by JJ Partridge
The mind of the toad was working, even as he threatened, “Make some fuckin’ sense or get the fuck out of here!”
“Sure, sure, here’s the payoff. The foreman of the jury that put Higgins away for years, cost him his livelihood, his reputation, his family, was Charlie Fessenden’s grandfather.”
Calibrese retreated in his chair. His eyes narrowed as his intelligence overcame his spite. But he couldn’t help muttering, “A high-hat fuckin’ asshole….”
“Who ill-used your family when he closed his quarry in Westerly, had your father and uncle arrested….”
From the slits of a second ago, his eyes opened wider than I thought possible. “Keep my family outta this! What would you know…?”
My voice was as calm as a psychologist on Prozac. “Think about it. Pontarelli, in your employ for ten years, gets a job at Haversham Golf Club. He knows if the pumps shut down, DEM pulls the permits, they can’t play golf, and you get the cash or increased rental or the property. You win big! Charlie Fessenden’s ‘deal’ kicks in. The members—including your Watch Hill ‘neighbors’—are forced to pay you more or lose their investment. So, who do the members blame while they pay you? Charlie Fessenden. He’s ruined. You get a windfall and Charlie Fessenden takes a fall.”
“What is this shit about pumps? I don’t know fuck about pumps.” The way he said it, his palms up going to me like fans, made me wonder if, indeed, he did!
“It’s about perceptions, Ugo. Like you told me. The perception is going to be that Pontarelli’s your guy and he was trying to corrupt the pump system for your benefit before July third. Somehow the fire is part of this, maybe as a feint or cover, but shutting down the pump system is what this is all about.”
He gestured at me in dismissal but I kept marching forward. This was the moment when my face, voice, gesture and clarity of point—the summation—had to be told as a story; if anything struck Ugo Calibrese as ‘off,’ it was over.
“But, there’s another scenario. Maybe, Pontarelli, solely out of personal revenge because of what happened to his grandfather, stokes Randall with the idea of shutting down the pumps, closing the golf course, so that ‘Charlie’s deal’ ends up in Fessenden’s ruin. Probably never wanted the risk of arson on such magnitude as a diversion or suspected Randall would have arson in mind. But, the clubhouse is torched, Randall’s body is discovered, and the pump system remains on. What’s going on, Pontarelli asks himself. He checks out the pump house and sees that Randall did fake a break-in but something prevented him from shutting off the pumps. Pontarelli’s reaction is to immediately repair the damage and thinks nobody’s the wiser, until Charlie Fessenden, the object of his revenge, tells him the door to the pump house was open the night of the fire. But Charlie is too naïve, too immersed in his own problems, to make anything out of it. Pontarelli thinks he’s clear.”
Calibrese’s mouth opened, spit escaped from the corners of his lips, but he didn’t interrupt.
“Now, the next part could go either way. After the fire, somebody anonymously becomes a ‘whistle blower,’ a good citizen who complains to the always watchful DEM that debris from the fire and runoff from the ruins seeped into the wetlands and ponds. Maybe the fire would accomplish what Randall hadn’t achieved, the suspension or termination of the DEM permits.”
Calibrese’s hands moved to the center of the blotter, squeezing together as though he clenched a rubber ball, or maybe my neck. Could it have been Ugo Calibrese or someone working for him, not Pontarelli, who had been the ‘good citizen’?
“But DEM tests and the Board has a lawyer on top of it, so it relents. It could have ended there. Two strikes and no contact with the ball. But it doesn’t. Two weeks later, the night of the fire at Randall’s trailer, lightning knocks out the electricity to the Club, and Pontarelli senses another opportunity. There’s still a few days to go before the critical anniversary date. If the backup generators don’t operate and the pumps stop, nobody is likely to know for hours because the central security system for the pump system was located in the clubhouse … and that’s gone! He scurries up there in the middle of the storm, he gets the housing off one of the generators to muck it up and shut down the pumps, when up pops Charlie Fessenden! He can’t believe it! Charlie thinks Pontarelli’s doing his job, and Pontarelli has enough sense to leave him alone. Again, he breathes easily.”
With that, I got up from my chair and stood behind it to look down at Calibrese. His hands had receded to his girth.
“All in all, I say it was Pontarelli, acting on his own, figuring if there’s any blame or surprise, it falls on you. Especially with Randall now dust in a jar someplace. But that’s my take. The Club’s Board will take a different tact. Because of your lawsuit, they’d be willing to pursue any angle that would damage you, call into question your motives. When they know about the link between Pontarelli and you, the fake vandalism at the pump house, his sudden appearance there during the storm…?”
Long seconds ticked by as we stared at one another. I had nothing left in reserve. He could crush me now with a dismissive wave or a call to Carmine to escort me out. But he didn’t. His hands slowly left their clasp around his belly to the arms of his chair. He was icy calm; his voice low. “You’re tellin’ me this crap so I give up the lawsuit?”
“And the rumors stop. Charlie Fessenden’s done nothing wrong, no ‘opportunities’ are disclosed.” I spread my arms wide. “Look, I see you as a businessman. In business, you take losses. You try to turn them into opportunities. Make a business decision. Walk away from the lawsuit, from the rumors. There’s less of a chance of Club opposition when you go forward with your subdivision plans. Build up a little goodwill. And it was Charlie Fessenden who convinces you …”
At Fessenden’s name, Calibrese’s face registered an anger that was visceral. He seemed to be barely breathing, so full of hate that the very name brought out his deepest bile. A whitish tongue wet his lips and I figured I had been evaluated and found wanting. And then, there was a ‘tell’ in poker jargon, a fidget, a tic. “What kind of guarantee can ya deliver?” he muttered.
“Only this, Benno Bacigalupi will be all over Pontarelli like a cheap suit.”
Calibrese stood, ponderously, with the aid of the chair’s arms. A knee bone clicked as he straightened to no more than five-four, his belly hanging on the edge of his desk. From somewhere in that bloated body, a noise that was supposed to be a laugh managed to erupt with a spray of spit. “Tough guy, huh,,” he grunted in derision. “A fuckin’ East Side tough guy.” A kiss-off was coming.
“Benno will talk to Pontarelli,” I replied smoothly. “Given the alternatives, he’ll quit his job at Haversham, and move away. What I know, stays here. No guarantee, of course, on Pontarelli. But Benno would be persuasive. No doubt, he’d remind Pontarelli how upset you would be if you learned you had been set up to satisfy his personal revenge….”
Calibrese’s fingers crawled over his pompadour and it slipped; his brows furrowed, his jowls tightened like they were muscles he could flex. In that moment, the kid from the mill village in Westerly revealed himself, born with nerve and little else other than a heritage of family pain and discrimination, clawing his way out of a society run by Fessendens and their ilk who despised his kind. “Got it all figured out, eh? I get rooked because Joe Pontarelli’s old man got a raw deal. Because you say I got a lot to explain because Pontarelli once worked for me?” He shifted his stare away from me. “I’m not shittin’ in my pants because you come up here to save your phony friend. He makes me puke! When my ass was sticking out of my pants, Fessenden was eatin’ off golden plates! What do ya know about quarry work? Fuckin’ dirty, back-breakin’ work, where you got fingers, arms, legs crushed, got killed. And you come in here to push me around?”
He sat down heavily, his eyes drilling into me, measuring me, and considering facts that only he knew. During his rebuke, I hadn’t moved. My bet was that Calibrese wanted, needed, power more than anything, more than money or
respect, had always risked everything to get it, and now he needed to keep it. It was all business now.
Slowly, his face broke into a surly smile. “How’s it feel to have your hands dirty, Mista Temple, trying to shake me down, to make a deal to save the reputation of your shithead friend? That’s what you think I’d do to you, right?” At that, he cackled. “Geez, I’m really surprised! You want to play at being me.” He looked at the ceiling. “Wait outside. Five minutes, and you’ll get an answer.” I thought that there was a serious, pinched, shadow on his face.
Dismissed, I left his office for the corridor window over the slots room, looking down through a haze of smoke at the rows of colored lights. Either there were more players or the number of machines with lights flashing had increased in the past half hour. Pretty easy business in Rhode Island: you install slot machines that the state owns and leases to the operator, the marks play, and you take a cut. A sure thing once they get off the bus. Carmine rushed by me into Calibrese’s office and in less than five minutes, he returned; if he was muscle, he didn’t seem to be looking to bash my face in.
“Ugo says go back in,” and left me.
Calibrese was at his desk, his chair facing toward a filing cabinet to his left. He was rolling a black cigar between his fingers, a lot calmer, a look of resolution on his face. Maybe even the ghost of a smile.
“You’re a stand up guy, right? You want me to trust you and your kind because I should,” he said mockingly, addressing the file cabinet. “So, I’ll tell ya what. I’ll make you a proposition. A game of pool. If you win, I drop the lawsuit. And if you lose, life goes on but you keep your stories to yourself.” He turned to me and pointed the cigar at my face. “If you don’t, I’ll make life fuckin’ miserable for Fessenden. Either way, Pontarelli’s out of here and I never hear his name again. You take care of that.”
I asked against who?
The cigar was dropped on the desk. “Emilio Salazar’s downstairs practicing for tonight’s ESPN match. He’ll play ya. Now.” He turned to me, his face in a sneer. “Wanna play or are the stakes too high?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
The pool ‘stadium’ was a brightly lit television studio with a two row ‘gallery’ on three sides of a nine foot Brunswick Gold Crown table. One large lens camera rested on guides above the table within a panel of dazzling lights; five or six mini-cams were fixed at various heights and angles to cover every shot and ball movement, players, and spectators. An unshaven Emilio Salazar was leaning against the table, in his ‘Zorro’ mode of black leather jacket over a black polo shirt above black trousers. He rolled his ebony cue stick between his palms. “I don’t get this, Ugo. Why am I playin’ him?”
“I said so,” he replied curtly. “Play him and beat him.”
A plain-Jane maple cue stick with a leather butt wrap that looked suitable for my stroke was in a revolving stand off the set. After rolling it on the table to test its trueness, I held it like a rifle and sighted down it while slowly rotating it. This was all for show because the match was bizarrely absurd; Salazar had taken me to the woodshed not four weeks earlier and I hadn’t played a game in weeks! If I lost, Calibrese would be sticking pins into me, now and forever. And, if by some miracle I won, would Calibrese keep the bet? I never bet on pool, right!
I took a few shots to get the feel of the table which, no surprise, was of tournament quality with new cloth that would slow the roll of balls. I asked for a shaper to round off the cue tip, another delay which seemed to irk Salazar.
“Stop foolin’ around. What are we playin’?” Salazar said.
I replied, “Straight pool.”
Salazar, expecting nine ball, was caught off guard, but recovered and snorted, “Old man’s game. For an old man. Makes no difference. Your ass is grass.”
* * *
Straight pool is basic pool, elegant, uncomplicated, and requiring control of the cue ball since most of the shots are short. You use each of the fifteen numbered balls, you shoot at any ball you want to, and every ball counts as one point no matter its number, so it makes for a fast game. Before a match, players agree as to the number of ‘points,’ whether it be twenty-five or one hundred twenty-five. Whoever sinks the designated number of balls first is the winner. Importantly, every shot is a ‘called’ shot which means that the shooter calls out the pocket and you continue to shoot until you miss, at which time your opponent takes over. When only one object ball—the ‘lone’ ball—is left on the table, there is a pause; the fourteen balls that have already been pocketed are reracked with the front position, where the one ball—the yellow ball—would normally be is left vacant. The shooter continues to play and usually tries to pocket the ‘lone’ ball with a shot that also has the cue ball streaking across the table to break up the reassembled rack, allowing the shooter to have a variety of shots for the next shot. Sounds easy? It is not!
So why did I choose straight pool? Straight pool plays to my strength since I grew up on straight pool at Young Jimmy’s father’s pool room where it had the inelegant name of ‘numbers.’ And because it is a game of finesse. That’s all I had going for me.
* * *
“Everybody out of here,” Calibrese yelled to those working cameras, booms, and other television paraphernalia who had stopped work to sidle toward the table. With audible resentment, they left as Salazar collected balls into a rack as Calibrese flipped down a seat in the front row of the gallery. Maybe Salazar wanted an audience to show off to because he took off his jacket and slammed it on a seat next to Calibrese. Delaying the inevitable, I slowly followed his lead, took off my jacket and tie, loosened my shirt collar and folded my jacket carefully over Salazar’s. I made the point to smile at Calibrese who didn’t respond, then took up more time to shake talcum powder on my hands. I could sense Salazar’s impatience grow, could I hope for just a bit of an edge from that? I muttered it was bright enough at the table for sunglasses, conditions familiar to Salazar but not me, and asked Calibrese if the lights could be dimmed. “No” was his answer.
“Water?”
“Over there,” he said, pointing to a Poland Spring dispenser.
Salazar, who had been in the shadows, impatiently stamped the butt of his cue stick on the floor. “Lag or flip for it?”
That was a reference to the opening break. Either we could do a ‘lag’ which means we each shot a ball against the far rail and the ball closest to the shooter’s rail got to call who was to break, or we could flip a coin. Pros usually ‘lag.’ Okay, I can be difficult and I needed a fifty percent chance. I reached into my pocket for a quarter and said, “Call it.”
The quarter left my thumb and in mid air, he called out ‘heads.’ I caught it, slapped it back on my right wrist. Damn, it was heads!
“Number,” he said. The first to pocket the ‘number’ of balls wins.
I answered without thinking, “Thirty-eight.”
“Thirty-eight? Wha-a-at?”
I retorted, “Shoot pool.” Right out of The Hustler.
Oh, he didn’t like that! His mouth puckered and his face dissolved into a supercilious sneer. “Did ya hear that, Ugo? Thirty-eight! You didn’t pack your lunch, did ya? This isn’t gonna take any time at all.”
He chalked his stick, put the cue ball in position behind the lead spot, and sighted down his stick, ready to break, when I called out, “I want to check the rack.” A tight rack is a grouping of balls touching all their neighbors in a proper alignment on the table. A loose rack not only absorbs the power of the cue ball but gives a shooter the opportunity for spins that might get into a pocket. Your opponent usually racks for you and vice versa; I had let him rack without checking it, not too smart when you are playing with a pro. I took the plastic triangle from the hook at the bottom of the table and hovered over the rack. The two ball on the foot spot seemed a millimeter off. “Well, looky here,” I said aloud as though dramatically surprised, “not as tight as it could be.” I put the triangle around the balls as Salazar came over, his fa
ce holding rage.
“Are you calling me …?”
“No,” I replied icily. “How would you know who was going to shoot first.”
From the shadows, Calibrese said impatiently, “He’s right. He should check the rack. Shut up and play.”
Salazar stiffened and turned to stare into the darkness. Neither of us could see Calibrese’s face, just his plump body and egg shaped head in the shadows. Salazar swallowed the insult and resumed his shooting position.
Anyone who watches pool regularly, especially nine ball tournaments on television, expects a rack to be broken with balls spreading out in all directions, usually one or two being pocketed at a minimum. Not the way of straight pool. Straight pool often begins with what is called a safety shot. The cue ball hits a corner ball which, in a perfect world, bounces off a rail and ends up behind the balls in the rack, while the cue ball returns to the front of the rack, creating an almost impossible shot at the freed ball that can lead other players into a mistake or a foul. Salazar shot and nicked the far left corner ball, the nine, and watched it spin against the rail, and angle off behind the rack. Meanwhile, the cue ball bounced off the side rail and returned halfway down the table. It was a wonderful safety shot. I couldn’t call the nine—the ball behind the triangle of remaining balls—because I’d never get it in. If I simply smacked the cue ball into the rack, I couldn’t call a shot which would be a foul. Two fouls and the game is over. My shot had to hit an object ball that touched a rail cushion, otherwise, it also would be a foul. No wonder a lot of straight pool players say that if you win the toss or the ‘lag,’ let your opponent have the opening shot.
I thought of mimicking Salazar with a safety shot of my own, when a close examination of the rack showed the two ball, still at the point of the rack’s triangle closest to me, to be slightly out of position. If I read the alignment correctly, it might send the one ball at the right corner of the triangle into the corner pocket. I called the shot and heard Salazar smother an arrogant chuckle. I set, aimed and hit the two ball squarely, sending the one ball to speed toward my called pocket but with more of an opposite English than I intended. It struck the cushion at the angled opening to the pocket, and smartly went back into the rack where a trio broke from the set.