Manhattan Noir Read online

  Maria said she always wanted to drive to Texas, said they’d cross the border at Eagle Pass. Said she had a brother in Salinas.

  Baltimore would’ve been enough for Mitzi, leaning into the wind, a bitty thing under buildings pricking the clouds. She’d never been south of Battery Park.

  Maxie had ice-water veins, never regretted shooting off Bippy Brown’s ear and now he didn’t give a damn about nothing. In less than an hour, he’d be back at the Hotel New Yorker using his real name, Mr. H.J. Blubaugh, having them deliver eggs, sunny-side up, and hash browns too.

  Puckett thanked him for the container of black joe, and Maxie sat on the piano bench to remove his galoshes, putting his hat and topcoat on the case, wondering if he was going to have to kill anybody to get it done.

  Wick, the senior teller, was already at her station, puckered lips, rouge, and all business, and then the Mexican broad entered, head held high.

  The ex-cop walked across the lobby, falling in behind the Mexican on his way to the can.

  Maxie eased the gun from the piano bench and dropped it into the side pocket of his blue suit jacket. As he went toward the locker room, he saw Minthorn opening the vault door, grunting.

  The Mexican broad was sitting at her desk under the stairs, and she was still wearing her coat.

  Puckett pissing away behind a door to the men’s room.

  Maxie opened his locker and saw that his duffel bag was gone, and his clothes.

  On the shelf, a record: “Moonlight and You” by the Benny Walters Orchestra, cornet solo by Bippy Brown, back when he had two ears.

  Maxie felt a jolt, but he already had it spent. “Fuck it,” he said, charging out.

  Puckett thought he heard someone call his name.

  Passing Minthorn and the open vault, Maxie marched around the counter, and the tellers looked at him, wondering, thinking, Maxie …?

  He grabbed the startled Wick by the meat of her arm, yanked her off the stool, rammed the .38 against her spine, and told her he didn’t give a shit if he had to kill her now or later, just keep her mouth shut.

  She said, “See here, Maxie—”

  Maxie, a nasty bastard, didn’t have a free hand to clap her, so he bit her hard on the back of her neck, drawing blood.

  “Ready to shut it now?” he said, as he spit to the side.

  They advanced toward Minthorn, who was stacking the cart with thick packets of bills and a fat bag of coins.

  Puckett backed out of the toilet, and then he looked at Maria who, with a wide-eyed nod of her head and a sideways glance, told the ex-cop what was going on.

  Puckett drew his side arm, held it shoulder high. He stayed under the stairs as Maxie and Wick passed the final teller.

  “Minthorn,” Maxie said.

  The vice president turned and, no panic, lifted his hands in the air. And then he said, “Maxie, let her go. Maxie, she’s got three kids.”

  Maxie released Wick’s arm, grabbed her hair by the bun.

  Wick hissed, but didn’t scream, blood dribbling.

  “Maxie, for Christ’s sake, take the money. Just let her—”

  Puckett squeezed the trigger.

  Out of the corner of his blue, blue eyes, Maxie saw it, saw how the whole thing was going to end.

  The bullet in the air, and he remembered it was Bird who gave him his nickname. Bird dubbed him Mum, since he didn’t yap much, and then Bird, as well read as anybody and twice as quick, upped it to Maximum, calling him Maxie.

  He loved Bird, and he hightailed it to K.C. full of hope, thinking he could play, thinking what he’d learned in the basement of the Kingdom Hall—

  Puckett’s shot took off the back of Maxie’s head.

  Wick went to her knees, the red mist finding her easy, and Minthorn charged out of the safe to catch her, failing when he bumped the cart.

  Maxie collapsed to the marble floor like somebody cut his strings.

  Minthorn took Wick in his arms. “Muriel?”

  She told him she was okay, and the color rushed back to her face.

  Puckett holstered his gun and pushed back the swinging door.

  Maxie’s blood was spreading fast.

  Minthorn said, “Muriel, let’s get the girls into my office.” Looking at the ex-cop, “Frank, don’t trip the alarm. Just keep the front door locked and wait for them outside. I’ll make the call.”

  “Sure thing, Mr. Minthorn,” he said as he turned, started toward the piano bench, the revolving door on Eighth, steam still rising from his coffee container.

  Minthorn shepherded Wick and the quaking tellers, and then they were all inside, grateful they no longer had to see Maxie, the nasty bastard, with the side of his skull blown off, his blue, blue eyes rolled up into his head.

  Minthorn pulled the blinds all around his office, cutting the light until he reached the desk lamp.

  On cue, Maria took Maxie’s empty duffel bag from her drawer and went to the open vault, as Minthorn had agreed.

  Minthorn, spent and on his side last night at the Hotel Martinique, and Maria, naked beneath his shirt on the chaise, telling him about Cuba. After a stopover in Miami, she said, they’d lounge on golden beaches, rum concoctions in their hands, and there wasn’t a banker on the entire island who would fail to believe he’d won the $202,000 at the casinos.

  She stretched out her long legs, giving him a peek at the dark patch under the shirt front, and Minthorn quivered at the thought of her on white sheets after a day in the sun.

  Referencing Maxie, she said, “He won’t know what to do when he has to face a man like you, Morris.”

  There was no counting how many ways a line like that would work on a dope like Minthorn.

  The 9:18 to Baltimore lurched forward, jostling the last of the passengers to board. Mitzi turned one last time to the rear. Maxie’s valise sat next to her atop the empty seat on the aisle.

  She’s not coming, Mitzi thought, as she wrapped her kerchief around her finger, unwrapped it, all but tied it in knots. I’m sent off, again, only this time it’s to Baltimore with two dollars and change in my purse.

  Ain’t it always the way?

  She started thinking she’d get off in Newark, grab a couple of bucks on a refund, figuring they had a subway or some kind of ferry would take her back to Hell’s Kitchen, knowing Maxie was paid up until New Year’s.

  As the clattering train began to find its pace, she thought, maybe there’s a guy in Baltimore. There’s got to be. A real nice guy, and she’s new in town, and he can see she’s had it rough. He’s got a job, something regular, and he’s kind. Buys her a drink, then the blue-plate special, a refill on the coffee, and everybody in the diner says he’s kind, a gentleman—

  “Excuse me, miss. I can have this seat?”

  Maria smiled, looking down.

  She seemed awfully composed, considering.

  “I can put your valise with mine,” she said.

  Brand new, brown leather, and without a single scratch.

  Mitzi figured the money was locked inside.

  “Okay,” Mitzi said, and she watched Maria allow the porter to hoist the two pieces, and her coat, into the overhead compartment.

  “Your coat now, miss?” asked the colored porter, sharp in a black bow tie and vest.

  “No,” Mitzi said, as Maria nestled next to her. “If you don’t mind, I’ll keep it.”

  They met sunlight in Jersey, and Mitzi leaned over, whispered, “Did you hurt him?”

  Maria looked at the red trim on the seat in front of them. “No, chica, I did not.”

  “The money …”

  Outside, miles of tracks on all sides, maybe twenty ways to come and go.

  Maria tapped Mitzi’s hand. She’d booked a sleeper for the overnight to Birmingham, and they’d count the dough on the bed, if the girl insisted.

  Maria figured it was $200,000, seeing that she left the coins.

  Minthorn thought she was waiting at the Hotel Martinique. He said he’d arrive around noon, passpo
rt in his pocket.

  She told him she had a brother in Camagüey.

  Her turn to whisper, Maria said, “The next tunnel I’m going to kiss you, Margarita. I’m going to kiss you until you no can breathe.”

  Mitzi blushed.

  “There is no one between us now, baby,” Maria added. “Now you are mine alone.”

  They rode in silence for a stretch, pulling into Newark, pulling out. “Trenton next,” bellowed the roly-poly man.

  Factories on either side, most of the way. Mitzi wondering if they had an ocean in Baltimore. Be nice to swim in an ocean.

  She didn’t know what to call the feeling inside. No, but it was like it was all the other times at the start. She wondered if it could be different in the long run.

  “Maria? Maria, will you be nasty?”

  “Que? ”

  “I mean, are you ever nasty?”

  Maria looked at her with her black, black eyes.

  “I told you, Margarita: Don’t think and don’t worry,” she said softly. “Leave everything to me.”

  Mitzi studied her, trying to figure out how she could ignore the passing scenery, puffy smoke billowing from towering chimneys, a silver airplane growing bigger. Christmas lights, and little backyards with snowmen, coal buttons, carrots, corncob pipes.

  TAKE THE MAN’S PAY

  BY ROBERT KNIGHTLY

  Garment District

  Sergeant Thomas Cippolo, desk sergeant at Midtown South, peers over his half-moon reading glasses at Detective Morrie Goldstein and his handcuffed prisoner as they enter the precinct.

  “What’s up wit’ Charlie Chang?” he asks.

  “Chang?”

  “Yeah.” Cippolo starts his various chins in motion with a vigorous shake of his head. “Charlie Chang. The dude made all those movies with Number One Son.”

  “That’s Chan, ya moron,” Goldstein replies without relaxing his grip on the arm of his prisoner. “Charlie Chan.” Goldstein is a massive man, well over six feet tall with broad sloping shoulders that challenge the seams of an off-the-rack suit from the Big & Tall shop at Macy’s. “Anyway, he’s not Chinese. He’s a Nip. Hoshi Taiku.”

  “A Nip?”

  “Yeah, like Nipponese. From Japan.” Goldstein notes Cippolo’s blank stare, and sighs in disgust. “The Japanese people don’t call their country Japan. They call it Nippon. Ain’t that right, Hoshi?”

  Taiku does not speak. Though he’s been in the United States for three days and has only the vaguest notion of the American criminal justice system, he’s heard about Abner Louima and wouldn’t be surprised if the giant policeman strung him up by his toes.

  Goldstein steers Taiku around Cippolo’s desk and up a flight of stairs to a large room jammed with desks set back-to-back. A few of the desks are occupied by detectives who look up from their paperwork to watch Goldstein direct his prisoner to a small interview room. They do not speak. The windowless interview room contains a table and two metal chairs, one of which is bolted to the floor. The table and chairs are gray, the floor tiles brown, the walls a dull institutional yellow. All are glazed with decades of accumulated grime, even the small one-way mirror in the wall opposite the hump seat.

  “That feel better?” Goldstein removes Taiku’s handcuffs, then flips them onto the table where they settle with an echoing clang. “Okay, that’s your chair.” He points to the bolted-down chair. “Take a seat.”

  Hoshi Taiku is a short middle-aged man with a round face that complements his soft belly. From his seated position, looking up, Goldstein appears gigantic and menacing. Curiously, this effect remains undiminished when Goldstein draws his own chair close, then settles down with an appreciative sigh.

  “My back,” he explains. “When I gotta stand around, it goes into spasm. I don’t know, maybe I should get myself one of those supports. I mean, standing around is all I ever fuckin’ do.” He removes a cheap ballpoint pen, a notebook, and a small tape recorder from his jacket pocket and sets them on the table.

  “First thing I gotta do is explain your rights. Understand?”

  Taiku does not reply. Instead, his gaze shifts to the wall on the other side of the room, a small act of defiance which elicits a triumphant smile from Goldstein. Goldstein has bet Sergeant Alex Mowrey $25 that Taiku will crack before 1 o’clock in the afternoon. It is now 10:30 in the morning.

  Goldstein lays his hand on Hoshi’s shoulder, and notes a barely detectable shudder run along the man’s spine. “Hoshi, listen to me. You chatted up the desk clerk, the bartender in the Tiger Lounge, and a barmaid named Clara. I know you know how to speak English, so please don’t start me off with bullshit. It’s inconsiderate.”

  After a moment, Hoshi bows, a short nod that Goldstein returns.

  “Okay, like I already said, you got certain rights which I will now carefully enumerate. You don’t have to speak to me at all if you don’t want to, plus you can call a lawyer whenever you like. In fact, if you’re broke, which I doubt very much, the court will appoint a lawyer to represent you. But the main thing, which you should take into your heart, is that whatever you say here is on the record. Even though you haven’t been arrested and you might never be. You got it so far?”

  Goldstein acknowledges a second bow with a squeeze of Taiku’s bony shoulder, then releases his grip, leans back in the chair, and scratches his head. In contrast to his body, Goldstein’s oval skull is very small and rises to a definite point in the back, a sad truth made all the more apparent by a hairline the stops an inch or so above his ears.

  “So it’s up to you, Hoshi,” he finally declares. “What you’re gonna do and all. You say the word, tell me you don’t wanna clear this up, I’ll put you under arrest, and that’ll be that.”

  “No lawyer.” Despite a prodigious effort, the words come out, “‘No roy-uh.’”

  “Okay, then you gotta sign this.” Goldstein takes a standard Miranda waiver from the inside pocket of his jacket, then spreads it on the table as if unrolling a precious scroll. “Right here, Yoshi. Right on the dotted line.”

  A moment later, after Yoshi signs, a knock on the door precedes the entrance of Detective Vera Katakura.

  “The lieutenant wants you in his office.”

  “Now?” Goldstein is incredulous.

  “Not now, Morris. Ten minutes ago.”

  When he returns a few minutes later, Hoshi Taiku, though unattended, is sitting exactly as Goldstein left him, has not, in fact, moved at all.

  “I’m gonna be a while,” the detective explains. “I gotta take you downstairs. Stand up.”

  Re-cuffed, Hoshi is led across the squad room to a narrow stairway at the rear of the building, then down two flights to the holding cells in the basement.

  “What you got here, Morrie?” Patrolman Brian O’Boyle asks when Goldstein approaches his desk. O’Boyle has been working lockup since he damaged his knee chasing a suspect ten years before. He sits with his feet on his desk, perusing a worn copy of Penthouse magazine.

  “Gotta stash him for a while,” Goldstein explains. He lays his service automatic on O’Boyle’s desk, then grabs a set of keys. “Don’t get up.”

  Goldstein leads Taiku through a locked door, then down a corridor to a pair of cells. The cells are constructed of steel bars, two cages side-by-side.

  “Yo, Detective Goldstein, wha’chu doin’? You bringin’ me some candy?”

  “That you, Speedo Brown? Again?”

  “Yeah. Ah’m real popular these days.”

  Taiku’s arm tightens beneath Goldstein’s grip and his steps shorten. Speedo Brown is every civilian’s nightmare, a bulked-up black giant with a prison-hard glare that overwhelms his bantering tone.

  “Put your eyes back in your head, Speedo. I’m stashin’ Hoshi outta reach.”

  “That the bitch cell,” Speedo protests as Goldstein unlocks the cell adjoining his. “Can’t put no man in the bitch cell lessen he a bitch. You a bitch, man? You some kinda Chinatown bitch? You Miss Saigon?”

  Go
ldstein pushes Taiku into the cell, locks the door, then turns to leave. “C’mon, baby,” he hears Speedo coo as he walks off, “bring it on over here. Let Speedo bus’ yo cherry.”

  Hoshi Taiku perches on the edge of a narrow shelf bolted to the wall at the rear of his cell. He stares out through the bars, his face composed as he studiously ignores the taunts of Speedo Brown. But he cannot compose his thoughts. He has disgraced his family and betrayed his nation. In the ordinary course of events, he would already have lost everything there is to lose. But not here in this land of barbarians. No, in the land of the barbarians there is a good deal more to lose, as Speedo Brown’s words make clear.

  “You come to Rikers Island, ahm gonna own yo sorry ass. I got friends in Rikers, git you put up in my cell. You be shavin’ yo legs by sunrise.”

  Taiku thinks of home, of Kyoto, of his wife and children. If he is arrested, they will be shunned by their neighbors, his disgrace falling on them as surely as if they’d committed the act themselves. But he has not been arrested, has not, in fact, even been questioned, a state of affairs he finds unfathomable. In Japan, in Kyoto, he would already have done what is expected of anyone arrested for a crime. He would have confessed, then formally apologized for upsetting the harmony of Japanese society. That was what you did when you were taken into custody: You accepted your unworthiness, took it upon yourself, the consequences falling across your shoulders like a yoke.

  But he is not at home, he reminds himself for the second time, and there are decisions to make, and make soon. Should he speak to the detective? If so, what should he say? Is it dishonorable to lie to the barbarians who bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Who occupied Japan? Who humiliated the emperor? Taiku no longer believes that Goldstein will hurt him, not physically. That’s because Goldstein has made the nature of his true threat absolutely clear: Talk or face immediate arrest and Speedo Brown, or someone just like him. Well, talk is one thing, truth another …

  Taiku’s thoughts are interrupted by the appearance of Patrolman O’Boyle. He is walking along the hallway, a prisoner in tow, a female prisoner.

  “Up ya go, Taiku,” O’Boyle orders. “You’re movin’.”