Catching the deuce, p.10
Catching the Deuce, page 10
“What’s perdition?” Cheo said. Pete caught his eye, drew a finger across his throat. “Oh,” Cheo said. “So what happened to him?”
“Gaitanis? One hot summer night,” Dzekas said, “probably right about the time you guys were born, the devil come for him. Old Patch caught up with Gaitanis in Douglaston, Queens, in a building the old man owned out there. Patch told him, ‘Costas, you done all the evil you’re gonna do, you spilled all the blood you’re gonna spill, your time has come.’ And they found the old man’s body there on the floor with a bullet hole right between his eyes.”
“Okay,” Cheo said, “so maybe the devil got him, but I bet somebody else hadda pull the trigger. Who was that?”
“Well that, my young friend, is still a unanswered question. The cops grabbed Pelios that night, and they put him away for manslaughter. But I never believed Pelios done it. Not that he wasn’t capable, mind you, but him and the old man, they was tight. They was just like father and son. And when they put him on trial, he stood there like a marble statue and listened to all the things they accused him of and he never said a word. Kept his trap shut. And there’s plenty he coulda said, too, half the guys in Astoria was shittin’ a pickle worrying about what he was gonna tell the cops to try to get himself out of going to jail. But he never done it, he never gave up a one of us. Nobody believed it at first, but after he went off to prison and nothing else happened, he was a hero, believe you me. For a while.
“For a while.
“What happened, though, nobody could find the old man’s money. Oh, there was a little bit here and a little bit there, but nothing like what we all knew he had. Tasya turned some up, but not a lot. Under a million. Price of a nice house, say. So there has to be millions out there somewhere, salted away, but nobody could find it. Drove us all crazy. Anyway, after a while, people started saying, ‘Pelios, that son of a bitch, he musta done it just like the cops said he did, he musta killed the old man and hid his dough,’ him being the old man’s driver and whatnot. That’s what everybody said. We all put a big circle around his release date, you know what I’m saying.”
“Still,” Cheo said. “If Pelios didn’t kill the old guy, who did?”
Dzekas stared out out at the subway platform. “I’ll tell you what I think happened,” he finally said. “See, you gotta understand, Pelios comes from a different time. A previous administration, you might say, and you gotta remember that when you’re trying to figure out what he’s thinking. Guys nowadays, they get arrested, okay, they’re singing La Boheme before the cops get the cuffs on, almost. Everybody wants to be gangsta but nobody wants to go to jail. They can’t wait to sell out alla their friends so as to stay out of trouble. Pelios, he was never like that. I never thought he wanted to be gangsta to begin with, he just wound up with us because he didn’t have no place else to go. When he was eighteen, okay, he’s driving the old man out to see his girlfriend, car had a tail light out or something. Something stupid like that. Long story short, they get pulled over, the cops find a pistol under the driver’s seat. Pelios takes one look at Gaitanis, tells the cops, ‘Hey, it’s my gun.’ He winds up doing a year and a half upstate.” Dzekas looked at the two boys. “But I tell you what, I know the kid didn’t have no gun. But the old man, he was known to carry a piece now and then, up until that time you couldn’t tell him no different, he thought he was Superman and nobody could touch him.”
“So if it wasn’t his gun,” Pete said, “then how come...”
“How come he went away for it? That’s what I’m trying to tell you. He’s old school. The old man was the boss, Pelios worked for him, took the man’s money, so he stepped up and took the fall. Of course, nobody said nothing, but that’s the way it was. Old man treated him like a hero after he got out. Threw him a big party. Pelios walks through the door, right, Gaitanis jumps up, yells ‘My son!’ as loud as he can, like he’s Moses or something. Did Moses have any kids? Maybe it was one of those other guys, Abraham or whatever, but you catch my drift.”
“Well, if he didn’t shoot Gaitanis, who did?”
“I’m getting to that. See, there’s a long list of guys who wouldn’t have minded putting Costas cold in the ground, and a couple of women, too. Gaitanis had some enemies, you can believe that. But the person who hated him the most was his daughter.”
Cheo scowled at Dzekas. “What’d he do to her?”
“Well, I don’t quite know how to explain that to a couple of upstanding young gents such as yourselves, who ain’t done nobody dirty in their whole lives, yet.” He fell silent for a moment or two, considering. “Okay, see, Costas already had a wife and son, lived right there in his house in Astoria. No daughter. But he had a girlfriend, too, you know what I mean, and she wasn’t no spring chicken herself on account of they were together for such a long time. And she lived in that apartment building in Douglaston, which Gaitanis owned, which they found him dead inside of, with a bullet in his head. And she had a daughter, girl was about seventeen at the time.”
“She was his daughter?” Pete said. “He was her father?”
“Ah well, you know, who could say for sure? She didn’t look much like him but she was just about as mean as he was. Way better looking, though. And he wasn’t no kind of father, not to her, not to his son neither, matter of fact, but he wouldn’t give the girl the sweat off his, ah, you know, brow. Walked away and let her raise her own self. You know what I mean?”
“Yeah.” Cheo and Pete both said it together.
“So anyhow, we all figured she was his. Because for a buck she’d cut your liver out with her nail file and for another dollar she’d cook it and eat it.”
“She don’t need a nail file,” Cheo said. “She carries a little silver knife.”
“That’s her,” Pete said, going pale. “Out there someplace, looking for us.” He pointed out through the bathroom door. “You think she did it.”
Dzekas shrugged. “Well, I wouldn’t bet my life on it, but if I was a cop and it was my job to find out, she’da been doing the hot squats, I can promise you that. But the point of all this is, Pelios was in love with her. And last time I seen him, he sounded like he still was.”
“You’re kidding me.” Cheo sounded disgusted.
“Not a bit. Mad, crazy, out of his mind, fall down on his knees in love.”
“So you think she capped her own father, and then Pelios took the fall for her,” Cheo said.
“Bingo,” Dzekas said. “Now, in regards to our present predicament, there’s two things you got to remember. One, prison changes you. It ages you something terrible. Turns you into somebody your mother wouldn’t recognize. That first time, before he went away for the gun, he maybe coulda been almost anything he put his mind to. Coulda been a lawyer or a doctor, coulda went into business, he was plenty smart enough. Coulda played quarterback for the Giants, maybe. The Jets, for sure. But when he come out a year and a half later, he might of looked twenty-one but inside he was closer to fifty. He didn’t have no future, not like before. The world was a smaller place. Alls he could be was what he already was.”
“A bad guy,” Pete said.
“You could say that. And when he went away the second time, he did twelve years. Imagine what he’s got left now.” Dzekas shook his head. “You wanna be something, you know what I’m saying, you want a shot at being regular, you gotta stay outa jail, I don’t give a damn how smart you are.”
“What’s the other thing we need to remember?”
“He’s still nuts for Tasya,” Dzekas said. “He still can’t think right about her. He’s still waiting for her to love him back.”
“Sounds like he’s got a long wait,” Pete said.
“Yeah, you might know that, and I know it for sure, but you can’t talk to a guy when he’s in that condition. He hasta find out for himself. Some guys never find out.” He peered out through the crack in the door again. “They’re coming. We still got a minute or two.” He turned, looked over his shoulder in the direction of the bathroom’s other occupant. Then he turned his hawkish glare at Cheo and Pete, held a finger up to his lips.
Cheo and Pete both nodded.
Dzekas walked swiftly to the rearmost stall. “I’m gonna say this to you one last time,” he snarled at the guy in the stall. “You make one goddam sound and I swear by all that’s holy I will cut your tongue out. I will have it in my pocket when I leave here, I don’t give a damn what else happens. You understand me?”
The man’s response was understandably silent but apparently Dzekas was satisfied with it because he turned his back on the stall and made his way back to the bathroom doorway. He opened the door again, just the tiniest of cracks, and looked out. He glanced once at Cheo and Pete. “Listen, guys, I don’t know whether or not they’ll look in here, but I’m gonna brace myself against the door anyhow, just in case. Okay? So don’t make a peep. Everybody stays quiet, pray Jesus the good Lord willing we’ll sneak through this all in okay shape. Got it?”
“Yeah,” Pete said.
Cheo was confused. “If all that stuff you said is true,” he said, trying to keep his voice down, “What the hell are you doing in here with us?”
Dzekas bared his teeth in a crocodile smile. “Hell is the word, my brother. ‘Though your sins be as scarlet,’ the good book says so and mine are redder than a baboon’s ass but Jesus loves me all the same. Quiet now, I promise you I’ll tell you everything just as soon as we get clear of this goddam sewer.”
Someone came and rattled the doorknob a few minutes later but the door might as well have been bolted shut, Dzekas had his entire body jammed up against it. Five more minutes passed, Dzekas had veins popping out on his neck before he finally eased off the pressure. He cracked the door open and peered out. “Don’t see nobody looking,” he said. “My brothers. Beware of Greeks bearing gifts. Anybody give one of you two something in the last week or so?”
“Pelios,” Cheo said. Pete looked at him in horror.
Dzekas’ eyes narrowed when he heard the name. “You seen him, then. And what did he give you?”
“Curve ball,” Cheo said.
Dzekas exhaled, and so did Pete. “Well I’m sure that was very kind of him, but I had in mind something of a more temporal nature, something you might hold in your hands, like, say, a pair of sneakers.”
“The phone,” Pete said.
“Oh, yeah,” Cheo said, and he pulled it out.
“Pelios gave you this?”
“No,” Cheo said. “The cops.”
Dzekas took it, flipped it open, then turned it over and popped the battery off. “Okay,” he said, relieved. “That’s how they’re doing it.”
“Doing what?”
“Following you.” He showed the two of them the phone, still missing its battery. There was a white strip stuck to the inside, underneath where the battery went. “That white thing right there is some kind of a beacon. Bet on it.”
“Flush it down the toilet,” Cheo said.
“That’s one option,” Dzekas said. “But I think we might be better served if I was to go slip it into someone else’s pocket. Someone waiting for a Bronx-bound train, say. But I don’t want to leave you two in here with that...” He took a step in the direction of the man in the stall.
“Noo...” Pete said. “Leave him alone. Come on, man, he stayed quiet, like you said.”
Dzekas stood suspended between murder and mercy. “So be it,” he finally said. “I s’pose the bastard’s recompense is the good Lord’s business and none of my own anyhow. Let’s go.”
CHAPTER 8
Another train rattled into the station as the three of them made their way down the platform. After it departed, all of the people who’d gotten off took the stairs up and out. Dzekas led Cheo and Pete down to the very end of the platform, where they vaulted a small gate and went down some blackened stairs and a few yards into the darkness of the tunnel. There was a small alcove there with room enough for the two boys to stand. “You guys okay here?” Dzekas said.
“Yeah,” Cheo said.
“Good. Don’t move, now, and don’t touch nothing. There might be another train along before I get back, this might take a few minutes, but if you stand still you won’t get squished. Or ‘lectrocuted. Okay?”
“Yeah. Does that lady chasing after us know who you are? If she sees you, will she recognize you?”
“Not a chance,” Dzekas said.
“How come?”
“Because when the good Lord changed my heart, he changed my face, too. Be cool, my brothers, and I’ll be right back.”
They watched him go. “We gonna run?” Cheo asked Pete.
“I dunno. What do you think?”
“I think the guy is wack.”
“Yeah, me, too. But...”
“Yeah, I know what you mean. He might be crazy but I think he’s for real. Did you see his face when I said Pelios’ name?”
“Yeah,” Pete said, sounding shaky. “I thought you was gonna tell him about the key. I tell you what, let’s wait for him to come back, okay, and we’ll listen to the rest of his story. We can always take off later if we have to. I mean, he sure took care of that nutbag in the bathroom.”
“That make him a good guy?” Cheo said.
“I dunno. Hard to tell, ain’t it?”
“Yeah. We should have a ‘run’ signal.”
Pete nodded. “Curve ball,” he said, holding down two fingers. “That’s the sign. Curve ball we run, fastball we stay.”
“Hssst!” It was him, it was Dzekas, he was back, but the change in his appearance was startling. He had a pair of shades perched high on his forehead, and the bathrobe was gone. In its place was a black polo shirt that proclaimed how much the wearer hearted New York. “Come on, youse two, let’s go,” he said.
Cheo and Pete, both glad to get out of the black tunnel, clambered up to join him on the platform. “They leave?” Cheo asked Dzekas. “What happened to your bathrobe?”
“Trashed it,” Dzekas said, grinning. “They’re selling these up to the newsstand. Fetching, don’t you think?”
“Cool,” Cheo said. They headed for the stairs to get out.
“Listen,” Dzekas said. “They didn’t see me before. Not really. All they seen was some old wino. Another lost soul, that’s all. And they won’t see me in this neither, they’ll just see another dipshit tourist. People mostly see what they wanna see. Only God sees who you really are. And yeah, they’re gone, I think, but you can’t be sure. I stuck that phone inside some lady’s baby carriage, so most of them are gonna be following her back up to The Bronx, but if it was me, I’d leave someone behind to watch. See if we come out after they go.”
Pete stopped. “Then shouldn’t we wait?”
“Nah. See, them Greeks and those two cops, they seem be working together but don’t none of them trust each other. And there’s one Black guy with them, I don’t know who he is but if I was him I wouldn’t trust a one of them. So even if it would be smart for one of them to stay behind and watch, none of them wants to do it for fear of being cut out of whatever kind of deal they made with each other. You guys hungry? I’m starving.”
“We don’t got money for breakfast,” Cheo told him.
“Money ain’t the problem,” Dzekas told him. “Don’t worry, I got you.”
“You ain’t a bum?” Pete asked him.
“Didn’t say that,” Dzekas said. “But I’m buying breakfast.”
He got them a table in the window of a small coffee shop. His eyes scanned the crowds going by on Lexington Avenue.
“So you saw Pelios,” Cheo said. “You talked to him after he got out.”
Dzekas nodded. “I did him a solid, I guess. Got him out of a tough spot.”
“So how come you’re not with them any more?” Pete said. “Tasya and them guys.”
“I made it too hard for God to get my attention,” Dzekas said.
“What?” Cheo said.
Dzekas looked at Cheo. “I know you ain’t a believer,” he said. “Not yet. That’s all right, you’re a smart kid, you’ll catch on. But the fact is, God was giving me signs. You know, messages. He was trying to make me see that the way I was living was not what he wanted for me, but I didn’t want to hear him. I had it too good, I thought, I had money, I had cars, I had women, I had everything. So what if I hadda hack off a couple toes here and there? So I closed up my ears and I pretended I didn’t hear nothing. I don’t think God was too happy when I done that. Same thing happen to Jonah, you know. God sent him to Nineveh, Jonah didn’t wanna go, look what happened to him, dude got swallowed down by a whale. You don’t mess with the man, you hear what I’m saying?”
Pete and Cheo exchanged a look. “You think that really happened?”
“I ain’t sure,” Dzekas said. “The whale part is tough to buy, I know, but one thing is for certain, God kicked Jonah’s bony ass all the way to Nineveh whether he wanted to go there or not.”
“You didn’t get swallowed by a whale.”
“No, no I didn’t. I pushed my luck too far, though, I promise you that, and I got my butt kicked for it.”
“What do you mean?” Pete said.
“Came a day, I knew I had to choose. Either I was to listen to what the good lord was trying to tell me, or I was to keep on the way I was, and pay the price. Well, I chose wrong, I kept on. And I’m paying the price.”
“Kept on what?” Pete said.
Dzekas sighed. “We owned the baggage handlers out to the airports,” he said. “If you wanted to get something into the country without anybody asking no questions about it, you came to us, we got it in for you. For a percentage, you understand.”
“Drugs,” Cheo said.
Dzekas shrugged. “Whatever. Didn’t matter to us. You got it on the plane, we got it off. All the baggage handlers and cargo guys were on the payroll. You couldn’t get a job out there unless you was with us. So one day, one of the guys on the baggage crew dies. Which happens. In this particular case, his wife caught him fooling around, he had the poor judgement to be married to a Greek woman and she stuck him with a kitchen knife and that were the end of him. So now we got an open slot. We’re wondering who we could use, you know, because it has to be someone we can trust. We finally settle on this one guy, he’s a kid from the neighborhood. He’s not a bad kid, smokes a little weed now and then but who don’t, you know, but he ain’t no doper or nothing like that. His mother used to be a party girl back in the day, a lot of us knew her pretty well, you know what I’m saying. We used to joke about it, ‘hey, he’s got your nose, he’s got to be your kid,‘ stuff like that. So we put him on.
