But only for a moment.
A whispered “Where the hell are you?” asked and answered, was followed by a blowtorch of personal abuse. Boiling Doyle. Michael had been a thoughtless, irresponsible, self-pitying son of a bitch. A full minute went by before the lawyer ran out of the more profane modifiers for “son of a bitch” and “little shit.” Sheila Doyle, Fallon assumed, must be out for the evening.
“Mr. Doyle ... I almost got killed.”
“What you got was a broken wrist. You fell apart over that? That's how Jake and Moon raised you?”
“Have you heard from Moon?”
“You just get your sorry ass back here.”
“I'm not coming back. Now calm down and hear me out.”
Michael told him about the muggers, one with a gun, the other with a knife, and why he wanted no part of the police. He mentioned the car that had almost run him down. He agreed that it might have been nothing, but it was one near-miss too many. He told of getting to the point where he thought his phone had been bugged and people were watching him. Following him.
Silence on the other end.
“Mr. Doyle?”
“Give me a minute.”
Another long silence. He had a sense that- the lawyer was pacing.
“Mike . . . you still should have called,” he said at last. ”I could have handled the cops for you.”
“Mr. Doyle, where's Moon?”
”I don't know. Moving around. He sent me one letter but no return address. He doesn't even know you've been missing.”
“Where was it postmarked?”
“Miami. But it said he's just passing through. If you're thinking Jake's condo, I already checked.”
“Did he say when he'll be back?”
“He says one of these days. Michael . . .”
“Have you been picking up my mail? Maybe he wrote to me too.”
”I have and he hasn't. I've paid all your bills, incidentally.”
Fallon had assumed as much.
“You can give up the apartment. I won't be needing it.”
“Michael . . . does anyone else know where you are?”
“No.”
“Have you used any credit cards, made any long distance calls?”
“Only this one.”
“Let's keep it that way for a while. I'll see if the police are still looking.”
“Mr. Doyle . . . have you been straight with me?”
“About what?”
“Anything. Everything.”
“You can ask me that? Jake Fallon was my best friend in the world and I'm your fucking godfather.”
“Yeah. Look . . . forget it.”
“Forget it, my ass. Say what's on your mind.”
“Nothing. It's just . . . it's been a rough few months.”
There was more to the conversation. Much of it had to do with going easy on the booze, not calling attention to himself, walking away from arguments. All things considered, said the lawyer, maybe getting away from New York was for the best.
“But you're still a little shit. Sheila lost ten pounds worrying.”
“Mr. Doyle . . . these things that have happened since I got fired, could Hobbs be behind them?”
“The guy's a worm, Michael. Worms call their lawyers, they don't send hitters.”
What it was, he said, was that Michael was right the first time. It's just the city. If his mind had not been on Jake, on Bronwyn, on getting canned in such a crummy way, he would have done a better job of avoiding stumbling drunks and ducking muggers.
What eased Fallon's mind the most, and made him glad that he'd finally placed the call, was when Doyle had already said goodbye but added this:
“Michael, listen,” said the lawyer quietly. “If there's anything I haven't told you, anything I'm holding back, this would be the reason. It's just none of your goddamned business.”
“It's about Uncle Jake?”
“He had a life of his own, Michael.”
What made that reassuring, Fallon supposed, was that the lawyer didn't have to say anything at all. He was afraid, however, that he knew what it was. Big Jake Fallon made deals with people. Big Jake Fallon fixed things. Somewhere along the line, one of these deals had involved either the financial community or the pharmaceutical industry or both. He could think of no other reason that first Jake, and then Moon, and then Brendan Doyle had been so negative about his entering a field that combined the two. Maybe they thought he might hear something, stumble across something. And it's probably why Doyle would have liked to see him drop that suit against Lehman-Stone.
Well ... to hell with it anyway.
To press it, he would have to go back to New York. It just didn't seem that important anymore.
Chapter 8
For several long minutes, Brendan Doyle stared at the telephone. His fingers drummed slowly against the surface of the desk. His expression was one of sorrow. Of regret. But as the rhythm of his drumbeat quickened, as fingertips gave way to knuckles, his expression changed as well. Regret had given way to anger.
He reached for the phone once more, but hesitated when he heard voices from the floor below. His front door had opened and closed. Sheila had come home. The other voice was that of Clara, their housekeeper.
Doyle reached under his desk for a black leather briefcase and, walking softly, carried it from the room. He climbed two carpeted flights and then a steel spiral staircase leading to his roof. He walked to the edge, set the briefcase down, and opened it. It contained a cellular phone.
The Doyle town house was on Pierrepont Street in Brooklyn Heights. Jake Fallon's home, now jointly owned by Moon and Michael, was three doors down and across the street. Doyle couldn't look at it. He kept his face averted but he could not keep his mind from seeing it.
“Ah, Jake,” he whispered. “Damn you for your soft heart. You should have finished this twenty-five years ago.”
He picked up the handset of the cellular phone. It was a Priva-Fone, virtually untappable, nor could it be picked up by a scanner. He dialed a number. A male voice answered.
“Marty, it's Brendan Doyle.”
Marty was Captain Martin Hennessy, Detectives, Manhattan South. Doyle had reached him at his home in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.
“I need to know about a felonious assault that happened in January.” He recited the details as he knew them. “In particular, I want the names and addresses of the victims and all that is known of their assailant.”
He listened. Then, “No. No, this has no connection with whomever killed Jake. First thing in the morning, Marty? . . . Thank you ... What? ... No ... Still no word from Michael.”
Doyle grimaced as he broke the connection. It had probably occurred to Hennessy that Michael's apartment is only a few blocks from the scene of the assault. But Marty would keep that to himself. Marty and Jake go back a lot of years.
He punched out a second number. It had several more digits than the first. A softer male voice answered.
“Moon? It's Brendan. Michael is alive and well.”
On the other end, a hissing sound. It was like a balloon deflating.
“Where?” Moon asked him.
The lawyer told him. He recounted, in broad strokes, the incident that put Michael in fear of arrest if not of his life. Doyle told him of his call to Captain Hennessy. He said he should know more in the morning.
“Martha's Vineyard. That's up off Cape Cod?”
“Moon . . . just leave him. Let's keep him out of this.”
“How much does he know?”
“Almost nothing.”
”I didn't raise him stupid, Mr. Doyle.”
“And he isn't. But for the moment, at least, he blames the city for Jake and the girl.”
“So did I. Until I started remembering.”
“Hey . . . we're still not sure. Go slow, okay?”
“We been goin' slow. Five months now.”
“You're still healing, Moon. Give it time.”
“It's Rasmussen
, Mr. Doyle. I can close my eyes and see him doing it. It's Armin Rasmussen killed Jake.”
“Moon...he'd be seventy-five years old now. We don't even know he's still alive.”
“He's alive. And old men swing bats. Come down here to Florida and you'll see. They don't run the bases so good and they can't chase down flies. But they can damned well swing a bat.”
“Well . . . let's see what we find out from Hennessy.”
“Mr. Doyle?”
“It's Brendan, for Christ's sake.”
“I'll call you Brendan when I feel more friendly toward you. You were supposed to look after Michael or I wouldn't have left.”
“If you stayed, and you're right about Rasmussen, you'd be just as dead as Jake.”
Moon said nothing for a long moment. “Mr. Doyle?”
Jesus.
“Yes, Mister Moon.”
“You won't ever tell Michael, will you?”
“Like you said, he's not stupid. He'll have to know some of it.”
“About his mother, I mean.”
“I'd cut my tongue out first.”
The lawyer had one more call to make. He hit a memory code for the number of Villardi's Seafood Palace on Ocean Parkway, Brooklyn. The restaurant was owned by the Giordano brothers. He left a message for them. Brendan Doyle, it said, has some interesting news. Kindly join him for lunch there tomorrow.
One floor down, Sheila was calling his name. He replaced the handset and closed his briefcase. He would not tell his wife that Michael is safe. Let her worry awhile longer. If she drops a few more pounds, she might even thank him for it.
Doyle, like Moon, had thought of Rasmussen the instant he was told that a bat had been the murder weapon. Like Moon, he had imagined that fat Kraut bastard standing over Jake. Bat in hand. Just as Jake had stood over him on that night twenty-five years ago. When Jake called him to account for what he'd done to Michael's parents.
But Jake, in the end, let him live. Rasmussen, ruined, broke and bleeding, had fled back to Germany. And then he simply vanished. During the five months since Jake was murdered, Doyle had skip-tracers here and in Europe trying to pick up his trail. So far they'd found nothing.
On a rational level, Doyle had trouble believing that Rasmussen had a hand in this if only because so much time had gone by. Who would wait that long for revenge? And, more to the point, why then go after Michael ... if indeed that subway thing and the mugger had been deliberate attempts on his life?
Still, he did wish that Jake had finished it back then. If he had, they would all be able to believe that Michael is right. That it's just the city. Accept it, lick your wounds, and get on with your life.
But Moon won't accept it. And now Moon blames him for this latest attack on Michael.
Doyle could have told him, he supposed, that he had people tailing Michael ever since that subway thing. But they'd managed to lose him on several occasions. The evening when he walked home from that movie, got jumped by those two muggers, was obviously one of those times.
Moon would have asked, “What people? Who'd you put on him?”
He would have answered, ”I asked Julie Giordano to lend me some of his.” Plus the guy who sweeps Julie's house for bugs. Doyle had him put a wire on Michael's phone just to see how much Michael did know. And he paid Michael's doorman to keep tabs on him and to change the tapes twice each shift. He would not tell Moon about that part because Moon wouldn't like the idea of bugging Michael. He would not be much happier about the tail.
Moon would have said, “You used Giordano's people? Those are leg-breakers, Mister Doyle. A leg-breaker and a bodyguard are not the same thing.”
Well ... we live and learn.
Not only did they lose Michael that night, they lost him on the morning when he split for Hyannis. In fact, to hear Michael tell it, seeing Julie Giordano's goons down in the street and even strolling through his fucking lobby was one of the things that made him run for his life.
So now, thought Doyle, he understands the difference.
A goon is a goon and a shadow is a shadow. But for some things, you still need goons. With luck, by lunchtime tomorrow, he would have another job for the Giordano brothers.
Chapter 9
Three more weeks had passed on Martha's Vineyard.
March had rolled into April, Easter had come and gone. The whole island was a soft green. A mild winter with a lot of rain had caused the flowers of spring to come early. They came in a profusion unlike any that Fallon had ever seen. Showy white flowers, called shadbushes, bloomed in great cascades on every street, along every road. There were tulips and jonquils that had been forced in greenhouses and other wild flowers called beach plums. There were chirping little pond birds called pinkletinks. Michael liked the sound they made almost as much as the name.
The whole of Edgartown smelled of paint and sounded with the banging of hammers. It seemed that all at once, every house in town was getting a clean, fresh coat after a winter of wind-driven salt. Every boat was being scraped and caulked. Fallon felt reborn.
He was no longer lonely because, aside from Brendan Doyle calling once or twice each week, more of the locals were seeking him out.
Even Doyle had lightened up. Moon still hadn't called but Doyle thought he understood why. All it was, he suggested, was that Moon had too much pride to let anyone see him while he was less than a hundred percent. He didn't want people, even family, offering him chairs and watching his hand shake while he eats. That, Michael agreed, did sound like Moon.
Doyle had also determined, through discreet inquiry, that the New York police were no longer interested in finding him. No warrant, no nothing. They had been unable to match a name to his description and had gone on to other matters. The racial issue, advanced by city hall, had been mere political rhetoric that had barely survived the press conference. Al Sharpton won't be marching on Edgartown either.
What made him more attractive to the locals was that he told Millie, the real estate lady, that he was ready to look at those houses and maybe some local businesses. A restaurant, perhaps. A hardware store. Maybe he'd breed and raise pinkletinks.
Steady, Michael.
But he had definitely decided to settle here. Live in Edgartown year-round. Great place to raise a family someday. The trick was to find something that would keep him occupied for more than just the summer.
She asked him for a price range. He said that price would be no problem.
Millie Jacobs was married to Dr. Emil Jacobs who was the first-string local dentist. Fallon learned, in short order, that the only gossip mill that is more efficient than a real estate office or a dentist's office is a combination of the two. Within days, everyone in Edgartown knew that Michael had recovered from his broken heart, had a pot of money in the bank, was a serious buyer, and was definitely on the lookout for a wholesome, sincere, Martha's Vineyard sort of woman.
Kevin, the bartender, confided that Millie's Nantucket niece was a bowser. His own niece, however, had won a Miss Lobsterfest pageant; came with a ready-made family, two cute little girls from the prick she divorced; and was still a size seven. The grocer had a piece of land that had a water view. Millie said forget it. It's where the gallows used to stand and it's nowhere near the sewer. The barber had a jeep for sale. Four-wheel drive. Can't live on this island without one, he said.
“That Kraut car of yours is nice for saying I got mine, but it ain't worth a damn after a half-inch of snow. Anyway, out here we buy American.”
“Michael . . . ”
“Wait a second. ”
That was another thing. He was feeling less of a need for his telepathic therapy sessions with Dr. Sheldon Greenberg. The price was right—hours of them for the cost of one book—but as long as it was all in his head, he would just as soon talk to Uncle Jake. Besides, the Greenberg thing showed signs of getting strange. The other day he asked Greenberg what he thought of the idea. Buying property here. Settling here. Greenberg answered that he was “on the fifteenth ho
le at Sea Pines, two strokes down, playing a ten-dollar Nassau. Don't bother me now. ”
Fallon took that- to mean he was getting better.
He also learned something about real estate people. Other, that is, than that telling one a secret is cheaper than placing an ad. He learned that the minute you suggest that you're ready to buy, and they think they have your price range, guaranteed, a house will come on the market at an unbelievable steal of a price. But you must act now. Wait a day and it's gone.
One such house did appear. Millie called it a miracle. The hand of God and the luck of the Irish combined.
“This isn't just a house,” she said in hushed tones. “This is the Taylor House.”
“Michael . . . think long and hard.”
“Are you kidding? It's gorgeous.”
“It's an inn, Michael. You're not an innkeeper.”
The Shadow Box Page 6