by Tom Drury
“Where are we going?”
Ivan yawned. “Well, I think we’re supposed to kill you,” he said. He picked up a clipboard and read it. “Let’s see. Yeah. Says right here: ‘Kill Nash.’ But first we’re going to switch cars, because your wife probably called the cops.”
“She’s not my wife,” said Paul.
“Oh really.”
“How’d you know where I was?”
“We know where everybody is,” said Ivan. “You should have done your time like a brave scout. Accountants don’t go to bad prisons. Then you wouldn’t be in this trap. Did you hear Carlo got out? He’s real sick, Paul. They don’t think he has that long left in him.”
“What about Leblanc?”
“Jail.”
Paul named some others and Ivan said, “Jail also.”
“Carlo got out because he’s sick?”
“That’s not unheard of,” said Ivan. “They don’t do it for an earache or something. But they do it. The court has to be convinced that something is really wrong.”
“Let me talk to him,” said Paul. “How sick is he?”
“I’m not his physician,” said Ivan. “And you can’t talk to him. Your days of talking are over.”
Ivan got off the interstate south of Boston. Bodoni woke up and gave him directions to a warehouse in the woods. They pulled up to a building with no windows and the younger hood got out, unlocked a bay door, and pushed it open. Ivan let off the brake and the car coasted into the building; where a dozen men worked on cars in various stages of disassembly. Bodoni closed the door and came up to the driver’s window.
“Paul wants to talk to the Pliers,” said Ivan. “What do you say, should we let him?”
“I thought he was going to,” said Bodoni.
“You have to learn how to play along,” said Ivan. “That’s one thing you haven’t learned yet. What Bodoni’s saying, Paul, is that while you’re requesting to see the boss, ironically, the boss wants to see you.”
“Why?”
“Maybe he’s still mad about that time he bounced those checks,” said Ivan. “Remember that?”
“That was bank error, if you’ll think back.”
“Oh, it’s never you, is it? It’s never Paul Nash. Impossible. But the Shepherd sure thought it was you. He said, ‘Where is that accountant? I’m going to grind his elbows.’” Ivan laughed hard, although neither Paul nor Bodoni laughed at all. “Shoot . . . ,” said Ivan.
“And I told him not to write checks,” said Paul. “There were stacks of cash lying around, on top of which he could have walked into any store and come out with what he wanted.”
“He wouldn’t, though,” said Ivan. “Too proud.”
“Wait a minute,” said Bodoni. “Are you telling me that Carlo Record writes a check, and somehow there ain’t enough funds, and the bank returns it?”
“You’ve been going to night school,” said Ivan.
“I know what he means,” said Paul. “He’s asking why a bank would risk making the Shepherd mad.”
“Don’t paraphrase me, cadaver,” said Bodoni. “But basically, yeah, that is my question.”
“Well, hell, it’s all computers, isn’t it?” said Ivan.
“A lot of it is,” said Paul.
“That’s all it is anymore,” said Ivan. “A computer can’t tell Carlo Record from Johnny Two-Bit.”
“There are even computers in use here,” said Bodoni.
“Where are we?” said Paul.
“This is what is known as a chop shop,” said Bodoni. “But that doesn’t do it justice.”
Ivan and Paul got out of the car, and Bodoni gave them hard hats to wear. Then the three of them walked among the bays.
“Vehicles make their way here from all over the eastern seaboard,” said Bodoni. “My job has two parts, evaluation and assignment. Let’s say for the sake of argument a red Mercedes comes down from Beacon Hill. The first question I have to ask myself is if the car has any value in one piece. Let’s say down in Florida they’re dying for red Mercedeses. Which is true. Pretty car, looks great in the sun, all the elements are there. But then, when I look closely, maybe the car’s not in such good shape as I thought. Maybe it’s rusted out. Maybe they had to fuck up the interior too bad when they stole it. In other words, just because a car might be a sophisticated marque, you can’t assume it won’t get chopped. Give you an example — and this happens routinely — a kid comes in a couple months ago with a ’ninety-two Rolls. He’s all excited. All he has to do is put out his hand to get the big money. But the car had body dents all over, the bumper was hanging down, the master cylinder was finished. Really, I’ve seen better-looking Subarus. So I said, ‘I don’t know how you got this car here, over mountains perhaps, but the most I can offer you is two hundred bucks, and that’s mainly to send you on your way.’ And you know where that Rolls is now? Everywhere. Minnesota, New York, Utah, Pennsylvania. So even the best brands might get broken up. That’s when I turn to somebody like Jim Gordon. Excuse me, James, what do we have going today?”
“It’s a Volkswagen Passat, Mr. Bodoni,” said an earnest mechanic with an earring. “Until recently it belonged to a Viveca Belgeddes in Albany, New York. She took care of it, too, which is always nice to see. Right now what I’m doing is removing the body panels.”
“They’ll go to Europe, am I right?”
“Yes.”
“And how’s it going?”
“Well, it isn’t easy, but I feel that I’m learning as I go,” said James. “Volkswagen’s got their own way of doing everything, that’s for sure.”
“Good, good,” said Bodoni, as a big Chrysler wheeled across the clean cement floor. “Well, here you are, Paul. I won’t be going on the next leg of your journey. My place is here. Good luck to you in hell. They say it ain’t so bad once you get used to the climate. Now give me back the hard hat.”
Ivan let Paul drive. The car glided across the coastal plain. Ivan used the armrest and sighed.
Carlo had closed up the house in South County and now lived with his son, Bobby, to be close to the hospital. At first the plan had been for Paul and Ivan to drive straight down to Bobby’s house. But Ivan kept getting calls on his cell phone, and just outside of Providence the meeting was postponed. Ivan and Paul were told to go back to Boston and get a room at the King Philip Hotel.
“What are we doing that for?” said Paul.
“The King Philip is the only place Bobby can remember the name of,” explained Ivan.
This was an old hotel with murals of stag hunting, but it was less fun than it might have been, given the circumstances. Then there was some mix-up that led the hotel staff to believe that the room had been taken by Ivan and his son. Bellhops kept turning up with child gifts — a toy lobster, a Little Mermaid coloring book — and although Ivan explained each time that there was no child, the message never seemed to filter through the system.
“I guess the Shepherd had to go to the hospital for his treatment today,” said Ivan while playing solitaire by the window. “Well, actually, he’s not getting treatments. The terms of his release specify treatments, but he doesn’t believe in them, so he just goes to the hospital and hangs around.”
“Doing what?” said Paul.
“Reads magazines,” said Ivan. “The fact is he’s not in his right mind. I wouldn’t expect too much when you see him tomorrow. If tomorrow it is.”
That evening they went out to dinner at a restaurant in Chelsea, where big-screen televisions showed horse races from across the country, and afterward they drove back downtown and sat on a bench in the Public Garden drinking beer. “Want to go back to the room?” said Ivan. “What do you want to do? Play cards? Watch the TV?”
“Sure, I’ll play cards with you,” said Paul.
The game that Ivan
liked was California Jack. Paul could not stop reorganizing his cards, sometimes by suit and sometimes by rank. He was all nerves. Around ten o’clock a bellhop knocked on the door, set a tray of milk and cookies on a desk, and left with a puzzled expression.
“My wife is pregnant,” said Paul.
“Congratulations,” said Ivan, “but I wish you hadn’t told me. What if I have to shoot you? I mean, I’d do it, but it would not be pleasant . . . Aren’t these mini-bars great? They’re just so goddamned convenient. You want something?”
“Scotch,” said Paul. “I can’t decide what’s going to happen. He wouldn’t want to talk to me if he just wanted me dead. He wouldn’t put me up in this hotel.”
“Well, you just don’t know,” said Ivan. “With Carlo anymore you just do not know. I don’t mean he’s going to put a cigarette out in your eye or anything. He’s got more class than that. So where is your wife? Why are you running around with stray skirt when you got a pregnant wife of your own?”
“Mary and I split up,” said Paul. “She went back to Spokane before we knew she was pregnant.”
“We know where she is.”
“You might be omniscient, but you don’t know anything about cards,” said Paul.
“I always wanted to be a croupier.”
“Mary deserves better than I’ve given her.”
“Lynette Fromme deserves better than you’ve given Mary.”
“Who?”
“That Manson follower who tried to kill Gerald Ford,” said Ivan. “Christ, there’s no common base of knowledge anymore. Why don’t you call her? Why don’t you call Mary? Let the Shepherd pay the toll. This is your night.”
Paul called the next morning, reaching Mary’s cousin Gustave, who said that the pregnancy was going well — she was in her seventh month — and that a diamond merchant from up north had taken an interest in the inn. Gustave said that Mary and the diamond man had gone out for a drive just now. Then Paul called Carrie and Lonnie Wheeler and asked them to feed the cat until he got back.
On the way to Providence, Ivan Montgomery explained Bobby Record’s career. Some years before, Bobby had been made overseer of the unruly Boston branch of the Record syndicate, which included Tommy “Mirage” Maynard, who once killed a schnauzer with his hands; and Bobby’s mission had, it could now be said, never gone well. Most people sympathized with his situation without necessarily having much fondness for Bobby himself. It had been inevitable that sooner or later the Boston affiliates would take a look around, realize how much bigger a territory they were working (“Say, Jerry, take a look at these figures . . .”), and cast aside their historical and artificial allegiance to quaint little Providence. It so happened that this shift happened on Bobby’s watch. With Carlo in prison, the Boston gangsters started doing whatever they felt like doing without giving a thought to Bobby Record. Or if they did give him a thought, it was only to devise some interesting way to needle him. For example, there was a guy named Yancy Delessandro from Buffalo whom Bobby had never got along with, and Tommy Mirage would get Bobby on the phone and go on at great length about what a swell guy Yancy Delessandro was. Another time, some of the Bostonians went ahead and killed a diamond swallower whose fate Bobby had wanted to ponder over the weekend. The upshot was that Bobby was left with not much to do in his big house in Providence, and real estate was flat, so the only way he could have sold the place was by taking a big loss. And then his wife, Karen, was killed in a plane crash, a sad and mysterious event that was said to have ruined Bobby, for he had loved her in his way.
“Karen came to our house once,” said Paul. “She was just a kid. She didn’t like our music.”
“She’s not a kid anymore.”
“They all came over and gave us a cat.”
“Funny story about that cat,” said Ivan. “Bobby wanted to kill it. He wanted us to hire some guys to go and kill your cat. This was last winter. But a bunch of us convinced him that it was stupid.”
“It was Bobby, Karen, Carlo, and Miriam.”
“Let me ask you something. Give me your honest opinion of Miriam’s singing.”
“I don’t know,” said Paul. “I guess I think of it the same way I think of pole-vaulting. It’s interesting that it can be done, but it doesn’t engage me.”
“That’s kind of what I think too.”
Part of Bobby’s problem within the organization, according to Ivan, was that while he had taken an advanced business degree from UCLA and hoped to complement Carlo’s authority with sound management practices, this had never worked out. It was not surprising that Carlo had assigned Bobby to monitor Boston, the importance of which Carlo had never quite understood. Sometimes when small and not particularly profitable activities were mentioned, Carlo would say, in Bobby’s presence, “Let’s give that to Bobby,” or “Let’s give Bobby a crack at that.” This was hardly a direct putdown, and yet Bobby was subtly undercut. The same thing had happened when Carlo invited Paul into what was called “the circle around the circle.” At the time, Bobby had been lobbying for the syndicate to fire Clovis, Luken & Pitch, and he had spent months comparing the brochures of other accounting firms; so when Carlo invited Paul to the Terrapin in Madrid, all of Bobby’s work went down the drain overnight. Paul suspected, in fact, that it was Bobby who had tipped the cops to the forged paintings, figuring that Paul would be too afraid to talk. When Carlo was convicted, Bobby was said to be especially furious at Paul, although it was clear that, as the shady agent Shumway had said, tapes obtained through wiretaps and eavesdropping had carried the day. And who had been responsible for keeping the offices of New England Amusements swept for listening devices? Of course it was Bobby.
Paul and Ivan arrived in Providence around noon. Bobby let them into the house, where some of the boys were watching a movie in the living room.
“The rat comes home,” said Tommy Mirage.
“Shh, Ray Liotta’s coming on,” said Max “Lionel” Ricci.
“Tommy, how are you?” said Paul.
“I consider you the lowest form of human garbage.”
“Well, you look good.”
“Shut up, everybody,” said Bobby “We’re not here to spar each other with insults.”
In the dining room Carlo’s wife, Lillian, and Miriam Lentine were drinking coffee and playing Yahtzee. They had poked their pencils through the face of the little professor in the corner of the score sheets.
Bobby folded his hands and bowed. “We were hoping to use this room.”
“Well, you can’t,” said Miriam Lentine. “Don’t you see we’re in the middle of a game?”
Lillian Record shook a velvet cup and spilled dice on the table. She stared at the dice. “Bobby, honey, what would you do?”
Bobby went to the base of a stairway. “About what?”
“With this roll.”
He came back to the table and nervously chewed the skin of his left thumb. “Go for your large straight. But I mean it, we need this room.”
“Why do you want to do it down here?” said Miriam.
“This is where he wants to do it.”
“Then you’ve got to bring Carlo all the way down the stairs and all the way back up,” said Lillian. “We go through this every three minutes.”
“He likes this room.”
Lillian gathered the dice. “I know what I’ll do. Roll again.”
Miriam and Lillian carefully picked up their game and went into another room, and Bobby directed Paul and Ivan to take seats at the table.
“Do you dance anymore, Bobby?” said Paul.
Bobby paused in the stairwell. “I’ve prepared a number for your unmarked grave,” he said.
Some time later, Bobby came down the stairs carrying his father in his arms. Carlo wore white pajamas, black corduroy slippers, and a dark red robe with an empty sleev
e. The specter of the decrepit boss brought home to Paul how long he himself had been in exile. The same years that had been taken from Carlo had been taken from him and Mary. They had grown nearer and nearer to middle age, all the while thinking that nothing in particular was happening.
Bobby settled Carlo into a chair and then went to a sideboard from which he produced a green leather folder. He sat down and placed the folder on the table. Tommy Mirage and Max Ricci appeared in the open doorway between the dining and living rooms. Carlo frowned in recognition and spoke in a voice that was dry and soft but not difficult to hear.
“Everyone is in pain because you put your friends in the boneyard,” Carlo said to Paul. “You let me down, you let Spiro down, you let Cochrane and Nicky and Jimmy down. Who else? Stevie Shakes is another one I can think of. Who else, boys?”
“Larry Zumwald,” said Bobby.
“Hatpin Henry,” said Max Ricci. “Also Ed Leblanc.”
“I knew I was leaving someone out,” said Carlo.
“How is Stevie Shakes?” said Paul.
“The same.”
“Eddie Leblanc,” said Bobby. “I’ve been trying to think of his name all week long.”
‘“Flipper,” said Max.
“What?” said Carlo.
“They called him ‘Flipper’ at the pool, Shepherd.”
“Who calls him that?” said Carlo. “I never heard it.”
“His pals,” said Max. “They used to go to the Y and they called Eddie Leblanc ‘Flipper,’ ’cause he didn’t like shooting hoops, he liked swimming. Like that porpoise that used to be on TV.”
“Jesus help me,” said Carlo. “Do you remember the cemetery in Madrid, Paul? I used to walk there every night after supper, if it wasn’t raining. You must remember. Max remembers. He would drive me over and he would walk along. Remember, Max? Later I began walking at the mall, but before the mall it was the cemetery. In prison there was no cemetery and no mall, only a yard. I tried walking in the yard, but one evening I saw some young men injecting dope into their bloodstream and I realized this was no place to walk. And so I stopped walking, reluctantly, and I would spend my evenings in the prison library looking at books. One that I liked in particular was a collection of paintings, and of all the paintings in that book, my favorite was by John Singer Sargent. And in the picture that I liked by John Singer Sargent a young woman sat by a stream, half in shade and half in light. Her expression was not happy or inviting but preoccupied, or even . . . even —”