by E. J. Simon
“No, of course not,” said Hightower, looking perturbed and not making eye contact with anyone else.
“Good. What exactly is on your agenda this morning?” Michael asked.
“Well, Mr. Perkins has reviewed the budgets of your division and those of the other divisions. We are still coming up short in terms of cuts and cost savings. In view of Wall Street’s expectations—”
Michael cut him short. “How much do I need to cut out of my budget? Just give me the number, and we can save each other a lot of time.”
Hightower looked down and said, “Twenty-three million, unless you could do more.”
Michael laughed. “Unless I could do more? That’s a new approach. You know that 80 percent of my budget is made up of personnel or related costs. So, it’s basically about cutting more people; I’d guess that’s about fifty heads.”
“Mr. Perkins doesn’t care how you do it.”
“And this is on top of the cuts we already made in this budget back in October?” Michael continued, looking at Karen, who appeared to be fidgeting. “And what about my earlier offer to move my group’s offices out of this palace and into much cheaper space in Queens?” Michael asked, knowing the answer.
“That offer will be rejected again, since the board signed a lease here for another five years. The other divisions would simply have to pick up your savings, and that’s unacceptable, of course.”
“Well,” Michael persisted, “why in the world would the board in all its wisdom sign a lease extension here, one of the most expensive locations in the world, knowing full well that we’re going to have to severely cut the hell out of our budgets?”
Michael could see Karen shifting nervously in her chair. She deliberately cleared her throat, an often-used signal between them that he was about to get himself in more trouble. Not that anyone cared for or about John Hightower, but Michael knew he would report every ugly detail to Perkins and the rest of the board.
“You know,” Michael continued, “this is just a horrible economy. No business is going to show great results until this situation passes. I’ve already cut out a lot of the muscle from this organization. Any more will truly hurt our ability to recover when the economy rebounds.” Michael knew Hightower couldn’t care less. “If I was a shareholder in it for the long term, I’d be very concerned about this.”
John Hightower was expressionless. Michael looked at his eyes and saw nothing, much like what he had seen in Morty the Mortician’s eyes. At least, Michael thought, Morty had a sense of humor, dark and stormy that it was.
Michael wanted to ask why anyone would really need a chief of staff, but after looking directly at Karen and reading the concern on her face, decided to just drop his attack and finish up the meeting. “When do you need the revised budget?”
“There’s no hurry. We’ve already taken the twenty-three million out of your next year’s budget, so at your convenience, you can just send us the detail showing where exactly you made the cuts.” Hightower appeared to be restraining the urge to smile. Perhaps, Michael thought, Hightower knew it wouldn’t be wise to risk provoking him, especially considering Michael’s reputation for verbal marksmanship. Even better, maybe he understood how close Michael was to literally coming across the desk at him.
Michael rose up from his chair abruptly. “I think we’re done here, John. I’ll have the revisions to you by the end of the month.”
As Hightower walked out of his office escorted by Karen, Michael’s cell phone rang. It was Skinny Lester. “Michael, I’m sorry to bother you. I just wanted to let you know that Fat Lester and I are contacting all Alex’s customers, except Sharkey, of course. We’re letting everyone know that we’re back in business. So far, everyone’s positive. A lot of questions about you, but everything’s good. We’re already getting a lot of football action.”
“Hey, that’s great, Lester. Keep going. Don’t forget, make a list of whom I should meet with directly. I can do some with drinks, but the high rollers should be a dinner. You tell me the ones I should do alone and the ones you should join me on. I’d like you to join me whenever it makes sense, since I don’t know any of these guys.”
“You got it. By the way, someone from the NYPD called the office. He wanted your cell number. I hope it’s okay, I gave it to him. He said he’d call you.”
Just as Lester was speaking, Michael could see another call coming in on his cell. “I think that’s them calling now. Let me take this call.” Michael pressed the option on his phone that allowed him to hang up and take the new incoming call. “Hello, this is Michael Nicholas.”
“Mr. Nicholas, this is Detective O’Gara from the First Precinct in Lower Manhattan. I believe you reported a stolen BMW a few weeks ago, which we found in the Hudson River.”
“That’s right. It was evidently taken from an auto repair shop where I thought it had been towed.” Michael really had no idea if the car had ever made it to the auto repair place.
“Mr. Nicholas, as I’m sure you recall, we found a body in that car when we fished it out. We couldn’t identify it at the time.”
“I certainly recall. No one forgets a dead body in his car. Did you have any luck with the identification?”
“Yes, we did. The prints turned up a match. Did you know anyone by the name of Donald Mermelstein?”
Michael knew immediately the name was not familiar to him. It wasn’t the type of name you’d forget. “No, I’m pretty sure I don’t know anyone by that name.”
“This guy lived in Las Vegas and had several addresses in Queens. No idea how he could have wound up in your car, not to mention the bottom of the Hudson?”
Michael wrote the name down on a pad on his desk so he could ask the Lesters whether this could have been anyone Alex knew. “No, Detective, I can tell you for sure, I’ve never heard the name before.”
“He had at least one other name he went by—let me run another one by you.”
“Go right ahead,” Michael said.
“Okay, this one must be his professional name. How about Merlin? Merlin the Magician?”
Stunned, Michael knew that there was only one answer he could give.
“I certainly don’t know any Merlin the Magician.”
Chapter 52
Saint Michael’s Cemetery, Astoria, New York
Michael rested the silver laptop on the black granite bench facing Alex’s grave. The blue screen lit up, casting a surreal glow on the nearby tombstones.
“What are you doing here, Michael?” Alex didn’t look happy.
“I don’t know exactly. I left the office early so I could get here on my way home before it got too dark.”
“But why? And why did you bring me here with you?” Alex said. He now looked confused, uncertain of his ground—perhaps literally, Michael thought. He wondered if he had made a mistake by returning to the cemetery with Alex.
“Something drew me here. Maybe I’m just trying to understand what’s happened. This is all so unreal. I thought if I brought this new you to where the old you was, and just kind of put the two of you together, or at least closer, maybe I could find some answers, figure something out, and make sense of this or understand it.”
“Michael, you’re looking in the wrong place. There’s nothing here.”
“What do you mean, ‘there’s nothing here’?”
“Just what I said.”
But there was so much still to ask. It was difficult to balance Michael’s need for answers about life and death with the pressing, everyday mysteries—like how Merlin’s body appeared in his car, and what were the details of Catherine Saint-Laurent’s movie. It was time to shift gears, Michael thought, to get to more practical matters. Michael looked up. It was getting too dark, and he was in a cemetery.
“This movie that you were helping Catherine finance, do you remember what it’s going to be about?”
“Of course, I remember. I don’t throw around three-quarters of a million dollars without knowing what the hell it’s abo
ut.” Alex was back to his sarcastic, cocky self, Michael thought, somewhat relieved.
“Don’t you think it’s a bit ironic that the theme is about a business executive who gets involved in some type of organized crime?”
“It was about a French business executive. You’re not fuckin’ French yet, are you?”
“That’s not the point. It’s still hits pretty close to home, don’t you think?”
“Michael, that script was written long before any of this shit happened, probably two or three years ago.”
“That makes it even more unusual—and then to have it wind up in my lap. That’s quite a coincidence.”
“I told you before, Michael. There is more to this world than meets the eye. Things I couldn’t imagine before … before this. There’s so much you don’t know.”
It was true, Michael thought. Too much that I obviously don’t know. As he stared into the screen, he wondered too, Why aren’t I comfortable showing all this to Samantha? Am I imagining this or am I dreaming? Am I having some sort of breakdown? I don’t think so, but how could this be happening? How can it be real?
He turned back to Alex, the only person—or soul—who could have the answer.
“Alex, are you dead or alive?”
Alex stared ahead, his face expressionless again. “I honestly don’t know.”
As Michael struggled to understand the meaning of his brother’s words, the screen went dark and the laptop shut down. Michael wasn’t sure if Alex disconnected himself or if perhaps Michael missed the low-battery warnings. He tried to restart it, but nothing worked. He shut the laptop and took a deep, slow breath and looked beyond Alex’s gravestone to the older section of the cemetery.
And now he knew it was time. Alex, I don’t think it was just you that brought me here tonight, he thought.
It had been over a decade since Michael walked away from this cemetery where his father and then his mother were buried. The two days were etched in his memory, yet despite being several years apart, they appeared as one, a single day in hell. His beloved uncle was nearby too. And too many others.
He turned away from Alex’s grave and walked down the gently sloping hill to the site of the other graves of his family and several of their close friends. They weren’t far away, he knew, in the older section, which had been filled up some time back.
Michael knew the way to the place he had avoided for so long. It was hallowed ground for him tonight. He looked at their gravestones, the fading white marble with their names etched into it, yet the edges were no longer as sharp. How quickly time dulls even stone, he thought. How ironic that something as elusive as a memory would be clearer than the names of the dead etched so deeply into granite.
These were the names he remembered seeing on the letters as they came through the mail, or engraved in a brass plate outside his father’s Manhattan shop door, or on the checks he received faithfully each week while away at college. Now they were in stone. Yet, as he passed each grave, the memories of those buried below came vividly to life.
As he looked around at the maze of symmetrically positioned stone markers framed by the cold, gray sky, each one representing a living being who had brought him joy, it came over him, like an ocean wave that you think will drown you until you realize that it’s receded and you’ve survived.
It wasn’t what he thought. This wasn’t a place he hated. And it wasn’t discomfort that he felt here. Except, perhaps, the unease you feel when you are content when you know you shouldn’t be, in a place you think you don’t belong. A place you don’t want to go to but feel drawn to like nowhere else.
And all this time, he thought he was repelled by this ground, when instead, it was the strong pull back that he had been fighting. Maybe it was because most of the people that he had loved—and still loved—were here.
Now he realized it. He was at home.
Chapter 53
Greenwich Village, New York
December 17, 2009
Silvano Marchetto, the venerable owner of DaSilvano, the man who brought Florentine cooking to New York, approached the Lesters’ table. Dressed in a pink V-neck sweater, his unruly white hair almost flowing over his bold, oversize silver-framed glasses, he had a patrician manner that appeared to barely contain a wild and unpredictable core. “I understand that you are friends of Michael’s?”
“Yes, is everything okay?” Skinny Lester answered.
“Si, si, of course. Welcome. You gentlemen just don’t look like most of his friends.”
Skinny Lester looked at his cousin. “Jesus, Lester, you could’ve ditched those wrinkled jeans for once.”
But the great Silvano Marchetto put his hand on Fat Lester’s shoulder. “Relax, my friend, you are good. What I meant was that many of Michael’s friends are, how do you say, uptight. Maybe the ones I have seen are more business associates. I can tell though that you two enjoy good food, good wine, and each other. That’s all that matters. Enjoy your evening here.” Marchetto gave a combination sigh and a low, guttural laugh as he moved on to the next table.
Fat Lester exhaled, his tension seeming to dissipate. Skinny Lester watched Marchetto and said, “Still, it’s probably why they gave us a table in the back, near the bathrooms. This is a pretty fancy place. It’s one of Michael’s favorites.”
“Do you notice how well Michael dresses when he goes out to dinner? He’s always wearing a sport coat or a cashmere sweater. He’s got cuff links on his shirts, you know—French cuffs. His suits look custom.”
Fat Lester twirled his fork into his tagliatelle alla Bolognese, “That shit works for him. He’s got to dress up for his day job. It wouldn’t work for us. But Alex was a pretty sharp dresser too. You know, I looked in his closet once; he had at least fifteen custom-made sport coats from that Korean guy, Gung Ho, in Flushing. Although, now that I think of it, he was always saying that none of them fit.”
“The Korean guy is Chung Ho, not Gung Ho,” Skinny Lester said before his thoughts drifted somewhere else. “It was just a month ago that we were at Alex’s birthday party. Same fifteen or so guys—Joe D, Shakes, Frankie the Bookie—and same table at Piccola’s, every year. Even Tony the usher showed up this year.”
“Yeah, I remember him from when Alex would take us to the Yankee games,” Fat Lester said, smiling over the memory. “Tony was the usher at the stadium for forty years. Alex had his season box there for all those years, and this guy shows up at the dinner. He’s got to be seventy-five. He said Alex was his nicest customer, always tipped him well and just treated him well. How many guys have the usher from the stadium go out of their way to show up at their birthday party?”
Fat Lester pointed his fork as he made his point. “And don’t forget Michael. He’s been coming the last few years, even though he skipped about twenty before that.”
As the two of them sat together and enjoyed their pasta and a bottle of Chianti Classico late that night, they had a chance to reflect on the path that got them where they were, their years with Alex, and the prospect of life with Michael.
“Who the hell would have ever believed Alex would be gone and his kid brother would take over? I always thought Michael was kind of an intellectual. He was always reading books,” Fat Lester said, a forkful of the Bolognese disappearing into his mouth.
“We knew Alex for over forty years. We’ve actually known Michael for almost as long, since we saw him when he was first born,” Skinny Lester said.
“I would have never thought he’d want to do what Alex was doing. If he’s still in it after all the shit that’s gone on the last several weeks, he’s no fuckin’ baby anymore,” said Fat Lester. “When Michael met with Sharkey at Luger’s that day, I was outside the room. In the middle, I heard a commotion. I wasn’t sure if maybe Michael was in trouble, so I opened the door just a little to check it out, be sure he didn’t need help. Michael had Sharkey by the throat. He had him so hard that Sharkey’s eyes were bulging out of his fucking head. I thought Michael was going to kill h
im right there. Sharkey had to beg for his life.”
“Shit,” said Skinny Lester. “I didn’t know it was that bad.”
Fat Lester stopped eating, which didn’t happen often when he was attacking spaghetti. “Les, could you kill a man if you had to?”
Skinny Lester looked up from his meal, his forehead wrinkled from the pressure of the question. “I’ve thought about it over the years. I guess it depends on what you mean by, if I ‘had to.’”
“Christ, just answer the fucking question.”
“No, maybe in self-defense or something like that. Could you?”
“Yeah, sure. But, it’s funny, only when I’m angry. Not when I think about it at all. I’ve come close a few times. You know, once when I had someone down, and I’m beating him. I got all wrapped up in it. I realized I could do it. I could finish him off.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I don’t know, Les. I’ve asked myself the same question, you know: Why did I stop? And it wasn’t any of the assholes from the business. Just some guys here and there in a bar who pissed me off.”
Fat Lester continued. “I miss Alex. He was a stand-up guy. Even when I had my problems, he never left me. You two guys were the only ones I could count on.” Fat Lester’s eyes glistened again with the hint of a tear.
But his face appeared to turn red as he switched gears. “Lester, who the fuck ordered the hit on Alex? Sharkey was real pissed at Michael, but why would Sharkey have wanted to kill Alex before any of this crap started or before Alex paid him his seven hundred grand that he won?”
“You know,” Skinny Lester said, “there’s an expression: when you’re looking to solve a crime, when you can’t find the money, look for the dame.”
Fat Lester stopped chewing and just looked, dumbfounded, at his cousin across the table.
Skinny Lester, knowing he had obviously confounded his cousin, smiled and said proudly, “My shrink, Donald Connor, told me that.”
Fat Lester’s face turned an even deeper shade of red. “First, I don’t know why you have to see a fucking shrink. All these Jewish guys, like Woody Allen, see shrinks. Is that why you see one?”