Carom Shot

by JJ Partridge

  Young Jimmy asked after Nadie, a frequent dinner companion downstairs in the restaurant, and mentioned a weekend exhibition match he had set up for a couple of pros, then made his rounds to the other tables, and went downstairs. I had my Blackberry out to reserve a cab for seven when it buzzed.

  I read the number and pressed the green phone symbol. It was Tramonti—and he was pissed!

  “Lavelle Williams was picked up about thirty minutes ago. He’s in interrogation. Somebody here decided to break up our party. He was at his mother’s place on Camp Street, with your minister friend. Caused enough of a commotion that back-ups were called in. Anyway, he had junk on him, enough to get him for possession, maybe intent to sell. By now, he’s been charged, fingerprinted, blood tested, and photographed.” Tramonti coughed, then continued. “I’m home, but I’m going downtown. Do you want to come? I owe you that much.”

  I accepted immediately and told him where I was; he said he’d pick me up in ten minutes and hung up. Only then did I think of Reverend Thomas and his likely reactions: disbelief, followed by betrayal. I punched in 411 and got the number for the parish house.

  “He’s not here, Mr. Temple.” The voice that answered was cool, elderly, and female. “He’s with Missus Williams. They—” She stopped abruptly.

  I felt embarrassed as only a do-gooder can when the do-good goes badly. “I’m going down to the police station with Commissioner Tramonti.” There was no response. “Mrs. Thomas, do you know if your husband contacted a lawyer?”

  “I don’t know for sure, but I don’t think so, ’cause he was relying on you ....” An accusation hung in her voice.

  The whole thing was such a goddamn mess. “Would you tell your husband that I’ll call as soon as I have any news, and that I’m sorry ..., really, very sorry—”

  “I’ll give him the message, Mr. Temple. Goodbye.”

  In my frustration, I kept the line open until the phone emitted a high-pitched squeal, then gulped down my drink, grabbed my Burberry, and went outside to the parking lot. The air felt cold, sour, and sooty. Tramonti’s black GMC Envoy soon pulled in; I slid into the passenger seat, primed with questions, only to be ambushed by the slobbering tongue of Oboe, Tramonti’s chocolate English Lab. “Sit!” came a gruff command and Oboe retreated to the rear seat with a disappointed whimper.

  As we peeled off, I snapped my seat belt into its lock. Tramonti was staring straight ahead, his large head rigid, his lips moving in and out, signaling conversation would not be welcomed. I thought of Lavelle Williams in custody, picturing him as scared, angry, and betrayed, until I recalled the drug dealers and gang members I had prosecuted so many years before—fiercely insubordinate, smirky, bravado oozing out of every pore, operating on the assumption that all was temporary—and my empathy waned.

  We crossed the Providence River on the Steeple Street Bridge in front of Citizens Plaza and slowed only when faced with a bank of red brake-lights on Exchange Terrace between the skating rink and the refurbished railroad station complex. Tramonti’s ill humor piqued at the traffic heading towards the Civic Center and Mall; he hit a switch on a flasher light on the dash, its globe burst into white and blue brilliance, and with Oboe howling and his master threatening punishment, we snaked through the bottleneck, ignored a traffic signal and irate car horns, roared past the Westin Hotel and Convention Center into LaSalle Square, and entered the parking lot behind the darkened hulk of the Public Safety Building. Tramonti parked in a space designated “COM’NER” next to three concrete steps that led to a battered metal door barely illuminated by a red bulb in a wire cage. I followed Tramonti, with Oboe on a leash, up the steps where he paused to look through an eye-level, wire-reinforced window in the door, used a key, and charged inside.

  Immediately, we were enveloped by the overheated air of a Providence municipal building, a dry, stale odor of disinfectant mixed with grime. The Public Safety Building is a graceless concrete pile—its façade gives the appearance that the architect just gave up—meant for, and filled by, unhappy people. Led by the dog who clearly knew his way, we ran up two dimly lit flights of worn, metal-tread stairs, guided by paint-flecked banisters. At the third floor landing, Tramonti flung open a metal door to a starkly lit corridor with pea green walls and black and yellowish squares of linoleum. Oboe’s claws echoed off the flooring until we stopped at a door marked “308 Commissioner, Enter Through 310” with an arrow pointing down the hall. Tramonti unlocked 308 and flipped a switch for fluorescent lights that reluctantly blinked on.

  The office was crowded with non-descript furniture under a stained, dimpled tile ceiling and badly needed an air purifier. A dusty, fly-specked venetian blind hid a single window above a battered air conditioner. Oboe was taken off his leash and, after intently sniffing in each corner, found a place in front of a metal desk, his huge brown head resting on his paws. His master plunked down heavily in a squeaky, oak-backed swivel chair behind the desk, then stood to rip off his raincoat and suit jacket and throw them angrily to the floor behind his chair. His white shirt and Gucci tie maintained the veneer of the business lawyer he had once been—until the tie was yanked off, his shirt collar was unbuttoned, and his sleeves were rolled up over hairy forearms. A pack of Salems and a lighter were tossed on the file cluttered desk. He pushed in a button on a telephone console.

  “O’Neil,” somebody by that name answered.

  “Tell the Chief the meeting is in here,” Tramonti responded in a bellow; he released the button, put a cigarette to his lips, and motioned me—still standing—toward a chair. “This might take a while.”

  I closed the office door, dropped my Burberry over one of the three vinyl chairs facing the desk, and sat. Tramonit’s cigarette remained unlit, maybe out of deference to me, maybe because in a moment of virtue, the city had banned smoking in public buildings. He used a remote for a CD player in a bookcase behind me and The Eagles’ Hell Freezes Over began with “Get Over It”. With the cigarette hanging from his lips, his icy eyes, curly black hair, swarthy complexion, and stony face begging for confrontation, he could have been one of the fellas from Goodfellas.

  I didn’t pursue conversation even as I wondered why he had asked me to come with him. It was then that I noticed there was no touch of familia here, not what I would expect from a Tramonti whose lineage demanded acknowledgement. The yellowish walls were unadorned except for a certificate of Tramonti’s appointment as Police Commissioner. Was it a signal to all, especially to Chief McCarthy, that it was a place of transition?

  Sonny Russo had appointed Tony Tramonti as Police Commissioner as a pay back for the generous campaign support Fausto Tramonti, Tony’s brother, had given Sonny in past elections, with the expectation that the position would continue as a part-time ceremonial post and that Tony was just another uniform-enraptured dilettante who craved a city car and driver and the trappings of medal award ceremonies and press conferences. Which meant that the department—despite being racked by low morale, petty corruption, promotion-for-pay politics, cheating on entrance and promotion exams, well-publicized incompetence, and alleged racism—would remain Sonny’s fiefdom.

  It didn’t go according to Sonny’s play book. Within weeks of his confirmation by the City Council, despite being a civilian and a Harvard graduate to boot, Tramonti went full time and was exercising rights given exclusively to the Police Commissioner by the City Charter without so much as a “how’re ya” to Sonny, who was insulted and embarrassed by this treachery. Tony’s easy going personality and community roots meshed well with rank and file cops with whom he went on night patrols and drank with at their hang outs, never demeaning their modest educations or working class backgrounds as reformers often unconsciously do. When he bucked Sonny on promotions, secured a pay increase from the City Council for patrolmen, authored a settlement of a long-running discrimination suit on admissions to the Police Academy, and began community outreach in minority neighborhoods, his leadership began to pick up allies.

  Sonny tried t
o fire Tony but lacked sufficient votes among the fractious Council members, some of whom also “owed” Fausto. Then, he resorted to sabotage. The FOP, the police union controlled by Chief McCarthy’s mostly Irish and Italian contemporaries, “grieved” every personnel change to arbitrators but couldn’t make the appeals stick—which gave Tramonti more clout—leaving the Chief to swallow his resentment and stay short of open defiance in day-to-day operations. Sonny seethed as Tramonti’s accomplishments garnered admiring Journal editorials, more so when Providence politicos gossiped that this “comer”, a tough-minded scion of the city’s most well-known Italo-American family, was preparing to challenge Sonny for City Hall.

  Tramonti abruptly silenced The Eagles. “I hear Jesse Kingdom will be up there on Friday.”

  I told him about the flyer, which he indicated he knew all about, and Puppy Dog’s message from Sonny.

  “This time, Puppy Dog just might be right,” he grumbled.

  I started to defend the University’s decision but stopped. Wouldn’t have made a difference. Since last August, Jesse Kingdom had become Tramonti’s nemesis.

  It began with a routine bust of an after-hours sip joint in South Providence. A black off-duty cop who tried to bring calm into the rowdy crowd was killed in a crossfire between patrol officers Ryan and Cabone and someone with a .38. False rumors, drunkenness, and a legacy of racism set off the arson, looting, and assaults the next night and into the next day, bringing on a police clampdown resulting in a plethora of allegations of police brutality. No doubt, the churls on the force used their privilege of street power against the “yoots” of South Providence; you could surmise that from the number detained rather than arrested, and the number of brutality complaints. Sonny and the Chief immediately rallied to the “rights” of “their” cops and attacked the “bleeding hearts” who didn’t get their hands dirty “dealing with criminals.” A state law, the Policemen’s Bill of Rights, the legalization of the “blue wall of silence,” required Tramonti to convene closed internal hearings into the allegations before he could refer them to the Attorney General for prosecution. When the hearing panels, by law appointed by the FOP and the Chief, found no cause for prosecution, Jesse Kingdom and his W.A.R. organization blasted away at Tramonti, not understanding—or seemingly interested in—the limits of the Commissioner’s authority or the realities of directing a police department reeling with shock and fatigue.

  In the aftermath, Tramonti, caught in the middle of controversy and without a political base of support, saw his election prospects plummet. Jesse Kingdom, more than even the caustic Journal editorials, was responsible. Many reformers who had indicated support for Tramonti did not want to back someone who earned Kingdom’s condemnation while others shied away from opposition when Sonny was riding high. Sonny, scenting blood, rejoiced in the crippled candidacy of his rival but wanted the kill. The trials of Ryan, Cabone, and two other white officers under federal civil rights laws were set to begin next week at the federal court on Kennedy Plaza. Jesse Kingdom’s announced courthouse rallys, Tramonti’s inner circle believed, would be a suitable opportunity for Sonny to again whip up support and marginalize Tramonti.

  The outer office door opened and slammed shut. Oboe sprang to his haunches, ignoring Tramonti’s commands to sit. With a perfunctory knock at the office door, Chief McCarthy, resplendent in a blue blazer, gray slacks, and white turtleneck sweater, his chin forward and his chest puffed out, strode in. “I know what you’re going to say,” he said breezily, “and—”

  He saw me and stopped in mid-stride. Oboe’s muzzle rose as a low growl rolled in his throat.

  “I think you know Alger Temple, Chief.”

  McCarthy recovered enough poise to acknowledge my presence with a hand offered only out of habit. I attempted to stand but he crowded me into remaining seated; he was so close I could smell his Aqua-Velva. “Good to see ya, Alga,” he said as he crunched my hand, his voice not concealing irritation and making my name sound absurd.

  Tramonti took the cigarette from his mouth and used it to stab the air. “They went against my direct order,” he said in a deliberately staccato voice that reminded me of a movie tough guy.

  Twenty-five years of police force experience, and as many in the political wars of Providence, earn a survivor like McCarthy a doctorate in guile. His demeanor expressed the confidence of a self-possessed man used to command and he gave off more than a little insolence as he picked an imaginary mote of lint off his expensive-looking blazer. “Nothin’ to get boiled about. He’s part of Flores’s gang and had some junk on him. Somebody didn’t get the word and he got rousted—”

  Tramonti, his face even darker than before, popped out of his chair and stormed around the desk; Oboe’s ears went back and his teeth bared and Tramonti yanked back the dog’s chain collar. “I gave specific orders. Williams was coming in, voluntarily, with his minister ... voluntarily, I said, and these guys go in a black neighborhood, no warrant, and they bust into his mother’s house! His mother’s house? With his minister screaming that he’s supposed to be meeting with me?” He caught his breath. “They knew what they were doing so I don’t want any bullshit about a good bust!”

  Tramonti’s ferocity left McCarthy open-mouthed; the muscles on his neck stood out like cords and his already florid complexion flushed. He sucked in a deep breath, stuck out his chin, and braced his shoulders, a move only slightly less exaggerated than one from Rodney Dangerfield. “Look, it may make ya feel good to bring someone up on charges but that’s not going to make anyone around here too popular. There are plenty around here who don’t like the idea of a ‘how-de-do’ with this scumbag, especially when he’s involved with Terry Sullivan’s girl.” When Tramonti didn’t flinch, McCarthy shifted gears. “Anyway, he’ll be here for awhile.” He sat in the chair next to me and, with a coolness I had to admire, slipped into a patronizing “we know best” mode. “Y-o-o-u people up at Carter, y-o-o-u think all we got ta deal with is this Stalker. Let me tell ya, we—”

  Tramonti was barely audible when he interrupted. “Get this. Anybody involved is in deep shit. The deepest.” He was sitting on the edge of the desk, not more than a step from McCarthy. “Don’t they get it ...,” his voice falling into a real wiseguy tone I hardly recognized, “... that this might blow the case? They had better grow eyeballs in the back of their heads!”

  McCarthy’s face had gone from surly to a twitchy recognition of a predicament: there was a problem if you screwed up a “family” case. “We got him so I don’t see the beef,” he said and shrugged. His mean eyes made me wonder about how Williams was faring, either under questioning in an interrogation room facing some of McCarthy’s finest or in a holding cell two floors below immersed in smells of dirty mattresses, sweat, and drunkenness from the tank down the hall. Right now, because of Tramonti, he’d be protected from any rough stuff, but for how long?

  “Has he got a lawyer?” Tramonti demanded.

  “I don’t know. I just got here.”

  Tramonti responded by pushing the telephone console towards McCarthy. “Find out.”

  McCarthy grabbed the receiver, punched in three buttons on the console, and spoke to someone named Kelly. McCarthy’s eyebrows raised appreciably. “He did?” he said with evident disbelief and listened for another moment before he hung up. “Jerry Franks,” he said, sounding somewhat deflated. “He just showed up. LaVoie set the hearing for nine-thirty on possession and intent to sell charges.”

  The office was hushed as we absorbed the news. The criminal defense bar in Rhode Island is like everywhere else: a lot of ham-and-eggers live on DWIs, assaults, and other petty crime, and a few top guys in Canali suits, Zarella shoes, and Armani ties grab the big cases and fees. Jerry Franks, however, didn’t need Milanese tailoring or other indicia of the criminal bar’s success. He was above the top-of-the-top, the dean of the criminal lawyers in the state, for decades the successful, flamboyant, crafty defender of the mafia dons, indicted politicians, major drug dealers, em
bezzlers, and anyone else who could afford his services. All the biggest dirt bags of Rhode Island hired him because he was smart, crafty, a workaholic, and incredibly successful before Rhode Island judges and juries. How could a street kid like Lavelle Williams retain a Jerry Franks?

  “Shit,” Tramonti said with disgust, “the kid’s protected! He’s on Flores’s tab!”

  McCarthy, beginning to look as though he needed a handful of Rolaids, slowly got to his feet. “Let me find out who we got handling the hearing.” Ignoring me completely, he left the room.

  When the outer office door slammed shut, Tramonti stood and closed the inner door. To my amazement, there was a glint of victory in his eyes. “You’ve got to take advantage of any situation around here,” he said, slapping me on the back. “The Chief has a problem. Some of his very own picked up Williams and will have to take the fall. Nobody likes that. How about some coffee?”

  Without waiting for an answer, he opened the side door and went out into the corridor; Oboe, tail swishing madly, got up and almost beat him over the threshold. I sat back, trying to get a fix on what had been another skirmish in the grinding day-to-day war between the reformer Commissioner and the truculent Chief, a fight so intense that the combatants would pummel one another without care as to who was present. Anthony Michael Tramonti may be savoring a win right now but Daniel Patrick McCarthy would be planning his counterattack. There was no checkmate in this power game.

  Tramonti returned, carrying two styrofoam cups; he waited for Oboe and then kicked the door closed. The tepid, greasy brew could have been sucked directly from the nearby Woonasquatucket River but that didn’t seem to bother Tramonti. “LaVoie, the bail commissioner, is Franks’s man. He’ll do about anything Franks asks, unless we’ve got enough to embarrass him into letting us hang on to Williams for a few more hours. If not, LaVoie will let him out on personal recognizance on the junk charges.” He sat on the edge of the desk and leaned toward me. “Williams plays into the politics here. The Detective Division guys McCarthy owns have put out the word that The Stalker is a suspect until shown differently. McCarthy doesn’t like the picture of an Irish blond shacked up with a black dealer. It shames Terry Sullivan. One of his guys. Not the brightest, or the nicest. A survivor. Used to be secretary of the FOP. If she’s a random victim of The Stalker, we don’t have to get into her drugs or her love life. Fortunately, McCarthy doesn’t own everybody and we’ll get to the bottom of this eventually. So, what was he going to tell us?”