by Con Lehane
“The money probably helps you suffer through,” I said, though not unkindly.
John chuckled. He knew the choices he’d made.
I knew what it had cost him, too. Over the years, except for Greg—and, I guess, me—he’d fired most of the people who’d been his friends. I remembered when he fired Ben Finch. John had been food and beverage manager of the Dockside for a few months. We all thought it would be heaven. But the corporation called in the note. John and I sat at the bar for hours one night after closing; he’d long since switched from Campari and soda to scotch. The company had sent him a spotter’s report on Ben. John had saved Ben a couple of times before—for missing work, for being drunk, the first time he was caught stealing. According to pretty much any standard, Ben deserved to be fired. But he hadn’t done anything any of the rest of us, including John, hadn’t done. If John had covered for him, he’d covered for John, and for me, too, as I had for both of them.
“I tried, bro,” John had told me that night. “I even went up to New York to the corporation.” What he wanted was for me to tell him that it was okay to fire Ben. It wasn’t that he thought it was. He just wanted me to make it easier. But I couldn’t. That was the night I told him that he wanted to be boss, he’d have to fuck over his friends.
John’s expression this morning was regretful, too, but nothing like that night. I suppose after a time you get used to fucking over your friends.
“So, how did you find out about my father?” John asked pleasantly.
“I looked at the videotape of Greg in Atlantic City. Linda recognized him.”
John lurched forward to lean his elbows on his desk. “Videotape? What videotape?”
“Security had a videotape of when I ran into Greg in the lobby.”
John screwed up his face. “It used to be you could just live your life. Now there’s a fucking replay for everything you do. And Linda? Is that going on again?”
“No,” I said quickly. “She’s married and has a baby.”
John looked at me with this bewildered expression. He started to say something, but after a few seconds he shook his head and compressed his lips, like he’d reluctantly decided against it. He leaned far back in his chair so that it reclined. “I shoulda told you about Charlie myself. But I didn’t want to get you mixed up in it. That’s my old man, Dr. Wilson. He came back from Arizona and set up practice here without my knowing it. It’s a long, twisted story. But Charlie doesn’t have anything to do with you or your friend getting shot.”
“How do you know?”
“He doesn’t have any reason to come after you, number one. And number two, that ain’t what he does.”
“Maybe he doesn’t want anyone to find out who killed Aaron Adams.”
John looked at me over the top of his glasses, his expression suggesting I was a half-wit.
I stood in front of his desk, leaning on it with both hands, ready to go to the mat. “I’m gonna ask again, John. How do you know he doesn’t have something to do with killing Aaron?”
Leaning forward, elbows on the desk, John rested his chin in his hand like a wise old judge. “He didn’t kill anybody, bro. But it’s almost as bad as if he did. Just him being in the neighborhood when this came down makes for a big fucking problem.” John took his glasses off and slumped back against the back of the chair again, staring at the space in front of him long enough to remind me of a junkie nodding in a doorway.
Then, when I began to think his depression was permanent, he jumped up. “Let’s go.”
Already in full stride, he’d reached the door before I was able to ask where we were going.
“To see my old man.”
On the drive to Brooklyn, he said, “You got a lot on your mind, Brian. I know that. You wanna think I’m gonna let someone do you in, I can’t stop you. But you could do what I say and lay low—go back to the shore and stay in my apartment at the hotel, or I’ll put you up at one of the properties here in the city. Let me straighten this out.”
I’d begun following John’s lead the first day I met him and never felt it was the wrong thing to do. But years pass; things change. I wasn’t a kid anymore. I no longer took goodness on faith. So I told him I didn’t want to hide. I was about to ask him about his secretary recognizing Aaron’s photo but then decided to hold off.
Dr. Wilson’s cool and efficient receptionist remembered me. “You’re appointment was at eleven,” she said with a condescending smile. “You’re late.”
I stopped in my tracks. “My what?” Then I remembered I’d made an appointment to have my eyes checked. “I forgot,” I said.
The receptionist, her eyebrows arched, her mouth a thin line, embodied disapproval. “There is a charge for a missed appointment,” she said with fake understanding in her voice and ice in her eyes.
I stared at her with my fading eyes.
John listened to this exchange with some interest and then, as the receptionist stared at him with her mouth open, strode past her desk and opened the door to the examining room.
Dr. Wilson, Charlie, or whoever he was, must have just finished with a patient, who was poised to open the door from the other side as John barreled through from our side. Once the guy caught a glimpse of John’s expression, he passed through the doorway quickly and headed for the street.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Wilson demanded. His words were angry. But he looked like he was seeing a ghost.
Ignoring his father’s protestations, John calmly sat down in the examining chair. “Who’s trying to whack Brian?”
Noticing me, Dr. Wilson switched tracks and became charm itself, “Ah, Brian,” he said, ignoring John. “Feeling better?”
“Better than I’d be feeling if those fucking thugs of yours had caught up with me the night before last.” I sat down at the small desk in his examination room.
His expression didn’t change. Once more he stood in front of his gigantic eye-examination machine like Captain Ahab. “I assure you, Brian, I sent no one after you.” He pointed to the examining chair. “Why don’t you sit down here. I don’t have a patient, so I can at least examine your eyes while we talk.”
I looked suspiciously at him, his chair, and his eye-examination machine. John stood up to let me sit down; he had a smirk on his face.
“How’s the leg?” Wilson asked. “Healing okay?”
“It’s infected,” I said testily.
He blinked but remained unruffled. “Sit down, Brian. I’m actually a pretty good optometrist.”
I sat in the chair and Dr. Wilson looked through the big machine, snapping various lenses on and off. He projected letters on the far wall and asked me to read them. He said “um” and “ah” just like a real doctor and looked appropriately noncommittal with just the slightest tinge of worry. John watched with amused interest. They reminded me of each other. Not so much in looks as in manner and charm. They were both warm, good-natured, likable men.
When he finished, Dr. Wilson looked me over. “You need glasses for reading or any kind of close work. Your distance vision will hold up for a while longer.”
“What’s wrong?” I gripped the arms of the chair with the panic of a drowning man. “Why are my eyes failing?”
“Age,” he said offhandedly. “It happens to everyone. Your eyes show signs of wear, just like the rest of you. But don’t worry. The glasses will help you to read and see things up close. In a year or so, you’ll need to have your eyes checked again.”
“That’s it? I’m not going blind?”
“Certainly not,” said Dr. Wilson.
Things were looking up. Not only was I not going to lose my leg, as long as I took my medicine, but I wasn’t going to go blind, either, if I wore my glasses. All I needed were a few props, and I could still run with the field.
Wilson offered to make me a pair of glasses on the house. “It’ll take a couple of hours. You can pick them up tonight—I’ll be here late—or tomorrow.” He gave the glasses and his notes to so
meone dressed in white who came through a door from a laboratory-type room behind the examining room, picked up the tray Dr. Wilson handed him, and went right back out.
The more I saw of Big John and Dr. Wilson—or Charlie—together, the more they resembled each other, as Charlie was a slimmer Big John, dated by a wavy 1950s hairstyle and a natty but out-of-style jacket and a tie as wide as the back of a bus. As they stood together now, there were two sets of eyes twinkling behind glasses, and two sets of dimples flaring. Sparring like boxers after the opening bell, they worked through each other’s irritation and each other’s toughness. At the same time, they both seemed to wriggle with anticipation, too—like big cuddly dogs when the master comes home. This standoff went on for quite a while before the younger one went over and swallowed the older, slighter man in his big bear hug.
“Brian,” John hollered. “Here you have my old man. What’re we gonna do with him?”
The eye doctor dropped his imperious professional air. Smiling with his eyes, he shook my hand heartily, as if he were meeting me for the first time, while laying his other arm almost tenderly on my shoulder. Holding me with his glittering eye, he said, “Believe me, I had nothing to do with your getting shot.”
I told him the story of my return match with the Cherokee.
He shook his head. “I’m sorry. If I could help, I would.”
John picked this moment to sigh audibly, like a whale spouting water. “Jesus Christ, you just can’t stay away, can you?”
The senior Wolinski smiled shamefacedly.
“Let’s try again,” I suggested. “Why was the guy who shot me in your waiting room?”
“I told you the truth. He wasn’t connected to me.”
“Why was the guy in your office?”
Wilson shook his head. “The receptionist said he came in right behind you and sat in the outer office until you left.”
“She’d recognize him, right? Like from a mug shot or something?”
Wilson looked troubled. “I told you I’d prefer being left out of this.” He came closer and, with a new series of facial gymnastics, tried to look earnest. “The cops wouldn’t find those guys even if she did identify them. They’re probably out of the country by now.” His face took on an expression of benevolent camaraderie, which on him looked like a false mustache. “I thought we had a deal.”
“That was before they shot my friend.”
John stepped in again. “Look, Charlie, you gotta play straight with us. You know what happens if we don’t get this cleaned up? You know what happens to you if you get one more rap?”
The older man looked startled. “I don’t know why that guy was murdered. Just like I don’t know who shot Brian.”
“I suppose you didn’t make a hasty trip to Atlantic City to see Greg, either,” I said.
Wilson looked away. I could practically hear his brain scrambling for an answer. “We had business there. But it wasn’t murder. You’re barking up the wrong tree.”
When I got out of the examining chair to pace around the office, John took my place in the chair. He was calm and under control. “Those answers aren’t good enough, Charlie,” he said quietly.
The doctor tried to regain his professional status by grabbing a chart off the desk and looking at it. “I’m busy, John. I have patients.”
Leaning back into the examining chair, John crossed his ankles like he was settling in for the long haul. “Whatever was goin’ on is over.” he said evenly. “That’s number one.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about. You’ll find out I had nothing to do with any killing.”
“I will find out,” John said. “Just like I’ll find out whatever it was you and Walter and Greg were trying to get over.”
John began turning some of the knobs on the big eye-examining machine. He got a light to go on, and he twisted a big round knob. Then he got up to go look in the machine from the doctor’s side, swinging it around as if it were an antiaircraft battery. “Why didn’t you stay in Arizona?” he asked from behind the big gun. “You’re too old for the rackets.”
Charlie shifted his eyes uncomfortably, trying not to look at me or John.
“I set the good doctor up in a practice in Arizona,” John said to me. “The whole family was going straight at the same time.” John backed away from the examining machine.
Charlie’s expression softened. There was less worry and some warmth in his expression. “Ah, John. This practice in Bay Ridge opened up. It was a gold mine.”
“You mean a perfect front. You think you’re pretty slick, putting me on with that phony receptionist in Arizona who said she’d give you a message.”
Charlie went over to his machine, looked through the scope, shot an irritated glance in John’s direction, turned a few knobs, turned off the light, and pushed the arm of the machine back into position. “C’mon, John. I was dead in Arizona. I didn’t know anyone. No friends.”
“Those sharks you deal with aren’t friends.” John angrily banged the back of the examining chair with the heel of his hand, swinging full force, as if he would knock it out of its moorings and across the room. “You’re back what? Six months? Already, look at all this.” John looked at his father with pity and disbelief. I was having a hard time staying with the conversation: The son telling the father it was time to retire. The father not wanting to. This should be normal enough, right?
“It was harmless, John,” the older man pleaded.
“Harmless?” John exploded. “There’re bodies all over town.”
“I don’t know about that,” Charlie said desperately. “I don’t know about that. It was just a little dealing.” He tried to enlist that doctorly manner of ending the conversation again, busying himself in the files and papers he’d picked up from the desk. But this time, the folders rattled in his hands and some papers spilled out onto the floor.
When the papers fell, John and his father knelt down facing each other to pick them up. Their eyes met and something happened between them. They reached an understanding, so that when they stood up, Charlie was calm again.
I felt outnumbered, but I asked anyway. “Did you go to see Greg the night Aaron was murdered?”
Charlie didn’t flinch. “No.”
“What about Walter?”
“No.”
“Could he have killed Aaron?”
“No.”
“Did Greg kill him?”
Charlie’s eyes hardened up. His voice went harsh. “Why do you care so much who killed this guy? What’s he to you? None of us killed him.”
I guess I expected John to say something—to stick up for me. When he didn’t, I got flustered. “I just want to know what’s going on.” I said weakly.
“There’s a lot more reason for you not to want to know,” Charlie said. Then immediately, his charm reemerged, the dimpled smile and twinkling eyes taking away the threat that had seemed so ominous just seconds before. “I’m telling you for your own good.”
chapter seventeen
On the drive back to Manhattan in John’s plush Eldorado, I asked John, “Is he really an optometrist?”
John chuckled. “That’s Charlie.”
“What’s that mean? Is he or isn’t he? Does he have a license? Did he study optometry?”
John was still laughing. “You saw the license. It was hanging right there on the wall.”
I sputtered. I was tired of being flimflammed. “He’s not a goddamn optometrist. He’s a fraud. He probably makes the glasses out of windowpanes.”
“What can I tell you?” John chuckled some more.
The story, according to John, was that Charlie had learned to grind glasses in a prison optical shop during one of his sojourns. When he got out of jail, he worked as an optician for a while for a small-time optometrist in Philly. When the guy retired, Charlie bought the practice, did some reading, practiced on his friends, and learned how to examine eyes and use the equipment to make lenses. He sold the place in Philly and opened o
ne in Atlantic City. “No one ever bothered him. People don’t complain about the glasses he makes. Self-taught. Self-made. The American way, right?”
“How’d he get a license?”
John rolled his eyes and raised his eyebrows.
“It’s fake?”
John sighed deeply. “People get addicted to coffee, to drugs, to cigarettes. My old man’s addicted to larceny. When I was growing up, from when I was five until I was twelve or thirteen, my father was in jail. He got out and became an optometrist. I was a kid. What did I know? I knew about policy slips, loan sharking, the football pool, Thoroughbreds and Standardbreds. We had a garage full of boosted cigarettes one week and hijacked booze the next week. Optometry, racketeering, it was all the same to me. Booking numbers for me was the same as a plumber’s son fixing sinks. By the time I was sixteen, I was running a crew. Charlie taught me, and he took Greg under his wing, too. You got to understand; as far as I knew, we were the good guys. The only people who ever got hurt were guys who did you wrong.”
“Greg, too? What about Walter?”
John nodded. “Greg, yeah, as much a part of it as I was. Not Walter, though. I didn’t know him then.”
“And David Bradley and Bill Green?” I asked, revisiting the unanswered questions and unclaimed bodies of the past.
John turned on me sharply. “David was a bro; you know that. Bill Green was a punk. What do they have to do with anything?”
“I don’t suppose you want to tell me what happened to David and Bill Green.” I pretended to look out the windshield of the car, but I could feel John’s hawk eye boring into the side of my head.
“There’s nothin’ to tell.”
“Bullshit, John,” I turned to glare at him, while, this time, he stared straight ahead.
“This is ridiculous,” John shouted to the plush ceiling of the Eldorado. “Why the fuck is someone shooting at you? Why is my fucking old man in the middle of this? Why can’t you all just leave me alone?” We drove slowly in thick traffic. After a while, John said softly, “Sorry, bro, I’ve got too many things coming at me.” His jaw tightened and his knuckles went white on the steering wheel. “If the old fucker gets caught, he goes back to the slammer for good. A habitual. And, as soon as the company hears about it, I’m gone.” John glowered at me as if it were my fault. “He was all set. He didn’t have to do this.”