“There’s got to be a cleaner way,” Wade said. “Your way the witness could get crippled.”
“You cut a deal with Gardella. No blood. Scare tactics only.” Thurston scooped up the check. He scrutinized it and then paid it with bills he had to peel apart, drawn that morning from a special fund. “We wouldn’t expect you to go into this for nothing. We’re generous to a fault when it comes to people who help us.”
“What are you going to do, buy me a new car?”
“No. But we’d pay for your children’s education.” Thurston’s lips curved into a quiet smile as he shoved back his chair. “Two terrific daughters, I’m told. A lot of girls up and get married as soon as they graduate. We’d even pay for their weddings. Every penny of their happiness.”
In the rest room they stood at opposite ends of the bank of urinals. Wade stared at pink tiles, his long legs wide apart, a hand on his hip. Thurston tossed him a glance. “Too much for you? If it is, say so.”
Wade was silent for a long moment. He was remembering a trooper with whom he’d gone through the academy, a red-haired young guy who for a couple of years took bribes from a lower-echelon mafioso from East Boston. Then, to prove he was still his own man, he busted his benefactor on a petty charge. Two weeks later his decapitated body was found in a portable dumpster in the town of Wakefield, a thousand dollars in bloodstained bills bulging a pocket of his uniform. His head was never found.
“Yes, I could do it,” Wade said. “The question is whether I want to.”
They moved to the sinks and then to the dryer on the wall, where they hung their hands under hot drafts. It looked as though they were about to dance. “There’s something else I can do for you,” Thurston said with casual authority. “I can get you back to Boston.”
“What makes you think I want to go back?”
Thurston played his trump. “That’s where your wife is.”
• • •
Silas Rogers, who worked odd jobs, loaded his pickup truck with bone-dry kindling from the lumber yard and, in a lonely drive over twisting winter roads, hauled it across town to the Gillenwaters’. It was dark by the time he got rid of the load, every stick stacked neatly in the makeshift shed beside the sagging frame house supported on two sides by drifts of snow. Old Mrs. Gillenwater, wearing three sweaters, poked her thin head out the door and gave him money. She wanted him to come in to warm himself, but he declined with a quick mumble. He knew that what she wanted most was to talk about the killings.
“Silas, wait!”
He wouldn’t.
He drove into the lighted center of town and parked in front of Ned’s Superette to pick up Gravy Train for the dogs. He pushed the truck door open, but some sudden presentiment rooted him to the seat. The cold crawled in and chilled him. As if paralyzed, he watched two stolid figures break from a web of shadows and approach him with boots crunching the packed snow. They were the Bass brothers, Leroy and Wally. Beyond them he saw the Thunderbird.
“How you doin’, Mr. Rogers?”
The voice chilled him more than the cold did. It came from the older one, Leroy, who was also the taller one by six inches. Despite the cold, each held a punctured beer can in bare hands that were studded with bitten-open knuckles. They had squiggles in their young foreheads and pouches under their ferret eyes, as if they hadn’t been sleeping much, and they reeked of the cows their father owned, none of which gave fit milk.
“Just fine,” Silas Rogers answered in a small burst, wishing someone would come along, anyone. Customers bobbed about inside the superette, but none came out.
“Wanna beer? We got an extra in the Bird.”
He shook his head and shivered. They were straining to read him, he could tell. The younger one smiled out of a pale face raw and red at the nose and swigged from a Budweiser can. He had known them since their raucous years at Greenwood Grammar School, where he had been the janitor and they stay-backs, truants, vandals, and bullies. Remembering their cruelties, he feared them more than ever.
“What you want in the store, Mr. Rogers? Wally here will get it, won’t you, Wally?”
The younger brother muscled his face nearer and loomed like a Hun. “What’s he after?”
“He ain’t said yet.”
“What’s he waitin’ for?”
“He’s thinkin’.”
Silas Rogers wanted only to drive away. At home he had a hunting rifle, but it was unoiled, uncleaned, and he wasn’t sure he had shells. Probably not, which made him want to weep. “Dog food.”
“Give ‘im money, Mr. Rogers. He can’t go in there without money.”
Reluctantly Silas Rogers pulled bills from his pants pocket and skinned off more than enough. Wally Bass raised a hand, one of the fingers mashed from an old injury. Silas Rogers fed it, which made the older brother frown.
“Will that do it, Wally?”
“Don’t think so.”
“Prices are high in there, Mr. Rogers.”
Without hesitation he surrendered all that Mrs. Gillenwater had given him, overly willing to do anything to satisfy them. Their smiles showed they were pleased. Wally Bass crushed his Budweiser can and strutted toward the store. The older brother threw his empty into the dark.
“Bad thing about the Gardellas. I heard you were there.”
“No.” His voice rose in pitch, and his confusion was intense, almost violent. “I was only driving by.”
“That’s what I mean.”
“I didn’t see anything.”
“No?”
“My eyes can see, but not far.”
Leroy Bass smiled and spoke with chilling certainty. “I thought your eyes were good.”
“They’re bad,” he insisted.
“My grandmother had cataracts. You got those?”
“Yes.”
“Maybe that’s good. Good they’re bad, I mean.”
The younger brother came out of the superette with a small bag, which he tossed into the back of the pickup, a light thump, scarcely enough for one dog. Silas Rogers started to close the door, but Leroy Bass stopped him. Their eyes locked. Leroy Bass’s broad face was all meat.
“You oughta give Wally somethin’ for goin’, Mr. Rogers.”
• • •
Later, ensconced in the idling Thunderbird, the heater going, the younger brother counted money and surrendered half to the older one. In an uneasy and tenuous voice he said, “You think he’s lying?”
“Don’t matter,” Leroy Bass said.
“Matters if he saw us, matters a whole hell of a lot.”
“No, it don’t,” Leroy Bass said with supreme confidence. “Like it was back in school, he’s still scared of us — now even more.” There was a smile. “We got nothin’ to worry about.”
Wally Bass loosened his coat, producing an odor exactly like unaired bedding. Now he smiled. “Remember the time down in the basement I told him I was goin’ to shove his head in the furnace?”
“No, I told him. All you did was hold his arms.”
“But I’d’ve done it,” Wally Bass said.
3
THE DAY after the autopsies were completed, the medical examiner released the bodies of Santo and Rosalie Gardella, which were then delivered in a hearse across state to Boston, to Ferlito’s Funeral Home in the North End. Sammy Ferlito and his nephew worked diligently in an attempt to ready the charred remains for viewing, but the task was staggering, the results dismal. “Tony, I don’t advise it,” Ferlito said apologetically and miserably to Anthony Gardella. They stood in Ferlito’s dark-paneled office, where ficus trees sprang out of ornate pots and were kept healthy by a special blue light. Gardella nodded with understanding.
“It’s Rita who wants the caskets open.”
“Do you want me to explain to her?”
“I’ll do it.”
“Tony, I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“Augie feels bad too,” Ferlito said, referring to his nephew.
“
Tell him not to worry.”
“Maybe sometime you can use him. He’s a good boy.”
“You say he’s a good boy, I believe it,” Gardella said and reached for his overcoat, which was dark and glossy, with a midnight-blue lining. Ferlito, who was short, went up on tiptoes to help him on with it.
“Cashmere, huh? Feels like a million bucks.”
“A thousand is all.”
“Could’ve fooled me.”
“I hope not,” Gardella said. “I hope you don’t fool easy.”
Later in the day Gardella walked up the plowed drive of his sister’s house. It was next door to his, nearly its twin, built by the same contractor. Hers was smaller, with less security, no alarm system, no peephole in the front door, no metal mesh shielding the windows that faced the street. Gardella entered without ringing and came face to face with the slender, bearded Cuban his sister had brought up from Florida. Galled at the sight of him, Gardella at first ignored him, then said, “Where’s Rita?”
The Cuban pointed upward. “Taking a nap. She couldn’t sleep last night.”
Gardella regarded him aloofly. They faced each other in the small foyer, where the floor was stone. Twin mirrors captured their images. “Making yourself at home, Juan?”
“The name’s Alvaro.”
“What are you sucking around my sister for? You like fat women or something?”
Alvaro’s brown eyes flared. He had on a crinkly saffron shirt and seersucker pants suitable for Miami, not for the Massachusetts winter. “I don’t think Rita would like you asking me these things. She told me what she does is none of your business.”
“Pretty sure of yourself, aren’t you?” Gardella said, and Alvaro shrugged, undaunted. “You speak English okay. Where’d you learn it?”
“Harvard.”
Gardella flushed. “You’re a wise little prick.”
“I learned it like you did. I was a baby when I came to the States.”
“What are you, Puerto Rican? Mexican?”
“I’m Cuban, like you didn’t know.”
Gardella’s eyes veered up. His sister came halfway down the stairs and clutched the rail, hovering in a robe that didn’t fit her, her face sour from sleep and her eyes feeble from too little of it. He viewed her with momentary disgust. With effort, she came down the rest of the way and said, “You haven’t asked him what he does for a living. Tell him, Alvaro.”
“I’m a towel attendant at the Sonesta.”
“You’re what?”
“You heard him.”
Gardella frowned with an air of sadness. He remembered when she was less large and more secure, though never reasonable, always self-indulgent in her rash choices of companions and self-destructive to a degree that never ceased to disturb him. At the same time, because she was of his blood, she was the only person in the world he totally trusted.
Alvaro made as if to leave them alone, and she said, “Stay!”
Gardella said, “Go. I want to talk to my sister.”
Alvaro vanished, with a small fatalistic smile. Gardella led his sister into her living room, where they remained standing, facing each other in a solemn way, all disagreements cast aside. With care and delicacy he briefed her on the funeral arrangements and added that the caskets would be closed. Her eyes filled as she confronted feelings mostly buried until now.
“That means I don’t even get to say good-bye to them.”
“You say good-bye at the church,” he murmured. “That’s where we all say it.”
“I’m going to miss them so much,” she said hopelessly. “I was Pa’s angel.”
“You broke his heart a hundred times.”
“Don’t be tough with me, Tony.”
He didn’t mean to be and didn’t want to be, not at this time, and he placed an arm over her shoulders. He was fourteen years older than she. She had been his angel too, and he her hero. His voice dipping, he said, “Is it forever, Rita, this way you feel about the spic?”
“Nothing’s forever, Tony. I’m smart enough to know that.”
“Good,” he said. “Then I can live with it.”
• • •
Deputy Superintendent Scatamacchia of the Boston Police Department personally directed traffic, and four white-helmeted officers manned motorcycles to lead the procession of more than fifty cars. The cars wormed their way through constricted North End streets from Ferlito’s Funeral Home to St. Leonard’s Church on Hanover Street, which had been scraped of snow. It was a cold, brittle day, which did not prevent a crowd from gathering. In the forefront, conspicuously displaying themselves, were Supervisor Russell Thurston and special agents Blodgett and Blue. Thurston was nettled. “Look at those cops on bikes. Like an honor guard.” Blodgett agreed with an epithet. Blue said nothing. He scanned the crowd, his the only black face in a neighborhood that tolerated none.
“Who’s the coon?” Rita O’Dea whispered as she struggled out of a limousine. She was wearing mink and stood voluminous in it. “He’s cute.”
“He’s a fed,” her brother said harshly, shading his eyes. “Feds you expect, a spade you don’t. It’s an insult.”
Victor Scandura sidled up. “The tall one’s Thurston. I had him pointed out to me once.”
“I’d like to squeeze his throat.”
“One thing at a time,” Scandura advised.
A seemingly endless line of mourners filed into the church for the solemn high mass, family members sinking into front pews. Gardella’s older son, the marine, was there in full dress uniform, his hair barbered close and his shoulders squared. The other boy, the Holy Cross student, sat less rigidly, with his head bowed. His grief was deep. Rita O’Dea sat next to him and pressed his hand. The church filled and overfilled. Out of respect for Anthony Gardella, Carlo Maestrotauro from Worcester was there, as was Francesco Scibelli from Springfield, both aging but still active, still in control. Raymond Patriarca, ailing, had sent a representative from Providence, and Joe Bonomo had dispatched a lieutenant from the Coast. Local respect was embodied in the presence of Gennaro Angello and Antonio Zanigari. In the back of the church, the last to enter, was Special Agent Blue.
Outside, Russell Thurston and Agent Blodgett loitered near the Caffè Pompei, which had a closed sign on the door, though some people had gathered inside. Through the window Thurston spied the high-level police officer who had directed traffic. The officer had made himself at home. He had his cap off and was drinking coffee at a small table, one foot up on a chair. “What’s his name?” Thurston asked.
“Scatamacchia. They call him Scat.”
“We got a file on him?”
“A little one.”
“Let’s make it bigger,” Thurston said and didn’t take his eyes off the man. Scatamacchia had a virile head of steel-gray hair and a nose like the curved powerful bill of a parrot. The eyes were slits and the mouth compressed. When he finally came out of the Caffè Pompei with his cap planted hard on his head, Thurston said in a voice that carried, “While he’s at it, he ought to run in the church and kiss Gardella’s ass.”
Scatamacchia stopped dead. At that moment, had they been alone together on a dark street he might have killed him. Instead he merely shrugged, as if he didn’t trust himself to speak. He knew Blodgett by sight and guessed at once who Thurston was. Thurston he knew by reputation, that of a zealot, unyielding and overbearing, with never a good word for the Boston Police Department.
Blodgett said, “Hello, Scat. Met my boss?”
He tugged at his cap, the visor filigreed in gold, and said in a savage undertone, “Keep him to yourself.”
“What’s that, Scat? I didn’t hear you.”
“I’ll let this pass, but I won’t forget it.”
Thurston said, “That’s what we’re counting on.”
With satisfaction they watched him stalk off. Thurston’s eyes flashed with excitement, as if he could see into the future, nothing but successes in it, big achievements, private rewards. Then slowly he scowled. Though
the service was not yet half over, Agent Blue had left the church and was joining them. Thurston said, “I told you to stay to the end.”
“Don’t use me to bait them,” Blue said after seconds of silence. “I don’t like it.”
“You don’t have a say in the matter,” Thurston said carelessly, a small smile forming. “If you’ve got a problem, take it up with the Civil Rights Commission. Otherwise get back in that church.”
“Is that an order?”
“Blodgett, tell him.”
“It’s an order.”
Inside the church the monsignor swung a censer over one casket and then over the other, and a sharp fragrance wafted into the front pews. For a wild moment Rita O’Dea looked as though she might sob. Instead she silently mouthed prayers, including a special one that may have been to the devil.
Deputy Superintendent Scatamacchia entered the church on surprisingly gentle feet and, slipping into a back pew, sat next to a large, baggy-faced man named Ralph Roselli. After a few moments Scatamacchia leaned against him and whispered, “Too bad you guys don’t whack feds.”
• • •
The day after Santo and Rosalie Gardella were laid to rest in Boston, Lieutenant Christopher Wade, always an early riser, drove to a coffee shop in downtown Lee. He was the morning’s first customer, a regular, a place already set for him. His order seldom varied: dropped eggs on toast. Other customers arrived, and he nodded to most. He was on his second cup of coffee when a stranger entered and glanced casually about. With continued nonchalance the man hung his hat, scarf, and coat next to Wade’s things and said, “May I?”
“Plenty of other tables,” Wade said, but the man, who had an easy way of moving, every gesture timed, joined him anyway. He had scant, coarse hair, like a coconut, and wore a vested suit and gold-rimmed glasses that seemed bolted into his face. He could have passed for a lawyer or a broker of sorts.
“I was told you eat here.”
“You must’ve got up early to get here.”
“That’s a fact. The name’s Victor Scandura.”
“I know what it is. I used to study pictures, a whole book of them.” Wade, who had quit smoking and was starting up again, opened a green-and-white pack of Merit Menthols. “I never got close to you, but I busted up a booking operation a cousin of yours was running.”
Sweetheart Page 3