“What did he offer?”
“Happiness.” Wade glanced sideways. “I can’t remember, what am I getting from you?”
“Thrills,” said Thurston.
• • •
Unannounced, Victor Scandura entered the office of John Benson at Benson Tours and lowered himself into a chair. John Benson’s head jerked up, and then he smiled. “Nice to see you, Mr. Scandura. You have no complaints, I hope.”
“None,” said Scandura. Benson Tours was one of the travel agencies the Gardella organization used in sponsoring gambling junkets to Las Vegas and Atlantic City.
“So, what can I do for you?”
“I understand you got a cop’s wife working here.”
“You talking about Mrs. Wade?”
“I want you to fire her.”
John Benson colored up. “I can’t do that.”
Scandura went on as though the other man hadn’t spoken. “I also understand you’ve got something going with her. I want it ended.”
“You can’t tell me what to do!”
Scandura lethargically lifted himself from the chair, his eyes slanting through his spectacles. “I’ll tell you what, Mr. Benson. Think about it, and then do what you think is best for yourself.”
Alone, John Benson pondered the problem for two minutes. Then he went into Susan Wade’s office and, with a practiced British accent, said, “How about lunch, old girl?”
11
AGENTS BLODGETT AND BLUE caught up with him near a display window and cornered him in the shadow of the building’s overhang. It was an extraordinarily bright day, mild, with traffic shaking the street and pedestrians thronging the sidewalk. “Hey, Augie, you know who I am?” Blodgett asked, and Augie turned fast and stood fixed in a sports jacket of fish-scale pattern, a red velour shirt beneath it. His teeth protruded.
“You don’t look familiar in the face,” he said cautiously, “but I can guess. A fed, right?”
“You’re quick, Augie. You’d be surprised the number of people told us you weren’t. Right, Blue?” Agent Blue nodded as a truck boomed by. A woman with a mouth clenched as if from permanent suspicion gave them more than a passing glance. Blodgett said, “What do you think of the Miami thing, Augie?”
“What Miami thing?”
“All those people that got blown away, Gardella’s cousin among ’em. When they buried him, he wasn’t all together. Some parts they put in the coffin might not even have been him.”
“What’s it got to do with me?”
“Nothing, Augie. That was expert work in Miami. You’re only good at hijacking meat wagons, though I hear you’re telling people you’re a shooter now.”
“What the hell you talking about? Me a shooter? Come on.”
“But it makes you feel good, doesn’t it, us thinking you might be? Gives you bigger balls.”
“Hey, I got a job. I work for my uncle. You die, I’ll do you up nice, only charge half price.”
“He’s cute, isn’t he, Blue?”
“He needs a chin, then he’d be cute.”
“And he needs some sleep. Look how funny his eyes are. He must be on something. What kind of pills do you pop, Augie?”
“You got a great sense of humor. Tell the spade to quit looking at me.”
“Tell him yourself.”
Agent Blue pushed forward with a supple movement. “Do you have something to tell me?” he asked with lips that scarcely moved. Augie flinched under a gaze sure and deep. Then Blodgett bore in.
“You don’t know who your friends are, Augie. You don’t even know much about yourself. Guys like you don’t make out. Blue and I, we’ve seen hundreds like you. You come out on the short end, you take the falls for the bigger guys, you get fished out of the river. You get tossed in the harbor, the chemicals eat you. The local cops laugh. You guys want to bump yourselves off, what do they care? But we care, Augie, not personally, you understand, but professionally. You catching any of this?”
“Yeah, I’m catching a lot of shit.”
“Explain it to him, Blue.”
“You’re doing okay.”
“No, I’m not doing good at all,” Blodgett said with a pained expression. “This guy thinks he’s Mafia. He doesn’t know he’s nothing.”
“Maybe he doesn’t know how it works,” Blue said. “You have to be kissed to be Mafia. Ask him if Anthony Gardella ever kissed him.”
Blodgett shook his head. “I can’t imagine Anthony Gardella making Augie. Most Gardella would do is use him for something — and then worry about him later. A guy who pops pills and brags he’s a shooter is someone Gardella would definitely worry about, I can guarantee that.”
“Especially,” added Blue, “when the DA’s task force is looking into Gardella’s operations. Right this minute Gardella’s got to be thinking about loose ends.”
“A loose end, Augie, is a loose mouth. If we know it, you can be damn sure Gardella knows it.”
“I’m going to leave now,” Augie said, buttoning his sports jacket. “I’m going to walk away from you guys.”
“You take one step,” Blodgett said pleasantly, “and I’ll break your head.” In the distance a police car howled, or perhaps it was a fire truck. Despite its push, the sidewalk crowd seemed muted, nebulous. Blodgett said, “What it comes down to is nobody’s going to protect you except us. Us, Augie, we’re the only ones. I don’t expect you to understand that, not now, not this minute, because it’s obvious things come slow to you. If you’d gone to a community college or even finished high school, I wouldn’t have had to explain any of this. You’d have been three jumps ahead of me.”
With a rich voice, Agent Blue said, “He’s not trying to insult you, Augie. He’s just telling you fact.”
“One last thing,” said Blodgett. “You’d better tell Gardella we’ve talked to you. If you don’t and he finds out, that’ll make it worse for you.”
Blue said, “Now you can go.”
They watched him slice into the crowd to the street and then pit himself against traffic. He did not look back. Blodgett said, “What do you think?”
Blue said, “It doesn’t matter what I think, only what Thurston thinks. You write up the report.”
• • •
Rita O’Dea opened the front door and peered out at the man teetering on the second step. “You look like hell,” she said, and Ty O’Dea’s eyes went blank for a moment. His voice faltered as he shifted his weight from foot to foot. He was unshaved, ashen, and his sky-blue suit was disheveled from the flight up from Florida, stops in Washington and New York along the way. “Don’t just stand there,” she said, “speak.”
“I’m scared, Rita.” He spoke too fast, his lips desperate. “I didn’t know if I was next or not. I still don’t know. You have to tell me.”
“If you’d been next, you wouldn’t have had time to think about it.”
He shivered on the step, his chin lifting. A breeze unfixed his shock of white hair, which was in need of a wash. He said, “I came here, I didn’t know what else to do.”
“I’ve been expecting you,” she said, shifting somewhat out of the doorway, the sun catching her black hair. She had on a Titian-red tent dress and furry house slippers. “I saved your ass, you know that,” she said, and he nodded, blink-eyed. “Like old times, me doing it.”
Her voice confused him. It was softer than he had ever heard it before, though her expression was cheerless, critical, intimidating. Her gaze swept past him to the foot of the drive, where a taxi was idling, a woman visible in the back seat.
“Who is she, Ty?”
Ty O’Dea showed grit. “It’s my woman,” he said. “Her name’s Sara.”
“You just going to let her sit there?”
He turned around and gestured with his fingers. The woman leaned forward in the taxi to pay the driver. Then she climbed out and began struggling up the drive with a suitcase in each hand. Rita O’Dea made a sour face.
“Go help her, for Christ’s sake.”
• • •
Anthony Gardella stayed longer at the house in Rye than he had intended. He and his wife stayed there through the weekend and well into the next week. Two or three hours a day, wearing bulky Norwegian sweaters, they tramped along the surf. With her Canon camera, Jane Gardella took pictures of gulls riding glittering waves and of her husband inspecting crumbs of bread sponge and lifting a length of driftwood riddled by boatworms. They walked over wet flats of sand and left behind squishy shoeprints as they vanished into the far reaches of the beach. On the final day, as they retraced their steps, a figure waited for them in the distance, near the house.
“It’s Victor,” Gardella said.
“You were expecting him?”
“Yes,” he said, taking her arm.
“Business?”
“Business.”
“I suppose I shouldn’t complain,” she said without hiding her disappointment. She took a wide breath of salt air. “I’ve had more of you than I thought I would.”
Inside the house she served coffee and then left them alone. Victor Scandura sat near the lit fireplace for the extra warmth. Gardella was too warm and removed his sweater. Stark sunshine cut through the windows. “You want something stronger, say so,” Gardella said, and Scandura shook his head.
“This is fine.”
Gardella relaxed in his chair, one leg slung over the other. “Roselli was good in Miami. I can always count on him.”
“He was very good,” Scandura said. “You oughta give him something extra, show your appreciation.”
“Give him what you think is right. Make him happy.”
“It should come from your hand, Anthony. It would mean more.”
“All right, remind me. I get back, I’ll do it.” Gardella compressed his lips for a second. “I’ve done some thinking about Miami. We’re getting out of dope for a while, the wisest thing under the circumstances, but we’ll continue with the washing. We don’t want to screw that up.”
“Who you going to put down there?”
“It’s got to be you, Victor. Temporarily.”
Scandura’s eyes thinned into slits behind his glasses. “Give me a break, Anthony. You’ve got me doing everything.”
“With that much money, you’re the only one I can trust at the moment.”
“Why don’t we bring the operation up here? Wire transfers are easy. Plenty of foreign banks in Boston we can do business with.”
“Up here I’m watched. Down there, everybody’s doing it. You don’t need me to explain that.”
Scandura put his coffee aside and gazed at the fire, his head held erect. His words were quiet. “My place is with you, not down in Florida. People say you got eyes in the back of your head. That’s because of me. I’m those eyes. You know that’s so, don’t you, Anthony?”
“Yes, I do.”
“I give you a hundred percent.”
“No, Victor. You give me a hundred ten.”
“I give you advice. You don’t always take it, but I give the best I can. Lately you’ve done things that worry me. I guess you know that, but you’re the boss. What you say goes, like always. You want me to go to Florida, I’ll go.”
“Tell me again what’s worrying you, Victor. Sometimes I forget.”
“Hitting those punks that did in your parents, that was bad. I still haven’t figured out why it was bad, but I know it was. You know it too.”
Gardella spoke with dry lips. “That’s something we’re never going to talk about. Capisce? What else worries you?”
“Everything you do is quick now. Maybe too quick.”
“It’s the way my mind moves.”
“And, you want my opinion, you should’ve gone to Sal Nardozza’s funeral. People were surprised you didn’t. Biggest bunch of flowers should have come from you.”
“You’re talking old fashion, old ways. I go to a funeral, I get my picture taken. I get my picture taken enough.”
“But it was expected, Anthony. You near the front pew. And your sister too.”
“You know what, Victor? You worry too much.” The words moved smoothly over Gardella’s tongue. His gaze narrowed. “But that’s okay. A guy like you I couldn’t do without.”
Five minutes later Gardella went into the kitchen, where his wife was busy at the sink. He lifted her hair, kissed the back of her neck, and said, “I’m going to walk Victor out to his car.”
“Are we leaving too?” she asked.
“It’s about time, don’t you think?”
“I could stay here forever,” she answered with emotion.
“One of these days,” he said, “we might do that.”
Scandura comported himself stiffly toward his Cadillac, which was parked partly on thin grass. His face was drawn under a dove-gray felt hat. With his topcoat buttoned to the throat, he seemed embalmed in too much clothing. Gardella, in shirt sleeves, grazed a hand over evergreen shrubs struggling to recoup from winter sunscald.
“Wade’s wife. How’d it go?”
“No problem,” Scandura said.
“Good. Good. I love playing angles, don’t you, Victor? It’s what makes life interesting.”
Scandura said, “There’s something I was saving for last. Your brother-in-law showed up.”
“I’d have been surprised if he hadn’t.”
“Rita took him in.”
“Predictable.”
“He had a woman with him.”
“Interesting,” Gardella said in a manner that closed the subject. “You drive with care, you hear?” He put his arms around Scandura, embraced him hard, and then abruptly pulled back. “Jesus, Victor, all I feel is bones. You losing weight?”
“I go up and down, you know that.”
“You feeling okay? Don’t lie to me.”
“I’m fine.”
Gardella was thoughtful for a moment, a breeze moving across him. “You’re right, Victor. Your place is here, not Miami.”
Scandura’s eyes filled. “Thank you, Anthony.”
• • •
Two blocks from Government Center, Christopher Wade caught sight of his wife across the street. She was moving swiftly, painted in sunlight, and he called to her, but his voice failed to carry over the tone of traffic. When he tried to push into the street, the potency of the crowd kept him in its grip long enough for her to vanish around a corner.
Minutes later, double-timing, he glimpsed her toiling up steep steps where the city rose to another level. Again he called out, and this time she stopped, her hand clinging to an iron rail. The face she presented was white and cold, with a curious smile that seemed only half attached to her mouth. She waited until he reached the steps, and then she turned away. There was a stone bench nearby. She sat on it.
“Susan.” He said the name tentatively as he joined her, and he put out a hand to touch her and thought better of it. She was a mystery to him, all of a sudden a total mystery. “Why are you here?”
“Why shouldn’t I be here?” Her voice slid grudgingly to him. “Why shouldn’t I go where I want?” Then she glanced away, her hands in the lap of her light wool skirt, her knees pressed together. Her stockings were dark, speckled. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I’m not at my best.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m out of a job. John Benson sacked me during an otherwise nice lunch. Also, he doesn’t want to see me anymore.” A laugh shot out of her mouth. “His excuse is he doesn’t want to tie me down. Says I should be my own person.” Her throat pulsed. “I honestly thought he cared for me.”
“You’ll find another job,” Wade said, noticing for the first time a gentle pattern of aging in her face, and he felt an extravagance of sadness, almost as much for himself as for her. She spoke rapidly, too rapidly.
“I already had an offer, the same day. Have you heard of Rodino Travel? You pass it every day. It’s practically next door to the Saltonstall Building.”
Wade drew his lips together. Feet shuffled by, dour Boston faces that
he glimpsed peripherally. Her eyes pressed upon him.
“How did they know so fast at Rodino’s that I was available? John never would have told them.”
“I don’t know,” Wade said with the hint of a frown and a sudden wince in his stomach. He was wearing an old knit tie, and he gently tightened the knot. “Are you accepting the offer?”
“I haven’t decided,” she said with a stinging look. “Something’s happening I don’t know about. I feel somebody’s pulling strings, somebody’s yanking me from one place to another. Is it you, Chris?”
He shook his head.
“If it was, I’d never forgive you.”
“I would never interfere in your life.”
“I’d like to believe that.”
“Tonight,” he asked, “would you like to go to the movies?”
“No, Chris, I wouldn’t,” she replied, rising to her feet, regret in her voice. “There’s something you’ve got to get through your head. I don’t love you anymore.”
He gazed up at her in injured silence.
“And there’s something else you should admit to yourself. You don’t love me.”
Watching her slip away, the sun glancing over her, he murmured, “You’re wrong.”
• • •
Ten minutes later, plunged into the gloom of a cocktail lounge, Wade made himself reasonably comfortable at a miniature table, lit a cigarette, and listened to a piano player ripple out airs of the forties for a few middle-aged lovers. Flicking an ash, he stared at the bare legs of the waitress who approached with a smile too rigid to be friendly. “I suppose,” he said, “you have a husband or a boyfriend.”
“Both,” she said. She was of indeterminate age, her hair a haze of old gold, which was almost the color of her diminutive costume, her breasts propped up by the tight top.
“Then I’ll try not to bother you,” he said.
“You can bother me all you want as long as you don’t expect too much.”
“What would I expect?”
“The world. Men do. But you I probably don’t have to worry about. I don’t think you’re interested.”
His eye turned more sensitive. “What makes you say that?”
“The way you make with the talk, it’s automatic. It doesn’t mean anything.”
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