Engel could imagine Gittel and Fox in the back seat, both scrabbling to get up front, to climb over the seat, each getting in the other’s way, the both of them shouting and jumping and wasting energy.
While Engel wasted time.
Right. He got to his feet — he seemed to have muscle aches in about thirty different places — staggered over the mall, across the eastbound lanes of traffic, over the turf on the other side to the metal fence there, climbed the fence, attained one of the little dim streets of Queens, and ran for his life.
17
In the Manhattan phone book there were six columns of people named Rose. In the Queens phone book there were three and a half columns of people named Rose. And the particular Rose that Engel was looking for could just as easily live in Brooklyn or The Bronx. Or Long Island. Or Westchester. Or Staten Island. Or New Jersey. Or Connecticut. Or on the Moon.
Engel shut the two directories and went back to his table, where his coffee was cooling and his cheese Danish was aging. He sat down, glumly took a mouthful of Danish, and looked out the window while he chewed.
He was in an all-night diner on 31st Street in Queens, about half a mile from Grand Central Parkway. He’d run this far full tilt, and here for the moment he’d gone to ground, and he’d been here fifteen minutes now without yet being able to think what he should do next.
Very little was clear to him, but included with that little was the indisputable fact he’d been framed. He’d been framed neatly, sweetly and completely, and not only that but he’d been framed by a stranger. In fact, if he’d heard the conversation right, it was a whole group of strangers. The little guy named Rose had only been representing others like himself.
Would Nick Rovito have taken the unsubstantiated word of a schmo like Rose? No. Nick Rovito would have insisted on the names of other businessmen who would tell the same story, and then he would have checked with those businessmen. That they had told the same story was pretty clear.
In other words, a whole group of complete strangers had taken it into their heads to frame a guy named Engel. Now, why would a whole group of complete strangers want to do a thing like that?
Businessmen, too. Solid citizens. Not maniacs, not practical jokers, not a rival mob, nothing like that at all. Husbands and fathers, proprietors of business establishments, payers of taxes, these were the men who had suddenly and inexplicably exerted themselves to put the finger on a guy they didn’t even know.
Why?
Slurping at cold coffee, watching the dark empty street outside the diner window, Engel gnawed at that question and his cheese Danish in equal portions, and whereas he was gradually getting somewhere with the Danish he was getting nowhere at all with the question.
With the Danish gone, with nothing but dregs left in the coffee cup, he decided it was best to table the question awhile and devote himself to thinking about another and a more immediate problem.
Like, where now?
He couldn’t go back to the apartment, that was obvious. If Nick Rovito’s boys weren’t there by now, the cops would be. (It was hard to keep in mind, but that was an additional complication: the cops either already were or soon would be after him for the murder of Willy Menchik. As if he didn’t have enough trouble without!) So the apartment was forbidden territory. So was his mother’s place. So, in fact, was any place he’d ever been before.
He thought fleetingly of Dolly, who even now he could surely reach through her friend Roxanne. But the way Dolly was leaving notes around, one of them was bound to be picked up by somebody dangerous, which meant that Dolly, too, soon or late, would be watched.
Money? He had about forty bucks on him, less than he usually carried but he’d insisted on paying for dinner up in Connecticut tonight. He also had a watch he could probably pawn in the morning.
In a second of real despair, he thought of turning himself in to the cops. In exchange for protection and leniency, he could promise to sing for them, do them a Valachi. Of course, there wouldn’t be a chance he’d ever convince them he’d been framed on the Menchik murder, which meant he’d spend the rest of his life — long or short, but probably short — behind bars, and that was almost as bad as not having any life to spend at all.
No. There had to be another way, a better way.
In order, then; take everything in order. The first thing to do was find a safe place to hole up for a while. The second thing to do was find out or figure out why he’d been framed, and the third thing to do was somehow prove to Nick Rovito that it was a frame.
“You want anything else?”
It was the waitress, a woman as stocky as she was surly, who looked in her white uniform like a sadistic nurse. Engel looked at her and shook his head. “Just the check.”
She slapped it down on the table as though she were trumping his ace, and waddled away again in triumph. Engel left a nickel tip, paid the man behind the counter, and left the diner.
Outside, on the corner, there was a cabstand, with one lone taxi sitting there all forlorn, its vacancy light glumly burning on its roof, its driver slouched behind the wheel with a copy of the Daily News up in front of his face. He also wore a cap, and had a pencil behind his ear. He also chewed gum.
Engel stood irresolutely on the sidewalk. If he could think of somewhere to go, he’d use this cab to get there. But first he had to think of a place, a place he could get to but where no one would think of looking for him. Either with someone he knew, or maybe even a place that was deserted, where there—
Got it.
Engel snapped his fingers, and allowed a faint ray of hope to soar up his spinal column and light up, briefly, his gloomy mind. Part one worked out; nothing left now but parts two and three.
He went over to the cab, slid into the back seat, and said, “Manhattan. West 71st Street.”
The driver slowly turned his head, and said, “Manhattan? Why don’t you take the subway, Mac? Cabs cost too much.”
“I’m in a hurry,” Engel told him.
“I don’t like Manhattan,” the driver said. “You want to go some place in Queens, any place in Queens, just let me know.”
“You can’t turn down a fare,” Engel said. “It’s against the law.”
“You gonna be a hardnose? Give me an address in Queens, I’ll take you.”
“Good. The nearest precinct house.”
The driver squeezed his face up. “What, to turn me in?”
“You know it.”
The driver sighed, and folded up his paper, and faced front. “I hate hardnoses,” he said.
Engel lit a cigarette and blew smoke at the back of the driver’s neck. “Tough,” he said, because that’s the way he felt.
Once he got moving, the driver was one of the fastest men afloat. He was clearly in a hurry to deliver Engel to Manhattan, turn around, and get the hell back to his beloved Queens.
They tore down 31st Street to Northern Boulevard, to the Queensboro Bridge approach, over the bridge, up Third Avenue to 66th Street, west across 66th Street through Central Park and over to Broadway, up Broadway to West 71st Street, and over 71st Street to the address Engel wanted, which was a good block from where he intended to go.
The meter read a dollar eighty-five. Engel gave him two dollars and waited for his change. The driver gave it to him, frowning, watching as though he didn’t believe it, and Engel pocketed the fifteen cents, got out of the cab, and slammed the door. The driver said several things, several very angry things, but he was already racing down the block as he said them, so Engel didn’t hear the exact words. Still, he caught the drift.