Bitter Truth

by William Lashner

  “Who exactly?”

  “If I knew that I’d already be rich.”

  “We notified the house but we’re still looking for the other two siblings, Robert and Caroline. Any idea where they are?”

  “None.”

  “So, if you don’t know who’s going after the Shaws, what do you know?”

  Normally, in my position as a criminal defense attorney, I preferred to share absolutely nothing more than I was forced to share with the cops. We’re on opposite sides, with the exact opposite goals, and since knowledge is power I tried to keep as much power as I could for myself. But I wasn’t facing McDeiss now as a criminal defense attorney. I was looking for a third of any recovery for wrongful death against the person responsible for Jacqueline’s murder and now, most likely, for Eddie Shaw’s murder too. Nothing would be better than to have the cops find the guy and convict him and leave his assets dangling for me to snatch down with my teeth. There were things he couldn’t know, things about my client Peter Cressi and his boss Earl Dante, about my role as innocent bystander in the hit attempt on the Schuylkill Expressway, about Raffaello’s plan to turn over the city’s underworld to his nemesis. But anything I learned in my investigation of Jacqueline’s death, I figured, I could turn over to him, including what I had learned from Eddie’s wife. Telling all I knew to McDeiss might just make my job of getting what I could out of the Reddman fortune that much easier.

  “You said that place La Vigna is pretty good,” I said.

  “Sure,” said McDeiss, “if you like Northern Italian.”

  “They have veal?”

  “Scallopini pounded thin as my paycheck, drenched with the first pressings of virgin olives and fresh lemon.”

  I wasn’t really hungry for veal. In reality, at that moment, surrounded by that saccharine fog of death, I feared I couldn’t keep down even a swallow of Pepto-Bismol. But McDeiss, I figured, was one to sharpen his appetite even as the fresh scent of death lingered in his nostrils. I took him for the type to eat a hoagie in the morgue while an autopsy of an old and bloated corpse was being performed and enjoy every mouthful, so long as the prosciutto was imported and the provolone fresh. It was to my advantage to talk to McDeiss and there was no better enticement for McDeiss to listen, I had learned, than a good meal. Except this time, it had to seem like he was pumping me.

  “Well then, why don’t we try it out?” I said. “I could go for a little veal. But if you want to hear what I’ve found out, let’s say this time you spring for the check.”

  McDeiss sent me across Front Street, to the other side of the yellow tape, to wait while he delegated the remainder of the crime scene work to his partner and the uniforms. I was watching him go about his business, listening to reports, talking with other witnesses, examining the car with the forensics guys. In the middle of it all he lifted up a finger to me, telling me he’d be there in a minute, and then went on with his work. For a heavy guy he was pretty limber and I watched with growing admiration as he stretched around and under the car, picking out whatever clues remained. As I watched I felt something grab hold of the crotch of my pants.

  “What the…” I said as I tried to whirl around and found I couldn’t. A block of stone was behind my back and a steel cable was now wrapped around my chest, squeezing whatever air was left out of my lungs.

  I tried to swing around again but found myself only being pulled back, away from the crowd.

  “Get the hell off of me,” I tried to shout, my gasping voice actually loud enough for a few of the people in front of me to turn around to see what was happening. One of them was a short gray-haired man in a black suit and as soon as he turned around I stopped shouting.

  “Funny seeing you here, Victor,” hissed Earl Dante through his small, even set of teeth.

  It was the first time I had seen him since he had started his war. The sight of him there, that close in front of me, with some monster holding me from behind, set my knees to shaking and I sagged down for an instant before I recovered. This was exactly what Raffaello had talked about. The bastard was going through me to set up the meeting.

  “Funny seeing you under the highway talking to that homicide dick,” continued Dante. “Funny as hell but for some reason I’m not laughing.”

  Dante nodded at whoever it was who was holding me from behind. The arm around my chest loosened and the hand released its hold on my crotch. My knees sagged again but I stopped myself from falling, stood straight as I could and shucked my shoulders. The mere gesture made me feel a little harder until the reality of the situation impressed itself once again upon my nerves. I looked behind me. It was the weightlifting lug who always seemed to be around when Dante appeared. The lug nodded at me and then looked away, as if there was something more important to look at down the street.

  “What were you and the dick talking about like such buddy-buddies under the highway?” said Dante.

  “The weather,” I said.

  “I hear there was a body in the trunk. It’s a shame to go like that. A tragedy.”

  “You talking about the body or the car,” I said, “’cause if you ask me, it might be a bigger shame about the car.”

  The lug behind me chuckled and even Dante smiled. Over Dante’s head I could see McDeiss making his way out from under the highway, walking toward us. The sight of him approaching gave me a shot of courage.

  “Tell me something, Earl,” I said. “Who’s paying you to kill Reddmans?”

  The smile disappeared and his composed mortician’s face startled for an instant. Then the smile returned, but there was an ugly darkness to it now. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Sure you do, Earl. Is it a Poole? Did a person named Poole pay for the hits?”

  “Ahh, now I get it. You dumb shit, you think I flamed that bastard over there?”

  “That’s exactly what I think. And I think you killed his sister in the luxury apartment and left her hanging like a coat on a rack, which is why you convinced that freak Peckworth to change his story for the cops.”

  “You talked to Peckworth?”

  “You bet I did.”

  “You’re a dumb shit, you know that, Carl? I would have thought your little misadventure on the expressway would have wised you up enough to keep you out of the business, but no. If you weren’t such a dumb shit you wouldn’t think what you’re thinking.”

  “You mean the fact that Eddie Shaw owed you a quarter of a million dollars and it looks now like he won’t ever pay?” I shook my head and looked up again. McDeiss was now in the middle of the road, about twenty yards away. “I figure you got that covered. His wife told me she had to sign something before he could get his little three-point-a-week loan from you. I figure you have a note in the full amount, for a legal rate of interest, signed by the dead man and his widow. With Eddie being the fuck-up he was, you have a better shot now at getting paid from the wife with her insurance money than you ever did from Eddie.”

  “You’re a smart guy, Victor, oh yes you are,” said Dante. “You’d think a guy as smart as you wouldn’t be a lowlife shyster trying to hustle an angle into someone else’s game. You would think a guy as smart as you would be rich already.”

  “I’m working on it.”

  “The cop,” said the lug behind me. “He’s coming right this way, chief.”

  “There’s going to be a meeting,” said Dante, talking low now, suddenly in a hurry, his words hissing out. “You’ve gotten the word already. Play it straight, Victor, all the way. Pretend for once you’re not a dumb shit and play it straight. You try to smart it out and play it on an angle and you’ll end up playing it dead.”

  He put his hand up to my cheek and squeezed it between his fingers, like a dowager aunt showing affection to her nephew, before he spun to his right and walked off, his bodyguard in tow. He left just as McDeiss made his way through the crowd to get to me.

  “Who are your friends?” said McDeiss, nodding at the two men walking away from us.
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br />   “One’s a pawnbroker I know from up on Two Street.”

  “Anybody I should worry about?”

  “Not really,” I said. “He’s just a guy that the dead man owed a quarter of a million dollars.”

  McDeiss looked at me and then turned his head to look back at Dante, but the little man and his musclebound shadow had by now turned a corner and disappeared.

  “What else do you know about this case?”

  “You buying me lunch?”

  “I’m buying if you’re talking.”

  “Well then,” I said as we turned in the opposite direction and started walking together up the block to La Vigna, “let me ask you. Ever hear of a man named Poole?”

  41

  I DIDN’T RUSH RIGHT FROM THE LUNCH with McDeiss to tell Caroline about her brother. You can’t just tell a girl her brother is dead and then leave to grab a super-sized extra-value meal at McDonald’s. You have to hug her tightly when you tell her and let her cry on you and stroke her hair and feed her soup and rub her leg as she keens, bending forward and back, arms crossed at the waist. You tell a girl her brother is dead you better be ready to stick around and comfort her through the long sleepless night as she shivers and sobs in bed. The whole rigmarole could chew up a lot of time and there was still something I had to do that day. So I didn’t tell Caroline about her dead brother right off. What I did was ask McDeiss to refrain from announcing the name of the victim to the press and instead drove back out of the city, up from the river, into the deep dark depths of the Main Line. Along the narrow road with the bending archway of trees, down to the bridge that forded the stream, up through the gate and across the wide-open field on the long winding drive that rose to Veritas.

  I parked on the part of the drive that circled the front portico. Nat was working on the hedges in front of the house, pruning off defiant shoots of green. He stood on a small stepladder. He was wearing overalls, his wide straw hat, long yellow rubber gloves that gripped a set of giant silver clippers shining in the sun. When I climbed out of the car he watched me for a moment and then stepped down the ladder. The sun was bright and the air was surprisingly clear. I imagined it was always fogged or rainy or wet at Veritas, but this was a brassy spring day.

  “Howdy, Mr. Carl,” said Nat. He took off his hat and wiped his forehead with his sleeve. Up close I could see the sweat dripping from his temples. The red ring around his eye was bright and proud in the sun. “Miss Caroline’s not here. We don’t know where she is.”

  “I’m not here for Caroline,” I said. “I’m here to see her mother.”

  “Also not here, I’m afraid. Still out of the country.”

  “Then I’ll talk to Caroline’s father.”

  He looked at me and then turned his head to stare up at the second floor and its shuttered windows. “Not a good day for a visit, I would guess. You’ve heard about Master Edward?”

  “I heard.”

  “We reached Master Robert in Mexico with the news, but we can’t find Miss Caroline. Any idea where she might be, Mr. Carl?”

  “I’ll tell her what happened,” I said, “just as soon as I talk to her father.”

  He lifted the long shiny shears and laid their pointed tips on his shoulder. “Like I said, not a good day for a visit.”

  “We all have work to do,” I said, “just like you and your pruning.”

  He nodded at the hedges. “Mrs. Shaw wants the grounds in shape for the guests. She’s arriving from Greece tonight, cutting short her vacation. It seems the brightest social occasions we have around here now are funerals.”

  “That’s about to end.”

  He raised his eyebrows when I said that and smiled. There was something charismatic in Nat’s smile. He didn’t smile often or easily, but when he did it was bright and inviting. It bespoke something shared instead of something hostile.

  “Sit down a spell with me,” he said. He walked over to one of the stone benches that flanked the steps leading to the front door. I sat beside him. His head was turned to the left while he talked, as if examining the uneven hedges still to be pruned on that side of the house. I looked down the long wide expanse of green, large enough to plop in an entire housing development, and wondered, silently, at the price of real estate in that part of the Main Line.

  “Mrs. Shaw, the younger Mrs. Shaw,” said Nat, “she named her children after the Kennedys. Edward and Robert and Jacqueline and Caroline. She wanted the glamour, I suppose.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “This was before all the scandals erupted, all the truths emerged about their crimes and infidelities. But still, you would have thought she’d pick a less tragic family to emulate.”

  “Like the Pooles?”

  He reached down with his clippers and snipped at an errant leaf of grass. “Hardly less tragic.”

  “What’s your last name, Nat?” I asked.

  “You know, Mr. Carl, the strangest thing happened. I was in the elder Mrs. Shaw’s garden and I couldn’t help but notice that the oval plot before the statue was dug up and put back down again.

  “Is that a fact?”

  “I wouldn’t have minded so much, but the plants were replanted poorly. You have to almost drown them in water when you put them back. If you don’t the roots won’t properly take. It’s a damn shame to kill a good plant.”

  “Among other things.”

  “Find anything interesting down there, Mr. Carl?”

  “Just some ancient history,” I said.

  “Yes, I suppose that’s right. For your generation ancient is anything before Reagan. And what is history, really, but the register of crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind?”

  “Shakespeare?”

  “Gibbon. Have you read The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire?”

  “No, actually.”

  “You should. Very encouraging.”

  “Why, Nat, I didn’t know you were a closet Communist.”

  “What do gardeners know of politics? How’d Miss Caroline take to learning all that ancient history?”

  “Not so well.”

  “Yep. That’s what I figured. Remember what I said about some things ought to being left buried?”

  “But isn’t it better to know the truth, no matter how vile?”

  He lifted up his head and cackled. “Whoever told you such nonsense? One kind lie is worth a thousand truths.”

  “How much do you know about everything that has gone on with this family?”

  “I’m just the gardener.”

  “Who killed her, Nat? Who killed Charity?”

  “Oh, Mr. Carl, you said it yourself. Ancient history. I didn’t show up here until years and years after Miss Charity Reddman disappeared. How could I know a thing like that?”

  “But you do, don’t you?”

  “I’m just the gardener,” he said, standing up, putting on his hat. “I’ve got work still to do.”

  “Ever hear of a family called Wergeld?”

  “Never.”

  “Any idea why the elder Mrs. Shaw would leave a fortune in a trust entitled Wergeld?”

  “We all have our secrets, I suppose.”

  “You haven’t told me yet your family name.”

  “Not too much call around here to know the last name of servants.”

  “I’m just a servant too, I guess. No different than you.”

  “Oh there’s a difference,” said Nat. “I may just be a servant, yes, but I care about this family and its fate more deeply than you can guess, Mr. Carl. What about you? Who are you here for? You here for Caroline or are you just here for yourself?”

  “Mr. Shaw’s in, I suppose.”

  “Always,” said Nat, taking his clippers back to the ladder by the hedges and climbing the steps wearily, one after the other.

  I watched him for a bit and then pushed myself off the bench and started for the steps leading to the door of the Reddman mansion.

  “You don’t need to drag it all up to Mr. Shaw today
,” said Nat as he started in again with his clipping, the blades sliding one across the other with a small shivery screech. “It’s a hard enough day for him as it is.”

  I stopped and turned around to look at him. He was still working, still clipping the offending branches one by one.

  “What’s your last name, Nat?”

  Without looking away from the dark green hedges that surrounded the house, without slowing the pace of his shivery clips, he said, “It’s not Poole, Mr. Carl, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

  I took that in and nodded to myself. Nat kept working on the hedges, as steadily and as focused as if I weren’t there watching. I spun around and headed for the house.

  My shoes scraped at the granite steps as I climbed toward the heavy wooden door and pulled the knob announcing my presence. I waited a bit before the door squealed open and Consuelo, dressed all in black, faced me.

  “I’m here to see Mr. Shaw,” I said.

  She squinted her eyes at me and gave me an up-and-down examination. “No. Mr. Shaw is not seeing anyone today.”

  “It’s very important I talk to him,” I said, sweeping past her and into the decrepit front hallway of Veritas. Even though the sun was bright outside it was still dark and damp in here, the heavy riblike beams overhead catching so little of the reflected light they seemed lost in darkness. The floor of the front hallway creaked as I passed over it and made my way around the strange circular couch and toward the formal hanging stairwell.

  I could hear the slap of rubber soles as Consuelo ran to catch up. She rushed in front of me just as I started up the stairway. “Stop, please, Mr. Carl. Mr. Shaw has requested to be alone all day.”

  “I need to see him,” I said. “Today.”

  “If you wait down here I will see if he will make an appointment for after the funeral.”

  “I can’t wait that long,” I said, “and I’m afraid if I don’t find out what’s happening as soon as possible there will be another funeral and then another.”

  As lightly as I could I brushed her aside and started up the steps. As she almost caught up to me I climbed faster, keeping her a few steps below. I spun around the landing and continued on until I reached the second floor. Which way was Kingsley Shaw’s room? I waited for Consuelo to tell me, and she did, coming up around my side and grabbing hold of my arm, standing between me and the wing on the right.