StoneDust

by Justin Scott

  “So am I. It would have made such a difference.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  She started to say, I don’t know, but instead suddenly straightened up and asked out of the blue, “Do you know Peter Stock?”

  “Very well.”

  “What do you think of him?”

  “As what?”

  “A worker.”

  “I don’t think he’s going anywhere pumping gas for Buzz, but he’s young. He’s got time. Last year he did night school for his diploma.”

  “He used to help Reg. He’s good with machines. Never beat ’em up…I’m thinking of hiring him.”

  “What for?”

  “Maybe I’ll get the business going.”

  “Excellent. You have the rep, Janey. If you can just hold it together, hire a few good people…Pete’s a good start. Good luck.”

  She smiled the first smile I’d seen on her since the funeral. “Like Reg used to say, we’ll never run short of product.”

  “It’s a great idea.”

  “Greg doesn’t think so.”

  “Tell Greg if he wants to go into politics it can’t hurt to have a rich wife.”

  “Rich? I just want to pay my bills.” She looked at my check. “Did you charge me enough?”

  “Plenty.”

  “I don’t want favors. You were very supportive.”

  I said, “You can do me a favor.”

  “Name it.”

  “Let me see that telephone bill.”

  It was still in the SNET envelope, unopened. Janey picked it up. “Why?”

  “Just curious about something.”

  She looked a little skeptical, but she did hand it over. I slit it open with my penknife. Out fell all the extra paper the Southern New England had stuffed in, and the bill itself.

  As Hopkins Septic was a local business, there were few long- distance calls.

  The phone rang. Janey answered it. I motioned toward the Canon fax machine. She nodded and I ran the long-distance sheets through it, producing a curly but legible copy. Then I waved goodbye and walked back to my office.

  On the day Reg died—after disappearing from six-thirty at night until a little after eleven, presumably to score heroin—he had placed no calls to Hartford, no calls to Bridgeport, no calls to Waterbury, and three calls to a number in Norwalk. I dialed the Norwalk number, wondering how a heroin dealer answered the phone. I got an answering machine with a recording by a man with a big voice:

  “Norwalk PVC Pipe. We can’t come to the phone because we’re loading the truck. Leave your name and number and we’ll call you back when we’re done loading the truck.”

  I looked up Norwalk PVC Pipe in the Yellow Pages. The phone number matched. They sold pipe.

  The only other long-distance call that Saturday was a 212 New York City number. Reg had called it at noon. I called it. A harried voice I couldn’t understand said something against a background of restaurant noise. I yelled Hello, he yelled Hello. I asked could I make a reservation. He said Hold on. Four or five minutes later, another busy person picked up and asked politely if he could help. I told him I was waiting to make a reservation. He asked when.

  “Tonight.”

  “Nothing before nine-thirty.”

  I said I’d take the nine-thirty, knowing full well I’d be fortunate to sit before ten if the joint was as successful as it sounded.

  “Where are you exactly?”

  He rattled off a Washington Street address.

  “What is that, West Village?”

  “Tribeca.”

  “And how exactly do you spell the restaurant’s name?”

  “B-r-a-s-s-é-e.”

  “Brassée? What does that mean?”

  “I don’t know. I just started here.”

  I looked it up in Cassell’s. It meant “armful.”

  The round-trip drive to New York would explain the two hundred miles on the Blazer. He wouldn’t have had time for much of a dinner, much less time to score his dope. The last time I’d been in Tribeca it hadn’t struck me as a place to do that, but the nice thing about New York is that there’s something for everyone everywhere.

  ***

  I telephoned Rita, got her machine at both numbers, and left the same message: “Would you like to have a late dinner in New York, tonight?”

  Then I went to the bank and cashed a check for a stack of crisp new twenty-dollar bills—tips for tips—which I folded into my money clip. Back in my office, I cut Reg’s photograph from the Clarion.

  Duane Fisk telephoned. He spoke not a word about last night but went straight to business. It was like breakfast with a stranger, afraid to ask, Exactly what happened before we passed out?

  Was I still interested in handling the Mount Pleasant subdivision? I told him I was, and spent a little time writing up an advertisement for the local papers, which I faxed to his Newbury Pre-cast office. Duane called back, wondering whether I intended to run the ad in the New York Times.

  Gently, I explained that my New York customers didn’t buy country houses in subdivisions. Michelle picked up an extension. She too acted as if last night were last year. “We’re talkin’ four-acre lots, Ben.”

  “It doesn’t fit their fantasies.”

  “It can’t hurt to try.”

  “Trust me…And speaking of which…”

  “Yeah?”

  “I think you should put some serious consideration into dressing up that gravel pit in front.”

  “What gravel pit?”

  “The trap rock you dumped on the slope.”

  Duane said, “No way grass would hold that grade. Besides, the town—”

  “I was thinking about stone walls.”

  “You know what stonemasons get a running foot?” Michelle protested.

  “I prefer not to begin a sale with an apology. Think about it. You’re asking for serious bucks. These days, that means quality.”

  They agreed to think about stone walls.

  I stretched out on the sofa and slept soundly for two hours, awakened somewhat caught up on the long night, showered and dressed, and walked down to the general store for a cup of coffee.

  Rita Long came by in her Jaguar, top down, a sight that stopped traffic like a jackknifed horsebox.

  She climbed out, oblivious to screeching pickup trucks, and hurried to my table on the front porch. She was dressed for New York in a pale green silk jacket and skirt, and a peaked driving hat to protect her hair. “I thought you might be here. I stopped at the house.”

  “Terrific. We can drive in together.”

  “No.”

  “Aren’t we on for tonight?”

  “No.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry. I thought it would be fun.”

  “Ben, we have to talk.”

  “Sit down. Coffee?”

  “No, I’m late.” She took off her sunglasses and said, “Actually, I have to talk.”

  A cool steel C-clamp began to tighten around my heart. “So I guess I’ll listen.”

  “I need some space.”

  Certain clichés never lose their impact.

  In the event that I didn’t fully comprehend, she added, “More space than you can give me.”

  I protested that I could give plenty of space and noted that we hadn’t seen that much of each other lately as it was. I heard the empty echo of a one-sided negotiation. You can’t bargain with someone who doesn’t want to make a deal. Still, I tried.

  When I had finished, she said, “I’ll call you.”

  She walked back to her car. I clung to that promise like a sinking raft. If she’d smiled or kissed my cheek goodbye, I’d have believed her.

  Rita pulled away, stopping more traffic, executed an elegant U-turn around the flagpole, and went by with both hands on the wheel, accelerating south. Next minute Main Street was empty, except for cars and trucks and people.

  “You’ve been dumped, fella
.”

  Saying it out loud made me feel a little better.

  Of course, I’d been expecting something like this ever since her sex-as-religion remark. Even a thoroughly insensitive fool would guess something was wrong when the woman he loved had trouble sleeping nights he stayed over. Actually, knowing the score was a bit of a relief. It beat guessing.

  The only reason my heart was still pounding was that I’d drunk too much coffee on too little sleep.

  Scooter MacKay lumbered up, got a cup, joined me outside, and lit a smoke. “Heard you and Aunt Connie threw a heck of a party.” He sounded miffed he hadn’t been invited.

  I was settling down nicely, thinking I might give Marian Boyce a call, or maybe invite Vicky for dinner tonight at the Brassée. Just casual, nothing to do with a destroyed ego, much less a broken heart. I felt fine.

  “Scooter, could I bum a cigarette?”

  “Huh?”

  “A cigarette. Could you spare a cigarette?”

  “You quit smoking in prep school.”

  “Give me a goddamned cigarette.”

  Scooter opened his Marlboros, raised one above its fellows for my convenience, and extended the box. His old-fashioned Zippo flamed.

  “You know your hands are shaking?”

  “Too much coffee—Jesus, these taste awful. How do you stand it?”

  “Something wrong with your eye?”

  “I got goddamned smoke in it.”

  “You okay?”

  “Fine.”

  “Hey, where you going?”

  “Find some bourbon.”

  “Hang on, I’ll join you.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “Where you going?”

  “The Drover—no, Waterbury.”

  “Waterbury? I don’t have time. I gotta work.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Hey,” he called after me. “Thought you weren’t supposed to drink with that head.”

  He was right about that. The little bit of wine I’d had at Connie’s last night had been more than enough. Bourbon would be foolhardy. So no bourbon. That wouldn’t stop me from swinging by Waterbury on my way to New York. It was only forty or fifty miles out of the way.

  Why not check out Ramos’s Bar? Ask some questions. Ask who’d seen Little John Martello. Maybe I’d get lucky and run into some gangstas looking for a fight.

  ***

  Despite the earnest attempts of civic groups to brighten up the Waterbury Green, nearby Ramos’s was the only business left open on its block. Even that was debatable, as they had left their mesh security gates across the front window.

  A heavyset lookout was leaning on the gate—a wise precaution at a gang hangout. I parked my Olds where I could see it from the window and told the lookout, “Anybody messes with my car I’ll kick your ass.”

  Strangling his protest with a Leavenworth Look he’d remember, I shoved through the door into the sort of joint where only the bartender could afford to play the jukebox. It was a quiet, dim, sad, sorry notch below a “Friends in Low Places” country honkytonk like River End, where all but the poorest had pickup trucks, rudimentary skills with shovel and chainsaw, and mothers to go home to when their spouses threw them out.

  Things got even quieter when I took a stool near the door and studied the room in the back bar mirror. Perhaps the dozen beer drinkers hard-eyeing me back saw a guy dumped by his girl, looking to ease the pain by punching somebody out. Or maybe they noticed my shortage of Spanish ancestors—though in fact I spotted two broad Sicilians as well as a blue-eyed bruiser who I’d have bet money was on leave from the Irish Republican Army, and a graying woman two stools down who had started life as a blonde. No, the real reason for quiet became apparent when the bartender nodded to a couple of thugs who wandered outside to look for my backup.

  They thought I was a cop. I didn’t really look like a cop. But I had the general build, and when I wore a sports jacket and open shirt, I did sort of look like a cop who was trying not to look like a cop. This came in handy, because a cop trying not to look like a cop was taken very seriously by a certain element.

  I ordered a beer and slapped two fresh twenties on the Formica. “This one’s for the beer.” I pushed it toward the bartender. “This one’s for Little John Martello.” I wasn’t feeling subtle.

  “You’re in the wrong bar, mister.”

  “Does that mean Martello doesn’t drink here? Or you don’t like my face?”

  The bartender was not looking for a fight—at least until he got a report on my backup. “This is Latin Popes. Martello is Knights.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “It means,” said the woman two stools down, “that if Little John Martello were to walk in here, someone would shoot him. As he knows that, he is unlikely to walk in.”

  I looked at her. She was large in a loose housedress, had a husky cigarette voice, wrinkling biceps, and—despite the wreckage of hard-lived years—the commanding demeanor of a Nightengale-Bamford School headmistress.

  When you don’t give a damn, you don’t get distracted worrying what’ll happen next. I said, “The state police gang file says he drinks here.”

  “It’s out of date. Half the people in that file are in jail, dead, or switched sides. Little John joined the Knights.”

  “Who are the Knights?”

  “Drugdealing, murdering, backstabbing terrorist thugs.”

  “I’ve heard the same said about the Popes.”

  Three gangsters rushed to defend their honor. I swung off the stool, intending to take out the left and the right before dealing with the big one in the middle, but the woman waved them off. They slunk back to their beers, muttering threats.

  She said, “If you want to get killed, why not try skydiving?”

  “Who are you?” I didn’t want to talk to a woman, and I certainly didn’t want to fight one.

  “I’m president of the Latin Popes.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Ben Abbott from Newbury, Madame President. It’s up north. Martello knows the way.”

  “How’d he find it?”

  “That’s what I want to know.”

  “How’d you find your way to Waterbury?”

  “Used to come down to watch the Cincinnati Reds farm team.”

  She sneered. “People like you commute to Hartford and Stamford, split by five; New Haven for school or the theater; Bridgeport for the ferry. Does anybody in Newbury give a damn about the disaster in Waterbury?”

  Maybe I could slug it out with a woman. “Listen, lady, Waterbury used to be called the Brass City. It was the Silicon Valley of its day, when clocks and locks and metal instruments carried the day. A friend of mine, Al Bell, owned a factory here. He told me a story that might help you understand what’s going on: Once upon a time, early in World War Two, engineers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute sent their latest engineering breakthrough to a Waterbury wire factory. It was a length of wire so thin they delivered it with a microscope. Top that! The Waterbury boys drilled a hole through it.”

  “What’s your point?”

  “Along came plastic, and they were history. Point is, neighborhoods and cities are more than location, they’re functions of time and purpose as well as place. Waterbury’s time and purpose have gone.”

  “Splendid theory, Mr. Abbott. What about the people who live here?”

  “They need a function or they better move.” I was really getting harsh, though it didn’t make me feel better.

  She turned away, motioning the bartender for more rye.

  Curious about this smart-talking oddball, I asked, “Where you from?”

  “Grosse Pointe.”

  “Jesus Christ, Grosse Pointe set the standard for urban flight. And you’re on my case for Newbury?”

  “I didn’t ask to be born there.”

  “Your grandfather made his money
with his hands, right?”

  “Clutch plates.”

  “Your dad with his brain.”

  “Ford division chief.”

  “You studied art history in college.”

  “English lit.”

  “While you were wallowing in Jane Austen, Japanese fathers got busy with their hands, built better cars, new materials, plastic instead of brass.”

  “So it’s my fault?”

  “No, I blame your father. Should have made you study engineering. How’d you go from English lit to street gangs?”

  “Chicago. Days of Rage.”

  “Weathermen?” I guess my brows shot up at that—’Sixties history, live, two stools down.

  “Surprised you know,” she said.

  “Studied it in prep school.”

  “Thanks for that reminder of my age.”

  “You’ve been breaking windows your whole life?”

  “Somebody has to. As long as people like you use theories like yours to blame the Popes for looking after themselves.”

  “I don’t blame groups. I blame Mr. Martello and friend who broke into my house looking after themselves.”

  “I don’t have much good to say about Little John. But I’m curious what you think his options are. Do you think he chose to rob your house instead of taking a job at IBM? Do you imagine him saying to his buddy, Yo, Spider, whatch wanna do today, write some new software, or rob a house?”

  “How would you feel if he and Spider robbed your place?”

  “They already have. Let me tell you, Mr. Abbott, it doesn’t feel that much different than the cops tossing the place. At least the burglars don’t hate you.”

  I didn’t see much point in calling up solidarity by telling her that I too knew what it felt like to have your home tossed.

  “Do you own this bar?”

  She looked at me as if I hadn’t understood a word she had said.

  “Are you serious? If they kick me off welfare, I’ll be living in a box.”

  “Are you really president of the Popes?”

  “Are you really paying for information?”

  I slid her the twenty. She said, yes, she was president of the Waterbury Chapter.

  “How’d you get the job?”

  “Since the men are mostly in jail, we make them president of inside chapters and women head of outside chapters. In my particular case, I’ve had some experience organizing, so I rose to my level. Got any more money?”