Clutching at Straws

by J. L. Abramo

  “Most of the scene will be shot very tight,” Jean-Pierre said, “and one of the cameras will be mounted directly above the table and will take in the individual card hands. With that in mind, think about leaning out from rather than in to the table.”

  We all muttered that we would keep it in mind.

  A prop man sat in the corner setting up decks of cards that could be dealt out exactly according to the script.

  The dialogue was fraught with cliché, the scene culminating with a large pile of chips in the center of the table. My character was third to fold his hand.

  “It’s getting a little too rich for my blood,” I read, throwing down my cards. I had to choke it out.

  The Man and Slade were left to butt heads. Lancey Howard won the match and cleaned Slade out.

  “How the hell did you know I didn’t have the king or the ace?” Slade says.

  To which Lancey Howard replies, with a few lines that maybe only Edward G. could pull off, “I recollect a young man putting the same question to Eddie the Dude. ‘Son,’ Eddie told him, ‘all you paid was the looking price. Lessons are extra.’“

  Slade throws in the towel, thanking the other players for the entertainment and Howard for the privilege of watching a great artist at work.

  “Well now, you’re quite welcome, son,” Lancey replies. “A pleasure to meet someone who understands that for the true gambler, money is never an end in itself. It’s simply a tool, as language is to thought.”

  Deep.

  That brought an end to the scene; we were told that the opening credits would roll afterward over the arrival of Eric Stoner, The Cincinnati Kid, into Denver’s Union Station. My scene with Chance would follow the credits. We were given a late morning break and told to report to the set for the rolling of the cameras at ten-thirty.

  I waited to see if Chance would approach me. He didn’t. I went off on my own. I decided that I would hold off and ask later if he wanted to join me for dinner and perhaps go over our upcoming scene together, scheduled to shoot the following day. I walked to Market Street and had a late breakfast.

  At ten forty-five we played out the scene, cameramen breathing down our necks and a large rig hovering ominously above our heads.

  After a late lunch followed by a few more takes, I was done for the day. Since Chance had more work to do, I grabbed a quick word with him before I left. I invited him to give me a shout when he wrapped, if he cared to join me for dinner at the Imperial Chinese Restaurant.

  I returned to my room and gave Darlene a quick call at the office. She didn’t have much to report, but she did say that Lieutenant Lopez had phoned with what she said was a new finding in the Freddie Cash murder case. I resisted the urge to call Lopez. I was feeling distracted enough trying to stay in character as a fellow actor while trying to develop a friendship with an unknowing investigative subject.

  I could have used a long walk, for exercise and fresh air after a whole day crowded around a small table in a smoke-filled room, but I was afraid of missing Chance Folsom if he called. Instead, I lay down on the bed and read some of the Dumas novel.

  The phone rang at about eight-thirty, waking me from what was quickly becoming a customary early evening nap.

  “Is it too late for dinner?” asked Chance.

  “Not at all,” I said, trying to sound awake. “I’ll meet you in the lobby, give me about fifteen minutes.”

  At nine-fifteen we sat at the Imperial on South Broadway. The decor was too New Jersey suburban for my taste, but the food was topnotch, voted Best of Denver for thirteen years running. Seafood gumbo, spicy eggplant in garlic sauce, crisp sesame prawns, and steamed salmon in black bean sauce cluttered the table.

  We were emptying bottles of Tsingtao beer at a fairly good pace.

  Chance and I were both loosening up. We began revealing information about ourselves. My revelations however, were to a great extent scripted.

  Chance Folsom and I could hardly have come from more different cultural and geographical backgrounds.

  At the same time we had more than I would have expected in common.

  We left the restaurant and moved on to the Ship Tavern at the Brown Palace. We sat at the bar and continued our exposés.

  Chance talked about growing up on an avocado farm. I spoke about growing up in Brooklyn with a fig tree in the backyard.

  Chance talked about the three-mile bus ride to his elementary school, I described the three-block walk to mine. We both loved baseball, had both played the game as preadolescents and in high school, and were both too young to remember when New York had the Dodgers and the Giants and California had no major league team at all.

  We both had loving mothers who could cook up a storm. We both had fathers who were strong-minded and introspective, fathers whom we tried very hard to please. We both had brothers who were smarter than we were.

  My brother Abe worked as an epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. I told Chance that my older brother was a successful lawyer in New York. Chance seemed to accept the coincidence without suspicion. He told me that his brother was a California district attorney but never mentioned the name Lowell Ryder.

  “When I graduated high school, I began working the farm full time with Dad,” Chance said. “It was expected of me. My brother, on the other hand, was destined for college education and a professional career in law and politics. It’s all he talked about wanting from the time he was fourteen years old. And my father was going to see that he got the opportunity. At any cost.”

  “At any cost?” I asked.

  “For my father, it was an opportunity to see his own thwarted dreams come true vicariously, through my brother. My old man grew up on the same avocado farm, and his old man wanted Calvin to be an avocado farmer when he grew up. But my father had other ambitions, and he ran off to college against his father’s wishes. He was doing very well, and had earned a full scholarship to law school when my grandfather died and my father had to come back to run the farm. He had no choice; my grandmother would never have survived without him. My father was always bitter about his sacrifice, and he often took it out on his family. Since he had the luxury of having fathered two sons, he could keep one on the farm and let the other go off and achieve what he never had the chance to have for himself. When my brother showed a strong desire to study law, my father was determined that nothing would get in my brother’s way.”

  “Nothing?”

  “What did your father have in mind for you?” Chance asked, shifting the spotlight back at me.

  “My father wanted both of his sons to be scholars. I was on my way to NYU, with a full tuition scholarship to study journalism, and then I fucked up royally.”

  “What happened,” Chance asked.

  The answer was difficult to deliver.

  “The summer after high school I stole a car and put it through the front window of a newsstand. I sent the man behind the counter to a hospital for five months. Instead of four years at NYU, I did three at Attica. When I got out I didn’t know a thing except what my cellmate had taught me about acting.”

  I glanced up at the mirror behind the bar. The reflection of my face brought the word louse to mind. I realize that I had said too much. I realized that maybe I wanted to be caught in the lie.

  Chance Folsom wasn’t stupid or gullible, only unsuspecting. He had no reason not to believe me. And yet, he didn’t bite. Chance said nothing about his own prison experience. Instead he moved the talk back to baseball.

  “Could be the Yankees and the Mets in the series,” he said.

  “Could be,” I said.

  And it was time to call it a night.

  “We never did run lines,” he said as we headed back to our rooms.

  Except I’d been running lines all evening.

  “I don’t think we’ll have much trouble,” I said. “It’s not exactly Harold Pinter.”

  “Thanks for dinner, Jake. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  And with
that we split up, Chance to the elevator and me to brave the stairs to the fourth floor. I had the feeling that it would take some prying to get Chance to talk about what transpired in the parking lot in 1985, and was beginning to feel that I didn’t have it in me to drag it out of him.

  I was thinking about letting it go, of admitting that the idea that Chance Folsom could throw any light on what happened to Judge Chancellor, Lefty, and the others had been a long shot to begin with.

  The next day we worked on our scene together, and we wrapped it by late afternoon. Chance seemed aloof. I let him be.

  I thought of calling Troy Wasinger for dinner, but realized that I was only looking for a convenient confessor. Instead, I moved up my flight to San Francisco. Without letting anyone back home know that I was returning early.

  Chance Folsom caught me at the check-out desk for a quick good-bye, promising that he wouldn’t miss getting to New York City for Cuckoo’s Nest. I didn’t know how to thank him.

  I took a cab from the airport.

  I picked up my mail and walked up to my apartment. I took a shower and put up a pot of espresso.

  I fell asleep in my reading chair, a Camel burning in the ashtray, the Dumas novel in my lap.

  I had no dreams that I care to recall.

  The Tugboat

  There is neither happiness nor misfortune in this world,

  there is merely the comparison between one state and the other,

  nothing more.

  —Alexander Dumas

  The Count of Monte Cristo

  Twenty Five

  The following morning I summed it up for Darlene.

  “So, you really didn’t learn much,” Darlene understated.

  “Only that undercover work is not what it’s made out to be.”

  “Lopez called again,” Darlene said.

  “I’m not sure that I care what she has to say.”

  “Why not reserve judgment until she gives you a clue,” said Darlene, “unless you’re too busy with something else.”

  It was the kindest way she could think to say “Get over it, Jake.”

  I called Lopez. I didn’t feel up for a visit to the Vallejo Street Station so I agreed to meet the lieutenant halfway at Caffe Greco on Columbus. I could listen for as long as it took to swallow down a strong espresso.

  It was an unusually mild day for late October. We took a table on the sidewalk in front of the coffeehouse. Lopez waited until the coffee was set on the table before she did what police detectives do. She began telling me why she wanted to meet by asking a question.

  “Did Freddie Cash pull his own kidnapping?”

  What the hell, Freddie was safe from prosecution now. “Yes he did. His father never knew.”

  “Does the name Charlie Mancuso mean anything to you, Diamond?”

  “Let me think,” I said.

  “I don’t have time for games, Diamond.”

  “Charlie Bones?”

  “The ballistics report on the bullet that killed Freddie Cash matched a weapon allegedly used by Mancuso in an earlier murder,” said Lieutenant Lopez. “The gun was being held as trial evidence against Mancuso until it mysteriously disappeared from the police station.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Is that the best you can do?”

  “I don’t know what you want me to say, Lieutenant.”

  “Can you tell me what I’m thinking?”

  Lopez was good. Trying to find out if I knew something she didn’t know before she spilled her beans.

  But I could be pretty cagey myself.

  “No offense, Lieutenant, but you said you didn’t have time for games and I left my crystal ball at home,” I said, “I’d rather you just tell me what you’re thinking, if you’re so inclined.”

  Lopez took a five-dollar bill from her purse and laid it on the table.

  “I just remembered that I forgot to water the plant in my office this morning. I’d better run,” she said.

  And with that she was up and heading toward Vallejo Street. And I was left sitting to consider what a smart cookie I was. “So, she just left you hanging?” asked Darlene, after hearing the synopsis of my meeting with Lopez.

  “I hanged myself,” I said.

  “So, tell me what you think she was thinking,” she said, “if you’re so inclined.”

  “Don’t be cute, Darlene.”

  “I can’t help it. C’mon, give.”

  “Someone lifted the gun from police evidence holding. Either it made its way back to Mancuso, or someone else used it on Freddie. Making Katt as the cop who snatched the piece is a pretty safe bet. But Katt was already dead before Freddie was killed.”

  “Okay.”

  “I think Lopez is thinking there’s a way to add it all up that pins the whole ball of wax on Charlie Bones.”

  “Mind if I try to do the math?” asked Darlene.

  “Be my guest,” I said.

  “Mancuso puts the big squeeze on Freddie Cash for outstanding gambling debts. Freddie kidnaps himself, takes the ransom money and pays Charlie off. Mancuso uses the money to employ Katt, first to lift the gun from the police station and then to set up a fall guy for the Chancellor snuff. Katt enlists Vigoda, Vic enlists Lefty. Maybe Mancuso is afraid that Vigoda knows he’s involved, so he dumps Vic into McCovey Cove, or has Katt take care of it. You rattle Katt’s cage with talk about the Rolex and the envelope, he reports back to Mancuso, and Charlie decides that Lefty knows too much and pays Katt to shut the kid up. Then Mancuso knocks off Katt for good measure. Finally, Mancuso worries that Freddie could tie him to the twenties and fifties scattered around the dead bodies and puts one into Freddie’s skull.”

  “And the judge?”

  “Charlie Bones does the judge himself, just before Lefty shows up.”

  “I couldn’t have said it better myself. I think that’s exactly what Lieutenant Lopez may be thinking.”

  “So,” said Darlene, “are you going to tell me what you’re thinking, or are you going to drop five bucks on my desk and stroll out the door?”

  “I’m thinking it’s possible that Mancuso killed them all, but I’d be more convinced if the envelope that everyone seemed to be after had Charlie Bones’s doom written all over it.”

  “Have they brought Mancuso in for questioning?” asked Darlene.

  “I don’t know. But I suppose I should give Lopez a heads up about the envelope if and when they do. And maybe I’ll try to track down Katt’s partner, Phil Moss, to see if he can connect the dots between Mancuso and Katt.”

  “And then?”

  Tug McGraw peeked his head out from under Darlene’s desk, as if he were waiting with her for my answer.

  “And then we’d better hope that some paying job comes through that door pretty soon,” I said.

  “Be careful what you wish for, Jake. I bet you can’t wait to see Lopez again after playing her so well at Caffe Greco.”

  “You love rubbing it in, don’t you, Darlene.”

  “Of course not, Jake. How could you say such a thing? Anyhow, look at it this way. You get to visit Vallejo Street Station, after all.” Darlene kept a straight face.

  I could have sworn the dog smiled.

  I moved toward the door and then turned back with the thought of getting in the last word, but Darlene had her nose in a stack of past-due bills and McGraw had disappeared again under the desk.

  At the police station, as luck would have it, I bumped into Officer Moss coming out as I walked up. I couldn’t tell if he was happy to see me.

  “Got a minute, Phil?” I asked.

  “Sure,” he said, “only, let’s walk away from here.”

  I followed him across Broadway and over to Pacific Avenue. “What’s up?” he finally asked when we were out of sight of the station.

  “I’m looking for anything that might tie your partner to Charlie Mancuso. Got something like that?”

  “I saw them talking once or twice, couldn’t tell you what about.”

&n
bsp; “Do you think Katt lifted Mancuso’s rod from the evidence room?”

  “Ask me that a month ago and I’d probably punch your lights out. Now, I don’t know what to think. It crossed my mind, since Tom apparently had his price.”

  “But you couldn’t verify it?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “Katt ever talk about the Freddie Cash kidnapping?”

  “No. When I heard that the Cash kid was killed with Mancuso’s gun I tried to think of anything Tom might have said about the kidnapping. I couldn’t.”

  “Is Mancuso in custody or been questioned?”

  “Charlie Bones is MIA,” said Moss. “Lieutenant Lopez has been scouring the earth for him.”

  “Call me if you hear anything,” I said, and headed back to the station.

  “Get to your plant in time?” I asked Lopez, through the open door from the hall outside her office.

  “What is it, Diamond? Didn’t I leave enough for the tab at Gaffe Greco?”

  “I came for a little give and take,” I said.

  “Well, as skeptical as I am, come on in. Take a seat. And give.” I accepted the invitation.

  “The last time I saw Lefty Wright,” I began, “he told me about an envelope. Vic Vigoda had promised him five grand down, which Lefty found under a rock, and ten more to pull an envelope out of Chancellor’s safe. Lefty never found it in the safe. Katt searched Lefty before other police showed up, and also rifled the safe. I’d say he was looking for the envelope.”

  “What was Officer Moss doing while all of this searching was going on?”

  “Trying to be a loyal partner,” I said, “while picturing his entire career going down the drain.”

  “Lefty say what this envelope was?”

  “Said he didn’t know.”

  “And you’re sure it wasn’t Lefty’s vivid imagination?”