by JJ Partridge
“Thanks,” I said warily, now with the impression that Fausto was thinking the University, and me in particular, were rapidly becoming political liabilities, or, at the very least, nuisances.
“I wanted you to know,” he said firmly and stood in our dismissal. Clearly, releasing Benno and me from our assigned tasks had become his next order of business.
I started to rise from my chair but Benno tilted his head to me and spoke in his modulated voice. “Ain’t that simple. You should know what happened that night in case they decide to go further when they know what we know. Because I think they will. Suppose they ask Charlie if he had a personal run-in with Randall, like a few hours before he got fired? Because maybe Randall told somebody else?”
Fausto interrupted gruffly. “Benno, I only got a few minutes before I got a client coming in. Where’s this going?”
Benno slowly raised his eyes to Fausto. “You’re paying me a lot of money. You ought to listen.”
I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone address Fausto Tramonti like that. But, to my surprise, Fausto, despite his glare, sat and folded his fingers over his stomach.
“I told you some of this before,” Benno began. “Over the past eighteen months, there’s been fourteen known fires set in or near the swamp. But here’s the thing. Not one at a property owned by a Quonnie. According to the local cops, a Quonnie buddy of Randall, Freddie Jones, is responsible, with Randall helping out. Jones is a certifiable nut case. He was released from the Army’s stockade about when the fires began, in there for biting off somebody’s ear after some unflattering remarks about Indians. He also poured lighter fluid all over the guy’s bunk and set the barracks on fire. The Chief in Greenwick figures Jones and Randall would torch a place after they boosted anything of value, copper flashing, metal pipes, bicycles, small refrigerators, beat-up air conditioners, all kinds of crap. They sold the stuff to junk yards or off the back of Randall’s truck in the boonies, like a traveling Salvation Army store….”
“Yeah, yeah,” Fausto said with exasperation.
“Every Friday night, Jones and Randall are at Oaky Gardiner’s tavern, usually with some other troublemakers, mostly relatives of Jones. On the night of the clubhouse fire, a Friday, Randall and Jones don’t show up. But the night before, they do, all the time giving each other high fives, until they got shut off and tossed. When the Staties were asking questions about Randall’s whereabouts on the night of the fire, they didn’t ask Gardiner or anybody else about the night before the fire, according to Gardiner. Just the night of. You gotta ask the right questions to Quonnies because they don’t volunteer.”
Fausto’s face flushed with impatience. “C’mon, c’mon, who cares?”
“You do,” Benno replied calmly. “Oaky Gardiner, the tribal leader, had always protected Jones, bailed him out a few times, because his family’s a solid minority on their tribal council. But right now, Gardiner’s not happy with Jones or his relatives.” Benno glanced at me and maybe his lips had a trace of a knowing smile. “So, he tells me something interesting. Said it was tribal history but I got his meaning. The Quonnies set ceremonial bonfires on Fessenden’s land, the ‘signal hill’ that Fessenden referred to, where the clubhouse got built. Guess who ignited those fires every year? Seems like this is a privilege that belongs to the Jones family because they trace their lineage to a hero named Magua. They’d collect all kinds of combustibles, take it through Randall’s property, haul it up to the top of the knoll, get all dressed up, do a lot of whooping and hollering, and then a Jones would set it off!”
Benno’s eyes were now half closed. He had it all worked out in his mind. Fausto’s big leather chair creaked as it came forward. “Benno, you’re probably right. For all I know, you’re absolutely right. So what? I don’t give a shit! Unless getting Jones picked up helps us to direct attention away from Charlie.” He paused to consider that. “Nah! Just going to prolong it.”
I asked, “You said they would steal things before….”
Benno continued to stare down Fausto but addressed me. “No one knows if anything missing at the Club, right? I’ve been thinking the fire had to be a two man job. Too much for a little guy like Randall.” His head slightly tilted toward me. “I think Jones and Randall decided on a boost at both buildings and a helluva bonfire. Could have used a pickup through the back trails from Randall’s trailer. Figured they could smash and rob, set the fire, stash whatever in the swamp or at Randall’s place. Look, I’ve been out there. You could hide half of Providence in there. So, that means they’re together. Get it? Charlie doesn’t have an alibi but he doesn’t need one if Randall was with Jones!”
Fausto’s fingers drummed the table. “Look, can you guys get this! The Staties aren’t gonna pursue it! We don’t care why he did it or who if he had help! All we gotta know is that they don’t come after Charlie! I know what I gotta do….”
I agreed with Benno. “What if Calibrese found out that Charlie had a run-in with Randall…? The rumors on the land deal would be small potatoes….”
“Fahgettaboutit.” Fausto responded. He might as well have said, ‘Stay away from Calibrese,’ and then, realizing he had come at us too shrilly, he became as silky smooth as his suit. “It’s over, Benno,” and he extended his hand over the desk. “You did a great job! The burned guy did it. We don’t need to know why. Or with who. Let’s drop it, okay!”
Benno stood, bringing Fausto to push away from the desk and come around to us, his presence and personality filling the room. “Send me your bill. Charlie’s okay, the Indians got trouble, life will go on.”
Benno left Fausto’s office without a response. Fausto smiled and shook his head as though I would understand his reaction. “See? That’s his problem. Goes off on stuff we don’t care about. Can’t let things go.” I stood and he raised his arm to my shoulder and said I was a ‘true’ friend. “We’ve done what we can do.”
Why did his slap on the back as I left his office give me a chill? Why did I remember a line from a Mafia movie, a don saying ‘screw your friend, marry your enemy.’
* * *
I approached Benno in the parking lot as he was opening his car door. The rain was now a mist. I asked him for a moment of time and got in the passenger seat. The car smelled of the Pine Tree deodorizer hanging from the rear view mirror. His face was stony, his lips in a straight line. “Something stinks,” he said. “Don’t know from under what rock. Why shut down on Calibrese? It’s killing Fessenden.”
I wondered about that as well. Maybe Fausto agreed with my assumption that Calibrese—even for Sonny—wouldn’t push Charlie’s conflict to a complaint at the Real Estate Commission because he would be involved. Or, maybe Fausto figured Charlie’s reputation was a lost cause and it was time to move on. In any event, my interest in what happened the night of the fire remained unabated. So, I told Benno that Charlie had lied as to his activities the night of the fire, that there were noises, lights, and maybe voices up at the pump house, that the pump house door had been open, and that Charlie later mentioned the security lapse to a greenskeeper who brushed him off.
Benno rubbed his eyes with his thumbs in consideration of new information. “The out buildings like the pump house were tied in by a wi-fi system to the central station in the clubhouse that wasn’t operable as yet. Shoulda had audible alarms. I didn’t check with the alarm company if they had a record of anything going off out there.” Then, he added, “So, you’re saying the fire gets set and nobody would notice if the pumps weren’t on, not for hours. The pumps are off and DEM pulls the permits. Ugo wins big time.” His voice trailed off. “What’s the name of the greenskeeper?”
“Pontarelli.” I noticed the slightest reaction to the name.
He reached into the back seat and withdrew a battered briefcase, opened it, and found a set of papers clipped together and headed ‘Personnel.’ He flipped pages until he found ‘Joseph V. Pontarelli—Assistant grounds keeper.’ “Before he got the job, he worked at Calibrese’s co
urse up in Greenwick. I was surprised coming from a public course he could get a job at a first class place like Haversham. Goddamn, I’m slipping. Should have looked further!”
Benno’s eyes dulled in his evaluation, then abruptly, he shook his head and shuffled the papers back in the briefcase. “No. It doesn’t work. Calibrese is too smart to get involved in something dangerous like setting a fire as a blind for shutting down the pumps. Not for short money. It’s too obvious. If the pumps are shut down or vandalized, just before the trigger date on the lease, somebody’s gonna point a finger at him. And, someone, a Randall for instance, could rat him out. Nah, he’d never put himself in that position, always plays his cards close to the vest….”
Benno’s reluctance to connect the dots made me impatient. I knew that squint-eyed, revengeful toad was involved! “But,” I argued, “Pontarelli must be his guy on the scene while the Club gets built. Suppose…,” Benno was already shaking his head ‘no,’ “… Pontarelli riles up Randall after he gets fired. Pontarelli must know about the temporary storage, the fireworks, …”
“A clubhouse fire doesn’t revoke the DEM permits,” he replied rigidly. I told him that the DEM had tested the pond after the fire after a false report had been received, but he dismissed the thought as a tick on an elephant. “Calibrese’s not going to risk an arson charge to shut down the pumps!” He was dogmatic.
“Benno, I want you to be working for me. Not Fausto. Is that a problem?”
“I just got fired,” he answered, slowly, his eyebrows arched in question.
I explained what information I wanted, some that was directed toward the fire, some more as to the nature of political intelligence. “I gotta lot on Calibrese already,” he said, his eyes sparking with renewed interest. “All his connections, going back years. Whatever you need to know. But not about his Westerly background or his dealings with the Quonnies or Pontarelli. It’ll take a few days.”
“I’m leaving for Italy day after tomorrow for two weeks. I need whatever you have when I return.”
“Okay.”
We talked about his fees, hourly and daily, and I accepted. I left his car, saying I wasn’t sure why I wanted the information.
“I never know what’s useful until it kicks me in the ass,” he replied and put his brief case on the vacant passenger seat. “You gotta have imagination. Get as many facts as you can about the people involved. Something might work.” What I might have expected from a gimlet-eyed, hardball detective right out of Hammett, Block, and MacDonald. “Nobody appreciates that anymore. Investigations aren’t just logic. It’s goddamn shoe leather!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
I collected Nadie in the Range Rover at her apartment. She was smartly dressed in a colorful short sleeve Bolivian knit sweater over black shirt, and dark green pants. Pearls decorated her kissable ears, under tied back, glistening hair; a pink and green Vera Bradley bag hung over her shoulder. She was happy, almost loquacious; an Eyewitness Guide Book To Northern Italy was withdrawn from her bag and as we drove south in heavy traffic streaming from Providence on Route 95, she clicked off a number of ‘must sees’ at Lake Como, Verona, and Padua; I made agreeable sounds. The way she rambled convinced me our excursion in bella Italia would soothe the ‘whatever’ that was bothering her.
Thunderheads darkened the horizon and gusts of a cooling wind came off the Sound as we arrived at Pond House. Dani, at the front door to greet us, embraced me and then, more guardedly, offered her hand to Nadie who was polite. Good! I was surprised when Nadie hung on my arm when we followed Dani into a living room with comfortable looking seating; a shell motif was evident in the bases of hurricane lamps, decorative glass jars, along ceiling borders, and in dark blue drapes complimenting pale blue walls. The Flanaghans were standing by a granite slab fireplace under a large, well-executed pastel of a rugged shoreline, beach roses, and tall grasses. Our hostess introduced Nadie to the Flanaghans; Charlie was at a drinks table, loudly announcing that he was mixing ‘adult beverages.’ I noticed Jean Flanaghan’s kind, intelligent eyes in her round freckled face and that her comfortable clothes signaled that she didn’t care if she was as stout as her husband.
Nadie requested a Cosmopolitan and I settled for a beer. I didn’t realize that Charlie was one or two drinks ahead of us until he joined us with our drinks and loudly declared—out of context and over our small talk—that he was ‘confident’ that the insurance company was about to ‘capitulate’ on an appropriate settlement to fund the clubhouse’s restoration, that he always knew it would ‘come out alright.’ Flanaghan and I shared a silent acknowledgement that his pronouncement did not have to be affirmed by us. Dani steered the conversation away from the Club with weather talk as she passed hors d’oeuvres; I probably stuck my foot in it when I asked Flanaghan to tell Nadie about the Windmere Country Club. Flanaghan did so, patiently ignoring Charlie’s frequent and boorish interruptions. When Flanaghan got to the manslaughter trial of the club’s manager, Charlie stood abruptly and with a splash from his cocktail wetting his cuff, declared righteously, “He deserved it!” and walked to the drinks table to replenish his glass for the second time since our arrival.
Jean Flanaghan had listened patiently. As her husband finished, she said quietly, “Tom didn’t tell you that my Uncle Joe was the busboy at the clubhouse.” That brought forth ‘oh’s’ and a silence; Charlie was open-mouthed. “He would have been twelve or thirteen. My grandfather never got over it, blamed himself, because ordinarily he would have been at the Club as its bartender but he had been loaned to an event in Watch Hill. The manager got through by clinging to a part of the collapsed clubhouse and riding the flood across the Pond into Randall’s fields. They found him the next morning, clothes mostly ripped from his body, and drunk on a bottle of something that followed him ashore. That, of course, didn’t help him locally. People wondered.”
Nadie asked, “I don’t understand why they didn’t leave before it was too late….”
“The Depression, Nadie, the Depression!” Charlie interrupted. “They were afraid to lose their jobs! He kept them there!”
Jean Flanaghan’s voice gave away the discomfort of a guest disputing a host. “Looking back, a lot of mistakes were made that day, decisions that cost lives. Should he have been imprisoned, lose everything, because of his ignorance of a horrific, once in a hundred years, storm?”
* * *
Through a dinner of mesclun salad, grilled swordfish steak, early peas, Yukon Gold mashed potatoes, and ample pours of wines from Sakonnet Vineyards, Jean Flanaghan, gently encouraged by her husband, matched his storytelling skills with a repertoire of tales of huddled families miraculously saved from the ravages of the hurricane, ordinary people turning into heroic rescuers, the spiritual revivals of those who survived ordeals, and nature’s eventual healing of the storm ravaged coastline. It didn’t take Nadie long to give away her profession by asking why her stories had happy endings, to which Jean responded there were too many tragedies like her Uncle Joe’s for a dinner table, leaving Nadie momentarily abashed.
As dessert plates were being cleared, Westerly was invaded by lightning and marching booms of thunder as rain swept in from the Sound. Jean Flanaghan indicated her desire to leave but Charlie insisted that we accompany him to the ‘observatory’ and ‘observe’ the ‘lightning show’ over the Sound. The women declined and Dani ushered them into the living room for coffee; Charlie led a curious Flanaghan and me to the second floor gallery and up a circular metal staircase.
The ‘observatory’ was sparsely furnished, seemingly designed for the sole purpose of three hundred sixty degree views through wide casement windows. A ceiling fan went on with the overhead light which revealed a brass telescope on an eye-level stand aimed toward Block Island. Charlie explained his grandfather’s fascination with the shipping on the Sound and its frequent storms, calling the octagon shaped room a ‘whimsy,’ as jagged slashes of lightning streaked the sky and reflected in the white capped surface of the pond.
Wind and rain, maybe hail, lashed the windows and pummeled the roof, thunder cracked every few seconds, creating a sense of danger you could see, feel, and hear. A lightning bolt lit up the sky to the north toward Route 1; Flanaghan said ‘a thousand one’ when the room trembled in the following thunder.
One of the women called from the base of the stairwell, demanding our return. I was ready to go downstairs and said so, when Charlie spotted the blaze. “Look over there!” he shouted, pointing north toward Route 1. “There’s been a strike!” A faint, yellow glow appeared above the tree line. “Could be …,” his voice lowered suddenly “… Randall’s.”
In his reflection in the window, his mouth was agape. I took his elbow but he resisted. “I’m fine, … fine,” he stammered, his face strained and damp, and shook off my hand. “I better call Dunn’s Corner,” he said and followed Flanaghan down the stairs.
The blackness and sheets of rain were seared every few seconds by lightning followed by cracks of thunder. I wrongly assumed that the torrents of rain would quickly quench the fire; instead, flames licked upwards, dancing in the turbulent winds. Then, the lights went off, eliciting a collective gasp from the second floor, followed almost immediately by a buzz of relief as they flickered on. I heard Dani’s thin, not very reassuring, voice say that generators had kicked on, that electricity loss happens once a summer, and we were not to be concerned. I went down the staircase where Charlie was on the telephone, giving directions to what I assumed was the Dunn’s Corner Fire Department. He said ‘yes’ several times, then hung up, shaking his head excitedly. “They’ll never get a pumper into Randall’s from Route 1. The road over the wetlands collapsed since they sold the place. But will they listen to me? I told them the alternative is to come through here and up the back trail….”
Dani interrupted. “If it is Randall’s house, at least nobody lives there … with Ollie gone.” For some reason, I thought of Freddie Jones but dismissed it. She continued, “I can show them the trail if the truck comes in through here.” Then, “But the gate, if it’s locked….” She stared at Charlie.