Straight Pool

by JJ Partridge

  I shook off my thoughts as I toweled and dressed. Get on with it, Algy.

  I went back into the loft and loudly announced that I was making martinis. We had been on a kick where I mix popular cocktails of the fifties and sixties featured in the weekend edition of The Wall Street Journal, luscious, often sweet concoctions like Old Fashions, Side Cars, Rob Roys, and Ward 8’s—the last, a mix of bourbon, lemon and orange juices, and grenadine, being our favorite—so, this was a return to our standby of Gordon’s gin, a drop of dry vermouth, very well shaken. I brought the frosted shaker out to the den with two straight up glasses and a dish of assorted nuts and olives because I expected she would join me; it was getting close to our usual time for a cocktail or glass of wine in the comfortable, over-furnished room with a striking prospect of the downtown. I poured my drink and stood at the floor to ceiling windows, admiring an early summer sunset that turned the horizon’s clouds pale purple with peach tones, and bleached the patina of the mansard roofs of office buildings and apartment towers in Capitol Center; a blaze of gold reflected on chimneys and gables and flashed in windows. The skeletons of new condo towers at WaterPlace Park were gaining height and would soon replace my distant view of the Westin Hotel and brick-faced, neon lit, mass that is Providence Place Mall. I took a sip of my martini, remembering that it wasn’t that long ago when Providence was a smudge on the map from New York to Cape Cod! And now…!

  “Okay, I overreacted,” Nadie said as she sat on the salmon colored divan and plumped up two pillows as an invitation which I accepted. I poured her martini, touched her glass to mine, and asked her about her plans for tonight. She tossed her long, silky, black hair around her elegant neck, her intelligent green eyes alert and playful, and said with the verve of the Nadie I love, “So long as you don’t sneak up on me again!” Then, she was on to her book review and whether she felt comfortable as a reviewer because she had met and did not like the author, while I concentrated on the freckles on her elegant nose, a Mediterranean complexion that seemed never to need makeup, and lips with a natural pink some women might seek from cosmetologists. Her fingers, without any rings, found an errant lock and I caught up to her during a giggly story about a colleague’s affair with a middle-aged internist we both knew at the Carter Medical School. Nadie was mildly disapproving because she said he was a ‘putz’—her word—and making me wonder why she seemed so confident in her assessment.

  I replenished my glass, she declined, and we sampled the brown olives purchased from Venda’s on Federal Hill, and I told her about Tramonti’s request, today’s meeting in Tom Flanaghan’s office, and the visit to the clubhouse ruins.

  She surprised me, since I knew she didn’t like Charlie Fessenden, by her focus on the plight of Dani Fessenden whom she had met at parties at Tony Tramonti’s home off Elmgrove Avenue and at the family’s compound on Ocean Drive in Narragansett. A distinct although polite iciness on Nadie’s part had been evident on those occasions. Afterwards, when she wondered aloud why Dani married such a wimp, I also caught an unexplained, discernibly, sniffy, attitude toward Dani.

  I finished my cocktail and suggested that I cook a Providence ‘Saturday night suppa’—what I would have prepared last night if not stood up—of Saugy hotdogs, B&M beans, and cole slaw for me and a chicken breast scaloppini and salsa salad in respect of her mostly vegetarian diet. She said ‘fine’ and asked if there was any more of the Eden Valley Chardonnay we had pleasantly consumed on Friday night. She soon had a glass of the straw colored wine, along with an ice cube, served with a bowl of cold shrimp with a dollop of my homemade hot sauce. With a CD of Puccini arias softly filling the den and her wine, the shrimp, and a New Yorker, she seemed content and I went to the kitchen, glad to avoid further discussion of the Fessendens.

  My kitchen—large enough according to Nadie for a small bistro—is functional, a focal point of our day-to-day living, and laid out to accommodate a Jenn Aire grill in a center granite topped counter, a Viking oven, a Sub Zero refrigerator, rows of gadgets and machines, lots of cabinets and two double sinks, all designed for efficient cutting, slicing, chopping, smashing, mixing, and tasting. Quickly, I marshaled the chicken and hot dogs, vegetables, pots and pans, herbs, condiments, and wine, and went to work. A cabbage was quartered and shredded within the Cuisinart; vinegar, mayonnaise, two teaspoons of sugar, and a generous amount of celery seed went into a mixing bowl with the cabbage, and after a vigorous toss, the cole slaw went into the Sub Zero to cool. Barbecue sauce, chili powder, chopped onions, and molasses were added to the beans on the stove’s gas burner at low heat. A chicken breast was malleted flat, tossed in white wine and herbs, and prepared for the grill. I was happy in the cooking, the savory smells of Rhode Island’s favorite hot dogs and the grilling chicken, a glass of sparkling San Pellegrino and a bowl of Goldfish crackers at hand, when Nadie climbed the three steps from the den and sat on a stool at the breakfast bar. She picked at the few Goldfish left in the bowl and licked the tips of her fingers. Two little creases appeared between her brows. “How close were you and Dani?”

  Whoa! That surprised me. And didn’t. We have an unspoken rule to avoid any mention of old relationships, and this one was positively ancient, but Nadie, sometimes, crossed the line. My marriage and divorce long ago, in particular, seemed to come up recently, always obliquely, although how we both lived and with whom before we met each other, and the twenty years between us were usually respected. I replied, “When she was growing up, she was Tony’s little sister. I never paid attention. When I came back, she was engaged to Charlie.”

  “Oh,” she said as though considering my response clinically, and used a wet finger to get the last of the Goldfish crumbs. “And after that…?”

  I paused. She made me feel transparent. But experience told me to be boldfaced honest with Nadie. “Once, a long time ago, when Dani was having problems with Charlie because he was drinking and had trouble at his bank job, we talked on the phone and had dinner once or twice. That’s as far as it ever went. She’s always been crazy about that guy. Always thought of me as a brother.”

  “Then you’re involved in this only because Tony asked you?” Her voice made that a question.

  Her premise bothered me. I was going to ask ‘What’s this all about?’ when she said, “I know what you’re going to do. You’re going to get yourself involved defending Charlie and….” A pause with a sulky breath. “It’s okay,” she muttered and finished her wine.

  I couldn’t let that go. “Tony’s got a real concern that Dani will be back to the …”—I almost said ‘shrinks’—“… therapy if Charlie has another problem. And Charlie may be an ass but he probably doesn’t deserve being the blamed for everything that’s gone wrong with the Club. Besides, with this Arts Quad mess and Commencement Week, I can only do so much….” I let that hang.

  My references to the Arts Quad controversy was on purpose. As an undergraduate, Nadie lived there junior and senior years and had sharp, predictable opinions as to its continued viability as a campus institution. “How’s that going to work out?” she asked. “We can’t have the cops thinking they can burst in there any time they want. There’s still a Fourth Amendment!”

  “Ask me after my meeting with Puppy Dog tomorrow.” Leon ‘Puppy Dog’ Goldbloom, the Providence City Solicitor, is Sonny Russo’s cucciolo, his lap dog, a sly, treacherous, amoral lacky whose idea of the rule of law is whatever Sonny Russo needed. And at tomorrow’s meeting, he held all the good cards.

  Nadie brought the wine to the breakfast bar while I flipped the cap on a bottle of Narragansett lager. She put out trivets, place mats and utensils, as well as mustard, piccalilli and pickle relish for me, and we sat across from each other after I delivered our meals.

  “I don’t really see what you’re supposed to do,” she said after she tasted, appreciatively, the salsa salad. She was back to Charlie. “He has a lawyer, Tony has hired this detective….”

  “I’m a cosmetic, a shill. I give Charlie respectability at t
he meeting. Beforehand, I help out by preparing him with some Q and A. Tony thinks Charlie will pay attention to me.”

  “I can’t see you as a shill. That’s not like you. You don’t front for people.” She cut into her chicken. “How do you get into situations like this? What kind of friends do you have?”

  “Real people, real problems,” I replied. Sometimes, her conversation reminded me of a law school professor’s use of the Socratic method—always questions, very few answers.

  Her fork clattered on her plate. It was unintended but served to get my attention. “No, you positively enjoy it!” she said, sitting back, her fork now pointed at me. A strand of hair had fallen over her forehead and she whisked it away.

  “Seems like the thing to do.” How can I explain this ‘honor your commitments with integrity’ ideal that is my parents’ lasting gift to their sons.

  “Don’t you think maybe you could be taken advantage of? Even by Tony?”

  “No,” I replied. As she well knew, at various times in my life, Tony Tramonti has been a protector, coach, good or bad for my morals and maturity, and above all, steady friend. While his battles with Sonny Russo had made him self-absorbed, nothing had changed the basics of our relationship. I took a long pull on the beer. “He’s doing what a friend should do. Ask for help. What’s wrong with that? I’d do the same.”

  “Sure. When do you ask for help? You never need help. Your family….”

  “Please, let’s not go there….”

  She backed off but said severely, “And do not, I repeat, do not, let anything keep you off the plane to Milan. I don’t care what stage your soap opera might be in….”

  We were to be leaving in ten days for two weeks in Northern Italy, our second trip to Italy and my anniversary present to her in April, celebrating our initial conversation at a faculty cocktail party years earlier. The prospect of Italy was the one thing that seemed to perk her up when whatever had been ‘troubling’ her manifested.

  “Not to worry,” I said as I finished the first Saugy. And I meant it.

  CHAPTER SIX

  City Hall, according to tourist brochures, is ‘designed in the fashion of Second Empire Baroque.’ Think of it as four floors and a grand staircase in search of a building.

  During Providence’s golden age of innovation and economic expansion in the 1870’s, the impressively squat pile of gray granite, tiered columns, recessed windows, multiple balconies, mansard slate roof, and stone balustrade was a projection of the city’s prosperity. That was the era of Rhode Island’s great industrial enterprises like Corliss Engine Works, American Locomotive Company, American Woolen Company, Gorham Silversmiths, and Brown & Sharpe Manufacturing. All world class companies …, and all gone.

  Maintenance within City Hall is a flit and a wipe, a reminder that sleaze prevails within these precincts. Still, that is better than it was before the Preservation Society turned its wrath on the Mayor’s Office, when City Hall was really a dump. Trash piled up in its hallways, blown light bulbs could go weeks without being replaced, water from urinals in the men’s rooms gushed in sluices across the floor. ‘Lunch’ was available in a dingy, airless coffee shop where any day, you could order the special ‘meat’ sandwich with cold French fries in a watery gravy from unfriendly people—all relatives of a political somebody—behind the counter and there was any kind of soft drink so long as it was Diet Pepsi which arrived fizzless. Ice? Fahgettaboutit!

  I entered from Fulton Street and inhaled the dry smell of disinfectant and ancient coffee that is an effluvium in Providence municipal buildings. The morning’s brilliant sun, diminished by a layer of grime on the enormous skylight sixty feet above me, provided a meager light into the cavernous interior. A half dozen city workers in casual clothes—it is always ‘casual day’ at City Hall—clutching Styrofoam coffee cups were in conversation in front of the pokey, still manned, often out-of-service, elevator so I decided to climb the worn marble staircase adorned with brass stanchions holding rarely illuminated globes to Puppy Dog’s third floor office.

  At the second floor landing, I adjusted my shoulder valise in front of the Mayor’s Office. Interior lights penetrated the frosted glass in the doors to his suite and I wondered if Sonny Russo was in residence this early in the morning ‘workin’ for the City!’ Not to worry, Providence, his staff always knew where ‘hiz honor’ was schmoozing or politicking or if he was in the cozy confines of his hideaway suite at the Hilton across Route 95 from Federal Hill. A columnist for the East Side Monthly recently wrote that Sonny’s message to his constituents was ‘I’m doin’ the best I can and it’s not as bad as you think,’ unless you had business with the City in which case ‘but for you, it could be worse.’ The writer’s real estate tax assessment will be carefully examined!

  One more flight through motes of old dust and a turn to the right brought me to a oak double door marked ‘Solicitor’ in gold Olde English script, with an aperture at eye level for someone five foot five. I knocked. The aperture opened, closed, a buzzer sounded, and the door opened to a high ceilinged room with worn red carpeting. Puppy Dog’s long-time secretary, Paula Ciccone, whose raspy voice I had heard innumerable times announcing ‘Mr. Goldbloom is on the line,’ had her face two inches from a computer screen, ignoring a flashing telephone on her desk. The lummox who admitted me—a City Hall ‘guy’ for sure as evidenced by his brush cut, squinty, black eyes, round face with a double chin, and greenish haspel suit a size too small—didn’t let me pass until Paula said without more than a second’s glance, “Hi, Mr. Temple, Mr. Goldbloom has the Chief with him.”

  Great!

  Unbidden, I took a chair under a studio photograph of the smiling Mayor that captured Sonny in a moment when he could have passed for Joe Pesci planning a mob hit. Paula seemed unusually grumpy, sweeping away her version of a Hollywood version of Cleopatra’s hairstyle: jet black, parted down the middle, bangs cut sharply above her dark eyes, and not a strand out of place. Her lummox, apparently no longer considering me an immediate threat to the peace, awaited instructions which came as she swung away from the computer in a frustrated squeal for a latte from the Starbucks in the Biltmore and a PowerBall ticket from the newsstand on the first floor.

  With Paula now answering the telephone in a flat voice indicating that all incoming calls came at a moment of high inconvenience, I considered the University’s positions, likely to be assailed at the meeting. From my valise, I took a dog-eared copy of the now ten year old Protocol For Security and Law Enforcement between the Providence Police Department and the Carter University Security Office, and the ‘incident’ report on the Arts Quad confrontation prepared by Bill Tuttle, Carter University’s Chief of Security, a retired major of the Providence police and no favorite of Chief McCarthy.

  I didn’t have to review the Protocol since I had negotiated its provisions when I was the University’s outside counsel, and had revisited it many times since. In a few succinct paragraphs, it outlined the authorities and obligations of the Security Office in relationship to those of the Providence police when it came to the campus. ‘Concurrent jurisdiction’ is the key phrase which means that except in an emergency, the Security Office provided basic security for the campus and its residents, controlled noise, parties, etc., and Providence cops took care of traffic and general crime. Nothing in the Protocol gave any additional right of entry to Providence cops on University property; nothing indicated that they couldn’t investigate crime or arrest when appropriate. Rapid, accurate communication, and robust cooperation were the keys to making it work, … and it did when there was the ‘peace.’

  I then skimmed Tuttle’s report. Two weekends earlier, at the close of the reading period before examinations, a Saturday night party attracted, in addition to Arts Quad residents and other Carter students, party goers from other venues, including downtown clubs, because every utility pole on Thayer Street had been stapled with colored flyers advertising an end of the semester ‘debauchery.’ It was a warm May night and
by midnight, the crowd spilled out onto Orchard Street from the Quad’s noisy, music echoing courtyard. That coincided with the arrival of three Providence patrol cars, sirens on full blast and strobe lights spewing a psychedelic dazzle. The half-clothed drunks milling around reacted with rowdiness, the cops forced their way into the courtyard, the kids scattered, and the cops found themselves braced up against a couple of our security officers who didn’t appreciate being pushed around on University property. Then, surprise, surprise, enter stage left, Chief McCarthy and Mayor Russo from a patrol car, along with a video van from Channel 11. Supposedly, the Mayor and the Chief were doing a documentary on Saturday night patrols in the city and had been ‘called to the scene.’