To Save a Son

by Brian Freemantle

  The lawyer sat with his head cupped in his hands under the onslaught, refusing to look up at his sister. Tina was right, thought Franks. Whatever the outcome, things were going to be very much different for all of them. He supposed Tina would suffer more from the break than he would; Maria had been her closest friend, and any continuing relationship between the two women would be difficult now. Did Tina really mean that she never wanted to see her father again? Whether or not she meant it, Franks realized he wouldn’t want to spend any more time in the old man’s company. Not just the end of a close relationship, then. The end of the Westchester visits and the wet-eyed sentimentality. Would they even need the Scarsdale house, now that the companies were being dissolved? There had been as much family as business reason for buying, and neither were going to exist anymore. Certainly the running of the cruise liner didn’t necessitate a place here. Franks stopped the reflection. He was running ahead of himself, far ahead of himself. He reached out, pulling the furious Tina away from the desk, feeling the anger vibrating through her, and seated her in the same chair into which he’d slumped in the first moment of shock the previous day. Turning back to the lawyer, Franks said, “Okay, so what about the surveys and the checks?”

  Nicky brought his head up, appearing reluctant to look at anyone. “They didn’t think it would take too long,” he said.

  “How long?” insisted Franks. Common sense dictated that he didn’t go into any meeting with the three men inadequately prepared, but he was reluctant to allow too much time. Getting out was the only consideration now.

  Nicky turned away once more, awkwardly. “Seems Pascara’s quite well known. By reputation at least. They thought some sort of preliminary report might be available in a couple of days.”

  “You made it clear what we want? Something provable! Recorded!”

  Nicky sighed at the unremitting pressure. “You set it all out last night! Sat here while I wrote it out!”

  And I’m glad I did, thought Franks. He was worried—was worried to hell—but he wasn’t giving up. He was fighting back and he was going to win, although he wasn’t precisely sure what winning was going to be. Nicky seemed to have given up at the very first indication of trouble. Franks said, “I don’t want any mistakes.” He paused and added, “Any more mistakes.”

  “I still don’t think we should do this,” said Nicky.

  “Do what?” demanded Tina, coming into the conversation.

  “Face them down.”

  “Jesus, Nicky. You make me sick!” she said.

  “You should know what it’s like, better than Eddie,” said the lawyer.

  “I told you he thinks it might be physically dangerous,” Franks reminded his wife.

  “Do you really think that?” said Tina.

  “It could be a possibility.”

  “I think we should talk to Poppa about it,” said Tina. “He’s involved, after all. Knew Pascara a long time ago, according to what you say. He’d know if there was any danger.”

  Franks supposed there would have to be a meeting between them sometime. It might as well be now—almost immediately—as later. And Tina was right. Enrico had known Pascara in the early days. So he might know something that he could use against the man at the dissolution meeting. He said, “Don’t you think Maria should hear about it, too?”

  “Yes,” said Tina, in immediate agreement. “I think that’s exactly what we should have. A family meeting. The last.”

  Nicky nodded uncertainly. “I suppose we should,” he said. Seemingly reminded, he looked to Franks and said, “Have you finished with the folder?”

  “What folder?” interrupted Tina again.

  “I told you about it,” said Franks. “The records that Nicky kept, of the offshore accounts and some of the formation details.” It hadn’t taken him very long to read, the previous night at the Plaza. According to the file, Pascara had separate investments totaling nearly two million dollars, spread throughout America, in addition to the hotels and casino stock.

  “I’d like it back,” Nicky said.

  “So you could destroy it?” Franks asked at once. Because he’d gone out to meet Tina’s Concorde flight there had not been time to go to a bank, so at the moment Franks had it in a safe-deposit box at the hotel. But he would put it into the bank, he decided, staring at the sweating lawyer and remembering his earlier thoughts about the man’s collapse. Nicky didn’t think there should be any confrontation, and he was already running scared. Franks wasn’t sure there was any protective value in what little documentation Nicky had retained, but he was damned sure he didn’t want it burned or shredded. Just as he was damned sure that’s exactly what Nicky would do if he returned it.

  “It’s my property!” insisted the lawyer desperately.

  “It’s company property,” Franks said, the argument already prepared. “The property of a company which belongs to me and of which you’re a servant, as secretary. I’ve every right to it; I had every right to it a long time ago.”

  “Please!” Nicky’s desperation was worsening. “You’re being stupid!”

  “Not anymore,” said Franks. “I have been, for far too long. But not anymore. If we’re going to survive this, we’re going to need evidence, not throw it away.”

  “Is that what you think we should do?” Tina asked her brother. “Get rid of something that could help us prove we weren’t part of all this!”

  “It isn’t proof like that,” said Nicky. “It’s only stuff about investments. Bank records.”

  “Which we’ll keep,” said Tina. “You make me sick, Nicky. Sick to my stomach!”

  Franks decided there wasn’t any point in continuing the personal abuse. Friendship—any relationship—was over, and they all recognized it. The only consideration now was getting out with as little damage as possible. And as quickly as possible. To Nicky he said, “Why not make a meeting with your father? Tonight?”

  “What if he says do nothing?” said the lawyer, in sudden urgency. “He’s our father, Eddie. As much yours as he is mine. We’ve always done what he said.…” The man looked to his sister. “You, too.”

  “No,” rejected Franks at once. “Maybe once. For a long time. But not anymore. We’ll talk it through. Because we should. Poppa could have stopped it happening, but he didn’t. I don’t have to respect him anymore, don’t have to do what he says.” All the relationships over, he thought again. Despite everything—despite the anger at their cynicism and their betrayal—Franks still felt sadness.

  “I feel like Eddie,” said Tina, declaring herself.

  “Wrong,” said Nicky emptily. “You’re wrong.”

  “Make the calls, Nicky,” ordered Tina. “Call Poppa and call Maria.”

  The lawyer did, stumbling and rambling, speaking first to his father, who agreed at once, and then to Maria, with whom he attempted to sound more forceful but didn’t really succeed. They could have gone immediately, but Franks was increasingly conscious of the importance of the file, and so he delayed, arranging to travel out in convoy at three o’clock.

  From the hotel Franks telephoned his bank on Third Avenue so that the officials were waiting when he and Tina arrived. As well as a business account Franks maintained a joint private account, because it had always been his practice to give his wife access to all his various holdings, including current deposits, and, although he hadn’t considered it until they were actually going through the formalities, he made her a joint signatory to the safe-deposit box as well.

  The agreement with Nicky was that the lawyer and his wife should meet them at the Plaza. Nicky was on time and there was an immediate, difficult embarrassment when Maria got from their car expecting the normal sort of greeting and encountered instead a wall of reserve, which was impossible for either of them to avoid showing, although each was aware of her innocence of anything that had happened. Franks insisted they set out at once, glad they were traveling in separate limousines. Franks and Tina remained silent as the car negotiated the difficult M
anhattan streets, but after they’d cleared the traffic-clogged city and reached the Saw Mill River Parkway, Tina reached across for his hand and said abruptly, “I want to tell you something.”

  “What?”

  “That I’m very proud of you. All the time when we were with Nicky today and I saw how he was behaving, I kept thinking how strong you are. And how weak he is. I don’t know what the outcome of all this is going to be, but I want you to understand that I’m with you, all the way. I trust you, Eddie. Trust you to do everything right.”

  Briefly Franks did not know how to respond. Then he said, “I will always look after you; keep you safe.”

  “I know, my darling. I think you’re wonderful. My family’s screwed you: fucked you—fucked us both—completely.”

  “It’s bad,” said Franks. “As bad as it could be. But I’ll get us out of it. I’ll get us and the kids out of it. There’ll be a period when it’ll be nasty, with a lot of exposure and embarrassing things like that. We’ll have to ride it all. You prepared for that?”

  “I don’t think that’s a fair question, after what I’ve just said.”

  “No,” said Franks, immediately contrite. “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m very lucky,” said Tina. “I know that well enough.”

  “We both are,” said Franks. “I’m sorry for what it’s going to do to the family.”

  “You know how I feel about the family.”

  “Now maybe,” said Franks sensibly. “You’ll feel differently later.”

  “I won’t,” said Tina positively. “Later it will be like it is now, about all of them. I hate them, Eddie, for what they’ve done. I hate Poppa and I hate Nicky. For what they’ve done I’ll always hate them, and I’ll never forgive them.”

  “Shush, Tina,” he said. “You mustn’t hate. Maybe now, but not later.”

  “I will,” she said. “I’ll always hate them.”

  “I can get us out of it,” said Franks, equally positive.

  “Which is why I said I’m lucky.”

  The arrival in Westchester was unlike any moment before with the family; more difficult, Franks was sure, than his wartime arrival. Then only he was uncertain, but now they all were. Not at once, of course. Initially there was the waiting-on-the-porch, open-front-door normality, despite Tina’s unannounced arrival from England. But Tina held back from any embrace—something she’d never done before—and he did, too. The stumbling change in Nicky was more obvious than anything, so there was a disordered, confused entry into the house.

  Enrico did see himself as the patriarch, Franks recognized. That was obvious from the way the old, still upright, white-maned man conducted himself in those early, obviously uncertain moments. But then, thought Franks in retrospect, it might not have been too difficult for him to guess, because always at the back of his mind must have been the thought of somehow, some day, something happening.

  Franks hadn’t been aware of it until now, but it was always traditional for them to separate within the house, the women going with the children, the men going with the men. Today that didn’t happen, although not by any announcement. Mamma Scargo instinctively led on, actually going toward the kitchen, but Tina stopped, refusing to follow her, and so Maria—already confused from the chill in the city—stopped too, so there was a swirl of uncertainty in the hallway. Franks moved for control, determined at last to achieve it. He announced, “This isn’t exactly a social visit. I think we should meet as a family. All of us.”

  Enrico Scargo looked at him, immediately irritated at someone making declarations in his house. “What?”

  “We’re going to talk.” Franks refused to acknowledge the intimidation he felt at once. Wanting to establish himself, he said, “We’re going to talk about my being cheated and conned and thrown aside by this family.”

  Enrico and Maria and Mamma Scargo had been milling about in the entrance, but now they stopped, matching the stillness of those who knew.

  It was Enrico, naturally, again, who reacted ahead of the women, rising to the challenge within his own household. “What?” he demanded again, his voice a rising roar.

  “Stop it!” said Franks, opposing the old man for the first time but convinced against any pretense. “You heard what I said and just in case you didn’t I’ll repeat it. I’ve come here tonight—with Tina, who flew in this morning from London, and who hasn’t slept and wanted this meeting because she’s as devastated—no, that’s a pompous-sounding word. She’s as broken up, even though that’s not much better, at what’s happened to both of us. Because we trusted this family—” Franks stopped awkwardly. He’d been about to refer to Enrico but he didn’t know how. Always, verbally, it had been Poppa, although he’d always thought of him as Enrico. Now neither fitted. He wasn’t Poppa and he wasn’t Enrico. Another change. “She had the right to trust you. You’re her father. Children should be able to trust their father. I trusted you because although you weren’t my father—although this wasn’t my true family—you made yourself so and I accepted it. So we both made mistakes.”

  “I will not be spoken to—have this sort of conversation—in my house!” shouted Enrico, confronting the challenge.

  Franks met it with the same determination. “You will,” he said. “Because you deserve it. Here in the hall, if you like. Anywhere. But you’re going to hear what’s happened. How this family’s been wrecked.”

  Franks thought at once that the word sounded dramatic, although he supposed it fitted. It registered with Mamma Scargo, who gave a strangely muted cry, almost a screech. She broke it off almost as quickly as it came, and said to her daughter, “Tina! What is it? What’s happened?”

  Franks strode into the large drawing room, the others trailing behind him. Enrico was the last to enter, puce-faced at losing control in his own house. The whiteness of his hair accentuated the coloring. Franks didn’t start to talk at once. He looked instead around the room, remembering the times he’d spent there, the weekends away from Harvard, the parties and the weddings, thinking last of the emotional scene with Enrico after Nicky’s marriage to Maria. So much was ending. Franks looked to the lawyer. “You tell them, Nicky,” he ordered. “You tell them what it’s all about.”

  The man looked up at him imploringly, but Franks felt no sympathy. “Tell them!” he yelled, the anger bursting from him.

  It was a pitiful performance. Nicky mumbled, head down toward the floor, and Franks shouted at him to speak up, and when he did, the account was still disjointed and confusing, so that Franks constantly had to intrude to ensure some coherence. Toward the end Nicky’s shoulders began to heave, and he struggled a handkerchief from his pocket and held it to his face, so that the words were even more muffled. Despite the need to prompt, Franks remained attentive to the reactions of everyone in the room. Tina, who knew it all, was stone-faced, an expression of contempt gradually forming as Nicky groped on. Maria stared unbroken at Nicky, too, her face showing a mixture of emotions, shock and bewilderment and, toward the end, perhaps contempt as well. Mamma Scargo’s was the quickest and most open response, the tears coming almost at once, but even these controlled in male surroundings, so that she sat with a handkerchief bunched in front of her mouth, weeping quite silently. Enrico’s aggression stayed for some time, but at the end it was an attitude he couldn’t sustain. There was no weeping breakdown, of course. Instead the man sagged, as if some inner support had collapsed, and in Franks’ eyes he looked for the first time what he was: an old, paunchy, white-haired man.

  It was Maria who spoke when Nicky finally finished, and her reflex was ironically the same as Tina’s had been that morning in the hotel room. “Dear God!” she said, swallowing in an effort for complete comprehension. “Oh, God.” The woman looked toward Enrico, instinctively seeking the strength that had always been there, and her face registered the shock when she realized that the slumped old man didn’t have it anymore. Desperately she looked around, so relieved when she saw how Franks was standing that she actually smiled,
an automatic expression of relief. “What are we going to do?” she said.

  “Get out of it,” said Franks at once. “Save what we can, abandon what we can’t, but get out of it.”

  “What do you mean?” The question croaked out of Enrico, and Franks thought fleetingly that even the man’s voice seemed old now.

  Franks didn’t reply at once. Where was the apology! he thought in another flush of anger. Where was the explanation from the man who could have prevented it by one simple, easy warning? Franks actually opened his mouth, forming the demand. But then he stopped, conscious how quickly a man who had known unquestioned obedience and respect from his family throughout his life had been humiliated. Franks didn’t want to further that humiliation. Enrico had constantly bullied him, but he didn’t want to bully in return. He didn’t want revenge, even. To think of revenge—consider the word—was stupid. Franks answered the older man finally, setting out how he intended to dissolve the company, and although he was looking directly at Enrico he was aware of another fleeting smile of admiration from Maria.

  “No,” said Enrico simply.

  “Why not?” demanded Tina. “They can’t stop us doing it, because they made the mistake of vesting control in Eddie and me. It’s a brilliant idea.”

  Now it was Enrico who talked, gazing down at the carpet, for the first time humble in his own household. “Pascara is an important man,” he said. “A big man. He tells; he doesn’t get told.”

  “How important?” said Franks.

  Enrico looked up, actually meeting Franks’ eyes. “Bigger man us, to confront,” he said, still simply. “Bigger than the law, always.”

  “Nonsense!” erupted Franks. “This is an FBI investigation!”

  Enrico smiled sadly. “There have been others. I don’t know how many, but a lot of others. They’ve all failed.”