“Now?”
“Not yet,” said Calvi. “I’ll tell you when. Sit down.”
“Why don’t you let her go while we talk,” I said, gesturing to Caroline, still standing behind me, quiet as a leg of lamb. Her face, when I looked at her, was transfixed with fear and I couldn’t tell just then if she was more terrified of the sight and size of Cressi’s gun or of the cat lying atop the metal box.
“She stays,” said Cressi.
“We don’t need her to speak to Raffaello,” I said.
“She stays,” said Calvi. “No more discussion. Sit down, missy. We all got to wait here some.”
Cressi gestured with the gun and I pulled out two chairs from the table, one for Caroline and one for me. Carefully I placed her in the chair to the left and sat in the chair directly across from Cressi. Calvi was to our right and the metal box from Charity Reddman’s grave was on the table between us. The black cat jumped off the box and high-stepped to the end of the table, sticking its nose close to Caroline’s face. Her body tense and still, Caroline shut her eyes and turned her face away.
“What, missy, you don’t like my cat?”
Caroline, face still averted, shook her head.
“She has a thing about cats,” I said.
“It’s a good cat. Come on over, Sam.” The cat sniffed a bit more around Caroline and then strolled over to Calvi, who stroked it roughly beneath its neck. “I named it after a fed prosecutor who’s been chasing me for years. I named it Sam, after the fed, and then took him to the vet to get his balls cut off. Very therapeutic.”
Cressi laughed.
“While we’re waiting,” said Calvi, “maybe we can take care of some unfinished business.”
Cressi leaned forward and lifted the lid off the metal box. “Where’s the rest of the shit what was supposed to be inside here?”
Caroline, her face still tense with fear, looked up with surprise. “What are you talking about?”
“Whatever it is I’m talking about I’m not talking to you,” snapped Cressi. “Vic knows what I’m talking about, a smart guy like him. Where’s the rest of it, Vic?”
“I don’t understand.”
Cressi reached into his jacket and pulled out a piece of paper. “A certain party what had been paying us for our services has requested we recover this here box and its contents, which are listed right here in black and white. The photographs and documents about some trust and old pieces of diary, they’re in here, all right. But the piece of paper, it lists other stuff that ain’t and so maybe you know where that other stuff, it went to, Vic.”
“Who’s the certain party?” I asked, wondering who would be so interested in the contents of the secret box of Faith Reddman Shaw.
“Not important.”
“It’s important as hell.”
“Give him what he wants, Vic,” said a scowling Calvi, his voice ominously soft. The cat’s black fur pricked up and it jumped off the table. It hopped to one of the couch cushions on the floor and curled on top of it. When it was settled it watched us with complete dispassion. “Give him the hell he wants and be done with it.”
“There’s a doctor’s invoice of some sort,” said Cressi, reading from the list.
I looked at Cressi and his gun and nodded. “All right,” I said. I stood and went over to the corner and found my briefcase among the scattered contents from the closet, the case’s sides slashed, its lock battered but still in place. I opened the combination and took out the invoice and handed it over.
Cressi examined it and smiled before placing it in the box. “What about some banking papers that are also missing?”
“They’re not here,” I said. “But I’ll get them for you.”
Cressi slammed the butt of his gun on the table, the noise so loud I thought the monster had gone off. Caroline inhaled a gasp at the sound of it. “Don’t dick with me, Vic.”
“I don’t have it here. I swear.”
“Where is it?”
“I’ll get it for you,” I said, not wanting to tell them anything about Morris.
“Go on, Peter,” said Calvi, staring hard at me through the smoke of his cigar.
“A three-by-five card with certain alphanumeric strands, whatever the fuck that is.”
“Also someplace else,” I said.
Cressi glared at me. “What about this key it says here?”
I reached for my wallet, took out the key that had opened the breakfront drawer at the Poole house, and handed it over. Cressi examined it for a moment.
“How the fuck I know it’s the right key?”
“It’s the right key,” I said.
“Is that it?” said Calvi.
Cressi nodded and put the list back in his jacket.
“It’s very important, Vic, now that we’re partners,” said Calvi, “to keep this party happy. It’s not so cheap making a move like we’ve made here. You just can’t bluff your way through. Even with a cookie baker like Raffaello, you have to be ready for war, and war’s expensive. This party’s been our patron and we keep our patron happy. You’ll get the rest of that stuff for us after the meeting.”
“No problem.”
“Good,” said Calvi. “I think, Vic, you and me, we’re going to do just fine together. You and me, Vic, we have a future.”
“That’s encouraging,” I said. I was referring to the fact that I might actually have a future outside the range of Cressi’s gun, but Calvi smiled as if he were a recruiting sergeant and I had just enlisted.
“You want a cigar?” said Calvi, patting at his jacket pocket.
“No, thank you,” I said as kindly as I could.
“Now we wait,” said Calvi.
“Where’s yous liquor?” said Cressi. “We was looking all over for it.”
“I don’t have any,” I said. “Just a couple beers in the fridge.”
“We already done the beers,” said Cressi. He turned to Calvi. “You want I should maybe hit up a state store?”
“Just shut up and wait,” said Calvi.
Cressi twisted his neck as if trying to fracture a vertebrae and then leaned back in silence.
“What are we waiting for?” I asked.
“It’s need to know,” said Calvi. “You think you need to know?”
I shook my head.
“You’re right about that,” said Cressi.
And so we sat at the table, the four of us, Calvi leaning on his elbows, his head in his hands, sucking on his stogie, Cressi, Caroline, and I asphyxiating on the foul secondhand smoke, none of us talking. The cat licked its fur atop the cushion. Every now and then Calvi sighed, an old man’s sigh, like he was sitting by the television, waiting to be called to the nursing home’s evening program rather than waiting to set up a meeting to take control of the Philly mob. I could feel the tension in Caroline as she sat beside me, but she was as quiet as the rest of us. I laid a comforting hand on her knee and gave her a smile. The silence was interrupted only by Calvi’s sighs, the scrape of a chair as we shifted our positions, contented clicks rising from the throat of Sam the cat, the occasional rumble from Cressi’s digestive tract.
Our situation was as bleak as Veritas. Someone had paid Calvi to kill Jacqueline and Edward and, now, to get the contents of the box. Who? Who else had even known that I might have it? Nat had learned we were digging. Had he told someone? Was that the reason he was missing? Was that the reason he was murdered, too, because he knew about the box and someone was determined that no one would ever know? Whom had he told about our nocturnal excavations? Harrington, the last Poole? Kingsley Shaw? Brother Bobby? Which was Calvi’s patron, ordering Calvi to kill Reddmans for fun and profit while building up his war chest? And why did the patron care about a box buried in the earth many years ago by Faith Reddman Shaw? Unless it wasn’t buried by Faith Reddman Shaw. And whoever it was, this patron had also paid to kill Caroline, or else why would Cressi have been searching for her, and once the bastards killed Caroline they would have no choice, reall
y, but to kill me too. I was the man who knew too much. Which was ironic, really, considering my academic career.
A peculiar sound erupted from Cressi’s stomach. “I must have eaten something,” said Cressi with a weak smile.
“It’s hot down there,” said Calvi, and I thought for a moment he was referring to Cressi’s stomach but he was off on a tangent of his own. “Hot as hell but hotter. And muggy, so there’s nothing to do but sweat. What did that snake think I was going to do, learn canasta? What am I, an old lady? You know when they eat dinner down there? Four o’clock. Christ, up here I was finishing lunch at Tosca’s around four o’clock and waiting for the night to begin. At four o’clock down there they’re lining up for the early birds. They’re serving early birds till as late as six, but they line up at four. And lime green jackets. Explain to me, Vic, sweating in a restaurant line in lime green jackets.”
“I understand Phoenix has a dry heat,” I said.
“White belts, white shoes, what the hell am I supposed to do down there? Golf? I tried golf, bought a set of clubs. Pings. I liked the sound of it. Ping. Went to the course, swung, the ball went sideways. Sideways. I almost killed a priest. What the hell am I doing playing golf? I went fishing once, one of them big boats. Threw up the whole way out and the whole way back. The only thing I caught was a guy on the deck behind me when a burst of wind sent the puke right into his face. That was good for a laugh, sure, but that was it for fishing. You know, I been in this business all my life. Started as a kid running errands for Bruno when he was still an underboss. You stay alive in this business, you do a few stints in the shack, your hair turns gray, you’re entitled. Up here I was respected. I was feared. Down there I was a kid again, surrounded by old men with colostomy bags on their hips and old ladies looking to get laid. I was getting high school ass up here, down there ladies ten years older than me, nothing more than bags of bones held together by tumors, they’re eyeing me like I’m a side of venison. They got walkers and the itch and they want to cook for me. Pasta? Sauce Bolognese? Good Italian blood sausage? Shit no. Kreplach and kishke and brust. You ever have something called gefilte fish?”
“Sure,” I said.
“What’s with that fish jelly that jiggles on the plate? Whatever it is, it ain’t blood sausage. I hate it down there. It’s hell all right, hot and steamy and the sinners they wear lime green jackets and white belts and eat pompano every night at four o’clock and play canasta and talk about hurricanes and bet on the dogs. ‘Welcome to Florida,’ the sign says, but it should say ‘Abandon hope all of yous who fly down here.’ What the hell made Raffaello think he could send me there to sweat and die?”
“So that’s why you came back?” I said.
“That’s right,” said Calvi. “That and the money. You sure you don’t want a cigar?”
I shook my head.
“Never understood why you’d drop a fin for a cigar when you could buy a perfectly good smoke for thirty-five cents.”
“You got me,” I said.
“I’ll be right back,” said Calvi, placing the cigar on the table so the end with the ash hung over the edge. He stood and hitched up his pants. “I gotta pinch a loaf.”
He ambled through the living room mess and into the bathroom. The cat followed, sneaking between his legs just as Calvi shut the door on himself. As soon as we heard the first of his loud moans, the bell to my apartment rang.
“That must be them,” said Cressi. “Can I just buzz them up?”
“No,” I said. “You have to go down the stairs and open the vestibule door.”
“What kind of shithole is this you live in, Vic?” said Cressi as he stood up and slipped the long barrel of his gun into his pants, buttoning his jacket to hide, though not very convincingly, the bulge. “And you a lawyer and all. You expecting anyone?”
“I don’t think so,” I said, though I wondered if maybe Morris or Beth had come by to check on me.
“Let’s hope not for their sakes,” said Cressi, as he started around the table and toward the door, the pistol in his pants turning his walk into a sort of waddle. He stopped for a moment and turned to us.
“Don’t either of yous move or you’ll piss the hell out of me.”
Then he turned again and disappeared around the bend of the living room.
50
“WHAT THE HELL IS HAPPENING?” asked a frantic Caroline as soon as we were alone.
I turned to her and put my finger on her mouth and whispered. “You came to me because of my connections with the mob. Well, there’s a battle going on for control of the organization and, somehow, I’m in the middle of it.”
“Who are they?” she asked, whispering back. “Those two men?”
“They’re the men who killed your sister and brother.”
“Oh, Jesus Jesus Jesus. I’m scared. Let’s get away, please.”
I took hold of her and stroked her hair. “Shhhh. I’m scared, too,” I said, “but it will be all right. I took care of some things.”
“They knew who I was. What do they want with me?”
“I don’t know,” I said, lying, because I was pretty certain that what they wanted with her was for her to be dead.
“Why did he want the stuff in my grandmother’s box?”
“I don’t know, except maybe it’s not your grandmother’s box after all.”
“I thought about what you said, in the car.”
“That’s good, Caroline, but we have a more immediate problem. We have to get you out of here.”
“I know I need to change things, but it’s harder than you think. You don’t reorganize your life’s story like you reorganize your closets. You need something to reorganize it around. What is there for me but the horrors of our past?”
I took her face in my hands and I looked at her and saw the struggle playing out on her features, but then the toilet flushed and a terror washed the struggle away with a consuming bland fear. I jumped from my chair and went to a kitchen drawer, slid it open with a jangle of stainless steel, pulled out a small paring knife. As I slammed the drawer shut I dropped the paring knife, point first, into my pants pocket. Then I went back to the table, took hold of her shoulders, and leaned over her.
“You’ll have a chance to get away,” I whispered. “Sometime. Keep your eyes open. Keep alert. I’ll give you the sign. When I do, run. All right?”
She was staring at me, her eyes darting with panic. The water started running in the bathroom sink as Calvi washed his hands.
“All right?” I asked again.
She nodded her head.
“Now pretend to smile and be brave.”
I let go of her and turned to sit on the tabletop. I was sitting casually, an arm draped over the pocket to hide the outline of the knife, when Calvi came out of the bathroom, shaking his hands. The cat ran out of the doorway ahead of him and jumped onto a cushion. Calvi looked around with suspicion. “Where’s Peter?”
“My bell rang,” I said. “He went to answer it.”
Calvi went back to the table, sat in his seat, picked up his cigar from the edge where he had left it. He sucked deep. “Good,” he said, exhaling. “They’re here.”
Cressi came back, not leading Morris or Beth by gunpoint, as I had feared, but with three men, apparently allies. Two I had never seen before, they wore dark pants with bulges at the ankles and silk shirts and had sharp handsome faces and slicked hair. The third I recognized for sure. The long face, the wide ears, the crumbling teeth and bottle cap glasses and black porkpie hat. It was Anton Schmidt, the human computer, who had kept Jimmy Vig’s records in his head.
Anton Schmidt, his hands in his pockets and his mouth pursed open to show his rotting teeth, stopped still when he saw me. “I didn’t know you were with us, Victor.”
“It looks like everything’s changed,” I said.
“Not everything,” said Anton. “The same rules, just a different opponent.”
“How’s your chess?”
“I’m seein
g deeper into the game every day.”
“Good. Maybe your rating will rise,” I said.
So Anton Schmidt was now with Calvi, and might have been all along. Of all the people in that room, me included, Anton, the chess master, was by far the smartest. Calvi was more powerful than I had thought if he had Anton doing his planning. Maybe Raffaello was right to step aside.
“Everything ready, Schmidty?” asked Calvi.
“The Cubans are in, waiting for orders. I sent them over the bridge where the bus won’t attract any attention. They’re at a diner in New Jersey.”
“They got good diners in Jersey,” said Cressi. “Tell them they should try the snapper soup.”
“We’ll know in a few minutes,” said Calvi.
Schmidt leaned over and spoke a few lines of Spanish to the two men, who nodded grimly and shot back some words of concern. Schmidt answered their questions and then turned to Calvi.
“Let’s do it,” said Calvi.
I had two phones in the apartment, a portable in the bedroom and one by the couch with a cord long enough to reach the table. I sat at the table with the corded phone, the line stretched taut from the outlet. Schmidt sat next to me and next to Schmidt was Calvi with the portable handset. Cressi sat across from us, his gun out of his pants and back in his hand. Caroline was sent to the bedroom, the door guarded by one of the two Cubans. Before she shut the door, Sam the cat scampered in after her. From behind the closed door we heard a shout.
“She has a thing about cats,” I said.
“Make the fucking call,” said Calvi.
I dialed the number I had memorized from the Rev. Custer message.
“It’s Victor Carl,” I said into the phone when it was answered. “Let me talk to him.”
“Who?” said the voice at the other end.
“Just shut up and put him on or I’ll rip off your face.”
Bitter Truth Page 45