by JJ Partridge
Seconds later, the trunk lock pops and despite very sore muscles and spongy legs, I manage to angle myself out to face a blinding flashlight and a shiny police service revolver. Before I can suck in a lungful of fresh night air, the cop’s young, gruff but strained, voice demands, “Spread ’em! Hands on the car! C’mon, spread ’em!”
As my sore hands flatten on the car’s roof, my feet are forcefully spread apart by the flashlight as my leg muscles scream in protest. I huff, “Hey, this is my car! I was abducted! In Providence, in a parking lot, stuffed in the trunk …”
“Car jack?” He asks.
“If that’s what you call it when …” I sound like my mental gears are not meshing.
He must have stowed away the revolver because he gives me a one hand pat down. Finally, “You can relax,” he says.
‘Relax?’ Like No-Neck, he wants me to ‘relax?’
I turn to him slowly, squeezing my aching fingers, my leg muscles trembling, I am disoriented but thoughts, excuses, alibis crowd my mind. The cop stands five five or so, is muscular, wears a gray starched shirt, is a clean cut looking twenty-five-ish, with black eyebrows. If he’s got a Friday night patrol that includes the landfill, he must be the rookie of the rookies. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah. A little shook up from being bounced around.” I notice he doesn’t bother to look in the trunk.
“Took your money?”
Good question. I feel my back pocket. “My wallet’s gone.”
“How many?”
I assume he means assailants. “Two guys. Never saw the faces.”
“Why bring you down here?”
“Beats me.”
“Registration?”
“In the glove box.”
“Get it.”
I squeeze into the front seat to retrieve the car’s registration and go through stuff that collects in there. “We come down here to scare off kids drinking or whatever,” he says. “But a few years ago, we had that double murder, a couple who were kidnapped in Providence near the Arcade, brought out here, shot. For what, fifty bucks? Remember that?”
I do.
I hand him the registration and get out of the car. He reads aloud, “Alger Temple. Congdon Street, Providence. Got an ID?”
“In my wallet …”
“Yeah, well, that’s what they wanted, but I still don’t get why they brought you here. Stay put. I’m gonna report in.”
He walks back toward his patrol car just as Benno’s Taurus comes bouncing up the road and stops.
51 Friday
MY CIRCADIAN RHYTHMS WERE out of sync after three nights in Italy. When I finally fell asleep, the next thing I knew, the sun was streaming through the slats of the loft’s blinds, splintering the room’s darkness and it was quarter to nine.
Sluggishly, I slung myself out of bed, put on my robe, went down to the kitchen, and found the morning Journal with a Post-It note on the breakfast counter: I love you, left for my last class! A double espresso provided the necessary caffeine charge to get on with the day.
At College Hall, after a brief meeting to catch up with Marcie, I closeted myself with the Provost. In my absence, his assistant had found a governance wonk in the faculty senate who filed a motion for reconsideration of the Columbus Day name change on the procedural basis I had suggested. The Provost said, “If we can get through this weekend,” when a Native American teach-in was scheduled on The Green on Sunday—Columbus Day—“we might make it through until Commencement.” As to negotiations on the tax treaty, he said the President was resigned to waiting it out. “We were so close, Algy, so close.”
I reported my discovery of Palagi’s fraudulent administration fee and that Brunotti was aware of Palagi’s fraud but failed to report it as required by both University regulation and common sense. As to Palagi’s accusation of Brunotti’s fraud, I told him of Benno’s theory as to the pages in the notebook. “Is everyone at the Institute a crook?” the Provost thundered and added that Brunotti, after a terse telephone conversation with the President on Tuesday evening, had gone to ground. “I bet he’s working on Plan B right now.”
I explained the proposed settlement with Palagi’s son. “If the son goes away for a split of the sale proceeds of the Italian apartments in return for a complete release of any claims, it’s a win,” he replied. “A probate court contest isn’t in our interest right now.”
Young Jimmy had called my office several times during the past two days and I returned his call. His voice was nervous and high pitched with anxiety. “I’m screwed! Zito called me to his office yesterday. This big, bald guy shows up and sits down next to me and Zito tells me to dump my match tonight. Keep it going as long as I can, and then dump.”
“Who are you playing?”
“Are you ready for this? Harley Smoot. It’s a huge deal. You can feel the action building. With the pros in town for the Shoot-Out, they all want to play him but he’s been cute. He’s been in the Club. He wins, nothing heavy on the table, he’s playing good but not pushing it, not banging balls, all finesse. But the later it gets, I see him lose his edge. Thought it was a hustle at first, but it isn’t. I can win! I can beat Harley Smoot! I could pay down, maybe pay off, Zito. And he wants me to dump!”
I remembered the “Love to play you sometime” from Young Jimmy to Smoot at the Gala. “How much have you bet?”
“I play Harley even for the ten grand from what I still have from the Shoot-Out, and with what I got out of beating Romero and Salazar on the side, so I’ve got down close to twenty.”
“You need a lot more than that.”
He paused, maybe swallowed, before he said, “I told Zito you are my sweater, that you could cover any bets I made, and he’ll be taken out.”
“What?”
“Algy, I panicked. I figured if he thought Algy Temple was backing me, win or lose, Zito might back off. You’re the only guy I know who would sound legit, like I could pay off the loan if I won, take the hit and pay off my bets if I lost. Zito already has the house cut, would make plenty out of that, plus what he spreads out on Harley or me. He’s just fuckin’ greedy!”
Should I have been surprised that Young Jimmy would lie? No, for a hustler, lying was a condition of play. Young Jimmy had no reason to know that my backing him would be grit in a festering wound for Zito, give him an excuse to crap all over me even if he had been warned to stop his harassment. All Young Jimmy was thinking about was his restaurant, his Club, his reputation, his life and limb. I was thinking about Nadie.
“What can I do,” I asked, hoping he had an answer.
“I don’t know. I had to tell you.”
“Where are you playing?”
“I think at En Core but I don’t know for sure.”
En Core would work. Lots of parking, no problem with logistics for the out-of-towners, put a table up in the third floor party room.
“Is Smoot into this?”
“No way. Doesn’t know and doesn’t care who has side action. He’s here to play pool, win our bet.”
“Does Maria Catarina know?”
“No.”
“How did you leave it with Zito?”
“He thinks I’m going along. Told me not to talk to you. If I do, that big fuck goes into action. Zito seemed to like the thought you might lose plenty backing me if I fold.”
“The way I see it,” I said, “you have to go to Tuttle because you can’t get out of Zito’s sway. If you beat Smoot, you lose with Zito and Scuiglie. If you dump …”
“Can’t dump. I never have. Smoot may beat me fair and square but I’m not gonna dump.”
I couldn’t conceive how Young Jimmy would get out of this self-inflicted mess. “Where are you going to be in the next few hours?” I needed time to think through every possible avenue of attack.
“I’m going home to shower and then down to the Dunk for an exhibition at seven-thirty, have to stay there for some ESPN color until about ten-thirty.”
“If you don’t see me at the
Dunk or you don’t hear from me before you play Smoot, you are on your own. You’ll have to make a decision right then and there to dump or not.”
“Are you saying you could help? Back me if I play to win?”
I remembered Big Bill Halsey and the long ago match at Falvey’s. “I’m not saying that. But I’m thinking.”
“Algy, if you do this for me and I win, I could pay down Zito. I tell him right before the match that I’m gonna win so he doesn’t put money on Smoot. He still has the book and get’s paid.”
“And if you don’t win?”
“I owe you. I’ll pay you back somehow, sometime. But that’s all it will be. Because I’m not gonna have anything left.”
I remained at my desk. Frannie Zito was a player in both the Palagi conundrum and Young Jimmy’s woes. Both debtors seemingly screwed; and me, his target, a player in each dilemma. While not related to one another, nothing would work that didn’t relieve both. I doodled on a yellow legal pad, lines and boxes and arrows were in parallel, then mixed together. Slowly, shadows emerged from the connections like a photographic plate immersed in a developing solution. Could I concoct a plan of action, implement an idea, one that might work out for both Young Jimmy and the estate of Italo Palagi? And me?
Joe Laretta was in his office and he assumed I was calling to catch up on last Tuesday’s probate court meeting. “Cremasoli’s a beauty. Started off tough, like I expected, showing off for the Luccas. He orders the trust documents to be turned over and wonders aloud about ‘fairness’ to the son. Pine argued that under Rhode Island law, the probate court has no jurisdiction over Palagi’s trust assets and then produces the letter of affirmation from Palagi.”
He chuckled. “So much for confidentially. Cremasoli already knew about the letter and recognized a legal as well as political problem he would rather not deal with. He was looking for a way out. ‘Judge,’ I say, ‘both sides agree that the will has to be presented, even if it is only to get to the contest.’ ‘Anybody have a problem with that?’ he asks. Nobody does. That effectively puts the case off at least three months after all the advertising and other procedural crap required. From Cremasoli’s perspective, three months is a long time for something to happen that makes this go away.”
I explained the prospective settlement with the son’s lawyer in Rome.
He replied, “Got to say, a settlement would be good because Cremasoli is really pissed off about this Columbus Day stuff.”
“There’s not much I can do about that.”
“They put up a Keep Columbus In Columbus Day banner below the pino hanging in the Arch on Atwells, right where the parade ends. The show at the Columbus Theatre on Saturday that the boys are producing will get tempers boiling and the parade will have a lot of anti-Carter stuff. All it’s gonna take is some jerk to show up with a Native American Day banner, an Indian headdress, or a couple of insulting placards, and ka-pow! And you lost a car, I hear.”
Because of what I was going to ask him to do for me, I gave him the details of the threatening phone calls, my session with Zito in his Bentley, the Mini’s demise, and Young Jimmy’s indebtedness to Zito. I took his long silence as sympathetic and that encouraged me to ask for a favor.
“You want a meet with Zito? Tonight? After you challenged him? After his goons destroy your car? After your buddy claims you are backing him against Smoot? Are you out of your f’n mind?”
“I’ve got something Zito would want in return for taking the pressure off Young Jimmy. He won’t regret it.”
“What.”
“Later,” I said.
“Look,” Laretta said, “you are out of your league here. No insult intended. An injury on the Hill is forgiven, but not forgotten. Zito doesn’t want any deal with you. He wants to spit in your face.”
“He’ll take a call from you but not me. For bona fides, I want you there. Don’t worry. Nothing that could embarrass you.”
“He’ll never do it.”
“Try.”
A couple hours later Laretta called me back. “You’ve got a meeting at seven.”
“Where?”
“At least it’s gonna be convenient. Hard Core. In the office.”
“Cripes, I don’t want to be seen going in there!”
“What did you expect? The Hope Club? Yeah, he’s rubbing your face in it. Look,” Laretta said impatiently, “you asked me to get a meet, you have the meet.”
“I’ll go. I just didn’t think it would be …”
“And here’s the other thing. It’s only you. Not me.”
“What?”
“I tried but it has to be one-on-one. I got to warn you. Don’t do this. Don’t go it alone. He’s a snake.”
I knew he was right.
“Tell me you won’t do it and prove to me you’re smart.”
“No, I have to do it.”
Laretta paused, “You better get your back covered.”
I told him I had hired Benno.
“Sure, Bacigalupi with six others and it’s even-steven. They hate him but respect him, but he’s not muscle. Not going to do you any good in a one-on-one inside Hard Core.” He paused. “If it doesn’t work out, can I represent your estate?”
Was he kidding?
I call out to the cop who has turned on his flashlight to check out the arrival. Benno gets out and approaches, one hand shielding his eyes from the cop’s flashlight, the other palm up flashing his badge. The scene is out of a movie, headlights, strobes, hands-up. “Officer, my name’s Bacigalupi. Chief Romano knows me. I’d like to talk to you for a minute,” Benno says confidently and moves closer to the cop. They are too far away for me to hear but Benno appears to be explaining something very deliberately, using his hands, nodding at the cop’s questions. The cop puts a hand through his brush cut as though trying to decide something, then, he says, “Okay,” and gets behind the wheel of the patrol car, a cell phone at his ear.
Benno comes over to me. He shrugs toward the patrol car. “Kid’s father is a sergeant on the Johnston police. I know him pretty well. I asked him if we could leave now, and file a report later. He could write up his immediate report and everything would be kosher.”
“Did he agree?”
“He’s calling his father. I bet he’ll say no problem. In Johnston, all they got is a car sitting on the side of the road where it shouldn’t be. If somebody should be interested, it’s where the assault took place and that’s Providence. And you’re a victim. And, you got your car back. The only thing missing is your wallet and who knows where that is.
I took two steps to the maw of the trunk, which remains open and has an interior light, and there it is. And my fedora. Benno takes the wallet, and empties the cash into his pocket.
The cop finishes his call, gets out of the patrol car, and walks slowly back to us. Benno shows him my empty wallet and I confirm it is mine. He checks my driver’s license photograph with the face in the beam of his flashlight. “Yeah, I don’t see any problems as long as you come in. All we need is a report,” and he hands me the keys to the Charger. That earns him a pat on the shoulder from Benno, a reminiscence about his father, and an escort back to the patrol car. With strobe lights off, he leaves us.
Benno and I get into our respective cars and I follow Benno out onto the Plainville Pike to a McDonald’s. Not for coffee or food. The restroom.
52
BENNO AGREED WITH LARETTA that a meeting with Zito under these circumstances was crazy. Worse, he said, he was sure somebody had talked to somebody to cool off Zito. All I was going to do was roil it up again, give Zito an excuse to continue harassment. Since I was adamant, we agreed that I was to let Zito know that everything I told him was also known by Laretta, and Benno who was waiting for me in the Hard Core parking lot. Benno agreed to meet me in the lot at seven.
“What about the car paint guy?”
“From a Bentley. But within a three year span. So close, but no cigar.”
I knew that if I wasn’t home for dinner
after my trip to Italy, Nadie would be upset. I arrived on Congdon Street at the same time she returned from Temple House’s wedding prep and to keep myself calm and focused, I volunteered to make dinner. She agreed, saying she was tired and had been caught in a passing shower on her walk home. “Oh, I miss the Mini!” she said, toweling her hair, and joined me in the kitchen.
A classic Caesar salad requires anchovies. Nadie hates anchovies. Under the circumstances, I deferred to her taste preference and became a receptive audience for a play-by-play of wedding dilemmas with caterers, musicians—the oboist for the ceremony called in sick—florists, and guests as I washed and chopped greens and grated parmesan cheese in front of her at the counter. We opened a bottle of Newport Vineyards Reisling, toasted ourselves, and before I realized it, I was telling her of Palagi’s fraud, his years as a conspirator against the Italian government, later as a front for a criminal gang, and his cancerous pathology. Her questions indicated I had won her professional attention.
She mused aloud, wine glass in hand, comparing Palagi’s duplicity to the arch schemer Sugarman. “By all accounts, Sugarman was charming, disarming, and looked the part, competent like an accountant, wise, prudent. People trusted him, pure and simple. With investors, Sugarman had won his halo.”
“And?”
“Now take Palagi,” she said, swirling the wine in her glass. “He fooled the University because he was an academic with the right pedigree, a generous benefactor in giving up half his royalties to the Institute, making the Institute his estate beneficiary. He had everyone’s trust … except maybe, you.” She added that grudgingly. “All the while, he was living a lie, just like Sugarman, probably angry because his sordid prior life required him to act so generously to tamp down criticism and avoid uncomfortable questions. Like Sugarman, he was greedy, arrogant, dismissive of others, and, his victim, the University, never bothered to dig into his background or why his donors were donating, or what was going in or what he was taking out of accounts. Everybody trusted him.”