The Accidental Pallbearer (15 page)

He’s in bed at 9:15, about to turn out the light on his bedside table when he decides he must call Enzo Raspante. Picks up his intimate bedside mate:

One more call to make. The automated voice at FedEx responds to his enunciation of the tracking number and tells him that delivery was made at 9:58
A.M.
Pacific Coast time and signed by N. Norwald.

After five and a half hours of sleep, uncompromised by his treacherous prostate, Eliot Conte is hyperalert at 3:35
A.M.
– fever broken, anxiety rising. Three proven liars: Antonio Robinson, Millicent Robinson, Rudy Synakowski. He understands the motives of the Robinsons, but Synakowski? Why would he invent a sexual connection between Sanford Whitaker and Jed Kinter? And why had Whitaker suppressed the photos of the substitute pallbearer? And why would DePellaccio commit suicide after withdrawing the $9,000 he’d deposited just a few weeks before? DePellaccio was murdered. Was he not? By whom? The substitute pallbearer? Was he, Eliot Conte, the last to see Nelson Thomas alive as Thomas jogged down Gilbert to his death? Hit-and-run accident, or hit-and-run murder? But why, after fifteen years, would Nelson Thomas suddenly be targeted? Aside from Synakowski and Whitaker, who knew that Thomas had witnessed the police van crash the bus? Robinson? Who ran down Thomas? Was his, Eliot Conte’s, interest in Nelson Thomas, Thomas’ death warrant? Fortuitous that Kinter appeared at Donny Daniels’ Photography just after Conte collected the photos? Donny alerted him? Donny himself was involved? (
Surely
not Enzo Raspante. Surely not
.) And Bobby Rintrona, so eager to help. Did Bobby believe that lending a hand to Eliot Conte would put him at the head of the line to collect Silvio Conte’s gratitude? Or was there something else in Bobby’s quickness for involvement? Bobby, whom he barely knew.

At 4:30, Conte goes to the kitchen for his infallible soporific: five tablespoons of peanut butter, a short glass of warm milk, and three ibuprofen. Back in bed he channels his roiling thoughts into an imaginary box the other side of the bedroom, lid locked down and soldered, then commences his version of counting sheep: titles of Melville’s novels, in chronological order, and the names and positions of the New York Yankees’ twenty-five-man roster. At 9:30 he awakes after five more hours without prostate interference – a total of ten in all since the night before and happy to be feeling healthy and looking reasonably decent for his dinner that evening with Catherine Cruz.

A quick shower, coffee, and ready to hit the road for his hour-and-a-half drive to Troy, to meet Rintrona at noon, when a knock at the door. Sweet-smiling Tom Castellano holding with two hands a large blue cast-iron pot.

“I caught you on the way out, Detective. Hey, I made this for you.”

“Tom, how kind. Please come in.”

“I have something else too, no matter how trivial, like you said. Have a couple of minutes?”

“I do, Tom, fifteen tops, then I need to leave for the Albany area.”

“You need to refrigerate it, Detective. My mother’s sauce, may she rest in peace. The recipe goes back from our mother
to her mother’s mother and who knows how far. Mine is the unaltered version, unlike Ricky, who had to change it. I asked why change our mother and he comes back with some garbage about individualism. That, if you want to know, was when we went our separate ways. Fuckin’ Ricky. I’m wasting your time, Detective.”

“Thanks, Tom.”

“Enough here for three meals, unless you have guests, which you could use some, I’m thinking.”

“Thank you.”

They’re standing in the kitchen.

“He doesn’t pay his rent with a check.”

“Jed Kinter?”

“Too trivial, Detective?”

Conte pauses before answering.

“Are you saying he doesn’t have a checking account?”

“He has one. Don’t ask me how I know.”

“He has one but pays the rent in cash?”

“Yep.”

“Always?”

“Ever since he moved in three years ago.”

Conte says nothing. Did Kinter pay the McPhersons in cash? Must ask Janice.

“Trivial or interesting, Detective?”

“Not trivial, Tom. How much are you charging him?”

“It’s a very nice apartment. Nothing better on the East Side, you saw with your own eyes. Six bills a month.”

“Thanks, Tom. For the sauce and the info.”

“I have something else. His car? A new BMW?”

“Yes?”

“Three years ago he had a different new one then. What I wanta know, Detective, where the fuck does the money come from? This shitty, low-level reporter a new BMW every three years? See what I’m saying?”

“I do, Tom.”

“Mulling it over, Detective?”

“You’ve been helpful, Tom.”

“Have a safe trip, Detective, better Albany than here, if you ask me, after what happened last night.”

Conte looks at him blankly.

“You didn’t hear about it?”

“What?”

“The brutal murder.”

“No.”

“A woman bludgeoned to death in her own home. Face beyond recognition. Naked and wounded in the vagina with semen on display. Over in south Utica. Chestnut Street.”

Conte steps in close to Castellano. Castellano steps back.

“What’s her name, Tom? Do you recall?”

Steps in closer. Castellano steps back.

“Janice McPherson.”

With sudden violent abruptness, Conte picks up Castellano and holds him high against the wall.

“Whoa! Detective!”

“Don’t tell me what you told me. This is a warning. Don’t tell me what you just told me.”

“Please, Detective, I only repeated.”

Just as abruptly, Conte sets Castellano down. Walks over to the kitchen table and sits. Castellano frozen at the wall. Face in hands, Conte says, “I know her. Can you forgive me?”

A long pause.

“You know her?”

“Yes.”

“A friend?”

“Do they have a suspect? Can you forgive me, Tom?”

“No suspect. Hey! No harm, no foul. What happened just now, it didn’t happen. It was too quick to be real. Hope you like the sauce.”

On the way out, Castellano, in a cold sweat, stops briefly at Conte’s desk and stares down at the blow-ups.

Conte exits the Thruway at Schenectady, finds a liquor store, asks for a fifth of Johnnie Walker Black. When the clerk returns to the register with the bottle, Conte is gone. At 11:55 he pulls into the parking lot of the Q Shack. A minute later, a car pulls up beside him – Rintrona, who has arranged through Catherine Cruz to be let into the private office, where they sit now with their sandwiches and lemonade. Rintrona also has an order of hush puppies. Rintrona eats, Conte does not, gives Rintrona all the details, talking rapidly – his questions and puzzlements, his paranoia, the grief and guilt for Nelson Thomas and Janice McPherson – saying, at the end of his story, that the key may be Coca. Break him down, we get to the bottom of it all, the spider at the center.

Rintrona says nothing. Working on his sandwich and hush puppies. Eating and nodding. Even after Conte has finished speaking, he nods. Wipes his mouth. Drinks long from his sixteen ounce cup of lemonade:

“That it, Eliot? Anything more you’d like to divulge?”

“Are you ready to help with Coca?”

“What exactly do you want me to do?”

“Did you acquire the chloral hydrate?”

“In the car. With the fuckin’ clown mask.”

“I don’t see Catherine until 7:00. In between now and then, I’ll take a room at the Super 8 motel, not far from here, where I intend to spend the afternoon – resting and writing out the scenario. Could you stop by at 6:30 to pick up your copy?”

“The clown mask. My copy of the scenario. Love the mystery. Okay. Listen. Here’s a few things in response to your story. No offense: I’ve been a real detective for years and there’s something I know which you, from your questions, I’m thinking you’re naïve. In the pursuit of a serious criminal, in this case extreme serious, there are cockteasing loose ends. You constantly think, if only I could tie those all up I would know everything there is to know and bring down all the ancillary bastards too. Total fuckin’ knowledge. But these loose ends can’t be tied up. Ever. You don’t get laid. No harmonious story awaits your brilliance that once you put it all together you never have to think about it again. You never stop thinking about who you didn’t bring to justice on this wretched earth. The only thing you can be sure of is you nailed your killer and some lawyer whose morals are worse than a terrorist’s can’t subvert the evidence. The truth of the evidence is your only truth. Forget this Polack and why he lied about Whitaker and Kinter being gay for each other. Forget this Donny and why Kinter showed up to see him while you were there. Donny is irrelevant. Whitaker is
involved, but I doubt as a major force. I could be wrong. I’m often wrong. Coca must be broken down. Of course. He must be reduced. I agree. Your friend the chief of police is dirty. How dirty? We’ll see. Coca will tell us after we work him over. Enzo? Don’t make me laugh. Strictly speaking, we don’t know if Nelson what’s-his-name and Judy what’s-her-face were murdered thanks to you stepping in where angels fear to butt in. My guess is you were the innocent facilitator. Who killed these poor slobs? Kinter’s visitor? Who also did the assassinations? This picture here – look! Not only the shoes, but the suit jacket. It’s obvious. Built up in the shoulders by a bad tailor. The man inside the suit and shoes is smaller than he looks. My theory? Kinter and the visitor are the same person. This is a Mafia thing from the beginning.”

“Kinter killed Janice?”

“Because she could finger him. Maybe. Maybe Kinter killed her. But didn’t you tell me Judy was raped?”

“Janice.”

“Whatever. Mafiosi are not historically known for doing a hit and getting ass at the same time from the person they hit.”

“Who killed Nelson Thomas?”

“Not Kinter unless he knows Nelson was a witness. Aren’t you going to eat, big fella?”

“Who then?”

Before Rintrona can respond, Conte answers his own question: “Robinson has the most to lose.”

“Maybe. But everything you tell me about him he’s a pussy. Do pussymen kill? On occasion. Coca you say was in
the van. He has something definitive, which is why the chief wants you to neutralize him.”

“Why won’t Robinson neutralize him himself?”

“No idea.”

Conte pushes aside his untouched lunch.

“You hardly know me, Bobby, but you’re eager to jump into a situation that could cost you your job and pension and maybe more. Because you’re in awe of my father? And believe he’ll be grateful that you lent me assistance? Hard to swallow.”

“At the end of the day? When the fuckin’ cows come home? No. There’s something maybe in it for me having nothing to do with Silvio Conte. Something potentially very nice. My contact in the FBI has a theory about the triple assassination. He tells me Aristarco was the target, not the Barbones who were gravy. Okay. Aristarco headed one of the classic five families. You know this. He took over for Big Paulie Castellano. Recall him? Gunned down in the early ’80s with his driver, outside of Spark’s steak house on 46
^th
Street. One of the two button men in trench coats and fedoras was Frank Barbone, who did the job on Aristarco’s behalf, who was sick of listening to Big Paulie’s constant complaints about his constipation, when is this tall fuck ever going to die of so-called natural causes? That’s one filament in the spider’s web. The other one is Aristarco’s attempt to usurp the drug business of the Patriarca family of Providence. For his greed, Aristarco was supposed to be whacked in a barber’s chair at Grand Central, but it didn’t happen. A loose end. So Raymond Patriarca looks for another opportunity and when it comes it’s too good to be true. A cemetery in Utica, nice
small town, bush-league and easily corruptible police. So Patriarca sends one of his people, the so-called visitor, Kinter himself, who ever since lives a civilian life with monthly cold-cash gifts from Providence, a new BMW every three years – he’s a vicious family man in deep cover. The Barbones are viewed as extremists within the top levels of Cosa Nostra. They whacked three civilian relatives of one of their enforcer nephews –
just in case
. While you’re at it, get rid of these two fuckin’ Utica animals who bring us bad publicity, that’s Kinter’s directive. We break this case, Eliot – we get book offers. Big advances for each of us in seven figures. We get TV appearances. We get live internet streaming of our daily lives. We get consultantships on a movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio, who we get to know as Leo, who plays Kinter, with Meryl Streep as Jeanine McPherson, directed by Martin Scorsese, who insists we call him Marty.”