Paradise City Read online

  Jennifer held his look for several seconds and then turned away, catching a glance at the traffic moving across Lenox Avenue. “There a good reason we’re standing here drinking coffee in the middle of Harlem?” she asked, attempting to shift the conversation back to police business. “What’s next after this? A ride on the Circle Line?”

  Lo Manto started to walk against the oncoming traffic, still drinking his coffee, his eyes giving a quick check to the street action along the avenue. It was late-afternoon crowded, old women straining to pull their groceries back home, plastic bags stuffed inside squeaky carts. Middle-aged men mingled in front of candy stores, a steady diet of cigarettes and chatter filling their time. Most of the shops were crowded and the wide street hummed with fresh activity. It was a working-class neighborhood with a lowering crime rate, bracing for the onslaught of a new gentrified generation, moving in with speed and pockets crammed with money, eager young faces looking to turn old tenements into fresh-faced brownstones overnight. “I don’t know if we have time for that today,” he said to Jennifer as he tossed his empty container into a full trash bin. “Maybe tomorrow if the day breaks our way.”

  “What’s a visit to New York without a ride up the Hudson?” Jennifer asked, words dripping with sarcasm. “But before I rush out and get us a couple of tickets, can you give me a hint why we’re here?”

  “I want to spend some time with an old friend,” Lo Manto said, stopping in front of a dark gray building with a façade that hadn’t been cleaned in decades. “Thought you’d like to meet him, too.”

  “Is this someone else you knew back from when you were a kid?” Jennifer asked as she pushed her way through a glass-and-old-wood revolving door into a long, dark lobby that smelled like stale beer.

  Lo Manto wheeled through the door and led Jennifer toward the rear and a worn and creaky elevator. “I hope you’re not afraid of dogs,” he said to her, ignoring her question. “Moe’s a friendly enough guy, at least once he gets to know you. But Little Moe is a whole other story. The kind of dog that wants to be liked and respected, and if he feels that he’s not getting either one, he does something about it.”

  “How’s he get along with you?” Jennifer asked, stepping into a shaky elevator car, watching as Lo Manto pressed the button for the sixth floor.

  He put a hand in his pocket and pulled out a small packet of dog treats. “He loves me,” Lo Manto said. “But that’s because I come with bribes.”

  The elevator door clanged shut and the two detectives rode the rest of the way in silence.

  Blind Moe Ravini was once the numbers king of the East Bronx, and he held on to that title for more than forty years. He would be driven into the neighborhood twice a day, the first time very early in the morning to collect and the second after the last horse race was run at dusk for the payoff. As he got older and aging bones made it more difficult for him to get around, Moe let his team of runners do the bulk of his legwork. After a long day taking bets and collecting slips, paying off both the police and the winning hand, Blind Moe Ravini was driven back to his Harlem office building where he put in a few more hours making calls to the bosses and reporting the day’s policy take. Little was known about his personal life, other than he had a wife and a son living somewhere on a farm he owned in Georgia. Even less was known about his early years or how he came to run the numbers operations in three of the five boroughs in New York. He materialized one day as if dropped from a thick cloud, a tall, muscular, blind-at-birth man, the only son of a black cleaning woman and a white Camorra bookkeeper. Blind Moe made his rounds with the aid of a silver walking stick and a thick-jowled English bulldog who was more lookout than guide. He seldom spoke and no one from any of the neighborhoods where he plied his trade ever saw him eat. Wherever he went, his large sedan and driver, Black Jack Curry, were always within the distance of a shout, the man behind the wheel as silent as his employer. Blind Moe seemed devoted only to the art of the numbers game, taking the bet, dropping the action and waiting for the payout to be handed over.

  Lo Manto first met Blind Moe when the boy was just shy of his fifth birthday. That was the first time his mother entrusted him with her daily one-dollar bet on her lucky number, 213. He remembered handing the blind man the folded-over slip of paper, whispering the number as his mother had told him to do and gently placing the dollar in the palm of his right hand. That first morning, Lo Manto leaned over to pet the top of the bulldog’s head, only to get a growl in return. “You’re lucky,” Blind Moe said to the boy. “You caught Little Moe in a good mood. You try that tomorrow and you might leave behind a finger along with that dollar bill.”

  Lo Manto followed the same pattern every morning for the next seven years, the bet never larger than a dollar, the number always the same, the conversation never lasting longer than a minute, the bulldog only growing nastier with time. Still, Lo Manto grew comfortable with the arrangement and looked forward to placing the bet each morning, making the corner of East 238th Street and White Plains Road his first stop on his way to school. He liked Blind Moe and learned to ignore the growling and barking of the various dogs by his side.

  One spring morning, Lo Manto, then just approaching his twelfth birthday, placed his bet and had just about turned the corner, heading toward his first class of the day, when Blind Moe spoke to him for only the second time. “You like coffee?” he asked the boy.

  Lo Manto turned and faced Blind Moe. “Yes,” he said.

  “Keep the dollar then,” Blind Moe said. “And tomorrow come back with two cups. One for me, one for you. I like mine with lots of milk and four sugars. You can take yours any way you please. And that’s only if you got the time and are willing.”

  “I’ll pick them up on my way,” Lo Manto said. “You want me to get something for the dog, too?”

  “He don’t need nothing to get him started in the morning,” Blind Moe said. “Other than a bowl of water and some biscuits and he’s got himself plenty of both. You and me are the ones that could use the kick.”

  The next morning, Lo Manto left the apartment fifteen minutes earlier than usual, stopped at Dick’s Deli, bought two containers of coffee, and walked them the two blocks over to Blind Moe’s corner spot. The containers burned his hands as he walked. He stood in front of Blind Moe, the unleashed bulldog lapping up cold water from a large blue bowl to his right, and waited for the numbers boss to acknowledge his presence. “Am I supposed to guess which one has the sugar in it?” Blind Moe finally asked. “Or is staying quiet just your cute little way of telling me there ain’t no difference between the two cups?”

  “This one’s yours,” Lo Manto said, holding up the container in his right hand. “I grabbed a few extra sugars in case you wanted more than what’s already in there.”

  Blind Moe took the hot cup, put it to his lips, and finished off half the coffee with one long swallow. “In my book, a good cup of fresh, sweet coffee runs a tight second to being with a beautiful woman,” he said, staring down at Lo Manto, his eyes hidden by a thin pair of wraparound sunglasses. “My guess is you’re still a baby when it comes to that end of the pool, so you’re just going to have to take it on my say-so.”

  Lo Manto sipped his coffee slowly and smiled. There was an empty wooden crate up on its side, nestled between Blind Moe and the dark brown bulldog. “Okay with you if I sit down?” he asked.

  “Fine by me if it’s fine by Little Moe,” Blind Moe said. “Just don’t want to hear any lip if you start to run late for school. I’m already where I’m supposed to be. But you got an empty classroom waiting on your end, with one of them nuns standing up against the board.”

  “They’re not as tough as they want us to think they are,” Lo Manto said, sitting down, the dog eyeing him with suspicion. “They talk it, but you can see in their eyes they don’t mean any of it.”

  “Things have changed then since I had them in school,” Blind Moe said. “Back then, they were some scary chicks buried under those starched white uniforms. I know m
en that did a long stretch of hard time that didn’t come off as tough as any one of those nuns.”

  “I didn’t know you went to Catholic school,” Lo Manto said, not bothering to hide the surprise in his voice.

  “What, you think I was born on this corner?” Blind Moe asked. “I put my years in, like you doing now. Except they jammed me into a special school, a lot different than where you go. A place for kids who can’t learn what they can’t see.”

  “What did they teach you?” Lo Manto asked.

  “The ladies preached the truth,” Blind Moe said. “They drummed it home. They said not to expect anything from anybody because I was blind except for pity and that shit don’t pay any rent. They told me to use what I had and not piss and moan about what I didn’t. They couldn’t teach me how to see, so they taught me how to hear. And that lesson has given me a lot of frequent flyer miles.”

  Blind Moe Ravini could hear it all. He used the handicap he was born with to help strengthen his other key senses. While others talked, Ravini listened and, through the years, that one fact helped build his power base. Strangers, friends, and foes all felt they could talk in front of Blind Moe, confide in him, seek advice from the man who seldom spoke. He was the ears of the East Bronx, keyed in on every deal and scam even before it went down. He didn’t need his eyes to tell him who the primary players were, along which lines criminal affiliations were divided, and who among the street dealers and climbers were living under the Rossi scope. He gathered all the information and stored it, building a mental database of detail, logging all the comings and goings, blessed with the ability to do business and operate without interference by simply standing still and taking bets on an isolated corner of the East Bronx.

  Lo Manto knocked on a heavy wooden door, turned the knob, and walked in, Jennifer close behind. The corridor was blanketed in darkness and he could hear the hard scuffle and scrape from the paws of a large dog running toward them. Jennifer instinctively reached for her gun. Lo Manto tore open the bag of dog biscuits and slid two into his right hand. He waited until the bulldog was close enough for him to hear the growl coming from deep within his chest. “Sono io,” Lo Manto said to the approaching dog, knowing that Ravini had trained them all to respond only to Italian commands. “Fa il bravo e sietate.”

  The bulldog slid to a halt and sat on his rear haunches. Lo Manto felt for a small coffee table and clicked on an ornate lamp. He looked and saw a large bulldog, wet tongue hanging off to the side of his thick jowls, sitting and patiently waiting for his treat. He moved toward the dog and put out his right hand. The dog lapped the two biscuits from his palm and crouched down to enjoy his special surprise. “You learned enough to make it past a dumb dog,” Blind Moe said. “But what makes you think you got the smarts to get past me?”

  Lo Manto walked over to Blind Moe, standing in the doorway between the foyer and his office. He was much older now than when they had first met, his short Afro tinged with patches of gray, his beard streaked with white. He still had the wraparound shades but maneuvered around the office without the need of a cane. “I figure you’d just be happy to hear my voice,” Lo Manto said, reaching out a hand and resting it gently on Blind Moe’s shoulder. “That would be enough to get me in.”

  “Cut the kiss-ass,” Blind Moe said, “and tell me about the woman.”

  Lo Manto glanced over at Jennifer and motioned her closer. “She’s a cop,” he said to Blind Moe. “NYPD asked her to keep tabs on me. See that I don’t get into any kind of trouble.”

  “I already figured that on my own,” Blind Moe said. “Didn’t think you’d come all the way down to my neck just to show a girl a blind man’s office. That ruled out a date from the get-go. And the only women around you are either ducking bullets or aiming them. Based on the lack of any perfume, I bet she fell on the side of the badge.”

  “I would have cracked open the Chanel if only I knew,” Jennifer said. “A girl needs some heads-up time. But I’m stuck on short-notice detail.”

  Blind Moe smiled. “She’s got some smoke to her,” he said to Lo Manto. “I like that. It’ll do you some good to get a whiff of that. Might help to keep you nailed in your place.”

  “You got some time for me?” Lo Manto asked.

  “You came in with a beautiful woman and a pocket full of dog treats,” Blind Moe said. “That’s more than good to get you both a cup of coffee and fifteen minutes of my time. That enough to hold you?”

  “Depends on what you have to go with the coffee,” Lo Manto said, following Blind Moe into his office, watching as the old man clicked on an overhead light as he moved through a large space cluttered with cabinets, old photos resting against the sides of gray walls, bookshelves filled with jazz and blues LPs, all lined up in alphabetical order. Two floor-to-ceiling windows dominated the center of the room, offering a full view of the wide expanse of Lenox Avenue.

  “I could have shot the two of you for breaking and entering,” Blind Moe said, walking to a small corner of the office where a kitchenette was set up, “and would have walked away clean as a just-washed baby. Now I’m supposed to come out with a platter of appetizers.”

  “I wasn’t asking for me,” Lo Manto said, sitting in a thick mahogany chair across from Blind Moe’s desk. “But we do have a guest. Thought it would be nice to offer her a little something to munch on.”

  “She wants something she can ask,” Blind Moe said. “I ain’t ever known a cop to be shy. Or a woman for that matter. And she covers both them bases.”

  “I’m good with just the coffee,” Jennifer said. “I don’t need anything else.”

  “Good,” Blind Moe said, his back to both of them, pouring out three large cups of coffee. “Then there’ll only be two of us wishing we had something to eat.”

  He put milk and sugar in each cup, not bothering to ask how either cop preferred to drink it. He turned around and walked the two cups toward them, vibrantly aware of how soft Jennifer’s skin felt as it brushed against the side of his hand. He walked back to the kitchenette, picked up the third cup, walked to his large desk and sat down in the thick black leather rocking chair, cradled in the middle of the well. He pressed a button next to the old rotary phone and soon the sounds of John Coltrane filled the room. “Okay,” he said, sitting back, “let’s get to it. What is it you need?”

  “I want to know what you heard about a call out to set up a high-end shooting for hire,” Lo Manto said. “Supposed to go down sometime in the next few days. By the weekend, maybe early into the new week, but no later.”

  “Help me with the target,” Blind Moe said. “What poor fool are the shooters looking to bury?”

  “Me,” Lo Manto said.

  Felipe sat back in his wooden seat, front row of the loge overlooking first base, waiting for the start of the game between the Mets and the Braves. His right hand was in a tight white bandage taped across his palm, five stitches needed to seal the wound inflicted by Charlie Sunshine’s blade. Felipe loved both baseball and the Mets and had been thrilled when Lo Manto came across with the two tickets, plus enough money to cover a visit to the Diamond Club, but still played it close and tried not to appear too eager. “This is a lot of money to be shelling out,” he’d said to the detective. “And I didn’t do anything to earn this.”

  “Don’t worry,” Lo Manto told him. “None of it is coming out of my pocket. The seats belong to the captain and he can’t make the game and didn’t want them to go to waste. I promised him I’d find them a home.”

  “No strings?” Felipe asked. He had known Lo Manto for only a few days, but had him pegged well enough to know there was always some plan brewing with every action he took, even one as simple as a night at a ballpark. “I can go and not have to worry about anything or scope anybody out?”

  “I want you to sit back and enjoy the game,” Lo Manto said, handing over the tickets and the Club pass. “Have as many hot dogs and peanuts as your stomach can handle. And pay for what you eat. You have enough money in your pocke
ts. There’s no call to lift anything from anybody.”

  “There’s two tickets here,” Felipe said. “You going to come with me?”

  “I’ve got a meeting I can’t miss,” Lo Manto said. “But a baseball game can run forever, especially with a team like the Mets. If I get a chance, I might stop by and grab a few innings.”

  “So I go in alone?” Felipe asked, sensing that something was in play. “Do nothing but root root root for the home team?”

  “Just you and about thirty thousand die-hard fans,” Lo Manto said. “And one guy who won’t care who wins or loses. He’ll just be there with his eye on you. At some point, figure around the fourth, maybe fifth inning, he’ll come down and grab the empty seat next to you.”

  “I knew it sounded too good,” Felipe said. “There’s a catch to every free ride.”

  “He’s going to stay for no more than an hour,” Lo Manto said. “When he’s decided he’s had enough of the hits, runs, and errors, he’ll get up, throw a smile your way, and head for the exits. He’ll leave behind a Mets warmup jacket and a yellow envelope shoved inside one of the sleeves. The jacket’s yours to keep. The envelope has to get to me.”

  “It sounds way too simple,” Felipe said. “What if it doesn’t go down the way you mapped it out?”

  “You worry about watching the Mets,” Lo Manto said. “Let me worry about watching your back.”

  The score was tied 1–1 going into the bottom half of the fourth inning. Felipe had his feet resting flat against the blue iron rail, Mets cap on his head tilted forward. He was on his second Cracker Jack box and had already seen Mike Piazza take a hanging curveball deep. Kevin Millwood was on the mound for the Braves, peering in to the catcher for the sign, looking to jam up the Mets leadoff hitter, Jose Reyes. Felipe leaned forward, hands wrapped around his knees, and focused on the action below. The first pitch was fouled off down into the left field corner as the crowd began chanting for a hit. The boy turned away from the game and looked up at the tall, beefy man as he slowly made his way down the thick cement steps and sat in the open seat. On the next pitch, Reyes lashed a sharp single to center field and glided down toward first base. “Looks like I got here just in time,” the man said as he snapped open a bag of peanuts and placed a large container of beer by his feet. “Maybe even get to see them score a few runs.”