspy voice. He said, “I got everything but the gun. You want?”

“Yes,” Levine said.

“In Manhattan,” the raspy voice said, “79th Street and Broadway, there’s benches at the median, middle of the street, where people sit in the sun. Around two o’clock there’ll be an old guy there with the package, gift-wrapped. Tell him you’re Abe.”

Levine followed directions and found half a dozen elderly men on the stone bench there, faces turned to the thin clear autumn sun. The faces were absorbing the gold, hoarding it, stocking it up for the long cold time in the dark to come.

One of the old men held in his lap a parcel that looked like a box of candy gaily wrapped in Happy Birthday paper. Levine went to him, identified himself as Abe, and took delivery. When Levine asked him how he’d come by the package, the old man said, “Fella gave it to me half an hour ago with a five dollar bill. Said you’d be along, said he couldn’t wait, said I had an honest face.”

The next old man over laughed, showing a mouth without teeth. “I said to the fella,” he announced, “what kinda face you think I got? Paid me no never mind.”

Carrying the Happy Birthday parcel, Levine went down Broadway to Kopykat, where he picked up the package for Mr. Robert. Then he continued on downtown to hand the material over to Inspector Santangelo at the Organized Crime Unit. “People upstate are talking to Johnson,” Santangelo said.

“But is he talking to them?”

Santangelo grinned. “He will.”

The next morning, Santangelo brought the two packages to the Forty-Third Precinct and handed them back to Levine in Lieutenant Barker’s office. The Kopykat package had turned out to be copies of about forty ledger pages, but only numbers and abbreviations were filled in, making it useless by itself; you’d have to know what business those pages were connected to, and presumably Banadando’s intended customer would know.

As for the birthday present, that box had contained a jumble of sales slips, for items ranging from automobiles and furs to coffee tables and refrigerators, plus a bunch of photos and negatives. There were a dozen pictures of what appeared to be the same orgy, there were pictures of a man getting into a car on a city street, pictures of a man at a construction site, of a truck being loaded or unloaded at the same site, of two men exchanging an envelope in the doorway of an appliance store.

Everything had been fingerprinted and photographed and brooded over, but there wasn’t so far much value in this material. “It’s puzzle parts,” Santangelo said. “Just a couple stray puzzle parts. Banadando has the rest.”

Monday was a less pretty day than Sunday had been, the broad sky piling up with tumbled dirty clouds and a damp breeze blowing from the northeast. With Banadando’s packages on the front seat beside him, Levine drove out the Long Island Expressway and took the turnoff south for Bellport. He found Howell’s Point, left the car, and saw Banadando approaching on a bicycle, dressed in his yachting outfit, with a supermarket bag in the basket. Banadando looked unexpectedly human and vulnerable, not at all like the tough guy he really was. Levine was pleased with the man, almost proud of him, for how matter-of-factly he carried it off.

Dismounting, Banadando said, “Take the groceries, okay? The boat’s just over here.”

Banadando walked the bike, and Levine followed with the bag and the two packages. The bag contained milk, tomatoes, lettuce, English muffins, a steak. Levine found himself wondering: Does Banadando have a wife? Is she part of his escape plan, or is he abandoning her, or does she not exist? Maybe she’s already gone on ahead to prepare their next home. Banadando’s style was that of the complete loner, but on the other hand he was only involved in this problem because of his emotional attachment to his son.

That was why Levine had never been able to go along with the idea that a murdered mobster was something to be happy about. Even the worst of human beings was still in some way a human being, was more than and other than a simple cartoon criminal. No death should be gloated over.

Aboard the boat, Banadando lashed the bike to the foredeck, then cast them off and headed out onto the bay, while Levine went below and put away the groceries. Coming up again on deck, where Banadando sat in a tall canvas chair at the wheel, steering them on a long gradual curve eastward into Bellport Bay, Levine said, “I’m not wired today. Thought you’d like to know.”

Banadando grinned at him. “Waste of good tape, huh?”

“You won’t say anything useful while I’m recording you.”

“I won’t say anything useful at all. Not the way you mean.”

They ran southeast for fifteen minutes, then Banadando dropped anchor near Ridge Island and they went below together to talk. Levine explained that the Thirsty man had said he had everything but the gun, and Banadando waved that away: “I don’t need the gun. I got enough without the gun.”

“Well, here it all is,” Levine said, gesturing to the two packages on the table.

Banadando nodded at the packages and grinned. “Made no sense to you, huh?”

“That’s right.”

“It’ll make sense to some people,” Banadando said. “And that’s all it has to do. What about Johnson?”

“He’s being talked to.”

“He’ll be very interesting, Johnson. Okay, time to memorize.”

It was another sheet of paper, instructions on another two pick-ups. Levine listened and nodded, and when Banadando was done he said, “How long am I your messenger?”

“Two more days,” Banadando said. “Tomorrow morning, you bring me this stuff, I give you the last shopping list. Wednesday morning, you bring me the last of it, I give you a nice package for yourself. The Johnson stuff is just a teaser; Wednesday morning I give you a banquet.”

“And you leave.”

“That’s right,” Banadando said. “And if you keep your ear to the ground the next few months, Detective Levine, you will hear some far-away explosions.”

Their business done, they both went up on deck, and Levine sat in the second canvas chair while Banadando steered back toward Bellport. Even though the sky was lowering with clouds and there was a chill dampness in the air, there was something extraordinarily pleasant about being out here in this boat, skimming the choppy little wavelets, far from the cares of the world.

Not far enough. They were almost to Howell’s Point, Levine could actually see his own car and a few other cars and some people walking along the pier when Banadando suddenly swore and spun the wheel and the Bobby’s Dream veered around in a tight half-circle, lying way over on its side into the turn, spewing foam in a great white welt on the gray water.

It wasn’t till they were far from shore, out in the empty middle of the bay, that Banadando slowed the boat again and Levine could talk to him, saying, “Friends of yours back there?”

“Friends of his,” Banadando said, his voice vibrating like a guitar string. Tension had bunched the muscles in his cheeks and around his mouth, and his lips were thin and bloodless.

Levine said, “I wasn’t followed, I can tell you that. My back-up would have known.”

“The supermarket,” Banadando said. “I can’t even go to the supermarket. This is rotten luck, rotten luck.”

“Now he knows about the boat.”

“He can put people all around this bay, Giacomo can,” Banadando said. “If he knows there’s a reason. And now he knows there’s a reason.”

“I’ll just mention police protection once,” Levine said.

Banadando nodded. “Good,” he said. “That was the mention. Look here.”

From an enclosed cabinet under the wheel, Banadando pulled out a Defense Mapping Agency book of Sailing Directions, found the pages he wanted, and showed Levine what he intended to do. “Long Island’s a hundred twenty miles long,” he said. “From where we are here, there’s like another seventy miles out to the end. But I can’t stay on the South Shore any more, so here’s what I’m gonna do. I don’t have to go all the way out to Montauk Point at the end of the island. Here by Hampton Bays I can take the Shinnecock Canal through to Peconic Bay, then I only have to go out around Orient Point and there I am on the North Shore. Then I head west again, across Long Island Sound. Look here on this map, west of Mattituck Inlet, you see this little dip in the coastline?”

“Yes.”

“There’s a dirt road there, comes down from Bergen Avenue. I know that place from years ago. There’s a little wooden dock there, that’s all. Nobody around. That’s where we meet tomorrow, let Giacomo and his boys search the South Shore all they want.”

Looking at the maps, Levine said, “That’s a long way to go, in a small boat like that.”

“A hundred miles,” Banadando said, dismissing it. “Maybe less. Don’t worry, Levine, I’ll be there. Between now and Wednesday, let’s face it, the only way I stay alive is to do things Giacomo thinks I won’t do or can’t do.”

“You’re right,” Levine said.

“I’m always right,” Banadando said. “I can’t take you back to your car. I’ll drop you at Center Moriches, you can take a cab back.”

Levine made that day’s pick-ups with no trouble, and that evening, as rain tapped hesitantly at the windows, the four policemen who knew about Banadando — being Levine and Jack Crawley and Lieutenant Barker and Inspector Santangelo — met in the lieutenant’s office at the precinct to decide what to do next.

Jack Crawley, a big beefy man with heavy shoulders and hands and a generally dissatisfied look, had no doubt what he wanted to do next: “Bring in everybody,” he said. “Inspector, you bring in your whole Organized Crime Unit, we bring in plainclothes and uniformed people from the precinct, and we surround that mother. I don’t want Abe to spend any more time in the middle of some other clown’s argument.”

“I’m already in, Jack,” Levine said. “We’re on the verge of getting some very useful information. I think Banadando actually is as smart as he thinks he is, and that he’ll manage to elude Polito for the next two days. It’s only until Wednesday, after all. The minute I step off that boat on Wednesday you can phone Inspector Santangelo at Organized Crime, tell him I’m out of the way, and send in the entire police department if you want.”

“He’ll be long gone by then,” Crawley said, and Lieutenant Barker said, “I tend to agree with Jack.”

“I’m sorry,” said Levine, “but I don’t. In the first place, he won’t be long gone. I believe he actually will make it around the island tonight, but it won’t be an easy trip. Those little boats always feel like they’re going fast, but they’re not. What’s the top speed of a boat like that, on choppy open water? Twenty miles an hour, maybe a little more? And they gobble up gasoline, he’ll have to stop once or twice at marinas. This rain will slow him down. Traveling as fast as he can, on a small boat pounding up and down over every wave, he’ll be lucky if it only takes him seven or eight hours to get around to where he’s supposed to meet me tomorrow.”

Lieutenant Barker said, “Meaning what, Abe? How does that connect?”

“Meaning,” Levine said, “he can’t disappear from us all that easily.”

Santangelo said, “That’s not such good news, Abe. If we could find Banadando just like that, why can’t Polito?”

Levine shrugged. “Maybe he can, I hope not. But we have the entire law enforcement apparatus behind us, to help, and Polito doesn’t. We can bring in the Coast Guard, Army helicopters, anything we need.”

Smiling, Santangelo said, “Not necessarily at the snap of our fingers.”

“No, but it can be done. Polito can’t begin to match our manpower or our authority.”

Crawley said, “Never mind all of that after-the-event stuff, Abe. What it comes down to is, Polito’s people got to that pier today within an hour of you getting there. What if they’d been an hour earlier?”

“A lot of different things could have happened,” Levine said.

“Some of them nasty,” Crawley told him.

Santangelo said, “The decision has been Abe’s from the beginning, and it still is. Abe, I’ll go along with whatever you decide. But I have to say, there’s a lot in what your partner says.”

“I’ll stay the course,” Levine told him.

Santangelo said, “There’s something else to consider. If something goes wrong, if Banadando gets killed or slips through our fingers, we could all be in trouble for not reporting the situation right away.”

Levine spread his hands. “If you’re worried about that, you do rank me after all, you could take the decision out of my hands.”

“No, I don’t want to,” Santangelo said. “I think we’re handling it right, but I want you and Fred and Officer Crawley to know there could be trouble for all of us down the line. Within the Department.”

Lieutenant Barker said, “Let’s count that out of the decision-making.”

“Fine with me,” Santangelo said.

The Long Island Expressway ended just short of Riverhead, seventy-five miles from Manhattan but still another forty-five miles from the end of the island at Montauk Point. The last dozen miles the traffic had thinned out so much that on the long straightaways Levine could see in the rearview mirror Jack Crawley’s car, lagging way back. The rain had stopped sometime during the night but the sky was still cloud-covered and the air was cooler and still damp. In mid-morning, the sparse traffic here at the eastern end of the Expressway was mostly delivery vans and a few private cars containing shoppers, the latter mainly headed west toward the population centers.

The land out here seemed to imitate the wave-formations of the surrounding sea; long gradual rolls of scrub over which the highway moved in easy gradients, long sweeps steadily upward followed by long gradual declines. It was on the upslopes that Levine would catch glimpses of Jack Crawley’s dark-green Pontiac far behind, and on the downslopes that he was increasingly alone.

At the Nugent Drive exit, two miles before the end of the highway, a car was entering the road, a black Chevrolet; Levine pulled accommodatingly into the left lane, passed the car, saw it recede in his mirror, and a moment later was over the next rise. Signs announced the end of the road.

The Chevy reappeared over the crest behind him so abruptly, moving so fast, that Levine had hardly time to register its presence in his mirror before it was shooting past him on the right and there were flat cracking sounds like someone breaking tree branches, and the wheel wrenched itself out of Levine’s hands.

He’d been doing just over sixty. The Chevy was already far away in front, and Levine’s car was slewing around toward the right shoulder, the wheel still spinning rightward. Levine grabbed it, fighting to pull it back to the left, his right foot tapping and tapping the brakes. Blow-out, he thought, but at the same time his mind was over-riding that normal thought, was telling him. No! They shot it out! They shot the tire!

Banadando! They found him, they’re going after him! They cut me out of the play!

He was recapturing control, of his emotions and his thoughts and the car, when its right tires hit the gravel and dirt beside the road and tried to yank the steering wheel out of his hands again. He hung on, his foot tapping and tapping, pressing down harder as they slowed, daring to assert more and more control until at last, in a swirl of tan dust of its own creation, the car jolted to a stop, skewed slightly at an angle toward the highway, seeming to sag in exhaustion on its springs.

Levine opened his mouth wide to breath, but the constriction was farther back, deep in his throat. He leaned forward, resting his forehead on the top of the steering wheel, feeling its bottom press hard into his stomach. His trembling hand went up to cup his left ear, the position in which, he had learned, he could best hear his heart.

Beat, beat beat—

Skip.

Beat, beat, beat—

Skip.

Beat, beat, beat, beat—

Skip.

Beat, beat—

All right. Straightening, Levine took a deep breath, finding his throat more open, the act of breathing less painful. That had been a scary one.

Generally, the skips came every eighth beat, but excitement or exercise or terror could shorten the spaces. Three was about the closest it had ever come, and this near-accident had matched that record.

Accident? This was no accident. His entire body still slightly trembling, Levine struggled out of the car, walked around it, and saw that both right-side tires were flat. They showed garish big ragged holes in their sides. A sharpshooter, worth the money Polito would be paying him.

Polito. Banadando. Feeling sudden urgency, Levine looked up the empty roadway toward the top of the slope he’d just come down. Crawley should have appeared by now, he wasn’t that far back.

They’ve taken him out, too.

Jesus, what’s happened to Crawley? Levine had actually trotted a few paces toward the distant crest when over it came a rattly white delivery van, and he remembered his other urgency instead: Banadando. In going for Levine’s tires, Polito’s men had made it clear they weren’t interested in killing police today, so they’d undoubtedly taken out Jack Crawley the same way. The man in real trouble was Banadando.

Pulling his shield out of his jacket pocket, waving it in the air, Levine flagged the approaching van to a halt. A big boxy contraption advertising a brand of potato chip on its side, it was driven by a skinny bearded young man who stood up to drive. He was frowning at Levine with a kind of hopeful curiosity, as though here might be that which would rescue him from terminal boredom.

It was. The tall door on the right side of the van was hooked open. Climbing up into the tall vehicle, still showing the shield, Levine said, “Police. I’m commandeering this truck.”

“This truck?” The young man grinned, shaking his head. “You got to be kidding.”

“Drive,” Levine told him. “As fast as this thing will go.” To encourage the young man, he added, “We’re trying to stop a murder.”

“You’re on, pal!”

But no matter how enthusiastic the young man might be, the van’s top speed turned out to be just about fifty-two. Levine kept leaning his head out the open doorway, looking back, hoping to see Jack Crawley after all, but it never happened.

The interior of the van was piled high with outsize cardboard cartons, presumably containing potato chips. Levine leaned against the flat top of the dashboard under the high windshield and wrote a note on a sheet of paper torn from his memo pad:

“NYPD Detective Abraham Levine, 43 Precinct. Partner Jack Crawley in apparent accident on LIE. Underworld informant under attack. Follow caller to site.”

After the highway ended, the young man followed Levine’s instructions along Old Country Road and Main Road and Church Lane and Sound Avenue. “It’ll be a dirt road,” Levine said. “On your left.”

When they finally found it, the young man was going to swing to the left and drive down that road but Levine stopped him. Handing over the note, he said, “Go to the nearest phone, call the Suffolk County police, read this to them, tell them where I am.”

“You might want me along,” the young man said. “Maybe you could use some help.”

“Bring me help,” Levine told him. Stepping down to the shoulder of the road, he slapped the tinny side of the van as though it were a horse, calling to the driver, “Go on, now. Hurry!”

“Right!”

The van lumbered away, motor roaring as the young man tried to accelerate too rapidly up through the gears, and Levine trotted across the road and started down the dirt road, seeing the fresh scars and streaks of a car’s having recently passed this way.

First he saw the water through the thin-leaved birch trees; Long Island Sound, separating this long tongue of land from Connecticut. Then he saw the automobile, a small fast low-to-the-ground Mercedes-Benz sports car painted dark blue. The black Chevy was nowhere in sight; Polito apparently employed specialists.

There was only the one car, and it contained seating for only two. Levine unlimbered his .38 S&W Police Special from its holster on his right hip and moved forward, stepping cautiously on the weedy leaf-covered ground. Yellow and orange leaves fluttered down, sometimes singly or when the breeze lifted they dropped in platoons, infiltrating their way to the ground.

Beyond the Mercedes muddy ground sloped down to an old wooden dock. Tied beside it, very close to shore, was the Bobby’s Dream. Revolver in hand, eyes on the boat, Levine approached and, as he passed the Mercedes, a big-shouldered man in dark topcoat and hat came up out of the boat onto the dock, his arms full of boxes and packages, a couple of which Levine recognized; things he had brought to Banadando himself. He stopped, arm out, revolver aimed, and quietly said, “Just keep coming this way.”

The man stopped, staring at Levine, his expression one of total amazement. Then, in a blindingly swift move, he flung the boxes away and his right hand stabbed within his topcoat.

Levine did not want to kill, but he did want to stop the man. He fired, aiming high on the man’s torso on the right side, wanting to knock him down, knock him out of play, but still leave the breath of life in him. But the man was ducking, bobbing, just as Levine fired; when he jolted back, his own pistol flying out of his clothes and arcing away to fall into the water, Levine had no idea where he’d been hit. He went down hard, the sound a solid thud on the wooden boards of the dock, and he didn’t move.

A sudden burst of pistol fire flared from the boat and Levine flung himself backward, putting the low bulk of the Mercedes between himself and the gunman. The firing stopped, and Levine sat on the leafy ground, revolver in his right hand, left hand pressed to his chest, mouth stretched wide. The constriction...

Hand cupped to ear. He counted beats, and after the fourth came the skip. Not too bad, not so bad as a little while ago in the car.

To his right, where he was sitting, were the hood and bumper and left front tire of the Mercedes, and out at an angle beyond them were the dock and the boat and the unmoving man Levine had shot. To his left, pressing against his arm, was the narrow graceful trunk of a birch tree. Levine sagged briefly against the tree, then pulled himself up onto his knees and looked cautiously over the hood.

Immediately the pistol cracked over there, and a fluttering of branches took place somewhere behind Levine, who ducked back down. When nothing else happened, he called, “Banadando!”

“He don’t feel like talking!” yelled a voice.

“Send him out here!”

“He don’t feel like walking either!”

So he was dead already, which would give the man on the boat nothing to lose by holding out. Still, Levine called, “Come out of there with your hands up!”

“I’ll tell him when he comes in!”

“You won’t get away!”

“Yeah? Where’s your army?”

“On its way,” Levine called, but the constriction closed his throat again, chopping off the last word. Get here soon, he prayed.

The man on the boat swore loudly and fired twice in Levine’s direction. Headlight glass shattered, and Levine couldn’t help flinching away, his entire body clenching at each shot. “I’m comin’ right through you!” yelled the voice.

“Come right ahead,” Levine yelled. But he didn’t yell it, he hoarsely coughed it. The tightness in his throat was making his head ache, was putting metal bands around his head just above his eyes. He couldn’t pass out, he had to hold this fellow here. Bracing himself between the Mercedes and the tree trunk, he extended his arm forward onto the hood, where the revolver would be visible to the man in the boat. Hold him there. Hold him, no matter what.

Another shot pinged off the car’s body; merely frustration and rage, but it made Levine wince. His free hand went to his ear, he sat looking at a leaf that had fallen into his lap.

Beat, beat, beat—

Skip.

Beat, beat—

Skip.

Beat, beat—

Skip.

Beat—

The Suffolk County cops were all over the dock, the boat, the foreshore. Boxes of Banadando’s evidence were being carried to the cars. The gunman from the boat had already been taken away in handcuffs, and now they were waiting for the ambulance and the hearse.

Crawley stood with the Medical Examiner, who straightened and said, “He’d been dead at least a quarter hour when you got here.”

“Yeah, I thought. And this one?”

They left Abe Levine’s body and walked over to the wounded man on the dock, still unconscious but wrapped now in blankets from the police cars. “He’ll live,” the M.E. said.

“The wrong ones die,” Crawley said.

“Everybody dies,” the M.E. said. “It’s a thing I’ve noticed.”

Crawley turned and looked back at his partner. Abe was braced between the car and the tree, arm out straight, revolver just visible to the boat. He had died that way, his heart stopping forever but his body not moving. Sirens sounded, approaching.

“How do you like that,” Crawley said. “He was dead, and he finished the job anyway. His corpse held that punk covered until we could get here.”

“Maybe they’ll give him a medal,” the M.E. said, and grinned, showing uneven teeth. “A posthumous medal. The first legit posthumous medal ever, for performance above and beyond the call of death.”

The hearse and ambulance were arriving. Crawley looked at the M.E. and pointed at Abe. “No plastic body bag,” he said. “He gets a blanket.”