Ed McBain - Another Part of the City

“Sure,” Reardon said.

“He was short, the bank wouldn’t let him have another nickel. They’re charging interest almost as high as us these days, the banks. Can you believe it?”

“Who’s us?” Reardon said.

Bobby shrugged again.

“This is a homicide we’re talking here,” Reardon said.

“So what do you want from me, your homicide?” Bobby said. “I’m a businessman. We lent the guy some bread, he knew what the interest rate was, he knew when the payments were due.”

“What was the interest rate?”

“Does Macy’s tell Gimbels?”

“When were the payments due?”

“Every Thursday. Today’s Thursday.”

“When did he make the last payment?”

“Last Thursday. When it was due.”

“You’re sure he paid you, huh?”

“I’m sure.”

“You’re sure you didn’t go in there with a little muscle Monday night...”

“Positive.”

“Who did?”

“You got me, pal.”

Reardon sighed. “Okay,” he said, “stay away from the D’Annunzio family. Your interest’ll wait.”

“No, it won’t,” Bobby said. “This ain’t in my hands.”

“Whose hands is it in?”

Bobby shrugged.

“You still working for Sallie Fortunato?”

“Who says I ever worked for him?” Bobby said.

“Come on, Bobby, cut the shit.”

“That’s news to me. my working for Sallie.”

“Next time you talk to him,” Reardon said, “which should be about three minutes after I walk out of here, tell him I’ll be stopping by.”

“I don’t even know his number,” Bobby said.

“Send a carrier pigeon.”

“Besides,” Bobby said, smiling, “who wants your truck outside listening?”

Salvatore Luigi Fortunato’s B-sheet gave his age as sixty-four years old, his place of birth as Palermo, Sicily, and his various aliases as “Sallie,” “Salvie,” “Big Lou,” and “The Accountant.” He had done time only once, shortly after arriving in America, for Second-Degree Arson, presently defined as “intentionally damaging a building by starting a fire or causing an explosion,” a Class-C felony for which he’d been sentenced to three years in prison, a year of which he’d served at Ossining before being paroled. He had managed to escape confinement since, presumably because he was connected with the mob, and could freely call upon their legal talent. Paunchy and graying, wearing a blue suit, a white shirt, black shoes, a dark blue tie, and rimless eyeglasses — which indeed made him resemble an accountant — he sat behind his desk in the small office at the rear of the Angela Cara pastry shop on Grand Street, and said, “Yes, I okayed the loan. So what?”

Two of his goons were in attendance. One of them was cleaning his nails with a toothpick. Reardon figured he’d seen this in a movie someplace. The other one was reading a copy of Penthouse magazine. Both of them feigned enormous indifference to the conversation.

“He came to you personally?” Reardon asked.

“No, no, he went to Bobby. Bobby called me, I said okay. It was peanuts, what’s the big deal?”

“The big deal is he was killed.”

“I’m going to give you a lesson in economics.” Fortunato said. “You listening?”

“I’m listening.”

“Dead men can’t pay what they owe you.”

“Is that the lesson?”

“It’s the best lesson you’ll ever learn.”

“Thanks. But accidents sometimes happen.”

“No. Reardon. Accidents don’t happen accidentally. They only happen if they’re supposed to happen. How long you been a cop? I have to tell you this?”

“Ralph D’Annunzio was killed, Sallie.”

“None of my people killed him. Not accidentally or otherwise.”

“Suppose. Sallie... I’m just supposing now.”

“Sure, go ahead, suppose.”

“Suppose D’Annunzio wasn’t meeting his interest payments...”

“You’re already supposing wrong. He made the loan, what, a month ago? Sometime around Thanksgiving, it musta been, is that a month? Whenever. The point is, he’s been meeting all the interest payments. So why would...?”

“I have only Bobby’s word for that.”

“And mine.”

“What if somebody went in there to collect, Sallie, and faked a robbery so it’d look like...”

“With me in the place? They’d have to be out of their minds.”

Reardon looked at him.

“What are you saying?”

“I was there Monday night. I was sitting there eating when those punks came in.” He indicated the goon reading Penthouse. “Jerry here wanted to bust it up, I told him to cool it. That’s all I need, interfering with a stickup. You guys’d figure I was the one masterminded it.”

“But you weren’t, huh?”

“Come on, Reardon, why would I bother? For a lousy seventy-five hundred? When the man is meeting his payments? Come on.” He sighed heavily, shook his head as though exasperated by the dullness of his student. “Anyway, I liked the guy,” he said. “I been eating there ever since it opened. Nice clean place, good food.” He smiled broadly. “I hate to eat places the Mafia goes, you never know when somebody’s gonna start shooting.”

“If you liked him so much, call off your dogs.”

“Sure, I’ll tell Bobby to cool it for a while. We can’t forget the loan, Reardon, that’s business. But respect for the dead is another thing. We’ll give the family a little breathing space.”

“Thanks,” Reardon said.

“And you call off your dogs, okay? My people had nothing to do with this, I promise you.”

“What’d these guys look like, Sallie? You were there, you saw the shooting...”

“Two of them with ski masks. Kinda slight of build. You checked the Chinese community? I wouldn’t be surprised this was one of the Chinese gangs. Them Chinese punks need a swift kick in the ass.”

“If you should hear anything, I’d appreciate your letting me know,” Reardon said.

“Oh, sure,” Fortunato said, his grin contradicting his words. “You’ll be the first to know.”

Reardon came out of the pastry shop, and walked to where he’d parked the unmarked sedan at the curb. He looked at his watch. Almost six o’clock. He was starting the car when the walkie-talkie on the seat erupted with the dispatcher’s excited voice.

“Five P.D., all cars! Five P.D., all cars! Ten-thirteen on Rivington and Forsyth! Ten-thirteen on Rivington and Forsyth!”

Reardon picked up the walkie-talkie.

“Four-oh-three,” he said.

“Go ahead, Bry.”

“Who’s the officer, do you know?”

“Chick Hoffman,” the dispatcher said.

Rivington and Forsyth was in the extreme northeast corner of the precinct — walk two blocks uptown, cross Houston Street, and you were in the Ninth, which was no joyride. Everything down here overlapped, not only the precincts. Reardon sometimes thought of the city, especially this part of the city, as a jigsaw puzzle with interlocking pieces — the Village spilling over into Lower Broadway and Little Italy; Little Italy running into the Bowery and Chinatown; the Bowery becoming the Lower East Side; Chinatown and Lower Broadway becoming Whitehall and Wall Street — a puzzle that remained a puzzle even when all the pieces were in place. Here on Rivington and Forsyth, this particular piece of the puzzle was now Hispanic, although an abandoned synagogue up the street had been organized in 1886 and erected in 1903.

The dispatcher had specified only Rivington and Forsyth, no address. A red brick building dominated one corner, the gold-lettered sign over its entrance arches identifying it as the N.Y.C. Adult Training Center. An empty lot was on the corner opposite, strewn with rubble and surrounded by a cyclone fence. Alongside this was a five-story tenement, the address over its door obliterated by spray paint. A Spanish “social club” now occupied what had been street-level stores flanking the entrance to the building. It was very cold there on Rivington and Forsyth at a little past six P.M. but the streets were thronged with citizens — the circus was in town. The circus consisted of an Emergency Service van and a dozen or more patrol cars angled into the curb. Most of the uniformed cops were crouched behind the protective cover of the cars or the van; all of them had pistols in their hands. The Emergency Service cops — big fuckin’ volunteer heroes — were casually strapping on ceramic vests. Reardon got out of the car, and walked over to a heavy-breathing, red-faced sergeant.