Straight Pool

by JJ Partridge

  STRAIGHT POOL

  By

  J. J. Partridge

  Copyright © John Partridge, 2008

  All rights reserved

  ® REGISTERED TRADEMARK – MARCA REGISTRADA

  ISBN 978-1-940192-81-9

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other – except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior written permission of the author.

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  The names, incidents, dialogue, and opinions expressed are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.

  Published by Koehler Books

  210 60th Street

  Virginia Beach, VA 23451

  212-574-7939

  www.koehlerbooks.com

  Publisher

  John Köehler

  Executive Editor

  Joe Coccaro

  Praise for Carom Shot by J J Partridge

  “Algy Temple is the kind of fictional friend you'd want watching your back, whether in a dark alley, a boardroom, or a courthouse. Carom Shot is a terrific debut that brings old Providence alive from the church steeples to the cracks between the cobblestones.” – Mark Arsenault, author of Gravewriter

  “Mystery-aficionados are always searching for a new detective: we gobble up stories faster than writers can write them. Algy Temple is a wonderful addition to the ranks of sleuths.” Prime Time Magazine

  “Carom Shot is a good old fashioned crime novel, set in a familiar location, but with an imaginary character to the city.” Providence Monthly

  “A unifying factor for all the novel’s characters is what Partridge calls the ‘old world murkiness’ of the city of Providence, which he captures so well in descriptions of both the physical setting . . . and the emotional atmosphere.” East Side Monthly

  “Carom Shot . . . is a good read.” Bill Reynolds, The Providence Journal

  “Carom Shot is a solidly plotted traditional mystery with enough twists -and- reversals to appeal to puzzle-lovers. An engaging protagonist.” Robert Knightly, editor of Queens Noir and contributor to Brooklyn Noir and Best American Mystery Stories of 2007

  Someone once wrote that if you believe that man is at the mercy of Fate, then life is tragedy, with the end of the story inevitable—and maybe predictable—from the beginning.

  I prefer to believe that the bad among us will inevitably be unhappy, the good will be rewarded, and most of us, with mixed fortunes, will survive the confusion.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Author’s Acknowledgements and Statement

  PROLOGUE

  Along Block Island Sound, a mackerel sky is a washed-out blue sky screened by scattered, greenish-gray clouds imitating the markings of the most common of coastal fish.

  On September 21, 1938, Westerly, Rhode Island awoke to the familiar cloud pattern masking a warming, silvery sun. The air was sea-tanged, bringing the prospect of relief from a dreariness that dogged the coast since Labor Day. For residents with the luxury of time or the where-with-all to ignore the grind of the lingering Depression, the day offered a welcomed opportunity for postponed gardening, a last picnic on the sandy spit of Napatree Point, or a round of golf at the town’s new attraction, Windmere Country Club.

  Not everyone along the Sound shared the buoyancy of that luminous dawn. Tradition held that a mackerel sky at daybreak is a harbinger of abrupt weather change. To grizzled fishermen in rubberized waders heading out from Little Narragansett Bay, to farmers on belching Ford tractors haying in fields that ran to salt ponds, and among self-described ‘old timers’ on worn benches at the docks of Avondale and Stonington, the cloud formation and the yellowish tinge to the horizon ‘weren’t right.’

  And what happened to the gulls?

  By early afternoon, the temperature was near eighty and cumulus clouds rolled in from the southeast. A freshening breeze tossed the shrubs, willows, and silver maples that rimmed salt ponds and flattened dune grasses on barrier beaches. In the rough at Windmere Country Club, blooming goldenrod swayed, thistles released silky parachutes, and red sumac and scarlet poison ivy leaves rustled with the scratchiness of autumn; on the clubhouse veranda, globe light fixtures caught the wind and began to spin in slow, ever-widening orbits. Not surprisingly for a weekday after season, few members arrived at the golf course during the morning hours and only a handful more ventured out after lunch when the wind became squally. By late afternoon, with the sky crowded by ranks of rapidly moving clouds, the clamshell surfaced parking lot in front of the clubhouse’s canopied pier was empty. Inside the twin-turreted, shingled building, the staff was thinking it might stay that way: the Twilight Golf League, the Club’s midweek mainstay of activity, had been cancelled because many members would be attending tonight’s Masonic Lodge annual dinner at the Ocean House in Watch Hill. A hand-lettered card tacked to the clubhouse’s entrance doors informed prospective diners that only ‘light fare’ would be available that evening. When intermittent sprinkles became a misty rain and then a hard downpour, the cook, the two waitresses, the busboy, even the club manager, considered the possibility of an early night. Maybe, they’d be home in time for Amos ‘n Andy.

  Meanwhile, despite the beating wind and waves splashing noisily against yellow oak pilings that anchored the clubhouse in the shallow waters of Wynomet Pond, they tended to the ordinary. Joey McAndrew, a gangly, tow-headed twelve year old, in his busboy’s uniform of starched white jacket, white shirt, black bow tie, and black trousers, and the waitresses, Mrs. Babcock and Mrs. Gavitt, solidly built women in white blouses, aprons over black skirts, and starched lace caps, busied themselves in the commodious dining room, setting tables and folding linen napkins into ‘bishop hats.’ In the kitchen, Mrs. Kenyon continued her preparations of the promised ‘light fare’—New England quahog chowder, choice of cold baked ham or sliced chicken plates garnished with side dishes of green beans, last-of-the-summer tomatoes, and potato salad—while water boiled on the new Garland gas range for a rice pudding dessert. Behind the service bar, the manager, thought by the staff to be officious—Mrs. Gavitt told her husband that the manager’s ‘arse could crack walnuts’—wiped stemware and beer glasses, seemingly miffed that with the regular bartender being called to the Ocean House event, it had been left to him to mix cocktails and serve drinks.

  By five-thirty, with no reservations called in and the weather laying siege to the coast, the manager reluctantly agreed to Mrs. Kenyon’s
request to tune the Philco console radio at the bar to WJAR in Providence. As dance music resonated in the dining room, Mrs. Babcock, finished with preparations, found her place in her lending library copy of Rebecca, while Mrs. Gavitt flipped through The Saturday Evening Post and Joey McAndrew started on his homework. Despite screeches and moans from the swirling wind and the crash of waves that sent barely felt vibrations to the floor above, the staff remained unconcerned. The clubhouse had been constructed fifteen feet—the exact number was in the Club’s brochure—above the high water level of the pond, and they were all, except the manager, Westerly natives accustomed to autumn’s gales. They were confident that the clubhouse, the only sizeable structure built on the shoreline from Watch Hill to Narragansett Pier since Roosevelt’s inauguration, would rebuff any storm. As for Joey, well, who was he to complain? After caddying at the club all summer—his freckled face retained its tan—he had the coveted after-school job of dining room busboy, with a guaranteed take home of five dollars a week!

  After the six o’clock news, Mrs. Kenyon, always the most independent of the staff, left the kitchen to cajole the manager into an early closing. Nobody would be coming out, she complained; the newsreader on the radio said the weather would likely worsen. The manager was unmoved. Suppose members arrived and found their clubhouse shuttered. That would not ‘do.’ It was Windmere Country Club’s first full season and members had been promised the availability of evening dining through September and weekends through Columbus Day. A stern ‘we’ll wait and see’ quieted Mrs. Kenyon’s objections.

  Moments later, after a blast of wind tattooed rain against the windows separating the dining room from the veranda, the lights flickered, the radio became static, both went off, and resumed. Mrs. Babcock muttered that hadn’t happened before, not once all summer, and despite the lights back on and music, now a Dorsey tune, filling the dining room, an itchy anxiety grew. Joey left his school books and accompanied by a cannonade of thunder, walked across the dining room to the rattling, rain spattered windows. He could hear, could almost feel, the ‘boomers’ pounding the barrier beach that protected Wynomet Pond from the boiling ocean. He used a handkerchief to wipe condensation from a pane and saw a mass of low, sullen clouds over the peaked roof of the Club’s bathing pavilion across the pond on the barrier beach and a horizon that was a rumpled sheet of gun metal gray, as though angry sky and turbulent sea had been fused into one.

  Except, he noticed, out to the southeast, where the clay cliffs of Block Island were visible on any clear day, a slash of ominous black-green seemed to separate from the grimness of sky and sea.

  Mrs. Kenyon left the kitchen to share whispered complaints with Mrs. Babcock while Mrs. Gavitt joined Joey at the windows. The rain drummed on the veranda roof and they had to raise their voices to be understood. Joey rubbed away more condensation so that Mrs. Gavitt could see the peculiar dark band becoming more distinct as it expanded rapidly from east to west. Maybe, he said to Mrs. Gavitt, it was heavy fog fading into a low cloud, but in this wind, and what a strange color, and look how quickly it was gaining the shore. Mrs. Gavitt murmured agreement, and turning to call the others, her voice was lost in an explosion of glass as a fixture from the veranda escaped its tether and smashed against a window, sending a shower of razor edged shards on to dining tables and the oak plank floor. The shrieking wind entered the gap in the clubhouse’s protection and scooped up tablecloths, sending water goblets and place settings to the floor and ‘bishop hats’ swirling like a flock of birds.

  Mrs. Gavitt threw her arms around Joey who, despite the danger of another shattered window, was transfixed by a swath of black water, flecked with green and topped by a spume of gray, closing on the barrier beach. Slack jawed, his hands grasping a window sill, he watched the rental cottages on the dunes disappear in the churning blackness, followed moments later by the pavilion. As he gave into Mrs. Gavitt’s efforts to tear him away, Joey realized that he was witnessing something he had read about in school, something that occurred in exotic places, but not in Westerly, Rhode Island. He shouted over the howls of wind: “Tidal wave!”

  The clubhouse, in a violent tremor, yawed on its pilings as though attempting an escape to the protection of land only thirty feet away. The women, screaming, discarding their aprons, their carefully pinned hair falling on their necks and shoulders, giving no thought to coats or handbags or to the glowing rings of gas burners, ran to the narrow entrance hall. Joey followed, aware that despite the tumult, the electricity remained on and Bing Crosby was crooning South of the Border. The manager, out from behind the bar, waved his arms and shouted for calm as they gained the hallway to the outer doors where too many hands fought to grasp knobs. With a click, the doors flew open and they crammed on to the swaying pier.

  Fragments of canopy flailed them as they staggered forward, barely conscious of pond water sloshing over the pier’s planks and the eerie, echoing, all encompassing, roar surrounding them. Breaths were sucked away by the furious wind, their shoulders beat against the canopy’s frame, the women’s skirts billowed and wrapped around them. Mrs. Gavitt stumbled, Mrs. Kenyon toppled over her into Mrs. Babcock and Joey. Joey braced himself against a railing and tried to pull Mrs. Gavitt to her feet as the manager struggled to close the clubhouse doors; somehow, he got one door in place, when the handle of the other was ripped from his hands, the wind slammed the loose door into him, and Joey saw him thrown inside.

  Behind the tottering clubhouse, the ocean and pond had become a surging mass. Wave upon wave climbed higher and higher into a mountain of froth and black water. Confined by the pond’s shallows, a single monster wave rose, relentless, towering, hurtling forward, reaching the point where gravity demanded obedience.

  Tons of water crashed downward.

  They were like rag dolls. Pieces of flotsam.

  The wind and water carried away their cries.

  CHAPTER ONE

  “He’s in another goddamn mess!”

  At a few minutes before nine on Saturday morning, Jimmy’s Billiard Club was as quiet as a high school classroom after four. Cones of light illuminated a new Olhausen pool table where I faced Tony Tramonti unzipping a black nylon Providence Police jacket with his last name stitched in white above “C’mish”. He had the vinegary look of someone who had drunk too much coffee and had not enough breakfast. Moments ago, he said he’d spotted my Mini Cooper in the parking lot that serves both the Billiard Club and Jimmy’s Restaurant one floor below and that he really needed to talk to me.

  The cause of his agitation? So far, all I knew was that it involved Charlie Fessenden, his feckless brother-in-law.

  Despite Tramonti’s obvious impatience to let me know more about the ‘goddamn mess,’ I was determined to continue my pool drills, exercises designed to enforce muscle memory of shot fundamentals. But my concentration lost out to Tramonti’s presence when his large hands grasped the opposite rail with enough force to whiten his knuckles.

  “Hands…?”

  “Sorry.” He stuffed them in his chinos.

  The drill I had reached was a series of carom shots, with the cue ball about two inches from the rail. I set up, shot too quickly, and the cue ball hit the one ball which kissed the nine ball and blew by the pocket.

  “You need practice. Aren’t you defending…?”

  I ignored him, chalked the cue stick’s tip, aimed, drew back, and saw his hands back on the rail. I straightened up, my scowl eliminating the necessity of words, and his hands dropped to his sides. I aimed and shot; the cue ball smacked the two ball into the ten and spun the two across the table toward a corner pocket where it rattled around without falling in.

  “Am I distracting you?” he said not very apologetically.

  Ugh! Pool requires self-discipline and concentration and I would have neither while he hovered at the table. There’s an old pool hall saying that ‘bad practice is prelude to bad play,’ so, sparing him a snide answer, I slipped my Vulcan cue stick into its place in one of the mirro
r-backed wall racks reserved for members and headed into the lounge area and its mahogany, twenty foot long bar. A sign reminding members that ‘Pool is a sport—not a game’ was above a gleaming Mignatti espresso machine behind the bar where I filled a brewing pot with ground beans from Pastiche on Federal Hill and placed two white ceramic cups under its spigots. A red light blinked as I hit the ‘on’ switch and turned to Tramonti who was slumped on a stool. As the machine burped and gurgled, with his elbows on the bar and palms together at eye level, he began.

  “What a screw off! First, he gets canned at Hospital Trust for speculating with that old lady’s trust fund.” I knew about that escapade. “Then, he and his Newport buddies set up the hedge fund and bet the wrong way on interest rates and currencies. What did that cost to keep him out of the clutches of the SEC and settle with the investors!” My former law firm, Champlin & Burrill, defended Charlie in that fiasco. “So, he and Dani”—Charlie’s wife and Tramonti’s sister—“move into his family’s place in Westerly and he starts selling houses to people buying into Watch Hill and Weekapaug.” Charm and a rising market go a long way in selling expensive second homes because the Tramontis had thought Charlie was prospering. “Now, this …!”

  ‘This,’ it turned out, related to Charlie Fessenden being the Club Secretary of Haversham Golf Club, a very expensive, new golf course in Westerly that in common knowledge had been plagued by permitting delays and costly construction overruns. To add insult to injury, a week ago, a fire gutted its spanking new clubhouse the night before the club’s grand opening. As I recalled it, the Journal reported that the wind driven blaze set off fireworks in storage for the following night’s celebration, creating a spectacular, explosion packed, conflagration that took hours to control. Arson was suspected and an unidentified body had been discovered in the debris.

  I handed Tramonti a cup of espresso and took my own to the end of the bar. “I need a cigarette,” he said, his black eyes lifting to mine and then to the shelf under the bar.