Sweetheart (16 page)

“Yes, I could, Blue, but why press it?” Thurston’s smile, like his voice, was smooth. “By the way, you never mentioned if your wife liked the roses I sent her for her birthday. I waited for you to say something, but you never did.”

Blue evinced surprise. “She sent you a note. Didn’t you get it?”

“Oh, yes,” Thurston said in a way that was at once playful and serious. “Nice, neat penmanship. If I didn’t know better, I’d have thought she went to a Catholic school.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“You should know the rules by now, Blue. It’s you I should’ve heard from.”

• • •

Twenty minutes later Thurston left the Kennedy Building. Waiting for the lights to change at the pedestrian crossing, he turned his nose away from the fumes of fretful cars, daredevil taxis, and burdensome tourist buses. The man next to him, a derelict, spat green. When the lights turned, he crossed the thoroughfare at a brisk pace and let the pump of the crowd carry him up Tremont Street to Park. Halfway up Park Street he returned with disdain the glance of a goateed black man who seemed to be wearing lipstick. He crossed Beacon Street, passed through that part of the General Court used as a public way, and approached the front of the State House. Christopher Wade stood nearby, a conspicuous figure, with an elbow on the rail overlooking the parking area for the privileged.

“You’re late,” he said.

“A little,” Thurston conceded cavalierly. Workers were leaving the State House for the day, the men in nubby sports jackets, the women in pastel pantsuits and flat shoes. A uniformed policeman from the Metropolitan District Commission strode by. Wade tossed away his cigarette.

“I don’t like standing here with my face out.”

“There’s a reason for everything,” Thurston said, lifting his eyes. The lieutenant governor emerged from a private exit with a claque of aides groomed and tailored in his image and in passing gave a cursory glance at Thurston, then a longer and scrutinizing one that took in Wade.

Wade said, “You don’t give a damn who sees us.”

“Before it wasn’t good. Now it is.”

“That’s why we’re meeting here.”

“Exactly.”

“The lieutenant governor’s not on your list.”

“True, but we’ll let him think he is. Great way to keep him off balance. Right now he’s wondering and worrying.”

“Not if he’s clean.”

Thurston snorted. “There’s not a politician alive who doesn’t have some shit on his soul. J. Edgar Hoover himself said that.”

Another group emerged from the same private exit: pinstriped doyens from the financial field, quintessential Bostonians. They had been meeting with the governor and now were moving smartly toward waiting limos whose drivers were throwing open doors. With an unnecessarily sharp nudge, Thurston said, “The tall one, that’s Quimby, president of Union Bank. His people came over on the
Mayflower
.”

“Does he know you?”

“Sure he knows me, but he’s pretending he doesn’t see me.” Thurston swayed slightly, as if from a sensation of well-being. “When you talk with him, I want you wired.”

“He doesn’t look like the type who’ll incriminate himself.”

“No, but he might whine. I want to hear it.”

“You want his blood.”

“Every blue drop. A man of his background dealing with scum like Gardella deserves nothing.”

More people were leaving the State House. Wade recognized Senate President Billy Bulger, Sheriff Dennis Kearney, and a representative he had thought dead. He also saw a couple of lawyers he knew. Thurston tapped his arm.

“Look to your left, down on Myrtle Street, the stocky gentleman talking to the two ladies. That’s Senator Matchett, known for his courtly manners and dictatorial control of the committee on counties. Sexually, he’s in his second childhood. So’s his wife. They got a summer place in Rye, near Gardella’s.”

“You want me wired for them too?”

“Sure, why not? They think Gardella’s some kind of god. They don’t know that if you squeeze him you get olive oil.”

Wade, with a dark look, reached for a cigarette and came up with an empty pack. “Do you mind if I ask you something?” he said.

“Sure, go ahead.”

“It’s personal, isn’t it, what you’ve got going against Gardella?”

“Personal? Sure it’s personal. I don’t like wops who think they’re white.”

• • •

Over plates of pasta at Francesca’s on Richmond Street, Anthony Gardella and Victor Scandura discussed the problem of Officer Hunkins. Scandura said, “The guy comes in, I don’t believe it. Who would be so stupid? He opens his mouth, I think I’m hearing things. He’s carrying a cannon, he shows it to me. Like a cowboy.”

Gardella poured wine from a wickered bottle. “No brains.”

“None at all.”

“An asshole.”

“That’s what we’re dealing with.”

Gardella drank and ate reflectively. They were in a booth, their privacy ensured by a solicitous waiter. “If it was another time, I’d say hit him. But right now it’s not the thing to do.”

Scandura nodded his agreement. “That’s my feeling too. Maybe your friend Wade could — ”

“No, I don’t like that.”

“I didn’t think you would, but it was something to consider.” Scandura tore his bread in two and sopped up the clam sauce left on his plate. A friend of theirs gave a wave from a table across the room. Scandura scarcely acknowledged it, Gardella not at all.

Gardella said, “What I think we should do is compromise him. That way we get him off our backs, and maybe a year from now we’ll feel better about hitting him.”

“We need people,” said Scandura. “How about that woman Laura?”

“She might be too classy for him.”

“She’s an actress, Anthony. She can do anything, the money’s right.”

“The money’s always right. Use her.”

“And Scatamacchia?”

“Him too.” Gardella lifted his wineglass. “Now I feel better. We finished with business? I want to enjoy.”

“One more thing,” Scandura said. “Sammy Ferlito did what you wanted. He sent Augie to Montreal to relatives and told him to keep his nose clean. He stays there till you say different.”

“The way I feel that might be never.”

“That’s what I told Ferlito.”

“He’s responsible, did you tell him that?”

“If you’d seen his face, you’d know I didn’t have to.”

• • •

In a cafeteria in downtown Wellesley, Agent Blue carried his cup of coffee to a corner table where two Wellesley police officers were seated, the remains of a ham and bean supper on their plates. They pulled in their feet as Blue joined them, and each gave him a lazy smile. One of the officers, who had a red bush of a mustache, said, “They still making you watch that place?”

Blue nodded.

“That’s a bitch.”

He had met them his third or fourth night of keeping an eye on Susan Wade’s house. Their cruiser had rolled up silently behind his colorless unmarked car, and they had come at him with drawn revolvers, forcing him out of the car and making him assume the position. His identification had not impressed them. A phone call to Thurston had been necessary.

“Pass the sugar,” he said, and the other officer, older, tougher-looking, accommodated him.

“We’re divorced, but a guy like you, married, it must be tough working nights,” the officer with the mustache said. “If you want, for a few bucks each week, we’ll drive by the place on the hour. It’s right on our route.”

Blue stirred his coffee slowly, with great care.

“Anything comes up, we’ll call you right away, right, Harold?”

“Sure,” said the older officer. “No problem.”

“How much money you actually talking about?” Blue asked.

“Hell, we’re not looking to get rich. Give me twenty bucks. Harold and I will split it.”

Blue stared intently at one officer, then the other, and pushed his coffee cup to one side, spilling some. “Tell Thurston it was a nice try,” he said, rising, “but it didn’t work.”

“Hey, you don’t want the favor, forget it!”

“I already have.”

They watched him leave the cafeteria, his shoulders stiff. The older officer said, “Fucking coon, he’s smart.”

The officer with the mustache said, “There goes our two hundred bucks.”

• • •

In bed that night, lying flat on her back, Sara Dillon felt swollen from the pressure of her pregnancy and chilled from a growing apprehension. “I don’t like it,” she whispered to Ty O’Dea. “I don’t like her buying us things. I don’t know where she’s coming from.”

“It’s just her way,” Ty O’Dea said in a voice thick from drinking. He had spent most of the day in taprooms in South Boston. He freed an arm from the covers, the Seiko watch glowing from his wrist. “You have to understand her. Sometimes she’s all heart.”

“Ty, I think we should leave.”

“We will,” he said, “soon as the kid’s born, I promise.”

“I think we should leave now.”

“It’s … it’s not that easy. Besides, think of the money we’re saving.”

Sara Dillon brought a slow hand to her face. Her forehead was hot and her skin felt rough, as if blemishes were standing out. “Ty, it’s like she’s taking over my body.”

“What kind of talk is that?”

“And she’s making too much about the kid.”

There was no answer from him. Seconds later he was asleep, his breathing cluttered, raucous at times. Eventually she drifted off, perhaps for a whole hour, and then she woke with her head hotter and her gown sticking to her. The window, which had been raised, was lowered, and the door, which had been shut, was ajar. She knew she had been looked upon, perhaps for several minutes. She knew this with utter certainty, as if Rita O’Dea had left the imprint of her face in the humid dark of the room.

T
HE
U
NION
B
ANK OF
B
OSTON
was an imposing structure of Victorian-Gothic architecture. Formidable in age and history, it was a monument in the city’s financial district. Despite much interior modernizing, it remained staunch and venerable with its mahogany and marble and its brass plaques honoring past presidents and chairmen, a notable number of them Quimbys. Christopher Wade had an eleven o’clock appointment. He expected to be ushered to an elevator and propelled to a posh suite of offices with original art on the walls. Instead, he was kept waiting in the main concourse, where he gazed through glass at automated teller machines. The people were using them with obsessional intensity, as if the money they drew were free. He turned with a lurch when someone touched his arm.

“This way.” The voice was smooth and solid, the privileged face untouched by ordinary worry and care. John Quimby guided Wade beyond a polished rail to a desk that nobody happened to be using at the time. Wade sat beside it, Quimby behind it. “I hope this won’t take long.”

“I can’t see any reason it should,” Wade said. “As you know, I’ve been looking into some of Anthony Gardella’s business enterprises, Aceway in particular, and some questions have come up that you might be able to answer.”

“Yes,” Quimby said brusquely. “Mr. Gardella warned me a week ago you’d be bothering me. He assured me the inconvenience would be minimal.”

“Mr. Gardella takes a lot for granted.”

“I doubt that,” Quimby said with a slight inflection.

Wade took out a pocket notebook, seemed to refer to it, and then put it away. “The bank made a number of bad loans to Aceway. Some were written off, some settled, and a couple of others renegotiated. The bank took a bath.”

“That’s ancient history.”

“I’d still like to know about it.”

“Nobody’s infallible, not even bankers. Errors in judgment were made. The loan officer involved resigned, which satisfied both the federal and state examiners. But apparently it doesn’t satisfy you.”

“Where is this loan officer now?”

“He died of a heart attack. Do you want his widow’s name? You might want to bother her.”

“A number of years ago,” Wade went on, “the bank handled a number of large money transfers for Gardella, if not directly, indirectly. Millions were involved.”

“Possibly. There was nothing wrong with the practice back then. Now there are stiffer regulations, and the bank doesn’t do it anymore.”

“Now he shuffles his money through Florida. Would you know anything about that?”

Quimby sighed. “No, Captain.”

“I’m a lieutenant.”

“Your rank doesn’t interest me. You’re lucky I’m listening to you.”

“How well do you know Gardella?”

“Socially, not at all. I know his credit rating, what I read about him in the
Globe
, and little else. I have no firsthand knowledge about his alleged criminal connections.”

“The FBI has an old photo of you two eating on the deck of a restaurant at Rye Beach, New Hampshire. You had scrod, he had scallops.”

“I’m impressed,” Quimby said with an austere face, like that of a Trappist monk. “I didn’t think the FBI opened its files to you lesser fellows.”

“When it suits their purposes.”

“But it doesn’t suit mine to listen to you any longer,” Quimby said and gave an open glance at his watch. On cue, two bank officers, senior to Quimby in age but junior in everything else, appeared outside the rail with documents in their hands, as if their business were pressing. Quimby signaled that he would be only a moment more and switched his eyes back to Wade. “What was your father? A milkman? A plumber?”

“Close,” said Wade. “He was an electrician.”

“A worthy craft,” Quimby noted with icy insincerity. “You should have followed in his footsteps.”

“In a way I have. For your information, I’m wired.”

“What?”

“It’s routine.”

Both men rose. “If you have any more questions, Lieutenant, direct them to my lawyer.”

Five minutes later Wade was in his Camaro, a victim of the kinetic orneriness of Boston traffic, whose haphazard lines clogged with false stops. It took him an ungodly long time to reach Interstate 95, where he tuned the radio to old music and cut into a passing lane. Though he had no reason for haste, he raced toward Rye.

• • •

No one seemed to be home. After ringing the bell several times at the front door, he ambled to the side of the house, where the shrubs were juniper, bayberry, and beach plum. The beach plum was in flower, delicately white, and he glanced over it into windows that hurled back his reflection. The patio was deserted. Down on the dazzling emptiness of the beach, misty near the surf, he guessed at a direction and chose north, which proved right. Some distance around the bend, shielded by boulders, was a pebbly beach that existed only at low tide. That was where he found Jane Gardella.

He startled her.

Seated on a low, flat rock, she was plunged so deeply in private thought that she did not see him until he was upon her, and then she leaped up, confused and unprepared, like someone rousted from a heavy sleep.

“Tony’s not here.”

“I know,” he said, his eyes full of her. She stood with her weight on one leg and threads dangling from her denim shorts. The sun had darkened her face and bleached her eyebrows, making her look even younger than usual and reminding him of certain vivid blond girls he had exalted in high school. Nancy Gleed. Margie Waitt. Terry Swedler. It amazed him that he conjured up the names so readily.

“What do you want?” Jane Gardella asked.

“I’m not sure,” he said, which was true or partially true. The air was pungent with the smells of brine, washed-up weed, and dead shellfish, some of the odor emanating from her. Earlier she had been poking about among the rocks.

“You must have come here for something.”

“I understand Senator Matchett and his wife have a place near here. I thought I might run into them.”

“It’s too early in the season for them,” she said quickly. “But I think you knew that.” He hovered, studying her in a way she did not like. “If you’re thinking of making a pass,
don’t
. One word to Tony … I’d destroy you.”

“Why are you so suspicious?”

Her silence was formidable as she cast her eyes to one side.

“Why are you so antagonistic?”

She rubbed one wrist and then the other, as if for circulation. “You get on my nerves,” she said. “I see too much of you.”

“How much has your husband told you about me?”

“Enough.”

“Then you know I’m a reasonable guy.”

“Don’t try to sell yourself to me,” she said, scathing him with a look. “It won’t work.”

“I’d like us to be friends,” he persisted.

“Fine. We’re friends.” Her smile cut. “Do I bother you, Lieutenant? Is there something about me that you can’t figure out?”

He regarded her intently. “Yes.”

“Good,” she said. “Let it gnaw at you.”

She turned away with a quick stride, and he, after a pause, followed. “Look here,” he called after her, but she did not listen. She leaped effortlessly over a tidal pool and clambered over heaped pebbles that were wet and shiny. Wavelets were beginning to wash in. Swiftly she glanced back and told him to watch his step, but it was she who should have been careful. She gouged the sole of her foot on the point of a shell, stiffened sideways in pain, and lost her balance. Pebbles clattering, she fell on her shoulder and rolled. Within seconds Wade was crouched over her, her foot in his hands and her blood on his fingers.

“Don’t be scared.”

She shivered. “Is it bad?”

“I’ve seen worse,” he said as she squeezed her eyes shut. He leaned over her. Her grimacing did not distort her youthful beauty; it gave it another dimension. The smell of summer was baked into her skin. At once he felt foolishly boyish and terribly awkward, as he had at his first school dance with a girl whose name he could almost remember. It was a tingle away.

“Is it still bleeding?” she asked.

“A little,” he said and tenderly traced a finger around her ankle.

“Don’t!” she said, but he could not stop himself. Leaning closer, he kissed her.

• • •

High in the Union Bank building, inside a spacious office where a Klee and a Kandinsky vied for attention from opposite walls, John Quimby tested his tea and nodded approval. His aging secretary, who had been with the bank since her graduation from Katharine Gibbs, waited until he sampled a scone and again gave a satisfied nod. Her tiredness showed, also her feelings for him, which he had never noticed and did not now. “I don’t want to be disturbed,” he said as she departed. After he consumed the scone, he picked up the phone and placed a call on his private line. When, after a considerable delay, he reached his party, he did not bother to identify himself. His commanding voice and cultivated Yankee accent, honed by a Harvard education, was identification enough. He said, “I don’t ever want that cocksucker of a cop in my bank again.”

There was utter silence on the other end. From Quimby came the rattle of cup and saucer.

“Did you hear me?”

“Never talk to me that way,” Anthony Gardella said. “Never.”

Quimby heard the line go dead.

• • •

Officer Hunkins was enjoying himself. He was in one of the larger girlie joints in the Combat Zone, with a choice seat at the bar and a strategic view of the stripper, who had shed the last spangly remnant of her costume and was gyrating to amplified music. Her smile seemed especially for him. Also, the bartender was good to him, would not let him pay for his shots of Canadian Club and beer chasers. The bartender, a towering man weighing well over two hundred pounds, wore granny glasses as if to present himself as a gentle giant. He said to Hunkins, “A cop comes in here, he gets everything for nothing. That’s the way we operate.”

Hunkins said, “How d’you know I’m a cop?”

“You guys, you got a bearing about you. It’s kinda like military.”

Hunkins glowed. Sitting next to him in a brilliant red dress that shrilled her presence was a young woman of intimidating attractiveness. She looked like a model. Screwing up his courage, he said, “How about the lady here? Can she get one free too?”

“That depends,” the bartender said. “She with you?”

Hunkins leered at her. “Are you?”

“Like the man said” — her voice was deep and raspy — “it depends.”

“I think it’s settled,” the bartender said, and served her what resembled a mixed drink chunky with ice. She rested her elbows on the bar and gently brought her slender hands together. Hunkins spoke close to her ear.

“What’s your name?”

“Laura.”

“What did you mean, it depends?”

Her eyes sank into his. “What do you think I meant?”

“How much?” he asked, and she quoted a price. “Jesus Christ,” he said. She shrugged. Ten minutes later they left together. The bartender cleared away their glasses and then lumbered to the telephone and made a call.

• • •

Victor Scandura took it. “That’s good,” he said and afterward made a call of his own. He was in the Gardella real estate office, which he left presently while tightening his tie and donning his suit jacket. He crossed Hanover Street and walked up a way to the Caffè Pompei, enjoying the soft evening air. Anthony Gardella was seated deep inside the café with a fresh cup of cappuccino and a newspaper he was about to read. Scandura said, “It’s all set.”

“Good.”

“You want me to oversee it?”

“I’d feel better.”

Scandura left as unobtrusively as he had arrived. His car was parked nearby. Mere moments after he drove away, Supervisor Russell Thurston clumsily maneuvered his nondescript Dodge into the vacated space. A tire shrieked against the curb. He got out and locked the car under the derisive eye of a youth strenuously chewing gum, salivating, and spitting. Thurston threw him a foul look.

He entered the Caffè Pompei and proceeded nimbly, almost like a dancer, past the elaborate jukebox that pompously resembled furniture with its woodlike veneer and pastoral picture painted on its raised lid. He picked his way deftly between tiny tables and sat down at Gardella’s without being asked. “We’ve never met,” he said, “but I think we know each other.”

Gardella cast aside his newspaper, examined the narrow, intolerant face, and nodded. Thurston made himself comfortable in an obviously insolent way.

“Do you know how many times I used to hear your voice on wiretaps?”

“Plenty, I’m sure,” Gardella said easily. “What good did it do you?”

“I know. You’re cute. You’re careful, but you ought to tell that young wife of yours to be careful too. We got pictures of her sunning herself down in the Caribbean, not a damn thing on.”

Gardella refused to react.

“If you want the pictures, I’ll get them for you. Black guy who works for me keeps them in his desk.”

Except for the sudden rigidity of his jaw, nothing in Gardella’s expression changed. His darkish hands, resting on the table, were perfectly still, vaguely ominous.

“Don’t take offense,” Thurston said with a bogus contriteness. “I know how you guys get. Remember the story about Hedy Lamarr’s husband? The poor cluck tried to buy up all the reels of that movie of her prancing naked through the woods. But I can understand that. Nobody wants the whole world looking at his wife’s ass.”

All of Gardella’s reactions were inner, unseen, tethered, though every nerve was strained. His eyes were hooded. Thurston reached forward and felt the baby-soft fabric of Gardella’s sleeve.

“The coon I mentioned wears suits like yours. You’d think the both of you clerked at Brooks Brothers. Me, I buy my stuff off the rack. I pay top price, but I don’t put on airs.”

Gardella spoke in a muted tone. “You got anything more to say to me?”

“I don’t know. Maybe you don’t want to listen. After all, you’ve got a lot on your mind, like the DA’s organized crime unit. The cop running it, Wade, probably isn’t the brightest guy in the world, but he’s a plugger. If he comes up with something on you, maybe you ought to come see me. Who knows, I might be able to offer you a deal. Something for both of us.”