I’m guessing the smoke you blew in my face just then is a subtle hint to back off. Fair enough. Right, you want me to start from the beginning about the New York Dolls case? Let’s see. It was this morning … about 10 …
When I arrived at my Mott Street office, the door was ajar. Nudging it with my toe cap, I pushed it wide and saw her in a visitor’s chair, facing my desk and ashing her cigarette into a wastepaper basket next to her nicely-turned ankle. It’s an observation, Detective, not a sexist remark.
Without looking around, the woman said: “Kent? You should lock the office. Someone stole your ashtray.”
“I’m going for a minimalist look.”
Then she turned towards me. Eyes like shaved ice, mouth slashed with scarlet lipstick and exuding all the warmth of a slammed door. “Close it behind you. This is confidential.”
Her handbag lying on my desktop looked expensive. She had my full attention.
“Take a seat, Kent,” she said. There was a hint of the Madam Lash about the command. “I’m Miriam Sleet, two of my clients have been kidnapped. I want you to find them … and don’t say it’s a matter for the police.”
“It’s a matter for the police.”
“I’m told you’re a discreet PI with a liking for whiskey and a wad of cash.”
“Not necessarily in that order. And kidnapping is for the local cops, maybe even the Feds if they’ve crossed state lines. The answer’s ‘no’.”
“I’ll pay you $500 a day plus expenses.”
“Of course, it’d be premature to decline before hearing the details.”
By the time Miriam finished her tale she was onto her second cigarette and I’d poured her the first cup of coffee from a drip-brew coffeemaker I’d inherited from the previous tenant who’d skipped town. She managed rock bands and her missing clients were David Johansen, frontman for the New York Dolls, and his bandmate Johnny Thunders.
I shrugged a “who?”
She ignored it and continued. Johansen and Thunders had disappeared five days earlier while on a press tour trying to drum up ticket sales for their coming gig at Gramercy Theatre. The band’s fortunes had been falling while the musicians stayed almost permanently high. “Don’t mix drugs and alcohol with business,” she warned. “Heaven forbid,” I answered.
And I’d been wrong. I had actually heard of these guys. The TV news had run nightly pieces while paperboys on street corners had been hollering: “Extra! Extra! Read all about it! New York Dolls snatched!” From the news clips and front page pix, I saw Johansen had the coquettish pout and showgirl strut of a low rent Mick Jagger, if that’s not an oxymoron, while Thunders gave off a Keith Richards not-quite-with-us vibe. I still didn’t want their concert tickets.
They’d last been seen in Greenwich Village heading into a corner bar named The Black Duck. I knew the manager. More importantly, he knew me. Being gallant, I’d shown Miriam out of the office before holding the first day’s cash payment up to the sunlight falling through the window. I checked. The bills were kosher.
Putting $400 in the safe, I drew out the Smith & Wesson Model 13 which I stash alongside a let’s-celebrate bottle of Redbreast whiskey. I cabbed it to the Black Duck, pocketed the receipt to charge back to the fair Miriam and pushed open the batwing doors.
Molloy was behind the bar either polishing a glass or rubbing dirt into it. “It’s a little early even for you, Kent.”
I held out a $100 note. “I’ve only got a Benjamin. Can you make change?” I took the proffered 20s from him and pushed two across the bar top. “I need some advice.”
“Don’t wear brown shoes with a blue suit.”
The two 20s lay there for an instant longer before he slipped them into his pocket. A moment later, he poured me a slug from a label-less bottle.
I downed it, shuddered, told him who’d hired me and asked about the New York Dolls’ disappearance. He claimed he knew nothing more than he’d told the cops: Johansen and Thunders had come into the bar, sat in a corner booth looking downbeat, drinking and squabbling. Two hours later, as they left, a battered van had come up MacDougal Street, three men jumped out, slid open the side door and threw the two musicians into vehicle. Gone in 15 seconds. That’s all she wrote, added Molloy.
I peeled off another 20. Apparently, she wrote more. He’d noticed three men sitting quietly in the bar about 10 feet away from the band members. They kept glancing at the pair and they didn’t look like fans. Sharp suits rather than good quality ones. Maybe they were Made Men.
Which family? I asked.
He lifted my shot glass off the bar and began turning away. Yet another 20 made him pause. The Primfacto family was his guess. Try L'anatra Nera in the meatpacking district. Knock twice. Play nice.
I knocked twice. The doorman’s nose didn’t look like it’d been broken recently. Given it hadn’t been fixed I guessed the Mafia didn’t have an employee healthcare plan. It seemed unwise to ask. Instead, I asked for a Birra Moretti from the waitress who’d shown me to a far table with all the grace of someone steering a leper away from a children’s playground. She returned with the beer plus three men who didn’t seem happy.
“Non sembri felice,” I said.
“Skip the wop lingo,” said the slimmest of the trio. “We’re never left the Five Boroughs.”
He added he knew why I was there. A little bird had told him. I pictured a little bird about 5’10” with an Irish surname serving mediocre liquor out of label-less bottles. I could feel the dead weight of the Smith & Wesson in my jacket’s right-hand pocket. I sensed I had a one-in-a-three chance of reaching it in time.
The slim man leant back with a tight smile. My anal sphincter was tighter. “We need your help,” he began. What he needed was a white knight – with or without shining armour – to rescue two rock musicians. The bulky men either side of him nodded, thick necks pressing into collared business shirts.
If the word “insufferable” had been part of the three men’s vocabulary it would have been aired. Instead “sons o’ bitches”, “assholes”, “stuck-up jerks” and “motormouths” took its place. Accompanied by obscenities. Frequently accompanied. The trio admitted they’d made a – and the slim man had bitten hard on the next word – mistake. Snatching the men, demanding a large ransom and collecting the loot had seemed a straightforward idea. Within 24 hours, after the cops went to the press and spilled news of the kidnapping, the Cosa Nostra discovered it definitely was not “Our Thing”.
Instead of being terrified when they were told the TV had picked up the story and the papers had run their photos on Page One, Johansen and Thunders loved it. Finally, the New York Dolls were back in the news and not simply for lackluster concerts and drug busts. And, no, they did not want to be liberated too soon. Tickets sales to their concerts would boom. They were hot again. Sure, a basement prison under a disused slaughterhouse wasn’t the Waldorf Astoria but they’d stayed in worse motels when touring. And they loved to talk and talk and talk to their guards about “the Biz”. The music business.
The slim man reached for a word to describe the captives. He finally found it: “Insufferable.”
He slipped me a torn-off notepad page with a scribbled address. “You gotta help us,” he pleaded. “They won’t leave if we just let ’em go and we ain’t calling the law.”
So, Detective Wanamaker, there you have it. That’s why I phoned the 6th Precinct’s detectives. How’d you like to be on TV tonight, standing alongside two rescued rock stars? Oh, no, please. Surely you’re not paying for another drink? Ah, but first you want the address where they’re being held. Why didn’t you ask earlier? It’s not as if I’m the kinda guy who spins out a story merely to sit at a bar with a foxy lady who’s picking up the tab.
Cough. Now there you go again with that smoke-in-the-face thing.
# # #
Copyright 2025 GREG FLYNN
No comments:
Post a Comment