Secondhand Smoke

by Karen E. Olson

  He grinned, his teeth a perfect example of teenage orthodontia. “The guy’s going to be okay.” He paused. “Well, he’s come through surgery okay, and the doctors say he’s going to make it.”

  I bit my tongue. I’d seen that car and what Pete’s truck had done to it. It was a miracle the guy wasn’t dead.

  “Wasn’t his time yet,” Mickey was saying. Oh, Christ, he was getting philosophical on me. I had to do what I’d come here for.

  “Hey, Mick, autopsy report’s back. Has anyone told you?”

  All eyes were on me; even the guys at the booth in the corner near the door seemed to be waiting to hear what I had to say.

  Mickey shook his head, but he didn’t say anything. I took a deep breath.

  “She was shot, Mick. She didn’t die in the fire.”

  Mickey’s eyes widened. “What the fuck are you trying to tell me, Annie?”

  “She was murdered, Mick. Do you have any idea who would do that?”

  “Why the hell would anyone kill LeeAnn?” With each word his voice got a little louder. I took a step backward.

  “I suppose you think I did it.” He was shouting as he slammed his glass onto the bar, shattering it. Bits of glass sprayed across the room, and I instinctively closed my eyes before feeling some hit my forehead.

  “Hey, Mickey, get ahold of yourself,” I heard Pete say.

  I turned back around to see the bartender wiping up the glass, Pete’s hand on Mickey’s arm, holding him down in his seat. I glanced at myself to make sure I was okay. I felt my forehead and gently brushed off a piece of glass that stuck there but hadn’t done any damage. And damn but if there wasn’t a fucking shard sticking out of my puffy coat. I picked it out carefully and put it on the bar.

  “I didn’t say you did it, Mick, I just asked if you knew who might have done it,” I said calmly, although my heart was beating way too fast and I wanted out of there. He was drunker than I’d thought.

  He was shaking his head violently. “No—I mean, maybe.” He paused. “No, I don’t know of anyone.”

  “Annie, you might want to try to talk to him later,” Pete said, taking my arm and steering me toward the door and out onto the sidewalk.

  “What the hell is the matter with you?” he demanded as the cold air hit me in the face and the door slammed shut behind us.

  “I needed some sort of comment, Pete. You know, it’s my job.”

  Pete Amato sighed. “Yeah, Annie, I know, but he just lost his wife, whether she’s murdered or not. You also seem to forget that I lost a friend and my father’s missing. I don’t really want to field questions, either, right now. You may think that you know us because you live in the neighborhood, but you don’t. Now go do your reporting somewhere else and let us be.”

  He left me on the icy sidewalk. Something caught my eye, and when I stared it down, I saw it was a feather, a small white feather. It came from the small hole in my coat, from which several other little white feathers were trying to escape.

  Jesus. Now I needed a new coat.

  THE FEATHERS REMINDED ME that I still needed to find out about those damn chickens. Since Vinny’s mother had spilled the beans about Vinny “beating” them, I was going to try my best to get it out of him.

  Vinny’s SUV was in front of his office building on Trumbull Street. Cobb Doyle, attorney-at-law, was coming in at the same time.

  His big, saucerlike eyes would’ve looked surprised if they didn’t look that way all the time. “Oh, hello, it’s you.”

  Cobb Doyle and I had met under some rather stressful circumstances a couple of months ago.

  “Hey, Cobb, what’s up?”

  He opened the door for me, proving that chivalry isn’t completely dead yet, just comatose most of the time.

  “Are you and Vinny working on something together again?”

  I nodded, although “working together” was a stretch, and he nodded solemnly in response as he moved down the hall, past Vinny’s office and to his own.

  A familiar odor brought me back to my college days.

  “Who’s got the incense?” I asked, walking into Vinny’s office without knocking.

  “Madame Shara’s upstairs with a client.”

  Madame Shara will read anyone’s palm for a price. I hadn’t had the pleasure of meeting her yet.

  Vinny closed the door behind me and motioned for me to sit in a chair in front of his desk. As he rounded the corner of his desk and sat down, I glanced at the door.

  “You know, frosted windows are clichéd. Who do you think you are, Sam Spade?”

  “Maybe. And maybe you’re the femme fatale.”

  “Your mother seems to think so, but I think she’d like to see Rosie take me out.”

  Vinny smiled. “My mother doesn’t know what’s good for me.”

  “Do you?”

  His eyes moved across my face, into my hair, and I swear I could feel them through the front of the goddamn puffy coat. My nipples grew hard despite myself.

  “Why don’t you take your coat off?” He was teasing me. I pulled my coat closer.

  “No thanks. I’m fine.” But it was fucking hot in here. Oh, yeah, that was the idea.

  “What’s up?” he asked. “I’m in the middle of something.”

  His immaculate desk didn’t indicate that.

  “Your mother said you beat the chickens once.”

  “You talked to my mother?”

  “I ran into her at Mac’s. So what about the chickens?”

  Vinny hung his head back and sighed. “Okay, I beat them. But it was a fluke. They really do know what they’re doing.”

  “Is this really why the feds are after Sal? The chickens?”

  Vinny nodded. “Yeah. Can’t have something like that go on for a long time before the feds find out about it.”

  “So how does it work, the chickens, I mean?” I had no idea what I was talking about.

  “Christ, Annie, you’ve played it. Every kid has. But it would be more fair if the chicken didn’t go first.”

  My brain was trying to compute this. What sort of game does a kid play that he should go first? My thoughts were jumbled all over the place, running through every game I could think of.

  I didn’t really take notice when Vinny got up and moved around toward me. He perched on the edge of the desk in front of me, his arms folded, a little smile playing at the corners of his mouth. “You have no idea, do you,” he said quietly.

  I cocked an eyebrow at him. “Sure I do.” Checkers? Chess? That was stupid. A chicken couldn’t do those things.

  Vinny was staring at me, and I could see he was waiting for me to figure it out.

  Poker? A chicken couldn’t play cards; they don’t have hands. Forget card games. Bingo? No, that wasn’t a two-man game, it was for the little blue-haired old ladies at the casino. Casino . . .

  I felt something on my leg, and I looked down to see Vinny’s fingers on my knee. I went back to my thoughts and tried to keep my mind off Vinny’s hand. But the hand was winning. It was unzipping my coat. And I was letting it.

  “Give me some hugs and kisses,” he said softly.

  My coat was unzipped all the way now, and he was leaning over me, his face closer and closer . . .

  Hugs and kisses?

  “I got it!” I jumped up, throwing Vinny to one side. I remembered a story I’d seen about chickens in Atlantic City. They were making a mint for one of the casinos. And the symbols for hugs and kisses were X’s and O’s.

  “It’s tic-tac-toe, isn’t it?” I shouted. “Sal trained those chickens to play tic-tac-toe!”

  Chapter 11

  It took a minute for both of us to recover, but then the light-bulb went on over my head again. If I didn’t watch out, I’d have a fucking strobe light sending signals from my eyeballs.

  “Jesus, Vinny, why couldn’t you have just told me from the start?”

  “Don’t want to be giving neighborhood secrets out to the press.” Vinny smiled. It was that smile that
always got to me, and I had to look away.

  “Mac and your mother said everyone knew about the chickens. But that’s obviously not true.”

  He grinned. “Well, when they say ‘everyone,’ it’s everyone who counts.”

  I made a face at him. “So Sal was running a little gambling thing with the chickens? How long?”

  “How long what?”

  “How long had he been doing this? And how did the FBI suddenly become so interested?”

  “First of all, this is more than just a ‘little’ gambling operation. Tens of thousands of dollars have been made and lost on a daily basis. And the feds have been trying to get into it for years.”

  “You’re shitting me.” But it seemed he wasn’t. “Tens of thousands in a day? How can that happen?”

  Vinny smiled. “Degenerate gamblers can and will bet on anything anytime. Did you know there was a craps game going on in New Haven for twenty years? On some nights, thirty-five thousand dollars went across the table.”

  Jesus. No wonder the FBI was poking around.

  “So how does it work?”

  “What?”

  “How do the chickens play the game?” I wanted to know how chickens could be such a huge moneymaker, my curiosity thoroughly piqued.

  “They use a computer. At least now they do. Sal had it all set up in the basement at the restaurant. The chicken is in a box with one screen, you’re on the other side of the box with your own screen. The chicken always goes first. It’ll peck the screen where it wants to place its letter. And then it’s your turn.”

  “And there’s no one in there with the chicken, helping him along?” I was rather dubious of this arrangement. Chickens have brains the size of a pea.

  “Sal built the box. It was on a sort of pedestal in the corner, with three wooden walls and a curtain on one side over a wire door so the chicken couldn’t get out.”

  If I was that chicken, I’d probably want to fly to freedom as fast as possible.

  “So the curtain keeps everyone from seeing what the chicken is doing?” This was really bizarre.

  “Yeah. Sal’s always got someone watching, to make sure no one peeks in at the bird.” Vinny was saying all this with a straight face. A chicken bodyguard. Go figure.

  “How many people?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “How many people each night?”

  Vinny cocked his head, looked up at the ceiling for a second, then back to me. “Fifty. Sometimes more, sometimes less.”

  “How the hell could all this go on without anyone in the restaurant knowing?” I asked.

  Vinny smiled. “That was the beauty of it. Sal had the basement soundproofed. They started coming in around eleven, when the restaurant closed, but even if people were lingering, because of the work he’d done, no one could really hear anything. It was fucking genius.”

  “What about employees?”

  Vinny laughed. “Hell, they knew what was up. Mickey was down there every night.”

  Figured. I had another wrench to throw, though. “What about cars? I never noticed any extra cars anywhere.”

  “Back lot. Prego’s got a pretty good parking lot back there.”

  I thought about that a second. He was right. And it was always full. I never noticed the hour, though. And I never thought anything of it. Vinny was right. It was fucking genius.

  “How many chickens are there?”

  “At least three or four.”

  I had another thought. “Where were the chickens that weren’t playing?”

  “He had a portion of the basement set up for them, a room no one was allowed in.” Vinny rubbed the back of his neck.

  “So where do you think the chickens are now?” I asked.

  Vinny shook his head. “I don’t know. They might have been in the basement and died in the fire.” He narrowed his eyes at me. “Did Tom say anything about finding anything unusual in there?”

  “No.” I doubted he’d tell me if he had.

  This was pretty weird shit, though. And my next question was: Who the hell would be stupid enough to let themselves lose to a fucking chicken?

  “There’s a guy up in Middlefield who trains them,” Vinny was saying. “Pavlov’s dogs and all that shit. Some sort of behaviorist who teaches at Central. He’s into this big-time.”

  Oh, Christ, I was going to have to find that guy and interview him. When Marty caught wind of this, I’d have a week’s worth of stories about where they get the chickens, how much time to train them, where else might the chickens play their game. I wasn’t sure I wanted to get into the chickens right now. The bigger story was still who killed LeeAnn Hayward and where Sal was. If the FBI said anything about the chickens, I guess I could get into it then.

  Maybe I really was burned out, since I was making so many excuses why not to write a story. This was good shit. Tic-tac-toe-playing chickens that had generated possibly millions of dollars over the years. Don’t see those stories every day.

  The phone interrupted my thoughts. Vinny moved back around his desk and picked it up.

  “Private investigations.”

  He was quiet a minute as he listened, then: “Sure, half an hour?” A pause. “I’ll be there.”

  He hung up. “I hate to break up this little party,” he said, “but I’ve got some stuff I need to do.”

  “Who was that?”

  “No one you need to know about.”

  I got up and started out but paused at the door. “Oh, by the way. LeeAnn Hayward was shot before the fire. That’s how she died.”

  Vinny jumped up, getting to the door so fast that I barely had time to open it. “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  “You spent all that time on chickens when you have real news?”

  So I got a little distracted. It happens. I shrugged. “I have to go write the real news now.”

  “Have the police got a suspect?”

  “I haven’t talked to the cops yet.” That reminded me I had to find Tom, even if he didn’t want to talk to me. Time was running out; I had a deadline to meet and dinner at my mother’s. If I was lucky, I’d have to work late and wouldn’t have to go to my mother’s. But I remembered my father, who was going to show up there with or without me. He needed me as backup.

  Vinny had a funny look on his face. “Well, I guess I’ll see you later.”

  Something wasn’t right, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. I started the car and sat for a few minutes, letting it heat up and running everything over in my head. As I was about to pull away from the curb, I spotted Vinny pulling out of the back parking lot and turning toward the highway.

  The old Honda can move when I want it to. I didn’t know why I was following Vinny, but it seemed like a good idea. He was about three cars ahead of me—thank God for those big SUVs, it’s not easy to lose them—and heading toward the Q-Bridge that connects downtown New Haven with the East Shore. People who lived there were technically in New Haven, but they had East Haven zip codes and got the earlier edition of the Herald that covered the shoreline more than the city. The East Shore was split up into the Annex and Morris Cove; Townsend Avenue led you down through both to Lighthouse Point Park, a city beach with a huge old carousel and a lighthouse, of course.

  Next to Wooster Street, this neighborhood was considered one of the safest, and for the same reasons.

  Vinny’s Explorer was moving at a pretty good clip down Townsend, until he slowed for the hairpin turn along the water, which spread out like glass under the gray winter sky. Sometimes, on a clear day, you could see Long Island from here. Today, I couldn’t even see West Haven.

  The SUV turned suddenly, and I slowed, turning down the same street. But he was already gone by the time I reached the next intersection. The blocks were short here, so maybe I could just drive around a little and I’d find him again. I took a right, then another right; going in circles seemed appropriate somehow, and my instincts were rewarded. I pulled over to the curb at the top of th
e street and watched Vinny emerge from his SUV in front of a small yellow Cape about halfway down the street. He climbed the steps, and I inched a little closer to see who was greeting him.

  My father stepped out onto the landing.

  Chapter 12

  Whose house was this?

  And in a second, my question was answered when Dominic Gaudio joined my father, shaking Vinny’s hand before they disappeared inside.

  I leaned back in my seat and pondered the situation. There might not be anything fishy about this at all. It wasn’t surprising that my father would know Dominic Gaudio, considering that he grew up in New Haven and they traveled in similar circles. And Vinny, well, he was a private investigator and was looking for Sal. Why not ask Dominic Gaudio and my father if they knew anything? That’s what I would do in his shoes.

  But they had called him.

  A black Cadillac with New York plates moved slowly past me and almost came to a stop in front of the yellow house before speeding up and moving on. I watched it turn the corner, out of sight. I felt my chest constrict. That wasn’t someone I was inclined to follow, and I began to worry about what my father was into.

  Now I wasn’t a kid, and I knew my father wasn’t squeaky clean, but it did seem his position in Vegas was on the up-and-up. I wanted to believe that whatever he’d been involved with earlier in his life, he’d gotten out of it.

  I glanced at my watch and back up at the house. I didn’t have a lot of time. I needed to get back and write up the story about LeeAnn getting shot, with Mac’s and Mickey’s comments, before going to my mother’s for dinner.

  I’d see my dad there anyway. I could ask him about this then.

  ONCE BACK AT THE PAPER, I tried to call Tom for an official comment about LeeAnn’s murder but got his voice mail. I did reach the cops’ public relations officer, who told me they were “following several leads.” Which meant they didn’t know shit. But at least I had something on the record to make Marty happy.

  And he smiled. Really smiled after he read my story. I’d even slipped in a sentence about how Vinny was investigating Sal’s disappearance. He liked that.

  I left out the stuff about the chickens. I didn’t have time to get into it, and I needed something from the FBI first, to confirm what Vinny told me.