The Inglorious Arts

by Alan Hruska

  “They expect me back with my daughter and Miss Madigan well within the hour. If not, they will assume we’re dead, or as good as, and will blast this island out of the water. Your accounts will be seized in every country of the world. Your other assets will be confiscated. There will be nothing left to you, or of you. Do you understand?”

  “The threat?” Sal says, as if it were trivial. “Yes, of course. So I will give you another to think about. I want you to return to your boat on the beach, putter it as fast as you can to the big boat in the channel, have them turn that around, and sail away. You have forty minutes from now to accomplish that.” He looks at the grandfather clock behind him. “Because, in that time, if not done, we will remove one limb of one of these young women and place it on a board on the beach—so that your telescopes can confirm we do what we say. Every five minutes, if your vessels are still in my harbor, another amputation. No anesthesia. Until both of them are quadriplegics. You understand that?”

  In high-jumping parlance, it’s called the Western roll, where the lead leg is kicked up vigorously to lift the body into a layout over the bar. Not normally done from a standing position, but it can be, especially if there’s no bar. It’s much better, though, with a two-step stride. So in the middle of Sal’s speech, Alec takes two unsuspicious steps backward, then strides and leaps, feet first, blade extended, over Sal’s desk and into his neck, the thrust kicking over Sal’s chair. The capo famiglia falls flat on the floor, blood spurting from his jugular vein. In seconds, he is dead, and Alec is back up on his feet. Lou DiBrazzi, who had foreseen no need to arm himself in a room filled with soldati, hurls himself at the intruder, only to receive a kick in the groin that leaves him castrated and, in seconds, unconscious and dying.

  Extraordinarily, none of the soldiers fires his gun, Alec’s leap, perhaps, being too fast and unexpected. Or in the small space, they feared shooting the capo himself. There is now the silence of shocked troops. And three lives, Alec’s brain screams at him, depend on it! He addresses himself to the man who, he guesses, would be the ranking officer in the room. “You have a decision to make, Nicoli. It will be the most important you have ever made, and it must be made now. Immediately. You can carry out this dead man’s threat, and kill everyone else here, including yourself. Or you can allow these two young women to leave with me, which will allow you to live and take charge of the family business.”

  “Whatever’s left of it,” Gura says with an ironical twist to his mouth.

  “That too, I think, would depend on your actions.”

  “And how do I know that, once you go, your navy won’t start bombing and strafing?”

  “You don’t. I can’t guarantee it. I will argue for it, I promise you that. And once you’ve shown your good faith by releasing us, what incentive does the United States Navy have to risk lives or pump costly missiles into your people and their sheds?”

  Nicoli surveys the three soldiers, who look back to him for instructions. He shows only indecision. “I’ve known you for five minutes. I just watched you kill two people. How can I trust anything you say?”

  “You don’t have to, Nicoli. Rely on what you know, because it’s obvious. Those ships out there—why did they come and who did they come for? Obvious. They came here at my request and for these young women. They’re not going to leave until they have us on board. Your chance to survive—and your only chance—is to permit that to happen. Right now! Any other decision—they will commence bombing, and they will invade. And you will not like that, even if you survive the bombing. They will not deal well with you when they arrive.”

  “I could send you back with the message that Don Salvatore suggested.”

  “Two things about that,” Alec notes, as if providing legal counsel. “Though it’s been only five minutes for us, I don’t see you as the kind of man who would amputate body parts from women. Just my read. But even if I believed the threat, there are hundreds of men on that destroyer who will be racing toward this island if they don’t see the three of us on a boat within minutes. And the bombing will start as soon as they embark. So do we all live, Nicoli, or are you—for absolutely no good reason of your own—about to bring the fires of hell down on us all?”

  Gura hesitates only briefly. “Go. And take the women. Though it’s been only five minutes, I will trust your word.”

  Time is most assuredly of the essence. Everyone involved knows it. Gura even helps get them aboard and brings two of the men to assist them. He also points east of the shore. “That way,” he says, “to avoid the riptide.” On the landing craft, Alec runs the motor and navigates; Sarah and Jesse sit grimly; no one speaks. The wind is up and whipping into their faces; the boat rocks, water spatters in everyone’s eyes, but as the destroyer gets nearer, the prospect of safety—a miracle ten minutes before—now seems palpably real.

  Alec approaches the bow of the larger ship, slides along its starboard side, and cuts the motor as two seamen rope them in. The entire craft is pulleyed up the hull. Arms on deck lift Sarah and Jesse to waiting medical attendants, while Alec is escorted to the quarterdeck. A young ensign brings him to Ned Townsend, who looks up from a map of Angiapello Island. “Is your return the result of negotiation or heroics?”

  “The shoes were useful,” Alec says. “Thanks.”

  “So you killed him? Angiapello?”

  “He looked dead to me. As did some guy who looked like the chief lieutenant. The departure was negotiated from there.”

  “What did you agree to give up?”

  “Nothing. No promises. But I did agree to argue leniency. For their lives and their business.”

  “Their illegal business.”

  “Yes.”

  “I can’t do that,” Townsend says.

  “You could give them something.”

  “Their lives would be plenty.”

  “You don’t really have to bomb their farm,” Alec says.

  “You mean the hemp fields?”

  “Yes.”

  Townsend laughs. “All right. I suppose they’re a very small part of that market. But I’ve got two missiles that will sink their munitions into the sea. That’s on orders from the vice admiral.”

  “Fair deal.”

  “You’re probably a pretty good lawyer.”

  “Yeah, well, right now I could use a bed.”

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Alec is awakened by the glare of the sea beamed like a spotlight through the porthole of his cabin. He struggles out into the passageway. A passing seaman puts him in course for the officers’ wardroom, where Ned Townsend is finishing breakfast with Lee Norris and Harvey Grant. “Help yourself,” Townsend says, gesturing toward a side-table buffet. “Should still be warm.” Wasn’t, but Alec eats eggs and toast anyway after downing a glass of OJ.

  Townsend says, “We’re letting your daughter use our radiophone. It’s contrary to the book, but—after her ordeal—it’s the least we could do. And speaking of bending regulations, she went jogging this morning on the deck.”

  Harvey laughs, familiar with Sarah’s habits. Norris says, “And she breezed by here for a roll and jam. With a few words about last night. I’d say, you’re on a roll. A Western roll into an evil gang lord? Christ, man! Are you now going to be impossible to live with?”

  “She regaled you?”

  “She told us what happened, Alec.”

  “Not an objective observer.” Alec, going for coffee, says, “Anyone seen Jesse?”

  “She’s still in her cabin, I think,” Townsend says.

  “Which is where?”

  “Go back to yours and turn right.”

  “And?” Alec says. “Go how far?”

  “A foot or two. She’s in the next cabin.”

  Everyone but Alec seems to find that hilarious.

  Sarah’s in the control room on the phone with Tino, who had been waiting for her call for two days. “You’re where?” he says.

  “On a Navy destroyer. They’re allowing me to use their phone,
but only for a minute, and I’m not alone.”

  “Give me a hint. What the hell are you doing on a Navy destroyer?”

  “Escaping from your uncle’s island. He’s dead, by the way. He kidnapped me, and Alec killed him.”

  “Oh my God!”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “I want to hear it!”

  “I know, I know, but now I have to go.”

  “But you’re okay?” Tino says.

  “Absolutely.”

  “I was going out of my mind.”

  “Yeah” she says. “Figured. That’s why I called. I’ll be back soon and tell you all about it.”

  “This is really crazy.”

  “What? My calling you from a destroyer?”

  “Everything about this is crazy.”

  “You weren’t thinking of ‘everything.’ ”

  “Yes, everything,” he says. “Including the fact that I think I’m my uncle’s heir.”

  “Oh for Christ’s sake.”

  “You and I together may have more dirty money than almost anyone alive.”

  “Then it’s not really ours,” she says, “and we should put it to good use.”

  “Together?”

  “We’ll see, Tino. We’ll decide that when we grow up.”

  Alec knocks. Hearing no answer, he tries the door. It swings open, and he steps into the room. Jesse sits on the bed. She wears the uniform skirt and blouse of a female naval officer, which were, presumably, the only fresh clothes they had to give her.

  “How you feeling?” Alec asks.

  “Stupid,” she says. “That’s how I feel.”

  “Because of the uniform?”

  “No, Alec. Because of my bad judgment.”

  “Anyone can be conned.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “Okay,” he says carefully, inviting more.

  She says, putting her hands flat down at her sides, “At the worst, after being drugged and assaulted by those subhuman creatures—when everything looked absolutely hopeless—Sarah never lost faith. She knew. She knew you would come, she was certain of it. And that you would rescue us.”

  “You were less sure.”

  “Less sure?” Jesse laughs. “I only hoped you wouldn’t try anything that reckless. That crazy reckless. And then you show up with the goddamn United States Navy in your pocket! I mean, Jesus, Alec! How the fuck did you do that?”

  “I thought the interesting accessory was the shoe blade.”

  “Ha! That was amazing, yes.”

  “So what do you think now?” he asks.

  “About what?” she says.

  “The going through hell part?”

  “Whether you’d do it?”

  “For you, yes,” Alec says. “You had a question about that.”

  “Well, Sarah was there too.”

  “So your 50 percent share of my going through hell isn’t good enough?”

  “No, it’s good enough,” she says. “Thank God you did, for my life, but you didn’t have to for my state of mind. I’d already recognized how stupid I’d been.”

  “I won’t ask you when.”

  “About five minutes after walking out of our apartment.”

  “Our apartment?” he says.

  “Yes,” she says. “That’s how it felt. When I left it.”

  Alec sits next to her on the bed. “So I don’t want this to get any sappier than it’s now becoming, but I feel I must say this. The commander of our ship—one Addison J. Townsend—has the power to—”

  “Yes,” Jesse says, interrupting. “I will.”

  “Will what?”

  “He can do marriages at sea,” she says, “and we should ask him for one.”

  “How’s your schedule for this afternoon?” he asks.

  “What’s wrong with now?”

  “Now?” he says as casually as he can make it sound. “Works for me.”

  THIRTY-NINE

  Thirty days come and go. Not a single public utility in the United States files suit against Allis-Benoit or Edison Electric. So that crisis passes, with only a very few people ever having known it had occurred.

  Breck Schlumberger, assistant attorney general for the Antitrust Division, files a stipulation of voluntary dismissal, agreeing to put an end to the largest and most notorious civil lawsuit in the history of mankind. Judge Ettinger refuses to sign it. He gets mandamused for a fourth time, and again excoriated by the Court of Appeals, which extinguishes the case with finality. In short order, the rest of the world forgets all about that.

  Alec Brno and Jesse Madigan, having been married aboard ship, take up residence once more in Grantland Rice’s old apartment on Ninety-Seventh Street. Jesse now makes movies—indie films she writes and directs—which she enjoys doing immensely, with some critical, though not yet any commercial, success. Alec continues to deal, in court and out, with the misadventures of other people. Some of these professional exploits attract public attention, which quickly fades. No one forgets, however, that it was the freakish fortune of the lawyer with the odd name to have executed two crowned heads of the Mafia.

  Years after the incident on Angiapello Island, Sarah and Tino, having both graduated from college and law school, establish their own charitable foundation. They live together happily but aren’t married. “Why not?” Jesse asks from time to time. Sarah answers with another question, “If it ain’t broke, why fix it?” To which Jesse responds, “Not broke, my dear girl, is one thing. There’s another that’s infinitely better. Just ask your dad.”

  “Oh, him,” Sarah says. “He’s as besotted as you are.”

  About the Author

  Alan Hruska is the author of the novels Wrong Man Running, Pardon the Ravens, and It Happened at Two in the Morning, the writer of several plays produced in New York and London, and the writer and director of the films Reunion, The Warrior Class, and, most recently, The Man on Her Mind. A New York native and a graduate of Yale University and Yale Law School, he is a former trial lawyer who was involved in the some of the most significant litigation of the last half of the twentieth century. The Inglorious Arts is his fifth novel. Learn more at alanhruska.com

  The Alec Brno Novels from Prospect Park Books

  Pardon the Ravens

  Gifted young New York lawyer Alec Brno gets the career boost of a lifetime: the opportunity to try a huge fraud case making international headlines. But he risks it all when he falls for an alluring young woman whose estranged husband is a sadistic Mafia don—and the criminal mastermind behind Alec’s case.

  This fast-paced legal thriller set in the Mad Men era grabs you and doesn’t let go. Moving from Wall Street power centers to Maine fishing towns, Pardon the Ravens follows Alec’s journey as he deals with corporate crime, Mob cruelty, a high-stakes courtroom battle, and the frantic race to save the life of the damaged woman he loves.

  The Inglorious Arts

  Alec Brno, first introduced in Pardon the Ravens, is tested again by overlapping personal and professional crises. Early on, he’s asked to rescue his firm’s oldest corporate client, who is being sued vindictively by a giant public utility, as well as the firm’s largest client, embroiled in a politically motivated suit before a lunatic federal judge. To avoid crippling results, and the loss of more than 200,000 jobs, Alec must somehow get rid of both cases almost immediately and stop thousands of others from suing.

  This seemingly impossible assignment arrives as Alec’s adopted sixteen-year-old daughter, the inheritor of a Mafia fortune, is targeted in a sex-slave scheme by her uncle, the capo famiglia. Distractions only intensify when Alec’s beautiful sister-in-law, who arrives from Dublin, looking and acting so much like his deceased wife, becomes a board piece in the Mob game. The Inglorious Arts follows Alec’s heroics as he deals with corporate intrigues, political maneuvering, two high-stakes courtroom battles, Mob terror, and the frantic race to save the lives of the women he loves.

  lan Hruska, The Inglorious Arts