Read The Accidental Pallbearer Online
Authors: Frank Lentricchia
Eliot, the mystery of Mrs. Kinter and child is solved. I got a FedEx letter this afternoon from Reading, Pennsylvania. Here’s what it says: “I want to thank you so much for being such a nice landlord and I am so sorry for leaving without saying good-bye. I am not coming back ever and please do not disclose my location to my so-called husband under no circumstances please.” Hope that relieves your mind, El. To be honest, I think you have the type mind that can’t be relieved because they haven’t yet invented that type laxative. Come on over and see me sometime, big boy.
Opens e-mail. One new message: Robinson:
What’s going on with the thing? Why is it so tough to see you since Sunday morning? The thing needs
elimination one way or the other. The longer we wait, the worse.
Conte replies:
Have devised the strategy. Millicent tells me she and Denise are still very close. Need M to take D out of town for the weekend. Suggest NYC for Broadway shows. Get her out of town Friday thru Sunday and all will be well. Out of touch until the thing is cured. Trust me.
E-mails Synakowski:
Rudy, what can you tell me about your colleague Jed Kinter?
Goes to the bathroom, flosses and brushes teeth. Changes shirt. Returns to his desk. Synakowski has answered:
Not much. No friends here that I know of. Competent in what he does. Walks by without saying hello or returning a greeting. A stranger to basic civilities. A short man. One thing: it was Whitaker who brought him in fifteen years ago. He visits Sanford’s office once a week and Sanford draws the blinds. Enzo used to say it’s all about fellatio. When I asked Enzo if he thought Kinter was brought in to give Sanford head, Enzo said he was convinced it was the other way around. A leading theory at the paper
is that Sanford plays in the closet. Here’s something else that will whet your appetite. Enzo once got into the personnel files, don’t know how, a long time back. We all have them – background experience etc. No file on Kinter. Find the spider at the center.
Notebook in hand he heads off to dine at The Chesterfield, the most Italian of restaurants in Italian Utica, on Bleecker, a ten-minute walk from home and about 100 yards from Nelson Thomas’ residence, around the corner, at 414 Ontario. Conte dines at The Chesterfield twice a week, where they know and care for him well.
Two entrances. One to the bar, the other to the dining room – a long rectangular space with a short wall of windows giving onto Bleecker, and at the opposite end, swinging doors to the kitchen. One of the long walls paneled in darkly stained knotty pine, with signed photos of Jerry Vale, Vic Damone, and Perry Como. Opposite this wall of heroes, a wall of artistically ruined brick. Tables covered in red-and-white checkered cloth. Conte sits at the table closest to the kitchen. Two couples at the other end.
He assumes he’s entered the dining area unseen, but less than a minute after sitting down, Rosie Pontenero, the owner’s wife, appears with a Johnnie Walker on the rocks, saying, “You’re not getting enough sleep. Too much on your mind, El?”
“What’s on my mind, Rosie, are three hot peppers stuffed with sausage, a bowl of the greens, and a large Coke.”
“Anything else?”
“Some extra garlic bread.”
“That it, sweetheart?”
“Not hungry tonight, Rosie.”
As soon as she disappears into the kitchen, Conte takes his drink quickly to the rest room and pours it into the toilet. He’s back at the table just before she returns with the garlic bread and Coke.
“Another Johnnie, El?”
“I’m good.”
“I always thought so,” stroking his shoulder. “We love you here. Keep it in mind, sad eyes.”
“I love you too, Rosie.”
“Dom and I are trying to think of a perfect lady for you, on the thought I’m not available. Sit tight, dear, I’ll give you the salad.”
He has no strategy for “the thing.” Has no idea why he’d committed to resolving “the thing” by the weekend. E-mails Robinson from his BlackBerry and asks if Michael C has a favorite drink that he indulges in after work. Rosie brings the chicory and dandelion greens in olive oil and lemon juice – known at The Chesterfield as Utica Greens. Halfway through the greens, Robinson responds:
Campari on the rocks, nightly, since I’ve known him. We had dinner at each other’s all the time. Always Campari on the rocks.
Conte asks if C has a security system. Answer:
Too fucking cheap.
Conte:
Let me know if M has arranged NYC as soon as possible.
He’s setting a detailed process in place, of specific actions, but to what end? Get in the house. Slip it into the Campari. Come back that night to find Coca in a deep, drug-induced sleep, helpless, unable to lift a finger. On the living room floor, at his mercy. Then what? Strip him naked, tie him up, wrist to ankles. To what end? Then what? Turn out all the lights. Wake him with high-concentrate smelling salts. Disguise himself. Including the voice. Think of a costume. Then what? To what end? Buy two dildos. Then? Turn on the lights. Conte opens his notebook and sketches a spiderweb with the name “Sanford T. Whitaker” at the center. Sketches another web with the name “Eliot Conte” at the center and two moths caught in the web, drained of life, and labeled “Rosalind” and “Emily.”
“El, dear!” Rosie with the stuffed peppers and a refill of the Coke. He looks up. “Come back from wherever the heck you are and come with me to the kitchen. You need first aid! My God, El! Look at what you’ve done to those cuticles! Let’s not worry about the tablecloth, sweetie. Lord! Look at what you’ve done to yourself!”
After Rosie takes care of his hands – after he’s eaten everything on his plate and all the garlic bread – after he’s paid the tab – he’s out on the street, the night turned upstate late-October cold, shivering in his sports jacket, turning the corner on Ontario as a man leaves 414 in jogging gear. A
stocky African-American,
Hut! HutHut!
Down Ontario he goes, away from Conte, down Gilbert he goes, gone.
Collar turned up against the wind and shoulders hunched against the cold, Conte tracks The Runner down Gilbert, where at its foot Conte turns left along Broad. (Should he have turned right? Where is Nelson Thomas?) On this ill-lit east-west thoroughfare he walks brooding through the devastated old industrial district – roughhouse saloons, broken beer bottles, drifting fast-food trash and the occasional condom, sagging with semen, from chain-link fences hung with care. And there they are – the haunted block-long buildings, those hulking brick corpses where once his mother and her friends worked in the textile mills. Reinhabited in the 1960s by General Electric, now long vacated for good. At the corner of Gilbert and Broad, where he began his brooding journey, what he never noticed. In deep weeds, alongside a baby carriage without wheels, an actual corpse.
Conte can’t shake the chill, even after turning up the heat and donning his newly (online) acquired Icelandic sweater. At his desk, googles “mickey”: named for an infamous Chicago bartender. Among options: chloral hydrate: red with a slightly bitter taste. Perfect: like Campari. Problem: prescription only. Could ask boyhood-pal-become-pharmacist, but won’t put Vince on the spot. Rintrona wants to help. About to call him when he hears footsteps on the front porch and the door swings open and Antonio Robinson walks in with Eliot’s hard cover copy of
Moby-Dick
, which he tosses from three feet away, thunderous onto the desk.
“Couldn’t put the son of a bitch down, El. I’m the ship, man, but I’m not going down.
This
Pequod,” tapping his chest, “me, I don’t go down.”
Robinson paces.
“But that’s not how Melville’s story ends, Robby.”
“But that’s how our story ends. We survive, we two alone. The motherfuckin’ white whale doesn’t.”
“Michael C doesn’t survive?”
“Loosely speaking.”
“Best book ever written, some say, anywhere, any time.”
“Oh yeah? That a fact, Professor? I took two lit courses at Syracuse. Lit for Jocks. Know what I say about literature, all due respect, El? Fuck literature, what I say. Because it’s worthless when you really need to get something
done
.”
“Somehow I don’t think you’re here to discuss the practical value of Melville’s masterpiece.”
“I’m here to discuss and assess
your
practical value. You tell me you have devised a strategy. I like that word. Stra-te-gy. The word of a practical man. Now I need detail.”
“Don’t trust me, Robby?”
“I fear you’re impotent to act because you’re distracted with this fuckin’ Kinter. I think you’re not devoting yourself to the real thing. I think you’re grieving for your kids, no matter what you say.”
“Don’t tell me what I’m doing with my time.”
Robinson pulls up a chair. “Let’s have a drink and relax a while, shall we?”
Conte brings him a Johnnie Walker on the rocks, seltzer for himself. Robinson nods in approval:
“You’re going ascetic? This is good. Denying yourself? This is very good. You chose the path of the philosophical assassin? In Lit for Jocks, we read a comic book version of
Crime and Punishment
. You’ll work toward total clarity. You’ll burn off all purposes except one. You’ll be on edge for the thing. You’ll drive the edge right through his fat fuckin’ throat. According to the comic book version. El, I’m impressed with the dedication.” He toasts Conte and says, “You’re on the path to what you’ve needed to do for a very long time.”
“You want Michael dead, don’t you?”
“This is how I see it, El. There’s the mild-mannered
professor type. Soft-spoken. A harmless bear of a man. My sweet friend for life. An obsessive reader of serious writing, a connoisseur of Italian opera, but Italian opera is the bridge to another man – the man of extremity and crazy ass passions. This other man is the man who made a dangerous UCLA exit. He’s the man of violence on the train. The rage monster within. Dr. Conte and Mr. Eliot.”
“You want Michael dead, don’t you?”
“His fate is in your hands. Whatever you do, I know he’ll never again bother –”
“
You
?”
“
Women
. Me? Yes. Me as Chief of Police with the sacred responsibility to keep Utica safe for the innocent. What are you, all of a sudden? Casting aspersions? My dear wife had a feeling. She had an inkling due to your line of questioning. Millicent believes you’re not to be trusted to do the right thing.”
“What do you believe, Robby?”
“I think you’re my only friend. I think in every way we’re brothers. I think we share a father, though you’d never put it that way. He loves us both equally. Yes, he does, El, don’t contradict me. Don’t you dare contradict. I think you want to help me. I know you want to help. I need you, El.”
“I will help you. When I get through with Michael C he’ll never …”
“What? Finish the thought. Give me detail. What about the Campari?”
“I’ll tell you nothing. Because you need deniability.”
“El, I can’t tell you how much –”
“Shut up.”
Robinson is suddenly afraid.
“Why did you lie to me, Robby?”
“Lie?”
“You deaf?”
“About what?”
“The rapes. You lied.”
“You’ll help anyway? Even though you think I lied, which I definitely did not.”
“I’ll help anyway.”
“El, are you going to hurt me?”
“Shut up and listen. You lied. Come clean now.”
Looking at the floor, Antonio says, “El.”
“I’ll take that as an admission that you lied.”
“It won’t keep you from helping?”
“No. And don’t ever ask me that question again.”
“When? When will you neutralize him?”
“I intend to wrap everything up by this weekend. Now you can help by telling me about the so-called accident you had fifteen years ago on the Parkway at Oneida. On the way to the cemetery. You were the driver, but it was kept out of the press and you never told me about it when I returned from Austria. Why not?”
“I was embarrassed to tell you. A humiliation, like fumbling in the end zone. I had blood on my hands. How did you find out?”
“Michael was on that van.”
“You know that too?”
“He’s blackmailing you? Is that it?”
“Yes.”
“About what?”
“He’s saying I did it deliberately.”
“And he waits fifteen years to put the screws to you, Robby? Makes no sense.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“I lied about the rapes, I did, but about this – I’m where you are. Makes no sense to me either why he’d wait fifteen years. I need another drink, El.”
“What does he want from you?”
“To step down as chief so that he can be elevated.”
Conte pours him a double.
“No ice, El?”
“Ran out.”
“I know you got ice. Trying to get me drunk so I’ll spill all the beans?”
“Yes.”
“No more beans to spill, bro.”
“Did you deliberately jump the light?”
“No.”
“Frank Doolin, riders on the bus, witnesses on the street, and Michael all say you jumped the light. Michael says deliberately.”
“How do you know Michael claims deliberately? You talk to him?”
“No.”
“How do you know?”
“My business how I know.”
“I don’t dispute I could’ve jumped the light. But deliberate? No way. Because why would I?”
“What is Michael saying about why?”
“Nothing.”
“He’s saying to you that you didn’t want to get to the cemetery. That you were in on the triple assassination. You and DePellaccio were the links to success. Michael has some kind of proof, doesn’t he?”
“I agree about DePellaccio. It’s obvious.”
“You’re fuckin with me, Robby.”
“Trust me, El.”
“After you tell me this: Why did you and Millicent concoct this ridiculous rape story when all you had to do is tell your beloved brother the truth about Michael’s blackmail?”
“Because if I did, I knew you’d think what Michael C thinks. That I was in on it.”
“And why would I come to that conclusion?”
“I don’t know. I just think you might’ve.”