by JJ Partridge
Mornings are not favored by pool players who are habitual night hawks, ‘sleep to ten when you can’ types. So, I expected and was proved right that the tournament refs would be sleepy looking, sullen, maybe hungover, their loud talk at coffee urns suggesting a fraternity of pool buddies, rail birds, club jocks, and tournament junkies. The age range was from late thirties to fifty; many wore clothes that could have been slept in. My dark suit, white shirt, and plaid tie elicited suspicious ‘who’s that?’ glances.
With a cup of coffee, I found a seat at a rear table where I scanned the contents of a folder handed out at the door: locations of the Shoot-Out’s matches, a background piece on Shoot-Out Pool LLC, a FAQ with telephone numbers and e-mail addresses, tournament-specific rules, and so on. My reading was interrupted as an over-muscled, overweight, shiny scalp man mountain with earrings in a red Derby City Classic tee shirt brushed by me to envelop a chair at the end of the table. On my other side, a towheaded scarecrow with thick glasses under a shapeless brown sport coat pulled out a chair. I would have taken a nickel bet that one or the other wore motorcycle boots and had a belt buckle larger than my fist.
“Shee-it!” came loudly from the table in front of me as another wide body thumbed through advertisements in the adult insert to the weekly Providence Phoenix. “Catch this,” he said to the denim-clad ref on his right, “gotta be ten strip joints in town!” For local color, I could have explained that gentlemen’s clubs and adult entertainment venues became a growth industry in Providence during the Russo years along with nineteen spa-massage-parlor brothels, on a per capita basis, more numerous than those in New Orleans. “Gotta check this out,” he said, showing a page of photographs of pasty and G-stringed porno superstars Alexis Texas and Jesse Jane featured tonight at the Amazing Club on Eddy Street. His buddy stretched to check their enhanced topography. “Shee-it!”
Their salivating was interrupted when B.J. Seifert, dressed for the occasion in a lemon yellow suit and frilly, purple, open collar shirt, tapped the podium mike for attention. His bouffant hairdo had been refreshed in its sweep, color, and plumpness. Next to him, in marked contrast, stood square jawed, crew cut, Providence Police Chief Bill Tuttle in a dark blue dress uniform, his service hat with a scrambled egg visor tucked under his arm. He probably considered himself to be there to preach a twelve step anti-gambling program to a room full of deadbeats. Not that he would be wrong.
Seifert opened with, “How ya’ll doin’? Not staying up too late, are ya?” The loud response was acknowledged with a mock wide-eyed, open-mouthed laughter as Seifert recognized individuals in the crowd with grins and pointed fingers and shook his head in a what-can-you-do-with-these guys nod to Tuttle.
He introduced Tuttle and asked if Alby Temple from the Tournament Commission was present. Alby? I raised my hand, Seifert acknowledged me, and I smiled back at all the suspicious faces. Seifert then briskly skimmed through the logistics of the tournament schedule, stressing the responsibilities of referees to inspect tables in outlying venues to determine adequacy for play and insure players’ practice time, and a list of no’s: no drinking near the tables, no toleration of any bumptious behavior by players or fans, and no gambling. “Nada, zip, none!” he proclaimed.
“Ain’t this Providence?” someone in the front shouted, drawing some cautious snickers.
“If a ref sees any gambling, the match could be stopped,” Seifert continued.
That brought out unruly jeers and momentarily, he almost lost control. Everyone in the room knew that gaming and pool were inseparable, despite every pool hall’s ubiquitous No Gambling signs. There was always skin in a match, a little side action, a couple of bucks bet here, a few beers there, and not to mention serious money placed on the light fixtures over a table or with a stakeholder. No effort to ban gambling, to clean up pool, even to class it up with upscale pool parlors with bistro menus, had ever worked or been profitable. Pool, played regularly by the estimated eight million amateur players in the United States alone, was and will always be, a one-on-one, win-any-way-you-can sport, and action juiced it up.
Seifert recovered with a couple of call-outs to those present, a joke or two, and he handed Tuttle the microphone, then grabbed it back to wink broadly. “Have a great … safe … time!”
A chorus of yeahs echoed the room.
Tuttle reached inside his uniform jacket for notes and reading glasses and in short order laid out his rules in a gravelly voice: in Providence, there would be no gaming—“I repeat ‘no’”—at the matches. At least one cop would attend every Providence venue, and he expected other cities and towns to do the same. No money on tables, no cash changing hands, no bets being called in or any updates on matches going out by cell phone.
The voice from the front shouted, “Even penny ante?”
Tuttle, putting away his glasses, responded, “Somebody puts down a dollar on a player, that’s gambling and that’s prohibited. The only prizes here are the official prizes. That’s for skill, not odds. If a player or buddy puts up a stake, makes a bet on a Tournament match, as far as I’m concerned, that’s a misdemeanor, he gets arrested.”
Audible groans and dismissive laughter responded. As Tuttle bristled, Seifert shrugged his shoulders, a ‘what can I tell ya’ expression on his face, and took back the mike. “Some of you got to skedaddle because,” he checked his watch, “you got about ninety minutes to get wherever. Somebody from the Shoot-Out staff is already at every venue. Remember, read the rules, use the website to check postings of match locations and your assignments. All we ask you to do is to show up, do the best you can, and if your shorts get tight, get to the Tournament person assigned to your venue. When play begins, it goes straight through to the finals. See you then.”
As the refs shuffled out with murmurs of annoyance at Tuttle’s sermon, I went up to the podium where Tuttle, not surprisingly, had been left alone. He and I were professionally friendly; he was as square as his Irish chin and had won my respect when he reorganized Carter’s campus security operations after he left the Providence police force because of run-ins with Sonny Russo over ham-handed political interference in investigations and promotions manipulations. Only months before, he had returned to uniform when Mayor Tramonti needed an experienced, honest cop to replace Russo’s corrupt minion as chief.
“These are the refs?” he said with disparagement. “People keep telling me I should loosen up, play it like it’s Vegas for ten days. People who should know better. I tell ’em we’re not going to become the big sleazy or coddle a bunch of …” He didn’t finish.
“And, you,” he said, his eyes boring into mine, “you should watch out for Frannie Zito. Heard is he’s very pissed at Tramonti for being thrown off the Commission. Probably you, too. A piece of work, bad temper, huge ego, and he’s got mob backing because Heritage Finance cleans its cash. Scuiglie is his goomba.”
While Zito had been beneath my radar, not so the infamous Gianvacchino ‘Gianni the Brow’ Scuiglie, the latest in a long line of Providence crime bosses, less powerful nowadays in the mob’s New England hierarchy but still a presence who controlled extortion, gambling, and prostitution rackets, and what was left of the drug trade not taken over by the Latino and Asian gangs. Through fronts, he owned three or four adult clubs of the twelve within city limits, including Hard Core, and extorted payments from the rest. Rumored to be a tough, tough guy willing to give the nod for a hit quicker than a flick of cigar ash.
The Scuiglie connection convinced me to inform Tuttle of the phone threats of Tuesday night. “Sounds like cheap shots,” he said, “insulting, not quite a threat, not that they would know the difference. Goes with the territory. Maybe you should have considered who you were replacing. Trace won’t work because they use throw away phones. And maybe it has to do with this Columbus Day stuff. But if it happens again or anything else that is threatening, you call me.”
I said I would.
“Another thing.” He ran his fingers through close-clipped hair beginnin
g to show traces of gray. “You oughta do whatever you can to make sure your buddy Hannigan isn’t tempted.” Tuttle once ran the precinct that included Fox Point and was aware of the long friendship among myself, Tony Tramonti, and Young Jimmy. “After last night, he’s center of attention. Somebody like him can get into situations. Like at his Club. Somebody like that should keep his lawyer’s phone number handy.”
“I hear you.”
25
A ROOM SERVICE WAITER rolled a trolley with cups and saucers, coffee carafes, baskets of rolls with jam and butter into the plainly furnished corporate apartment. Then came a Micheletti espresso machine. That told me Fausto Tramonti, the mayor’s brother and chief political operative, would be present. Espresso is Fausto’s drug of choice; wherever he spent time, there was always espresso.
I opened glass sliders from the living room to the narrow terrace scooped out of the building’s façade. On the twenty-fourth floor above West Exchange Street, I took in a lungful of damp air and edged toward the railing for a spectacular view of Narragansett Bay as far south as the Pell Bridge in Newport. The Bay’s surface mirrored this morning’s aluminum sky, giving stark dimension to its islands and shorelines. Two dark hulled freighters, cranes poised on their decks, were anchored at the Port of Providence. Fuel barges lined the petroleum depot wharves. At the head of the Bay, the I-Way suspension bridge’s columns remained illuminated, its spider web of silvery cables contrasted sharply with the orangey hulk of the Hurricane Barrier, a reminder of where Palagi met his fate.
Voices came from the apartment and I turned as Fausto Tramonti preceded Tony and, to my surprise, Aldo, the oldest Tramonti brother. All wore serious suits and ties. Fausto whacked a newspaper against the back of an upholstered chair and went to the espresso machine, Tony joined me on the terrace.
He said too casually, “Aldo wanted to see you.”
Not good news. For years, Aldo Tramonti, the CEO of Tramonti Corporation, an international construction management company with its headquarters on nearby Broadway, had been a generous supporter of the Institute and a member of the Institute’s Leadership Council. Had to be here about Columbus Day.
I followed Tony inside, closed the slider, ignored Fausto, and greeted Aldo. Aldo’s stature was like his father’s, the fireplug as he was known, a day laborer who founded the highly successful construction company, and even expensive tailoring did not hide Aldo’s short, barrel-chested physique. He shook my hand without greeting, his black eyes and tight lips set in a stony face, and sat next to Tony on a tan leather sofa across from the chair I had chosen. Fausto didn’t acknowledge me until with espresso in hand, he joined his brothers, neither of whom were eating or drinking, on the sofa. Three on one, I thought.
Fausto loosened his tie. Not as handsome as Tony or as well dressed as Aldo, not as trim as Tony or as short as Aldo, he emanated forcefulness, an innate energy of purpose. Clearly, it was Fausto’s meeting; he was a lawyer with an office in a restored Victorian mansion across from Tramonti Corporation headquarters on Broadway, who understood how to get things done in Providence, the political whip, the glue pot for his brother who could massage the ethically challenged City Council. Going back to our early days, politically and personally, we did not get along. After I accepted the appointment to the Commission, the Mayor told me that Fausto had forcefully argued for his own candidate and was frustrated that I accepted.
“Algy, we got a situation here,” Fausto said and gulped down his espresso. “Did you listen to the talk shows yesterday? On every show, some plant of Sonny’s or Lucca’s calls in and reads a copy of the press release on your appointment to the Commission and it gets linked with this Columbus Day shit. That’s not good for anyone, you know what I mean? It’s not good for you, it’s not good for Tony, it’s not good for …”
“Who listens to those jerks,” I said disparagingly, but knowing the answer.
Fausto’s eyes bulged. “A lot of people,” he said, turning to his brothers for support. “People that live and vote in Providence. A lot of ’em work for the city. And they are very sensitive to this kind of thing.”
“Nothing is settled about the name change. We have a plan of action …”
Fausto never heard what he did not want to hear. “You guys can do what you want up there but right now, you’re causing a huge pain for Tony. I advised him to distance himself from the University and …”
Tony interrupted. “Fausto thinks you should resign from the Tournament Commission.”
I stared at Fausto. His expression showed expectation, his eyes like two deep black pools, that I would roll over and resign because of my loyalty to his brother. But I wasn’t going there. Not yet.
“Look,” I began, directing my reply to Tony, “in the first place you pushed me into accepting the appointment. Secondly, since it’s known I’m on the Commission, isn’t it going to be a cave-in if after two days I take a walk?”
Tony’s glance at Fausto signaled these same points had been recently aired. “You just don’t get it, Algy. You never do,” Fausto grumbled, got off the sofa, poured another cup of energy, and downed it. “We gotta deal with regular people. All day yesterday, I listened to regular people. First thing in the morning, I’ve got Councilman Ferrucci calling. We need his vote for the budget. I twisted his tail nine ways to get that vote. Now he tells me his ward committee chairman called him because he’s really pissed, says the Mayor has to do something to push back against Carter, more than just talk. By the way, I agree! This is a goddamn insult, a goddamn insult!”
“My resignation is a put-back to the University? C’mon, that’s a stretch,” I replied and noticed Tony had his eyes fixed over my shoulder toward the terrace; his dark face was cupped in his right hand. Fausto, back on the sofa, sensed his brother’s indecision so he pressed the loyalty button. “Algy, listen, if you do it now, you don’t have to relate it to Columbus Day. On second thought, you’ve got too much work and you’re getting married, right? Or, you’re not going to be around that much, or whatever. We deny a connection. Tony makes a suitable replacement, someone who’s competent, who gets the good government people and the Journal all aquiver.” He smiled, snidely, I thought. “You know we got other people like that.”
When I didn’t immediately respond, he gave up on charm. “What I’m saying is you got a big fuckin’ target on your forehead and Tony’s getting beat up!”
“I …”
Tony intervened. “Fausto’s right about it being dicey,” he said coolly. “I’ve got a budget to get through. Anything that gets in the way of that is playing into Bobby Lucca’s hands. For the first time since the inauguration, they’ll carve me up.”
They would. Providence politics was no-holds-barred, down and dirty. So, because Tony was my best friend, he needed votes to pass a budget, the tax treaty was vital to the University, and because my appointment to the Commission was as useful as another tit on a sow, I fell on my sword. “If you want me to resign, just say it. I’ll do it in a second.”
Fausto beamed.
“I knew you would,” Tony said, got up, stretched and went around the sofa behind Aldo. “You’re stand up. And a pool guy. So, that’s why I want you to stay on the Commission.”
“Fuck!” Fausto exploded out of his seat, his hands rose in exasperation.
“I’m not throwing Algy under the bus. His appointment is already out there, for better or for worse, and I don’t see him resigning and not feeling as though I’ve taken advantage of him.”
With that said, I could have, maybe should have, taken everybody off the hook and resigned, making an honorable exit after Tony’s declaration, and I would have done so, except that Fausto, his body shaking in frustration, thundered, “Jesus Christ, Tony, how can you back the fuckin’ East Side when you got seven wards of trouble! I got to deal with the pains in the asses, seven councilmen, half the council, that are calling me on this.” He turned to the oldest brother. “Aldo, talk to him!”
Aldo had not ch
anged his dark expression since he sat down. “It’s Tony’s call.”
That’s when I got it! Tony Tramonti appointed me to the Commission as a warning to his brother to stay away from Commission shenanigans, even if it gained a vote or two on the City Council. The Mayor was protecting himself. And Aldo knew it.
Fausto’s whole body radiated anger, his jaw set like a boxer’s, his hands lodged in his arm pits, for him, a speech impediment. “Can I say this?” He walked around the table, stood behind me, and put his right hand firmly on my shoulder. “At the very least, keep a low profile. If you see a problem with anything, come to me. First. I know some of these guys, how to deal with them. Don’t go blowing off in the press.”
When I didn’t immediately respond, Fausto wheeled around my chair and threw his hands up in front of his face. Aldo turned to him, his voice modulated but firm. “You had your piece. It’s over.” Among the three brothers, that constituted finality. Then, Aldo said to me, “This faculty senate vote. I see it as an attack on Italian heritage, our culture. I’ve supported the Institute for years, raised a lot of money for it …”
“Aldo, believe me, the President is very concerned about the reaction of University friends like you. Columbus Day is not off the calendar. Perhaps if he called you …”
He waved his hands dismissively. “The insult from the faculty cannot be taken back. I came here to tell you that. I don’t care about the politics. That’s for Tony and Fausto. But this stings, personally.”
Fausto, seeking to take advantage of Aldo’s declaration, said, “This Columbus Day shit is not going away. You’ll regret it if he stays on,” he said to Tony. When he got no reaction from his brother, he straightened his tie and stormed out of the apartment.
I stood to leave. I was staying on the Commission, for better or worse. Aldo had his cell phone in hand checking messages as Tony came over to me, a wan smile on his face. “Hey, we’re going to take some heat on this. Are you going to handle it?”