I Detest All My Sins

by Lanny Larcinese

  As he walked back to his car parked in front of the Melrose, he retrieved his gun and pulled out her picture again. She looked fine. The photo was of her upper torso. She must be totally naked. No doubt that snake was abusing her, maybe raping her. But as long as she stayed healthy, Bill would help her work out emotional trauma. His support might even help them stay together. She’s got to do what she’s got to do to stay alive. She had to survive, no matter what. Eddie was a killer. Once he got his money, the bad news wouldn’t stop. All the more reason to kill him.

  That Louise might be learning to enjoy her stay was not a possibility he was willing to entertain.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  Sam Lanza shuffled through a sheath of pink phone messages and separated out those concerning the shooting outside of the bar from the homicide of Jericho’s lady friend. One caught his eye; it was from Jericho. Its caption read, “wants to talk.”

  All things considered, Sam liked Jericho. At one time they were close, and Lanza thought he knew his former partner. But since the big guy took up with that so-called priest he was different from the old days. Yeah, he claimed that Conlon helped him see the light, but for as tough as he was, Jericho Lewis was too naïve, too vulnerable to a seemingly high-minded phony like Conlon. Even the priest’s name shouted it: Con-lon, con-artist, con-vict, con-flate. If Sam Lanza ever had anybody’s number, it was Conlon’s.

  Jericho agreed to come to the Roundhouse. He brought cheesesteaks from Gino’s. Three for himself and one for Sam. They talked about the old days. Jericho asked if there were any developments with Henrietta’s case.

  “The only common denominator is your pal, the priest.”

  “Stop it! You know damned well he and I were together when we stumbled on the scene. It must have just happened.”

  “At first I thought maybe your ex, Crystal, had something to do with it. You know, jealous wife. But then I needed a new theory.”

  “You’re not implying that Bill or I had anything to do with it, are you?”

  “You aren’t capable of such a thing,” Lanza said. “But I don’t know, you and Conlon are tight.”

  “And his motive would be…what?” Jericho asked, voice dripping with sarcasm.

  “Do a favor for you? He knows you’d cover for him.”

  Jericho suddenly turned red and stood. His massive six-foot ten frame loomed over Lanza while the detective continued to chew. Jericho grabbed him by his shirt and lifted him out of his chair as greasy meat, fried onions, and Cheez Whiz spilled down the front of the detective’s rumpled pants.

  “You got to stop this shit, Sam! You’ve gotten so fucking paranoid I don’t even recognize you anymore.”

  “Let me go, Jericho. Don’t make me pull my piece.”

  Jericho pushed him back into his chair and sat down as cops from the floor peered at the ruckus through Lanza’s office window.

  “You’re fucking nuts, Sam. Bill and I came directly from the class I teach at Temple. Check it out so you can let go of this hard-on you got. And when the kid from Dirty Frank’s got shot, the two guys in the van wanted to kidnap me and Bill. One of them shot the twink, and Eddie knew them. They’re under Luca Cunnio. Do your fucking job. And if you ever pull a piece on me I’ll break your fucking spine.”

  “What about that Thunder Woman character, what’s his excuse there?”

  “There’s no connection. They both frequented Dirty Frank’s is all. But I’ll tell you who else is connected to her, Eddie Matthews.”

  While it gave Lanza pause, Jericho’s outburst rolled off his back. He was used to people acting all defensive. Still, Jericho was at least a witness.

  “I know your pal went to Eddie’s apartment after my men were there. Why?” Lanza asked.

  “If you untether your brain from paranoia, I’ll tell you.”

  “I can be persuaded.”

  Jericho told him about Eddie’s flirtations with Thunder Woman. He also unfolded the story of Bill’s connection to Mikey Osborne and his belief that Eddie did Mikey in. He mentioned Mikey’s boasts about the prison food issue, saying he had proof it was some kind of racket.

  “I spoke to Imhoff about the food thing,” Lanza said. “He said I had to stay away from ServMark.” He rubbed at his pants as he spoke, trying to erase the yellow stain of Cheese Whiz from his fly.

  Jericho said, “Bill Conlon wants to pin the Mikey Osborne murder on Eddie. He’s not in league with him.” The dust-up hadn’t diminished the big man’s appetite. He spoke as he chewed. “Then, when those guys tried to grab us outside of Dirty Frank’s and Eddie knew them, Bill got more suspicious. He went to Eddie’s apartment to see what he could find.”

  “He didn’t think my men could handle it?”

  “He thought your men wouldn’t know what to look for. They had no context about Deadly Eddie.”

  “Then I guess we’re all looking for Eddie,” Lanza said.

  “And you’re not going to find shit until you get your head straight. You’ve been in this business too long, Sam.”

  “You’re not the first one to tell me that. What about your girlfriend, the Henrietta Jackson woman?”

  “Bill thinks it was meant for me.”

  “What do you think?”

  “It makes me feel guilty, but I’m beginning to believe it.”

  “And why you?”

  “I’m not sure. Maybe my position at Graterford. I seem to be caught up in something. I don’t know why.”

  “You were forced to resign. You being set up?”

  “I was forced out so Warden White could cover his own ass.”

  “Okay. You’ve been vouching for Conlon all along,” Sam said, “so I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. But he’s got to stay out of my way, not be second-guessing me or my men.”

  “I’ll tell him.”

  “And I better not find more bodies with holes in them or floating down the river.”

  “I hear that, Sam, but we got no control over that, do we?”

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  Eddie was comforted by the busyness and anonymity of Center City. He strolled into First Union Bank’s safety deposit area and presented his key and signature for access to the vault and box number 1476, where he extracted the ServMark documents. He took a cover sheet out of its ServMark file folder, put the folder back in the box, thanked the clerk, and left for Downtown Copy Center.

  He didn’t need to be a chief financial officer to understand its opening paragraph under the letterhead of Lysco Foods and Supplies: “Thank you for the opportunity to bid on the contract for the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections. Attached you will find our detailed bid to service your system…” It was signed by J. S. Montpetite, President. After Eddie got it copied, he returned the original to the box and ducked underground for the train back to South Philly.

  He was concerned about Louise. Not about keeping her chained in a closet like a rabid dog, but that she might loosen her constraints and escape. He liked the control, and if he didn’t know better, it seemed like she did too. He learned in prison that living in small spaces had the salutary effect of expanding the mind.

  The thing he had hated most about being locked up was not the loss of freedom, but the loss of personal dignity. Things that were small deals on the outside were big deals inside, as if pressure increased as the amount of space a person occupied decreased. Like when guards messed up his stuff during searches. Or when his cellie ate one of his Almond Joys and claimed the guard must have done it. Eddie smashed the guy’s head so hard against the metal door he fractured the orbit bones under both of his eyes. It was worth the six months in AdSeg.

  He was told when to eat, sleep, stand, sit, walk, dress, and undress. He was told when he could be in the yard, the chow line, in the hallways or at the rec center. Being on the phone, eating, and all his waking hours were tightly controlled. Some guys cracked under the mental suffocation. Eddie survived by imagining his straight-jacket was a blue blazer with a carnation boutonniere
.

  That’s not how he treated Louise. He let her out so they could eat together, a tablecloth thrown over the bed like a real dining room table. He installed a light in the closet so she could read. He made her chain longer for comfort, bought her some clothes, let her dress up and look at herself in the mirror. And she was good to him about sex. Whenever he wanted.

  Even though he had been out for over a year, he still hadn’t learned to live large, in the glorious space of the golden day, instead, confined spaces were like a baby tightly swaddled.

  When he got back to his apartment, he asked Louise, “What’s your street address on Day Street?”

  She gave it to him. “Why?”

  “Your old boyfriend is helping me cash in on a matter. I’m sending him something that helps.” He looked into her eyes for a flash of something, regret or memory or longing, at the mention of the priest. But they told no such stories. Instead she said, “Oh.”

  “I’ll bet you thought I was some kind of ignoramus because I did so much time,” he said.

  “No Eddie. I never thought that.”

  “What did you think?”

  “I thought you had been deeply hurt.”

  Her words were a ten-penny nail to his heart. He sat still, not knowing what to say, not knowing what he felt, only that his walls were shaken and if he let them crumble, he would be crushed.

  “Where do you get off saying shit like that to me, like I’m some kind of broke-ass?” He gave her the back of his hand and knocked her against the wall. When she held her hands over her face to ward off another blow, he punched her in the stomach. She collapsed to the floor, gasping for air.

  “You know Louisey, “he said, “I been treatin’ you too good. Back in the closet you go.”

  He shortened her chain by folding over the links and secured it. He unscrewed the bulb and slammed the door shut. On his way out to mail the letter to Bill, he tossed the bulb into the trash.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  Lanza tailed the red De Ville down Delaware Avenue and over to Spring Garden. He put the portable flasher on his roof and pulled the Cadillac over. It was eleven p.m., traffic heavy from nightclub revelers cruising from club to club. Sam got out, .38 held low in his hand and concealed behind his thigh. As he approached the Caddy, its driver-side window silently descended as Sam stopped just to the rear of it, until he saw the driver’s hands at ten and two on the steering wheel.

  “Hi Sam,” Luca sneered, staring straight ahead.

  “Carrying anything Luca?”

  “I’m not even allowed to carry fingernail clippers.”

  “Step out of the car. Let me see your hands at all times. Assume the position.”

  “Come off it, Detective. People on this street know who I am. Can’t we just talk?”

  “Let me check you out, then we’ll talk.”

  Luca got out. His eyes swiftly scanned the streetscape to the right and left. He turned quickly to face the car, put his hands on its roof, spread his legs, and leaned face forward, nose against the metal, concealing his face from passersby.

  Sam holstered his Special and patted Luca down.

  “Turn off your engine and your lights. Get in my car, in the front seat,” Lanza said.

  Luca and his boys had an uneasy peace with the Philadelphia Police Department. It had two rules: nothing splashy and play in your own backyard. The dead twink meant the rules were broken. Somebody had to pay.

  “So your boys, Paulie and Angie, been getting a little frisky, have they?”

  “Who are you talking about?” Sam said.

  “Which one shot the twink?”

  “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. I don’t know any twinks, and I wouldn’t tell anybody if I did.”

  “Why did Paulie and Angie try to grab the big guy Jericho Lewis, and his pal, the one they call the priest?”

  “You’re talking in puzzles,” Luca said.

  “Okay, here’s the deal. I got a dead twink and one of your mooks did it.”

  “I don’t know a thing about it, but I’ll ask around.”

  “You’re going to have to give them up.”

  “For what?”

  “If you mean what you get in return, it’s that you can continue doing your skuzzy business, as long as my citizens aren’t getting killed.”

  “What do you have on our boys?”

  “About seven witnesses.”

  “Is one of them Eddie Matthews? ’Cause if it is, you can’t believe anything he says.”

  Now why would Luca bring Eddie’s name up out of the blue? When Angie and Paulie tried to snatch Jericho and the priest, they intended to take Eddie too. Now Eddie had disappeared and here’s Luca trying to rat him out. To blame the shooting on him?

  “Where do you know Eddie from?” Sam asked.

  “He came around looking for work on one of my construction sites, but I had heard he murdered his old man. We didn’t need guys like that.”

  “What, you got guidelines?”

  “C’mon Sam.”

  “What were Angie and Paulie gonna to do with Jericho Lewis and the priest?”

  “All I know is I didn’t put them up to anything. Maybe they were acting on their own. I’ll see what I can find out.”

  “If you don’t pal, here’s what’s at stake. I’ll have License & Inspections crawl over every one of your projects and shut them down. I’ll have Vice bust every card game and every poker machine in every candy store in South Philly. Then I’ll drop a dime to your people, let them know their livelihoods disappeared because you weren’t playing ball.”

  “I said let me check it out. I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Bye Luca. And remember to signal your way back into traffic.”

  As he drove off, Sam thought only two things would happen: Either Angie and Paulie would come into the Roundhouse and deny everything, maybe blame Eddie, or their bodies would be found by some kid taking a pee on the shoulder of the Atlantic City Expressway. But something big was going down. The twink’s shooting sounded like an accident but trying to grab Jericho and the priest was no accident. Maybe it was the food thing again.

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  The envelope had no return address and the printing looked like a third-grader’s scrawl. Bill tore it open. The letter inside was folded unevenly. The letterhead said “From the Office of the President of Lysco Foods & Supplies, Inc.” It made reference to a bid being attached. Eddie had said he had others. Bill waited for Eddie’s 10 p.m. call.

  “Did you get it?” Eddie asked when he called.

  “Do you have the attachments?” Bill asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you have others like this, from other food companies?”

  “Yep,” Eddie said.

  “How do we know where they came from?”

  “They came from ServMark. They were inside a ServMark folder with a memo note from ServMark’s honcho in charge of marketing. Senior Vice President it says.”

  “How did you get them?” Bill asked.

  “I took ’em from the widow Osborne. Mikey said she had them. Too bad he got hisself killed.”

  Eddie had the goods all right. And if Bill needed one final piece of evidence that Eddie killed Mikey or wondered what his motive was, it was now resolved.

  “I’ll take this to my contact and see what his response is,” Bill said.

  “He better have only one response, how much it’s worth.”

  “I have no control over that.”

  “Yeah, well find a way to get it, ’cause I still have control over this luscious piece o’ ass. I’ll call again in seventy-two hours. Same time.”

  Eddie hung up.

  Bill poured a tumbler of Old Grand-Dad and sank into a stuffed chair. He turned off the lights and sipped. He ruefully recounted a litany of his failures and losses. He had loved his parents and now they were gone from him, mired in anger and hate over Dennis’s suicide. He thought he loved Pam Rogers but all he did was
serially rape her over two years while he got hooked on heroin. He had loved Dennis but let him down so badly his little brother’s only out was a plunge off the Ben Franklin Bridge. Then, in a desperate effort to make up for it in prison, he befriended Mikey Osborne, and made Mikey an avatar for Dennis. But Bill was so preoccupied with himself that he ignored Mikey’s self-destructive boasting about having proof of rigged DOC food bids. It cost Mikey his life. Now, he loved Louise, but all it did was get her kidnapped and abused by a homicidal maniac.

  His hubris ruined the life of everybody who ever mattered, and its weight a dark curse compared to the golden glow of his humble soul on his first day in seminary so long ago. Since then, he tried to pray, tried to put himself in the aura of the Holy One, but got nowhere. As he sipped the bourbon down to its last inch, tears began to roll and regret stabbed at his heart. Forgiveness seemed so far away. As slumber claimed his addled brain, the justice of a dead Eddie Matthews seemed the only answer left and would provide the release prayers couldn’t conjure.

  Bill awoke with a head that was seven on the Richter scale. The numbers on the phone were blurry through swollen, reddened eyeballs. Squinting didn’t help. He went to the kitchen and stuck his head under the cold-water tap, letting water run down his neck and chest and saturate his shirt. He stayed there for fifteen minutes before shaking his head, testing for a possible explosion and whether his eyes were prepared to focus. He peeled out of his shirt and dried himself. Not quite there yet. Maybe he needed another drink, a short one, an eye-opener, but decided against it in favor of sitting and calming his nerves by contemplating his mission.

  Gary Bigelow called to set up a rendezvous.

  “I don’t want you coming up to my office,” Bigelow said. “I don’t want to be seen with you. I’ll meet you at three at my private entrance where my car picks me up. We can talk in my car.”

  Bill wasn’t sure what to make of the secrecy, but Bigelow was a highly regarded CEO and Bill an ex-con rapist. Or maybe it was Bigelow who had something to hide and being seen with a guy like Bill might be chum for the voracious maw of the Daily News.