The Big Boom (20 page)

“To his office? I can’t give you that.”

“I have to see if he’s all right.”

Dante could see in her eyes what she was going to say next. That she couldn’t help herself, even though it made her look desperate.

“I want to go with you,” she said.

Dante looked away. He thought of Marilyn. He thought of the life he never got around to living.

“No,” he said. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

E
arlier that morning, Nick Antonelli had heard the knock on his office door. He had lain there on the office couch until he heard the elevator engage, and then he had gone to the window and looked into the street. It was five stories down. Directly below him was a Chinese sundry shop that specialized in herbal medicines. In the morning there was a lot of in and out, old ones coming for their tonic, mothers with their colicky kids. Once, as he leaned out the window, a pen had slipped from his pocket and nearly hit someone below. Alongside the sundry shop was the entrance to the lobby, and Antonelli had studied that entrance this morning to see if he could catch a glimpse of his visitor departing the building.

Dante Mancuso.

Nick had stepped back into the shadows and watched as Mancuso crossed the street. Mancuso had lingered a moment across the way, glancing back to study the building. Then he’d turned the corner at Mollini’s and disappeared.

Now Nick lingered at the window, studying The Beach. The
hill was a wash of color. He remembered running in the alleys when he was a kid, conscious of his father up here in his office.

“It’s all about land,” his father had told him. “All about land. Once you own a piece, never let it go.”

Nick had gone along with that dictum, more or less. But the old man hadn’t been into leveraging. Nick was different. He’d run a lien against the Weber apartments to buy a building in Cow Hollow, then knocked that into subunits. Made a deal with some Hong Kongers back in the eighties, dealing the building in which he now stood, but securing a ninety-nine-year lease on the top floor, with a graduated rent tied to the Libor. Taken equity out of the old waterfront property. Always extending, leveraging. That was the rule. He’d used it all to swing the Solano deal. Just another step, another move.

“You will either be the king of the world,” his father had said. “Either that, or you will be a ruin.”

The office phone rang and he ignored it. Then his cell went off. He looked at the little screen.

Smith.

He let it ring.

He’d made a mistake last night. Sometime, in his drunkenness, stumbling about on the street, he’d called Smith. After he’d called his wife. After she’d left him in the cold, saying nothing, letting him twist. Sometime after that he’d called Smith and uttered the unutterable into the man’s answering machine. Wailed and threatened.

A foolish thing to do.

Smith would come after him, he figured. If not now, then eventually. And in the meantime, there was still Dante Mancuso.

Mancuso was a stubborn son of a bitch, he knew. Chances were the cops, with no one pushing, they’d get distracted, lose the trail, but Mancuso would circle around. He would figure everything out.
The man had the tenacity of a paranoid, the inability to let go. The truth was, Dante’s whole goddamn family had been that way. He remembered the grandfather, with his fucking hook nose, lying in his boat, whispering to his goddamn fish. And the mother, off the edge, that one.

No, Dante wouldn’t let go.

The cell rang again.

Smith.

Nick picked up. There was only so long you could avoid what was coming. Sooner or later you had to answer the call.

“I know how hard this has been on you,” said Smith. “I know how much you loved your daughter. And you may not want to hear this now, it may seem insignificant, but I wanted to let you know, to ease your mind, that everything’s been squared away.”

Smith went on then. All the venture money had been secured. Solano Enterprises would be moved into the building soon, just as planned. The cash flow problems were over, so Nick didn’t have to sweat. Smith did not mention Nick’s call from the night before. And for some reason, this frightened him more than if it had been the other way.

“The market’s down,” Antonelli said. “I hear everyone’s closing shop.”

“Our investors are smarter than that. They know those who ride the tide, who stay the course, will reap the profits down the line.”

Antonelli understood. He understood it in a blink, and was surprised he had not understood it earlier. Perhaps he had not wanted to understand. It was the oldest game around. Solano Enterprises was a shell, and Smith was the one who yanked the string. He used the investment money to create the shell, and used the shell to attract more investment money, but the company itself was an illusion,
and the money kept draining away. And Solano Enterprises had drawn Nick into the deal, getting him to finance the Water-house Building so the game could keep going, filling the offices with people, offering stock options down the line, fattening the cow. But with the rumors, with the crash, it had all started to fall apart. No doubt Smith and his buddies were draining the remaining cash even as they spoke.

Himself, Nick, he had been a pawn. And Solano too, he figured. The real players were the venture firms. They drew in the investors and sucked the gravy. And his daughter, he guessed, had figured it out.

“What I want to do is arrange a meeting. I know you have lots of other things on your mind. But some of our people are in town. They’d like to get together with you. Take a tour of the building.”

“My daughter—”

“I know,” Smith said. “I’m sorry. Sometimes, a little distraction … Isn’t that what they say at times like this? Keep yourself engaged with the world.”

Antonelli struggled to compose himself. He stepped onto the fire grating. There was Serafina’s across the way and there was Stella herself, standing in the open door. I am trapped, he thought. Because if I blow the whistle, I ruin myself. And if I say nothing, Smith can take me down at any time.

“These things have a way of passing,” Smith said.

“I can see the police station from here,” Antonelli said.

“Excuse me?”

“I can see the patrol officers. I can see the little black-and-white cars.”

There was no response.

“I think Mancuso, the detective, knows. He will figure it out. He will piece it all together.”

“I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

“You killed my daughter,” he said.

“I don’t see how you can blame that on us.”

“I only thought you were going to scare someone. A little push. I didn’t know who—”

“You’re imagining things. In your grief.”

“I didn’t know what kind of a son of a bitch you were.”

“Tell me,” Smith said, and his voice was suddenly very calm. “How’s your wife holding up under this?”

Antonelli heard the tone. He understood the innuendo.

“My wife knows nothing. It’s me you want, not her.”

“Of course.”

“I’ll go to the police.”

“I don’t think that would be wise. In your state. You’re very upset. You haven’t slept. Things have a logic that isn’t really there. I think the best thing, if you could meet with our people.”

“What do your people intend to do with me?”

“Don’t be silly.”

“No.”

“I’ve ruined everything.”

“What—”

Antonelli lowered his voice. “Okay.”

He glanced to the street. He heard a few strains of music, a swelling voice, then an orchestra, and guessed it was coming from Mollini’s shop, where the kids, like their father before them, liked to listen to opera behind the counter. Meanwhile Stella still stood in her doorway, and she had been joined by couple of old-timers, old
man Mollini himself, it looked like, and George Marinetti, hobbling over his cane. A Chinese man looked up at him, then away, not seeing. No one saw him except maybe that teenager midstride in the crosswalk, crossing against the light.

“I have another appointment.”

“When?”

“Now.”

“I think this should take precedence.”

“I agree.”

“Well, let me tell you where to meet.”

“Don’t worry.”

“What?.”

“I’ll be right down,” said Nick. “I’m on my way.”

D
ante was headed toward Antonelli’s office. Up on the corner of Stockton and Vallejo, Joe Mollini stood in the door of the family butcher shop. Dante had gone to school with the younger brother, and it had been the same back then, always a Mollini in the doorway, and the opera playing inside. Joe Mollini was in his early fifties now. In the window, there was the same sign as always, along with his father’s recipes for Sicilian meatballs. In the afternoon, the elder Mollini and Marinetti usually came and sat at the card table inside. They came after they had finished their lunch at Serafina’s, Dante knew—though likely that routine would change soon.

Dante would not get past Joe Mollini without talking, he knew this. It was the way things were. You walked past the corner of Stockton and Vallejo, you talked to one of the Mollinis.

“Is it sold?”

“What?” asked Dante.

“Marinetti’s. Did your girlfriend sell his place?”

“I don’t know.”

“Come on. You know everything, a job like yours. Marinetti, he says they have multiple offers.”

Joe Mollini was a good-natured guy. Like his father, he took things as they came. He was not reluctant to speak up, though, and you could see from his expression that he had feelings on the issue.

“I don’t object to anybody making a commission on a sale,” he said. “We all have to eat. But sometimes, you know, Prospero’s people push somebody to sell when they don’t want. I’m not saying anything about your girlfriend, but George Marinetti, he’s friends with my father … and it’s his daughter behind this.”

“If he doesn’t want to sell…,” Dante said, then he fell silent. He didn’t know if he should get into this. Meanwhile, the music inside seemed to have gotten louder. Antonietta Stella, maybe, singing Verdi. The opera where the young woman gets murdered in the monastery.

“He will have no choice,” said Joe. “If Marinetti gets the offer now, and he decides not to sell, then he has to pay the commission anyway. You see, he’s roped in. And if he sells—if he leaves the neighborhood—what the hell am I supposed to do with my father. If Marinetti goes, my father’s going to be in here all day—no friends … no nothing …”

Mollini was agitated now. A car screeched to a halt just around the corner, someone shouted, but Mollini did not turn his head. The streets here were always full of racket.

“It’s no good … these old men, to take advantage …”

The butcher shop sat on a corner, with windows on either side of the building, and Dante could see traffic had stopped on Vallejo and there was some kind of commotion. There was an unearthly noise, a high wailing cry that at first Dante thought came from the music inside, from Antonietta, the famous soprano. Only the noise was nothing like Verdi.

Dante broke away. He was quick, but by the time he got there the crowd was already three deep in front of the sundry shop and growing thicker. The wailing was more ungodly up close and did not sound human. A Chinese woman was on her knees and pulling at her hair and she began suddenly to pound her head against the brick building. A baby stroller lay sideways and a man’s body was skewed across it. A small form lay on the concrete nearby.

A doll, Dante thought.

Stella swooned in the middle of the street, head between her knees. Meanwhile Marinetti was wobbling on his cane at the curb, and Mollini’s father, Ernesto, was trying to keep him from toppling. A cop from Columbus Station was running down on foot. A Chinese teenager waved her hands, pointing to the balcony overhead, to the stroller. Dante saw them but he did not see them. He was trying to restrain the woman. Then he got another glimpse. The doll wore a little blue cap. Only the doll was not a doll, and blood was pooling beneath its head. The man nearby lay with his feet over the stroller, and his cheek against the walk. Dante had not put together what had happened, but he would in a moment. More onlookers had gathered. Witnesses. People gesturing to the balcony, then to the stroller. To the man who lay on the sidewalk. To the hysterical woman who had emerged from the sundry shop at exactly the wrong moment, pushing the stroller, and whom Dante could no longer contain. She broke away. There were more cops now. The crowd thickened. They spoke in English and Italian and Chinese. The noise they made rose up and was lost in the woman’s wailing. Even so, in the background, he could still hear the music from Mollini’s shop. Dante looked again at the dead man. Nick Antonelli. He lay at Dante’s feet with his eyes open and his skull crushed against the walk.