Pardon the Ravens

by Alan Hruska

“I’m working on it, Sid. Still working on it.”

  SEVENTY-ONE

  Vito and Joey Forcaccio snare Carl Raffon fleeing. He’s downstairs from his one-room apartment on a side street in the Lower East Side. Having just packed up the trunk of his Oldsmobile convertible, Carl rushes to get the key into the ignition and instead fumbles it onto the floor. Vito and Joey don’t bother forcing the door. They slice open the canvas top of the convertible and pull Carl up and out of it, with Carl squirming in their grasp like a weasel. People stare and keep going, despite Carl’s screams. Getting involved isn’t safe in New York and it’s considered to be very time-consuming.

  Across town, Phil is waiting in an old refrigerator room in the meat-packing district. The butchery once there has shut down. But meat hooks are still affixed to the walls and dangle from ceiling trolleys.

  Phil doesn’t have to wait long. Vito and Joey arrive with their prey before schedule. Carl’s been cuffed by the boys and held upright. He’d be screaming still, except they’ve taped his mouth. But his eyes bulge. A mistake Carl makes. It gives Phil an idea.

  He says, “You know what happens to pigeons, Carl. Bad things happen to pigeons. So guess what, pigeon? They’re about to happen to you.”

  A loud hum of protest erupts from the now thrusting, frenzied figure being held by the two men.

  Phil proceeds. “I think we should make a statement here. I want what happens to you to be graphic. People should be moved by your plight. I want them not only to understand it intellectually, but to feel it. You know what I mean?” Phil waits. “Probably not. So try to stay with me. You see those meat hooks. I’m gonna yank one into the back of your head and thread it through one of your eyes. If I miss, I get another chance. In golf, we call that a mulligan. In Latin, we call it an in terrorem effect.”

  Carl lunges with all the force in his body against the clamp of the henchmen, which leaves him sagging on his knees on the cement floor.

  “Take the tape off, Vito. Carl wants to tell us how he’s feeling about all this.”

  Vito’s method of tape removal isn’t gentle, so Carl has further reason to scream.

  “You’ve understood what I just told you?” Phil says.

  “Phil, Jesus! I haven’t told anybody a damn thing.”

  “Wrong tack, Carl.”

  “All the good work I’ve done for you, Phil. You wouldn’t do this.”

  “Do what?”

  “What you just said.”

  “You think I’m joking?”

  “You’re not that… vicious.”

  “A challenge!” says Phil. “Whatta you think, boys? Am I joking, bluffing?”

  Neither say anything, but Vito shakes his head, no.

  “Put the tape back on,” Phil says.

  SEVENTY-TWO

  For Alec, the plane ride Monday morning is a bit of an out-of-body experience. He’s flying to New York, but part of him never leaves Maine. In his mind, he’s still clinging to Carrie. Like she clung to him at the gate.

  At LaGuardia, he doesn’t get far. No further than the newspaper rack of the Union News kiosk. There’s Carl Raffon, big as life, on the front pages of the Daily Mirror and the Daily News. Except Carl’s no longer living. According to the story, he was found hanging from a meat hook in a freezer on Jane Street. The hook was rammed into the back of his head, out through his left eye.

  Alec buys both papers. “Typical of a gangland execution,” the News article reads. And, obviously, a warning to other prospective witnesses. Alec knows of only one.

  So does Shilling, whose call comes in as Alec opens the door to his office. “We’ll need the girl now, Carrie Madigan.”

  Alec’s tone isn’t pleasant. “You think the Angiapellos have run out of meat hooks?”

  “I have that covered, no fear. As it happens, I was at a dinner party this week with my former partner, Ray Sancerre.”

  Alec now totally loses it. “You told Sancerre about Carrie?”

  “Alec, what’s the matter?”

  “You fucking crazy? You trying to get the girl killed?”

  “On the contrary. Ray will put her in the witness protection program, which I’m told is damn good.”

  “Yeah? Whatta you suppose Carl Raffon thinks about that?”

  Alec hangs up, furious, blood pumping. He gives it a minute, then dials Carrie in Maine. Tells her about Raffon, Shilling, Sancerre.

  “So you’ve got no witness,” she says.

  He says nothing.

  “Me then!” she says. “I’ll come back, nail him, get Sarah back, go for witness protection.”

  “You’re safer not testifying. Just sit tight. As yet, no one knows how to find you.”

  “Not testify.”

  “That’s what I’m saying.”

  “I don’t testify, you lose your case.”

  “Ri-ght. Just what I want—to risk your life so I can win my case. Phil killed Raffon two days ago. If he were worried about you and knew where you were, he’d have been there by now.”

  “What about all those people—you said, thousands—who will lose their jobs, their savings?”

  “So I won’t lose,” he says. “I’ll figure something out.”

  “Alec?”

  “Yes.”

  “As soon as this is over, no matter what the outcome, I’m getting my daughter back.”

  “Yes.”

  “Even if I have to grab her and wait for Phil with my gun.”

  “It won’t come to that.”

  “But if it has to?”

  “Trust me, please. I will figure this out.”

  At U.S. Safety, in a large office with a view of New York Harbor, Alec and two younger associates are preparing Brett Creighton to testify at trial, when Alec’s secretary transfers a call from Ray Sancerre. Alec takes it in Creighton’s adjoining conference room.

  “Alec,” says Sancerre. “Think we need another face-to-face.”

  “Tied up, Ray, sorry. I’m with witnesses every minute until we start the trial.”

  “Carrie Madigan. You know where she is?”

  Alec, off guard, doesn’t answer.

  Ray says, “I know you know who she is, Alec. Your firm’s gumshoe made a deal on her behalf with the ADA handling her drug case. So, you know where she is?”

  Alec now doesn’t hesitate. “No.”

  “We can make the same deal we made on Raffon. You get to call her first in your case.”

  “Fine,” says Alec. “You find her, I’ll call her.”

  “Why is it I’m feeling you’re blowing smoke up my skirt?”

  “Overly cynical?”

  “I can subpoena you.”

  “And waste both our time.”

  “Lie to me under oath, I can put you away.”

  “Nice threat,” Alec says. “Nice story. Telemarch would love it.”

  Pause.

  “All right, Alec. I’ll find her,” says Ray. One could hear his mind working—the impulse to deliver his pet lecture on obstruction of justice warring against the Telemarch threat. He hangs up.

  Alec calls Carrie. “Stock up on groceries,” he says.

  “I know. I was halfway out the door when you called.”

  “Sancerre is unleashing the bloodhounds. As U.S. Attorney, he gets the cooperation of every local sheriff in the country. In about two hours it won’t be safe to be seen anywhere there are cops.”

  “I know this, darling.”

  “Okay, I won’t hold you.”

  “You may hold me as much as you like,” she says.

  “This,” he says, “is getting extremely sappy.”

  “Wish to contribute?”

  “Go!” he says.

  “I’m out of here.”

  “No, wait. One more thing. I want to ask you to do something you’ll consider weird.”

  “I don’t know, darling. I’ve got quite a range.”

  “Remember that guy we met on the dock… what was his name? Roscoe Harley.”

  “The swor
dfish man.”

  “Right,” he says. “Make him an offer. Say we’ll be willing to take delivery of about two hundred skeletons, not crushed.”

  She says nothing for a moment. Then, “You’re kidding, right?”

  “No. Not kidding.”

  “You’ve thought of something not ridiculous to do with them?”

  “I have,” he says. “But I’m going to have to show it to you.”

  “This is a test,” she says.

  “Of faith.”

  “Where’d you like ’em?”

  “Backyard?”

  Alec is meeting with the younger associates when he’s summoned to Braddock’s office. “With the team?” Alec asks Madge, who’s delivered the summons.

  “He said you. I’d come alone.”

  Alec heads for the senior partner’s office.

  “You working this weekend?” are the first words out of Ben’s mouth delivered over the morning’s New York Law Journal. Tilted back, newspaper up, legs sprawled over a corner of the desk, the former judge is a half-hidden figure.

  “Not here,” says Alec.

  The newspaper comes down. “Really. Not here. Where your team is. Where the documents are. Where you could have the witnesses, if you wanted them.”

  “I don’t need them. Or the documents. Or the team.”

  Ben’s legs hit the floor. “You know what you’re doing?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re setting up a situation where, if you win, you’re okay. Marginally, because you winged it, but okay, because winning excuses much. You lose, which is the far more likely scenario….”

  “And I’m gone.”

  Braddock wags his head mournfully. “Gone? You’re unemployable. You’re toxic fucking waste. After you win ten, twenty big cases, maybe you can afford to boot one. At your stage, for you to break in… you need this win. The firm needs it—for trusting you—and for redeeming an unforgivable mistake. Almost half the service staff of this office, the secretaries, the messengers—you know what they’ve done?”

  “Yes, but I didn’t know you did.”

  “Don’t kid yourself, son. Ain’t nothing goes on here I don’t know about. You lose this case, those poor bastards will be wiped out.”

  Alec says, “I can’t be here this weekend.”

  “You mind telling me why?”

  “Sorry. I can’t tell you why.”

  Braddock gives him another sorrowful wag of the head, and the re-raised newspaper is a signal to get out of his office.

  At the airport gate, Alec says to Carrie, “That disguise is ridiculous.” She’s wearing a blond wig.

  She kisses him on the mouth and whispers in his ear, “I walked by six cops who are looking for a dark-haired woman. They hadn’t a clue.”

  Making for the front entrance of the terminal, Alec says, “I thought we’d agreed I’d take a cab.”

  “Actually,” says Carrie, “I don’t know what you’re doing here. Don’t you have a case to try next week?”

  The car is parked a few feet away. “I have to deal with the fish bones. You got them?”

  “You’re not going to believe it.”

  “You didn’t get them?”

  “Oh, I got them all right,” Carrie says. “You’ve never seen anyone as happy as Roscoe to deliver anything. What you won’t believe is what they look like in our backyard.”

  Close viewing is put off until morning, although the stench of dead fish pervades the night, as does the howling of every cat in the neighborhood. Twin mounds of skeletons. Hundreds of them. Many with heads, many in bits. Like an offering in the sunrise to a sea god.

  They find a wheelbarrow in the basement. It takes them hours to cart the bones down to the small beach in front of the seawall. It takes the rest of the day to sort out the whole ones, clean them and lay them out on the lawn to dry. The local hardware store has fulfilled Alec’s order. He makes the pickup early that evening. Gets some looks hauling the cans out of the store. But this is Maine. No one questions his need for ten gallons of phosphorescent paint. People like their walls to glow in the dark, that’s their business.

  Sunday is cloudless. Alec and Carrie roast as they work in the full glare of the sun. The basement had offered up not only the wheelbarrow but an old tub they also haul down to the seawall, and then fill, for starters, with four gallons of the paint. Dipping all the bones in the tub and drying them in the sun take them to midafternoon. Then the big job: dispersing the painted bones over the marsh.

  That night, Alec and Carrie go up to a third-floor window to admire the effect. It’s dazzling, literally. In a random pattern, throughout the marsh, the swordfish bones luminesce in the moonlight with a light greenish sheen, as if the marsh itself were an organism being X-rayed. Or a parchment of celestial runes.

  “Takes one’s breath away,” says Carrie.

  “Yes.”

  “Quite an artistic conceit.”

  “Anything moves in that marsh,” Alec says, “it breaks the plane of fluorescence. And we’ll see it. Better than depending on lights, whose wires can be cut.”

  “But why swordfish bones?”

  “Because of the artistic conceit,” he says.

  She looks up at him dubiously.

  SEVENTY-THREE

  Back in New York, on the day before trial, a fissure in Alec’s composure tears open, and panic flows in. The verdict against him is ruinous—to the stockholders, the Kendall, Blake service staff, and Alec personally. The newspapers mock him. The firm fires him. No other will have him. Carrie leaves him. Phil tracks him down….

  What stops the free fall is anger. At himself for his weakness. At Phil for sadistic brutality. At Si and his smarmy troupe, painting themselves as the champions of their own victims, and getting away with that fiction—getting rich on it—in case after case.

  Alec calls Carrie, looking for calm.

  “What’s it like up there?” he asks.

  “Lonely. What do you think?”

  “I meant outside.”

  “You trying to trick me? I do go outside. Around the house. No one sees me, don’t worry.”

  “I’m sure it’s fine,” says Alec, wondering whether it really is.

  “You worried about your bones? Dem bones, dem bones,” she sings.

  “Still in place?”

  “Still there. Still beautiful. And they protect me. I can see if a chipmunk moves out there. A field mouse!”

  “A large rat.”

  “Blow his head off!” she says, jest ending with a grim little tone-twist.

  They’re silent for a moment.

  “Almost over,” Alec says.

  “I know.”

  “We’ll come through this, have Sarah back, be all right, you’ll see.”

  Another silence.

  “Carrie?”

  “I know. Just do it!”

  Rosenkranz’s final settlement offer is delivered that afternoon. A meeting to consider it is scheduled for Gen. Rand’s office. On arriving, Alec is surprised to learn that it’s a meeting between only the two of them. Rand has already gotten Creighton’s opinion, and Shilling’s.

  “And what do they think?” Alec asks.

  “I’m not telling you.”

  Alec laughs. “Which way do you think it would push me?”

  “I figure you for a contrarian.”

  “In fairness, sir, almost no one tries these cases. No one wants to. Either side. The risks are too high before a jury, and there’s too much at stake. Also, Rosenkranz and his crew are finally down to where the insurance companies want to settle.”

  “And is that what you want?”

  “Personally?”

  “Yes.”

  “Of course not.”

  “Right,” says Rand. “And you know what paying out four-hundred-million would do to our rates?”

  “Up fifty per cent?”

  “Try double that. Maybe triple. Which we can’t afford. We’re in twelve different businesses operating at
the margin. We need low insurance rates to succeed. U.S. Safety is mainly a banking and small-manufacturing operation. We do not make large profits. We do need insurance, and it’s not an insubstantial part of our costs. Double our rates, I sincerely doubt we’d survive long term. Triple ’em? We wouldn’t last four years.”

  Rand stands up, goes to the window. “Come here,” he commands, and Alec joins him. “Those people down there,” Rand says. “Scurrying around. Most of them work for people like me. I make bad calls, they pay. I don’t like that. Especially if the decision I’m making is to bail out my own ass by settling with insurance money. You getting my drift?”

  “I am.”

  “Do you know the average length of time our employees have worked for the company?”

  “No.”

  “It’s the longest of any company on the Big Board. Over sixteen years. That’s our average. That includes brand new employees. Which means most of our work force has been with the company for more than twenty-five years, many for thirty-five years. You think I’m going to put those people out of work with an improvident settlement?”

  “No.”

  “Right. So you tell me. Now. On the eve of trial. Are our chances of winning this case realistic?”

  “They are.”

  “I don’t want bullshit,” Rand says. “I want an honest appraisal.”

  “I’ve just given you one.”

  “Do you believe you’ll win?”

  “I do.”

  “Then, goddamnit…”

  “Do it.”

  “Right! Do it!”

  SEVENTY-FOUR

  Abigail is planning a romantic picnic. To take our minds off things, she thinks, to live! One of the estates she services has a strip of sand on Long Island Sound. The owners, still in Palm Beach, called Abby for additions to their security system before their return to New York. The job is done on a balmy spring day which ripens into a sultry evening. When they wrap the work, she surprises Sam with a basket of food and a blanket for them to sit on.

  The mood, however, isn’t as cheerful as she had hoped.

  “Okay, Sam, what?”

  “Food’s terrific.”

  “Cold lobster, yeah, I should think.”