Straight Pool

by JJ Partridge

  He jerked his head toward me. “No, that’s not what happened! Silverman suggested it to me. Sounded great!”

  “Just before you closed the deal?”

  “Well, around then.”

  “Did you see a possible conflict?”

  “What conflict?”

  I gave up.

  * * *

  It was two-thirty by the time Haversham Golf Club was disappearing in my side mirrors. Lunch had been made bearable by Dani’s presence. Charlie sat morosely at the table, eventually complaining of a headache and leaving Dani to drive me back to my car.

  It clouded up during my drive home and by Schartner’s Farm near Route 4, the windshield wipers were in a steady rhythm. In a few minutes, I was on Route 95 weaving impatiently among the trucks thundering north through a drizzle. I should have retanked on Advil but I forgot to ask for the muscle relaxer before I left Fessenden’s and that didn’t help my disposition nor thought process. Do I tell Fausto the latest? Could I rely on Charlie telling Laretta? The pump house event, or non-event, didn’t seem very relevant to anything we were interested in except Charlie now had another deception on his record. But maybe, the pump house was a stop on Randall’s way to the clubhouse? Why? At least now I understood the reason for Charlie’s lies. Charlie knew that if he had called security—I didn’t believe he didn’t have his cell phone with him—perhaps, the fire might have been prevented by a 911 call or at least contained. Why hadn’t he made that call? Because he was drunk or close to, or too scared? No matter, but if the Board found out about his inaction, he was toast!

  I also realized that I wanted a satisfactory resolution to what happened that night, how Randall killed himself, and that something Charlie said was waiting in a part of my brain to catch up with a conclusion, when I touched the visor button for the door opener of my garage. I put the Charger away, walked up East Street around the corner to my house, and felt my BlackBerry vibrate. I checked the number and it was Fausto Tramonti.

  I answered by saying, “Hold on” and went to the second floor bathroom for two little red pills. It was a full four minutes before I was back on the phone and this time, I was aggressive. The whole situation was giving me the proverbial headache. I opened the conversation with, “Not even a call to ask if your brother-in-law survived the membership meeting?”

  “You shoulda called us…!”

  ‘Shoulda called us? That response was classic Fausto. Always on the offensive. I could picture him at his desk, his face in a frown, his hands fluttering in the air over the speakerphone. “What’s going on?” I continued heatedly. “You didn’t tell me that Randall scared the bejeezus out of Dani right before Charlie got him fired. You didn’t tell me about the Calibrese connection. Or, that Charlie hasn’t an alibi until he arrives at the fire and that’s why you hired Benno and Laretta!”

  Fausto’s silence meant he was surprised by what I knew and was thinking about how to handle the inconvenience of truth. “You weren’t supposed to get that far into it,” was his muted response. “The idea was for you to help get Charlie through the membership meeting. No further involvement. That was it.”

  “So you and your brother decided how much I was supposed to know?”

  “Cheap shot, Algy.”

  Ugh. “You better hope Laretta’s as good as you think.”

  “Why? There’s something you’re not telling me …?”

  It gave me pleasure to relate how Flanaghan and I met with Calibrese and learned about Charlie’s ‘arrangement’ with Calibrese for possible future real estate commissions, that Charlie was likely set up by Calibrese. Fausto’s response was a curt, “Who knows besides you?”

  “On our side, Flanaghan and me. Now you.”

  “Shit.” Then, “Why did you meet with Calibrese? Why didn’t Flanaghan ask me?” He was about to shoot the messenger. “Chrissakes, Algy, what are you doing? Nobody’s asked you! Stay out of it!”

  That jab riled me. I planned to also tell him of our misadventures at Oaky’s Tavern but decided not to since he was so patronizing and dismissive.

  “Damn,” he said, “you can be a stubborn bastard!”

  Being a stubborn bastard, and now an angry, stubborn bastard, I hung up. Maybe that should have made me feel better, but it didn’t. I felt stupid.

  * * *

  Nadie arrived around five with a bundle of groceries and an overnight bag. After some discussion about dinner, we decided on tuna steak which I would prepare on the CharBroil grill on the patio, together with a salsa, and a tomato and parmesan salad. I mixed a Ward Eight cocktail for her and a Negroni for me. As I grilled and sipped my aperitif, she sat at the breakfast bar and I told her about my run to Westerly, that I had decided, which was true, that Charlie Fessenden’s problems were no longer any of my business. Her eyebrows arched in a question and then she seemed satisfied that I was becoming ‘unglued’—her term—from the troubles of Mr. Fessenden. With a bottle of cool Santa Dama Chianti, we shared our rapido e simplici meal, with Nadie full of new thoughts from her guide book and the internet for our itinerary in Italy. I guess I was getting goofy because I responded to everything she said in my limp Italian, which loosened her too serious, tour director demeanor. Maybe, in my foolish repartee, I was also covering up for my bruised hand, the latter having been explained as the hood of the Charger falling as I checked the oil.

  After we cleared the dishes and glasses, she went upstairs while I scrubbed the grill. I followed some time later with two espressos. A black and white Turner Movie Classic was on the Sony as I put the espressos on the table in front of her. Katherine Hepburn’s elegant face was profile to profile with a ‘what’s his name’ leading man from the early forties. Maybe John Lund? The film was of a Philadelphia Story genre; she wore an evening gown, he had a three-piece tuxedo, and ballroom dancers flashed by in the background.

  I slumped into the sofa and saw that Nadie was engrossed in the film. No surprise considering her notions about America’s upper class, especially its women, and what better screen representation of the type than Ms. Hepburn with her good cheekbones, hair artfully exposing a delicate brow, her clipped speech, graceful use of words, and wispy mannerisms. With her tennis racket, or golf club, or martini, or in a ‘first woman in the job’ role, she epitomizes an aristocracy of tone, money, and culture that captivates Americans, whether in a Wasp or in a Kennedy. And that phenomenon troubles Nadie, a child of Brooklyn, with social activism in her DNA and anti-elitist to the bone. Time and again, she is drawn to a sociological examination of the ‘why’ of American class. Hadn’t she read de Tocqueville at Radcliffe? During our early days together, I sometimes wondered if, deep down, the ‘why’ was the reason she hooked up with me in the first place.

  Nadie interrupted my musing. The movie was over and Ms. Hepburn was being interviewed years later. “Isn’t she lovely?”

  “Yes…?”

  “That voice …,” Nadie said. Ms. Hepburn must have been eighty at the time of the interview, still clear eyed and beautiful, and I almost asked ‘remind you of someone?’ as the actress reflected on her later movies with Spencer Tracey and John Wayne. “You know,” Nadie whispered as though the actress was sitting across the room, “she was Tracey’s mistress for almost two decades.”

  I said I knew that. Should I add Howard Hughes too? “But were they happy?”

  Nadie turned to me, surprised. “I don’t know,” she said thoughtfully.

  “It could have been two decades of frustration, sneaking around, excuses, hideaways….”

  “Yes, it could have been,” she said, with a gentleness that was unexpected.

  The interview ended. Nadie started to surf channels. “Why do you suppose he married Dani Tramonti?”

  “Huh?”

  “Charlie.”

  “How about love.”

  “I mean in addition to love.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “He’s a dummy but not all dummies are dumb when it comes to their own inadequa
cies. He must have seen Dani as someone beautiful, probably an ardent lover, and with all the money and power that her family brought to the marriage.”

  “Well, that’s rather cool,” I replied.

  “Think about it,” she said. “I bet he could have married any number of girls from his social set. But he didn’t. He married into a traditional Italian family. Albeit, a wealthy Italian family. There had to be another reason.”

  “And you call me a cynic!” I complained. “A rich guy marries a beautiful girl from money and somehow it isn’t romance. Dani loved him. He couldn’t love her? Nadie, it makes the world go ‘round. People fall in love and they get married. They really do!”

  Nadie used the remote and clicked off the television. She stared at the screen, then let her hands comb through her hair. Seconds went by in silence before she said softly, “You know I love you. But, it’s a different time. Someone like me has a separate life and a career from yours. I can’t be …, enveloped …, subsumed in you …, like it is for Dani. Sooner or later, that’s what you would expect….”

  “Not so!” I exclaimed. “We could do it.”

  She exhaled deeply, leaned over, and took my hand, held it for a moment as though unsure of a response. The next thing I knew she clicked the remote and we were watching a rerun of Seinfeld.

  The moment was gone.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Behind the Journal’s ‘Lifebeat’ section, Nadie’s towel turban was barely visible across the breakfast bar. “Listen to this! That new cable show, The Hill, starts tonight. ‘Violence, treachery, politics, infidelity, bribery, backstabbing, set right here in Providence!’” Pause. “Seems like they’ve got that right.”

  No response required. Nadie’s cynicism toward my fair city was ironic since she enjoys living and working here, its great restaurants and cultural attractions, with Boston only an hour away. I sipped my espresso. Out through the den, I saw the new apartment and condo towers in WaterPlace in the heart of the bustling self-proclaimed Renaissance City. Why hadn’t HBO, and Showtime, and Hollywood bought in? Because, Nadie once said in her psychologist mode, Providence is schizoid, having both an exciting, vibrant, stimulating personality and a corrupt, self-absorbed, noir personality living together, a condition unrecognized by natives and long-term residents, evident to newcomers. I’m paraphrasing, of course, but you get the idea. The ‘good’ Providence is what I hope for, but ‘where the old world shadows hang heavy in the air,’ is more titillating.

  I heard a few more quotes about The Hill – I assumed from her evident interest that we would catch a few episodes—as I breezed through Part Two of the Journal’s Verona series focused on its superb restaurants and local cuisine. Someplace along the way, I wondered aloud when the Faculty Club article would break, which brought Nadie’s retort that maybe the story had been killed by some ‘friend of the University,’ reflecting her suspicion of the Journal’s publisher, part of Providence’s elite, don’t you know.

  I dodged that bullet and closed the newspaper with the clever remark that it was a day closer to our departure for Milan. Nadie responded by bestowing a radiant smile because I was the one who brought up Italy.

  * * *

  Maria Lopes knocked and came in to my office with a handful of photographs of her nephew’s graduation, including one of him in the uniform of an Army second lieutenant standing next to his proud auntie. I had been frequently reminded by Maria that the nephew was off to Boston University Law School before his active duty service and that she hoped for my assistance when he applied to Providence law firms for summer employment. Once again, I acknowledged that I would do so if his grades were up to snuff. She sniffed and said, “Not to worry!”

  The rest of the morning was routine through to a noon conference call with lawyers in the counsel’s office at Dartmouth and Princeton on the timely subject of overlapping municipal police and campus police jurisdictions. It was soon apparent that the issues faced in Princeton, New Jersey and Hanover, New Hampshire had little relation to the way we do business in Providence, Rhode Island. When the call wrapped up with promises of more information sharing, I told Maria that I would be back after two and walked to Thayer Street for a late lunch at Geoff’s Deli where the day’s special was a ‘Judge Fortunato,’ heated Italian cold cuts, pickles, hot peppers and mozzarella on Italian roll. A stool at a window was my vantage point to watch the sparse sidewalk traffic with a Providence Monthly and an Orangina. As I finished, I found myself thinking of the delights of Bellagio, Lake Garda, Verona, Trieste, the Maserati I had rented for the trip, and then, more somberly of last night, and Nadie’s indecision. That thought would not go away, even in expectation of Italy’s many splendors.

  * * *

  When I returned to College Hall, the light was on in the President’s first floor office.

  Charles Danby looked tired. Commencement Week is a rough stretch for everybody in College Hall but toughest on the President. Being the gracious host for the luminaries, alumni, and Trustees, giving a last ‘all’ for the graduates, being ‘there’ all the time and ‘on’ all the time, is wearing even for a vigorous man like Charles Danby. As I knocked, he took off his glasses, pushed aside a document he was reading, and thanked me for a difficult week dealing with Sonny, Puppy Dog and the Faculty Club story. I related my ambush by Ms. Reins. “Enterprising,” he laughed, not at all alarmed. “Sounds like a graduate we can be proud of.” Then, “I’m sorry if it gets personal for you.”

  I nodded wanly. I admire Charles Danby, not only for his singular achievements during his brief tenure, but because he is a good man. He then said he was about to leave with his daughter, a graduating senior, on a ‘road trip’ from Providence to Florida, with no itinerary, reservations, or plans, stopping when and where they felt like it. “Can you imagine not being scheduled for two weeks?”

  The pleasure of the thought was written largely in his happy expression. Martina Danby, a remarkable young woman, bright and very loyal to her father, had been his unofficial President’s House hostess since the death of his wife shortly before he took office. “You know she’s signed with the Peace Corps. Thinks it’s going to be Tanzania for the first year, training volunteers in the second. Then graduate school.”

  “You must be very proud of her.”

  He pushed his chair away from the desk and turned away to face a window and the towering trees of The Green. “I’ll miss her terribly. She was my link to her mother in so many ways. I don’t know if I could have gotten through the first year without her. She was my extra set of eyes and ears on the campus. I’ll never have that again.”

  His secretary knocked on the doorframe, announcing a phone call. “By the way, Sonny sent me this,” he said and handed me a contract for the city’s use of the South Water Street buildings for the ‘Sister City’ events. The formal letter that went with it noted a need for repairs and clean-up and the City’s willingness to move expeditiously on permits. I wondered why it went to the President and not to me.

  “Pressure’s on Sonny to produce something positive,” I said.

  “Maybe the ‘truce’ can continue?”

  “I doubt it. There’s neither goodwill or veracity in anything related to Sonny.” I said I’d review the contract before I left for Italy with Nadie. At her name, he smiled. “I heard she’s shaking the tree at Psychology. Good for her.” Then, he rose, came around the desk, and took my hand in both of his. “Algy, you’re part of what makes this campus work. We’ve got something good here. You and Artemus, the rest of our senior staff. I’m gratified.”

  I think I blushed.

  * * *

  A few minutes later, I felt like Nostradamus. Maria and Marcie, on summer hours, had already left the office. Stuck to my computer monitor was a message on a yellow Post-it in Maria’s careful penmanship: “Call Mr. Tuttle!”

  “Your truce is about to end.” The ‘I told you so’ bite to Tuttle’s voice wasn’t hidden. “I called the Traffic Division this afternoo
n for a status report for the movie people. Guess what? We’re not getting any support. We get nada. Those huge vans and trailers they got, all the trucks with the special lighting? Vince Nardello, the traffic guy I deal with, said if they’re gonna park, it won’t be on the city streets. And that schedule of street closings we gave them, with the ‘no parking’ schedule, forget it!”

  Why would Sonny mess up Providence movie making? Screw up Leonardo DiCaprio and Alec Baldwin and Toni Gillette coming to town? Sonny loved hobnobbing with movie makers, posing with film stars, dining with directors on Federal Hill, showing up at sets with a cashmere overcoat around his shoulders like an impresario. Had the Faculty Club issue, or my threat to expose his pay-to-play politics at the License Bureau, overcome his urge to be in the lights?

  “Maybe somebody didn’t get the word?”

  “There is no ‘word’! I’ve known Nardello for years. He’s got his orders directly from McCarthy!”

  “How much time do we have?”

  “I’ve got to talk to the production people tomorrow morning if there’s going to be a problem.”

  “Let me try Puppy Dog,” I said. “Don’t call them until I’ve gotten back to you.”

  Paula Ciccone’s familiar recorded message greeted me: ‘Mr. Goldbloom is either on another call or is outta the office. Please leave your name and number.’ Note that it didn’t add ‘… and he’ll return the call.’ Who else? I couldn’t call McCarthy for obvious reasons. That left Tony Tramonti. A good excuse, too, because I remained peeved with his brother and him.

  “No, I haven’t been ‘ducking’ you,” he said too breezily. “You’ve been terrific. I owe you, the family owes you.”

  “Here’s your chance to repay,” I said curtly. “The Traffic Division is under orders not to cooperate while the DiCaprio movie is filmed on campus. The production people arrive next week, ….”