Big Silence by Stuart M. Kaminsky Read Free Book Online Page B

Mickey had gone to work for Jimmy Stashall. As Jimmy Stashall’s bookkeeper, Mickey had led a life of relative comfort, though a solitary one since his wife took their son and left him more than a decade ago. Still, Mickey had been resigned to his lot. Then something, who knows what, maybe the need to change things around, stay ahead of the game, had gotten to Jimmy Stashall, who decided that Mickey Gornitz was getting a little old and was maybe a little dangerous because he knew too much.
    The state attorney’s office had picked up Mickey and played him a tape of Stashall’s number-one man, Carl “the Fish” Cataglio, telling someone unknown that Mickey Gornitz was beginning to smell funny, that he needed a bath. The guy he was telling it to simply said, “Yes.”
    The state attorney couldn’t use the tape in court, but he used it on Mickey, who understood exactly what the conversation meant. Mickey’s lawyer made a deal and Mickey never even went back to his apartment to pick up his clothes and a toothbrush. Witness protection in exchange for copies Mickey had kept on floppy disks of Stashall’s illegal activities. Mickey would also have to appear on the stand to testify that the disks were authentic.
    Now came the waiting. Convinced that Stashall had gotten to the first lawyer, Mickey fired his lawyer and got a new one. Living in the hotel room for three months, talking and talking and talking to lawyers and cops and prosecutors and the FBI, Mickey was beginning to go a little mad. Everyone expected it. Then one day Mickey insisted on talking to Abe Lieberman and no one else. He knew Lieberman was a cop.
    Mickey got what he wanted, including, he assumed, protection for his son and ex-wife.
    A television was on across the room. The sound was off. It looked like C-Span.
    “Hal Litt’s dead,” Mickey said, shaking his head at the more than forty-year-old memory. “One of the greatest. Best all-around player I ever saw, like French silk pie to play with, wasn’t he? Could have, should have been the best Jew in the NBA. What was he? Six seven? Should have gone to a major college. Would have set records up the ass.”
    “Hal was stupid,” Abe said, reaching for a cup of coffee Mickey had leaned over to pour for him. “A basketball idiot savant. Genius on the court. Couldn’t read past fifth-grade level. Couldn’t add numbers over the low hundreds.”
    “Couldn’t carry numbers,” Mickey said, handing Abe the coffee cup. “I tried to help him. You know that? With you, Hal, Mel Goldman, your brother Maish, and the black kid …”
    “Alvin Garrett,” Abe supplied.
    The coffee was bad, very bad.
    “What happened to him?” asked Mickey.
    “Went to Pepperdine,” said Abe. “Got a Ph.D. Heads a department out there.”
    “And Hal’s dead.”
    Abe shrugged.
    “He worked in Fetterman’s bagel bakery. Went to park district games at night. Looked older than any of us.”
    “Time,” Mickey said with another shake of the head. “How’s Maish?”
    Abe said his brother was fine.
    “Still owns the T&L on Devon?” Mickey asked, glancing at C-Span and over at the cop at the door.
    “Still,” said Abe.
    “Okay,” said Mickey sitting back. “Now we talk about what you’re really here for. The days of the Marshall Commandos can wait for better times.”
    “Bad news,” said Lieberman.
    “How bad?” asked Mickey, the small smile still in place, hands clasped together white in frightened mockery of prayer.
    “Someone killed your ex-wife,” said Lieberman.
    “The boy?” asked Mickey. “Did they …?”
    “We don’t know,” said Lieberman. “Happened just outside of Dayton. Motel. We were watching. You can’t be one hundred percent sure of protecting people who are out …”
    “Stashall’s got him,” Mickey said, standing up and running his hand through nonexistent hair. He began to pace.
    “Maybe,” said Lieberman.
    “There’s no maybe,” Gornitz said, pacing around the sofa. “How