Authors: William Lashner
26
I
PAID THE FOUR bits, folded the tabloid in half to hide the front, and took the paper straight to my apartment. I locked the door behind me. I pulled the shades down low. I flicked on a lamp by the couch and unfolded the paper beneath the artificial arc of light. Staring up at me was the picture that had shaken me so when I first glimpsed it in the bookstore. It was a picture of a man, stretched out on his back like an exhausted runner, a dark shadow slipping from beneath his head. The man’s mouth appeared to be laughing and at a glance it might have seemed a cheery picture except I knew the man and he was not much drawn to laughter. What seemed to be laughter was really a twisted grimace and the shadow was not a shadow and the man was no longer a man but now a corpse.
Dominic Volare, an old-time mob enforcer with strong ties to the boss. They had clipped him when he left his favorite diner in South Philly, waited as he leaned down to stick his key in the door of his Cadillac, rushed at him from behind, blasted him in the back and the neck, leaving only his face nicely unmarred for the picture. I had played poker with Dominic Volare, lost to him, been frightened by him, but he had never hurt me and had actually done a few favors for me along the way. I had thought him retired and now, I guess, he was.
There was a story inside linking the Schuylkill Expressway attack on Raffaello to Dominic’s murder and to another hit, just as deadly, if less photogenic. Jimmy Bones Turcotte, massacred in his car, a Caprice, the windows blown to hell by the fusillade that took with it his face. I didn’t know Jimmy Bones, had never had the privilege of standing in court beside him and saying “Not Guilty,” but I knew of him, for sure. He was another longtime associate of the boss. It was getting dangerous just then, I figured, to be a longtime associate of the boss, especially in or around your car.
The headline above Dominic’s death mask on the front page said it all: WAR!
It was on, yes it was. Dante’s battle for the underworld had begun in earnest and no one was safe, especially not a nickel-and-dime defense lawyer who had been roped into scouting for one side or the other. I turned off the light and thought about fleeing, maybe to Fresno, where mobsters in the movies always seemed to flee, Fresno. Or I could just cower in my apartment until it passed. I’d be all right, I had a television and a freezer for my frozen dinners and there was that Thomas Hardy book I had been meaning to read. I could hide out until it all blew over, lose myself on the bleak heaths of Hardy’s Wessex, I could, yes. But I wouldn’t. I had things to do, a fortune to hunt, and no slick-haired tooth-sucking loan shark like Earl Dante was going to push me off my path. What I needed was advice, serious advice, and there was only one man I trusted who knew enough of the ins and outs of the family business to give it to me.
With trembling fingers I dialed the 407 area code and then information. It was a shock to actually find his number there, as if all he was was another retiree, waiting by the phone for calls from his grandchildren. “Be there,” I whispered to myself as his phone rang. “Please to hell be there.”
“Yes?” said a woman’s voice, squeezed dry by massive quantities of cigarettes.
“Hello,” I said. “I’m looking for Walter Calvi.”
“He no here now.”
“I need to speak to him, it’s very important.”
“He’s gone two, three days, fishing.”
“Fishing? I didn’t know Calvi fished.”
“Big fish,” she said. “From a boat.”
“When will he be back?”
“Two, three days.”
“Can you give him a message for me?”
“He’s fishing,” she said.
“Can you give him a message for me? Can you tell him Victor Carl called and that things are going on up here and that he should get in touch with me?”
“Okay,” she said. “Victor Carl.”
I gave her my number and she repeated it to me.
“Could you tell him it’s important?”
“Nothing more important down here than big fish,” she said. “Except maybe cleaning the air conditioner and feeding the cat. But I tell him, okay?”
I hung up the phone and waited in the dark of my apartment for a while, waited for the light outside to grow dim, waited for Calvi to get his butt off his boat and tell me what to do. At least it had turned out all right for him, I guess. He was sitting on some boat off the Florida Keys, snapping marlins from the cool Atlantic waters, while the rest of us were stuck up here ducking Dante’s bullets. Of all the deals that were handed out Calvi got the best, for sure. I just hoped he would get his butt off that boat in time to tell me how to get one for myself.
When it was time I quietly left the quiet of my apartment, stepped down the stairs, looked both ways along the now dark street. Cautiously I slipped out onto the sidewalk. I passed my car and left it there. After what had happened in Raffaello’s Cadillac, and seeing what I had seen in the paper, I wanted nothing to do with cars for a while. I walked along Spruce, then down through the park at Nineteenth, and over to Walnut, to restaurant row. It was time, I figured, for me to do some fishing of my own.
27
H
OW’S THAT GROUPER, Caroline?” asked Franklin Harrington, with a surfeit of politeness.
Caroline was leaning back in her chair, arms crossed, moodily separating the pale flakes of fish with her fork. She wore her leather jacket and black jeans and combat boots and would have looked terribly out of place among the well heeled and well coifed except that Harrington, in his perfectly pressed Ralph Lauren, covered for her. “Succulent,” she said, her voice dry and devoid of enthusiasm.
“Terrific,” said Harrington, who had instinctively taken on the role of the host, either through the dictates of good breeding or his unbridled arrogance, I couldn’t yet figure. “And your crab cakes, Victor?”
“
Trayf,
” I said.
“I don’t understand.”
“It’s the Jewish word for succulent.”
“And I thought that was
shiksa,
” said Caroline, with a sly smile, as she reached for her wineglass.
“
Trayf
is broader than that.” I explained. “Not all
trayf
are
shiksas,
though
shiksas
are surely the most succulent
trayf
.”
“Well then why don’t you just go right ahead and order the
shiksa,
” said Harrington.
Caroline spit out her mouthful of Chardonnay.
Welcome to the lifestyles of the rich and the Yiddish.
We were in the Striped Bass, a gaudy new restaurant on Walnut Street, more stage set than anything else, with palm tress and rattan chairs, with marble pillars three stories tall, with the kitchen open so the diners can see their fish’s firm flesh being pan-seared. It’s not enough to just eat anymore, restaurants are now theme parks. Ride the gingered seafood fritto misto. Thrill to the bite of clam fritters with Asian slaw. Test your courage with the raw Malpeque oysters and your manhood with the hunk of burning blackened sea bass. The Striped Bass served only seafood, that was the hook, but it was more show biz than anything else, no different than the Hard Rock Café and Planet Hollywood, though many steps up in class and price. Instead of hamburgers, mahimahi with arugula pesto. Instead of fajitas, sautéed Maine lobster with somen noodles. Instead of gawking teenagers, gawking adults, wondering who was rich enough or famous enough to be at the chef’s table that night. And despite this burden of atmosphere the food was actually brilliant. Reservations at the Striped Bass were taken months in advance, but guys like Harrington had their ways, I figured, and so there we were, Caroline sulking, Harrington as gratingly pleasant as a cruise director, and me, who had convened this awkward congregation, waiting for the appropriate moment to unload my questions.
I hadn’t liked Harrington when we first met at the bank and I still didn’t like him. There was an air of false importance about him, a sense that what he said actually mattered. He had been somebody’s blue-eyed boy for too long. He needed to be stepped down a peg and I was just the guy, I figured, to do the stepping. I wanted to be sure, by the end of the night, after all was said and done, that he knew I had screwed his fiancée, and even though I hadn’t liked it much, he didn’t need to know that. Class divisions as clear as those between Harrington and myself always bring out my best, or at least my most petty.
I took a forkful of crab, swirled it in the mustard sauce, and swallowed. It was too good. Harrington was working on his swordfish. Caroline was still flaking her grouper with the tines of her fork, showing no inclination to eat despite the thirty bucks her fish cost. It was almost getting beyond awkward, so I thought I’d lob in the first of my little bombs and liven things up.
“Who,” I asked nonchalantly as I picked at my crab, “was Elisha Poole?”
Harrington looked up from his plate with a sharp surprise on his face. He glanced at Caroline, who rolled her eyes with boredom, and then back at me. “What do you know about Poole?”
“Bobby told me a little when I was at the house the other night.”
“Yes,” said Harrington, his pale cheeks darkening, “I heard you were there.”
I smiled a competitive little smile. One of the evening’s goals, at least, had been scored. “Bobby told me that his great-grandfather had bought the company from Poole just before he started pushing his pressure-packed pickles and that, later, Poole claimed he was swindled. Bobby said that Poole had cursed the whole family for it.”
“So that explains everything,” said Caroline. “I rather like the idea that we are cursed. It’s more comforting than knowing we screwed it up ourselves.”
“Everything Bobby told you is correct,” said Harrington. “It was Poole’s company before Claudius Reddman bought it, one of a score on the docks canning produce. Poole was a tinsmith and started the company by tinning tomatoes and corn brought over from New Jersey. Claudius was first hired as an apprentice tinsmith but soon took on other responsibilities.”
“When did you learn all this, Franklin?” asked Caroline.
“I find it prudent to study the history of any family whose wealth I administer.”
“How did Reddman end up buying the company if he was just an apprentice tinsmith?” I asked.
“We’re not sure,” said Harrington, “but it appears that Poole liked his drink and as Claudius was able to handle more and more of the business side of things, Poole spent more time with a bottle. Poole’s father was a notorious drunk, apparently, and so it was only a matter of time before it caught up with the son.”
“Can you get us more wine, Frankie,” said Caroline. “I’m suddenly thirsty.”
I gave Caroline a glance as Harrington snapped for a waiter and ordered another bottle.
“As Poole’s drinking grew worse,” said Harrington, “Reddman started taking control of the company. Bit by bit he purchased Poole’s stock, paying cash for the shares. The company wasn’t earning much in those days and Poole was finding himself falling into debt and so he took the money eagerly.”
“Where did the cash come from?” I asked.
Harrington shrugged. “There’s the mystery. But just before the company expanded production of its soon to be famous pickles, Reddman took out a loan to buy the rest of Poole’s shares. By that time the company was in the red and Poole was apparently only too ready to sell out. It was quite the gamble for Claudius Reddman, taking a loan to buy a profitless company.”
“But it paid off, didn’t it?” I said. “Reddman became a wealthy man, an American industrial giant, and Poole was left to hang himself.”
“That’s right,” said Harrington, turning his attention back to his fish. “Poole ended as an embittered old drunk who had pissed away his chance for a fortune, that’s one way to view him. Or, if you take his side, he was an honest, trusting man, swindled by an avaricious swine who built his own fortune off the carcass of Poole’s life work.”
“Who is left to take his side now?” I asked.
“Pardon?”
“Who is around who still thinks Poole was swindled?”
“I don’t know,” said Harrington. “The Pooles, I suppose.”
“Are there any?”
The sommelier came with another bottle of wine, red this time, and poured a sip’s worth into Harrington’s glass. Harrington tasted it and nodded at the waiter and then said offhandedly, “I would think there are.”
“Where?” I asked.
“How should I know?”
“What about the daughter,” I said, “who lived in that house by the pond at Veritas with her widowed mother? You know the place, right?”
Caroline and Harrington glanced at each other and then away.
“Can you imagine her,” I continued, “living in that sagging little hovel, all the time looking up at the great manor house that her father had told her should have been hers? Do you ever wonder what she was feeling?”
“Probably gratitude that great-grandfather had given her a place to live,” said Caroline, who proceeded to empty her wineglass in three quick gulps before reaching for the bottle.
“Did you know Caroline was a Republican?” asked Harrington with an ironic smile I wouldn’t have expected from a banker.
“Somehow I don’t think Poole’s daughter was gratified at all,” I said. “Have you ever seen that Andrew Wyeth painting
Christina’s World?
That’s what it must have been like for her, staring up with longing at the large house on the hill. Can you imagine it? She lived there until her mother died, in the shadow of that huge stone house. How twisted must her tender little psyche have become? That she ended up in an asylum is no wonder.”
“Who told you she ended up in an asylum?” asked Harrington with a curious puzzlement.
“The gardener, Nat. I asked about the old cottage on the other side of the pond and he told me.”
“How the hell would Nat know anything about her?” asked Caroline. “This is all ancient history. Jesus, has it gotten cold or something?” She swallowed a gulp of wine. “Can’t we talk about a cheerier subject than the Pooles, for God’s sake. Victor, you’re the mob lawyer, tell us about the mob war that’s in all the papers. It even made the
Times
. What about that attack on the expressway?”
“Amazing,” said Harrington.
“What happened to your face anyway, Victor?” said Caroline. “It looks like you were in a fight with a cat and lost.”
“I wonder if she had any children?” I said.
“Who?” asked Harrington.
“The Poole daughter.”
“Jesus, Victor,” said Caroline. “Why are you so interested in the goddamned Pooles? It’s enough to drive a girl to drink. Pass the wine.” I couldn’t help but notice that she was now completely ignoring her grouper and had begun to drink like, well, like a fish. I guess our conversation about her family had turned this into what her therapist would have called a situation.
“I’m intrigued by the whole of your family history, Caroline. You asked me to find out if Jacqueline was murdered. Well, after looking into it, now I’m sure that she was.”
“Is Victor acting as your lawyer?” asked Harrington, bemusement creasing his face. I found it interesting that he was more surprised that I might be lawyering for Caroline than that I believed Jacqueline was murdered.
She gave a half smile rather then attempt to describe our peculiar legal relationship.
“So that explains the check and the visit to Veritas.”
“You thought what?” said Caroline. “That he was a gigolo, maybe? Victor?”
“You also wanted me to find out who killed her,” I continued, ignoring Harrington’s laughter. “I think I now know who.”
“What?” said Harrington, his laughter dying quick as a scruple in a bank. “Who, then?”
“That’s not important right now,” I said.
“Of course it is,” said Harrington. “Have you told the police?”
“The evidence I have is either inadmissible or would disappear before a trial at this point. I’ll need more before I go to the police, and I’ll get it, too. But the guy who killed her was hired to do it, I believe, paid. Just like you would pay a servant or a bricklayer or a gardener. And so the question I still have is who paid him.”
“And you suspect the answer is in our family’s history?” asked Caroline.
“I’m curious about everything.”
Harrington was staring at me for a moment, trying, I suppose, to guess at exactly what I was doing there. “You know, Caroline,” said Harrington, still looking at me, “I knew Victor was a lawyer, but law was not the game I thought we were playing here. Silly me, I thought you brought me here just to show off another of your lads.”
“I announced him as my lover at the house just to get mother’s goat,” said Caroline.
“And you succeeded. She was apoplectic.”
“Thank God something worked out right.”
“Well, then, let’s have it out,” said Harrington. “Are you, Victor?”
“Am I what?”
“Caroline’s lover.”
I glanced at Caroline and she reached for her wine and there was an awkward silence.
Harrington laughed, a loud gay laugh. “That was clear enough an answer. Now, I suppose, I must defend my honor.” He patted his jacket. “Damn, you can never find a glove when you need one to toss into a rival’s face.”
“Shut up, Franklin.”
“I’m sorry. You’re right, Caroline. I’m being rude. Don’t worry, Victor, what you and Caroline do after school is fine by me. All I want is for Caroline to be happy. Truly. Are you happy with Victor, Caroline?”
“Ecstatic.”
“Terrific then. Keep up the good work, Victor.” He turned back to his swordfish and lopped off a thick gray square. “Any help you need keeping her happy, you let me know.”
Caroline emptied her glass and let it drop to the table. “You’re a bastard, you know that.”
“Maybe I’ll order some champagne to celebrate.”
“A goddamn bastard. And you want to know something, Franklin. Victor’s amazing in bed. An absolute acrobat.”
I couldn’t stop my jaw from dropping at that.
“Well then, instead of the champagne I’ll call for the check, get you both back to your trapeze.”
“You’re too heartless,” said Caroline, her arms now crossed tightly against her chest, her chin tilted low.
“I wasn’t the one who invited us all out to dinner together.” Harrington picked up the bottle and said nonchalantly, “More wine, Victor?”
“Am I missing something?” I asked. “It sounds like I’m in the middle of an Albee play.”
“Yes, well, the curtain has dropped,” said Harrington, putting down the bottle. He looked at Caroline and the arrogance in his face was replaced by something tender and vulnerable. It was as if a tribal mask had suddenly been discarded. The way he looked at her made me feel small. “You have to understand, Victor, that I don’t care for anyone in this world as much as I care for Caroline. I couldn’t love a sister any more than I do her. She caught a bad break, getting born a Reddman. Any normal family and she’d have been a homecoming queen, happy and blithe, and she deserves just such blind happiness, more than anyone else I know. I’d die to give it to her if I could. I’d rip out my heart, bleeding and raw, and present it to her on a white satin cushion if it would turn her sadness even for a moment.”
Caroline’s sobs broke over the last few words of Harrington’s speech like waves over rock. I hadn’t even known she was crying until I heard them, so entranced I was by this new Harrington and his proffer of love. Caroline was hunched in her chair, thick mascara tears streaking her cheeks, and there was about this jag nothing of the rehearsed dramatist I had seen when she collapsed in the street with her gun that first day I met her. Whatever strange thing was between Caroline and Harrington, it cut deep. She was about to say something more, but she caught her lip with her teeth, tossed her napkin onto her plate, stood, and walked quickly away, toward the ladies’ room.