Bitter Truth

by William Lashner

  We approached the passenger side and Lenny opened the rear door for me. “Hop on in, Victor.”

  I gave him a tight smile and then ducked into the car. It must have slipped my mind for a moment, what with all the wiseguys at the funeral and the sadness of the pebbles scudding across the top of the coffin and the words of the Kaddish still echoing, but Lenny was not just any driver, and his invitation of a ride was less an invitation than a summons. When I entered the cool darkness of the car’s interior my eyes took a second to dilate open and I smelled him before I saw him. The atmosphere of the car was rich with his scent: the spice of cologne, the creamy sweetness of Brylcreem, the acrid saltpeter tang of brutal power waiting to be exercised.

  Slowly, the car drove off along the cemetery road.

  20

  “I THOUGHT IT BEST IF I PAID my respects from a distance,” said Enrico Raffaello, sitting next to me on the black bench seat in the rear of his Cadillac. He was a short, neat man in a black suit and flowered tie. His hair was gray and greased back, his face cratered like a demented moon. His voice was softly accented with a Sicilian rhythm and a genuine sadness that seemed to arise not from the surface mourning of a funeral but from a deep understanding of the merciless progression of life. Between his knees was a cane tipped with a silver cast of a leopard, and his thick hands rested easily atop the crouching cat. “Jimmy was a loyal friend and I didn’t want to ruin his day.”

  “I think that was wise,” I said.

  “Did you like the service?”

  “It was touching. The son especially.”

  “Yes, so I’ve heard. I arranged for it to happen like that.”

  “Flying him in from L.A. was very generous.”

  “That is not quite how I arranged it. You see, Jimmy was not a diligent family man. He hadn’t seen his son in years and the son refused to come after what Jimmy had done to his mother. Jimmy was wrong in how he handled his wife, granted, but that was no reason for a son to show such disrespect for his father.”

  “So how did you get him here?”

  “I didn’t. Such rifts can be wide and deep and I am not a psychologist. I hired an actor instead.”

  “That was an actor?”

  “I told him I wanted some emotion. This actor, he said that crying was extra. I could have wrung his fat neck, but I am a sentimentalist, so I paid.”

  “I never knew you were such a soft touch.”

  “I’m getting too old, I think. It is one thing when my colleagues die, that is the natural order of things. But when the new generation start dying from natural causes and I’m still around, there’s nothing but a weary sadness. Maybe they are right. Maybe it is time to loosen my grip on the trophy.”

  He sighed, a great sad sigh, and turned away from me to look out the window. We were just heading out the gates of the cemetery, turning into traffic. Lenny was breathing through his mouth as he drove. Though it had become a warm sunny day outside, with the darkened windows and the cool of the air conditioning it felt like fall.

  “Have you found out anything from Pietro?” he asked still looking away.

  “I wish you would let someone else do this.”

  “Tell me what you know,” he snapped.

  “Cressi wasn’t working alone,” I said. “He had to check the details of the arrangement with someone else before agreeing to the purchase of the guns. I’ve made some inquiries to area Mercedes dealers, no one reported stolen cars. I also talked with the ATF about the group to whom Peter says he was going to sell the guns. White supremacists, skinheads. Those brothers who butchered their parents up in Allentown were members. ATF has been watching them for years and says they do buy guns, but not in quantity. They’re too strapped for cash to even mail their newsletters out. I don’t believe he was going to resell them.”

  “Then what were they for?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  He sighed again and lifted a hand so he could examine his fingernails. “I believe I can trust you, Victor, and that is good. You are my scout. Like in the old cavalry movies, every general needs a scout to find the savages.”

  “I hope I’m not the only one.”

  “I’m being betrayed from within. I’m ready to step down, to retire to New Jersey and paint flowers, like Churchill, but I won’t be pushed out by a Judas.”

  “Who do you think it is?”

  Raffaello shrugged, his shoulder rising and falling as gently as a breath.

  “Dante wanted me to report directly to him,” I said. “That is not our arrangement.”

  “He is overeager perhaps, but a good man.”

  “How did he rise so fast?”

  “He is the eye in back of my head.”

  “Maybe he needs glasses.”

  “Do you have any reason to doubt him?”

  “No, but I don’t trust him. What happened to Calvi? I thought I could trust Calvi.”

  “We had a disagreement.”

  “Over what?”

  “What do you think this is about, Victor, the cars, the secrets, the deals, the threats? It’s all about money, rivers of money. We drive around in our Cadillacs and people give us money. When they don’t, we get a little rough and then they do. I keep the peace because that way we make more money. I distribute what we get fairly so everyone will stay in line and we’ll make even more money. It’s fun, sure, and we eat well, but we’re not in it for the pasta or the fun, we’re in it for the money. Now the animals who are against us, they want more than their share and to get it they’ll do whatever they need to, commit whatever crime they have to. It would be no different if we were selling cars, or canned goods, or cannoli, we’d still have the same fight. Just the tactics would be different and there would be more survivors. They want me gone so they can control the city and decide who gets what and once they control the city they’re going to milk it dry. And then it will grow too ugly to even imagine.”

  We were on the Schuylkill Expressway again, going east, toward the city. We were in the center lane and all about us cars were surging and changing lanes and halting abruptly as another car got too close. Lenny was driving remarkably steady, never rising above fifty-five, acting as if we were being followed by a cop car at all times, which we very well might have been. A red convertible pulled even with us to the right, the driver’s blond hair flying behind her like a dashing scarf, before she rammed her way ahead.

  “What about Calvi?” I asked.

  “Calvi became unreliable. He hated everybody, trusted no one, and everyone hated him back. He had risen beyond his abilities and he knew it, but he wouldn’t step down. And then we discovered he was taking more than his share, so I was forced to step him down.”

  “How did you find out?”

  “Like I said, I have an eye in the back of my head.”

  “Have you ever wondered why if you got rid of Calvi you still have trouble? Have you thought maybe that Calvi wasn’t the problem? That maybe it’s that damn eye in the back of your head that is the problem?”

  “Be my scout, Victor. Find out who is behind Pietro and I’ll call in the cavalry to take care of the betrayer.”

  “And then I’m out. Completely. No one so much as even walks in my door or calls my number.”

  An old white van, its side rusted out with holes, slid up on the left of us, passing the Cadillac, before slowing down again. The van fell back behind us as a station wagon slowed in the left lane before cutting sharply in front of our car and then in front of a bus before exiting.

  “That’s the deal, yes,” said Raffaello. “But before that can happen you must find out what I need to know. I try to govern with reason, Victor. I’m a peaceable man at heart. But I know for certain when reason battles strength it is strength that will win. You tell me who the traitor is and I will show you strength. Tell me who the traitor is and I will cut out his tongue and mail it to his wife.”

  Outside, on our left, the white van again pulled up to our side and this time from one of the rusted h
oles stuck a black metal tube. There was a puff of smoke and a fierce whine and the window next to Enrico Raffaello’s face suddenly sprouted crystal blooms of glass.

  21

  THE CRY OF METAL being torn apart. A shriek of brakes. A shout. The white van shooting ahead of us and then coming back as if on a string. A twist of the wheel. A force slamming me into the door and then down off the seat. The scream of twisting steel. A shout. A shattering of glass. A splash of cool crystals on my neck. A shout. A hand in my face and a voice telling me to shut up. An explosion beneath us and a wild series of bumps. A jerk forward. The shriek of breaks. The grind of the engine and a force pushing me further into the floor. A shout. A shout.

  “Shut up already, Victor,” said Raffaello. “Just please shut up.”

  “What? What?”

  “Just shut up and calm down. We’re getting off the highway.”

  A loud acceleration. A flash of a green hillside and then a jerk upward and to the right.

  “Superb, Lenny. Absolutely superb. Did you see anything?”

  “The window was blacked,” said Lenny with an utter calm. “Couldn’t see a thing, Mr. Raffaello.”

  “That’s fine. We’ll find out soon enough. You were superb.”

  “I slammed the hell out of them,” said Lenny, “but I couldn’t see who they was.”

  “What? What happened?”

  “What do you think happened?” said Raffaello. “The bastards they tried to whack me. You can sit up if you want. They’ve gone past.”

  I sat up cautiously. The rear windows were all cracked and pitted with holes. Through the cracks I could see we were speeding off the highway, not bothering to stop at the stop sign before swerving violently to the left and onto a city street. The ride was terribly rough, even for a Philadelphia street, so I figured a tire must have blown. Lenny was searching the rearview mirror as he sped along. The car door on Raffaello’s side was fluffed with spurts of coffee-colored foam.

  “We need to let Victor off now, Lenny.”

  “Yes sir, Mr. Raffaello. I’ll slow us down under the bridge.”

  “I don’t want to get out.”

  “It has started, Victor. It doesn’t do either of us any good for you to be with me right now, you understand? When Lenny slows you will jump out of the car.”

  “But no. No. I can’t.”

  The Cadillac eased slower just a bit and edged to the side as it slipped under a cement bridge.

  Raffaello leaned over to open my door. As he leaned I saw him wince. The left side of his suit was wet with blood.

  “You’ve been hit. You’re bleeding.”

  “Get ready to fall,” he said as he clicked down the lever.

  “I can’t do this. They’re probably following us. They’ll run right over me.”

  “Then be sure to roll,” he said as the door yawned and I saw a primitive mural of cars in traffic pass and beneath that the rush of black asphalt.

  “Wait!”

  “We’ll be in touch,” said Enrico Raffaello before he shoved me out of the car.

  A sledgehammer bashed into my shoulder, a pile of rocks fell all at once along my side, claws scraped at my face as my head was pummeled. A line of pain edged into my back and then I was up, over the curb, lying splayed on a narrow cement walkway just beyond the cover of the cement bridge. I picked my head up as a set of tires sped inches from my left hand, which lay in the street, pale and still like a dead fish.

  I pulled it back and scooted to my knees and tried to figure out where I was. It all looked vaguely familiar. The stone tunnel to my left, the traffic lights, the banners on the poles. A ludicrous bouquet of balloons. Wait a second, balloons and banners? Over there, by that parking lot, gingerbread kiosks and barred entranceways and a great green statue of a lion pride at rest. Suddenly I knew. Lenny had pulled off the expressway at the Girard Street exit and left me just outside the front entrance to the Philadelphia Zoo.

  When I figured out where I was I also realized that the murderous white van must also have known the Cadillac’s escape route. It would give chase, along with any other vehicles that were tagging along to finish the job. No doubt they’d come right up this road, looking for whatever they could to kill off and what they’d find, if I stayed there, on my knees, like a scared penitent, would be me.

  I stood and did a quick inspection. My jacket was ripped at the shoulder and blood was leaking through the white of my shirt. I wiped thin lines of blood from the scratches on the left side of my face. The right knee of my pants was slashed and through the opening I could see jagged gashes from which bright red oozed. Move, I told myself. Where? Anywhere, you fool, just move.

  I cantered past the balloon guy and across a narrow road that encircled the zoo and then, with a stiff side step, I passed the lion statue and headed for the open gate between the kiosks.

  “That will be eight-fifty,” said the young woman in the ticket window after she eyed my tattered jacket and the blood that had seeped through the shoulder of my shirt. She had a wide mole on her cheek that creased when she smiled. “But if you want to buy a membership now, you can apply today’s admission charge to the forty-dollar total.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “It’s a tremendous deal. You get free parking anytime you come and free admission all year long. If you just want to fill out this form.”

  “Really, no thank you,” I said, handing her a twenty. As she counted out my change I looked behind me. Nothing suspicious, nothing at all, until I spotted the nose of a long black Lincoln sniff its way slowly down the same road Lenny had taken the Cadillac. I rushed through the gate and into the zoological gardens before the woman could give me back my change.

  I galloped across the wide stone plaza with the fountain in the grand iron gazebo, past the statue of the elephants, into the rare animal house, a long semicircular corridor flanked by cages. Fruit bats, to my right, scurried across their caged ceiling like a puppy motorcycle gang in black leather. Naked mole rats, pale pink and toothsome, huddled together in a warren of tunnels to my left. I glanced quickly behind me as I walked through the interior. Owl-faced guenons, marmosets, colobus monkeys with fancy black-and-white furs. It was mostly empty of viewers, the rare animal house at that time of the day, a few kids in strollers with their mothers. I stopped for a second to listen. The screech of a monkey, the rustle of the bats. The place smelled of dung and the musk of simian sweat. Two tobacco-colored tree kangaroos humped on a branch high in their cage. I was about to start moving again when I heard a door swing open and the tap of running feet.

  I couldn’t see who was coming because of the curve of the wide corridor, but I knew enough not to want them to see me. There was an exit to the left marked EMPLOYEES ONLY and I darted to it, but the handle wouldn’t turn, as if the door knew exactly who I wasn’t. I looked back down the corridor, still saw nothing, and started running, past the mongoose lemurs from Madagascar, running to the far door, the sound of the footsteps gaining. Just as I hit the first of the double doors a herd of schoolchildren stampeded in, followed by their teachers. They pushed me back, drowning out the sound of the following steps with their excited baying. I found myself unable to wade through the waist-high gaggle and as the kids streamed by, I stopped and turned to face whatever fate it was that was chasing me.

  The woman from the ticket window.

  “Sir,” she said, her mole creasing with a smile, holding up two bills in her fist. “You forgot your change.”

  I forced myself to take a deep breath. Even as I trembled, I stretched my lips into a smile. “Thank you,” I said softly, “that was very kind.”

  “Here you go.”

  In her outstretched hand was a ten, a one, and two quarters. I took the one and the quarters and said, “Thank you, you can keep the rest.”

  “I can’t do that sir. Really, I can’t.”

  “Think of it as a tip,” I said, “for restoring my faith in human nature.”

  She blushed and her
mole creased considerably and she tried to protest but I raised a hand.

  “Thanks a lot,” she said. “Really, that’s great,” and finally she spun around to leave. Then I, with my faith in human nature restored, stepped slowly from the building, searching about me all the while for the men who were trying to kill me.

  There was nothing suspicious on the wide brick walkways. Huge Galápagos turtles, safe in their shells, stared passively as I hurried by. Emus strutted and hippos wallowed and a black-and-white tapir lumbered about, looking suspiciously like a girl I used to date. At the rhino pen I leaned on the fence and watched a mother rhino and her calf. I was jealous of their great slabs of body armor. A girl in a purple dress stood on the tips of her Mary Janes and slipped her golden elephant key into the story box. A voice poured out.

  Throughout Africa and Asia the rhinoceros is being hunted almost to extinction. For centuries certain cultures have believed the rhinoceros horn, blood, and urine possess magical and medicinal power.

  While leaning on the bars and listening to the lecture, I slyly looked back along the path. As I did I spotted a figure at the top of a rise and my breath stopped. A beefy man in a maroon suit, looking around with a fierce concentration.

  Scientists estimate there are only fourteen hundred greater one-horned Asian rhinos remaining in India and Nepal.

  I didn’t know him, and I wouldn’t have recognized him except for the suit. Maroon suits are rare enough, but that shade was simply radiant in its repulsiveness, and not easily forgotten. I had seen it just that morning, at Jimmy Vig’s funeral. Its owner was one of the downtown boys for sure and not, I was sure, here to commune with nature. I froze and let my breath return in tiny spurts.

  To help preserve this endangered species the Philadelphia Zoo cooperates with other zoos in a program called a species survival plan.