All the Dead Yale Men

by Craig Nova

  So, they took them from her. When they were done her nose was bleeding onto her clothes, and she turned toward the camera in the police car, her hands cuffed behind her as she said, “Frank, didn’t you understand love? You’re breaking my heart. Can’t you see?”

  The next day they showed the tape to Maxwell Jenkins, a tight-assed man if there ever was one, who had caught this case, and he was in my office in an instant. As fast as he could get there without running. I told him that Pauline and I had been involved, and that she thought I had made a promise.

  “Did you?” he said.

  “What?” I said.

  “Did you promise her diamonds in exchange for sexual favors?”

  A film of sweat appeared on his forehead and on his upper lip, which showed he thought maybe he was really onto something.

  In the hall, the sound of a woman’s high-heeled shoes sunk into the first migraine headache I have ever had, a spike into a jellyfish. It was up to Jenkins how she was going to be charged. I sat down.

  “Cat got your tongue, Frank?” said Jenkins.

  “No,” I said. “Of course not. I didn’t offer her diamonds for anything.” He polished his shoes on the back of his pant legs. It was a way of hiding his disappointment. “But,” I said. “I want to ask you something.”

  “You mean like a favor?” he said.

  “That’s right,” I said.

  “I bet I can guess. Oh, I bet I can. You want me to go easy. Isn’t that right, Frank? What are you doing hanging around with these cheap sluts?”

  “Max . . . ,” I said. I got out of the chair.

  He stepped back, just like that.

  “You don’t have to get that way, Frank,” said Jenkins. “Take it easy. Take it easy.”

  He went into the hall, his shoes squeaking where the woman’s high heels had made that tapping, and even from my office, it was possible to hear Jenkins say, into each door he passed, “Get this. Mackinnon wants us to go easy on his squeeze.” Then he came into my office and showed me the previous charges that had been entered on Pauline’s sheet. Resisting arrest, sale of marijuana, possession of stolen property, fraud, trafficking in stolen credit cards. Her father and mother had been arrested, too, many times, since they had a chop shop, a place that reduced stolen cars to auto parts, which they sold around New England. Pauline had grown up in the business and had been arrested for transporting just about everything: carburetors, alternators, computers, air bags, all packed up in boxes that looked brand new. She had moved up in the business, too, and had been involved as an organizer of the distribution of parts as far as Miami. The Cubans had been great customers. But then she had quit all of that, at least for a while.

  “I’m asking you for a favor,” I said.

  “Well, Frank,” said Jenkins. “I can only do that if she buys a plea.”

  Of course, she insisted on a trial, and when at the end I went to see her in the courtroom, she faced me, her eyes at once as attractive as they had ever been, as though this trouble was the kind of thing that made her so desirable. “That man,” she said. She pointed at me. “Right there. He failed me. Don’t you see? Frank, I’m sorry for you. I could have made you so happy,” the judge hammering the gavel all along and then called to the bailiff to turn her around and to make her shut up. I went out of the room, hearing her call, “Frank, Frank, Frank. No one can love you the way I did. And you threw it away. Don’t you remember? You were supposed to protect me.”

  She was sentenced to a year and a half.

  About ten years ago I was in court. The halls were marbled and appeared like a mausoleum. There is nothing like the hall of a courtroom: the indifferent formality of the floors and walls perfectly confront the troubled if not desperate nature of the people who wait there, their expression one of hoping for the best, but knowing the worst is probably going to come. Mixed in with that is the endless waiting for an attorney, for a new schedule, for a delay, as though you could get somewhere by putting something off, when in fact you were just making the anxious moment last forever.

  Jeremiah Gordon, another district attorney, stood in the hall with his British suits, his shirts with the white collars and white cuffs and colored sleeves and fronts, the bow tie perfectly tied. He said, “Hey, Frank. You remember your squeeze from a while back?”

  “Who?” I said.

  “You know,” he said. “The one who broke the window and took those diamonds.”

  High-heeled shoes and cops’ brogans echoed in the hall, the sound at once chaotic and familiar.

  “Step in here for a moment. You remember her name?”

  Pauline stood with her same posture, perfectly straight, but coiled, still defiant. She was in her thirties now, hair with a little less sheen, but somehow her vitality, her kill-the-world-for-pleasure quality, was stronger than ever, as if she had had time to stand at more dangerous cliffs than I could imagine. She turned her head and tossed her hair just the way she used to years before. She smiled and said, “Frank, why how nice to see you. I bet you don’t feel bad yet, do you?” Then she faced the judge, who asked if she understood the charges against her, the details of trafficking in stolen car parts, which she had gone back to as though by gravity, and the fact that she had been arrested while she was carrying a specific amount of cocaine. The pickup truck she drove had been loaded with stolen air bags and a transmission for a Porsche. She nodded, but then she turned back to me.

  “Frank,” she said. “You should be charged here, too. If you just had the courage to love, I wouldn’t be here at all.”

  He sentenced her to five years. She was led out by two bailiffs, one on each arm, and as she looked over her shoulder she said, “Frank, I’ll bet you’ll end up in trouble, you know that? It will sneak up you. And you know why it will happen? Because you try to be careful. Because you think feelings can be hidden.”

  [ CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE ]

  THE NEWSSTAND IN Harvard Square is, by comparison with the people who surround it, a sort of temple of the serene. The sidewalk is filled with the jugglers, the three-card monte boys, one woman with a piercing in her nose who held a sign that said FORTUNES TOLD. FINANCE: $6. LOVE: $9. Next to her were the tie-dye shirt sellers (the one product that seems as constant as toilet paper), competing guitarists, each with a battery-powered amplifier, one singing “I Want to Be Sedated,” one more retro, all hammering away for a dollar or two or to maintain some ever-receding dream. There, in the middle, stood the kiosk with the newspapers laid out on overturned milk crates. The Globe said, in large type, CITY COUNCILMAN INDICTED. KICKBACK SCHEME WITH ORGANIZED CRIME FIGURE, MANNY VERRAZANO, FOR SUBSTANDARD CONCRETE.

  “Hey,” said the news vendor with a change apron on his fat belly. “Are you going to pay for that or just walk away?”

  “Oh,” I said. “Sorry.”

  The dollar disappeared into his hand like a rat devoured by a snake.

  “They’re going to fry that guy, I’ll tell you that,” said the vendor. He tapped the story. “He can just bend over and kiss his ass good bye.”

  “You think so?” I said.

  “Does a bear do it in the woods?” he said.

  “I guess,” I said.

  “No guessing, Jack,” he said. He put a finger onto the front of the Globe. “This character is roadkill.”

  He arranged the girly magazines, one just covering the front of another. The store window behind me, where I read the newspaper, smelled of the donuts the place sold. The news vendor was probably right: Boston loved a scandal, as though it was a way of knowledge, a morality play, the same pattern shown again and again, like something from the Middle Ages. The accusation, the denials, the outrage, the fight to the death.

  The Raver moved sideways, along the newly cleaned window, his hair in the wind that carried the scent of a recent shampoo.

  “Remember . . . ,” he said to me, his hand picking at my sleeve, then turning the paper so he could see the front page. “The good and just and beautiful, which generates and
holds together all things . . . And thou wilt give thyself relief, if thou doest every act of thy life as if it were the last.”

  In the fourth paragraph the story said that they had the councilman on tape, soliciting a bribe and giving his guarantees that the thickness of the concrete, poured for a new road, and the depth of the gravel beneath it, would never be checked. After the jump, next to an ad for Feline’s, was a picture from the tape. Grainy, but all the more damning for that.

  “Listen to me,” said the Raver. “Listen. You are worried. Did you pour the lousy cement?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Hey,” said the Raver to a man who stood behind a card table covered with neatly folded tie-dye shirts. “Where’s your contribution? Didn’t I tell you this spot costs? Pony up or move on . . . ”

  One of the musicians started in on “I Want to Be Sedated” again, and the woman with the piercing and the three-card monte boys all looked hungrily at the ten dollars I dropped into the musician’s cigar box. The opened lid had a painting of a woman with dark hair in a gold burst. My father had used cigars, sent to him in a Red Cross care package from his father, to trade for blood sausage in Poland.

  •••

  The barbed wire was bright at the top of the fence, and the piles of cars still stood with that modern solidity, as stern as those faces on Easter Island. I had gotten this far, but the coming scandal and the loss of Pia’s trust (if it looked as if I had lied to her) were right there, as definite as those piles of broken automobiles and as tragic, too.

  Yana was at the computer, as always, her white hands on the white keys. But every now and then a woman walked behind Yana’s chair, her gait familiar and pleasant, a mature woman but still oddly sultry. Her hair was dyed red and her freckles showed when she turned and made the short walk, about fifteen feet, before she turned again. Then she came up to the window, her eyes set on mine: it had been a long time, but even so we stood there, mesmerized, unblinking, surprised.

  The samovar gave off a wisp of steam, like a thin beard on an old man, but the tea, with that exotic scent, was just waiting. A couple of clean cups sat on the plywood counter, although only one had a handle. Stas’s chair was empty. Outside the wind moaned between those stacks of cars, which seemed like evidence of sudden and yet hidden violence.

  “Here, Frank,” said Pauline. “Let me get you some tea.”

  The samovar made a trickling sound as she filled the cup with the handle.

  “You want a cookie?” she said. “Chocolate chip. From that upscale bakery in town. I remember you had a sweet tooth.”

  The tea was the temperature of a kiss. Yana typed, then scrolled through a page of photos and Pauline said, “No. Those are twice what they should be.”

  The samovar made that trickling sound. Pauline offered a cookie, holding it out as though it was a way of reaching across those years. It was sweet and buttery.

  “So, Frank?” said Pauline. She was still thin, more knowledgeable, it seemed, than ever. “How have you been?”

  “I came to see Stas,” I said. “Do you know where he is?”

  “And what about me, Frank,” she said. “Aren’t you glad to see me?”

  “Of course,” I said.

  “Just listen to him,” she said to Yana. “Butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth, would it? What a cool one you are, Frank.”

  “Why are you here?” I said.

  “Business. I was born and bred to the trade. My father taught me. Didn’t you read my sheet all those years ago, or were you too busy trying to pretend you didn’t know me?”

  “I tried to help,” I said.

  “Tried to help,” she said. “Now isn’t that something?” She turned to Yana. “You hear that?”

  Yana scrolled down the page.

  “There,” said Pauline. “We can do something with those air bags. Are they genuine Mannhausers? At that price they may be phony. How many have they got?”

  “Three hundred,” said Yana.

  “Maybe we can knock them down a little?” said Pauline. And as she looked at the screen, she said, “It’s funny how things work out, Frank. I was in Florida, you know, looking for a deal on parts and I make an offer to Yana, and we get to talking and she says she knows you. How about that? So I thought I might come up and see how things are doing in my old stomping grounds.”

  She turned, her eyes that same blue, at once furious and filled with grief or regret. As though it was stronger after simmering for twenty-five years. She seemed youthful, although she was tired, and dropped her eyes, as though showing them to me was hard work.

  “You two were close?” said Yana.

  “It seemed that way,” said Pauline. “Didn’t it, Frank?”

  “We were close,” I said.

  “Ah,” said Pauline. “But not close enough.”

  “That’s right,” I said. “I didn’t understand.”

  She stepped closer, her nose just inches away from mine.

  “And what would you have done if you had understood?” she said.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “It was a long time ago.”

  “Some people, they just move on. They get married. They have a kid. Like Frank here. He’s got a daughter, don’t you, Frank? Is she beautiful?”

  “What are you crying for?” said Yana. “I don’t want a kid. That’s for sure.”

  “Wait until you’re a little older,” said Pauline.

  Yana shrugged. She scrolled another page of air bags.

  “Those look good, too,” said Pauline.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “We were young. What did we know?”

  “You were young,” she said. “Not me. No, sir. I didn’t get to grow up that way. In the auto parts business, you have to learn the ropes pretty fast.”

  “I guess,” I said.

  “There’s no guessing about it,” said Pauline. She wiped her eyes with a handkerchief, which she put back in the pocket of her black jeans. “I guess you went around and broke a lot of other hearts, just for the hell of it, huh?”

  “No,” I said. “It did something to me, too. You think it didn’t?”

  “Can I believe that?” she said.

  “Why not?” I said. “Why would I lie now?”

  She shrugged.

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “Well,” I said to Yana. “Tell Stas I came by to see him.”

  “Sure,” said Yana. “Have you got a message for him?”

  “Just tell him I came by,” I said.

  Yana shrugged.

  The door came open with a squeak, like something caught in a trap, and then the air, tinted with oil and plastic seats that have been out in the sun, blew into the room. Keys clicked. Then Pauline followed me outside. The wind moved through those piles of cars.

  “It was good to see you,” I said.

  “Fuck that,” she said. “Don’t be so polite. You don’t want to see me.”

  We listened to the wind.

  “Did it really do something to you?” she said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Why do you ask?”

  “It might make a difference,” she said.

  The stink of oil, the earthy scent, a few sad blades of grass, the icy triangles of glass.

  “You look worried, Frank,” she said. “I wonder why that is?”

  I shrugged.

  “Nothing special,” I said. “Work. Time. Nothing special.”

  “You never were a good liar,” she said.

  “No,” I said. “I never was. I just tried not to feel certain things. But that catches up with you. One day, well, you make a hash of things, like a case, and you did it because you had so much under wraps.”

  “I warned you,” she said. “Don’t you remember?”

  She cried, leaned against me, trembled there: in that touch the years took on a new weight, as though a hundred times more heavy now, in confronting them, than in just looking the other way.

  “So, Frank,” she said. “I want you to ask me
something.”

  “What’s that?” I said.

  “Ask for my help,” she said.

  “What kind of help is that?” I said.

  “Don’t be stupid,” she said. “It’s clear enough. You can do it or not.”

  “OK,” I said.

  “That’s not asking,” she said.

  “All right,” I said. “Will you help?”

  “I’ll think about it. Maybe I’d like to watch you twist in the wind,” she said. Then she put her hands on my chest and shoved me away. “Get out of here. Go on. Leave me alone. That’s what you were good at.”

  I drove away but still glanced up, from time to time, to the rear-view mirror. She stood with her arms crossed beneath her breasts, the wind moving her hair, her eyes set on the car. A blimp floated overhead, silver and swollen as it towed a sign that said LOWEST MORTGAGE LOANS. MANCHESTER BANK. COME IN TODAY.

  [ CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO ]

  AT THE END of June the box for a pregnancy test sat in the wastebasket in the upstairs bathroom in my house, the one next to Pia’s room, although she had her own apartment in Cambridge now. Robert probably lived there, too. Here, in her bathroom at home, the wallpaper was the same as when she had been a child: sail boats on little waves, with sailors, in blue hats, hiking out over blue water, their teeth as white as whale bone. And, for a moment, the question was why she had brought the pregnancy test here, to her old bathroom. So, I put the pregnancy box back in the trash, although now I buried it under the used Kleenex and tissue that had been on the bottom. Then I sat on the turned-down toilet seat, with a little sort of blue rug on it, and considered the facts.

  The little stick was blue.

  Pia sat downstairs in my study. Robert was about to arrive. I had invited him for the weekend on that land along the Delaware River. We’d spend some time in the woods, along the water, maybe gather some watercress at the top of a seep where the bear appeared from time to time. And, of course, I thought we would have a picnic where the cress grew.

  Pia and Robert hadn’t yet enrolled, but they both had their first-year law books and were already reading them.