Straight Pool

by JJ Partridge

  “Councilman Ferrucci,” he began, “was with Sonny last night when he called you. Sonny was bouncing off the walls.” Fausto, I thought, should have been thrilled by Sonny’s embarrassment but his tone was measured.

  “Sonny was extremely … unpleasant, let me put it that way.” I sat back ready to get into more detail when he said, “Oh, more than that! He is pissed, at you! You personally.”

  I gave him the background but Fausto seemed both well informed and somewhat, indifferent. I asked him if Sonny might screw up Commencement. Smart, shrewd and the real politician of the family, Fausto understands these things.

  “You and Tony sometimes forget he didn’t get to be mayor by being stupid. Corrupt, yeah, but not stupid. You’ll get your payback. But not right now. He won’t want his retribution and his bill paying to be connected. Next week, the week after, it starts.”

  He paused, maybe to sip his usually available espresso. “Anyway, I called about Charlie. Benno found out that the State Police want to talk to Charlie because Charlie had to call in the Westerly cops when … the burned guy threatened Charlie when he got fired. Charlie said some choice things in return, according to Benno. And the burned guy ….”

  “His name is Ollie Randall.”

  “… had a run in with Dani that morning and Charlie was furious. She said she told you….”

  With that admission, I might have expected something like an apology about what had been withheld from me, but Fausto doesn’t hear what he doesn’t want to hear, and never apologizes, at least to me. Actually, there has always been a sense of his tolerance of me in our relationship, and it had been there since Tony brought me home as a new friend. Fausto, then a LaSalle Academy senior, wasn’t sure he liked his brother’s East Side buddy. Once, I put that down to jealousy, and later to his suspicious, ornery nature, and now, I thought it was all of the above.

  “Once Charlie gets going, you don’t know what he might blurt out. Somebody could twist this, make it seem like he had a motive to….” Fausto’s voice trailed off in distain; he admires brains, toughness, and loyalty and Charlie was deficient in all three. “I gotta get him a criminal defense lawyer.”

  “What about Flanaghan?”

  “He’s already got his hands full.”

  “Who?”

  “I was thinking of a guy in Jerry Franks’ office.”

  That was the reason for the early call. Jerry Franks. The brothers knew about my run-in with Jerry Franks, Rhode Island’s star defender of the Mafia, drug lords, and indicted politicians, a mean, ugly fight with, literally, a mean, ugly lawyer.

  “Not Jerry himself!” Fausto protested. “Too close to Sonny. He’s got a guy in his office, a wanna-be almost as good. Joe Laretta.”

  “You get him somebody like Franks and the Club’s members will suspect Charlie’s in real trouble. You’re escalating this….”

  His response betrayed annoyance. “Not the people we care about.”

  I didn’t have to ask ‘who.’ Culturally anchored in his community, the ‘people’ were from Providence neighborhoods, graduates of parochial schools, LaSalle Academy, Providence College, now the political lawyers, councilmen, and judges who frequented the Aurora Club, summered at Bonnet Shores and the Pier, and enjoyed the steakhouse atmosphere of The Capital Grille. They were not members of Agawam Hunt Club, or the Hope Club, and certainly not Haversham Golf Club.

  “According to Benno, the Staties think the burned guy ….”

  “Randall,” I said impatiently.

  “Yeah, yeah, … set the fire. His threats are enough for motive, it’s his cracked skull that’s the problem. So, it could be that somebody clocked him and then set off the fireworks, maybe thinking nobody could tell that he got a fractured skull. Problem is that Charlie was alone at the time. No alibi.” He took a deep breath for emphasis. “Laretta’s good, Algy. I’ve been sending him criminal defense work the past couple of years. Got a lot to lose if he screws up. So, trust me.”

  I would defer. Hiring Laretta was a family decision, had been discussed with, and agreed to, by his brother. This call was to let me know—I was that close to Tony—that it had to happen, whether or not hiring Franks’ protégé was offensive to me.

  The office phone rang and I asked Fausto to hold. It was the Provost from Grafton Hall at the last meeting of the Board of Trustees for this academic year. Since today’s meeting was planned to be serene, self-congratulatory, and kept to a tight schedule by the President so that the Trustees could get on with this morning’s Honorary Degree ceremony, the call meant something within my bailiwick had been unexpectedly raised by a Trustee. In the background, someone was speaking as the Provost whispered, “We got a question on the Arts Quad.” He mentioned one of the Trustees, a California Court of Appeals justice. “She’s urging the Trustees to create a special committee to deal with the ‘incursion,’ as she calls it. I don’t see any momentum for it, but I don’t want the Board jumping into this if I can avoid it.”

  I thought, ‘Mind crossing your fingers?’ “Do you want me over there?”

  “No, it would give her honor the opportunity to ask more questions. I want to be able to say that you and the Mayor’s office are dealing with this, that you have a promise to revisit the Protocol over the summer, and we expect that should give clarity to both sides. Nobody has said anything different, right?”

  I agreed—technically that was true—and he hung up.

  I got back to Fausto, who was talking to someone in his office. “Sorry about that,” I said. “Duty calls.”

  “No problem. I’m going to call Charlie….”

  “Some advice. Wait until after the Sunday meeting with the members. Don’t add anything to his angst. Nothing is going to happen until next week anyway.”

  Fausto considered the point. At the membership meeting, the audience was my turf. “Okay. Makes sense. I’ll wait. Suppose you call Laretta? Bring him up to speed….”

  “Fausto!”

  “I know, but we gotta do what we gotta do. Don’t be pissy about this. All the pols know about Charlie, that we’ve bailed him out before. They expect us to take care of our own, but nobody wants to be embarrassed by their friends. We’re at a critical time trying to get support from these guys and Sonny’s kicking the crap out of us….”

  “Franks hates me, I have no use for him, so why should I call his associate.”

  Fausto practically growled, “This isn’t Franks! I’ll let Laretta know you’re going to call. He’ll understand.” Then, “You know, we need you to do this. It’s important.”

  There was an exhalation of uncertainty before I agreed and hung up. Damn! I’m closer to Tony than my own brother. But this was turning blood into—what was Times puzzle word I discovered on Sunday meaning a smelly, viscose liquid—ah, grume!

  Both fists hit the desk, throwing anything loose into the air, sending a shock of pain through my hands. I needed that. I was overreacting to Fausto’s pushy personality. ‘Laretta.’ The name was familiar and suddenly I had it. Giacomo Laretta is the political don of Providence’s Eighth Ward, a boss sometimes in opposition to Sonny for arcane reasons only a Providence politician could understand. Someone who Fausto wants to back Sonny. Runs a popular family style restaurant down the hill from St. Bart’s Church. In its back room, Fausto said, political fortunes had been made and lost. Joe Laretta must be a son or nephew!

  * * *

  The Provost called minutes later indicating that the Board of Trustees’ meeting had adjourned with no action on the Arts Quad, despite her honor’s admonitions not to let the police ‘trample’ on University and student rights. Thanks! Everybody is an expert when it comes to telling the cops to bug off from two thousand miles away.

  With the Honorary Degree ceremony beginning to ramp-up outside on The Green as two thousand folding chairs were being opened and aligned, I was now off duty and I examined my options. I could hang around for lunch and then attend my class ‘meet and greet’ function at Bancroft Hall, to
be followed by a forum on health care issues moderated by two classmates, one a member of the House of Representatives, the other from some think tank from Berkeley. That would be the ‘Carter’ thing to do. Or, I could get ahead of my weekend chores because Saturday would be taken up by Commencement, and Sunday was the membership meeting in Westerly.

  “Ugh!”

  I had to admit, I was in a put-upon mood, angry at myself for my greenhorn play last night at Jimmy’s, how I let Fausto cajole me into briefing a Jerry Franks’ associate, none to happy about my upcoming role as a shill on Sunday, so all decisions came slowly. I wasn’t particularly keen for my class function where forty or so academics, lawyers, stockbrokers, and class officer types, were likely to be full of themselves. Although, honestly, that wasn’t the complete rationale. I dislike reunions. I am sympathetic to the views expressed last year in a letter to the Alumni Record that reunions are depressing, making many of us feel downright inadequate compared to the speakers or seminar leaders or award recipients. After ten or twenty or more years from graduation, we haven’t advanced the cure for cancer, made a scientific breakthrough, written a Broadway play, or been elected to national public office. We live lives and careers out of the limelight and rarely make the Notes section of the alumni magazine until we marry, send kids to Carter, retire, or die. So, why spend even an hour ill at ease, with others in the same predicament?

  * * *

  I walked home, picked up the Mini Cooper, and drove to the WholeFoods Market at University Heights, then Wayland Square with my laundry, and finally, up to Federal Hill. At Tony’s Colonial Market, I bought links of sweet sausages for Sunday dinner, a wedge of sweet gorgonzola, and some cured capicola for panini, and walked the block to the former tenement that housed Gasbarro’s World of Wine.

  “Hey, wrong day!” Marco called out from behind the counter. He wore his trademark white shirt with sleeves rolled up to the elbows.

  “Yeah, I know. Commencement is tomorrow.”

  “Right.”

  Marco was a year or two ahead of me at Carter but already focused on wine and his family’s business. “I want you to try a brunello. Just came in. I tasted it last year when Carla and I were in Montalcino. It took me all this time to get it. I opened a bottle for friends. Come on back.”

  I followed his slight figure the length of the store into a windowless office with fake knotty pine walls lined with ancient metal file cabinets, family photographs, wine posters and memorabilia, books on wine and food, and a large, poorly executed Tuscan vineyard scene. Two security television screens faced his cluttered desk from over the doorway. I sat in front of him, not revealing I knew this invitation was for more than a taste.

  “Hey,” he said, leaning over his desk, “I hear Tony’s gotta problem in the family.” His eyes left mine to squint at the monitor to above my left shoulder. “And Sonny’s got a new ‘thing’ for you.”

  ‘Things’ political are meat on Marco’s table. I shrugged. “Sonny’s always got something to piss him off. Tell me about the wine.”

  “Sure, sure,” he said, and opened a cabinet behind him, withdrew a loosely corked bottle, and selected balloon shaped glasses from a shelf. “2001. A good year everywhere in Italy, and it’s got another five to ten years before it blooms, but taste this!”

  He rattled on about the Podre Salicutti vineyard, the owner’s family, how he had lunch under an arbor by their vineyard, how the antipasto was prepared, how he had regaled the padrone with stories about some nasty, avaricious wine distributors in the States, how lucky Gasbarro’s was to have the only hundred cases in New England. Meanwhile, he had filled my glass and I began the ritual, holding the glass to the light, swirling the dark cherry colored wine, inhaling the rich ‘nose,’ and finally tasting. He was right, it was delicious, tannin in balance with an unidentifiable fruit. He joined me with a taste. “Powerful, serious wine,” he said. “Can’t serve anything with it but beef or a good, thick veal chop.”

  I savored the wine’s subtle aftertaste and thought, Nadie shares a bottle of this with me, and she surrenders.

  “I’ll put a case away for you, right?”

  “Sure.” I looked and sounded offended.

  “I gotta ration these,” he said defensively, and probably meant it.

  Holding my glass to the light, the ‘legs’ on the glass evidencing the wine’s richness, and knowing an expensive case of wine was worth a trove of information, I said, “Marco, a lawyer by the name of Laretta?”

  A black eyebrow was raised in question. “Jerry Franks’ guy?” He shrugged. “Good on his feet, tougher than nails, already has got a reputation. Father is Giacomo. You’ve heard of Giacomo?”

  “Thanks,” I said as he offered another taste. Marco looked up to the screen to my right, and blinked twice. “And, hey, you’re not going to believe it, he’s in the store! He’s there.” He pointed to the screen which showed the back of a man at the wine bins with a salesman, Cousin Frank. Marco pushed back from his desk, “I’ll get him for you?”

  Decision time. I tell him ‘no,’ and he wonders why, or I tell him ‘yes’ and I get the promised phone call over. I finished the wine. “Why don’t you introduce me.”

  We left the office, Marco secure in the thought that he had sold a case of choice brunello at a nice price, with the bonus that something interesting must be going on. In front of bins of Ovietos and Pinot Grigios, a tall, darkly handsome man about forty in a light gray, well-cut Italian suit, wavy black hair, straight nose with flaring nostrils, was listening to Cousin Frank describe the lineage of the bottle of Gavi in his hand. Marco interrupted, “Joe, I want you to meet a good friend of mine, Algy Temple.”

  Laretta’s eyes flickered before he put out his hand.

  “Nice to meet you,” he said smoothly. “Let me take care of this. Then, maybe we could meet for a minute?” Marco’s eyes widened; there was clearly more to learn as Laretta took the bottle of Gavi that Cousin Frank was holding. “A half case, Frank, with the others. I’ll be back.”

  I followed Laretta out to the parking lot and a new black Mercedes 500C. “Let’s get outta the sun,” he said as the door locks popped. The car had that brand new, musky leather smell that is an aphrodisiac to me. The engine was turned on, no louder than a hum, as the air conditioning flowed. “Fausto said you would call, could give me an insight into the … situation.”

  In the next few minutes, I told him what I knew about the ‘situation’ including what Dani told me about her incident with Ollie Randall, Charlie’s jealous temper, and the circumstances under which she told me. I tried not to editorialize about his client and that was hard. I said Charlie didn’t have an alibi, as far as I knew, for the time of the fire or just before. As I gave him details of Charlie’s description of the fire, I got the impression the lawyer was sizing me up.

  “I saw you once in federal court, when you were defending Textron in a class action. Marty Berlin was on the other side.”

  That pleased me. I had been lead counsel in a multi-million dollar case over allegedly defective brake parts. I won.

  “… and in our office. Jerry was defending that black kid who got popped in New York. I can’t remember his name….”

  “Lavelle Williams.”

  “Yeah, that was it. Jerry ended up having a thing for you. However, that doesn’t affect me. I haven’t met Fessenden so I have to wait until I see and hear him. Fausto has Benno Bacigalupi looking into this because Charlie doesn’t have an alibi.”

  Oh, how dumb was I! That’s why Benno was on the case! Not for the insurance claim or the rumors but to bolster the case that the ‘burned guy’ remains the Staties’ choice for perpetrator. So much for saving Charlie’s reputation, or even Dani’s embarrassment!

  “I suppose they’ll be all over him, your … the club members. You’re helping out? When’s that?”

  “Sunday. A membership meeting.”

  “What are you supposed to do?”

  “Be there. Ask some questions
he can answer, if need be.”

  Laretta’s face broke out into a smile. “Hey, what are friends for?”

  My head went back in agreement, finding I liked Laretta. He had the rough charm of the Hill, with the unusual quality of directness, and radiated confidence without Franks’ preening deviousness. Fausto—and I should have realized this—had made a good choice for Charlie.

  “You used to be with Champlin & Burrill?”

  “Eighteen years. Before that, two years with Manhattan District Attorney. Found out that being a prosecutor wasn’t going to be my career.”

  He nodded. “I was with the Attorney General for five. Had enough and I had a family. I applied to Champlin & Burrill but didn’t rate an interview. Got back a form letter that my law experience didn’t meet their ‘needs.’ Now, they got a full blown white-collar criminal law guy in Jimmy Bryan. Former assistant AG. The best.” He laughed, or at least snickered. “The practice changes, doesn’t it. Here we are in my Mercedes up on the Hill, and I’m talking to Alger Temple and I’ve got a client by the name of Charlie Fessenden.”

  A man who gets it, I thought.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  I went home and put away my purchases and laundry, went downstairs, and practiced pool, mindful of my foolish play last night and the challenge for me in this year’s Club tournament only weeks away: don’t get eliminated in the first round! My name was etched on the senior plaque next to the bar at Jimmy’s only because the perennial favorite, Alec Ferguson, was out in the second round on some fluky play by a normally poor player who ended up being my opponent in the championship match. Alec would deservedly regain his senior flight championship this year.