The Brass Go-Between

Chapter six

Someday, I fear, I shall live in a house in the suburbs with crab grass that I can mow, snow that I can shovel, tax assessments that I can rail against, and a next-door neighbor’s wife who will jump into bed of an afternoon, forty-five minutes before she has to pick up the kids at school. But all of this, like my death, is some time off, and though I view both events with equal trepidation, I meanwhile shall continue to live in the disintegrating inner core of the city and make the most of the privacy it affords, the services that it offers, and the rude wit that can be enjoyed while trying to cross almost any street against the red light. “Whassamattah, shithead, colahblind or sumpthin?” Stimulating.

For nearly three years home had been the Adelphi, a medium-sized, medium-priced residential hotel that catered exclusively to anyone who could scrape up the monthly rent. I had what was known as a de luxe suite which meant that they installed a Pullman kitchen sometime in the 1950’s and the rent had been increased by fifty percent. In addition to daily maid service, the Adelphi offered a restaurant and bar that were steadfastly ignored by all the printed guides to New York, a cigar stand that was always running out of stamps, and a switchboard answering service which got the messages right at least a third of the time. Two aging bellhops, one during the day and the other from four till midnight, ran a small book along with whatever errands the guests might have in mind.

After the shuttle from Washington finally quit circling LaGuardia and the pilot brought the plane in only forty-five minutes late, I took a cab to the Adelphi. The phone rang while I was unpacking and when I answered it, Myron Greene wanted to know what had happened.

“I got the job,” I said.

“That’s not what I meant.”

“They paid me half in advance.”

“Go on.”

“The Washington cops figure that it was an inside job and the inside man’s already been killed. His wife hung herself. They were both heroin addicts. Or so the Washington cops say.”

“Jesus!” Myron Greene said.

“It gets better,” I said. “You’ll like the next part.”

“Just tell what happened.”

“Well, I got a call from a woman who said she’s representing the thieves. Somebody’s supposed to call me here in New York either today or tomorrow. Then there was Conception Mbwato, a representative of Komporeen which, he says, is the rightful owner of the shield. He offered me fifty thousand to hand the shield over to him, once I get it back. I turned him down — reluctantly, I might add — and he promised to steal it — either from me or from whoever’s got it now. And I asked Frances Wingo to have a drink, but she refused.”

“You’d better mail me the check,” Myron Greene said, “and I’ll have Spivack deposit it for you.”

“If they have any stamps,” I said.

“Who?”

“The cigar stand.”

“You’re dissembling again,” Myron Greene said. “You always do that when you’re nervous.”

“I’ll take something for it. The cigar stand might have something along with the stamps.”

“What do you do now?”

“I wait for the phone to ring.”

“What did the Washington police say?”

“That I make too much money.”

“Do they think that whoever stole it were professionals?”

“I don’t think I even asked,” I said. “It seemed obvious that they were. They killed the guard which means two things to me. One, they’re either professionals or gifted amateurs, and two, you didn’t ask for enough money.”

“It’s not too late for that in view of subsequent developments,” Myron Greene said. “I can probably work something out.”

“Do that.”

“What are your plans now?”

“As I said, I wait for the phone to ring. Then I might try to find out if anybody knows anything. The thieves know who I am. That means that they might know somebody whom I know. And since they’re the types who go around shooting people in the back of the head, perhaps I should find out.”

Myron Greene wheezed for a moment. “It might not be a bad idea,” he said finally. “As long as it doesn’t disrupt the negotiations.”

“If I find out that they’re the kind who don’t leave any witnesses around at all, there won’t be any negotiations.”

“You have to remember that you’ve already committed yourself.”

“Not to get killed,” I said.

“Of course not. I didn’t mean that.”

“You mean you need $2,500?”

“No, damn it, I don’t need $2,500 and if you think my fee is too high, I’ll forget about it.”

“Calm down, Myron. Remember what excitement does to your asthma.”

“Screw my asthma, St. Ives.” Myron Greene never called me St. Ives unless he was upset.

“What’s bothering you?” I said.

“I received a call this morning from Washington.”

“From Frances Wingo?”

“No. From the State Department.”

“What do they want?”

“They, or rather an assistant under-secretary for African Affairs, a Mr. Littman Cox, wants Jandola to get that shield back. This Mr. Cox — I think he said he was an assistant undersecretary, whatever that is — wanted to know if the State Department could be of any assistance.”

“How?” I said.

“That’s what I asked him. He said that he could bring in the FBI.”

“What did you tell him, Myron?” I said.

“Don’t get that tone in your voice, St. Ives,” he said. “I told him that it would be totally unnecessary and that we preferred to work alone and that if he wanted to be of assistance to us, he could make sure that the FBI stayed out of the case until the transaction was completed.”

I decided that Myron Greene liked having the State Department call him. Even more, he liked turning them down and getting himself into what he considered to be the thick of things and referring to us and we. “What else did the assistant under-secretary of State for African Affairs have to say after you said no?”

“Well, to be frank, he seemed upset. He kept telling me that I was in no position to assess the international significance of the shield and that its return was of what he called — I even wrote it down here — ‘paramount salience to the future relations between Jandola and the United States.’ He sounded like a prick.”

“All that means is that State is cozying up to the British and doesn’t want either France or Germany to start giving aid to Komporeen.”

“How do you know that?” Myron Greene said.

“Conception Mbwato told me.”

“I see,” Myron Greene said, and from the tone of his voice I could tell that he didn’t see at all, but the story was too long to tell. “Anyway,” he said, “I turned him down and told him that if he brought the FBI in, we would back out.”

“What did he say when you said that?”

“He wanted to know about your professional competence and integrity.”

“You assured him that they are of the highest order, of course.”

“Of course. I also pressed him about the use of the FBI; he promised me that they would not be called in. You know something?”

“What?”

“Perhaps I should have gone into the diplomatic service instead of law — especially if Cox is typical of what State has working for it.”

“You could have made a great contribution,” I said with as much sincerity as I could muster.

“I might’ve at that,” Myron Greene said. “Keep me informed, Philip.”

“Every step of the way.”

When he hung up I called down to the desk and asked Eddie, the day bellhop, to bring me up a steak sandwich and a glass of milk.

“Steak’s not too good today,” he said.

“How’s the liverwurst?”

“Better.”

“Make it a liverwurst.”

While I waited for him, I endorsed the check, put it in an envelope, and addressed it to Myron Greene. When Eddie arrived with the sandwich, I paid him, gave him two dollars to put on a horse I’d picked on the plane, and a letter to mail.

“They’re out of six-cent stamps at the cigar stand again,” he said. “But I got some.”

“How much?”

“Dime each?”

“I’ll buy one,” I said, and handed him a dime. It’s what I’ve always liked about New York. Neighborly.

I ate the sandwich and spent the rest of the afternoon waiting for the phone to ring and reading a paperback novel that I’d picked up in the Washington airport. It was about a CIA man who wandered around Red China for a couple of years doing good works like poisoning the water supply.

By six o’clock the phone hadn’t rung so I waited until six-fifteen and then dialed a number. A man’s voice said, “A to Z Garage.”

“Parisi there?”

“Who?”

“Parisi,” I said slowly, pronouncing each syllable with care. “Johnny Parisi.”

“Nobody here by that name.”

“Just tell him it’s Philip St. Ives.”

“St. what?”

“Ives,” I said. “You want me to spell it?”

“Lemme see.”

I waited a while and then Parisi came on the phone with, “Hello, Lucky.”

“I like your new secretary.”

“You mean Joey. He’s something, isn’t he?”

“Something’s as good a description as any.”

“By the way, when I got home last Saturday from your place, I found out I really took a bath. I dropped nearly nine hundred bucks and most of it to Ogden.”

“He needs it. His daughter’s starting to college next month.”

“Like shit he needs it. With what he knocks down he could send a dozen of them to college and never miss it.”

“Nobody’s that rich.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Parisi said. “It ain’t like when you and me were going to college. I don’t understand these kids today, always raising hell and trying to take over the schools.”

“They’re different,” I said.

“Maybe they ought to have to work their way through like we did,” Parisi said, apparently convinced that missing six set shots in a row qualified as work.

“You free for dinner tonight?” I said.

“I’ve got to see a guy downtown about ten.”

“Come over around eight and I’ll buy you a steak.”

“Dominic’s?” he said.

I sighed. Dominic’s meant a forty-dollar tab at least. “Dominic’s.”

“Okay,” Parisi said. “At eight.” I started to say good-by, but he said, “You’re working again, aren’t you?”

“I’m working.”

“I figured as much,” he said, and hung up.

Dominic’s was a medium-sized restaurant on West 54th Street that had leaped into popularity and a measure of notoriety after a Hollywood motion-picture star began to use it as his New York headquarters because it was quiet, the food was good, and a friend of his who was fairly prominent in the criminal hierarchy owned thirty percent of it. The actor once held court in a small alcove just off the main dining room until the word got around and the out-of-town tourists started to flock there and order things like spaghetti and meatballs and even pizza, which made the chef angry enough to threaten to quit. The movie star stopped coming, the owners raised the prices, and the out-of-towners flocked to other places where they could goggle at some celebrity who was worth talking about when they got back home to Joplin or Cedar Falls. Or to Chicago and Dallas for that matter. The citizens of Joplin and Cedar Falls are not the nation’s only celebrity gogglers.

Now Dominic’s was once more quiet, the food was excellent, the prices remained astronomic, the chef was happy, and the restaurant fulfilled its original purpose of losing money for its owners, whose accountants employed the deficit to offset the profits from other businesses which were not quite so respectable.

Parisi was already there, chewing on a piece of celery, when I arrived a few minutes after eight. He waved the stalk around as he chomped on the vegetable. “I’m trying to quit smoking,” he said. “They say that celery helps.”

“Good luck,” I said, and lighted a cigarette.

“Oh, hell,” Parisi said, and fished out his amber cigarette holder. “Let me borrow one from you; I’ll quit tomorrow.”

We ordered drinks, a martini each, and then began to study the menu.

“You hungry?” Parisi asked.

“Fairly so.”

“Me, too. I didn’t have any lunch. You want to go a Chateaubriand?” A chateaubriand was $27.50.

“Fine.”

Parisi grinned at me around his cigarette holder. “Like I said, I’m hungry.”

Parisi got into a long conversation in Italian with the waiter about how the steak should be cooked, the salad prepared, and what wine to order. I looked around the restaurant, which was only half full. The alcove where the actor formerly held court was dark and empty and I felt that perhaps it should be turned into a national shrine. While waiting for the steak, Parisi and I talked about poker and drank to absent friends.

“That guy Wisdom took a bath last Saturday, too,” Parisi said as he lit another borrowed cigarette.

“He can afford it.”

“How much did his grandma leave him, five million?”

“Seven, but it’s in a trust fund and he has to live off the income.”

“How much do you think that is?”

“At five percent it would be $350,000 a year, but he’s probably doing better than that.”

“Christ, with that much money he could sure dress a little better than he does.” Parisi liked people to be neat.

“With all that money he can afford to be a slob,” I said.

Parisi nodded, not so much in agreement, but as if expressing the universal conviction that if he had that much money, he could spend it far more efficiently than could Park Tyler Wisdom III who went around in sneakers and a sweat shirt, for God’s sake.

“What does he do?” Parisi said. “I mean he just doesn’t play poker all day long.”

“Jokes,” I said.

“Jokes? Like in the Reader’s Digest?”

“No, not like that. Wisdom likes to play elaborate jokes on fairly prominent people who don’t have a very good sense of humor.”

“Then they don’t get the joke.”

“That’s what makes it funny to Wisdom.”

Parisi was interested. “What kind of jokes? I mean do you remember any of them?”

“Well, there’s the Bonford Gentry Park story.”

“What’s that?”

“Wisdom has this farm or estate, I suppose you would call it, in Connecticut. He also had an old Airedale that was half blind who stayed on the estate with the caretaker. The dog must have been thirteen or fourteen years old and it drooled a lot. One time the caretaker took the dog into this small town which is near the estate and it got out of the car and wandered away. It was in the summer and the dog’s tongue was hanging out and it was slobbering like old dogs do, especially Airedales. Well, the mayor of the town happened to see it, called the local cops, and they shot it.”

“They thought it was a mad dog, huh?” Parisi said.

“That’s what they said.”

“So what happened?”

“The caretaker got the dog’s body and took it back to the estate and buried it. Then he called Wisdom and told him what had happened. Wisdom didn’t do anything for a couple of weeks and then he drove up to Connecticut and called on the mayor. There was some property that the city owned which it wanted to turn into a park. Wisdom offered to donate the money for the park improvements provided that they would call it Bonford Gentry Park after an old friend of his. He also offered to put up a fountain. The mayor agreed to all this, even to calling it Bonford Gentry Park. The mayor seemed to think that Wisdom was harmless enough for a millionaire. The park was developed and Wisdom paid for everything — the trees, the swings, the seesaws, the shrubs and what have you. The plumbing for the fountain was installed and the day before the park was to open Wisdom had the fountain trucked in at night, erected behind canvas, and connected to the plumbing.

“The next day was Saturday and the unveiling of the new fountain. After a speech that thanked Wisdom for his contribution to the town, the mayor pulled the cord that unveiled the fountain. The water was turned on at the same time. Around the base of the fountain was the inscription: To Bonford Gentry, Dear Friend and Close Companion, 1954–1968. The fountain was an eight-foot statue of Bonford Gentry, who, of course, was the Airedale that the mayor had ordered shot. His left leg was cocked up in the air and he was peeing the water. Wisdom said it made a pleasant splash.”

“Huh,” Parisi said. “What did the mayor do?”

“Nothing.”

“Didn’t he remember the dog and having it shot?”

“No.”

“Then he didn’t get the point.”

“No,” I said, “that’s what made it so funny to Wisdom.”

“Well, it’s sure not like those funny stories you read in Reader’s Digest,” Parisi said.

“No, it’s not,” I said. “It’s nothing like those.”

When we were through with the chateaubriand, we ordered some $2.00-a-glass brandy and some 75-cent-a-cup coffee. Parisi borrowed another cigarette from me, inserted it into his amber holder, and lit it with one of his own matches.

“Okay,” he said around or through the holder, “you didn’t buy me a steak just so you could tell me some dog stories.”

“You’re right.”

“What’s your problem, one of those go-between deals?”

“Yes,”

“Where?”

“Washington,” I said. “Do you guys have anything in Washington?”

“Huh uh,” Parisi said. “Not a thing. The colored boys have got it all sewed up down there and we just leave them alone. The closest we are to Washington is Baltimore. There’s pretty good action in Baltimore.”

“I’m supposed to buy something back for $250,000 from whoever stole it. They seemed like pros. They’ve also killed one guy so I’d like to make sure that they don’t have any similar plans for me.”

Parisi brushed some imaginary ashes from his double-breasted vest with its flapped pockets. “We got a call about a month and a half ago about you,” he said.

“From whom?”

“From a guy who knew a guy who knew a guy who wanted to know something.”

“About me?”

“You know, if you were all right and all. I didn’t think anything about it. I just told them that we’d never had any business dealings with you, but we knew some people who had and they didn’t have any complaints.”

“This was how long ago?”

Parisi looked up at the ceiling and started counting on his right hand. “Six weeks at least; maybe seven.”

“That could be about right.”

“You want to talk to the guy that I talked to?”

“Yes,” I said. “I think so.”

“He’s way down the list, you understand. He may not know a goddamned thing except the name of the guy who asked him to call us.”

“I understand.”

“You can tell him I told you to call if you want to.”

“Thanks.”

“You want to write it down?”

I found a piece of paper and a ballpoint pen. “Okay.”

“His name is Al Shippo. Albert M. Shippo in the phone book.”

“What’s he do?” I said.

Parisi shrugged. “He hangs around.”

“I’ll call him.”

“Mention my name.”

“All right,” I said, signaling to the waiter for the check. While I paid it, Parisi drummed on the table with the fingers of his left hand.

“You know something?”

“What?”

“The statue of that dog pissing.”

“What about it?”

“I was just thinking,” he said. “That might be worth driving over to Connecticut this Sunday just to see.”