The Lacey confession l-2

by Richard Greener

  “You look great,” he said again.

  “This surgery you had, Walter,” chimed in Billy, “I think it made you even better than before. You think I could be right?”

  “Yes,” Walter said. “Yes I do. But I think Ike’s right too. Don’t I look great?” His smile quickly turned to full blown laughter. “Seriously though,” said Walter, “I think he’s right about being here, on St. John. If I lived in Cleveland, or someplace, I don’t believe I’d feel as good as I do or look as good either, thank you very much.”

  “Damn right, Walter. Shit, that’s true for us all, isn’t it?” laughed Billy proudly, extremely satisfied with his own observation.

  “Wise man,” said Ike. “Billy, you definitely a wise man.” For his part, Billy was as happy as he could be with Walter’s recovery.

  Billy Smith-previously William Mantkowski in another life altogether-knew a little something about recovery. He had seen men, including himself, injured in a way no one ever thought they would come back, come back all the way that is, come back to their old selves. He knew there was a lot more to it than drugs and doctors. Billy was certain as the day was long that among other things, the grace of God, the loving hand of Jesus, as well as his own good food had done wonders for his friend’s robust improvement. If Walter wasn’t praying, Billy was sure his own would suffice.

  “They took something from your leg-is that right?” Billy asked.

  “And they used it for my heart,” said Walter.

  “Bypass,” Ike said, at the same time he was sucking into his lungs a volume of cigarette smoke that might have killed a first-time smoker. “Bypassing. Gotta go around something. Gotta use something to do it.”

  “True, true,” said Walter.

  “Like they did with Tommy John.”

  “Tommy John-again, Billy?”

  “Let me tell you something, Ike,” Billy said, dropping his bar rag on the counter and leaning over, with both hands on the bar, in the direction of the old man. “There’s been other players in baseball besides Negroes. Players like Tommy John.”

  “White boy, huh? The one you always talking about? Must be your favorite player, or something.”

  “White boy, huh?” mocked Billy. “Tommy John threw out his arm. You know, that’s what they called it back then-throwing out your arm. When a pitcher did that, it was all over. But, with Tommy John, they operated on him-took something out of his leg, I think, and used it somehow to fix his bad arm, you know his elbow or shoulder or whatever it was he threw out. Anyway, he recovered and he was better than before. Better.”

  “Tommy John,” laughed Ike. “Must be a Negro, with two first names, you know.” He laughed again. “Walter?” asked Ike. “You better than before? Now, before you say anything, I want you to know I think you look better. You know what I mean?”

  “I think so, Ike. And again I thank you.”

  “You know,” the old man said, with a sad shake of his head, “You walked in here, after you came back, and you looked like-” once more he shook his head the same way. “You looked like shit, you know what I mean?”

  “I feel a lot better now,” said Walter with a generous smile. “Living here. The sand. The water. The weather. Billy’s food, of course, and…” He held up his bottle of Diet Coke. “Couldn’t have done it without this.”

  “Denise too,” added Helen from her spot over by the wine cooler, the newest addition to Billy’s behind-the-bar equipment.

  “Yes indeed,” said Ike. “Denise. Good girl.” And again Walter lifted his bottle. It was not necessary to say more. Good girl.

  “So,” said Billy unwilling to give up on Tommy John just yet. “Tommy John was a good pitcher. Maybe even a great one. That’s not for me to say. But he’s better known for the surgery than for his pitching.” He glared at Ike. “That is among people who know who he is at all.”

  “There’s others,” Ike interjected, coughing and spitting up phlegm into a bar napkin. one he then rolled up and left on the table in front of him. Still, despite his obvious discomfort, he dragged a huge inhale, exhaling from his mouth and nose simultaneously, once more, for the millionth time, appearing as if he was on fire himself. “There’s others more famous for what they did than what they did.”

  Helen looked at the old man with a stare that had hopelessness written all over it. No one was going to change this man, not now, not ever. He was, she was sure, going to kill himself with those cigarettes.

  “Damn!” Billy said, looking over at Ike.

  “Ike,” said Walter. “You ever hear of those Buddhist priests who lit themselves on fire in Vietnam?”

  “I have,” the old man answered. “Fine people, every one of them.”

  The conversation turned back again to Tommy John and the surgical procedure that came to bear his name. Billy felt that alone was proof of his argument. “The man’s name is on it,” he said. “Like Lou Gehrig’s disease.”

  “Jim Brown,” said Ike, with a period, like that was all that was necessary. More was required, however.

  “Jim Brown? What about him?”

  “I tell you, Walter, Jim Brown’s more famous for what he’s done after football than for when he was playing.”

  “What’s that for?” Helen chided. “Throwing women-small women at that-off hotel balconies?”

  “That too.”

  “That too? Geez, Ike!” said Helen obviously too upset to say anything further about Mr. Brown.

  “I don’t agree with that either, Ike,” said Walter. “Jim Brown-for all his difficulties, Helen-was the greatest player ever to suit up in the National Football League. Number thirty-two for the Cleveland Browns. Nothing he’s done since-movies, or anything else, good and bad-outshines that. I think we’re talking more about somebody like.. .”

  “Mike Tyson,” shouted Billy. “Mike Tyson. I’d say Michael Jackson, but he’s even crazier than Mike Tyson, too crazy to talk about.”

  “Well, how about Ronald Reagan?” the old man offered for consideration.

  “Now you’re talking, Ike,” said Helen. “More famous for being President of the United States than for his time as a second- or third-rate actor. Good one, Ike.” The old man flashed her one of his patented, yellow-toothed smiles complete with a tip of his cap, which today was a John Deere hat. It had to be one of Ike’s jokes. There couldn’t have been a half-dozen pieces of John Deere equipment on the island of St. John, all of them probably lawn mowers.

  “Or Kennedy,” said Billy.

  “Kennedy? For what? Which one?”

  “Either one of them, Helen. They’re both more famous for being dead than for anything they did when they were alive.”

  “Now Billy, John F. Kennedy was the President of the United States. How much more famous are you going to get than that?”

  “Yeah, and when you think about him, what do you think of? Come on, don’t sit there with that silly look on your face. What do you think of? That’s right, you know it. The same with his brother Bobby too.”

  “Billy, do you know who Roosevelt Grier is?”

  “Sure, I do, Walter.”

  “Well, since you bring up the Kennedys, I’ll go with him-Rosey Grier. All pro, famous as you can get as an athlete. Yet, better known as the man who caught Robert Kennedy’s assassin, Sirhan Sirhan.”

  “He did too,” said Ike. “Jumped on the man, right there in the kitchen where he shot him. That’s a good one, Walter.”

  Billy broke the pause, the momentary silence among them, with a question. “You want me to write it up?”

  “Put me down for Roosevelt Grier,” said Ike. “Thank you. Walter, if you don’t mind.”

  “I’ll take Tommy John,” said Billy, showing loyalty to himself and his unwillingness to be moved off his original conviction. “Walter, what about you?”

  “No,” said Walter. “Don’t write it, not yet. You say the Kennedys are more famous for being dead. Okay, I say the same for Wild Bill Hickok.”

  “Wild Bill Hickok?”


  “That’s right, Billy. Aces and eights.”

  “Well now, boys,” cautioned Ike. “This is getting out of hand, if you know what I mean. Billy, you say the Kennedys, either one. Walter, you have Wild Bill Hickok-which I think is a good one-but I’m taking John Lennon.”

  “That’s a stretch, don’t you think? Christ, he was a Beatle.”

  “You don’t like it, Walter, don’t vote for it. Go on now, Billy,” said Ike, “Now you write it up.”

  On the chalkboard, near the old register, Billy scrawled, KENNEDYS/WILD BILL/THE BEATLES.

  “Beatles? Not what I said, but that’ll do,” said the old man with the silly cap. “They ain’t all dead yet, but that’ll do.”

  “And just what does this prove?” asked Helen pointing toward Billy’s handiwork. “I don’t get it, and I’m not sure you fellas do either.”

  “It shows,” Ike pronounced, “you never can tell what you’ll be remembered for. Isn’t that right, Walter?”

  “As rain, my old friend. Right as rain,” said Walter. Helen seemed unconvinced.

  Walter went to Boston. He spent two days there, talking to people, some at Harvard, others in the financial trade. He also had former clients in Boston. One in particular, a mature woman from a legitimate old New England family-not one like the more popular, Johnny-come-lately Kennedys-was eager to help Walter. So many of the pre-Revolutionary Protestant families hated the upstart Irish, thought of them as twentieth-century fakes. Plus, Walter had helped this woman in a way she could never have hoped for, at a time when she thought she might lose everything. Now she could do him a service and she was truly thankful for the opportunity. He wanted to know as much as he could about Abby O’Malley. He wanted to know who her friends were, where she spent money and how much, and especially who she talked to on the phone, both hard-wired and cell phone. Such information could be had. He had done it before, more than once. All you needed was the right contacts and sometimes enough money.

  “Would you like me to hire an investigator?” she asked Walter.

  “I don’t want anyone to do anything that might alert Miss O’Malley.”

  “Of course not. And the last thing I would ever do is something that displeased you, Walter. You know how grateful I am.”

  She said she would retain an investigator of the highest respectability, someone who would act with great discretion. The investigator’s work would never be shown to anyone but her. When he was finished, his work product would disappear just as he would. That was important, Walter said. No records. She said she would call Walter when she had something. He thanked her, said he would be in Boston for a few days and would wait for her call. He never asked about her daughter. That’s not the way he worked.

  Sean Dooley was more than a little surprised to hear from Walter. A man doesn’t hold a gun to your head, strip you naked on the floor and threaten to crush your balls beneath his foot, then call you up on a Sunday afternoon.

  “You remember me, don’t you Sean?”

  “That I do.”

  “Good. I need a favor from you.”

  “A what? A favor… from me?”

  “Tell me about Abby O’Malley.”

  “Tell you what?”

  “Tell me everything. I’ll listen.”

  It wasn’t much. Dooley told Walter he’d never seen her. Spoken to her a few times, but never in person, always by phone.

  “How’d she find you?” asked Walter.

  “I don’t know,” answered Dooley.

  “You don’t know? You get a call from a stranger and you never ask how?”

  “Not with the kind of money she was offering.”

  “To do what exactly?”

  “Mostly to watch this old man. Englishman, a Lord or something. You never know with them. Follow him around. See where he went, write down how long he was there. Things like that.”

  “How many times did you break in?”

  “A few-broke into a few places…”

  “Places where the old man had been?”

  “Yes, that’s right. But I never found nothing.”

  Louis Devereaux didn’t call for very much research. His background information was easy to get, some of it public record-Yale, University of Chicago, CIA. Of course, there came a time in Devereaux’s public resume when he began taking on titles at the CIA Walter knew to be pretense. The truth behind those things was harder to get at, perhaps impossible. But it hardly mattered. Walter was certain Devereaux had told him the truth about himself when they were in Atlanta. Men like that don’t tell small lies, he told himself. Devereaux was eager to get Lacey’s confession. But why? Walter was sure he was working on his own. It made no sense to think the CIA was behind such a thing. No, it was Devereaux. The question of motive, however, remained open. What could Devereaux want with Lacey’s confession and why would he kill for it?

  Walter considered the situation, the series of events that led him to this point. What Devereaux had going for him was the President of the United States. If the President wanted Lacey’s document, if the President knew Harry Levine had it, why didn’t he just ask for it? And wouldn’t Harry have delivered it to the President? Walter was sure he would have. Why didn’t he then? Perhaps he did, or perhaps he thought he was. Perhaps the President did ask for the document and put Devereaux in charge of getting it. Walter considered that as a possibility. Harry had never told him about details like that. He never said what the President specifically told him to do.

  Of course, Walter thought, it was Devereaux. It had to be. He figured Devereaux for a killer, a big-time killer. Walter couldn’t be exactly sure what Louis Devereaux did for the CIA, but he knew Tucker Poesy worked for him, and Tucker Poesy was definitely a hitter and probably not much else since she proved inept at what she tried to do in Walter’s house. She paid a high price for that misstep. A busted jaw maybe, and a week, naked, tied to a chair, hand fed and watered, never knowing what might happen next, shitting and pissing all over herself. That’s a high price, he thought. But in the end he let her go. She didn’t kill Harry. She pulled a gun on him, in his own house. Ten years ago he would have killed her without a second thought, without a moment’s hesitation. Ah, fuck her! he thought, with some degree of frustration.

  Abby O’Malley and Louis Devereaux had some unknowns hanging out there. Still, Walter had every reason to believe all their unanswered questions would be resolved, soon. It was the Georgians who presented a more pressing problem. Walter had no idea who they were. Aminette Messadou was all he had. He’d never heard of her great-uncle or the story of his retreat from Georgia. He didn’t know very much about the Russian Revolution except that was how the communists got their foot in the door. He didn’t know the Czar’s name. Never saw the movie. Never heard of the transwhatever federation.

  After a few hours looking up these and other things on the Internet, Walter placed a call to Dr. E. Bard Leon, a professor at Marlboro College in Vermont. One of the skills Walter had perfected over the years was his ability to call a perfect stranger, tell the stranger he needed their help, and get it. Despite whatever decline he was in, if he’d kept anything he’d kept that. Like so many had done before him, professor Leon agreed to see Walter. It was an easy drive from Boston to Marlboro, Vermont, just a few miles west of Brattleboro. Before getting to the campus, he stopped at a small diner, on the side of the road, in an old wooden building, not a modern aluminum diner, and had a bowl of macaroni and cheese made with pure, white Vermont cheddar. It was the best he’d ever tasted.

  Professor Leon turned out to be a walker, a nature lover, one of those fifty-year-old men who wore hiking boots and old chinos, sweatshirts and woolen hats. He had long hair, longer than Walter’s. Grayer too. They walked about the hilly, wooded campus as they talked. Walter thought of telling Dr. Leon he was recovering from bypass surgery, but decided against it. If the walk proved too much, he could always stop and explain.

  “Djemmal-Eddin Messadou was quite a fellow,” said
Professor Leon. “Remarkable man.” Dr. Leon was the author of six books on Russian history, including a two-volume edition on the last of the Czars and a seventh about the long-forgotten Transcaucasian Federation. He loved to talk about all of them and spoke, uninterrupted by Walter who had no reason to stop him, for at least an hour while they strolled leisurely across the small campus and down the single, picturesque road leading to it. They walked slowly enough not to tire Walter at all. Everything Aminette Messadou had said was pretty much the way Professor Leon told it. The arrival of the Georgian had caused quite a stir in Europe.

  “What about the personal fortune Djemmal-Eddin had? Jewels, gold, whatever?” Walter asked. “How did he get it out of the country before the Bolsheviks overran him?”

  Dr. E. Bard Leon, distinguished Professor of History at one of the country’s elite liberal arts colleges, looked at Walter as if he just realized he was talking to someone who knew nothing at all. “Djemmal-Eddin had no personal fortune, as you put it. That’s not what he came west with. That is not what caused all the excitement. Not at all. Oh, no, Mr. Sherman, that is not what Djemmal-Eddin Messadou brought with him to Europe. Let me tell you about Solly Joel.”

  According to professor Leon, Djemmal-Eddin had amassed many tons of the Czar Nicholas II ten Ruble coins. “Tons,” he told Walter eagerly, with a wonderfully warm smile. “Can you imagine it!?” Gold paid the bills for an independent Georgia as well as the ill-fated, short-lived Transcaucasian Federation. Djemmal-Eddin’s son-in-law Frederick Lacey was a great help to the struggling new nation. He assisted in the negotiation of international trade arrangements supplying Georgia with needed materials of all kinds in exchange for some of the Czar’s gold. While the coin itself held no monetary value for a supplier in England or the Netherlands, Italy or anywhere in Europe, the gold in the coin was always worth the value of. 2489 ounces. No one turned it down as a form of payment.