Souvenir (11 page)

A long black car drove past them, a Cadillac Deville, polished and gleaming in the late afternoon sun. Clay knew the car.

“You’d better go,” he said. “I’ve got business coming. I’ll be home at seven.” He shut the door, patted the hood, and stepped back. He watched the Nash drive off, heard the rumbling noise that told him it would need a new muffler before long. It was a ’59, bought used last year, and it was going to start costing money. It was just for around town, but he wanted it to be in good shape for Addy. She deserved better. Clay looked to the Cadillac idling double-parked. The polish job looked a mile deep as it reflected the overhead sky. Last year’s model, it was sleek and lean, clean lines, classy. Addy would look good in that car, maybe a white convertible. He imagined them driving, top down, heading to the beach, sunglasses on, wind swirling over the windshield, cooling them in the summer sun and asphalt heat.

A car door opened and slammed shut. The driver was out, a big fella in a green sharkskin suit. He opened the rear door for his passenger, a smaller man dressed in a black suit. Except for a stark white shirt, everything was black. Pointed toe shoes, tie, cufflinks, hair, mustache, even his eyes looked like black dots on white. He walked towards Clay, looking into his eyes, searching for something. He stopped when he was nearly toe-to-toe. He was a couple of inches taller and tilted his head slightly. Clay smelled cologne, cigarette smoke, and sour wine.

“Inside,” he said.

“Sure, Mr. Fiorenza,” Clay said, and followed.

Clay wasn’t surprised when they went inside and another well-built guy in a dark suit was standing by the back booth. Like the last time, the only time, Pasquale Fiorenza had come to Jake’s Tavern, he sent one of his men around the back first, to check out the place. Then he made his entrance. Mr. Fiorenza hadn’t made it to where he was today by walking into rooms without knowing what was on the other side of the door. Mr. Fiorenza sat in the last booth, facing the room. The dark suited guy sat on a bar stool facing the rear door. He didn’t order a drink.

Clay slid into the booth, glancing at Brick, who shrugged, raised his eyebrows, and pulled a draft. Clay turned to Mr. Fiorenza, who sat with his hands up to his face. He looked tired. Clay was wary, uncertain of what the visit meant.

“Can I get you anything, Mr. Fiorenza? Coffee?”

Mr. Fiorenza pulled his hands down his cheeks, stretching his lower eyelids until the wet, red inner lid showed. His eyeballs were bloodshot, not the crystal clear white they had seemed outside. His hands finally left his face, which returned to its normal hardness. The hands went flat on the table.

“How long have we known each other, Mr. Brock?” Mr. Fiorenza was always businesslike and proper, an Old World formality draped over his shoulders like a black topcoat. He was Clay’s age, a few years younger maybe, but he was from another world. A world of Cadillacs and cufflinks, a world far away from the worn wooden floorboards of Jake’s Tavern.

“More than fifteen years,” Clay said. Since that first visit fifteen years ago, he had seen Mr. Fiorenza a dozen times or so, mostly at Tri-State Brands, sometimes at baseball games at West Side Field, and once at City Hall, whispering with a councilman.

“Seventeen years, this December,” he said. “Seventeen years ago I came to you and we made a deal, yes?”

The answer was so obvious all Clay could do was nod his head. Sure, they had a deal. Clay ran numbers for him, used his tavern and his cigarette route to bring in business, and in return he got a piece of the action.

“And this arrangement has been good for both of us, yes?” 
Another nod. Clay was sure it worked out well for Mr. Fiorenza. Everything did, or else he wouldn’t have made the deal. It worked out for Clay too, even though he felt the pressure with the cigarettes. He was in no position to complain, given how deep he was in. Playing the numbers was no big deal, everyone looked the other way. Running numbers, that was different. Serious, like tax evasion.

“So, Mr. Brock, if that is true, what happened to my receipts yesterday?” Mr. Fiorenza leaned forward, whispering, getting his face close to Clay. Clay saw the jaw clench, the eyes widen, the signs of physical anger uncoiling beneath the expensive suit. He wanted to back up, get away from the smell of the man, but his back was against the booth, nowhere to go.

“I gave them to Al,” Clay said, feeling thick and stupid. He knew something hadn’t been right about that guy. He shouldn’t have handed the receipts over to somebody he didn’t know. So obvious now, with this angry man poised across from him, looking like he wanted to leap over the table and strangle him. Mr. Fiorenza eased back and folded his hands in front of him, as if praying.

“Al. Whenever have I sent a stranger to you?”

“He was driving a Tri-State truck, had the uniform, said Petey had been in an accident—

how is Petey? Is he okay?”

“He was beaten, my truck was stolen, and this scum,” Mr. Fiorenza waved his hand in the air, dismissing the lowlife Al, “this scum, works his route, and takes the receipts. Finally, someone with an ounce of brains calls me to check. Someone who can think, lifts up the telephone, and ends this, but not before I have lost thousands.”

“I should have…”

“How much did they give you?” 
“What?” 
“How much!” Mr. Fiorenza’s right hand slammed down on the table, the sharp snap of flesh on wood rattling the glass ashtray, still clean and clear in the middle of the table. Clay took a deep breath, trying to figure out how to calm the man, figure out what he needed to say.

“I didn’t know anything, it was just another delivery, another pickup. The guy was a little strange, he was late, but everything seemed normal.”

“A little strange, and you think that normal? Mr. Brock, you are one of my most successful associates. The bar, the cigarettes, how you do business, very quietly, nothing to draw attention. This is very good. Someone as smart as you, you are fooled by this man? I am not sure.”

“Why would I—”

“Has anyone contacted you,” Mr. Fiorenza interrupted, “about our business?”

“No, nobody,” said Clay. “Was anyone else?”

“Never mind who. Several weeks ago I was made an offer on my business.”

“Tri-State?”

“Yes, and all the associated business that goes with it. The price was very low, and I have no desire to sell. But these people, they have a great desire.”

“So, Al was one of them?”

“See, Mr. Brock, you are very smart. Yes, Alphonse DePaoli, he is a
ladro giovane
, a boy who steals from his elders, who has no respect.” Mr. Fiorenza took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, shook one loose from the pack so it stuck out an inch or so, and pulled it out with his lips. Old Golds, Clay noted absently as Mr. Fiorenza lit up with a gold cigarette lighter.

“This act was a message to me, a message that caused me to think how I would proceed if I were in their shoes,” Mr. Fironeza went on. “I would contact associates like you, explain to you how it would be in your best interests to do business with me. Get information, learn about how we conduct our business. Then, pull something like this, intercept revenues, cause a disruption.” He blew out a stream of smoke right at Clay.

“No one has done that.” Clay felt calm now that the cards were on the table. It was bad news, but at least he understood where he was, what was going on around him. He was in the middle of a war, something he could grasp, maybe even manage. They both sat silently for a minute, watching each other. Clay had passed a test, he knew that much.

“All right, then,” Mr. Fiorenza said as he unfolded his hands and spread them open. “If anyone does, call me immediately. We will deal with them. One of the two men with me today will accompany the new driver. You will remember their faces?”

“Yes,” said Clay, glancing at the man at the bar.

“If one of them is not with the driver, give him nothing.”

“What if he insists?” 
“That is your problem, Mr. Brock. And, for the rest of this week, there will be no percentage for you. We have to make up losses. I still have to pay the winning numbers.”

“That’s not—” 
“Do not dare tell me what is fair,” said Mr. Fiorenza, holding up a finger, as if stilling a rowdy child. “Nothing is fair. Nothing.”

He slid out of the booth and walked out, the cleats on the heels of his black shoes sharp on the floorboards as he passed. The guy at the bar followed him, nodding to Clay as he went.

Clay couldn’t argue with the logic. Fair was a fairy tale.

Chapter Six

2000

Clay poured coffee from the pot, enjoying the aroma and the look of the hot steam swirling up as the liquid filled his cup. He set the pot back down on the burner, stirred in a touch of sugar and carried his coffee cup to the kitchen table.

Addy didn’t drink coffee anymore, so one day Clay had put away the Mr. Coffee and dug out their old aluminum coffee pot. It was with the camping gear, covered by a canvas tarp in the garage. It was beat up, dented, and scorched black on the bottom, but it had cleaned up pretty good, and it wasn’t some piece of plastic crap. It was real metal, something you didn’t plug in, it worked indoors and out, and you could watch the coffee cooking up, water bouncing up against the little glass top over and over again until it turned dark black and smelled like heaven.

He sipped the coffee. It was hot and strong, really hot, not like the lukewarm stuff that came out of those drip pots. He had to slurp in air with it to cool it down. It always brought back the memory of drinking coffee brewed up in mess kits. Nescafe, instant coffee in little plastic packs. You’d dig a small trench in the ground, and stick in one of those heating tabs that came in C Ration packs. Burned hot and bright, no smoke. Put your mess kit over that, and heat up your chow or water for coffee. Once in a while, he’d get some real coffee from the Company kitchen and throw it in with the water and let it boil up. But that was rare good luck, or from bartering souvenirs when they had them. Most times though, it was instant coffee, the water poured burning hot into an aluminum canteen cup and the Nescafe and sugar cubes stirred in. You’d burn your lip on the hot rim, because the coffee cooled down sooner than the metal. But it tasted good, hunkered down in a hole with your buddy, the warmth filling your stomach, while you waited for the sun to come up. The days were short that winter of ’44-’45, the nights long, cold and dark in the hills and forests of who-the-hell-knows-where.

This past winter, as the last year of his century wound down, Clay would lie awake at night, listening to the hard wind outside, wondering how he had ever lived in that weather, with nothing but what he could carry and his buddy to sustain him. Once, he had gotten up early, before dawn, and quietly dressed in his winter coat, warm boots, gloves, scarf, and wool cap, then went outside. He’d stood in the driveway for a minute, wind blowing gusts of snow over the plowed blacktop. It hadn’t felt right. He walked past the garage, into the backyard. That felt better. Hard ground. He went to a thin strip of trees separating his back yard from the back yard that came up behind him, where the land sloped down toward the other house. He moved branches aside and ducked into the trees. Another time, another place, this is where he would have dug in. In the cover of the trees, with a clear view to his front, the row of houses behind his house the enemy lines. This is what it felt like, he reminded himself as he knelt in the snow, fifty-five long years ago. He had to stop himself from getting a shovel and chipping away at the frozen ground. He couldn’t really do it, the sound would wake Addy, and she’d think he was crazy, and probably be right on the money. He’d grunted as he got up. Made his way back to the house, inside, carefully hung everything up so Addy wouldn’t notice.

He set the cup down on the table and looked out the kitchen window, out at the line of trees, now sprouting springtime leaves. They lived on Buckwheat Hill, a small knoll above the city. When they had built the house, they had a clear view over to the Polish Cemetery, but now there were houses in the way on roads with silly names like Jimmy Lane and Louis Drive. From this window though, looking towards the northeast, they still had a clear view of Lamentation Mountain. Dark brown shale spilling down the sides, a covering of green clinging to the top. Perfect name for a mountain that was falling apart, chunks of rock falling off and choking the trees below as it piled up all around them. Clay thought about how long the mountain had been there, shedding its outer surface, laying itself bare to the world. What would be left when it had all fallen away?

A shudder of sadness swept through Clay. Looking at his hands, cupped around the coffee mug, the warmth bleeding into his aching knuckles, he tried to nail down where the feeling came from. Surprises scared him. He could handle it if he were prepared, like he was prepared for the volleys at Bob’s funeral yesterday. It still got to him, but if he knew it was coming, he could steel himself, like a G.I. digging in. Give me ten minutes and I’ll bury my ass. Getting caught out in the open was the last thing he wanted.

Death? How far off could it be? Was that what slid its knife into his gut? No, not that. He felt a calmness about death. Not about dying, exactly, but the whole idea of being dead, after being alive so long, didn’t chill him like it did when he was young. It had once seemed terrifying, the complete absence of himself. Now, it was the next logical step, and he had to admit to himself, the years had built up to a weariness he had never conceived of. Some day, it would be enough.