I called the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles from a pay phone at a Shell station just off the interstate and said, "This is foot patrol Officer Willis Sweetwell, badge number five-oh-seven-two-four. I need wants and warrants on New York plate sierra-romeo-golf-six-six-one. And gimme the registration on that, too." They either go for it or they don't.
There was a little pause, then a guy with a deep voice said, "Wait one." Score for the Jack Webb.
The deep voice came back on and told me there were neither wants nor warrants on six-six-one, and that it was registered to the Lucerno Meat Company at 7511 Grand Avenue in lower Manhattan.
I said, "You don't have an individual on that?"
"Nope. Looks like a company car."
I said, Thanks for the help, buddy. Have a good day." Cops like to say "buddy."
I took the Merrill Parkway down through While Plains, then went across the peninsula to the Henry Hudson Parkway and down along the western rim of Manhattan with the Hudson River off to my right. A green treesy park followed along the river with joggers and old people and kids who should've been in school hanging out and laughing and having a good time. I passed Grant's Tomb and the Soldiers and Sailors Monument and then the Hudson parkway became the West Side Highway and the green strip of park was gone and the road ran along the waterfront. Lee J. and Marlon, slugging it out. You hear that the Hudson is ugly and barren, but I didn't see any dead fish or floating bodies, just a couple of nice sailboats and about a million Japanese container ships and a Cessna floatplane tied to a short pier.
At the Holland Tunnel I went east along Canal, crossing lower Manhattan between Little Italy and Chinatown. The buildings were old and made of red brick or yellow brick or stone, some painted and some not, each webbed with a tarnished latticework of fire escapes. People jammed the sidewalks, and yellow cabs roared over the streets without regard to traffic lanes or bicyclists or human life, and no one seemed to see anyone else, as if each person was inalienably alone and liked it that way, or at least was used to it.
Lucerno's Meat Packing Plant was in a two-story redbrick industrial building between a tire wholesaler and a textile outlet, four blocks from the Manhattan Bridge. There was a drive and a large crushed-gravel parking lot on the side where Econoline vans and six-by trucks turned around and backed up to a loading dock. Five cars were parked at the far end of the lot, out of the trucks' way. The second car from the end was the black Lincoln.
I pulled into the lot past the six-bys, whipped a snappy turn like I was trying to get out of the place, put it into reverse, backed up, and crunched the Lincoln nicely. I turned off the Taurus, got out, and made a big deal out of looking at what I had done. The Lincoln's left front headlight was popped and the chrome around it crumpled and the bumper compressed. A couple of black guys in dirty white aprons up on the loading dock were watching me. One of the black guys went into the warehouse and yelled something, and then a little guy in a white jumpsuit and a clipboard came out. I walked over and said, "I was trying to turn around and I backed into that Lincoln. Do you know who owns it?"
The little guy came over to the edge of the dock and stood with his boot tips hanging over and looked at the cars. Lucerno's Fine Meats was embroidered on the back of his coveralls with red thread and FRANK was sewn over his left breast pocket. His face was sour and lined, like maybe he'd just checked his lunch pail and discovered that his wife had given him a roach sandwich. He said, "Jesus Christ, where'd you learnta drive? Wait here a minute." He went back into the warehouse. The two black guys finished loading a dolly of white boxes into a six-by. They took the boxes off the dolly two at a time and slid them into the six-by so hard that the boxes slammed into the truck with a heavy thud. Tenderizing the meat.
In a little while Frank came back and said, "Forget it you’re off the hook."
I looked at him. "What do you mean, forget it?" Best-laid plans.
"Just what I said. You had a bad break, but we're not gonna bust your chops about it. Take off." The old smash-their-car-and-offer-to-pay-for-it routine wasn't getting me very far.
I said, The headlight's smashed and the bumper's pretty dinged up and the frame around the light is busted. Maybe the owner should come take a look."
"It's a company car. Forget it."
"I don't want to forget it. I'm responsible. I oughta pay something to somebody."
He gave me Desi looking at Lucy, the look saying, Jesus Christ, what did I marry? "I'm giving you a pass, capisce? What, are you stupid?"
I said, "You know, that's the trouble with America today. Everybody's looking for a pass. Nobody wants to own up. Well, not me. I own up. I take what's coming to me. I pay my way." Maybe I could appeal to his national pride.
One of the black guys adjusted his crotch and laughed. He had two gold inlays on the right side of his mouth. Frank took a deep breath, let it out, and said, "Look, I got work to do. You came in here, you busted the car, and you came looking for someone to do right by it. Great. But I'm standing here telling you that it's okay. I work here. We seen what happened and it's okay. I'm telling you that you ain't gotta pay a dime, you ain't gotta say you're sorry, you ain't gotta do dick. Okay?"
"But you don't own the car?"
He spread his hands and blinked. "What?"
"And you don't own the company."
"What?" His voice was getting higher.
"If you don't own the car and you don't own the company, then how do I know you've got the right to tell me it's okay?"
He shook his head and looked at the sky. "I can't fuckin' believe this."
"Tell me who drives the car," I said. "Maybe the guy who drives the car should tell me it's okay."
"Jumpin' Jesus fuckin' Christ with a hard-on."
"It seems only fair."
One of the black guys said, "Oo-ee."
Frank threw down the clipboard and stalked back into the building. The two black guys flashed a lot of inlay work and gave each other the Spike Lee treatment. After a little while Frank came back with a large, bald man in his fifties with pop eyes and a melon head and a voice so soft that it might have come from a sick child. He told me that he was the manager and he gave me his card. It said Michael Vinicotta. Lucerno Meats. Manager. He said that if my insurance company wanted to speak with anyone, they could speak with him. He told me that he very much appreciated my concern and my consideration in trying to make sure I had done right by the owner of the car, but that restitution by me was neither sought nor needed.
I said, "Maybe we should leave the cars where they are and call the police and get an accident report."
He said, "Get the fuck outta here or there's gonna be more broken than a goddamned headlight."
I went back to the Taurus and drove around the block and parked in a garage on Broome Street. I walked back to a pastry shop across from Lucerno's and bought a double decaf espresso and sat in the window. Maybe I should go back and pretend to be Ed McMahon and tell them that the guy who drove the Lincoln had just won the Publisher's Clearing House Sweepstakes for a million bucks. That sounded better than the old busted-headlamp routine, but now they knew I wasn't Ed McMahon. Probably should've tried that one first.
Most of the way through my third espresso the fat guy with the caviar skin came out of Lucerno's. Joey. He was wearing the white coveralls and insulated work boots and the same blue Navy pea coat that he had worn at the Howard Johnson's. Well, well. He wasn't the guy in the Lincoln, but he was close enough.
I paid for the espressos and followed Joey two blocks east to a place with a big sign that said SPINA'S CLAM BAR. I watched through the front glass as he took a stool at the end of the bar and said something to the bartender. The bartender put a glass of draft beer in front of him, then set up an iced tray and started opening clams. Four other guys sat at the bar, but no one seemed to know anyone else and no one seemed particularly talkative. Another half-dozen people sat in little booths. It was the kind of place you could go in your work clothes.
When the tray was filled with clams, the bartender put it in front of Joey and then walked away to see about the other guys. Joey was slurping a clam off its shell when I walked up behind him and said, "Say, Joey."
Joey turned and looked at me and I thumbed him in the throat.
His face went red and his eyes got big and he grabbed at his throat and started to cough. Most of a clam popped out and fell on the floor.
I said, "You oughtta not eat so fast, you're going to choke."
The bartender came down. "Is he okay?"
I said sure. I said I knew how to do the Heimlich. A couple of the people at the other end of the bar looked over, but when they saw the bits of clam all over the place they turned away. The bartender went back to his other customers.
Joey sort of half fell and half slid off his stool and pushed a slow right hand at me. I pushed it past with an open hand then thumbed him in the right eye. He went white this time and stumbled backward and fell over his stool into the bar and down to the floor.
The bartender and the other four guys at the bar looked at me. I said, "Think I did the Heimlich a little too hard."
The nearest guy said, "You want I should call an ambulance?"
"Maybe in a bit."
Joey was scrambling around on the floor, holding his face with one hand and trying to get up. He screamed, "You poked out my fuckin' eye! I'm gonna be blind!"
I pulled him up and led him farther back into the bar. The bartender and the other guys were making a big deal out of not seeing it. I said, "Nah. I took it easy. Let me see."
He let me see. I thumbed him in the other eye.
Joey made a sort of gasping sound and grabbed at the other eye and tried to turn away but he was against the wall and there was no place to go. The eyes were red and tearing but he would be fine.
He said, "You sonofabitch, you're supposed to be gone. We got rid of you."
"You did a lousy job."
He lurched forward and threw another right hand and I pushed it past just like the first and drove a spin kick to the right side of his head. It slammed him sideways into the bar and he fell down again. The guys at the other end of the bar and a couple of people in the booths stood up. The bartender said, "Hey, I'm gonna call the cops."
I said, "Call'm. This won't take long."
I reached down and pulled Joey up again and sat him on the stool and dug out his wallet and looked at his driver's license. Joseph L. Putata. Jackson Heights.
I put the wallet back in his pocket. "Okay, Joey. What's a used rubber like you got to do with Karen Lloyd?"
One of his eyes was looking up and the other was sort of rolling around and he was blinking a lot. He shook his head, like he didn't know what I was talking about. "I dunno. Who's Karen Lloyd?" His hands were down at his sides.
"The lady at the bank." Maybe she hadn't sent them.
Joey's eyes started coming together and he looked scared. "Oh, shit, I told him we run you off. I said you were outta here."
"Who? The guy in the Lincoln?"
The bartender said, "I just called the cops."
Joey looked from me to the bartender, then back to me. Confused along with the scared.
I said, "Why'd the guy in the Lincoln want me to forget about Karen Lloyd?"
"I dunno. He said you were bothering her. He said she was a friend." He looked even more scared, like talking about the guy in the Lincoln brought it out in him. "I told him you were gone."
"Who is he?"
"Who?"
"The guy in the Lincoln."
Joey looked at me like I'd just beamed down from the Enterprise. "Jesus Christ, you don't know?"
"No."
He looked at the other people at the bar and then he lowered his voice. He said, "We're talking about Charlie DeLuca. Sal DeLuca's kid."
"So?"
Joey shook his head and put on a face like he was about to wet his pants. "Sal DeLuca is the godfather, you dumb fuck. The capo de tutti capo. He's the head of the whole damned mafia."