Sammy two shoes, p.17
Sammy Two Shoes, page 17
‘Gas doesn’t smell?’
He shook his head. ‘They added it after some school in Texas blew up in 1937. And I got a big supply in aerosol cans. You spray a couple of cans like this around, and everybody panics.’
‘So how many of the guys I just saw outside Tanner’s building were yours?’
He sat back. ‘That’s the beauty. Me and ten other guys pulled this off. The rest were legit cops and firefighters. Once you get a panic about a gas leak, it kind of takes on a life of its own.’
‘Funny.’ I sat back. ‘That seems to be the story of my visit to the city in general: kind of taken on a life of its own.’
‘You haven’t answered my question,’ Lonnie insisted. ‘Did our gag work out for you or not?’
I stared at the tape recorder. ‘The thing is, we’re up to four people now. Four people who killed Emory Brewster. And only one of them meant to do it. The other three didn’t really know what they were doing.’
‘I don’t understand.’ Lonnie sighed.
‘I don’t either, Lonnie,’ I admitted. ‘What am I supposed to do now?’
TWENTY-FIVE
I took the tape recorder back to Ralph. He was surprised to see me.
‘You didn’t die!’ he said.
‘Not for lack of trying,’ I answered. ‘Can you transfer what’s on the tape to a cassette? Without listening to it.’
I was standing in his doorway. He was dressed in a tux. A red tux with a pale pink shirt and bow tie. I was just too tired to ask him about it.
He leaned close to me. ‘Is there something dirty on it?’
‘I don’t want you to be an accessory,’ I said wearily. ‘In case the cops ask.’
‘Oh,’ he said quickly. ‘Right. Well. Come on in. I’ve only got about twenty minutes before I have to go, but I think I can pull this off if the tape’s not too long.’
‘It’s not.’
He took the recorder out of my hand. I followed him into his place. It looked a little tidied up since the previous visit. Again, I didn’t care to ask.
He busied himself at a console of some kind. I sat down on a piano bench and leaned my back against the wall.
After a couple of minutes he piped up.
‘OK. I’ll have a cassette in a jiffy. High-speed dupe. You’re not going to ask me about this ridiculous monkey suit?’
‘That suit is an insult to monkeys everywhere,’ I assured him. ‘And isn’t it kind of hot for a tux? I don’t remember New York being this hot.’
‘It’s summer.’ He shrugged. ‘I got opening night tickets for Godspell at the Broadhurst! That’s what the suit is for.’
‘What is Godspell?’ I asked.
‘What’s Godspell?’ He seemed insulted. ‘It’s only the best musical about Jesus ever. I saw the original production in ’seventy-one at La Mama. But this is Broadway, baby. Broadway tonight!’
My knowledge of musicals about Jesus was slim, so I was disinclined to comment.
‘Aren’t you going to ask me how I got tickets to a Broadway opening?’ he went on.
I sipped a breath. ‘How did you get tickets to a Broadway opening, Ralph?’
‘I know the stage manager!’ he was delighted to tell me.
I took a second. Then, ‘Stage manager. Really.’
‘You know, the stage manager runs the whole thing,’ he told me absently, fussing with his console. ‘Knows everything that goes on in the show. Like, everything. You would not believe the gossip.’
‘Gossip.’
‘You know.’ He clicked something and the console went quiet. ‘Who’s dating who, who hates who, who’s got the best coke.’
I sat up. ‘Right. I heard that about stage managers. They know everything.’
‘Oh, they do.’ He leaned forward and plucked a cassette tape from in front of him; held it out to me. ‘Here you go.’
‘Maybe you should erase the original,’ I suggested, ‘and hide your spy tape recorder away for a while. Just in case.’
‘This is the Tanner Brookmeyer thing? Is he on this tape?’
I nodded.
Ralph went right to work. ‘I’ll erase the tape and then burn it.’
I turned toward the door. ‘You know, I heard Phil Ochs at Newport. I think it was 1963. He was fantastic.’
‘Tell Spider I said hello, right?’
I put the tape in my pocket and nodded. ‘Have fun at Godspell.’
He didn’t answer me because he had already dished up a quarter of a teaspoonful of coke and was just about to enjoy it.
Helen Baker listened three times in a row to the cassette I’d brought her. Without comment. Because I didn’t want anyone else in her crowded office to hear, I’d told her to listen to it with headphones. It took half an hour to find some. My hangover hadn’t gotten any better, and I was just starting to realize that I needed food.
I was sitting in an uncomfortable metal chair beside her desk, distracted by all kinds of activity in the office. She finally took off the phones.
‘“I gave bad coke to Nan to give to Emory.” That’s all he says.’ She bit her upper lip. ‘I mean, I can certainly bring the guy in for questioning, but there’s more on this tape to incriminate you than Tanner.’
‘Me?’
‘You confess to destroying the very evidence that would substantiate Tanner’s culpability.’
‘You mean I broke Emory’s mirror,’ I said, ‘and then it got thrown away.’
‘Yes.’ She shook her head. ‘I can’t go to a judge with this.’
‘Did you check Emory’s body for strychnine?’
She nodded. ‘I haven’t heard back yet.’
‘The strychnine was in the coke,’ I told her. ‘Get a really smart doctor to prove that it was the strychnine that killed her, not the cyanide or the pencil in her neck.’
‘That might not be the case, Sherlock,’ Helen demurred. ‘Might have been a ridiculous combination of everything. I mean, just how many people wanted to kill this Emory?’
‘All of them,’ I said. ‘Far as I can tell.’
‘OK.’ She slumped down in her chair; she was exhausted. ‘You still have to bring in Sammy. Where is he now? Because I know he’s not at your mother’s apartment.’
‘The cops went there,’ I surmised.
‘Yes.’
‘But they didn’t find anything.’ I was sure of that. ‘Not even blood or bullet holes.’
‘Right,’ she agreed. ‘How did they manage that, your mother and your aunt?’
‘Practice.’ I stood up. ‘So are you telling me I risked my life and pulled in a huge favor to get that tape, and it doesn’t do any good?’
‘I don’t know how evidence works in Florida,’ she snapped. ‘But here in the big city …’
She trailed off because she saw the look on my face.
‘OK, OK,’ I said. ‘I have to eat. Then I’ll go get Sammy. Then I’ll decide what I want to do next.’
I knew she wanted to say something else; I could tell from her expression. But I got out of her office before she could verbalize. And before I lost my temper.
Sure, I thought to myself when I was out on the sidewalk, the concept of evidence in the strictest courtroom sense might have been a little fuzzier in Fry’s Bay, Florida than it was in New York City. But I’d just about cooked my bacon to get the goods on Tanner, and in my opinion, the goods were gotten.
And, sure, I was hungover, hungry, and hapless, so my opinion might not have been completely informed. But the idea that I’d busted into the lion’s den – nearly got killed, and narrowly escaped – for nothing, it didn’t sit well. It didn’t sit well at all.
I knew that I should go back to the YMCA and check on Sammy. Having bullets taken out of you is no joke. But I also knew that if I didn’t get something in my stomach and start to think straight, the rest of the day was going to go about as well as my visit to Helen Baker’s office.
So I looked up and down the block. Two diners, an Italian place, and a hot dog cart in the street. For me, penne with vodka was the perfect hangover cure, so I headed for Vittorio’s, which described itself on the sign as real Italian food. I had to tip the waiter a ridiculous amount of money to talk the chef into penne with vodka, but when it came it was worth it. And it was gone in less time than it took to ask for it.
Now, the secret to really good penne with vodka, to me, was always in the tomato sauce. Can’t be from a can. You have to make it with fresh tomatoes, fresh basil, a little Chianti, and a lot of garlic. The vodka’s essential, but not the star. The star was the sauce. And that was exactly how the chef had made it.
In short, I tipped again, bigger than before, and left Vittorio’s singing. Actually humming under my breath. I was thinking of the old Glenn Miller number ‘Elmer’s Tune’ and I didn’t know why. ‘What makes a gander meander in search of a goose?’ That’s what they wanted to know in the version of the song that was playing in my head.
I was stepping off the curb to flag a cab when I realized that the B part of the song was, ‘Listen, listen, there’s a lot you’re liable to be missin’.’
The cab stopped in front of me about the time I realized that the song was a telegram from my subconscious. But what had I missed?
I settled into the cab and mumbled something about the Greenpoint YMCA. Then I spent the rest of the trip trying to remember everything about my conversation with Tanner. I got stuck on the moment when Tanner was really agitated about Sammy and just on the verge of telling me why he was so irate when Howard the butler had come in with the croissants I never got to taste.
Was that what I was missing? Something about Tanner’s rage toward Sammy?
If Tanner had been telling the truth about not really wanting to kill Emory, not really caring about her at all, then why had he given the poisoned coke to Nan to give to Emory? And was that connected to his feelings about Sammy? Was Sammy still hiding something from me?
But the cab was in Brooklyn by the time it came to me that I could ask Sammy about that.
The room at the Y was dark. I didn’t want to disturb Sammy’s sleep, so I came in quietly and didn’t turn on the lights. I only took two steps into the little room before I heard a very distinct clicking sound. Like, maybe, somebody clicking the safety off a gun.
Then the lamp by the bed came on, and there was Sammy, sitting up, wincing, and pointing his Colt at me.
He blinked, then sat back. ‘Oh.’
‘How’re you feeling?’ I asked him.
‘Like somebody took to my chest with a jack hammer,’ he told me. ‘But the bleeding seems to have stopped for the most part.’
‘That’s good news.’ I sat down at the desk. The note I’d left for Sammy was undisturbed.
‘Where you been?’ he asked me softly.
‘I had a whole thing,’ I hedged. ‘Then I went to see Phoebe’s lawyer.’
He was having trouble keeping his eyes open. ‘Is she out of jail?’
‘Not yet,’ I had to say. ‘But can you talk for just a minute?
‘Sure.’ But the eyes closed.
Sammy was on his side. His suit was significantly the worse for wear. His face was contorted. I knew he was in pain.
The bed was one of those metal jobs. The headboard and foot were the same, and a bare mattress, we hadn’t bothered with the sheets. As a kid I’d been in jail cells that were jollier.
‘Why does Tanner hate you, Sam?’ I asked.
That opened his eyes. ‘There’s a question.’
‘You’ve got an answer?’
A long breath and a bit of adjustment on the bed, and he told me the story. ‘Why Tanner Brookmeyer Hated Sammy Two-Shoes.’
Sammy had spent a lot of his life feeling lost. He loved music, but it didn’t love him back, not in the way he thought it should. He wanted a record deal, but nobody was interested in the kind of folk blues he sang in the era of disco. He thought he loved Emory Brewster, but she only loved cocaine and the theatre. In that order. Then, when one of his best friends left New York to go live in Florida, he didn’t know what to do with himself, so he meandered into the family business, which was, in general, being a hoodlum. He’d never been sure which of his aunts was really his mother, and he’d only heard rumors about his father, a much-loved and more-feared hit man of great renown. And a man who already had a family somewhere else.
But thanks to a friend of his aunt, a woman named Shayna, he acquired a moral compass of sorts. Sammy learned from her that killing children was wrong. Killing victims of abuse was wrong. On the other hand, killing Nazis, fascists, bigots, rapists and child molesters was not only right, it was required. Sammy took to that philosophy. He believed it was his spiritual calling.
Then one day, after he’d been working for Tanner for a while, Tanner asked Sammy a question. It was a question about Shayna. Tanner asked Sammy if Shayna was available. Tanner said he had always admired her, and they were about the same age, in the same business, and went to the same Temple, when they went. Tanner said it would be a nice change from the teenagers he was used to dating.
But Sammy’s reaction was not a good one. He shoved Tanner. Then he hit Tanner. Then he went over to Shayna’s apartment where she lived with her sister and he told Shayna that Tanner was after her, but he had syphilis. Shayna said that she was afraid of Tanner, and rightly so, because Tanner was crazy.
So Sammy and Shayna planned a hit on Tanner’s primary supplier of cocaine, a little man in Atlanta who was a racist, an anti-Semite, and a Grand Dragon in the KKK.
Sammy went to Atlanta and killed the little man. When Sammy came back from Atlanta, Shayna and her sister sat Sammy down and told him that he and Foggy Moscowitz, the friend who’d gone to Florida, were half-brothers. Same father. They said that’s why Shayna had taken him under her wing. Sammy liked the idea, because he and Foggy had been brothers in arms anyway, so why shouldn’t they be brothers in fact?
But the important part of the story was that word got around: Sammy was actually the son of the famous hitman, now deceased. Word also got around that Sammy had ruined Tanner’s chances with Shayna, and that Sammy was beginning to dismantle Tanner’s network bit by bit. The problem for Tanner was that he couldn’t move against Sammy directly, because the legend of Sammy’s real father loomed large, as they say, and half the hoods in Brooklyn were suddenly watching out for Sammy the way they used to watch out for this Foggy Moscowitz in the older days.
But Tanner wasn’t the kind to let things go.
‘For what it’s worth,’ I told Sammy softly, ‘I just found out, like, hours ago that we’re brothers. I never knew.’
‘I know.’ He sighed. ‘Your mother didn’t want you to think less of your father. You know, what with his cavorting.’
‘Cavorting,’ I repeated. ‘The thing is, I never thought much about my father one way or another. I knew the legend. I never knew the person. So, not really an issue. But you and me …’
‘I don’t want it to change anything between us,’ he complained. ‘I like things the way they are. You like me. I like you. We got into scrapes when we were kids. You’re helping me now. I don’t see any percentage in singing “Michael Row the Fucking Boat Ashore” at this point, do you?’
‘I hate that song,’ I admitted.
‘Who doesn’t?’
‘You don’t even want to talk about it a little?’ I asked.
‘Maybe after we get Phoebe out of jail,’ he said. Then he added, ‘And if we are somehow able to avoid being killed by Tanner Brookmeyer. Which I wouldn’t give us odds, at this point.’
‘Yeah.’
I told Sammy what I’d done, all about going over to Tanner’s place. How I’d taken a big risk and fallen on my ass, at least according to Helen Baker.
He took it all in silently.
‘OK, yes,’ he said at length, ‘that is going to make it harder for us to stay alive. I mean, it sounds to me like it was a good idea, but Tanner tried to shoot you before it really got where you wanted it to get, right?’
‘I don’t know what that means, exactly,’ I said. ‘What I do know is that we have to get Tanner before he gets us. Because he’s coming for us.’
‘Oh, he’s coming for us,’ he agreed.
And with that he swiveled and shifted and groaned and, when he was done, he was on his feet.
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ I asked him. ‘You’re, like, barely alive.’
‘I’m going to get Tanner Brookmeyer,’ he answered, wincing. ‘Are you coming with me or not?’
‘Do I have a choice?’
‘You could always run away to Florida again,’ he mumbled, heading for the door.
TWENTY-SIX
The thing about going to war with someone like Tanner Brookmeyer is that you had to know there was no chance of winning. Not in any obvious way. Once you realized that, the next thing you had to figure out was how to keep him from winning. And winning for Tanner, in this particular instance, meant killing Sammy and me.
Sammy explained that he had been working overtime to erode Tanner’s foundation, but that was only a nuisance. Tanner could always find another coke supplier, another porn king, another rich girl. To him, one was pretty much like another.
Sammy’s real idea had been to keep Tanner busy plugging holes, distracted, so he could hit from the blindside, something Tanner would never see coming.
We were in a cab going back to Manhattan before Sammy revealed that part of his scheme.
‘Like a lot of miscreants, Tanner doesn’t like banks,’ he said softly. ‘He keeps almost all of his money in that fancy penthouse where you went. In a safe built like Fort Knox, a whole room-sized number, all the walls lined with three feet of iron. Joshua could blow his horn and the whole building could fall down but the safe would still be locked.’
I sat back in my seat. There was no point in interrupting Sammy. He’d get to the point eventually. Because I was certain it didn’t involve going to Tanner’s penthouse to crack his safe.
‘The thing is,’ Sammy went on, ‘I know a plumber.’
