Frame-Up (16 page)

There was a silent pause, but a short one.

“What do you want, kid?”

“A meeting.”

Another pause.

“Where?”

I gave him the time and the place of the meeting, snapped the phone shut, and settled into swallowing the lump of burning coal that had risen into my esophagus.

The Parker House, on the corner of School Street and Tremont, is one of the grand old ladies of Boston. She is the oldest continually operated luxury hotel in America. Her dining room has served Parker House rolls and Boston cream pie to political and financial titans of every degree since 1855. My favorite table in the dining room is the one at which President Jack Kennedy proposed to Jacqueline. I savored the irony in the fact that this grand old lady was about to offer the same hospitality to Fat Tony Aiello and Michael Knight.

This time I was at a far corner table, concealed behind the sports section of the Boston Globe, when the Aiello entourage appeared at the maître d's station. Fat Tony, aptly nicknamed, led the delegation of four sides of beef, each stuffed into a pin-striped suit that was cut to the dimensions of a more svelte form. The entire tailor's nightmare lined up behind Frederick, the maître d', who, to his credit, maintained his cool while he escorted the entire herd to the table I had reserved for them.

I gave Frederick a nod, and he delivered my note to Aiello requesting that he join me alone at the table to which Frederick would lead him. At first, Aiello balked, particularly with me nowhere in sight. Eventually he threw his napkin on the table and followed Frederick with reluctance.

By the time he reached my table, the bands of fat that gathered over his shirt collar were nearly tomato red. He was not quite in his element, and the idea of following dutifully in the footsteps of the somewhat disdainful Frederick to comply with the whims of some little pissant lawyer — me — obviously sent his blood pressure off the chart.

I savored every bit of it. The sight of that bull moose reluctantly weaving his way through the glances of the noontime Parker House diners convinced me all the more that I had some serious leverage in that string of coded digits.

When he arrived at my table, I lowered the newspaper. Leverage or not, I found myself looking into the bloated face of a man who would, with pleasure, have had me killed at the very first lapse in precautions. I nodded to the seat opposite me without a word.

Frederick, as was his custom, unfolded and placed the napkin in what he could find of Fat Tony's lap. I thought for an instant Tony was going to punch him out in defense of his manly honor. I believe Frederick caught the same signal, because he summoned a waiter and withdrew at quick march to his station at the entrance.

The waiter appeared and began describing in florid terms the chef's specials of the day. I cut him off in mid-appetizer and suggested that ice water would do for the moment. The sooner we could get to business, the more likely we could disband this little gathering of misfits. I thought I'd better take the lead, and fast.

“Mr. Aiello, I'm Michael Knight.”

He gave me a nod and a glare that said we could dispense with the customary handshake.

“Let's agree on something, Mr. Aiello. We both need information.”

He was up on his elbows, oblivious to where he was, and barking.

“The hell I do!”

I matched him elbow and bark.

“The hell you don't. You didn't come here for the clam chowder. Let's not shadow box. Neither of us has time to waste.”

The waiter stepped in to pour ice water. We both sat back in silence. Aiello let the steam pour out over his damp shirt collar. I just thanked God that no one was dead yet. When the waiter left, I picked it up at a more subdued pitch, and the other diners went back to their schrod.

“Let me tell you how it is, Mr. Aiello. I don't give a damn in hell
about you or Santangelo or any of your business. I'm defending Peter Santangelo for the murder of John McKedrick. Nothing more. I think whatever that code of numbers leads to is at the heart of his murder. When I find out how, I'm out of it. You get whatever the thing is, and you'll never see or hear from me again. That's all I want. I'm no threat to you or your business. Are we clear on that?”

Aiello reached for his ice water and took a long slug. He didn't say yes or no. I plowed on. “Here's the deal. I give you the right numbers in exchange for your telling me what the numbers lead to. An even swap.”

It was his move. He was still sweating, but no longer glowing red. He seemed to have settled into his surroundings more comfortably than I wanted.

He wiped his mouth with his napkin and slowly came forward on his elbows. His voice was low. “Now I'll make you a deal, you little piece of crap. You'll give me the numbers and maybe you don't spend the rest of your life wondering when your luck runs out.”

It was my turn at the ice water. The pause was for more than dramatic effect. It gave me time to regroup and realize that I was so deep in the hole that any direction was up.

I leaned forward and cut it to a whisper. “See, here's the thing, Mr. Aiello. I never depend on luck. I told you once. Maybe you didn't catch it. If I should miss giving the right signal to someone, you have no idea who, everything I know, and a few things I made up, go directly to the ear of the father of the man I'm defending. I don't know if you're ready for an all-out war with Mr. Santangelo and the families who'll back him. I can guarantee that's what you'll have.”

He looked me right in the eye and I could see a grin, closer to a smirk, creeping across his face. He put his right hand on the table in a fist with the index finger pointed at my chest.

“You're dead, kid. You want to know something? I'm gonna do it myself. You try to bluff me? You bring me down to this lousy joint. Who the hell—?”

Damn it, that did it! I lost it.

“Do you know where the hell you are, Aiello?” I was spitting the words out between clenched teeth. “Some of the people who built this country did it right here in this room. People whose boots you couldn't lick. And a bum like you calls this — Did you ever have one single thought that went beyond your damn pocketbook or your stomach?”

I was seized with the abandon of one who was certain that he would not live to walk through the door. There were no wrong moves now. They had all been made.

I came straight up out of the chair as if I had been launched. My napkin hit the table and my knees drove back the chair. My feet were clearly in gear for an exit.

I had one last line. “That's your choice, Aiello. You'll never see those numbers in this life. Watch out for what's coming, Buster. Après moi le déluge.”

I always wanted to use that line. The problem was it went right in one fat ear and out the other. On my way by, I bent down and whispered close to his ear. “It means, when I go through that door, the gates of hell are going to let loose the beasts.”

I was never in my life so certain I was going to die. I only knew that come hell or high water, by damn I was going to walk tall through the Parker House door. From that point on, I had not one single clue. I only knew I couldn't stop.

Something in that previous insane minute must have registered with Aiello. I took one more step when a hand that felt like a vice grabbed my arm. It held me in a grip that I can feel to this day.

“Sit down.”

I froze.

“I'm telling you to sit down.”

I turned back to the chair, and the grip loosened.

It took every ounce of willpower to walk calmly back to my seat, sit calmly in the chair, and calmly replace my napkin as if I had just arrived for luncheon with Prince Charles.

Intuition told me that the storm had passed, and we had both weathered it. This was a new game, and it was his serve.

“Like you said, Knight, this is business. What've you got for me?”

“You know what I've got for you. The question is, what does it open?”

Aiello sat there in silence. I thought it was just hard for him to make the first disclosure. Then another thought hit me. Maybe he doesn't know.

“It's the key to a numbered account, isn't it? That much I could figure out. But where is it?”

Aiello still looked at the table, and nothing came out. I was becoming more certain by the moment that Aiello had no idea of the details. That might have been one key to his vulnerability.

Then the clouds began to lift. It takes a certain amount of sophistication to play money games with numbered accounts. The bank or vault, whatever it was, most certainly was not in the United States. It could have been on an offshore island. It could have been in Amsterdam or Zurich, or anywhere in between.

I thought of the kind of people who play those games. I looked at the pathetic figure across the table, who had likely never in his life mastered a concept more complex than raw violence. He clearly could not have pulled it off.

But my old pal, John McKedrick, could.

I looked over at the table of monkeys who came in with Aiello and wondered who in all of Aiello's organization, beside John, could have managed a deal involving a foreign account. Frightening as it seemed, perhaps the most intelligent and educated member of that tribe other than John was Benny Ignola, and in the sophistication game, Benny clearly did not hold the cards.

What the hell were you up to that last week, Johnny? That week when Terry O'Brien said you were tense and distracted?

“What's in the vault, Mr. Aiello? That's the price of the numbers.”

Aiello instinctively looked left and right and leaned over the table.

“A picher.”

“What kind of a picher? Like for water?”

“A picher, you schnook. A painting. It's a big deal.”

“What picture?”

“I don't know. It's worth a lot of money. It's by this guy, Vermeer.”

I almost fell off my chair. I remembered from a basic art history course at Harvard that Vermeer's work was probably the most highly priced in the world. I knew there were a limited number of his paintings in existence, and every one of them was worth at least as much as the combined salaries of the Boston Red Sox, to put it in terms I could understand.

“How in the world did you get a Vermeer?”

Another look in each direction, and then in a whisper with hand signals. “Keep it down. Keep it down. It was hot. That lawyer, McKedrick, he heard about it. How we could get it.”

I was stunned, but I had to keep the flow going.

“How would John hear that?”

“He did some business for me. In Europe. In Amsterdam.”

“What kind of business? Drugs?”

I could see him pull back.

“Let's not get too much into this thing. I'll tell you what you need to know about the picher. The rest is none of your business.”

“All right. So John goes to Amsterdam to transact business for you. So what?”

“So he comes back from a trip three weeks ago. He says he met these guys over there. They can arrange to get this picher and sell it to me for like a third of what it's worth. It's hot. They can't sell it on the market. Everyone knows it.”

Now he has me completely baffled. A third of what it's worth is still in the high millions. Why would Aiello want to put that kind of money into it? He had even less ability to sell it than the people who had it.

“I don't suppose you want to tell me what you'd planned to do with it after you bought it.”

“That's right. I don't. I told you what it is. Now come across with the numbers.”

Something frightening was taking shape in my mind.

“Suppose I do, Mr. Aiello. What will you do with them?”

“That's none of your business too.”

“Think about this. I give you the code to a vault somewhere in the world. Maybe Amsterdam, where John met these people. Have you thought about the fact that it could be a joint account and someone else has to supply the other half of the code? That's not unusual.”

He was looking at me as if he was getting a glimmer of where I was going.

“So?”

“I think you need to get your hands on that painting. I think you're over your head in some kind of financing deal that John McKedrick put together, and now you've got to come up with that painting. Otherwise you wouldn't be here talking to me.”

I paused, and he didn't interrupt.

“That means someone's got to find out where this vault is and deal with another someone on the other side.”

I looked over at the table of thugs he had brought with him. “Which of those geniuses are you going to send to do it?”

There was no answer.

“If not them, who else have you got?

Again no answer.

“I think you're in one hell of a spot, Mr. Aiello.”

He started to say something, but backed off.

“I told you before. My only interest in this thing is Peter Santangelo. The best way to get Peter an acquittal is to find out who actually killed John. I'm guessing it wasn't you. You needed John to pull this off.”

I looked him in the eye and he didn't blink. Good sign.

“Suppose I go after the painting. I think it could be someone connected with that deal who killed John. If I can get the painting and find out who's involved, you get the painting. I get the information.”

He had a sarcastic edge to his voice, but he didn't sound completely shocked by the suggestion.

“You're gonna work for me? What the hell makes you think I trust you?”

“No offense, Mr. Aiello, but in my worst day I wouldn't work for you. Call it a joint venture. As far as trusting me is concerned, two things. One, I'm not like you, and you know it. You can ask anyone in this town. You'll hear that my word is good. Second, what the hell would I do with a stolen Vermeer? And a third thing while we're at it. What are your other options? Benny Ignola?”

He knew better than I did that he could trust Benny as far as he could throw city hall. I saw him glance over at his collection of orangutans plowing their way through the basket of rolls. It took him a minute to exhaust every other option before he turned back.