The Ghost Read online

  “If we get to that point, then we’ll see what happens,” Mac said. “But we’re not going to jeopardize anything. That’s the rule! And it doesn’t matter how much of an impulse any of us get to kill that cocksucker. Did I just say something that wasn’t clear?”

  Mac continued: “Okay, here’s what we know for sure. At all costs, they don’t want to kill you, Frank. Their main objective is to get you, not kill you. With you gone and Willy unable to communicate, they would have no chance. Therefore, getting you but not killing you is the issue. Once they got you then you’d be in trouble because then they’d torture the shit out of you and believe me they won’t believe that you don’t know where the package is. But again, you won’t be killed. You’ll be kept on the edge—on that disgust-line between life and death where you’d be begging to die. Whoever sent these motha-fuckas sent guys who would know not to kill the goose with the golden egg but rather to keep him right on that line.”

  “Mac, Lyle, I’ve got an idea,” Al piped in. “We gotta move Willy to another hospital on the QT, and of course keep him safe there with the same cops that are guarding him here. Then we announce it in the papers that Willy’s at the morgue and that services will be held for him on such and such a date and at such and such a cemetery. It’ll be the talk of the town—for sure of the neighborhood—and it’ll be read about. Whoever needs that information will realize that either Frank here will be at the morgue identifying Willy, or at the cemetery—where they’d be itching to grab Frank there. They don’t know that Frank saw the big guy. So I think the cemetery is where we’ll get them.”

  “It’s good, Al,” Mac said. “It’s good. But a lotta people are going to be devastated with that obituary. But it still might be worth it especially if we get them—either at the morgue or the cemetery. Remember though, no rough stuff unless we need to physically bring them down. Then we bring them down tough! I’m for it that way. And Frank, you’ll need a vest even though you would never be a target of any shooting, but there could be incidental fire in your direction. No one would dare endanger your life deliberately. You need to be captured, not killed. So, don’t worry. Furthermore, we’ll be forgiven for that obit if it all works out. No doubt.”

  Al agreed. He told Frank that Gloria would visit Willy and then announced he had to take care of a few things and would catch up with us later. Simultaneously, upon Al’s departure, the overall plan went into effect as soon as Mac and Lyle called it in. Then before you knew it, Mac had a sit-down with the doctor on duty at Willy’s ward and in short order this doctor went right along with Mac’s plan to move Willy. They both agreed however, that it was a police responsibility for that to happen so that the doctor’s position in the hospital was not at all jeopardized. Of course, the doctor was worried about the possibility of being dismissed for lack of professional judgment resulting in the certain accusation of the endangerment of a patient.

  The transfer happened in a blink. Willy was, with stealth, and thus practically with invisibility, transferred in an ambulance to Bronx Hospital on the Grand Concourse—probably the most affluent thoroughfare in The Bronx. He was set up in a private room off a private corridor. Wouldn’t you know it, on the third floor, rear. The third floor, for crying out loud! The whole transfer was so good that we were told it was, for all intents and purposes, undetectable. Further, Willy Travali’s name was placed on the ‘deceased’ docket where all such cases are registered. That took care of phase one.

  Mac and Lyle both almost simultaneously noted that it had to be a Catholic cemetery and if so it had to be Saint Raymond’s Roman Catholic cemetery at Lafayette Avenue, also in The Bronx. It was the famous Saint Raymond’s that even gained international notoriety because of the Lindbergh case involving the drop of ransom money for Lindbergh’s son’s kidnapper. Even though the Lindbergh thing was more than twenty years before, it was perfect because it increased the possibility that the guys we were after just about couldn’t miss the notice in the papers.

  The very next day, the Daily News, the New York Post, The Daily Mirror, the New York Herald Tribune, the New York World Telegram, the New York Journal American, and the New York Times, all had obit notices on Willy. The obit lamented the end of life of a child who was a great kid, good in school and very interested in his friends and family.

  That took care of phase two.

  So far, we had what we wanted. Willy was being cared for and guarded from inside Bronx Hospital as well as from the outside with cops in unmarked cars stationed across the street at both entrances/exits. Second, the morgue cops had descriptions—big and burly, tall and slim, and of course, accents of German and Spanish. Then on phase three, I had another idea. Given my concern for my own safety I was also thinking ahead. I began considering other factors about the guy who pushed Willy.

  “One of the things we haven’t counted on,” I proclaimed, “is that those two guys could have arranged for others to replace them at the cemetery while they continue to be holed-up who knows where just waiting for these replacements to bring me in.”

  “It doesn’t matter, Frank,” Mac answered. “Lyle and I have also been considering that. There are four exits from the cemetery. Every car leaving the cemetery will be carefully monitored by pistol-packing cops. People in the cars will be ordered to identify themselves. All police have been instructed that we need the suspects alive—at least one of them—hopefully the big burly one. But if he’s holed-up somewhere and we get their replacements—if there are any—they would still need to identify themselves.

  “The point is that no one gets to Willy inside the hospital and no one gets to you in or outside the morgue or cemetery. In the meantime,” Mac continued, “I’m curious to see what Al’s up to. He said he needed to do something but he didn’t say what. But he did say he’d be in touch later.

  * * *

  When we saw Al later, he told us how he was able to see where we all needed to go from here and what we needed to do. Al lived on Brook Avenue, a block or two from Willy’s school and a few blocks from where Willy and I lived on Third Avenue. It was a poor area mostly populated by European families—mainly Italian, Irish, and Puerto Rican. All their kids were first-generation American and all their parents spoke with a variety of foreign accents. Immediately further south started the Negro area.

  Al lived one flight up with Gloria –Gloria Messer. Gloria is very smart and very pretty. She’s a kindergarten teacher at P.S. 42, where Willy went. P.S. 42 had what they called a pre-junior high-school annex for kids who were ahead of their grade-level and that’s where Willy was placed. Al is forty-two, same age as I am. Gloria, who Al’s been living with for the past couple of years is thirty-five. Their apartment house was one notch up from a tenement building. I knew that Al and Gloria were both happy. Al repeated to me many times that they always had hot water and that in the winter, they always had heat. That kind of thing was important to him. You know, basic needs and basic conveniences. Al’s income was sometimes there and at other times not. Gloria made a steady teacher’s salary so that together they lived somewhat frugally, but pretty well; that is, they felt financially more or less secure.

  Al was about five foot ten and a muscular hundred and seventy-five pounds. And he was very handsome. He was a black-belt Krav Maga fighter. Gloria was a full figured five six, about a hundred twenty-five pounds—beautiful. Al always made a point to tell me that whenever he walked into the apartment and saw Gloria, he always kissed her. I was imagining that when he walked in this time she was cooking their dinner. I had a feeling he got home in time for dinner—wherever in the world he had been earlier. When Al confirmed it, and told me they sat down to eat during which time he explained the entire Willy story, I told him I knew it and that I imagined it would have gone down with Gloria more or less how he described it.

  Before Al could begin telling Gloria all about Willy and what happened, she said she already knew about it and told him that she had spoken to Mac when he went to the school to talk to the princip
al. Then after talking to her, Mac drove her in his police car to see Willy at his new digs at the Grand Concourse’s Bronx Hospital. Apparently, with the doctor’s permission, she sat in Willy’s room for a few hours. She also told him that in all that time at the hospital Willy was breathing fine but didn’t move at all. He just lay there like he was unconscious. Since it was the start of the weekend, she said she was planning to go back there in the morning.

  Willy was an orphan; his father, Ustacio, had disappeared, vanished, and his mother Olga, died. So, in his everyday life, I, although his uncle, was functioning as his father, and he already knew Gloria since she and Al were a couple. At that time Willy was about nine or ten—about a year or two ago. Gloria loved Willy. You could see how she mothered him and was very sensitive to his needs. I was thinking that if Willy could choose anyone to be with him, it would be Gloria first and me, second. And that was okay with me. Willy treated Al as an uncle and as a close personal friend as well. As far as Willy was concerned, he was part of a four-person group: him, me, Gloria and Al.

  As long as Gloria was watching over Willy, I felt relieved. I was also always interested in how Al described what I thought of as his ‘detective-thinking.’ In this case, his detective-habit showed up. For example, he would usually ask someone unrelated to his search for whatever—know what I mean—like what guess they would make about this or that with respect to whatever he was explaining or looking for. In this case he couldn’t quite figure out what his next lead would be in order to get those guys, or where he should look, or how to uncover even something, anything; that is, if the morgue or cemetery things didn’t work out. So in order to expand this rather limited repertoire he decided to ask Gloria for her opinion. He told me that in his offhanded way he said to her:

  “Hon, lemme ask you something. Okay, we’re looking for these two guys and we’re pretty sure that they’re looking for Frank. They obviously wouldn’t be living around here. Assuming they’re looking to grab Frankie, where would you say they’re located? Where would you say is their place of operation? How would you say I go about figuring it?”

  Gloria thought for a few moments and then blurted out:

  “They’re living in their car. It’s the only way. They’re living in their car all the time, eating in the car, even maybe sleeping in the car unless others take over after whatever number of hours they take searching. I get an image of them constantly driving the neighborhood looking and hoping they’ll see Frankie in the street. Because what else can they do? I’ll bet they’re driving all around the neighborhood. All they know is that this is where Frankie lives. And they need to spell each other in the driving.

  “I would say the perimeter of their land mass would encapsulate Fulton Avenue on the east and from south to north, 171st street to 173st Street, and the same for Webster and Claremont from 171st north to 173rd. Then to complete the square, they would drive all the east-west and north-south blocks: Claremont, Bathgate, Washington, Brook, Park, Third, Fulton, over and over again, just cruising and watching—looking for Frankie.”

  When Al caught up to us that evening he told us what we were dying to know; that is, what to do and where to do it?

  “So that’s it guys. The morgue and the cemetery are good. But this is better. We’ll do the morgue and the cemetery, of course. But what that tells me is that they almost for sure had photos of both Willy and you, Frankie. How else would they know who to get? Whoever planned the whole thing—let’s say this guy, this ghost—had the means to do it; had technical people and money to finance the whole thing. Of course. They’re driving the neighborhood. What else could they be doing except for the morgue and cemetery? And that’s if they even read the papers! Otherwise, their only target is Frankie. So how are they gonna get you, Frank? How? Gloria clocked it. They’ll be looking for you in the square few blocks that Gloria named. The cemetery is good, the morgue, not bad. Scope and stake them out. Of course, but I feel it. Gloria’s idea is better.

  “You know, Gloria thinks she’s a bit psychic but I think she’s totally smart and just figured it out logically. So, what we need is a total stakeout at various points of the neighborhood. And by the way, another genius thing is she also said we shouldn’t be driving around looking for them but that we should be in cars parked at the curb and sit tight and watch all cars passing. We’re bound to see them. I can feel it. One of us will see them. They’d need to pass us in just about each and every stakeout spot. We’ll all have our intercoms on the ready so as soon as they’re spotted everyone gets alerted and we surround them.”

  “Al,” Lyle popped in. “Does Gloria have a sister?”

  We all laughed but we all naturally caught ourselves. We all felt that given the situation with Willy, laughing might’ve been inappropriate.’ So in view of the Willy thing we killed the laughter. Even the way I said that to myself about using the word “killed,” I automatically felt the ‘uh oh’ that I shouldn’t have even thought it. It was my superstition about what a person thinks could influence what actually happens. I know it’s stupid, but because I’m always playing ball, I know that that kind of superstition is a very serious thing with ball players. But this time Lyle saved me and without knowing it steered me away from these ruminations.

  “Okay, I’ll set it up. Mac,” Lyle jumped in saying. “How many cars do we need.”

  “Well, it’s about an eighteen block perimeter,” Mac answered. “I say five stakeout cars. Two guys in each car. Frank, you place the cars. Where do you think?”

  “I would say offhand, one on Washington and Claremont, one on Webster and Claremont, one on Webster and 171st, that’s three. I think one on Fulton and 173rd Street, that’s four, and the last one on Brook and Claremont so that because Claremont is the only two-way street, then in this way traffic on Claremont will be completely covered. If they’re cruising the perimeter, we’ll definitely get them.

  * * *

  It was all set. The five cars were stationed as planned all over the neighborhood. Mac and I were in one car on Claremont and Washington, and Al and Lyle in another on Brook and Claremont, right around where Al lived. The others were stationed at specified points we had figured out.

  Al told me later that Lyle was interested in how I had no Italian accent but couldn’t figure out how that could be since when I got to the U.S. I was already an adult. The essence of it was that I had this savant ability for hearing language spoken in its perfect dialect. To me language was loaded with accoutrements—intonation, enunciation almost as though it were music. In addition, I had a hunger for words so that my vocabulary and what’s known as ‘command of language’ was always pretty good. It wasn’t something I was striving for. It was just something that came naturally. And all of that, is what Al told Lyle as they were continually scanning all passing cars looking for the big guy and maybe someone else with him.

  It was funny because here we were, looking for guys who could be killers, and here we were talking about the art and science of language. Oh yes, that reminds me. I almost forgot to tell Mac and Lyle that Al, Alex Kaye is a trained Krav Maga expert—a black belt Maga. It’s the most serious and dangerous of the martial arts. It was developed by a Jewish guy by the name of Imi Lichtenfeld, and became required for training Jewish street fighters in Israel more or less at the time Israel became a country. So much for Jews not being able to fight!

  But this all started in the late forties. Al, like me, was born in 1916. He in The Bronx and me in Ukraine. In about 1938 when Al was in his early 20’s, Lichtenfeld made a clandestine trip to New York City to raise money for the eventual organization of the Jewish army. I’m not sure how he met Al but they did meet and Al told me that’s when he began Krav Maga lessons from Lichtenfeld.

  A couple of years later, in about 1940 or 1941, Al travelled to the Middle East, first by boat to England which was dangerous because of Nazi U-boats, and from there through practically half of Europe before he got to Turkey and then I think he said to Syria and Jordan and only t
hen to the Palestine Mandate which wasn’t that area of the Middle East called Israel yet. And here’s the interesting part. Al was baby sitting two cannibalized aircraft with their parts separately packed in crates, destined to be the start of the new Jewish Air Force. Therefore, this air-force, an eventual Israeli Air-Force would consist of exactly two planes—those two. They were entrusted to Al, sent originally by a family of Jewish brothers who owned a machine shop in The Bronx. They were the Tishner brothers—Sammy, Earl, and two others.

  When Al finally arrived with the crates in tow, he told me Lichtenfeld met him and it was Lichtenfeld who then had all the crates taken and loaded onto trucks by a waiting squad of men. For his efforts, Lichtenfeld gave Al about five or six more weeks of Krav Maga lessons. Al kept on practicing it on his own for a year with a Krav expert in New York City, in Manhattan, until he became equivalent to a Black Belt. I think Al said Krav Maga translates into ‘combat-contact.’ According to Al, like I said, it’s reputed to be the most dangerous and more to the point, even the deadliest martial art.

  Al said that when he arrived at Lichtenfeld’s little workout spot, Lichtenfeld was already in Krav sessions with a British guy named Jimmy McKay and an American named Max Palace. Apparently, Lichtenfeld had a rule that if you wanted lessons from him in Krav Maga, he wanted to know why. In other words, you needed to have a pretty damn good reason for wanting to become a killing machine. Imi said Al told him why, this way:

  “I live in a tough neighborhood in the southeast Bronx. Sometimes there are gangs that take things into their own hands. Know what I mean? Recently, house break-ins started happening. A house break-in means just that. A few guys break open your door and just like that take over your apartment. I have a girlfriend who’s a teacher in a public school. We live together. She’s in her thirties and gorgeous. Now as you can see I’m a pretty strong guy and I assure you, I’m not afraid of contact. But if there are three or four guys, that’s another story. Whether you’re home or not, anything of value is taken, and if any females are there such as a wife, or even a daughter, or even a mother, such girls or women would possibly not be safe from, you guessed it.