Straight Pool

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Straight Pool Page 25

by JJ Partridge


  I was barely listening to Flanaghan, so focused was I on Joe Pontarelli’s presence at the pump house. Nadie grasped my arm, saying to all that we were leaving, and pulled me toward the hall. “What possessed you to go out there?” she whispered. “He had a gun! Algy, a gun! You could have been killed!”

  I excused myself for the lavette when Dani gave me a pair of socks. I heard Jean Flanaghan, whom I would have thought never raised her voice, doing so at her husband, both for his heroics and for owning a handgun she knew nothing about. Meekly, Flanaghan confessed he had it in the glove compartment of his car because of Jones’ behavior at the ‘incident’ at Oaky’s Tavern. What ‘incident’? And it turned out that Flanaghan, like me, hadn’t been very candid about our adventure last Sunday. Flanaghan, fortunately, gave a sketchy description, emphasizing the damage to his car and what he said was Jones’ crazy behavior, as I joined them with my face washed, hair wiped, and shoes cleaned and back on.

  “You were there, too,” Nadie said, quite likely thinking of my bruised hand and sore back of the past few days. “Can we go now? Unless you have to go down to the police station.”

  I looked at Flanaghan for an answer. His brows arched and his eyes seemed to brighten. “Nah, nice thing about practicing law in the same town all your life, you get to know what the cops want. I’ll file the complaint against Jones. Charlie’ll come down with me.” Flanaghan got up and withdrew a set of keys from a trousers pocket. “Here, take my car. We’ll get AAA here in the morning, get yours towed to your dealer. I’ll get somebody to go up to Providence and pick up mine. We’ll drop Jean off at home, and we’ll get us to the station….”

  “Yes,” Charlie added, assuming an air of responsibility. “Of course, we’ll take care of it.” He put out his hand to me. “I owe you again, Algy. If he had gotten the boat …, it was gassed up …, can you imagine? He would have raced down the Pond to some inlet or landing, maybe smashing it up on the rocks, or getting out through the breachway into the Sound. I could have ended up with no boat!”

  Thanks, Charlie, for thinking about me.

  * * *

  On the way home in the big black sedan with the smashed rear deck, exhausted and yet adrenaline-wired, I explained what I knew about Freddie ‘Magua’ Jones and my suspicion that he might be an accomplice of Ollie Randall in the clubhouse fire. Nadie listened in a grumpy silence. She remained angry that I had not been candid about my first encounter with Jones. Later, as we neared Providence, she said off handedly, “The sachem, what’s his name, he’ll be happy. With Jones in jail, that will be one less tribal council vote against his casino.”

  I agreed. “Oaky Gardiner may be the only winner tonight.”

  * * *

  Oakland ‘Oaky’ Gardiner was not a winner. His son Peter Gardiner was dead, discovered in Ollie Randall’s trailer by Westerly firefighters. Flanaghan telephoned us with the news from the Westerly Police Station within five minutes of my turning the key in the front door lock. “It’s Peter all right. All the cops know Peter. Won’t tell me how he died but there was gun play. Jones hasn’t been charged yet but.…” His pause was full of meaning.

  “After we left Oaky’s on Sunday, Peter followed me out of the swamp and stopped me. Steaming mad! The fight embarrassed him. He wanted to make sure I was pressing charges. He told me Freddie was holed up in the swamp someplace, that sooner or later, Jones would come for whatever he and Randall had boosted from out of Randall’s, and …, are you ready for this…, he was going to ‘fix’ Freddie good.”

  Nadie, listening by my side, picked up most of his conversation. “I thought Westerly was a nice, peaceful town. Now Providence, I understand. Drive-by murders among gangs, a Mafia on-purpose, or an abusing husband, that’s par for the course….” She stopped. “Sorry. No pun intended.”

  I ignored her.

  * * *

  The next morning, I learned that Tom Flanaghan was born with blarney and guile. On its web site, the Westerly Star reported that through Charlie Fessenden’s efforts, the Westerly police had captured Freddie “Magua” Jones fleeing from the scene of suspected arson and homicide. Charlie led ‘friends’ on a trek through a fierce thunder storm to assist firefighters gain entry to Randall’s burning house and trailer, only to face Jones escaping Randall’s trailer. The police captured Jones at the boathouse because of Charlie’s timely 911 calls—and there was nothing about my ‘daring do’ or Flanaghan’s timely arrival or gun shots. I realized Flanaghan had laid it on with a putty knife. If the Tramontis were paying him to save some scrap of Charlie’s reputation in Westerly, Tom Flanaghan deserved a bonus on his retainer.

  Nadie, of course, wasn’t satisfied with my candor and slowly dragged the truth out of me as to the incident at the tavern and our trek to Randall’s trailer. Despite her upbraiding over our espressos, I detected pride in her voice, mixed with a concern that was heartfelt, reminding me of when she, and I, had subdued the ‘Carter Stalker’ only a year earlier, when we felt like John Steed and Emma Peel of The Avengers for a few days, even though she fit the part more than me.

  She left Congdon Street after breakfast to finish packing. I exercised, got cleaned up and walked to the office. I marked up the proffered contract with the City for the buildings on South Water Street and asked Marcie to clean it up and send it to Puppy Dog just before I returned to the office. She knew whom to call during the next two weeks and that the international cell phone I planned to pack would be for emergencies only. Before I left College Hall to begin my own packing, a Westerly Star reporter contacted me on Jones’ capture. I followed Flanaghan’s lead, giving Charlie accolades for his steady nerves, concern for those in harm’s way because of the fire, and the capture of the fleeing Jones. I was barely a witness to it all. That almost made me swallow my tongue but I got through it.

  * * *

  Nadie and I left Providence at four, baggage stacked into a Lincoln Continental limo, on our way to the seven-forty, nonstop Delta flight from Logan Airport to Milan. While Nadie fussed about passports, and a forgotten book, whether and when she should take one or two Ambien sleeping tablets for the flight, and then became engrossed in her guidebook, I got to the sports section of the Journal. ‘Play,’ according to the golf writer, would be initiated tomorrow at the ‘snake-bitten but exclusive new Haversham Golf Club,’ with the Governor taking the inaugural tee shot. I folded the newspaper and leaned back in the comfortable leather seat, watching the traffic into Boston slide by. I hoped it would be a cloudless, South County beautiful, day when the members played their new course. Maybe, some of the good feeling would slop over on to the ‘brave,’ ‘concerned,’ and ‘unselfish’ Charlie Fessenden, alleviating some of the obliquity of ‘Charle’s deal’ and other failings in remission.

  Unless Ugo Calibrese had other ideas.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  As you climb out of the sun drenched Lombardy plain toward Lake Como, the heat dissipates with every meter in gained altitude. To the north, golden lights play off snow-tipped mountains, and you smell—you think—the camellias, azaleas, and verbena that rush by as you use the silky six speed gearshift of the Maserati Granturismo more frequently.

  The lake sits like an upside down wishbone in the foothills of the Alpi Orolie, a water filled gorge created by an ancient glacier. At the cusp of the lake’s two arms, elegant Bellagio, the summer retreat of Italian nobility since the sixteenth century, faces the northern stretch of the lake. There, the water becomes turbulent as it decides whether to flow southwest to Como or southeast through the narrows to Lecco.

  While the scenery was guidebook beautiful, I was engrossed in driving. The V-8 Ferrari engine purred in muscular echoes and the refined suspension and superior braking flattened the curves of the S-231. No GPS system or electronic foolishness on the dashboard of this piece of metal sculpture from Pininfarina. Even Nadie, usually oblivious to automobile artistry, raved about the car’s sinuous lines, its luscious leather seating, the rosewood panels on the dashboard a
nd doors, the Bose sound system, and the unexpected massaging seats. During the next ten days, I would drive this gorgeous car, experience its power and learn its secrets, a perfect holiday extra for an automobile buff.

  Close to three in the afternoon, I pointed the car into the sweeping curves of the palm lined boulevard from Piazza Mazzini into the stone courtyard below the warm yellow facade of the Hotel Florence. Two uniformed staff quickly took our luggage as hand in hand, we climbed the marble stairs of the eighteenth century palazzo of the Borremeo family. The reception requirements were little more than signatures and a flick of passports and we were whisked to the top floor in the filigreed cage of a silent elevator.

  Our suite was baroque opulence. Nadie opened double glass doors that faced the shimmering lake; curtains billowed in a breeze that was clean and sweet and smelled of water. The canopy bed, frescoed ceilings, and antique furniture, the marble bath with all of the amenities, the vista of the sky-tinted lake and snowcapped mountains from the balcony, and the prospect of passionate lovemaking, were transforming. Nadie’s radiant smile was full of expectation.

  * * *

  It was our third day in Bellagio, a day off from touring the lake’s many attractions and exploring Bellagio’s graceful arcades for caffe latte and connetti con marmellata breakfasts and long lunches. We lay on cushioned lounge chairs on the hotel’s stone terrace, dressed in shorts, with me in an apricot colored polo shirt and Nadie in a light sweater. The temperature was cool for eleven o’clock late in June, the sky milky, and the morning mist hadn’t cleared the lake’s surface, giving it a mysterious quality, especially as ferries suddenly appeared and disappeared. The hotel’s courteous staff had been by several times, seemingly fixated on whether or not to open the sun umbrellas, inquiring ‘was the senora comfortable,’ and ‘would the senor like to reserve for luncheon or dine al fresco?’ I was in my reader comfort zone with the latest Janet Evanovich in my lap, a pot of espresso and a plate of almond cookies on the table beside me. Nadie was reading a fearsomely thick tome. I was considering ordering lunch delivered to the terrace—an antipasto, vegetable ravoli al dente and perhaps peach melba—when I heard a deep exhalation. Nadie book closed, her sunglasses went to her lap, and she said, “The night of the fire, when you and Tom and Charlie went off to war, Jean Flanaghan told us something that just popped into my mind.”

  These out-of-no-where, change-the-mood events, are a Nadie ‘thing.’ I bent a page corner and closed the book. On the flight to Milan, we mutually promised there wouldn’t be any talk about her new course or Charlie Fessenden or the Quonnies. “Mia cara, do I want to know?” I was in my Italian lover mode.

  “Yes, I think you do,” she replied. “The people who died when the tidal wave hit the clubhouse? In the hurricane? Jean’s uncle, remember?”

  “Sure,” I grumbled, feeling the mood dissipate.

  “When people realized that two waitresses and the boy, all local people, had been killed, and the manager, who kept them there, was still alive, it didn’t take long for the Washington County prosecutor to get calls. The victims’ families couldn’t sue the promoter or the club because of the bankruptcy and they only got a few dollars out of their workers’ compensation checks. Jean’s grandfather and grandmother got nothing because her uncle was a minor. And of course, they were devastated by the loss of a son….”

  She stopped for a moment to see if I was paying attention. By now, I was.

  “The manslaughter charge against the manager was that he put their lives in mortal danger by maintaining ‘unsafe premises.’ The cook who survived was the only witness against him. Said she tried to convince the manager to close before the tidal wave hit but he was insistent they stay.”

  The lawyer in me reacted. “Seems a stretch. Like Charlie said, unless he was Simon Legree snapping the whip, and they were in fear of their lives if they disobeyed, I don’t know that was enough to try him for manslaughter….”

  “Well, they did. Jean said it was the only hurricane related criminal case brought in all of Rhode Island! And he was convicted. And here’s the point. Charlie Fessenden’s grandfather was the foreman of the jury! And, two years later, he bought the golf course land, including where Charlie’s house is located, at foreclosure. Charlie Fessenden’s grandfather!”

  I hoisted myself up in the lounge chair as Nadie continued. “It was obvious that Dani didn’t know. When Jean realized that, she was apologetic about bringing it up.”

  Wheels within Rhode Island wheels. “What was the manager’s name?”

  Nadie paused. “I think it was Higgins … or maybe Huggins. I’m not sure.”

  “Still,” I said, “the conviction of Higgins, or Huggins, and the purchase of the real estate had to be….”

  “You’re going to say coincidental, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “And that’s not all of it. Dani went out of the room for the coffee and Jean said the grandfather was one of the town’s big shots, whom Jean said her family called a ‘swell.’ When was the last time you heard that word? Big car, servants, a mansion overlooking the river, owned a lot of real estate, and the last operating quarry in Westerly. A year or two before the hurricane, middle of the Depression, he closed it. Without any notice. Shut down, throwing fifty people out of work without any kind of severance. The workers’ rioted when they couldn’t get their tools or their back wages, and he had them blacklisted from any employment in Westerly. But the ‘swell’ was still doing fine, driving a big Packard, trips to Florida….”

  “Nadie, callous, yes, ….”

  “Just think of it. This … ‘swell’ … closes down the town’s last quarry, a lot of people lose their livelihoods, then he puts the manager away, and buys the club’s land at a knockdown price so he can build his house where three people died in his front yard!”

  Class was rearing its ugly, complicated head! “I don’t know and I don’t care.”

  “Higgins or Huggins … whatever his name was … was a victim of prejudice and Fessenden’s cupidity….”

  “Ugh!” Taking up the cause of the manager, an outsider, an underdog, put upon by a ‘swell’ taking advantage of status and money and ignoring a tragedy, was essential Nadie.

  “Jean said Westerly talked about it for years. People wondered if the manager got a fair trial. The Fessendens were disliked by ordinary people because they were snobs, for the way they closed down the quarry, treated their employees. Was the grandfather trying to make himself popular by putting the manager away?”

  Better stop it now. “Look, you didn’t hear the witnesses, you weren’t in the jury room, you don’t know anything about it. And we’re on vacation and it isn’t Charlie’s fault—or my fault—if his grandfather was a rapacious, insensitive jerk!”

  “Do these people have blood in their veins? Put somebody away for years! Build your house where three people needlessly died? Take land from people … the Randalls … that owned it for hundreds of years because they’re down on their luck? People like Charlie, they go through life never having to pay for how they got there, their history….”

  “That’s just it, Nadie, it’s all history. You’re making Charlie out to be one of your ‘types.’ ”

  O-o-h, I shouldn’t have said that but it sailed right by. She put her sunglasses on with a snap that signaled irritation. “You’re ready to excuse perfectly outrageous behavior because either it was too typical of the time or it touches too close to home.”

  “That wasn’t very nice.” Why was she pushing this?

  There was a long silence and then she said, “It’s just … oh, I don’t know. It’s just there.” She picked up her book and muttered, “I’m sorry. Forget it.”

  I went back to Janet Evanovich and her beat-up city, lowlife bail bondsman, crazy relatives, and spirited heroine, but Nadie had struck a chord. Despite sharing my mother’s and Sylvia’s take on ‘getting on with it,’ maybe I did excuse too easily. After all, Charlie is a dunderhead beside being a liar, and li
kely as avaricious and insensitive as his grandfather. But would the grandfather, the ‘swell,’ have manipulated the system by playing to local prejudice in the jury room? Did that explain why Westerly would easily believe rumors about a Fessenden?

  And, what happened to Higgins-Huggins? I’m not sure why but after lunch I called Benno.

  * * *

  A few days later, I made my self-imposed single call to the office. After routine questions, Marcie said that the lead story in the Sunday Journal was Ms. Reins’ report on Sonny Russo’s extraordinary expenditures for food, drink, and travel. Every one of Providence’s great restaurants made the list, from Al Forno to Z Bar, along with some of Boston’s finest eateries—we’re not talking chop houses but Lockovers, No. 9 Park, Capital Grille and L’Espalier for example—with limo rides back and forth. Sonny even took some of his cronies and contributors to Las Vegas for a convention or two. Of course, the well-publicized trip to Verona was there, with Providence real estate entrepreneurs Ugo Calibrese, Vincent ‘Vinny’ Malofante, and Salvatore ‘Sally’ Veramma; ‘governmental representatives’ Senator Silvano ‘Silk’ Zenga, Representative Tommy Regan, and Councilman Christopher Ferrucci; and the capo regimes of Sonny’s organization, notably Nick ‘the Angel’ Buonnatti, all paid for by ‘Friends of Russo.’ But nothing on the Faculty Club!

  That came on Monday, a factual listing of the bills, the amounts overdue, the policy of the Faculty Club when member payments were not current, and a litany of the many fights between the University and Sonny. A sidebar referred to me and my role in the dunning letters, which were printed in full, with a paragraph about my friendship with the Mayor’s political rival, Police Commissioner Anthony Tramonti.

  As Nadie predicted, Tuesday’s paper brought the faculty’s reaction. Ms. Reins had scrounged up representative comments on what was referred to as ‘Sonny’s special dispensation,’ all scathingly critical of the Faculty Club, College Hall, and the Mayor. An investigation by an independent forensic accountant was the demand of Professors Ambrose Kyle and Merten Aggassey, two pain-in-the-ass fussbudgets, ‘sparrow farts,’ Derek Kirk calls them. The Mayor’s response was that it was all a mix-up by his campaign staff and since the account was now current—it was paid the Monday after Commencement—so what’s the big deal? Was this a University plot to embarrass him while he fought for tax fairness and upheld drug laws?

 

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