by David Archer
“Howard, let me ask you the same question you asked me, more or less, a while ago. Are you somehow going all the way around the block to proposition me?” A look of surprise came over Howard’s face.
“I don’t know,” he answered in all honesty. “Am I?”
The two of them had a lot to think about when they woke up together in Howard’s bed the following morning.
“Gentlemen that last exercise in your laughable attempts to master the game of pinochle will set you back the mighty sum of two dollars and twenty-five cents…each.” Steve Kashuba gloated.
“I dunno, Steve, more and more, I keep thinkin’ you brought in a ringer to fleece us,” Chuck Johnston grumbled.
“Yeah,” Chuck’s partner Ralph Pace agreed. “I kinda miss Sir Fartsalot,” he went on referring to Steve’s former partner.
“I think it’s ‘cause we’re playing against a couple gentlemen of leisure,” Chuck observed. “You and I, we still gotta hump the grindstone, but these two ex-cops got nothin’ better to do than to plot pinochle strategy.”
“You found us out, Chuck,” Ernie grinned. “Actually Speve…uh…Steve here is gunning for the Nobel Prize in pinochle next year.” Ernie often called his card partner Speve when he caught himself starting to use the Captain’s old nickname. Fortunately, he had not yet come out and called the guy Spanky. When one of the guys asked Ernie why he sometimes called his friend Speve, he told the guy it was a hangover from a speech defect he had as a kid. If you had asked Fred Campanella, the only “speech defect” his son had was a smart mouth.
“Tell me, ‘Speve,’ you still keep track of goin’s on with the police?” Ralph asked.
“Now and then,” Kashuba answered. “Oh, that reminds me, Ernie, I picked up some interesting news about your best friend in the whole wide world, Captain James Maddox.” Captain Maddox was the man who had gleefully fired Ernie from the force, even if he did have the backing of everyone in the department.
“Yeah, my old buddy Jim-Bob-Bwah. So what’s the slimy prick up to these days?”
“Well, like you, he’s soon to be an ex-cop. Word is he’s taking an early out to go work for City Council.” The Councilman—a longtime ally of Frank Rizzo—was a powerful politician in his own right. While his constituency was still predominantly white, he realized it might be a good idea to hire a black flack-catcher to fend off any potential trouble from that segment of the population. And what better black assistant could he ask for than a former police captain?
Maddox would enjoy a prosperous post-retirement career working for the Councilman, that is, until the politician got caught with his hand, elbow-deep in the cookie jar. When the detritus hit the fan, the first person he threw under the bus was James Maddox. In the end, the politician did some time, but Maddox did a good deal more.
“Can we skip brunch with Frank and Sadie? I don’t feel so hot.” Howard asked Arlene.
“Fine with me,” she answered. “Tell you the truth, I feel a little sick myself.”
“I’d say, if we’re both feeling punk by the time we get off work Monday, we make appointments with Dr. Horowitz.” Howard suggested. Through their health plan at the Civic Center, the two of them had discovered Dr. Deborah Horowitz and had been pleased with their choice. She was at least as knowledgeable as her older, more experienced peers, yet was pleasant and never judgmental.
They made back-to-back appointments for that coming Friday. Dr. Horowitz saw Arlene first, then Howard.
“Mr. Ellsworth, please don’t think I’m starting a bad joke, because this is a very serious matter, I’m afraid.” She began. “I have bad news—at least I think it is—and even worse news.”
“Um…okay…let’s get it over with.”
“Your…uh…companion Miss Gomez is pregnant, and she is sure you are the father.”
“Please tell me that was the worse news.”
“I’m afraid not. Mr. Ellsworth…Howard…you have cancer.”
Chapter 6
“Ernie, my love, I’d like you to meet Giacomo Buonocore. He’s an art dealer,” Evelyn told her husband.
“Pleezdameech,” Ernie mumbled as he stuck his hand out. “So, are you a for-real Italian or one like me who was born and raised in Philly.”
“Actually, I just moved here,” the dealer answered. “I was born in The Abruzzi, but, most of my life, I’ve stayed in New York.”
“Y’know, I’ve always wondered what it would be like, living in the Big Apple. What made you trade down, if I may be so nosey?”
“I wouldn’t call this trading down. The place where I live makes little difference to me compared to the chance of representing the renowned Evelyn Klein.”
“Renowned is right,” Ernie was quick to agree. “You do know…uh…”
“Yes, Husband, he knows all about my sordid history. Thank you so much for asking,” Evelyn said.
“No offence, Lambchop. You do know I love you, right? I’m just thinking about what you said about Uncle Sam confiscating any money you got from selling your art, am I right?”
“You are, except my cousin Seth, the lawyer, is going to see if I can keep a few bucks from each sale. But, yeah, for the most part, I’m not allowed to ‘profit’ from my notoriety. You get that, right, Giacomo?”
“Yes, I am aware of this, but—”
“Please, Signor Buonocore, let me explain,” Evelyn stopped him, then turned back to Ernie.
“Here’s the deal,” she began, “and, by the way, this is the reason we’re meeting on the library steps and not in some nice restaurant, where we might be bugged or overheard. This is for your ears only.”
“Oooh, sounds sinister,” Ernie said.
“What are you, nine? Now shut up and listen. Mr. Buonocore, as a licensed art dealer, will buy all the art I can produce for amounts between 500 and 2000 dollars.”
“Gee, that sounds a little low,” Ernie pointed out. “Look, Mr. Buonocore, this lady has talent with a capital T.”
“Ernie, please let me finish. As I was saying, once he has ownership of the paintings, I will dutifully report my sales to the government, while Giacomo here, hauls them across the pond and sells them for more like what they’re worth.
“And you’re OK with that?”
“I haven’t finished yet. Whatever he gets for the art, he keeps half and drops the other half into my Swiss bank account. By the time my parole is over, nobody will notice the extra half million I got there already from the…you know. We have to think long-term here.”
“So I guess that means I’m indentured to Salvatore Longo for another eight years.”
“Yeah, but you get to come home and fuck me in the evening,” Evelyn reminded him.
“Nice work if you can get it,” the dealer pointed out.
“All right, I suppose I can put up with it. Still, I wonder, other than telling me I gotta keep earning an honest dollar for a while, why even bring me into this?”
“I know why,” Buonocore said in a glum tone.
“Husband of mine, please understand this. Giacomo Buonocore is a fine man with a sterling reputation. That said, I need to trust him with a lot of valuable art. As long as the deal goes down like it should, you are to treat him with the utmost respect, but, if he ever decides to double-cross me, it will be your task to kill him.”
“Um, where do you get this notion that I’m some sort of a cold-blooded killer? I only shot that one guy, and it was an accident he died from it. Since then, there’s been no blood on my hands.”
“Of course there hasn’t, my Sweetie Pie,” Evelyn said in a manner that told Ernie in no uncertain terms that his wife had figured out what happened to Elizabeth Gildemeister.
“So, deep-down you’re a nice guy,” Giacomo guessed.
“Yeah, that’s me, Mr. Nice Guy, but keep in mind, the one person I did kill was Italian—hai capit’?” Come to think of it, so was the other one.
This particular Thursday, the game was at Steve Kashuba’s place. When the four playe
rs were done, Ralph and Chuck said their goodbyes and trudged off to their cars.
“Want me to help you clean up?” Ernie asked, as he had done the other times when Kashuba had been the host. His former boss would always say, no, that’s all right, this is no big deal, but this time, he came up with a difference response.
“Yeah, that would be great,” he told Ernie. “Suppose I take all this crap to the kitchen and you wipe the table off.” Ernie did that and started looking for something to get the crumbs off the floor when Kashuba came back downstairs and sat in his card-playing chair.
“Okay, here it is,” he began. “I didn’t keep you back just to wipe down the table. We need to have a talk.”
“Oh, shit, am I in trouble?”
“How would I know? I haven’t been a cop for a long, long time. Now listen up. Remember the other night when we were at Ralph’s? Remember that news item I dropped about James Maddox?”
“Yeah, now that you mention it.”
“Well, I wasn’t just flapping my gums for the exercise. There’s a reason I brought that up.”
“And that reason is?”
“I want you to get a private detective’s license. If Maddox was still on the job, he would have blocked you, but, with him gone and me pulling some strings, you could get set up as a P.I. So happens Lieutenant Korpal took over for Maddox, and, for some strange reason I cannot for the life of me figure out, he thinks you’re an OK guy.”
“Spiff. Now who do you know is looking to hire a private eye?”
“Me, that’s who. I’ve decided to start an agency. Interested in climbing on board?”
Chapter 7
“This is great stuff, Leon, but it doesn’t fit the direction we’re going in at the present time,” said Jeremy Constable, editor of the Fair and Square—newsletter for The Fair Welfare Action Committee told the young reporter who had just turned in a scathing article about Ohio Republican Governor Jim Rhodes, the man who had ordered the troops to Kent State in 1970.
As he listened to the editor’s rejection, he noted a piece in the galley proof for the next issue, lambasting the liberal, Puerto Rican New York mayoral candidate Herman Badillo as a “Tio Taco” (The Hispanic equivalent of Uncle Tom). He remembered an earlier issue where managing director and soon-to-be-mayor Wilson Goode of Philadelphia had been debunked as a shameless publicity seeker (which, in the opinion of many, he was), but weren’t there more dangerous politicians out there? What about this guy Reagan, Leon wondered. Don’t see anything about him in this rag. Even in the mind of a true believer like Leon Porch, something didn’t add up.
At the same time Leon was getting the bad news from the paper’s editor, Sean Higgins was thinking about the young man. He had been delighted with the kid’s article on the hypocrite Jimmy Carter, whom Sean had never liked in the first place, but his output after that had been unsatisfactory. All the rest of the stuff the new member had submitted dealt with those whom Higgins considered to be good people, such as J. Edgar Hoover and converted Republican Frank Rizzo. On the other hand, as long as he remained a member, they could keep Young Mr. Porch under the kind of close scrutiny he clearly needed. Sean guessed they would have to put up with the lying, turgid prose as a price for that access.
“We thank you, Lord, for this fine meal,” Luther began the Christmas dinner grace, “and for the freedom which we live in. Better dead than red. Amen.”
“Dad, it may surprise you to know, none of my professors have asked me to join the Communist Party,” Leon pointed out. “In fact, I doubt any of them are members themselves.”
“Bullshit!” his father snorted. Leon rolled his eyes, while his two younger sisters looked down and kept silent, hoping this part of the conversation would end quickly. Fortunately for them it did.
“Pass the gravy,” was Luther Porch’s next comment on the world situation.
Leon didn’t dare tell his parents about the revolutionary organization he had joined. It was enough, he figured, they had allowed him to attend such a liberal school. On the other hand, compared to his compatriots at Fair Welfare, some of his professors, even in the Poly Sci Department, seemed like a collection of old fuddy-duddies.
Of course Luther would have greatly preferred that the boy had gone to Princeton, but, in his own unstated way, he was proud of his son. It was all he had been able to do to make heads or tails out of high school. As an extra benefit to a life he tried to make as easy as possible, he found that his own mother was a lot happier to see him when Leon was around. She loved her son out of a sense of duty, but Leon was her pride and joy.
It was only to Grandma Cinda that Leon told his aspirations and his membership in this great humanitarian organization. At first Lucinda had been pleased at the boy’s active interest in the world he lived in, but she was beginning to wonder what was wrong with these people that they stopped publishing his very well-written articles. She had hoped that by now, his junior year, he might at least have a byline in the paper.
That night, full beyond his original intentions with leftover turkey and stuffing, Leon encountered a strange dream. He was in what he imagined to be an old-time vaudeville theater, sitting in the front row, while on stage their leader, Louis Simmons, was arm-in-arm with the late J. Edgar Hoover, singing Cole Porter’s song “Friendship.”
“Whew, talk about crazy!” Leon said when he awoke. Then it dawned on him—maybe it wasn’t all that crazy after all. He sat on the edge of his bed thinking the whole thing through until dawn. At that point, he went to his desk and started the draft for his next article, but probably not for The Fair and Square. As his fingers ran over the keyboard, the title hit the blank page: “I Smell a Rat!”
Chapter 8
“This is a hell of a mess,” Howard admitted to Arlene. “How ironic that I, of all people, should get you pregnant.”
“Never you mind about that,” Arlene said. “Women have been known to live through pregnancy. It’s the cancer we should be worried about. How bad is it, Howard—the truth.”
Howard shook his head and frowned. “Colon cancer, and it’s really spread. Truth is, Arlene, I’m not gonna make it, which is why I feel all the worse about what I did to you.”
“Jeez, Howard, didn’t you ever get yourself checked? They have ways of looking for it, you know.”
“Yeah, I knew about that and I’m a damn fool for not getting checked out. Thing is, I’m a little squeamish about having that equipment rammed up my…you know.”
“You want to know what’s ironic? That’s ironic. I’m sorry, Howard, that was very mean of me to say. I just blurted it out. Really, I am terribly sad to hear this.”
“Well, there is one thing we can do about it. I intend to take care of our child. The small silver lining to this cloud is that I have built up a nice nest egg. Now it will be yours to raise the child as you see fit.”
“Oh, Howard, that is so sweet of you…”
“Wait, I’m not finished yet. Arlene Gomez, will you marry me?” Before she could speak, he reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a diamond ring.
“Howard, Darling, this is so noble of you, but this isn’t the sixteenth century. These days, a single girl can care for a baby without being stoned or pilloried by the village elders.”
“True enough, but some of those elders will expect you to be my wife if we are to establish joint tenancy with right of survivorship. If I were just to leave it to you as my girlfriend, the Commonwealth would get a big chunk of the money that should go to you and the baby. I love you deeply in the way that I do, Arlene, but this is a business decision. Please tell me you’ll make the right one.”
“I’ll marry you, although, to tell you the truth, I’m more worried about the gossip I’ll get for being a gold-digger than I would from just being a loose woman. And, by the way, let’s stop feeling so damn guilty about that night. We have been the best of friends for years and if that finally took the form of love-making, one night, then so be it. I regret nothing, Howard Ellswor
th.”
Three weeks later, for time was of the essence, they were married in a simple ceremony in Ernie and Evelyn’s church. It took some persuading to bring the pastor around, but, as a gag, Frank Mueller, standing in for Arlene’s late father, marched her down the aisle with one arm hooked through hers and the other holding a red and yellow toy shotgun on his shoulder.
On their honeymoon, there was intimacy, but it had little to do with sex. Arlene spent the whole time trying to make her husband as comfortable as she could. To that end, she had learned how to give Howard his injections when the nurse was off-duty. The pain was becoming unbearable.
Four months before Madeline Ellsworth came into the world, her father left it.
Chapter 9
“Isn’t that a sight? Isn’t that just a sight?” Steve Kashuba beamed as he and Ernie stood by the door to their suite. The sign on the glass read STEVEN J. KASHUBA, PRIVATE INVESTIGATIONS. “I thought about calling us Kashuba and Campanella, but, things being what they are, I think’s it’s best you keep a low profile. You know what I mean, right?”
“Sure, Boss, I’m totally fine with that,” Ernie assured him. At the outset, Ernie would be making less than he had been working for Longo’s Appliances, but the chance for growth would be a lot better here. The main thing, though, was that Ernie could get back to doing what he did best. Well,,,maybe every once in a while.
“Don’t get your hopes up too high,” Kashuba had warned him. “Most of our work is gonna be pissed-off wives looking to catch their tomcat husbands in the act.”
In the beginning, Ernie would supplement his income by working for Sal Longo as a part-time independent contractor. Then again, through painful negotiations with the Commonwealth’s Attorney, Evelyn’s cousin Seth had worked out an agreement where she could keep the first $800 of any art she sold. The rest would be confiscated. Any sales under the 800, she’d have to split 50-50 with the authorities…and still pay taxes on her share. Receipts would have to be painstakingly made out and turned in for each transaction. Evelyn, for her part, did her best to look frustrated and disappointed, but it was an even better deal than she had hoped for. If she felt like it, she could turn out a spectacular landscape in under two hours, using toilet paper to apply the paint. When she demonstrated that particular skill to Ernie he had said, yeah, that was pretty neat alright, but if he ever reached for the TP and found an empty roll, somebody was getting a shiner. (Not really—beyond the recreational spankings they both enjoyed, Ernie would never even think about striking his beloved wife). In any case, they would not go hungry during Ernie’s apprenticeship.