“The fuck could we do?” Russo asks. “We keep wrestling, we get clothes back on him—his pants, his shirt, his jacket and tie, everything, except he has major wood poking out, I swear it’s getting bigger, like his dick is Pinocchio and just told a lie.
“I go down, twenty the doorman to go for a smoke and I guard the lobby. Monty and Malone heft this guy into the elevator and we drag him out the side door into our car, which is no easy task.
“So Harry’s propped up in the front seat like he’s drunk or something and we drive all the way downtown to his office. A hundred for the security guard, back in the elevator, we set him down in his chair behind his desk like he’s this dedicated employee burning the midnight oil.”
Russo takes a sip of his martini, signals for another. “But now what? What we should do is just get the fuck out of there, let them find him in the morning, but we all like Harry. Very fond of the guy, and we don’t have the heart to just let him sit there rotting, so . . .
“Malone here calls the desk sergeant at the Five. Makes up this bullshit about walking past the building, seeing lights on, thought he’d go up to see his old friend Harry, blah, send a unit.
“The uniforms come up, then the duty ME. Takes one look at Harry, says, ‘The guy’s heart exploded.’ We nod, like yeah, isn’t it sad, he was overworked, then the ME says, ‘But it didn’t do it here.’ We’re all like, ‘What do you fucking mean?’ and he goes into some long explanation about lividity and morbidity and that he didn’t shit his pants and what’s more, the deceased has a hard-on like a battering ram, and he’s looking at us like ‘what’s going on,’ so we take him aside and tell him.
“‘Look,’ I say. ‘Harry tapped out in the saddle and we want to spare the widow and the kids the embarrassment. Can you work with us on this?’
“‘You moved the body,’ he says.
“We confess.
“‘That’s a crime,’ he says.
“We agree. Malone here, he tells the guy we’ll owe him a solid, do the right thing, and the doc he says, ‘Okay.’ Writes it up like Harry died at his desk, a faithful servant of the city.”
“Which he was,” Monty says.
“Absolutely,” Russo says. “Except now we have to go to Rosemary, tell her her husband has passed. We drive over to their place on East Forty-First, ring the bell, Rosemary, she’s in a robe and curlers, we tell her. She cries a little, she makes us all some tea, then . . .”
Russo’s martini arrives.
“She wants to see him. We tell her why don’t she wait until tomorrow, we made the ID, it’s not necessary, but no. She wants to see her husband.”
Malone shakes his head.
“So, okay,” Russo says. “We go to the morgue, show our shields, they slide Harry out of the drawer, and I have to say they did their best. They had him covered with sheets, blankets, but no . . .
“Tent pole. Like you could hold a revival meeting under there. The circus, I don’t know—elephants, clowns, acrobats, the whole nine yards—and Rosemary, she looks and she says . . .”
They all start laughing again.
“Rosemary, she says, ‘Look at Little Harry—never say die.’
“She was proud of it. Proud that he died in the saddle, doing what he loved to do. We’re getting hernias lugging this horny bastard around, and she knew all about it all the time.
“Calling hours? You know sometimes the wiseguys, they have to have closed caskets? They had to close Harry’s casket from the waist down. Rosemary said send him to heaven ready.”
Monty lifts a glass. “Here’s to Harry.”
“Never say die,” Malone says.
They clink their glasses.
Then Russo looks over Levin’s shoulder. “Oh, shit.”
“What?”
“Don’t turn around,” Russo says. “At the bar. It’s Lou Savino.”
Malone looks alarmed. “Are you sure?”
“It’s Savino and three of his crew,” Russo says.
“Who’s Lou Savino?” Levin asks.
“‘Who’s Lou Savino?’” Russo says. “Are you kidding me right now? He’s a capo in the Cimino family.”
“Runs the Pleasant Avenue crew,” Malone says. “He has an open warrant out. We gotta take him.”
“Here?” Levin asks.
“What the fuck,” Russo says, “do you think IAB would think, it got word we were in the same place as a mobster with an open warrant and we let him walk away?”
“Jesus,” Levin says.
“It has to be you,” Malone says. “He hasn’t made us yet, but if one of us gets up, he’ll bolt like a rabbit.”
“We’ll back you, kid,” Russo says.
Monty says, “Be polite.”
“But firm,” says Russo.
Levin gets up. He looks nervous as hell, but he walks to the bar where Savino is having drinks with three of his guys and their gumars. If they’re sitting in the main room of any restaurant, they always want to be seen with beautiful women; if it’s just the men, they’d be in a private room.
Whether or not to have women at dinner on Bowling Night has long been a topic of discussion in Malone’s team. He could argue it either way—on the one hand, it’s always nice to have a lovely woman by your side at dinner. On the other hand, it’s too showy. A group of well-known detectives out to an expensive dinner is borderline as it is; to be more ostentatious with call girls is another thing.
So Malone has vetoed it. He doesn’t want to rub it in IAB’s faces, and besides, it’s a good chance for the men to talk. The restaurant is noisy, the chance of getting a wire in remote, and even if IAB did, the sound would be so murky and confused that you could deny it was even you. The tape would never make it through the evidentiary hearing.
Now he and his team watch Levin approach Savino. “Excuse me, sir?”
“Yeah, what?” Savino doesn’t look too happy to be interrupted, especially by someone he doesn’t know.
Levin shows his badge. “You have a warrant. I’m afraid I’ll have to place you under arrest, sir.”
Savino looks around at his crew and shrugs, like What the fuck is this bullshit? He turns back to Levin and says, “I don’t have no warrant.”
“I’m afraid you do, sir.”
“Don’t be afraid, kid,” Savino says. “Either I have a warrant or I don’t, and I don’t, so you don’t got to be afraid of nothing.”
He turns his back on Levin and signals the bartender for another round.
“This is a thing of beauty,” Monty says. “A beautiful thing.”
Levin reaches behind him for his cuffs. “Sir, we can do this like gentlemen, or—”
Savino whirls on him. “If we were gonna do this like gentlemen, you wouldn’t be interrupting my social evening in front of my associates and my lady friends, you . . . what are you, Italian? Jewish?”
“I’m Jewish, but I don’t see what—”
“—you kike, hebe, Christ killer motherfucker, you—” Savino looks over his shoulder, sees Malone and yells, “Ball buster! You ballbuster!”
Levin turns around to see Malone and Russo practically falling out of their chairs and Monty’s shoulders heaving up and down in laughter.
Savino slaps Levin on the shoulder. “They’re goofing you, kid! What is this, fucking Bowling Night, right? You got some coglioni on you, though, coming up on me like that. ‘Excuse me, sir’ . . .”