by Neil Turner
My heart falters when I hear “complex matter” used in conjunction with “billing arrangements.” I manage to talk him down to half the retainer he originally suggests. Then I hand him photocopies of a sheaf of papers from Papa’s bedroom closet and make my escape before he can turn me upside down and shake out my pockets. I shudder to think what their criminal defense attorney would charge to take on Papa’s case.
I put that thought firmly out of my mind and call my headhunter as soon as I’m on the road.
“Executive Solutions. Recruitment Solutions for a New Century,” a chirpy woman’s voice announces.
“Gavin Townsend, please. Tony Valenti calling.”
“Tony!” Townsend booms when we’re connected. “Great to hear from you.”
“You never told me what happened with that bank holding company.”
“Sorry, bud,” he replies. “They decided to go in another direction.”
He couldn’t call to tell me?
“We knew the Sphinx situation might scare some people off,” he continues. “I’ve had a couple of clients get a little testy with me for shopping you to them.”
“That’s ridiculous!”
“You stayed until the bitter end, Tony. That bothers some folks.”
“Are these people familiar with the concept of loyalty?”
“Loyalty is a tired concept in today’s workplace, especially at this level,” he says patiently. “The situation with your father isn’t helping.”
“Surely everyone in Chicago doesn’t connect me to that?”
“Some have. Look, we’re going to have to live with this stuff, bud. Sphinx and your father.”
A creeping sense of dread steals over me. “Suggestions?”
“I can keep banging my head against the wall or we can modify our search parameters.”
“Lower our sights?”
“Yup.”
“You have some positions in mind?” I ask while coasting to a stop for a red light.
“I’ve got three or four firms that should jump at the chance to interview you.”
I respond with a touch of dark humor. “I’m not going to be clerking again, am I?”
He laughs a little too quickly. “Of course not. A manufacturing concern with a few hundred employees spread across six plants might be a good fit. They want someone to handle their HR legal.”
“Strictly HR work?” I ask, hoping my horror at the prospect isn’t evident in my voice.
“Not entirely, but HR is the primary focus. The workforce is unionized.”
Great. Probably open warfare between management and the union. Grunt work. But it will put food on the table and keep us living indoors, at least until the legal bills start rolling in. “See if you can set up an interview.”
Ironically, the traffic light turns green in time with the realization that my career as a high flying corporate hot shot has come to a screeching halt.
Chapter Nine
The sharp crack of the screen door slamming against the house heralds Brittany’s announcement of Pat O’Toole’s arrival late Sunday afternoon. “She’s here!”
Pat’s suggestion to give her a call led to lunch at Howells and Hood in the Tribune Tower. We caught up on our lives since high school over fish and chips and a beer, then spent a half-hour talking about Papa and the house. I enjoyed the visit so much that I invited her for Sunday dinner on the Columbus Day weekend.
It’s one of those days when the atmosphere sucks all the moisture out of the Gulf of Mexico and dumps it like a lead weight on Chicago. Unusual for October, but not unheard of. Great day for a barbeque, shitty day to be on my hands and knees picking through backyard dirt. It hasn’t been a good few hours for Tony the Home Handyman. A sprinkler system replacement head that was supposed to take “fifteen minutes, tops” to install lays temporarily discarded in the garage. Fifteen minutes, my ass. Then again, how was the Home Depot irrigation guy to know I can’t tell one end of a hammer from the other? Hell, even weeding is proving to be a challenge.
I poke my head above the roses and see Brittany planted on the back step with her hands on her hips. Pat stands beside her, dressed in an almost identical outfit of cut-off denim shorts and abbreviated tee shirt.
“Give O’Toole a beer,” I tell Brittany as I sweep past them and into the house. “I’ll wash up and be with you in a few minutes.”
I emerge from the house fifteen minutes later, showered and decked out in a canary yellow golf shirt over a tan pair of Docker shorts and my habitual loafers. Brittany and Pat are stretched out side-by-side on a pair of patio loungers. Deano has already latched onto the newcomer and is settled in the shade under her lounger, busy licking Pat’s calf through the webbing. I plunge my hand into a galvanized metal tub filled with ice, snag a Sam Adams, and plop my aching ass in a zero gravity chair.
Pat lifts a hand to shield her eyes from the sun, then shoots a glance Brittany’s way. “Wanna hear about this guy’s high school follies?”
Brittany nods enthusiastically. “Yes!”
I’m pleasantly surprised by the easy camaraderie I re-established with Pat over a couple of hours together. She seems to be replicating the trick with Brittany. I tip my bottle in their direction. “You two are going to be trouble together, aren’t you?”
“You’ve got a lotta beer for two of us,” Pat says while hoisting herself into a sitting position. “Expecting a crowd?”
“Nope. Tales of you hard-charging, beer-guzzling reporters are legion.”
“Yeah, right,” she replies with a wry chuckle. “It wasn’t my crowd who spent their high school years chasing around from beer bash to beer bash.”
“Daaad!” Brittany exclaims with a delighted clap of her hands. She turns to Pat. “Really?”
Yup, these two are definitely going to be trouble. “O’Toole exaggerates,” I protest with mock indignancy. “We did not chase from beer bash to beer bash, and that’s all you need to know about my school years, young lady.”
“Pshaw,” Pat sneers before she winks at Brittany. “Stick with me, kid. I’ll give you the straight goods on this character.”
Brittany beams. “I will!”
Pat’s eyes roam over our surroundings. “This is a great yard. I feel like I’ve fallen down a rabbit hole and come up outside a Mediterranean villa.”
“Exactly the effect Mama and Papa were after,” I reply.
“Love the swing!” Pat gushes.
My eyes settle on a handcrafted Western Red Cedar swing for two. It’s nestled beneath a Hawthorne tree whose branches are beginning to sag under the weight of clusters of red autumn fruit. This is where Mama and Papa retired after dinner on summer evenings. I can almost see them sitting there when a gust of wind sets the swing in motion.
“Who did the fence?” Pat asks.
“Papa,” I reply, looking along the length of the four-foot tall side fence of creamy stucco that separates our yard from those of our neighbors. Folks on Liberty Street didn’t hide from their neighbors, hence the modest fence height. The Valentis and Vaccaros spent hours chatting over that fence. I’d always suspected Papa decided on stucco while feeling a touch homesick for Italy. The Mediterranean flourishes became more frequent with the passing years. “Mama and Papa loved it back here.”
“Let me guess,” Pat says. “Your mother babied the roses and your dad fussed over his tomatoes?”
I smile and nod. “You, too?”
She returns the smile. “Pretty much.” Such is Cedar Heights.
Phil appears in the Vaccaro backyard. I hold up my beer for him to see. “Hey, Phil, can I buy you a beer?”
He nods and walks over to the fence. I snag a bottle of Sam Adams and the bottle opener, then pop off the cap on my way to meet him. After shaking his hand, I nod toward Pat. “Phil, meet Pat O’Toole.”
“Hi, Pat,” he says.
She waves back. “Hey, Phil.”
“Phil is Sandy Vaccaro’s husband,” I tell her.
Pat’s smile
widens. “I remember Sandy. Sweet gal.”
“Sure is,” he replies before tilting the bottle back and draining half of it. “Speak of the devil,” he says while wiping the overflow off his chin with the back of his hand. Sandy has just walked into the Vaccaro backyard, looking none too pleased with her husband.
“Hi, Sandy,” I call out. “We’ve got Sam Adams.”
Her eyes meet mine for a millisecond before she turns to Phil. “I need you to start the grill, honey. Mama and Papa and the kids are waiting and we need to leave for mass in an hour and a half.”
Phil’s eyes meet mine as his wife stalks back into the house. “Sorry, pal. She’s really wigged out about what happened over there. I guess she knew the cop from school.”
“They were friends?”
“I don’t think so. Maybe an acquaintance. She didn’t sleep after she gave the cops her statement.”
“She saw it?” I ask.
“Naw, she just heard them arguing.”
I didn’t know. “Arguing about what?”
“She won’t discuss it. Coupla cops came by to talk to her the day after.” Phil holds his beer up before he turns to leave. “Thanks.”
“Anytime,” I reply as he departs.
The awkward encounter puts a damper on things. Pat looks pensive. Brittany looks frightened. Maybe food will help.
“I’ll get dinner started,” I announce before starting the gas grill. Then I head inside for the meat and a skillet of vegetables. Once dinner is sizzling over the flames, I wander over to rejoin Pat and Brittany.
Pat cocks her head to study my daughter. “You remind me of your aunt.”
“Auntie Amy?”
“Yup. Don’t know what happened to Chubby here,” Pat says while hooking a thumb in my direction, “but his sister was a looker.”
“Chubby?” I ask indignantly while Brittany howls. Maybe I’ve gained a pound or two and some gray hairs since high school, but Chubby?
“Sorry,” Pat says without a trace of remorse.
“Did you know Auntie Amy?” Brittany asks Pat when they stop laughing.
Pat’s expression sobers. “Not well. Amy was a couple years ahead of us at school and helped coach my softball team one year. Great gal. I was crushed when I heard she died.”
Brittany points across the yard at a mural painted on the fence. “She made that.”
“Really?” Pat sits forward to stare at the painting.
Amy had done it after graduating high school. A vision of her with paintbrush in hand fills my mind—the image as fresh as if it had been yesterday. It was the summer she’d briefly imagined life as a Bohemian artiste toiling along the left bank in Paris. If only she’d gone.
“As I recall, she painted it from a snapshot of Papa’s hometown,” I reply. “She claimed the style was inspired by the Italian fresco school, or some such.” I’m about as conversant with the business end of a paintbrush as I am with the part of a hammer that hits the nail.
“It’s brilliant,” Pat says with her eyes riveted on the depiction of lush rolling hills dotted with picturesque pastel houses and trees. A wagon sits at rest alongside an earthen road; the horse hitched to it has buried its snout in the tall grass edging the path. Gentle mounds of purple and gray mountains rise in the distance.
I nod in agreement. “Papa loves that mural.”
We quietly gaze at Amy’s masterpiece, each alone with our thoughts. I still miss my sister fifteen years after her death and remain outraged about how she died. Amy was an Army helicopter pilot who told us she was bouncing around the country in puddle jumpers when she was actually flying Special Forces missions in Colombia. One night her chopper never returned. The Army told us she crashed on a joint training exercise with Colombian troops and that her body hadn’t been recovered from the swampy jungle. There was mention of crocodile-infested waters. Not having a body to bury was tough, but the nightmare got worse when a guy named Joe McIntyre showed up on Liberty Street a few years later. He’d been a helicopter pilot in Amy’s unit in Colombia and had a different story to tell. McIntyre told us they’d been in Colombia helping the Colombian Army put down some sort of rebel faction—effectively taking sides in a civil war. He and Amy were inserting ground troops into a mountain clearing the night she died. Unfortunately, the wrong people expected them. It was all over by the time the cavalry arrived. The Pentagon could hardly send the bullet-riddled corpses of Amy and company home and still pretend they’d been killed in an accident, so the bodies were quietly buried in a Panamanian military cemetery. After they were outed by McIntyre, the Pentagon bastards still managed to convince Mama and Papa to keep the whole sordid business quiet. Mama’s price had been that they bring Amy’s body home to be reinterred in Cedar Heights.
I’m pulled back to the present when Brittany pops to her feet and scurries to the back door. “Gotta go potty!”
Pat scooches to the end of her lounger and leans close once Brittany is inside. “I didn’t want to mention this in front of Brittany. I’ve heard rumors that what happened to Amy in Colombia wasn’t a training accident.”
“What did you hear?” I ask cautiously. So far as I know, Joe McIntyre’s story has stayed within the family.
“That she was killed in one of our glorious covert operations.”
I’d never agreed to keep quiet. Screw the Pentagon. I meet Pat’s gaze. “You heard right.” Her eyes widen while I recap Joe McIntyre’s revelations.
“How is it that the truth never came out?” she asks while Deano stretches to nose her foot. She absently rubs behind his ears, which produces a contented doggy sigh and what I swear to God is a toothy canine smile. Or maybe he’s just panting in the damned heat like the rest of us.
“I wanted to scream it from the rooftops,” I reply. “Mama and Papa agreed to keep it quiet after the Pentagon bastards insisted that they do so for national security reasons.”
“How do you feel about that?”
“Like we betrayed Amy.”
Pat’s eyes bore into mine. “And your father? How does he feel about it?”
“Mama dealt with it a little better than he did. Not that she didn’t grieve, but she seemed more willing to accept the Army’s reasons for bullshitting us. Papa held his tongue about it for Mama’s sake, but he was incensed that the government lied. He couldn’t forgive them for wasting the life of his daughter.”
“That’s how he sees it?”
“We discussed it once after we brought Amy home. He never mentioned it again.”
“A helluva thing for parents to endure,” Pat murmurs. She touches my arm. “Her brothers, too. Speaking of which, how’s Frankie?”
“No idea. Haven’t seen him in years. Haven’t even talked to him.”
Pat’s brow furrows. “I didn’t see him at your mother’s funeral.”
“He fell out with them years ago.” The night Mama stumbled on him beating me near to death. Papa argued that it was just boys being boys. Mama was having none of that.
“That’s a shame,” Pat mutters. “Kids should honor their parents—good parents, anyway. They should be there for their folks when times get tough.”
“Yeah,” I reply bitterly. Not that I’d been much better than my brother. My response to Amy’s death had been to plunge deeper into volleyball and my studies to fill every waking moment so there wasn’t time to think. I eventually realized that I had shut out my parents, as well. Like some sort of precursor to the foreclosure business, I hadn’t been there for them then, either. Her mention of Mama’s funeral registers. “You were there? I didn’t see you.”
“Didn’t want to bother the family,” she says with a shrug.
So kind. So considerate, I think.
“That’s a potentially interesting twist,” she says thoughtfully.
She’s lost me. “Twist to what?”
“Your father’s case.”
I lean closer. “How so?”
“Just wondering about his state of mind.”
; “What are you two babbling about, looking all serious and stuff?” Brittany asks when she bursts back through the screen door.
Pat glances up at her and replies, “Your grandfather’s trial. I’ve been wondering what could make a man like him snap the way he did. Maybe he’s been dealing with more than we know.”
“Maybe,” I allow. I don’t want to have this conversation in front of my daughter. I get to my feet. “The meat should be done. Should we eat out here or in the house?”
“I hate flies on my food,” Pat says.
“She’s always been quite a nature lover,” I tell Brittany, who rewards my lame humor with a half-hearted smile.
“He’s got a point,” Pat admits. “My idea of roughing it is leaving the window open overnight.”
Once we’re inside and settled around the table—Pat and I passing our knives through a pair of sumptuous T-Bone steaks as if they were pats of butter while Brittany munches on a burger—I steer the conversation back to mundane matters like school, work, and the weather. We keep the conversation light for the rest of the meal.
Pat smiles across the table when she finally pushes her plate aside and dabs her lips with one of our gourmet paper napkins. “Great meal! Thanks.”
“Our pleasure,” I reply. “Dessert?”
She groans. “Maybe after coffee?”
Brittany bounces up. “I’ll make the coffee.”
Pat and I follow her into the kitchen and are rinsing silverware and glasses when the phone rings. The Caller ID reads: Butterworth Cole. They called earlier in the week asking for permission to bill my credit card for additional costs. I was afraid everything might come to a screeching halt if I said no, so I gave them the okay to whack my ABA Visa. I didn’t have the stomach to ask what the damage was—my next statement will tally the carnage soon enough.
“May I speak with Anthony Valenti?” a crisp female voice asks when I answer.
“Speaking.”
“Good afternoon, Mr. Valenti. My name is Penelope Brooks, Associate Counsel with Butterworth Cole.”
“Yes?” I ask as I wander into the living room for some privacy.
“Mr. Cumming assigned me the eviction matter you discussed with him. I’ve completed our research and am filing paperwork to request a hearing. Mr. Cumming asked that you be kept apprised of our progress.”