“Ray Martello?”
“Yeah. When I spoke to him he was crazy mad at me for letting you get that close.”
I started noticing things about the kid’s voice. His accent was mostly flat with a bit of a nasally twang. Half the kids that Sarah went to the University of Michigan with had that same accent. I thought about what approach to take with Patrick, if that was his name. Should I play the understanding, avuncular stranger or the outraged victim? Should I play softball or hardball? I went with hardball.
“Ray’s a scary guy,” I said. “What do you want from me and why the fuck should I care? Don’t forget, kid, you’ve spent the last few weeks terrorizing my family and committing felonies.”
“I didn’t know. I swear to God I didn’t know.” His voice cracked.
“What did you think you were doing?”
“Making a movie.”
“Don’t bullshit me, kid. I’m from Brooklyn and you’re not.” I threw a high hard fastball under his chin. “You need cameras to shoot a movie. Seen any of those around lately? Maybe when you got the job you believed that movie crap, but not anymore.”
“Okay, you’re right. I’m really sorry about what I did to your wife and all, but I was in too deep to…”
I had him and it was time to start pressing my advantage.
“How did Martello get a recording of Patrick’s-?”
“If I come in, can you protect me?” His voice took on a real urgency.
“Sure.”
“You don’t sound so sure,” he said.
“You blame me for not trusting you? Why should I believe a fucking word you say?”
“I swear to God, Mr. Prager, I’ll come in. I just want to get away from this guy. He’s got a crazy temper. I thought he was going to kill me this morning.”
“That’s twice you’ve invoked God in this conversation, kid. Stop swearing to God and start giving me some proof I should trust you. Where did Martello get a tape of Patrick Maloney’s voice?”
“I don’t know. I swear to-Okay, forget that, but I really don’t know. He hasn’t let me in on any stuff that doesn’t directly involve me. I don’t even know why he hates you so much.”
“That one I have the answer to. Who’s the guy with the eye patch?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I guess he’s an old cop friend of Martello’s dad. He drives me around some of the time. That’s all I know about him. We don’t talk much.”
“All right, kid, come on in.”
“No, you have to come get me.” It was his turn to play hardball.
I thought about calling his bluff, but couldn’t afford to let him get away again. Besides, if what he was saying about Martello’s temper was accurate-I had every reason to believe it was-and he sensed the kid was ready to bolt, he would cut his losses and get rid of the hired help. Bottom line was, I needed the kid alive. Without him there was no case.
“You win. I’ll come to you.”
Silence. He was having second thoughts. He might be scared but he was also likely sacrificing the most money he’d ever made. I helped his thought process along.
“Listen, Patrick, I’ll pay you to come in and I’ll do my best to shield you from the cops.”
“Twenty grand.”
“That means he’s paying you ten, some of which you’ve already received. Five,” I said, “and I’ll have it with me when I pick you up. If you help me put this cocksucker away, I’ll take care of you.”
“Okay. Two hours.”
“Where?”
“I’m pretty close to you.”
“That doesn’t help me, kid.” I wasn’t going to call him Patrick again if I could avoid it.
“Manhattan Court, number sixty-nine, downstairs. It’s a garden apartment that he rented for me.”
“Manhattan Court over by Coney Island Hospital?”
“That’s it.”
“You are close. Two hours?”
“Bring the money,” he said, all the big bad fear gone out of his voice.
I thought about calling Katy and Sarah, but I remembered what her shrink had said. I could serve this kid and Martello up on a silver tray and Katy would still resent me. She had to deal with her issues and I had to deal with mine. That worked for me, for the time being.
Squeezed in between Avenues Y and Z and perpendicular to Ocean Parkway, Manhattan Court was a small, forgettable block of post-Korean War garden apartments with a row of low-slung garages behind. The “gardens” out front were actually lawns of weeds cut low to give the illusion of grass. Each unit had a brick and concrete stoop just large enough to hold a few beach chairs and a portable charcoal grill. I suppose Manhattan Court and the surrounding blocks of garden apartments must once have seemed like a little bit of heaven in the concrete and asphalt world of Brooklyn. Now it seemed in need of repair or bulldozing.
I knew Manhattan Court because Crazy Charlie had lived there. Charlie and I went to Cunningham and Lincoln together. We called him Crazy Charlie because he would do shit no person with half a brain would do. You tell him you’d give him twenty bucks to climb the Parachute Jump and he’d say, “Fuck, yeah,” and climb it. Most kids, me included, were afraid to climb the fence that surrounded the ride, but there was Crazy Charlie two hundred fifty feet in the air screaming for his twenty bucks.
He also tended to be loose with his fists. For him, one a day wasn’t a vitamin, but a description of how many fights he averaged. Sometimes he took Sundays off. “I’m a good Catholic,” he’d say. Crazy Charlie didn’t care how big you were, who you were, or who you knew. If you pissed him off-and, trust me, it didn’t take much to piss Crazy Charlie off-he was going to smack you. Of course, throwing the first punch didn’t always equate to victory I’d seen Charlie get the shit kicked out of him on more than a few occasions. There’s no future for guys like Crazy Charlie. Last few times I saw him was in the mid-’70s when I was still on the job. I’m walking by the holding pen at the Six-O and I hear someone calling my name.
“Moe fuckin’ Prager, that you?”
“Crazy Charlie, what the fuck you doing in there?”
“I ain’t Crazy Charlie no more, Moe. I mean, I’m still crazy, but it ain’t dignified for a man, that name, you know what I’m saying?”
“What are you going by these days?”
“Charlie Rolex.”
“Selling fake watches, huh?”
“Good fakes. But yeah, a man gotta make a livin’ right?”
“Right.”
“So you should come by one day and have a beer with me.”
“You still on Manhattan Court?”
“Yeah. My dad bit the big one, but Mom’s still kickin’.”
“Okay, Charlie Rolex. I’ll do that.”
And I did.
When I went over to his house that last time, he was shirtless, wearing an army helmet, and drinking beer out of a mixing bowl. Oh, yeah, he also had a loaded police special on the table. He let me drink my beer out of the can and we talked about the nutty stuff he used to pull. After a few minutes of reminiscing, he leaned over to me conspiratorially and whispered, “You’re a Jew, right?”
“You know I am, Charlie.”
He looked around to make sure no one was listening. “You don’t see any of your people in jail.”
Well, actually I did, but Charlie wasn’t up for a debate.
“No, Charlie, you don’t.”
“See, that’s what I’m saying.”
Frankly, I had no idea what he was saying and I got out of there a little while later with fake Rolexes for Aaron, Miriam, and me. They all broke the first time we put them on. A few years later I heard Charlie had taken to
