CHAPTER 2

For a man of solid dimensions, Sam Stello was surprisingly economical with his movements and precise with his handwriting. He was perched on the corner of the bed, a legal pad in his lap, listening to the toilet flush in the bathroom. His empty briefcase was open next to him. He tapped his ballpoint on the pad and stared at a water stain on the ceiling. What that stain has seen, he thought.

The Bay View Motor Inn was the kind of place with atmospheric mildew, single ply TP, sheets with stains, and deadbolt locks on the bathroom doors. It sat, forlorn, in the shadow of the Pulaski Skyway, on the banks of the industrialized, water-borne squalor known as Newark Bay. Thirty years ago it had hummed along even in the midst of the Great Depression. It served the business community of Jersey City during the week and, on weekends, families on a budget whose vacation plans included a visit to New York City. Then the Skyway was built, enabling travelers to literally pass over Jersey City, never once setting down in a town that, face it, struggled in the shadow of its gargantuan neighbor even during the best of times. For Sam, the Bay View Motor Inn was a distasteful professional necessity but perfect for his needs, because it was the kind of place where daytime room usage, an hour at most, was so commonplace it didn’t even raise an eyebrow.

So what the hell is she doing in there? Sam jotted down a note in the margin: “Danny. Chianti, gnocchi.” He could hear the bathroom tap running. He loosened his tie. The room was warm and getting warmer by the minute. He felt a sweat droplet crawl down his back. Sam was punctilious and organized by nature, and it vexed him that, try as he might, his wardrobe never improved upon a steady state of rumple. Perhaps it was his husky frame. Perhaps it was his reluctance to spend good money for high quality suits and shirt. Whatever the cause, his best intentions for sartorial sophistication, every morning, were thwarted by wrinkles, soup stains and perspiration by lunch. Some guys looked starched and neat all day long. Not Sam, and it ticked him off.

The bathroom door opened and she returned, plopping her ample frame into the chair across from Sam. She set her purse on the cheap maple desk and crossed her legs. She reunited a loose strand of bang, blond and stiff, with its brothers hanging above her brow. She rummaged through the purse and pulled out a long thin cigarette. One of those new kinds designed for women. She lit it from a skinny silver lighter. The cigarette and lighter were the only slim things about her, Sam thought, as she plumed smoke over her shoulder. This was Jersey kabuki, a mannered set of movements and gestures that struck him as choreographed and overly rehearsed.

Sam could not help noticing, and that was the point he was sure, her hemline ride up her thigh. It was a thigh as overfed as her breasts, top two thirds of which overflowed her blouse. Sometimes clients were frightened, sometimes timid but determined. Sometimes angry even; at their intended victims, at Sam, at the world. This one was a piece of work. Calm and detached. Her foot jiggled, sending echoes of motion up her thigh fat. Her precisely drawn eyebrows exuded boredom. Not anxiety, guilt, fear, or sadness, just boredom. Her studied indifference only deepened Sam’s own natural veil of gloom.

“So where were we?” she said.

 Sam noticed she left fresh lipstick prints on the cigarette filter.

“Well, uh, Gloria, it looks like we got most of the details. His name is Morty, right?”

“Morty, yeah. So how?”

“What do you mean?”

“How? How you do it?”

Sam capped his ballpoint and slipped it into his jacket pocket. He sighed. They always asked this question.

“Usually I just knock on the door. You say he’s home days, right? So he answers, I show him this.”

He pulled out his wallet and flipped it open to a shield and a police i.d., complete with Sam’s photo and name.

“Hmmm. Looks real,” she said.

“Yeah, well most people, they expect something’s wrong but they never suspect…you know. So they invite me in and once I get in, out of view, I do them right there. Then leave. Simple. Bingo bango.” Sam replaced his wallet.

“You can’t,” she said flatly.

“You getting cold feet?”

“Not in the foyer.” She pronounced it ‘foy-ay.’

“I just got new white shag.” She pulled on the cigarette and sent another cloud of smoke in Sam’s direction. She snapped her gum. Sam blinked.

“You gotta find somewhere else,” she exclaimed, sounding exasperated.

“Oh. OK. Well, let’s see.” Sam scanned his notes.

“So here. You say he goes to see his cardiologist every Wednesday, right?”

“Yeah. Wednesdays 10 a.m.”

“Where’s the office?”

“Scarsdale. Big medical building.”

“Got underground parking?”  

“Yeah.”

“That’s it then. I wait, he comes out, I pop him there. In the garage.”

This seemed to satisfy her. She stubbed out her cigarette.

“So good. When?”

“Tomorrow’s Wednesday. That’s good?”

“Yeah, tomorrow’s good.”

“You sure? Like you don’t got a tennis lesson or something? Maybe bridge with the girls?”

She shot him a dirty look as she stuffed the cigarette pack and lighter into her purse.

“Keep your day job. Comedy ain’t your thing.” She got up to leave.

“Ah, aren’t you forgetting something?”

Sam leaned back, letting the holstered gun peek out from the jacket. Two could play this body language game. He held up his hand and rubbed his thumb and forefinger together. She scowled and opened her purse.

“Half now, half after the funeral. Like we agreed.”

She removed a thick, rolled wad of fifties held by a rubber band. She tossed it in Sam’s lap and headed for the door. He picked up the money and placed it into the briefcase.

“I only got one question,” said Sam.

This stopped her at the door. She turned to him and raised her perfect eyebrows.

Sam was reading from his notepad.

“He’s 75, right?”

“Yeah, so what?”

She detached the security chain. Sam continued to look at his notes.

“Cardiologist. So a bad ticker, obviously. Two heart attacks already.”

“What’s your point?”

“So my point is why come to me? Why not just take him to see Psycho or something? The roller coaster at Coney Island? I mean he ain’t long for this world anyway.”

Her eyes grew large and the eyebrows angled down to her nose, her voluptuous lips suddenly ugly and bloated, pulled back over bared teeth.

“He abuses me, OK? Mentally! He’s cruel!”

“He owns a dozen apartments in Crown Heights and a condo in Boca.”

“That has nothing to do with it! Why don’t you just shut up and do your job!”

She threw the door open and stormed out, slamming it behind her.

The flimsy motel walls shook. The painting on the wall across from Sam, a palette knife treatment of a sailboat on stormy waters at sunset, tilted another two inches off level. Sam sighed. This was not a business that showcased mankind at its best. He placed the notepad in the briefcase and picked up the roll of fifties. Looked about right. Ten grand. He put it back in the briefcase and snapped it shut. Before he left he straightened the painting.

The Scarsdale Medical Arts building squatted on West Post Road, between a Ford dealership and a Grand Union. It offered four nondescript floors to specialists associated with Westchester Hospital and boasted a pharmacy and prosthesis fitter on the street level.

Sam finished the last of the corned beef sandwich he’d picked up from the 2nd Avenue Deli before starting north. Cross-town traffic had been a beast, and then all the way up the Henry Hudson, and even though he’d left with plenty of time, he thought he’d miss the old man’s appointment time. It cleared out on the Saw Mill, however, and he’d sailed in with time to spare. In fact, time enough to gulp down the sandwich. He wiped his hands and face with the napkins, wrapped up the deli paper, and stuffed it all back into the greasy paper bag. He brushed bread crumbs from his shirt and grimaced at the spot of mustard on his tie.

Sam had been pleased to find Morty Burnett’s bronze ’64 Eldorado near the elevator doors on the first level of the garage, with an open space right next to it. This meant he could wait until the last moment to approach the old man, and best of all, he was still close enough to street level to pull in an AM signal while he waited. He fiddled with the tuning knob. Stations faded in and out, but he could pull them back in with an occasional adjustment.

Sam checked his hairline in the rearview mirror. Several of his buddies, Vic and Augie chief among them, had been cracking wise lately about the amount of scalp beginning to appear. The prospect of a future that included baldness worsened Sam’s already foul mood.

He pulled a Winston from a wrinkled pack and put it between his lips. Sam was a worrier by nature, and ever since the Surgeon General released his goddamn report, he now worried about smoking. Quitting was tough, though. Somewhere he’d read it was an oral fixation more than anything, and the urge could be relieved just as readily by holding one unlit in your mouth. Sam had been trying this technique for several weeks, but he kept slipping. Maybe it was just him.

Perry Como’s Catch a Falling Star was winding down as Sam checked the load in the .38. Singers like Perry could always lighten his mood. Another great Italian crooner. Frank, Vic, Tony, Perry. God, they could sing.

He snapped in the burnished, oiled cylinder as he hummed along. Then the DJ teed up the latest hit from those Brit freaks as he slipped the gun into the shoulder holster, and just like that he was back in the funk. He twisted the radio off with a sneer as they yeah, yeah, yeah-ed. Drivel.

The chime of the building elevator snapped him to attention. The doors slid open and a spidery old man with a cane emerged. He was a human palette of gray, head to toe. Gray hair, ashen skin, charcoal suit that hung loose and long, even dark gray oxfords. His shuffle was excruciatingly slow. Sam pulled the photo from his jacket pocket. There were a lot of old men in a building full of medical specialists, he was certain, and he wanted to be sure he had the right one. It was Morty Burnett.

Sam opened his door and heaved himself out of the car. As he did, he immediately realized that he had not slipped the .38 into his shoulder holster as he thought, but instead had slipped it into the shallow watch pocket of his sports jacket. It was a pocket, needless to say, ill-equipped to hold a heavy weapon. With a sinking sensation he could feel the gun fall. If thirty years around handguns had taught him one thing, it was that one should never be in the neighborhood of a falling weapon. Unlike Hollywood, in real life the expression “drop your gun” was an invitation for disaster.

Sam’s gun hit the pavement at his feet, and fired point blank into the driver’s side rear tire. The blast echoed obscenely around the garage. Sam ducked behind the fender. The tire whistled as it deflated. The car settled. He peeked beyond the bumper. No one came running. No shouts or screams. Morty Burnett, on the other hand, continued to creep toward the bronze Eldorado, oblivious. He was close enough now for Sam to see the wires hanging from the old man’s ears. Either those hearing aids were turned off, or Morty was so stone deaf that no amount of electronic amplification was going to help. Probably the latter, thought Sam.

He gathered his gun, secured it in his shoulder holster and this time snapped the strap over it. Then he stood, straightened his tie, and walked toward the old man.

“Hello? Morty Burnett?”

Burnett tottered to a stop beside his car. He rummaged in his pocket and removed a ring of keys. With shaking hands he picked through them. Sam tapped him on the shoulder. Burnett slowly turned to face him.

“Mr. Burnett?”

“What?”

“Sam Stello, 4th Precinct NYPD. May I have a word with you?”

“What?”

Sam pulled out his wallet and flashed the i.d. Burnett peered at it closely, then looked at Sam.

“You’re a lot fatter now.”

Sam sighed.

“Right. It’ll take just a sec. We can sit in your car.” Sam motioned to the door.

“What?”

Sam pantomimed getting in the car. Burnett shrugged and unlocked the driver’s door. Slowly he eased himself in, shaking off Sam’s attempt to hold his arm. Sam gently closed the driver door, then ran around to the passenger side. He slid into the passenger seat and closed the door.

Burnett looked surprised to see him. He slipped the key into the ignition.

“Who are you again?”

“Detective Stello. NYPD. Mr. Burnett, I’m afraid I got some bad news.”

“What?”

“Gloria. She hired me to kill you.”

“What?”

“Gloria! Wants me to kill you.”

Sam enunciated each word slowly and loudly.

“Kill me? Who wants to kill me?”

“Your wife!”

“A knife?”

“NO! Shit. Oh hell with it.”

Sam reached inside his jacket pocket. Burnett’s eyes widened with sudden understanding and his mouth formed a silent O. He gripped the steering wheel with skeletal fingers.

Sam pulled out a folded bundle of papers and presented them to Burnett.

“Look. Transcripts.”

Burnett held them close to his nose. Sam rolled down his window. It was hot and stuffy in the Cadillac. Burnett pored over the pages, occasionally voicing a word.

“Bingo bango…white shag…Scarsdale…”

Burnett sucked in his breath.

“You see?” said Sam. “I told you, I’m a detective with NYPD. I work underc…”

“Son of a fuckin’ bitch!”

“Yeah, I understand. So look…”

“Son of a fuckin’ bitch!”

“Right. So we need to go downtown to the precinct so we can take your statement, and we gotta use your car because my car…”

“Son of a fuckin’ bitch!”

Sam sighed and reached over to Burnett’s key. He gave it a twist and the engine roared to life. He motioned Burnett to drive.