"He had to beat them off with a baseball bat," said Virgil.
There was a quiet, awkward pause and then Dominic spoke in a voice hard as slate. "That's enough," he said.
"You know what you are, Virgil?" said Jasper. "You're an idiot."
"I didn't mean nothing by it."
"That's your problem, you never mean nothing by it," said Luigi. "I'm raising twenty."
"Three queens," said Virgil, shaking his head as he tossed in another twenty. "I knew he had them queens."
"In," I said.
Dominic put in his chips and Luigi dealt the next round. No one tripled their pairs but I pulled the seven of hearts, leaving me four to the flush.
Dominic tossed in twenty-five dollars and Luigi saw it.
"What happened to Mr. Forty Dollars?" asked Virgil. "Where's he gone?"
"You in or not?" asked Luigi.
"In," he said, tossing in his chips.
"I'm in too," I said. "What I heard about Zack was that he was stepping out with the wrong girl at the end."
"Where'd you pick that up, Sport?" asked Jasper.
"That's just what I heard."
"Is that what you heard?" said Jasper. "Well, maybe you heard right."
Dominic threw in his chips and then, without looking at me, said in his harsh voice, "Haven't I seen you on TV or something?"
"Wheel of Fortune?" I said.
"Maybe that's it," said Dominic. "You on Wheel of Fortune?"
"No."
"Funny guy," said Dominic without a smile. "Deal them cards."
Luigi dealt out the last round of cards face down. I slipped mine on top of my other down cards and pulled them to my chest. Slowly, carefully, I looked at my down cards. The four of hearts. The four of spades. I glanced around at the old men looking at me and then I looked at the new card. King of hearts. I had flushed, king high. I was finally going to win a hand. I let out an involuntary sigh.
"What's that?" said Virgil. "What was that, did you hear that?"
"I didn't hear nothing," said Luigi.
"You been deaf in your left ear since 'fifty-nine."
"I heard it too," said Jasper.
"What was it?" asked Luigi.
"He sighed," said Virgil. "Victor sighed, three hearts up and he pulled his flush. That was a flushing sigh if I ever heard it. Something high too, an ace. He's got an ace high flush."
"Can't be, no way, no how," said Jasper, searching through and then turning over one of his folded hand. "I got the ace of hearts right here."
"You cannot-a do that," said Luigi. "You're out, you cannot-a say what you had."
"Aah, stop that," said Jasper. "All of a sudden now it's Hoyle from the guy who raises himself."
"Believe it or don't believe it, I don't care none," said Virgil. "But he's got his flush."
"I don't-a believe it," said Luigi. "Whose bet?"
"Dominic," said Fred.
Dominic put twenty-five in the pot.
"I see it," said Luigi.
"Count me out against the flush," said Virgil.
"I'll see the twenty-five and raise twenty-five," I said.
"Told you," said Virgil.
Dominic tossed in another fifty.
"Another raise?" said Luigi.
"You and your queens," said Virgil. "You and your queens are worth zippo. You should have folded with Jasper."
"Jasper bent over the day of his first-a communion," said Luigi, "and he's been folding ever since."
"What? You want I should bet like you, Luigi?" said Jasper. "You want I should blow my check staying in like a douchebag with three queens against a flush? I don't got no rich son-in-law running a funeral parlor in Scranton. I got to be careful or by the end of the month I'm eating Alpo."
Luigi looked at Jasper, sneered gently, and said, "I see Dominic."
"Is that what got Zack killed, the wrong girl?" I asked nonchalantly as I looked over my cards for the final bet. I only had fifty dollars left.
"Let's just say," said Jasper, "between you and me, Sport, his luck wasn't rotten only in baseball and poker."
Still looking at my cards, I said, "I heard he was playing around with Raffaello's daughter," and after I said it a silence crashed into the room.
I looked up. Around the table the four men were staring at me like I had blasphemed the virgin mother. Giovanni sat up in his chair. I started to sweat.
Finally I said, "I'm in," and to break the silence that followed that declaration I said, "and I'll raise my last twenty-five." But the game didn't continue just then.
"Hey, stugatz," said Luigi. "Don't be talking about things you should not-a be talking about."
"It's just what I heard," I said, trying to shrug it off.
"From who?" asked Jasper. It had turned into an inquisition, four against one. "What greaseball you hear that from, Sport?"
"I just heard it," I said. "It wasn't like a secret."
"You must not be from around here," said Jasper, "because if you was from around here you would know you talk about a man's family like that you might just wake up to find yourself dead."
"It's been known to happen," said Dominic in a flat, cold voice.
"Some men don't like nobody talking about their family," said Virgil.
"You should learn to keep-a your mouth shut," said Luigi.
There was a long quiet while the men stared at me and I stared at my cards and then Dominic said, "Let's play."
Luigi shook his head at me. "No more talk, hey. Enough with the talk. I'm in," he said, tossing in his chips.
Dominic put in his twenty-five.
"Now," said Luigi, turning up his down queen. "Show me that-a flush."
"Sure," I said as I turned over my cards. I reached to rake in the pot but Dominic's hand grabbed my forearm and squeezed.
He squeezed so hard I felt it in the bones.
"Full house," he said, without turning over his cards.
"Of course he had the boat," said Virgil. "Why else would he have stayed in against the flush?"
Dominic pushed my arm away and then slowly began transferring the chips from the middle to his piles. He still hadn't turned over his cards.
"Let's see it," I said.
Dominic froze at the table, his hands still on the chips, and I could hear his breathing, slow, steady, dangerous as a leopard's.
"If Dominic says he's got a boat, Sport," said Jasper, softly, "he's got the boat."
"I'm not saying he doesn't," I said. "I just want to see it."
"What you are saying," said Luigi, the coldness back in his whispery voice, "is that you don't-a believe him."
"I'd just like to see it."
"This is a gentlemen's club," said Luigi. "And since you have no more money your temporary membership is revoked."
Giovanni rose from his red leatherette chair and moved to the table behind Luigi, his arms crossed in front of him.
"You're ripping me off," I said.
"It's time to go," said Giovanni.
I looked around at these old men, who had seemed harmless just a few moments ago, and what I saw was not a group of geriatrics needling each other in their weekly poker game but something much more ferocious. Luigi had the sharp hatchet face and Sicilian accent of a Mafia underboss. Virgil was an aging enforcer, collecting for loan sharks, breaking legs when necessary. Jasper was the negotiator, the dealmaker, the man who set up the lucrative arrangements that the others enforced. And Dominic, silent and stolid, was as dangerous as a hit man. I never had a chance in that game, the goal of that night was to fleece me of all my money and I was lucky that was all they were after. But I had learned what I had come to learn, that Bissonette had played around with the wrong girl and had been killed because of it. And though these aged gangsters had refused to talk about it, their silence and threats and the absence of denials loudly confirmed that it was Raffaello's daughter Bissonette had been playing with and that it was Raffaello who'd had him killed. And I wondered, for a moment, if it was one
of these old men who had done the deed. Maybe Dominic, Bissonette's second cousin, twice removed, whose grip, I knew, was still strong enough to wield a Mike Schmidt autographed bat.
I stood up and nodded at the men around the table and, without saying a word, self-consciously walked to the door.
"You're forgetting your jacket, Sport," said Jasper. "We don't want you should forget your jacket."
I returned to the table, avoiding the angry gazes of the men as I took hold of my jacket, and walked again to the door, moving as quickly as I could without running.
"Hey, kid," I heard from behind me.
I stopped and turned around. Dominic was staring at me with a scary squint in his eyes. Slowly he turned over his down cards, one by one, first the ten of spades, then the ten of clubs, then the six of diamonds, which gave him a sixes over tens full house.
"No one calls me a cheater, kid," he said. "Leastways no one who wants to keep breathing."
I looked at him and expected him to smile at his joke, but he didn't, his face was as hard as the squint in his eyes. And then I dropped all pretensions of calm and ran out of the club, ran to my car, and tore the hell out of South Philadelphia.
I was filled with relief when I drove north past South Street, into the safety of Society Hill. It was relief at being out of that grubby little men's club, away from the gangsters there with murder in their eyes. And, just as much, relief at learning that everything Prescott had been telling me might actually be the truth. He was right about who killed Bissonette and he would do his best, which was far better than my best, to make sure the jury knew about it too. I could now, with whatever good conscience I could muster, stay safely silent, following his orders as he tried my case, collecting my fat hourly fee by merely sitting next to my client, keeping my mouth shut and my tie clean as I slipped into my prosperous future.
I had just left the front door of my apartment building the next morning, heading for the Market Street subway to take me to the courthouse, my body still suffused with the soft elation of relief, when the rear window of a parked car exploded in front of my face.
25
IT WAS A HATCHBACK, Japanese I think, and I was just in front of it when the rear window shattered into a constellation of diamonds that hung in the air for a brilliant incandescent second before falling. It was such a startlingly pretty sight that I didn't move, just stared at the now jagged opening yawning from the back of the car and the sparkles spinning on the pitted asphalt. Then I saw someone across the street pointing down an alley and a man in front of me dropping to the ground, like a soldier under ambush, and I realized that the window hadn't spontaneously exploded of its own accord but had been shot out in front of me. That's when I dropped to the ground too.
There were no more shots. There were the sounds of footfalls and a car stopping suddenly and more footfalls and people shouting, but no more shots. By the time I had picked myself off the sidewalk a crowd had formed and a policeman was coming over to look at the damage and to ask his questions. There was a group of us now, the man I had seen hit the ground, the man who had seen someone run away and had been pointing across the street, an old woman from my building, out for a morning walk with her purebred dachshund, the dachshund barking rabidly, the woman laughing wildly. I had seen nothing but the explosion of the window and so I wasn't much help, but the officer took down my name and address just the same.
"What do you think it was?" asked the pointer.
"Probably just some random shooting," said the cop, a peach-fuzzed kid with a holster and an attitude, trying to speak over the dachshund's barks. "Happens all the time."
"In Beirut maybe," said a passerby.
The dachshund growled into my crotch.
"Quiet, Oscar," said the dog woman, no longer laughing, giving her dog a tug on the leash. The dog sniffed my ankle and growled again.
"Maybe someone was trying to damage the car?" said another man in a tan raincoat.
"That's possible," said the officer, who for the first time took note of the car's license plate. "Anyone know who owns this vehicle?"
No one knew, so he called in the license plate on the portable radio attached to his belt.
"All right now," he said as he was waiting for a response. "I have your names. Let's get on our way."
I left, and took some comfort in the officer's nonchalance, but not too much. I stepped quickly to the subway. I took a seat in the corner of the first car and hid myself behind a newspaper. Back on the street I was careful to stay within the bosom of the crowd on my way to the metal detectors in the lobby of the Federal Courthouse. And all the time I couldn't help but carry with me, along with briefcase and raincoat, the suspicion that the shot had not been random or aimed at the car, but fired at me. Oh yes, I was not completely blind. I could feel the danger rising about me, from the threatening Chuckie Lamb, from the paranoid Norvel Goodwin, from my new and fervent relationship with Veronica, from Jimmy if he ever found out about the two of us, from Prescott and the power he could use to break me, from the poker playing gangsters with murder in their eyes and full houses in their hands, from the shadowy Raffaello.
This I knew about myself: I was not the most courageous of men. I was comfortable with that fact. I left the heroics to those who were paid for it, policemen, Brinks guards, inside linebackers, paparazzi. That's one of the reasons I was attracted to the law, I guess. By its very nature the law is a hedge, boom or bust, mergers or bankruptcies, there is always work. And so the shot had only confirmed for me the decision of the night before, confirmed it in a way that was more than intellectual, in a way that was visceral. And whether the bullet was aimed at me or not was no matter; I had learned the lesson of the lead. Whatever was to come, whatever humiliation, whatever ugliness, whatever betrayal, I would do nothing to stop it. My instructions were to follow along, and follow along I would. Whatever you want, Mr. Prescott, sir, you can count on me.
Outside the courtroom that morning I was talking to Beth about my opening statement when we were approached by one of the Talbott, Kittredge coterie working with Prescott. It was the blond bland man with the perfect nose who had sneered at Morris the day before. His name was Bert or Bart, something harsh and efficient. I knew nothing about him, really, didn't know whether he had a family, a child, whether he read poetry or Proust, whether he felt deeply for the disadvantaged or whether the pains in the world had turned his viewpoint cynical and his humor wry. But what I did know was that he held a Harvard law degree and I didn't, that he had the job I wanted, that he owned the future of which I had dreamed, and for all of that I hated him.
"Bill asked me to give you this," he said, reaching into his shiny silver case and pulling out a sheet of paper with a few lines printed out in bold capital letters.
"What is it?" I asked.
"It's your opening," he said.
"We prepared an opening," Beth told him, her voice showing incredulity at his nervy assumption that we weren't ready.
After the poker game I had spent most of the night practicing my delivery of a lengthy and blistering attack on the government's case against Concannon. It had been written primarily by Beth, so I knew it was quality. Beth's opening highlighted the gaps in the case against Concannon: There were no tapes capturing Concannon's voice, no pieces of physical evidence directly involving him in any of the transactions, no photographs showing him with Ruffing or Bissonette. The case against Concannon would depend solely on the testimony of Ruffing and certain financial records from CUP, and Beth had laid out a viciously effective argument against Ruffing's credibility. I understood that I would be following Prescott's lead in every sense, but I still expected that I would be saying at least something of my own to the jurors.
"We're sure that it's a fine argument," said Bert or Bart. "But what we want you to do is to give the opening we have prepared for you."
"Who wrote it?" asked Beth, grabbing the paper from my hand.
"I did," he said, his chest puffing out slightly. "
Bill looked it over, discussed it with the jury expert, made a few changes, and decided you should go with it."
"Is that what he decided?" I said.
"That's what we decided."
"I think we'll stay with what we worked up already," said Beth.
"I was told you were with the program, Vic," he said to me, ignoring Beth. "That you wouldn't be any trouble."
"What's your name?" Beth asked.
"Brett Farber. Brett with two t's."
"Well, Brett with two t's," she said. "The only program we're with is our client's and as best I can tell, from a quick look through this little statement of yours, it's a piece of shit."
Brett didn't pull back from the attack like I would have. Instead he brought out his sneer and leaned into me until I could smell the coffee in his breath and he said, "Shit or not, Vic, your client approved it and it is what you are going to give."
Before Beth could reply he had turned on his heels and was gone.
Fucking Brett with two t's, I thought as I watched his back disappear into the courtroom. Maybe there was a reason other than luck that he was an up-and-comer with Talbott, Kittredge and I was not.
"Such a pleasant young boy," said Beth. "His mother must be so proud. So tell me, Victor, how does it feel to have assholes like William Prescott and Brett with two t's as your colleagues?"
"For two-fifty an hour I'd sleep with an orangutan," I said. "This is only slightly worse."
"What are you going to do?"
I took the piece of paper from her and read it quickly, eight sentences typed in bold capital letters so that I wouldn't stumble as I read it to the jury. "What I'm going to do," I said, "is discuss it with my client and then, Beth dear, I'm going to suck it up."
"You suck it up any more, Victor, you're going to start looking like a chipmunk."
I hadn't told her about the shattered hatchback window and didn't intend to, nor about Veronica, nor about Chuckie's call, nor about Norvel Goodwin, nor about my disastrous poker game. If there was danger to be ducked, it was mine and I would do the ducking. So all I did, as she looked at me with disappointment flashing in her sharp, pretty eyes, was shrug.
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