Authors: William G. Tapply
I’d run out of people to call. Another wild Saturday night for the bachelor.
So I pawed through my fishing gear and piled what I needed for tomorrow’s trip with Charlie beside the door. Then I found an old Robert Mitchum movie on my black-and-white TV. I sprawled on the sofa and watched it all the way through without falling asleep—and without dwelling on the fact that Alex was living in Maine and Sylvie was unavailable and I was alone.
When the movie ended, I decided it was late enough that I could go to bed.
Tomorrow was another day. Tomorrow I’d go fishing.
My eyes popped open at six in the morning. Outside my bedroom window a perfectly cloudless sky was just beginning to grow light. No rain today.
It seems as if more than half of the fishing excursions that Charlie and I plan end up weathered-out by gullywashing rainstorms or tree-rattling winds—and often both—which defies all the odds. Charlie believes that he and I have the power to cure a drought simply by planning to go fishing.
But today the low-angled beams of the just-risen sun streamed in through the sliders that opened onto my balcony. It was impossible to feel anything except exultant on a morning such as this, especially with a fishing trip to look forward to. I fetched the Sunday
Globe
from outside my door, had a bagel and a handful of strawberries and three cups of coffee and a couple of cigarettes while I read the sports section, then lugged my gear down to the car. Charlie and I had agreed to meet at nine, and I was going to be early. But I couldn’t put it off any longer.
An Italian restaurant called Papa Razzi occupies the structure which had been the Howard Johnson’s just east of the traffic circle by the Concord prison. For more than fifty years, the orange-tiled roofs of Howard Johnson restaurants were highway landmarks all over New England. A family couldn’t drive past a Hojo’s without stopping for one of their fifty-two flavors of ice cream, or a fried clam roll, or a hot dog. Now virtually all of them are defunct, replaced by a new generation of highway food joints—Roy Rogers, Burger King, Popeye’s, KFC, Taco Bell. The first thing the new tenants of the old Hojo buildings always do is paint those orange roof tiles a less garish color.
I parked in the Papa Razzi lot a little after eight—an hour before our scheduled rendezvous. Charlie’s Cherokee pulled in beside me less than ten minutes later.
I got out and bent down to his open window. “Hey, you’re early,” I said.
He grinned. “You’re always early. I figured for once I’d be the first one here. I should’ve known better. Pile your stuff in back. Let’s get going, before it decides to rain,”
It takes a little over two hours to drive from the Concord rotary to the catch-and-release section of the Deerfield River where it flows from the bottom of the Fife Brook Dam a little west of Charlemont, Massachusetts, hard by the Vermont state line. Somewhere around the halfway mark, Route 2 narrows and winds through rural villages, where it becomes scenic as hell and is called the Mohawk Trail.
Charlie and I picked at the strawberries I’d brought and sipped coffee from car mugs. I told him about watching Darren fish with a bobber and worm, how it had reminded me of my youth, how Sylvie and I used to catch perch at Granny Pond, how Alex had nobly tolerated my fishing, how I’d screwed up all my relationships, beginning with my marriage to Gloria and ending, most recently, with Alex, how Sylvie was in town and how seeing her had rekindled a lot of confusing memories and emotions, but how I didn’t think I had the courage for another relationship that I’d also surely screw up.
“You and Sarah,” I said to Charlie. “Good, solid twenty-year marriage. What’s your secret?”
He didn’t say anything for a minute or two. Then he said, “Guy’s out walking on the beach one morning. California, somewhere. Spots a green bottle on the sand, and when he picks it up, out pops a genie. Before the guy can say a word, the genie says, ‘One wish, pal. That’s it, and consider yourself lucky. None of this three wish shit.’ So the guy shrugs, thinks a minute, and then he says, ‘Okay, fine. I’ve wanted to go to Hawaii all my life, but I’m petrified of flying and I get seasick. So my wish is this: Build me a bridge to Hawaii.’”
Charlie glanced at me. I pretended to be staring out the side window.
“Well,” said Charlie, “the genie blows his stack. ‘You shitting me?’ he says. ‘A bridge to fucking Hawaii? You know how far that is? How in hell do you expect me to get supports all the way down to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean? Or,’ he says sarcastically, ‘did you want me to make you a suspension bridge? What do you think I am, anyways? You better come up with a better wish than that, buddy.’
“The guy shrugs. ‘Well, okay,’ he says. ‘There’s something else I’ve always wanted.’ ‘Yeah?’ says the genie. ‘And what might that be? A bridge to the moon?’ ‘Naw,’ says the guy. ‘Easier than that. See, genie, all my life I’ve had terrible luck with women. Three divorces, and that’s not counting broken engagements. Even my mother hates me. I just don’t get them, you know? Women. They baffle me. So my wish is simple. I just want to understand women.’”
Charlie paused to indicate the punchline was imminent. I nodded. I thought I saw it coming.
“The genie,” he said, “looks at the guy, shakes his head, and says, ‘So this bridge. Would two lanes be okay?’”
I refused to laugh, and we drove in silence for a few more miles. Then Charlie chuckled. “It’s just luck,” he said. “We are what we are, and we can’t help it. Turns out Sarah loves baseball, and that’s made all the difference. There’s no way to know if you’ve married the right woman until you do it.”
I didn’t believe it, of course, and I don’t think Charlie really did, either. But it was very supportive of him to say so.
Charlie did not mention Mick Fallon, and neither did I. That subject qualified as business. We did not talk business on fishing trips.
There were only two other cars in the pull-off by the river. We tugged on our waders, strung our rods, shrugged into our vests, and slipped down the steep bank with all the eagerness of teenagers on a double date with sisters who were reputed to do it.
The water was littered with a smorgasbord of insects—mayfly duns and spinners, midges, terrestrials, caddisflies—and there were enough surface-feeding trout to occupy us all day. Charlie and I fished within shouting distance, which was our agreement on the Deerfield, where sometimes the dam released water suddenly and in great volume and a heedless angler could find himself lifted off his feet and bob-sledded downriver. It had happened to me once. Fortunately, Charlie had been fishing downstream from me, and he’d managed to grab me on the way by and haul me out.
We quit around six. The trout were still rising, and we knew we could continue catching them into darkness. But we hadn’t even stopped fishing for lunch, and, anyway, we’d had enough. It had been a perfect day. Anything more would’ve been too much of a good thing.
We stopped at a roadhouse near Greenfield for burgers and coffee. We listened to Charlie’s Miles Davis tapes on the drive home, content to savor our own thoughts, comfortable enough in each other’s company that we didn’t need to talk.
I transferred my gear from Charlie’s truck to my car in the Papa Razzi lot. We agreed it had been a good day and that we should do it again soon. Then I headed back into the city.
It was about ten when I pulled into my slot in the garage under my apartment building. I got out, opened the back door, and leaned in for my stuff. When I straightened up and turned around, a man was standing behind me, not five feet away. He wore an expensive-looking suit and a Dick Tracy hat. In the dim orange light, his face was deeply shadowed, and I didn’t recognize him at first.
Then he spoke. “Coyne, right?”
I nodded. “You’re Patsy. Or Paulie. I get you two confused.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “Mr. Russo wants to talk to you.”
I shut the car door and started for the elevator. “Tell him to call my office for an appointment,” I said. “On second thought, don’t bother. I’m all booked up.”
He moved beside me and touched my arm. “Mr. Russo wants to share some information with you. About a friend of yours. Mick Fallon?”
I squinted at him. “It’s Patsy, right?” I said. “You’re the one who does the talking.”
“Mr. Russo’s waiting, Mr. Coyne. He don’t like being kept waiting. It shows disrespect.”
“He’s got information for me?”
Patsy shrugged.
“Where is he?”
“Parked on the street. He came to you. That shows great respect.”
“Um,” I said. “Flattering. Okay. Let me put my stuff back in the car.”
I did, and when I was done Patsy said, “Sorry, I gotta frisk you.” He patted me down, then led me out of the garage.
At the end of the block, we turned left, and there, parked next to the curb, sat a big silver Mercedes with tinted windows. The headlights were on and the motor was idling.
Patsy opened the back door, then stood aside.
A gravelly voice from inside said, “Mr. Coyne. Thank you for coming. I assume Patsy treated you courteously, huh?”
I bent down to look in. Vincent Russo was wearing a dark suit and hornrims with yellow lenses. He was a small, dapper man in his sixties—steely hair brushed back tight against his scalp, thin lips, pale skin, dark hooded eyes. His picture appeared in newspapers regularly, but I’d never seen him in person before.
“Patsy was the perfect gentleman, as always,” I said. “He mentioned Mick Fallon.”
“Please. Sit in here with me so we can talk private.”
“To tell you the truth,” I said, “I’m not all that eager to get into a car with you, Mr. Russo.”
He lifted one hand, then let it fall onto his thigh. “We are not enemies, Mr. Coyne. You have nothing to fear. You got my word on it, huh?”
“You have information on Mick Fallon?”
“You’re his attorney. There are some things perhaps you should know.” He looked up at me and smiled coldly. “We can help each other, huh?” He patted the seat beside him.
I hesitated, quite certain that I was about to do something foolhardy or worse. I could hear Charlie when I told him about it. “You did
what
?” he’d say.
There were a million reasons why I should not get into the backseat of Vincent Russo’s Mercedes on a dark Boston side street on a quiet Sunday night in June.
So I bent down and slid in beside the most notorious mobster in Boston.
Patsy shut the door behind me. It latched with the sound of finality. I wondered if Russo’s Mercedes was equipped with disabled rear door latches, making a backseat guest such as me a prisoner. I resisted the impulse to find out, on the grounds that it would betray my discomfort.
A man with a thick neck sat stolidly behind the wheel up front. I looked at Russo, then pointed my chin at the driver.
He nodded. “Paulie, leave us alone, huh?” he said softly.
Paulie immediately switched off the headlights and ignition, got out, and shut the door behind himself. I noticed that the dome light did not go on when the door opened. Paulie went around to the front of the car, leaned against the fender, crossed his arms, and gazed up the street.
I turned to Russo. “You have information about Mick Fallon?”
He shrugged. “Who besides you, I ask myself, might suggest to Lieutenant Horowitz that Patsy and Paulie could be involved?”
“Oh, I’d give Lieutenant Horowitz more credit than that.”
He made a little backhanded brush-off gesture. “No matter, Mr. Coyne. If you mentioned it, you were only doing your job. I respect that. But I want you to understand that Mick’s health and happiness is very important to me.”
“I’ll be sure to tell him when I see him.”
“You’re mocking me, huh?” he said. “That’s okay. Sometimes I beat around the bush. Let me be straight with you, okay?” He reached over, tapped my knee, and held my gaze with those lizard eyes. “We didn’t whack him, Mr. Coyne.”
“It never occurred to me that you did.”
He nodded and smiled. “Of course it did. But let me assure you.
Nobody
whacked him, okay?”
“How do you know?”
“Mick has enemies, Mr. Coyne. But they won’t hurt him, because they know it would upset me.”
“Do you know where he is?”
Russo shrugged. “We know people who can help us find out, and sooner or later we will.”
“The police are looking for him, too,” I said.
“Yes,” said Russo. “And the way I figure it, Mick is already feeling all those nooses drawing tight around his neck. At some point he’ll have to get in touch with somebody he trusts, huh?” He arched his eyebrows.
“If you think I’m going to turn Mick over to you,” I said, “you’re not as smart as I thought you were.”
“It would be best for everybody if you did, Mr. Coyne. You should trust me on this.”
“Is this a threat, Mr. Russo?”
He held up both hands, palms out. “I’m a civilized man, sir.”
“Good-bye,” I said. I tried the back door handle, and it worked. I got out of the car.
“Mr. Coyne,” he said.
I bent down and looked in at him.
“A shame, what happened to Mick’s beautiful wife.” He shook his head. “Terrible, terrible tragedy, huh? Thing like that, I always feel worst for the children. Those two beautiful kids of his. Erin and Danny. College kids, huh?”
I stared at him.
“Well,” he said after a minute. “Let’s keep in touch, huh?” He held out his hand for me to shake.
I looked at it but did not take it. I shook my head, turned, and headed back to my car in the underground garage. I half expected Patsy and Paulie to follow me and try to teach me a lesson in respect. But they didn’t.
When I got to my apartment, I went directly to the cabinet over the refrigerator. I took down my jug of Rebel Yell, poured several fingers over a handful of ice cubes, and carried it out onto my balcony. I noticed that my hand was shaking.
Bad enough that he had threatened me. But that son of a bitch had also threatened Danny and Erin.
I plopped down in my aluminum chair, lit a cigarette, tried to think straight.
Okay. Who stood to gain from Kaye Fallon’s death?
Vincent Russo, that’s who.