by JJ Partridge
I swallowed hard and addressed the subject of our conference. When Brunotti had been informed of the putative son’s legal challenge to Palagi’s estate, he pressed me to immediately settle, even after I emphasized that we had been given no records to support a claim of paternity and that the old man might have been duped. “Strike now!” he said, his hand hammering his desk. “Negotiate! See what you can get away with. Don’t let this fester into a media circus.”
As I again made my case for patience, Brunotti rolled his eyes. He thrust his hands dramatically into the pockets of his suit jacket, striking a pose of a posturing Italian politician last seen in a Fellini movie. “The situation will be an embarrassment. Mark my words, Alger, the Italian public will expect that a son would receive a rightful share of his father’s estate, no matter what Palagi’s estate plan may have directed.” He went through a litany of Italian notables and politicians and Leadership Council members likely to be offended if the University was obstinate, and how the Italian media would delight in a messy dispute involving the estate of a well-known thriller writer and scholar. “And now, there are local lawyers.” He reached into a desk drawer and handed me an oversized business card that shouted “Lucca & Lucca, Attorneys at Law.”
Their names rang as many bells as an Easter Sunday in Rome. Former state senator Rudolph ‘Rudy’ Lucca, known in Providence politics as Il Mazziere, the card player, was a shrewd pol from Federal Hill; the other Lucca was his son, City Councilman Robert ‘Bobby Flowers’ Lucca, the leader of a cabal of politicos that vied for control of city government with Providence’s newly elected and reforming mayor, my oldest and closest friend, Tony Tramonti. My immediate and overriding concern, however, was Brunotti’s apparent blatant breach of the University’s absolute ban on communication with lawyers representing real or potential claimants against the University. No exceptions. Not even for il Direttore.
“What could I do?” he exclaimed in reaction to my scowl. “Senator Lucca is the Italian consul in Providence. He demanded a meeting. An official visit to the Institute on behalf of the Republic! He’ll be here on Friday at eleven.”
“He’s not coming for espresso and cantucci,” I responded sharply. Was it not clear to Brunotti that Rudy Lucca would use and confuse his status as a consular representative to press his legal representation of Palagi’s alleged son? My comment to that effect was met with a flit of a dismissive eye. “So, will you be here?”
A light blinked on the plasma screen over someplace in the Piedmont where it must be late afternoon, followed by a string of beeps. Brunotti made no move to respond. I stood to leave, knowing I had to make clear who was in charge. “This will be my meeting, Cosimo. I am the only University officer authorized to deal with the Palagi estate. You can participate as host but you will not offer comments or answer any questions unless I direct you to do so. And, I repeat, the University’s position is that all of Palagi’s assets under his will and trust come to the Institute.”
“You want me to be a party to such a rigid position, one that is a disaster for the Institute?” he retorted as he sucked in a breath for what surely would be a speech. “Just so you know, we … I … the Institute … cannot afford negative publicity, here or in Italy, in these times of economic distress. A fight over Palagi’s assets would demean us. Our prestige is at stake. You understand this? Palagi was a member of the Roman Academy, one of Italy’s men of distinction, an author, a scholar. Only last year, the President of the Republic presented Palagi with Italy’s highest civil honor, the Cross of Savoy. His son must be … accommodated!”
My response was interrupted by another string of beeps and blinking lights, this time over Rome, which got Brunotti’s attention. “I must take this call,” he said coolly and opened a desk drawer and removed a cell phone.
I felt his stare drill my back as I left.
6
THE CRYSTALLINE NOONTIME SUNLIGHT did nothing to alleviate my agita. I left the Institute and turned south on the narrow brick and slate sidewalks of Benefit Street toward Fox Point, navigating overflowing bins and recycle boxes of a refuse pick-up day. Yellowed ginkgo and plane tree leaves drifted to the ground, bikes and cars shot by, historic houses painted in authentic blues and yellows brightened the street, a nice distraction, if only for a few seconds, as I ruminated over Brunotti’s egotism and likely perfidy.
Jimmy’s, my destination and widely recognized as the best Portuguese-American restaurant in the area, had been newly renovated, sheathed in natural shingles that covered worn clapboards and a mansard roof with double-sized windows that allowed daylight into the second floor Billiard Club. A flame-red canopy with a cursive white Jimmy’s went from the curb on Wickenden Street to the entrance; this being artsy Fox Point, the utility pole by the canopy also served as a stanchion for one of designer Madolin Maxey’s street installations, a prancing wooden stallion constructed by artist Norma Anderson.
Bells jingled from above the door, sounds that harkened back to the Jimmy’s of the past. In contrast, its new interior shouted upscale in its earth tone colors, well-crafted landscapes, displays of Portuguese faience crockery, subdued lighting, white tablecloths, and cushioned booths.
I chose a stool at the stainless steel counter in front of an open kitchen that gave diners a view of bustling cooks at ranges, ovens, and prep tables. Spicy aromas, particularly cumin, sharpened my appetite—no breakfast, not even a donut all morning—and I opened a multi-page menu that had replaced a daily insertion in a plastic sheet. Today’s lunch specials included several of the restaurant’s featured fusion dishes. “Portuguese fusion?” I asked Nadie at the restaurant’s grand reopening in April. “Yes,” she replied. “Smile. Get with it.”
Chef Jao, in whites with a red bandana around his neck, saw me and came to the counter. I was about to order a Goan shrimp salad when I heard “How ya doin’?” followed by Young Jimmy Hannigan’s hand on my shoulder. “The scallop risotto,” the co-owner barked to Jao. I raised an eyebrow and nodded in acceptance.
Young Jimmy took the stool to my right. His long fingers began to drum the counter. “How’s business?” I asked.
“Business sucks,” he muttered and lapsed into silence. “Restaurant’s down twenty percent. The function room doesn’t draw squat during the week.”
I spun on my stool to face him. A white polo shirt covered an upper body so skinny that as a kid he rarely doffed his shirt out of embarrassment. His elongated face had features that were somehow out of place, or the wrong size, as though mixed up at birth, his sallow complexion contrasted poorly with longish, wavy hair and eyebrows likely touched-up with Grecian Formula. That didn’t matter much because his widely spaced, stunningly blue eyes grabbed instant attention, eyes that I have always believed were his edge in shooting pool.
“The Club is way down,” Young Jimmy continued. The Billiard Club was the plush private pool club on the second floor, successor to Hannigan’s Billiards and Tap, his father’s—Old Jimmy’s—pool hall cum bookie. I have been a Club member since it opened.
The risotto arrived in a bowl accompanied by a fork and soupspoon. Jao waited for me to taste. “Fusion?” I asked, with a wry smile, spoon in hand.
“Yeah,” he snickered without looking at Young Jimmy. “Stonington fusion! Bomster flash frozen scallops. The best you can get.” I had a spoonful of the risotto and let Jao know with a smile of satisfaction that I appreciated his efforts before he left us.
“Even the Saturdays,” Young Jimmy lamented, slamming his right hand palm down on the counter. On Saturday nights, the Club’s sporting members backed their hunches on exhibition matches between touring pros arranged by Young Jimmy who took a hefty house cut from the betting pools he managed. I skipped Saturdays in recent months because my weekend schedule that now included Nadie.
“We overdid it,” he said and to make his point, turned to the nearly empty dining room. “We thought it was time to renovate, make the investment.” Then, he brightened. “I gotta tell you, though,
the Shoot-Out will be a life saver.” He lowered his voice. “A fuckin’ lollapalooza for us with my host gig and exhibitions at the Dunk, plus what we expect from here and …” he shrugged, “…upstairs.”
I was well aware of Young Jimmy’s expectations. The Shoot-Out Tournament was advertised as the largest nine-ball amateur and pro pool tournament ever held east of Chicago, with huge pots of prize money. The event, to be played mostly at the Dunkin’ Donuts Civic Center, known locally as the Dunk, was expected to attract thousands of pool players and fans to Providence, a bonanza for the city’s hotels, restaurants, bars, and clubs. Young Jimmy had said he expected to coin it, especially in the Club where looking-for-action road players, railbirds, pool junkies, and hustlers would gather like ants at a picnic. He was so confident that he closed the Club to its regular membership over the Shoot-Out’s two weekends and had scored short-term event liquor licenses from the Providence License Board. That was, in his word, “huge” since the License Board, reliably deep in the pocket of politicians, was frugal with liquor licenses unless some vigorish passed through member’s hands.
“Hey, so you took the Mayor’s appointment to the Commission!” He slapped my back with exuberance. “That’s great! That’s great!” and he enumerated the perks I could expect as a member of the Shoot-Out Tournament Commission created by the city and state last fall and nominally in charge of hosting the tournament. I smiled amicably even though the perks—like good tickets for events—meant little to me; I had accepted the appointment the previous Friday afternoon because our mutual friend Mayor Tony Tramonti called and asked me. The Mayor grew up with Young Jimmy and me, and was a longtime pool player; he recognized that the Commission was where Providence’s well-earned reputation for political shenanigans and toleration of skanky business would surely meld with the crimped ethics of the world of pool. Tony cajoled me, saying that a “new face” on the Commission that was controlled by political hacks and hangers-on appointed by his predecessor might tamp down rampant conflicts of interest and outright sleaziness that could embarrass Providence once again.
Young Jimmy continued. “And how about the Gala?” That was the Shoot-Out’s opening dinner reception on Wednesday night when Young Jimmy was to be honored as Providence’s premier pool player.
“Yeah,” I said, and meaning to give him a friendly dis, I continued, “the resurrection of the Fox Point Kid?”
He jerked his head back at my snarky wisecrack.
“You know,” he grumbled back to life, “you can be a downer. In addition to the Gala, just for being a greeter at the Dunk, a Mr. Hospitality like Vinnie Paz or Ernie D at Foxwoods, I get three grand a weekend! Plus I play an exhibition each night, old pro versus new, you know that shtick, each for another grand!” His eyes expected approval.
I quickly added up Young Jimmy’s payday: six grand a weekend. “Not bad,” I commented.
“Not bad?” he hooted. “Not bad? And with what we will do here?”
Maria Catarina, his wife, co-owner, and dining room hostess, was suddenly behind him. She gave him a meaningful rap on a shoulder and said, “Algy, you got to talk to him.”
Young Jimmy turned to her and lowered his voice as a customer sat at the end of the counter. “I keep telling you it’s not like when I was on the road. I get paid just for being there, smiling, being a good guy, and play exhibitions, win or lose makes no difference. For Christsakes, stop worrying, Algy’s going to be on the Commission, one of the watch dogs!” It was now apparent to me that Maria Catarina’s concern accounted for much of Young Jimmy’s enthusiasm for my appointment to the Commission. He raised his eyebrows to me. “See you later,” he said and left in full retreat.
Maria Catarina immediately sat on the vacated stool, her red skirt pulled around her legs. Maria Catarina’s shiny black hair was drawn straight back and held by a silver clasp. In her mid-forties, she retained the exotic Iberian beauty that took Young Jimmy off the road. Usually, she flashed her huge dark eyes and a smile that was welcoming. Today, her face showed concern.
“What did he tell you?” She didn’t let me answer. “The hospitality stuff downtown, okay. The exhibitions too. Things are tight now, we can use the money, but he can’t go back to that.”
That meant his days on the road as a pool hustler and later the private big money matches that he played up and down the East Coast and out to Chicago, before meeting Maria Catarina and marriage, before her family’s restaurant moved down Wickenden Street to become Jimmy’s, and his reinvention of his father’s pool parlor into the elegantly appointed and private Billiard Club.
“People tell him playing again is great publicity for the restaurant, for the Club. Your buddy the Mayor said it will give us a boost.” She threw back her head. “A ‘boost’? All we need is customers! Tony should have some of his times here.”
In Rhode Island, a political fundraiser is known as a ‘time.’
Jao approached the counter, checking my progress with the risotto. “Want some heat?” he asked, looked at Maria Catarina, then back at me, took my bowl, and returned to his ranges.
“Algy, he respects you. Talk to him. We’ve got a good thing here. Maybe we shouldn’t have expanded, remodeled, done the party room, but we’ll be fine. I’m not going to lose it.” Then, she whispered, “What he does upstairs, that’s okay. He’s just a … manager. But, if he went back to playing, to the life, I don’t know what will happen to us.”
“I’ll do what I can.”
She threw up her hands and left me.
7
MARCIE TEXTED ME THAT she had scheduled a telephone conference with the Champlin & Burrill lawyers for two o’clock, giving me an hour or so before I had to return. I climbed the interior staircase to the second floor, expecting to be alone in the Club this early in the afternoon, but there was Young Jimmy bent low, cue poised for a shot, at the brilliantly lit center table, a Gabriel with electric-blue felt known as Jimmy’s Table because its blue matched his eyes. The table was set up for nine-ball.
Young Jimmy moved quickly through the rack, pocketing balls in sequence with shots that were sweet and true, like they were guided by laser. There were bursts of power in his play, consistency in his stance, strength in the finger bridge for the cue. His forearm seemed like it was on a hinge, over, under, back and forth. With the table cleared, he stood to face me. “Twenty racks so far today, drills every day for the past few weeks.”
That sounded like his practice routine of years ago as a road player and sometimes hustler, when he could come home to Providence with a roll of fifties and hundreds bigger than your fist, or so broke, he slept on a sofa in my Benefit Street bachelor apartment. Backed by dodgy sponsors known as sweaters—guys with lots of cash who didn’t bother with tax ID’s or memberships in the Chamber of Commerce—Young Jimmy Hannigan played big money matches with the best in the East and became a master at setting up and relieving a mark of available cash. He also bore the scars of a hustler’s life: a disgruntled loser broke a cue over his back in Baltimore; in Albany, punks took him on in a parking lot and closed a door on his left hand, which required two operations. After that, his sweaters provided on-the-road protection.
He reracked and demonstrated a sharpened skill with cute shots like a double carom and a shot off the rail that could have been on a wire. I watched, thinking of the competition he would face in the Shoot-Out exhibitions. Were the smooth mechanics, the muscle memory, the legendary hand-eye coordination, really in place? He was obviously comfortable on his own table, in his own venue, but play in public against today’s felt artists?
“Gotta go,” he said, “got stuff to do,” and unscrewed the pieces of his Predator cue, which he slid into a black leather case and zipped it closed. “Algy, twelve grand just for showing up, shaking a few hands, a couple of matches. Plus, what we do here. Pretty goddamn good, if you ask me.”
I didn’t ask because his eyes held the steady confidence, the swagger, of a rejuvenated Fox Point Kid. “Don’t worry, man,�
� he said. “It’s all under control.”
After he left, I removed one of my three cues from the members’ wall rack, set up on Jimmy’s Table for nine-ball, and made a decent break. All under control stirred a memory. What was it?
I rarely played nine-ball; I was a straight pool and eight-ball player. In straight pool and eight-ball, you decide which ball to pocket, call your shot, and execute. Nine-ball, however, is a rotation game, meaning the cue ball must first strike the lowest numbered ball on the table on every shot. The winner is the player who pockets the nine-ball after striking the lowest ball on the table. That meant a player could pocket the one ball through the eight ball, miss the nine ball shot, only to have the opponent pocket the nine-ball and win the game. Nine-ball matches are played quickly, ideal for the popular ESPN television matches from Las Vegas; most often they are a ‘run to seven’ which means the first player to win seven games wins the match. That was how the Shoot-Out Tournament planned to get through hundreds of qualifying players in three days: runs to seven until the semis when the matches would be runs to nine.
Another reason for nine-ball’s popularity is that it is a good gambling game. Players easily handicapped themselves by negotiating with an opponent to ‘give up the break’ or letting the game end by pocketing a designated ball lower than the nine. Negotiating the ‘play’ was a key to nine-ball wagering.
I made two more shots and then missed a double bank shot. The Fox Point Kid would have made the shot. It was always that way, going back to when Tony Tramonti and me and Young Jimmy as kids played here when it was still Hannigan’s. Of the three of us, remaining friends despite the divergent paths we took, only Young Jimmy—and I’m probably the only one who still thinks of him as Young Jimmy—still related to the idioms, customs, and culture of pool.
I left myself a difficult shot with the cue ball within a cluster of three balls. As a kid, Young Jimmy would practice a shot like that for hours until he had it down pat. Pool didn’t care about his plain face or his hand-me-down clothes or bad acne. Only skill mattered. For him, every spread of balls was a puzzle to solve, every shot a makeable challenge.