Warren Murphy: Mafia Fix

Cynthia Hansen lived alone in a six-room apartment on the top floor of an eight-story apartment building that was one of the city's best. It still had a doorman and it had an elevator that worked, which was rare in Hudson, and the garbage had been allowed to lay uncollected in the cellar only once-until Cynthia Hansen had unleashed a flood of city inspectors on the property, papering everyone with summonses, until the owner who lived in Great Neck decided to do something about the garbage.

But the rooms were maze-like, seemingly unconnected, as if they were designed by a drunken architect, and in his first five minutes in the apartment, Remo made three wrong turns looking for the bathroom.

Cynthia's refrigerator was well-stocked, but they decided to dine on salami and cheese. Remo would not let her slice either with a knife, but instead tore off hunks for both of them.

And Remo had her in the kitchen while she was putting food onto a tray; he had her on the parquet floor of the living room which was cold against her back and his knees among the salami skins and cheese rinds; then he had her in the shower where they lovingly lathered each other's bodies and used each other as washclothes. From kitchen to living room to shower, it was one of the great displays of coitus interruptus and then Remo made it non-interrupts as he finished shagging her on the hard, unyielding mattress of the four poster bed in her enormous bedroom, with the blue velvet-striped wallpaper on one wall.

Afterwards, they lay naked, side by side, on top of the blue velvet spread and Remo decided that since he seemed intent on screwing his brains out, he might as well bust training all the way, so he joined Cynthia Hansen in a cigarette and made a mental note to buy spearmint gum on the way back to New York so Chiun would not smell the smoke on his breath.

"Ever think about going into government?" Cynthia Hansen said to him, and blew smoke rings toward the ceiling, then handed the cigarette across her body to Remo.

"Ever since I've met you, I've done nothing but go into government," Remo said

"I think I could find something good for you," she said. "What do you make at that stupid magazine anyway?"

"Good year, I might do eight, nine thousand."

"I can get you eighteen and you don't even have to show up."

"To be the royal stud?"

"To work for me. On whatever I ask you to do."

"Sorry. I don't believe in working for women. It's degrading."

"You're a male chauvinist pig," Cynthia Hansen said. "I really wish you'd think about it. There's not much future in what you're doing now."

"Which is?"

"Which appears to be walking around, insulting people, causing trouble and getting people very upset."

"It's my nature," Remo said, and tried to blow a smoke ring but failed abysmally. Annoyed, he stubbed out the cigarette in an ashtray on an end table next to the bed, then, absently, picked up a small photo in a golden gilt frame.

"Your mother" Remo asked, holding the picture of a smiling couple up in front of Cynthia.

"Yes. And my father."

"She's a good looking woman. You've got her face," he said, and he really meant it because Mayor Craig Hansen, the other person in the picture, was handsome, insipid and characterless. His face had all the distinction of a phonograph record.

"I know," Cynthia said. "People always tell me I look like my mother."

Remo put the picture back. She lit another cigarette, they smoked it and she again offered him a job at City Hall. "Do you think you can buy me off, you insidious heroin peddler, you?" he asked, and then he was getting dressed, because it was dark outside and it was time to go back to see Chiun. Cynthia stayed him, offering him a job for a third time which he refused for a third time. Then he held her bare butt in his hands, and told her he would see her tomorrow, and Cynthia Hansen allowed herself to fear that he would never see her or anyone else again. But she was wrong.

Gaetano Gasso's silver crochet needle flashed back and forth. He stared intently at the doily he was working on. He was trying a new stitch and it was difficult to pick up the correct thread each time. He had done it wrong three times now and he was beginning to lose his temper. And when Gaetano Gasso lost his temper, people had reason to worry.

He sat alone at a bare desk in the corner of a mammoth warehouse, a warehouse that was stark empty except for one automobile. It was Gasso's automobile, a 1968 Chevrolet sedan that once was a police car. He had purchased it at an auction for city cars and got it for $5 when the junk dealers who normally bought such cars for $25 all developed serious cases of lockjaw. For another $10 he had had it tuned up at a good garage he knew on Paterson Plankroad in Secaucus; for $10 he had two kids paint it yellow; and for 25 bucks he had himself good dependable wheels. It was good to have a friend in city hall.

It was no use. He could not concentrate on the doily. It was that writer. That smart-ass writer. Well, tonight he would take care of that smart-ass writer, and he allowed himself a smile at the prospect. First he would work him over, find out what he was really doing in town and what had happened to The Duck and O'Boyle and Pops, then he would kill him. He looked forward to the prospect and he rubbed his big hands together. Then he could get that stitch right. Crocheting took concentration. That Remo Barry would pay the price for disturbing Gaetano Gasso's concentration.

A steel door at the front of the warehouse opened and Willie the Plumber Palumbo stuck his head in reluctantly and called, "Mister Gasso? Mister Gasso?"

Gasso stood up behind the desk in the corner. The Plumber saw him and said loudly, "We got him for you, Mr. Gasso. We got him." Then Willie the Plumber walked into the warehouse, followed by a medium-tall, medium-husky stranger, who was followed by Steve Lillisio who had a gun poked into the stranger's back.

Willie the Plumber let the two men walk in front of him, locked the door behind them, then hurried to get back in front of the procession. He smiled as he neared Gasso, who had moved alongside the desk, and hoped to coax a smile in return. Nothing.

"We got him, Mr. Gasso. We got him. Real easy. Just picked him right up off the street. We got him for you."

Gasso ignored him. Willie coughed. Something came up into his mouth, but he wasn't sure of Mr. Gasso's position on spitting so he swallowed it.

Gasso was looking at the man in the middle. Remo Barry. He didn't look like enough to cause all this trouble. Remo Barry, meanwhile, was looking around him at the warehouse, all around-at the ceilings, at the floors, at the walls. Finally he turned his head to Gasso.

"How you want to die?" Gasso asked.

"What do I want to die for? But I'll tell you, you keep sneaking up on me like that and I'll die of shock. You're enough to scare somebody to death. How do you get that hair to grow all over you? Some kind of plant food, right? Huh?"

Willie the Plumber Palumbo and Steve Lillisio stood there silently. It was not nice to talk that way to Mr. Gasso. They hoped he would tell them to go. They did not want to be there to see what was going to happen to this writer.

The writer was still talking. "Does the Museum of Natural History know you're here? I mean, it's just not right to keep Margaret Mead out of this. The last time anybody found something like you, it was in a cave. How come you don't have hair on your teeth? I saw something in a display case once that looked like you and I would have sworn it had hair on its teeth."

Mr. Gasso was going to talk. His mouth was moving and Willie the Plumber Palumbo hoped that he would say, "Okay, Willie the Plumber. Go home. You did a good job, now go home and leave me alone with this creep." But Mr. Gasso talked to the writer instead. "I asked you how you want to die?"