Sweetheart (11 page)

Wade said nothing.

“Did you hear me?”

“It’s too much,” Wade said. “It shouldn’t have happened.”

“Don’t worry about it. People like that never should have been born. When you meet Gardella tonight, watch his face. See if it’s satisfied.”

“I’m thinking of canceling,” Wade said.

“You cancel,” Thurston said, “you’ll wish to hell
you
were never born.”

A
NTHONY
G
ARDELLA’S HOUSE
at Rye Beach was an old Cape that had been given a deck, a solarium, a sauna, and, for winter use, a massive fireplace in the extended sitting room. A fire was lit, though the evening was mild, more like May than March. From the start, Christopher Wade was uncomfortable there. He was conscious of a trace of sweat on his nose and of Gardella’s watchful eyes.

Gardella gave him a drink and warned, “It’s sweet. Maybe too sweet for you.”

Wade tasted it. “Like Dubonnet.”

“But better. And a dollar cheaper.” Gardella smiled with handsome teeth, a noticeable separation between the two front ones. “A toast.”

“To what?”

“Reasonableness.”

Wade received the word with a stare and recorded it without thought. Somewhere a window was open, and he could smell salt air. If he listened hard, he could hear waves flapping.

With a sort of pulse to his voice, Gardella said, “I want you to relax. But I don’t know, is that possible?”

“For a few hours, why not?” Wade said as Jane Gardella entered the room with hors d’oeuvres and eyes that disturbed him. They rested on him carefully, discreetly, and, at the same time, imperiously. Her youth more than her beauty disconcerted him, along with her poise. Her scent touched him as she offered choices on a silver tray.

“Laura recommends everything,” she said.

Laura was the other woman, the fourth person in the house, a balance to the evening. At the moment she was in the kitchen, helping out. Wade lifted something flaky and hot from the tray and said, “Have you two been friends long?”

“All our lives,” Jane Gardella answered and moved with the tray to her husband, who sat with his legs crossed, a black English shoe extended, the toe perforated.

He said to Wade, “Go tell her to take off her apron. Maybe she’ll listen to you.”

Wade rose with a strain, found his way to the kitchen, and glimpsed Laura straightening her stocking on an endless leg. She was especially slim, elegantly tall, boy-hipped, the kind of body one associated with models. Wade said, “You’re wanted.”

She came forward with feline grace and stunning agility, and yet she stumbled. She fell against Wade, her hands grazing his chest. He stood immobile. “I’m not wired,” he whispered, “if that’s what you’re trying to find out.”

She eyed him coolly out of shaded lids, a bold tilt to her head, though her voice was warm. “I’ll tell Mr. Gardella.”

“With what? A look?”

“A little one.” Her eyes played subtly with his. “What’s a nice cop like you doing here?”

“I’ll ask myself that later on,” he said in a tone consistently flat. “Are you here for my benefit?”

“No,” she said. “For Mr. Gardella’s.”

Wade liked her, but not much.

At dinner he sat with his back to the fire, Laura beside him, and the Gardellas facing him. He gave a start when a log fell and then let his shoulders sink against the heat. Gardella said, “We don’t say grace here. Does that bother you?”

“I don’t say it either,” he replied and ate his soup without knowing what it was. Dover sole followed. Gardella rose to bone and serve it. The conversation went quietly to New Hampshire politics. Jane Gardella mentioned the man likely to become governor, Sununu, and said he sounded like an oil company.

“He’s Arab,” Gardella said. “Same thing.”

Jane Gardella lifted her wineglass, and Wade found his eyes lingering on her. He thought she looked Dutch or Danish, or perhaps Norwegian, but toward the end of dinner there was mention of Germany, an aside about her father’s forebears, Bavarians. Wade wondered what there was about her that made him uneasy.

Laura said, “I’ll get dessert.”

“I’ll pass,” Wade said.

“It’s parfait,” Gardella said. “Your favorite.”

Wade had dessert. When it came time for coffee, Gardella glanced at him. “We’ll have ours in the den.” Then he looked at the women. “You’ll excuse us?”

Wade went to the bathroom first. The lighting was merciless, and the mirror gave him a swollen look. His hand moved clumsily and upset a crowd of cosmetic bottles. As he set them right, a suspicion reared up and settled in his mind like a cankerworm on a leaf. The suspicion was that he was openly doing himself in. When he unlocked the door he saw Laura standing outside, waiting her turn. She regarded him serenely, as if her eyes could enter him at will.

“Where’s the den?”

She pointed. “You’ll find it.”

“No, I don’t think I will.”

“Then I’ll show you.”

It was in a distant part of the house. He peered into a hard-edged room with high windows, pointed shadows, and heavy furniture, and he entered it with a sense of weight and mass, which extended to Gardella, who looked heavier from having eaten. The coffee was poured. Wade picked up a cup and committed himself to the deepest chair in the room. Apropos of nothing, Gardella said, “Were you in the service?”

“Ages ago.”

“Yeah, me too. Korean thing. I still look back at it like it was the best time of my life. I enlisted, eighteen years old, can you believe it? Guys I took basic with were older. I still remember most of the names, all from New York. Deckler from Queens, Bellia from Brooklyn, Davidson from Manhattan. Deckler, a big Kraut with hair always sticking up, got me interested in reading books, and Davidson, a Jew, got me talking about life, you know, what you want out of it. I always meant to get in touch with those guys, but I never did.” Gardella sighed. “When were you in? Vietnam thing?”

“Early part,” Wade said. “Actually I never left the States.”

Gardella smiled. “Neither did I.” Then his face turned serious, stiff, almost pallid. “Maybe you mind me saying this, but I’m going to, anyway. You showed feeling when the thing happened to my mother and father. I appreciate it. My sister, she appreciates it. She was here, she’d tell you so herself. There, I’ve said it. That okay with you?”

Wade looked at him directly. “The case is still open. We had two suspects, brothers, but their car went over a cliff.”

“Maybe it’s better that way.”

“I don’t know. I’m not God.”

“Sometimes you have to ask yourself if there is one.” Gardella’s expressive eyes brimmed with light. “For me, the pain will always be there, but now I can live with it.” Then he drank some coffee, the subject closed. “What d’you think of my wife?”

“She’s beautiful.”

“What about her friend?”

“Almost as beautiful.”

“But you’re not interested, I could tell.”

“Sure I’m interested, but that’s not why I’m here. You’ve got a pitch to make, and I’m curious to hear it. Maybe I’ll laugh in your face, or maybe I’ll just walk away, or maybe I’ll have something to mull over. But it’s best I warn you now. I don’t do business.”

“If I thought you did business,” Gardella said, “I wouldn’t have had you at my table. My wife wouldn’t have served you canapés, I wouldn’t have boned a fish for you. You’re a clean cop, that’s what I’ve been told. I respect that. I also heard about you trying to save the bum dying on the sidewalk. You putting your mouth on his. You care for people. I respect that even more.”

Wade said, “I’m starting to feel like a saint.”

“Few saints around, none that I’ve met, anyway.” Gardella sipped his coffee idly. “All I know, at this particular moment, is the DA’s looking to hurt me for reasons better known to him than to me, and he’s using you to do it. Naturally I don’t like it. I sound worried, it’s because I am. I’ve got a lot of businesses, hard to keep my finger on all of them.”

“If you keep good books, you don’t have a problem.”

“Come on, Wade.” Gardella’s smile was transient. “You and I both know you guys look long enough, you can find what isn’t there. That takes up my time, gives me grief, and costs me money. It goes to court, I pay for the lawyers. In the end the judge throws out the case because you guys never had one. Who wins? No one.”

“I don’t look that far ahead. I just do my job.”

“There’s plenty of ways to do a job. Best way is to just look busy. That’s how you look good, and I don’t get harassed.”

“I haven’t heard one word you’ve said,” Wade murmured.

“That’s because I haven’t said anything you don’t already know twice as well as me.”

“You mind if I smoke?” Wade asked and lit a Merit Menthol. He raised his coffee cup from its saucer. Someone passed by the door, and he wasn’t sure whether it was Jane Gardella or the other woman. Their scent, he had realized earlier, was nearly the same.

Gardella said, “Basically, in case you haven’t noticed, we’re not that much different. We’re family men. You got daughters, I got sons. I got a son who’s a marine. I’m proud of him. I’m even prouder of my other kid, who’s at Holy Cross. He’s going to be better than me. Not bigger, that doesn’t count, but better.”

Wade listened to the voice trail off; then it came back more mellow.

“We’re lonely guys, not just me, you too, I can tell. When my first wife died, I didn’t know if I wanted to go on. I still wake up in the night and think it’s her beside me, not Jane. I didn’t have Jane, though, I’d go crazy. You know what I’m telling you?”

“That you’d go crazy.”

“I’m telling you two guys shouldn’t go out of their way to hurt each other. They get hurt enough in other ways. No?”

Wade nudged his cigarette ash into a hollow of crystal he wasn’t certain was an ashtray. The coffee was a special blend, a chocolate taste to it. He said quietly, “The reason I came here is I thought you might want to raise the possibility of immunity in return for your cooperation. You’re big, but Angello, Zanigari, they’re bigger.”

Gardella did not trouble himself to reply to that or even to acknowledge with a glance that the words had been spoken. Instead he lifted his jaw in a manner that compelled attention. “Kith and kin, Wade. That’s what’s important to us. The people who make our lives matter, the women who make us whole. Without a woman, you’re not whole. Tell me I’m wrong. If I am, I’ll shut up.”

Wade said, “You’re not wrong, but your wife’s friend — she wasn’t necessary.”

“Clumsy of me. Stupid, even. D’you know what I’d like to see? I’d like to see you back with your wife, where you belong. I think you’d be a happier man.”

Something in Wade went cold and affected his face.

“I care,” Gardella said quickly. “Should I apologize for caring?”

“Why the hell should you care?”

“You’re happy, maybe I don’t have to worry about you,” Gardella said with a smile, as if he had come up with an ace.

Wade looked uneasily toward the door, as if he had played this hand too well.

• • •

It was nearly two in the morning when Wade, speeding along Interstate 95, saw the distant lights of Boston pricking the darkness. It was two-fifteen when he let himself into his Commonwealth Avenue apartment and two-twenty when the phone rang. It was his wife, one of the few people who had the unlisted number. “Are you all right?” she asked.

“Yes, of course,” he said, surprised, a tense quickness in his voice. “Why do you ask?”

“Silly of me, but I had the same horrible feeling I used to get when you were working undercover and I was sure you were dead or dying. Chris … you’re not a young guy anymore.”

“Why the reminder?”

“Are you undercover again?”

“You read the papers. You know what I’m doing.”

“No,” she said. “I don’t know what you’re doing. None of my business. I shouldn’t have called.”

“But you did.”

“Chris, please. Don’t make too much of it.”

“Have you seen the girls lately?” he asked, staring at their framed pictures, studio shots taken when they were ten and eleven, one a close facsimile of the other, each a fatted calf at that tender age.

“Yes, haven’t you?”

“I’ve talked to them a few times on the phone. I wanted them to have lunch with me, but they were always busy.”

“Ironic, isn’t it. In the past it was you who were too busy.”

He stood poised on his toes, aware that even if no one was in the apartment above him a tape recorder was operating. Ears, if not listening now, would listen later. “Susan … are you alone?”

“Yes,” she said.

“I could come over. It wouldn’t take long.”

“Goodnight, Chris.”

• • •

Wade did not sleep well, scarcely at all, and he was up early. The streets appeared raw, bruised. They needed warming up from a sun only gradually showing itself. He drove to nearby Newbury Street, left his Camaro double-parked, and went into a basement coffee shop for breakfast. He ordered Number Three without knowing what Number Three was. The tables were close. A man wearing a security guard uniform and a sidearm that looked real enough but was a toy said, “You a cop?”

Wade narrowed his gaze. “Does it show?”

“I know cops. I was one for twenty-three years. Don’t ever retire. It’s bullshit.”

“I’m a few years from that.”

“Die first,” the man said.

“Suicide’s a sin.”

“You got insurance? Get cancer.”

“You’ve made my morning,” Wade said and changed tables.

When he returned to his car, he found Russell Thurston sitting in it. As he pushed in behind the wheel, Thurston said in a well-regulated voice, “A hell of a way to park.”

“I wanted to make it easy for you.”

“Drive, will you? Around the block. How’d it go last night?”

Without answering, Wade drove up Newbury Street and eased through a red light. His eyes were fixed to the windshield in the growing traffic.

“You in a bad mood?”

“A small one.”

“Any mention made of Miami? It was all over the news last night.”

“No mention.”

“He’s a cool bastard.”

“He’s smooth, Thurston. Smoother than you.”

“Did he put a hook in you?”

“So smoothly I haven’t felt it yet.”

“What did he offer?”

“Happiness.” Wade glanced sideways. “I can’t remember, what am I getting from you?”

“Thrills,” said Thurston.

• • •

Unannounced, Victor Scandura entered the office of John Benson at Benson Tours and lowered himself into a chair. John Benson’s head jerked up, and then he smiled. “Nice to see you, Mr. Scandura. You have no complaints, I hope.”