“ ’ Tis the season to be jolly…”
“What are you doing around at this hour?” Mike looked at me intently. “You just got home from some hot date? You found a nice woman yet, Artie?”
“Sonny Lippert. Needs me for something.”
“Jesus, man, I thought Lippert retired.”
I ate some pie. “That’s really good, Mike.”
“Thanks. So, you ever see her?”
“Who?”
“Lily Hanes. You could bring her over to me and Ange for supper. Ange always says, ‘When’s Artie going to marry Lily?’ ”
“Sure.”
“What, you met her, like, ten, fifteen years ago? I know you’ve dated plenty of women, and we liked Maxine and all when you got married to her, but you weren’t the same with her like with Lily.” Mike was in a talkative mood.
For ten minutes while Mike pulled pies out of the oven and set them on the counter to cool, while I drank his coffee, we exchanged neighborhood gossip. I agreed to go over to his house in Brooklyn-he drives in every morning, around two a.m.-for dinner. But all the time we were making small talk, I could see there was something on his mind.
“What’s eating you?”
“Nothing, man.”
“You pissed off because McCain didn’t get in?”
Mike’s a vet, served in the first Gulf War, volunteers at the VA hospital. McCain’s a god to him.
“I got over it, more or less. It was that broad’s fault, Palin. Geez. Who invited her to the party?” Mike looked over my head toward the door. “You got company,” he said.
CHAPTER 2
Wrapped in a camel hair coat, Sonny Lippert took off his brown fedora and climbed on the stool next to mine. His hair was all gray now. He had finally stopped dyeing it. He tossed a sheet of paper on the counter in front of me and greeted Mike, who brought him a mug of coffee. “Anything to eat, Sonny?”
“You got a poppy bagel?”
“Sure.”
“Yeah, so can you do it well toasted, with a little schmear, but not too much? OK?”
“You got it.” Mike reached for some cream cheese.
I picked up the piece of paper-it felt thin and greasy, like onionskin-and when I unfolded it, I saw it was printed in Russian. “This is what you called about?”
“Yeah, man, I need you to translate it, Art. OK? They found it stuck in his chest with a knife, like I said, right near his heart,” said Sonny, pointing at the paper. I saw the edges were brown from blood.
“Where’d they find him exactly?”
“Harlem, up by the border with Washington Heights. Church cloister. Half buried, dirt all over him.”
Mike put a plate down in front of Sonny. He picked up the bagel, spread the cream cheese on it, and bit into it. “Nice,” he said to Mike. “Thanks.”
“They whacked him before they buried him?” I said.
“They cut him up good, with a curved boning knife, it looks like, same as they used to stick the paper to his heart.”
“You said he was still alive when they buried him?”
“I said maybe.” Sonny ate another bite of his bagel.
“Who told you?”
“An old pal name of Jimmy Wagner, he’s the chief of a precinct uptown, the Thirtieth. One of his homicide guys found this guy a couple days ago. I think. I think Wagner said a couple days. He thinks it’s mob stuff. Drugs, maybe. Some kind of extortion.”
“Why’s that?”
“He didn’t say, just asked for me to get him a translation,” said Sonny. “Just read it, Art, OK?”
“ Don we now our gay apparel, fa la la la la la la la la…”
“What the fuck is that music?” Sonny said.
“Mike likes it. She’s Greek,” I said. “The singer.”
“Yeah, right. Just translate the fucking Russian,” he said. “Please.”
I gulped some coffee. I put on my glasses. Sonny was amused.
“They’re just for reading, so shut up,” I said.
While I looked at the blood-stained paper, Sonny made further inroads on his bagel. Mike poured him more coffee. I read, and then I burst out laughing; I couldn’t help it. This was stuff I knew by heart, but you would, too, if you’d grown up in the USSR, like I did. I didn’t leave Moscow until I was sixteen, and the stuff had been drilled into me like a dentist going down into the roots.
“You find it funny, Art? It’s a joke?”
“Yeah, I so fucking do.” I read out a few lines.
“In English, for chrissake.”
I read: “ ‘Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.’ ”
“Jesus,” said Lippert. “It’s the fucking Communist Manifesto.”
“Yeah, your parents would have appreciated it,” I said. Lippert’s parents had been big Communists back in Brooklyn-it’s part of Sonny’s history; it never leaves him. Now, he stared at the paper and shook his head, deep in some memory of childhood.
“Does that help?” I said. “Is that it?”
Reaching into his coat pocket, Sonny took out two pictures and tossed them on the counter and said, “Take a look at these.”
In one photo was a dead guy on a slab at the morgue. The second was a close-up of the guy’s upper arm where there were some tats, Russian words circling his bicep.
“Same guy as they found the paper on?”
“Yeah,” said Sonny.
Naked, the dead guy had a huge upper body, heavily muscled arms, a slack face. A lot of Russians who work security in the city were once Olympic weight lifters, though I’d picked up at least one hood who’d been a nuclear physicist. Times change.
What were you? I always ask them. What were you back then, before the empire collapsed, before everything changed?
“What about the tats?” said Sonny.
I held up the picture.
“Jesus,” I said. “I never saw Russian tats like this, but it goes really well with what’s on the paper.”
“Yeah? What?”
“ ‘Workers of the World Unite. You have Nothing to Lose But Your Chains,’ you know that one, right, Sonny? I mean, ask yourself, is this guy the last crazy Commie true-believer left on planet Earth, except for maybe a few elderly ladies holding up pictures of Stalin on the street in Moscow? Maybe he belongs to a gang of old Commies. Maybe he strayed, turned capitalist, whatever.” I yawned. “I’m going back to bed.”
“You’ll help me with this one, won’t you, Art?” Sonny asked. “You could do me a favor and drop in on Jimmy Wagner.”
“What’s your interest? You’re retired. What do you want this for?”
“I’m consulting on certain cases that come my way.”
I saw now that Sonny was looking thin, old, his face lined.
“You feel up to working?” I was worried. Truth is, I love the man.
“I’m taking a few things on.”
“Why’s that?”
“Why’s anyone hustling right now? Tough times.”
“You have your pension, right? You told me you had some investments.”
He stared down at the remains of his breakfast.
Once upon a time, Sonny Lippert was the most connected guy in the city. He could raise anyone on a dime. You’d say, Sonny, I need a lawyer for a friend, I need somebody in forensics, a contact with the Feds, and he’d say, No problem, Artie, man, just give me a few minutes.
He had to be in bad shape financially. The meltdown was killing the city. Madoff had been arrested, but I didn’t figure Sonny for a big enough player to have put his money with the bastard.
“Sonny?”
“Just say I’m doing some consulting work, OK? Can we leave it at that, Art? OK? Please?”