Past Due

Chapter 59

“HOW DO YOU like this setup?” said Derek Manley as we sat alone in his bedroom. It was a large room, furnished with a bed, a desk, a set of easy chairs, and a big-screen television. Everything a man could want except a telephone and a key. The windows, I noticed, were bolted shut and covered with metal bars. “I got three squares, I got a maid comes in once a day to freshen up the joint, I got the frigging U.S. marshals guarding my ass, I got Direct TV with, like, a hundred and fifty channels and Cinemax and Showtime.”

“HBO?” I said.

“Sopranos, baby.” He gave me a thumbs-up and then leaned forward, pointed to a fixture in the ceiling. With a remote control he turned on the television to some all-news-all-the-time station, leaned close, and lowered his voice. “They’re listening in so I gots to keep the TV on and my voice soft, but you want to know the truth, I get some of my best material for the feds from that show. Tony pots someone, the next day I tell it word for word to the guy asking the questions, only I put Philly names on it. It keeps them tapes rolling, that’s for sure.”

“Don’t be stupid, Derek. You have to tell the truth or they’ll spit you out.”

“I’m just giving them that stuff to keep it interesting, I’m giving them real stuff too. But in this place, it’s like I’m that broad what was wearing all the hankies and telling them stories to that big fat guy, trying to keep him interested enough so he wouldn’t whack her.”

“Scheherazade?”

“Gesundheit. Point is, I gots to keep them interested. Which brings me to that thing with Joey and me down by the waterfront.”

“Did you tell them about it?”

“Well, no, you see. All theys really interested in is the stuff I can give them on Dante. And who the hell wants to cop to a murder that no one knows shit about? But then this city DA got word that I had turned and he came over here with a copy of that deposition I gave to you, remember, that day you raked me over the frigging coals. He wanted to know the details. I told him I wanted to talk to a lawyer. When I said the word ‘lawyer’ he winced. When I gave him your name he had a conniption. It was quite a sight.”

“Why me?”

“Because of Joey. Because you said you was trying to find out what happened to him. You still taking care of him, so I thought for sure you was the one. So, Victor, I got a question.”

“Go ahead.”

“This is lawyer-client, right?”

“Sure.”

“Tell me about that statue of limitations.”

“You know, you guys, if you’re going to talk about the law at least get the words right. Statute of limitations, all right. Statute. Say it after me. Statute.”

“Eat me.”

“Close enough. And the news is, Derek, there is no statute of limitations on murder.”

“Crap. This could throw off the whole deal. When I told them what I would tell them there wasn’t anything about no murder.”

“Let me show you something.” I reached into my jacket pocket, pulled out the photograph that Mrs. Greeley had given me, the photograph of her son, Tommy, with that smirk on his face. I handed it over to Derek. “Was that the guy with the suitcase?”

He looked at it, squinted his eyes, turned his head to take it in sideways. “It was a long time ago.”

“Was that the guy?”

“It’s hard to be sure, you know.”

“Was that the guy, Derek?”

“The prick with the suitcase? Yeah.”

“You sure?”

“Pretty sure.”

I took the picture back, thought a bit. “Tell me what happened that night?”

“It was like you said. Joey got a little overenthusiastic with the baseball bat. Got him in the face. The guy went down. Boom.”

“Dead?”

“Sure.”

“You check his pulse?”

“I seen enough fish in the tank to know dead. He wasn’t moving.”

“Did you check his pulse?”

“No.”

“Put a mirror to his mouth to see if it fogged?”

“He wasn’t moving.”

“Did you have a stethoscope?”

“It was a rough-up, not a checkup.”

“You ever see a live possum?”

“No.”

“It’s because they play dead.”

“What the fuck you talking about, Victor? I never seen a dead one neither.”

“What did you do to the body?”

“We kicked it into the river.”

“Did you wrap it in chains? Did you weight it down with blocks. Did you stuff the body into a canvas duffel? What?”

“I told you, we kicked it into the river.”

“Just kicked it into the river.”

“Yeah. What’s wrong with that?”

“Your hit man technique stinks.”

“We was young.”

“You were stupid.”

“Go to hell.”

“You stupid son of a bitch, you stupid stupid son of a bitch.”

“Victor, why are yous coming down on me like this?”

“If you and Joey are going to spend your lives cursed because of a murder, you might as well make sure you commit it proper.”

“What are yous saying here?”

“Look, I think you’re in the clear. I think what you did is well beyond the limitations period.”

“But you said-”

“I know what I said. Give me a few days before you say anything to anyone, all right, and by then I’ll know for sure. But you have to tell me something now. You have to tell me who it was who hired you to give that kid the rough-up in the park.”

He leaned forward, looked around, lowered his voice even more, so it was barely audible over the continuing screed of the television news. “All right. You sure you want to know?”

“Spill.”

“It was Deep End Benny.”

I just stared.

“Remember that picture you showed me in that deposition, the three altar boys? Joey, me, and some other guy? Well, the other guy was Deep End Benny. It was the three of us growing up, except Benny, he was a vicious little snipe, off the deep end, which was how he got his name. And that was before he got into crank. He hired us.”

“Where’s Benny now?”

“Dead. He built up a rep and started working for the boys. But he was too crazy even for them, too crazy for Scarfo. You had to be son of a bitch crazy to be too crazy for Scarfo. Shot through the head, tossed off a bridge, run over by a truck. They wasn’t taking no chances with Benny.”

“So why were you scared to tell me if he was dead?”

“Because Dante knew. He was still just a pawn boy then, Dante, standing like a nothing behind the counter in his shop, but he found out.”

“How?”

“Joey pulled a watch off the dead guy’s wrist. When he pawned it, Dante asked his questions. Joey didn’t know enough to say nothing. That was how Dante made his way to the top. He knew everything what was happening in the whole of South Philly because of who was pawning what.”

“But why would Dante still care if Benny was dead? I’m missing something here.”

“You ain’t so swift, is you, Victor? It wasn’t important right off, but Dante, he stored it away until it became something that he could use. And he’s been waiting, patiently, for a time to use it. Deep End Benny, he had a big brother, a wimp what meant nothing to nobody except to Benny when we was growing up, or even later, when this whole thing went down. But eventually, Benny’s brother, he made good, damn good. And when the time comes, Dante is going to take the info and turn it into a free pass out of whatever trouble he gets into with the law. See, here’s the thing. Our boy, our friend, the guy what Joey and me, we was altar boys with, it was Deep End Benny Straczynski.”