I didn’t answer.
“I get it.” I heard him let out a full breath. “Well, you may have been a chump about her, but it’s understandable, with all this going on.”
“I hope she understands,” I said.
“We’ll see, you may need to give it some time. She’s a good lady, I can tell you that.”
I thanked him. Then I said, “I know about Blackie, too.”
I didn’t need to say more, he knew what I meant. He said, “I’m sorry, kid.”
“You don’t need to be. You’ve been a good friend to me all these years, I just never knew how good.”
I heard Selma start yelling in the background, demanding to know who was on the phone. Benny told her to shut up.
“I guess maybe you should go,” I told him.
Benny said, “Don’t worry about Selma. She just worries, is all.”
I told him that wasn’t a bad thing.
“You’re right,” Benny agreed, then changed the subject, saying something about how he’d like to see Gilles again, how he’d been meaning to grab a flight over there, just to pay a visit. But I knew Benny. I knew he never would.
***
BACK IN THE HOTEL ROOM, Donna had her bag packed and was ready to take the train to Paris.
“How was Gilles?” she asked.
“Tired,” I told her. “And I think a little sad to see us go.”
“Me too.”
She was standing in front of the open window, the blues and greens of the sky and sea providing her a worthy background.
“Before we leave, I’ve got something to say. About you. About how spectacular you’ve been through all this.”
She laughed her melodic laugh. “A few hours ago you were worried I was a call girl, or some kind of gun moll working for your cousin.”
“I’m not saying any of that is true, but you did tell me you understood why I had doubts about you.”
“Oh, I understood all right, but to be thinking the things you were thinking about me.” She shook her head. “Just hideous.”
“Gun moll?” I asked, the look on my face getting her to laugh again.
“That’s exactly what you believed.”
“If I did, then you are the most beautiful gun moll of all time.”
“How far do you think you’re going to get with a line like that?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted, “but what if I add something like, Donna I’ve fallen in love with you?”
I stepped forward and took her in my arms and she reached up and held me to her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Donna and I spent two days in Paris. We went sightseeing, strolled along the rive gauche, had dinners at Taillevent and Chez Andre, all of which was wonderful to experience, but boring as hell to have someone tell you about.
Especially since you want to know about the Monet.
***
WHEN WE GOT BACK TO NEW YORK we headed straight for my apartment, dropped our bags in the foyer, grabbed a screwdriver and made for my bedroom. Donna sat on the edge of my bed as I took my father’s painting off the wall, that oil of a French countryside he’d given me years ago. I held it in my hands, looking it over front and back, then laid it face down on the floor and began carefully prying the canvas from the frame with the screwdriver.
It came apart easily, so I put the gilded frame aside, which left only the painting, stretched on its wooden struts. I had a close look at the edges of the canvas, just as Gilles had instructed. And just as he had instructed, I removed the heavy duty staples that held the canvas to the wood.
I peeled the canvas away, expecting to find the Monet underneath.
It wasn’t there.
***
THE NEXT DAY I HAD TO RETURN to my real life. I left Donna sleeping in my apartment and went to work.
My boss, Harry, was positively thrilled to see me, especially when I told him I hadn’t done a thing on his new automobile account.
“Let me get this straight,” he said, his corpulent frame vibrating in his chair, his cigarette hand extended toward me in a vague attempt at a menacing gesture, “all your promises about what you would be doing while you pulled your little disappearing act, you did none of it. Have I got this right?”
“Not exactly. I did sort of think about the campaign.”
“I see. You sort of thought about it. Well then, what else is there to say?” He stood up which, as I have mentioned, was a major physical activity for Harry. “I’ll just call the client and tell him that my cracker jack account exec has sort of been thinking about him and his car dealership, and that pretty soon we may sort of put together an ad campaign for him. How’s that?”
After everything I had been through over the past week, the predictability of Harry’s tirade came as a familiar relief.
“When have I ever let you down, Harry?”
“Let me down?” he bellowed, though there wasn’t much fire behind it.
“That’s right. When have I ever said I was going to do something I haven’t done?”
“Don’t play games with me,” he demanded, making an effort to raise his voice with each word. “I need that workup, and I need it pronto.”
In the past, I would have said “Yessir,” gone back to my small office, and set out to do whatever he was asking. This time, however, I just stood there and smiled.
“What the hell are you grinning at?” he wanted to know.
I had no answer for him.
“What is it?” he asked again, this time a little less gruffly.
“I don’t know, Harry. I was just thinking, that’s all. I mean, how worked up are we going to get about a guy on Long Island who wants to sell a few more cars? I’m not saying I won’t do it, you know I will. And you know why I will? Because we’re just a couple of working stiffs, you and me. Perspective, Harry. That’s what I’m smiling at.”
“Perspective?”
“That’s all,” I said. Then I left Harry standing there, having no idea what the hell I was talking about.
***
DONNA HAD TO LEAVE NEW YORK that afternoon, and saying goodbye was not easy. I took her to the airport, helped her check in and stood by the security entrance.
She said, “I hope it all works out for you.”
“Thanks.”
She laughed. “Thanks? That’s it?”
“I don’t know what else to say. I’m caught between sad and confused and feeling just awful to see you go. I miss you already.”
“Me too.”
“Which part? I mean, ‘me too’ to which part?”
“How about, all of the above.”
I took her in my arms and we kissed, and for a fleeting moment I considered holding onto her, not letting her get on the plane. Instead, I asked how soon I could come out to see her.
“How about tomorrow?”
“I’ll see what I can do,” I told her.
She was about to walk away, when I called her back. “Did I mention how great you were? Through everything.”
She didn’t answer. She just looked at me, gave me a little wave, and I watched her until she disappeared down the long corridor to her gate.
***
I DECIDED, SINCE I WAS AT THE AIRPORT on Long Island already, to stop by the car dealership and say hello to the owner, just to show how interested I was in his Cadillacs and to make Harry happy.
I was walking through the terminal toward the parking lot exit when a familiar looking, middle-aged man came up beside me. On my other flank appeared a younger guy I had never seen before.
I didn’t wait for them to speak. I said, “I was wondering when I would see you again.”
The man who had come to my apartment a few days before, claiming he was my father’s old friend only to have his sidekick rough me up, gave a
slight shrug of his shoulders in reply.
I looked from him to his new companion, then asked, “Where’s Silvio? Attending an anger management seminar?”
They didn’t answer so I stopped walking and so did they. We formed a cozy little circle with a steady flow of travelers hurrying to and from their flights all around us.
“Look,” the older man said, “let’s siddown and have a talk, nice nice, eh?”
“What are we supposed to be talking about this time?”
“We still think you got something belongs to our friend. We think you should give it to us.”
I laughed, I mean genuinely laughed out loud. “God,” I said, “You guys are something.”
They glanced at each other, then went back to watching me.
“All right,” I said, “there’s a bar right over there. We’ll talk.”
We sat on tall chairs around a small table in one of those Formica airport lounges where you can buy a second hit of booze in your cocktail for an extra dollar. I asked for a double Bloody Mary. Tweedledee and Tweedledum each ordered a beer.
“Okay, so what is this thing I supposedly have?”
The older man said, “Look, I don’t know exactly how to explain this, but, uh—”
“But you don’t know what it is, right?”
He shrugged his shoulders again.
“But you figure it belongs to you, whatever it is.”
“That’s right, that’s exactly it.” He was happy we were suddenly on the same page.
“I’ve been running into that a lot lately.”
He gave me a look that convinced me he was just as moronic as I had guessed.
“My father’s been dead for six years. You guys run a rather inefficient collection service.”
He stuck his lower lip out at me. “Hey, nobody never said nothing to you before, because you was not an involved guy, you see? But now you been askin’ questions, seein’ people. Our boss says it’s got something to do with this something that you gotta give us. Like I said, your father owed it, right?”
That was the moment, when he mentioned what my father owed to his boss, that I thought about what Gilles told me about Blackie’s death, how Benny never found out who the three men were, and how maybe, just maybe, this creep had something to do with it. My head started to pound.
“So,” I said, after taking a long pull of my Bloody Mary, “you guys must know a lot of people in your business.”
“What?”
“I mean, with all this talking you say that I’m doing, you two must get around and meet a lot of people.”
“We get around, sure.”
I took another swallow of my drink. “So how well did you know Blackie?”
The older man said, “Blackie? Tell you the absolute truth, I didn’t really know him that good. He was part of the Arthur Avenue crowd. I’m kinda downtown myself.”
I nodded, draining off a little more liquid courage. “The other day you told me you were an old friend of his.”
“We met, but not really friends. I hadda say somethin’, right?”
“I guess you did,” I said.
“Never knew him,” the younger man said, obviously deciding it was time to enter the conversation. “Heard he was a fun guy though.” He looked at his cohort for agreement.
“Funny?” the older man asked.
“No, not funny,” the younger man said. “Fun. You know, like a good guy.”
“Oh, yeah, yeah, I hear he was.”
I studied each of them without speaking. They had neither the intelligence nor the motive to lie to me, and neither of them was that good an actor. I puffed out my cheeks and let out a long breath, but my head and chest kept a strong and steady pulse. “Too bad,” I said, meaning that in more ways than one. “You would have liked Blackie. He would have liked you too, I bet.”
“Look kid, let’s get on with this. We know you’re a straight guy. Don’t make no trouble for yourself, all right?”
“It’s all right with me, except I still don’t know what you’re talking about.”
They looked at each other again before the older man said, “You gonna work with us or not?”
I leaned forward a bit, so I was right in his face. “Now pay attention, because I want to be really clear about this. I have no idea what you’re after, but I can guess that your boss probably heard some bullshit from my cousin Frank who, I don’t mind telling you, is a certified scumbag of the first order, so take that into account when he’s feeding you his stories. You can tell your boss that I’ll sit and talk with him any time about my father, if that’s what he wants, but he better check out Frank first. I’m sure he’ll discover he was sold a load of crap. You can also tell your boss that my father’s slate was wiped clean six years ago—the hard way, as I hear the story—and you can tell him I said that too. Tell him exactly that, the slate got wiped clean the hard way. All of which, I understand, has already been conveyed to your friends out in Vegas.” I drank off some more of the cocktail, never taking my eyes off him. “Now, I think it’s time for us to say goodbye.”
The younger guy didn’t seem all that impressed with my speech. “You play it smart or you play it stupid, that’s up to you.”
I stood up, ignoring him and turning back to the older man. “Last time, you barged into my apartment, telling me you were some old friend of my father. This time I know who I’m dealing with, which happens to be a couple of guys who have no fucking idea what they’re talking about or why they got sent on this little errand in the first place. Am I right?”
The younger man lowered his voice. “You’re talkin’ pretty tough today, for a guy I hear can’t take a punch.”
I took a step toward his seat, so we were almost up against each other as I stood over him. “I’ve had a few interesting days of training on that score, so you do what you’re big enough to do.”
The older man stood up. “That goes for you too, kid. We tell the man what you’re up to, then it’s whatever. You understand?”
Without taking my eyes off the younger man, I said, “I understand perfectly.”
Since there wasn’t anything left for them to do, they each took a swig of their beers, as if it were some sort of team event.
“It’s not important to us,” the older man finally said, “not one way or another.”
“Me either,” I told him, “so tell your boss everything I said, because if he thinks this is my way of playing it tough, he’s got it all wrong. The guy you should be talking to is my cousin Frank. Let him tell you what he thinks I’ve got, which he found out is nothing. Then you won’t have to bother me again.”
The older man started to say something, then stopped.
I lifted my glass and finished off the drink. “Now I’m going back to my world and you can go back to yours, and if you want to talk to me again, call and make a fucking appointment and I’ll be sure to have the FBI with me.” With that, I pulled a business card out of my jacket and threw it on the table. “And thanks for the drink,” I said. Then I turned and walked away, feeling like I had checked off one more item on a very old list.
***
THE NEXT DAY I FIGURED IT OUT.
It happened, as these things tend to happen, in the dead of night. I woke up thinking about my father, realizing that I knew him well enough to guess what he would have done in those weeks before they came for him, in those final days when he wrote me the letter, when he was trying to arrange for something he’d never done before, the fencing of a multi-million dollar painting. I realized all I had to do was think about it the way he would have.
For starters, Blackie never intended to put me at risk, so he certainly wouldn’t have stuck me with a stolen painting, not without telling me I had it.
He also wouldn’t take the chance of losing the Monet by leaving it storage or some other such pl
ace.
He knew that Benny didn’t want any part of it, and I believed Benny when he said he didn’t have the painting and didn’t know where it was.
Which meant there was only one other person he would trust enough to hold the Monet.
That afternoon I made the phone call, then left the office, got in my car and made the drive alone, my memory bank spinning into overtime all the way up the highway and across the Tappan Zee Bridge.
When I pulled into the driveway I sat there, staring out the windshield at the familiar house. It struck me how the place looked smaller than I remembered it. Odd, how when you’re a kid things seem so much bigger and more important.
After a minute or so, I got out and walked up to the front door. He opened it before I could ring the bell.
I said, “Hello Uncle Vincent.”
“I heard you pull in.”
I had not seen him since my Aunt Mary’s funeral. He looked frail and even a little shorter than he used to be. His hair was combed straight back, just as he’d always worn it, but it was whiter and thinner now. He reminded me of my grandfather.
“We need to talk,” I told him.
“I know,” he said.
I followed him inside. The house looked the same as it always did, except it was older and worn and it had that stuffy smell of old people, as if all the doors and windows ought to be thrown wide open for about a week.
He led me into the living room, and before we sat down he asked if I’d like a drink. I said I would.
He left me there, standing in the room where I’d spent so many weekends and holidays, so many birthdays and weddings and wakes. I watched the ghosts milling around the room, none of whom seemed any more surprised to find me there than my Uncle Vincent did.
When he came back he was carrying a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black in one hand and two shot glasses in the other. “You gonna need water?” he asked.
I shook my head.
“Good boy,” he said with a wan smile. Then we sat down, opposite each other across the well-worn oak cocktail table, and he poured us each a full jigger of scotch. “Here’s to your father,” he said, hoisting his glass.
Fool's Errand Page 22