House of Lords

by Philip Rosenberg

  While the tub was filling, she sterilized Jeffrey’s wounds with cotton and alcohol. He winced when she touched the cuts on his chest but she had to get them clean. They both agreed that he might have some cracked ribs and that there wasn’t much one could do about a cracked rib except wait for it to heal.

  She helped him into the bath and left him there while she went to get him a tall Bushmill’s on ice. He didn’t seem to want to talk and she didn’t want to press him. She asked if she should stay. “Come back in a little while,” he answered.

  She changed her clothes and threw out the bloody cotton swabs. Then she changed the sheets. What she really wanted, she told herself with a wry, self-mocking smile, was a nice simple relationship with a nice simple man. Simple, in the sense that Sunday morning in bed with the Times is simple. Comfortable without being boring. Jeffrey Blaine wasn’t simple and he wasn’t comfortable. He was married, he was very possibly a criminal, and everything about him was dangerous. Even in bed, he was always in control of himself, and that frightened her, because it meant that she wasn’t in control. Even though she was the one who initiated their relationship, that didn’t change her marrow-deep sense that he was controlling it. And controlling her. How was that possible? Even if she hadn’t known where it was going to lead when she followed him into that bookstore so many months ago, she certainly knew by the time he walked into her apartment the first time.

  But knowing didn’t count for much. She wanted this man. More, she wanted the recklessness of the relationship, and that frightened her about herself as much as she was frightened about Jeffrey and about his being here now and about the beating he had taken.

  When she thought he had been in the bath long enough, she helped him out of the tub and into bed. She pulled the blinds and came back to sit by him. Even his hands were bruised and scraped, as though he had been digging in the earth with his bare hands. Her father’s hands used to get like that.

  “Jeffrey, I lied to you,” she said, when it felt to her that she had been silent long enough.

  He didn’t ask any questions. He waited for her to go on.

  “I didn’t meet you by accident at Barnes & Noble,” she said. “I was following you.”

  “Was there a reason for that?”

  “Your name came up in a report. Some agents following Chet Fiore.”

  Now it was her turn to wait. She wanted him to say something.

  He turned his head to the side, looking toward the light playing in the cracks in the blinds.

  “Jeffrey,” she pleaded, “say something.”

  He turned back to her, and she had never seen his eyes burn like they were burning now. “What do you want me to say?” he asked sharply. “You told me once you didn’t want to know what I was doing. What makes you think I want to know about the games you’re playing with me?”

  “I just want to be honest with you, Jeffrey.”

  “Really? Then let’s both be honest. I launder money for the mob. Does that make it easier for you?”

  He reached for her hand and she pulled it back, as though she were afraid. He caught her wrist. His grip was powerful.

  “Let’s not get shy all of a sudden,” he said. “You’re the double agent here.”

  “I am not a double agent.”

  “What do you call it, then?”

  “I’ve got a job, Jeffrey,” she said.

  “And you’re going to do it?”

  She looked at him a long time and said nothing.

  “Are you still on the case?” he asked. “Is this part of your investigation?”

  “No,” she said, confused. “I mean, yes, I am. But no, this isn’t part of it.”

  He let go of her wrist.

  “Are you afraid of me?” he asked.

  “No,” she said. And then, “Yes.”

  He smiled. “Shouldn’t I be the one who’s afraid?”

  She took a long breath and closed her eyes. He could see the tears she hadn’t quite managed to hold back. Then she stood up and walked to the window. It had started to rain, and she could hear the drops against the pane. She parted the blinds enough to look through.

  “No,” she said at last. “You don’t have to be afraid.”

  The street below glistened in the light of the street lamps.

  Her back was to him and she didn’t see his smile. When she turned to face him he said, “I’ve left my wife.”

  When he was young, Jeffrey loved driving the car. His father always had enormous Pontiacs. He bought them used because that was all he could afford, either a cheap car new or a big car used. Jeffrey learned to drive in those Pontiacs. In the hills outside town, no road was straight for more than a hundred yards. Now hired drivers did all his driving, Martin and half a dozen men before him. Except in the country, where he usually gave the driver the weekend off. But where did he ever go in the country? To the market and back.

  Martin stayed with Phyllis but Jeffrey kept the Jag. It sat in the garage most of the time. Now it felt good to be behind the wheel, and he kept the needle at a steady seventy-five, his mind as clear as the road in front of him. The city faded down to nothingness as he ate up the miles in enormous gulps, big ungainly projects giving way to suburbs, suburbs to villages, villages to open fields. He veered off the highway at the Orient Point exit and followed the route he had taken before to the stone wall and the gate that guarded the entrance to Gaetano Falcone’s wooded estate. He was just on time; Sal the Younger swung the gate open for him.

  He drove slowly down the pine-flanked trail until the house came into view. He surprised himself by how calm he felt.

  Fiore’s Mercedes was parked in front of the house. Fine. Fiore was there first. It would have been presumptuous of Jeffrey to get there ahead of him.

  Jeffrey pulled up behind the Mercedes. Fiore’s driver was waiting behind the wheel, his head tipped back, his eyes closed. As Jeffrey started up the walk to the front door, he amused himself remembering how he had been shadowed every step of the way on his first visit, as though he might steal the flower beds if left unguarded for a single moment. This time there was no one in sight.

  Sal the Elder opened the front door for him. “This way,” was all he said.

  Jeffrey followed him into a wainscoted den with heavy French doors that opened onto a patio overlooking the ocean. A fire burned in the fireplace even though the day was mild. Falcone and Fiore were both on their feet. Jeffrey shook hands with both of them. The old man, he noticed, appeared to have aged a great deal since their first meeting. His stocky body hadn’t changed, but the care with which he executed all his movements made him seem somehow frail. There was a bowl of fruit and a plate of assorted cheeses on the coffee table in front of the sofa.

  Falcone motioned Jeffrey to a chair, then sat in the middle of the sofa, his stubby legs stretched out before him, his hands folded on his ample belly. “In the years since we consolidated the structure of our business,” he began, “there is nothing we have undertaken as important as our banking arrangement. Nothing.”

  Jeffrey smiled at the euphemism. Consolidation obviously referred to the legendary bloodbath that brought Gaetano Falcone to power.

  “This new arrangement opens a whole new world for us,” the old man continued. “It was a brilliant scheme, Charles, and brilliantly executed.”

  Fiore leaned forward in his seat and helped himself to a wedge of Gouda so that he wouldn’t appear to be basking in the praise. He nodded an acknowledgment.

  “And my congratulations to you, Mr. Blaine,” Falcone said, turning his heavy head. “Many people have tried to solve this riddle. You’ve succeeded where they all failed.”

  “That’s very kind of you, sir,” Jeffrey said.

  Although nothing changed in Falcone’s demeanor, he made it clear at once, in the pitch and tone of his voice, that the pleasantries were over. “I called you here because I want to know what’s wrong and how you’re going to fix it,” he said.

  A month ago Jeffrey cut
the amount of money he processed through the funds by more than half, and since then he had kept it at that low level, waiting for the old man to notice. Fiore noticed right away and asked about it, but Jeffrey put him off with evasions.

  “I’ve asked Mr. Blaine about this,” Fiore said. “He said it’s just a drop in the market. He can explain that to you.”

  “That’s true, the market is down,” Jeffrey said, “but that has nothing to do with the drop in receipts. The whole point of this system, sir, is that it’s impervious to market forces.”

  “Wait a minute,” Fiore said, jumping in with both feet, but Jeffrey cut him off before he could say more.

  “I’m sorry I misled you,” he said to Fiore with a cold and gracious smile, before turning back to Falcone. “I told him it was the market because that seemed the best thing to say under the circumstances.”

  Falcone bristled. “You misled him?” he asked pointedly. “Mr. Fiore speaks with my voice, Mr. Blaine.”

  “I’m aware of that, sir.”

  “Explain yourself,” Falcone said. He wasn’t leaning back anymore. His hands rested by his thighs, his thick fingers sinking into the soft cushions.

  “I’m just being cautious, Mr. Falcone,” Jeffrey said. “There’s too much at stake here.”

  Falcone pushed himself heavily to his feet, which made it necessary for both Jeffrey and Fiore to stand.

  “You have a problem with Mr. Fiore, is this what you’re telling me?” Falcone demanded.

  “I’m telling you,” Jeffrey said levelly, “that I’m concerned about security.”

  Falcone aimed a warning finger straight at Jeffrey’s face. “If this is about your daughter and her problems with Mr. Fiore—”

  “My daughter has nothing to do with this,” Jeffrey said, brazen enough to interrupt Gaetano Falcone as he was speaking.

  “Because I did what I could for your daughter. If you still distrust Mr. Fiore—”

  “I just told you. This has nothing to do with my daughter,” Jeffrey shot back, interrupting again.

  For a moment all of Jeffrey’s calculations hung in the balance as Falcone’s small, dark eyes studied him carefully. Jeffrey knew that any complaint about Fiore’s mistreatment of Jessica would backfire. He had come to Falcone for help before; if he was still having problems with her, they were his own responsibility. Even with Falcone’s elaborate and overdeveloped sense of family and honor, family and honor counted for only so much. Greed and self-preservation were the springs that made the clock tick. And so he hesitated a moment, letting the old man think whatever he wanted to think. Then he said, “We have a security problem, Mr. Falcone. The United States Attorney’s Office is looking at us.”

  Fiore actually stepped between them. “They’ve got nothing,” he said. “They look and they go away.”

  “You were aware of this?” Falcone asked.

  “Of course I was,” Fiore said. “This isn’t something that ought to be discussed now, Mr. Falcone. These are internal matters. They’re not Mr. Blaine’s concern.”

  Blaine, he was saying, may be our banker, but that doesn’t entitle him to know about our business.

  “You’ll pardon me, Mr. Falcone, but I am concerned,” Jeffrey countered. “I’m the most vulnerable person here. I don’t want to take chances.”

  “And I’m telling you the U.S. attorney has nothing,” Fiore answered tersely. He turned back to Falcone to explain. “They put an undercover in one of our midtown operations and they brought one of my people in for questioning. That’s all been taken care of.”

  “Don’t be a damned fool,” Jeffrey snapped. “The undercover at the Javits Center was never a problem. It was a sideshow for them, that’s all it ever was. You took care of a problem that didn’t exist.”

  The words Javits Center sent a shock wave through the room. The color drained from Fiore’s face and Falcone looked like he wanted to find a place to sit down if he could do so without compromising himself.

  “How the hell do you know so much about our business?” Fiore exploded, taking a menacing step forward.

  “I make it my business to know things,” Jeffrey said.

  “You seem to know a lot about what’s going on inside the U.S. Attorney’s Office, too. Is that your business?”

  Jeffrey turned to the old man, as though Fiore’s insinuation didn’t deserve an answer. “My training is in banking,” he said. “There’s no room for carelessness in that business. It’s not about balls and charm. We have to know what we’re doing.”

  Fiore wasn’t about to let himself be passed over like that. His powerful hands flashed toward Jeffrey and grabbed two fistfuls of his shirt, which he ripped open with one quick, wrenching movement. And then he stopped, frozen for a moment.

  This was the moment Jeffrey had been waiting for. The trap had been carefully baited. Now, with Fiore inside, all that remained was to spring the door.

  He knocked his adversary’s hands away, and then, with insolent calm, said, “If you want me to take off the rest of my clothes, just ask. You won’t find a wire.”

  Fiore said nothing, because Jeffrey had left him nothing to say. He walked to the patio doors, content to let this play itself out while he studied the sea beyond the narrow strip of land. He could hear the hissing of the surf.

  “I wouldn’t have gone into this without a safety net, Mr. Falcone. You can understand that,” Jeffrey said, pulling his shirt closed, buttoning the buttons that remained. “I knew even before I made the first transaction that federal agents followed Mr. Fiore the first night he made contact with me. It was bad weather, there was very little traffic. It should have been easy for him to determine whether or not he was being followed but he didn’t do it. He could have contacted me privately but he chose my daughter’s birthday party instead.”

  He turned to Fiore, half a room away. “A person like you showing up as a guest of a person like me is going to pique their interest.”

  Fiore glanced over his shoulder. “That went nowhere and you know it,” he growled.

  Now Jeffrey turned on him, walked toward him, his voice sharp, an accusing finger leveled at him. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said. “They’ve been monitoring everything we do. Which one of us do you think they were following when you took advantage of my daughter and then sent for me to come and get her?”

  Now Falcone was moving across the room as well. “Is this true, Charles?” he asked angrily.

  Ten minutes ago he would have written Jessica off as a tramp Blaine couldn’t control. Now she gave him all the pretext he needed for his indignation.

  “His precious daughter spilled her guts about our whole banking arrangement to a reporter for Newsday,” Fiore said. “Ask him how the hell she knew so much.”

  Now Falcone turned his anger toward Jeffrey. “You told a child about our arrangement?”

  Jeffrey was ready for this. “She guessed,” he said. “Mr. Fiore jumped into our lives with both feet. It wasn’t hard for her to figure out what he wanted. I assume the U.S. Attorney’s Office has figured out the same thing. I’d like to shut down the entire operation until you tell me it’s safe, sir.”

  Falcone nodded his assent.

  “Fine,” Jeffrey said. “Is there anything else we have to discuss? It’s a long drive back to the city.”

  Falcone studied him a moment before responding. There was an insolence about the way this banker conducted himself that he didn’t like. It wasn’t Blaine’s place to leave until he was sent away. But Falcone was finished with him for the time being, so he turned away and waved Jeffrey out of the room with an impatient gesture.

  When Jeffrey was gone, Falcone turned to his protégé. “Come, there’s food,” he said, gesturing toward the fruit and cheese. “Get us a bottle of wine.”

  Fiore went to the wine closet and selected a bottle. They touched glasses before they drank.

  “That man came to me months ago with complaints about you,” Falcone said. “I knew then he was looking to s
upplant you. I warned you at the time to be careful.”

  Fiore smiled. “Honest men,” he recalled. “You warned me that honest men were dangerous.”

  When they had drunk some wine and eaten a bit, the old man walked his guest to his car, where he exchanged a few pleasant words with Jimmy Angelisi, who had been waiting all this while. The elder Sal came up and stood by his boss’s side as the old man watched the Mercedes until it disappeared around the bend in the drive. Falcone turned to him.

  “You know what to do,” he said. “Take your son with you.”

  Fiore settled in and leaned his seat back as far as it would go.

  Jimmy glanced over. “Tired?” he asked.

  “Nah. Not tired. Something else,” Fiore said.

  That had been a close call, he thought, stretching his legs out as far as they would go. Blaine was smart, but the old man was smarter. He knew a play for power when he saw one.

  The salt air smell was fading as they moved away from the shore and into the village, where the Mercedes turned onto the highway. It wasn’t much of a highway this far out. “Are you going home or are we going into the city?” Jimmy asked.

  They still had an hour before Jimmy had to turn off the LIE for the Bronx and City Island but Jimmy always had to know everything ahead of time. He had been like that even when they were kids.

  “There’s nothing going on,” Fiore said. “Drop me at the house.”

  He turned his head and watched the landscape unroll beside him. In the turned earth of a freshly plowed field he saw Eddie Vincenzo’s skin the way it looked that day in the hospital. Fuck Blaine, he thought, jerking his attention back to the road ahead. It wasn’t like his little bitch of a daughter was kidnapped. Eddie called and she came running. How was that Eddie’s fault?

  Maybe, Fiore thought, we don’t need Blaine anymore. He should have made that point to the old man when he had the chance. They knew how Blaine’s system worked. Any banker could do it. Maybe they didn’t even need a banker. Maybe the guy who played the games with the computer for Blaine could do it just as well without Blaine. It shouldn’t be hard to find out who that guy was.