A Season in Purgatory (28 page)

Harrison nodded. “Who are you protecting yourself from?” he asked.

The question was ignored. “But,” said the man, “as Maxine always says, if they’re going to get you, they’re going to get you, no matter what kind of security you got. Right?”

“Yes, I suppose so,” agreed Harrison. “You don’t think when you’re driving up that dirt road that you’re going to find anything like this.” With a broad, two-handed gesture, Harrison indicated the impressive house in which he was standing.

“That’s the whole fuckin’ point, man,” said the man, as if he were talking to an idiot.

“Yes, of course, I see.”

“She says to tell you wait in the bar.”

“I would like to use the men’s room.”

“That way. Down that hall. Turn left. Maxine always says, ‘Turn left at the Renoir,’ but that’s her joke, not mine, so laugh when she says it, if you should happen to ask her to go to the bathroom again.”

Harrison walked down the hall. There on the wall was a Renoir-looking painting. He peered at it. He touched it. He looked at the signature. He turned left and entered the bathroom. On the wall were two urinals, as in a public bathroom. He took out a pen and notebook and made a few notes.

“ ‘Fly me to the moon,’ ”
came a second voice from the hallway, singing along with Dom Belcanto’s voice on the sound system. “I hope Pony took care of you,” Maxine Lonergan said, as she came up behind Harrison, who was sitting on a tall stool in her bar. “No drink? Pony didn’t offer you a drink?”

She had a cigarette smoker’s voice. He saw her in the mirror behind the bar before he turned and looked at her, hopping off the barstool as they shook hands.

“Miss Lonergan, I’m Harrison Burns,” he said.

“What do they call you? Harry?”

“Sometimes, yes. I prefer Harrison.”

“Then Harrison it shall be,” she said, smiling at him. “It’s a nice name. Your mother’s maiden name, I bet?”

“Yes, it was.”

She was a tall, beautifully built woman of forty-five. Her face, chiseled regularly by a doctor in Brazil to retain its youth, was expertly made-up, as if she were about to go on stage. Her hair, blond, iridescent blond, had just been done in an elaborate manner. She was dressed in off-white cashmere slacks and an off-white silk blouse opened down several buttons. She wore no brassiere. Around her neck and on her
wrists, fingers, and ears were a great many diamonds. “The daytime stuff,” she said later, waving her hands in front of him, when he remarked on them. She walked behind the bar, snapping her fingers in time to the Dom Belcanto song on the sound system. There was about her a sense of friendliness and good humor.

“There better be ice out here, or somebody’s going to lose her job. And there’s not. Concepcion,” she called out, rolling her eyes. “Con-cept-tione.
¿Donde està el hielo?
That’s Spanish for where’s the fucking ice,” she explained to Harrison.

A Mexican maid rushed into the room with a Lucite ice bucket.

“
Gracias, Conception
,” said Maxine, taking the bucket. “And bring us some munchies. Or your guacamole dip.”

“Si, señora.”

“What will you have?” she asked Harrison. “You name it, we got it. This is what is known as a well-stocked bar.”

“Just Perrier,” he said.

She made a face at his choice. “I might have a little champagne myself. You sure you don’t want to join me? The best money can buy,” she said, waving a bottle of Dom Perignon in front of him.

“No, thanks.”

She closed her eyes for a minute as she listened to the music, singing along with Dom Belcanto’s voice. “Was he the greatest, or was he the greatest?” she asked. She didn’t expect an answer. With eyes cast heavenward, she shouted out, “Oh, Belcanto, wherever you are, I love you, Belcanto.”

“Are you a singer?”

She laughed. “No.”

“An actress?”

“No.”

“What?”

“I’m an ex-party girl who did well,” she said. “Now I raise cattle. Santa Gertrudis cattle, to be exact. It’s a crossbreed. Developed at the King Ranch in Texas about forty years ago. They’re red, like the picture on the mailbox.”

“Your place looks huge,” said Harrison.

“Not really. Couple a thousand acres. Take the Obregon Ranch farther down the Patagonia Highway. Now, that’s huge.”

Harrison nodded.

“I take it you were a friend of my son’s?” she said.

“No, I actually never met your son. I’ve just heard about him,” said Harrison. “I’m writing a piece on a possible insurance fraud on the death certificate of a man named Esmond Bland, and your son’s name figured in my investigation.”

She nodded. “I get letters all the time from men who loved him. Rich guys. Prince somebody, what’shisname? Flew him to Rabat, in Morocco. A couple of Hollywood studio heads. On and on. You’re not one of those guys?”

“No.”

“Oh. I got that screwed up, I guess. Dwane had something. There’s no two ways about it. There’s this myth building up about Dwane. Like James Dean.”

“I have seen Esme Bland.”

“She still in the nuthouse?”

“Yes. In Maine. The Cranston Institute. She is ill.”

“I’ll say she’s ill. She’s loony. She shot my kid. Right between the eyes.”

“I meant that she is terminally ill. She has cancer. She wants to leave you some money in her will. I don’t think she has any idea you live in this manner.”

“You can tell Miss Bland that Miss Lonergan don’t need her money, thank you very much.” She began to sing. “
Miss
Otis regrets, she’s unable to lunch today, madam
. Tell her to leave it to AIDS.”

“I must admit that I am confused myself by this sense of opulence about you, Miss Lonergan,” said Harrison.

“Try Maxine, Harrison.”

“You’re an unlikely candidate for home-on-the-range, Maxine,” he said.

“I’m a lady in retirement.”

“I probably shouldn’t say this, but I was expecting a trailer, or a mobile home.”

She laughed. “I wasn’t exactly born to the purple. I worked damn hard for my money. One hair from a pussy can pull a freight train, as Dwane used to say. You must know that. Dom Belcanto left me a bundle when he cooled. His wife, Pepper, wanted to contest my inheritance. It’s called the fifth-wife syndrome. Gimme, gimme, gimme. I fixed her. I said, sure, honey, sue, go ahead, and I’ll show you and the FBI and the president of the United States a few pictures of Dom and Sal and some of the boys, taken in Vegas and Havana and Hollywood, and right here at the ranch, where they came when they wanted to be really private for their confabs, if you get my point. Pepper shut up pretty quick after that. She moves in high society now. She didn’t want that to come out. After all, I serviced Dom for a good ten years, and that wasn’t always easy, especially when he was drunk and belligerent. And then, of course, there was Sal. Sal was the real love of my life.” Her eyes misted over. She pulled a flowered Kleenex from a Lucite holder on the bar and turned and faced herself in the mirror as she dealt with her tear before it could roll onto her makeup. “Took me an hour and a half to put on this face,” she said, looking at him through the mirror. “Can’t fuck it up so soon. Sal really took care of me. He bought me the ranch, the pictures, everything.”

“Sal?”

“Salvatore Cabrini. You heard about Lansky. You heard about Giancana. You heard about Trafficante. You heard about Roselli. Who you didn’t hear about was Sal Cabrini. No relation to Mother Cabrini, by the way. Not even distant cousins. Silence. That was Sal’s power. He kept a low profile. And he kept me. He would have married me. He wanted to. But he had this sick wife. Angela. Sick for years. And he wouldn’t divorce her. We kept thinking Angela was going to die, but she never did. She’s still alive. Lives in Miami. I liked that about Sal. He had honor. Then he got killed in a plane crash, flying to Miami for Angela’s birthday. Well, those are the breaks. Anyway, you know something? I’m better as a solo act. Listen, would you like to see my pictures?”

“Sure.”

“I love Monet, Van Gogh, and all that stuff,” she said. “Some of them may be hot, for all I know. Sal started giving me pictures, and I always thought it was best not to ask questions. He didn’t know shit about art. He just knew what they were worth.”

Harrison laughed. “I saw the Renoir,” he said.

“Oh, you went to the john already? Nuts. I always say, ‘Turn left at the Renoir,’ when guys ask me where the john is. Gets a laugh every time.”

“Yes. Pony showed me.”

“Sal had the urinals put in. You know, on the wall like that? Dwane used to love to stand at those urinals when he was a kid.”

“Why was your son a prostitute?” asked Harrison.

“Dwane? He liked it. He enjoyed it. It was the money, the trips, the gifts, that made him erotic. It was an exciting life. He was just another version of me. If he’d lived, he’d have settled down after thirty, thirty-five, gotten out of the business. We make very good wives, us ex-hookers.

“I had this casket flown in from L.A. Eight thousand bucks. All brass. Gorgeous. I’ll say this for Dwane. He was a beautiful corpse. I had him laid out in there at the end of the living room. Right in front of the big picture window. You could see the purple mountains beyond. It was a beautiful sight. The service was private. Just Pony and me, and Concepcion, and some of the cowboys, and the people who work on the ranch. Angela Cabrini sent flowers. I thought that was nice.”

Harrison stared at her.

“Are you staring at my tits or my diamonds?” she asked.

“Actually, your diamonds,” replied Harrison.

“Smart boy. The current boyfriend is the jealous type.”

“Oh. Tell me about him.”

“He has a very flat stomach, like yours.”

“That wasn’t what I meant.”

Maxine laughed. “I know that. I just thought I’d toss it in. Dom Belcanto had a gut on him out to here, and I just didn’t want you to think I was confined to men with that kind of figure. Actually, you already met the guy.”

“Pony, with the gun in the holster?”

“Listen, he’s honest. He works. He’s not after my money. He’s faithful. He’s a pretty good fuck, three or four times a week, usually in the morning when he wakes up horny, which is not my favorite time, but so what? He uses Scope. You can’t have everything. You want a refill on your water?”

“No.”

“Here’s a picture of Sal and Dom taken here at the ranch years ago. That kid next to Sal is Dwane when he was about thirteen or so. Cute, wasn’t he? He left home when he was about sixteen and went out on his own.” She gazed at the picture fondly. “All my fellas,” she said.

Harrison stared at the photograph. “Who’s that guy standing in the background behind Sal?” he asked.

“He used to work for Sal years ago, in slot machines in Atlantic City. Johnny Fuselli. He left Sal to go with that billionaire Gerald Bradley as a sort of right-hand man, i.e., pimp,” said Maxine. “He was all right, Johnny, but he wasn’t a player, not in the league with Sal and Lansky and those other guys. Strictly second echelon. Third, even.”

“Small world,” said Harrison. “I used to know him, sort of.”

“Tell me this, Harrison. How would a guy like you ever meet up with a guy like Johnny Fuselli?”

“One of the Bradley kids was a friend of mine in school. I used to spend time with that family. That’s where I saw Fuselli.”

“Do you know what Sal thought about Gerald Bradley? Not much. That’s what he thought. ‘Don’t be deceived by appearances,’ Sal said to me once, after I saw Gerald in Vegas. Horny guy. He put the make on me and then sent me a fur coat. Sal said, ‘He puts on airs and sends his kids to fancy schools and gets them into posh clubs and mixes with the high and mighty, but I know the real truth about the guy. He’s a crook, same as me.’ Sal hated his guts. Sal said he was a double-crosser.”

“Amazing.”

“Sal met with Gerald a lot in the early days, but he never wanted any of his sons to be in on those meetings. Even Jerry, the crippled one. He didn’t want the association to rub off on his sons,” said Maxine.

Harrison nodded.

“Are you aware there’s a Bradley living here in Nogales?” asked Maxine.

“What? Some kind of cousin?”

“Not at all. Of the blood.”

“How could that be?”

“Desi, he’s called. Actually, Desmond Junior, I suppose.”

“Really? How old?”

“Twenty. Twenty-one. That sort of age.”

“I remember now. Des married a maid in the family house in Scarborough Hill, Connecticut. That was before I knew them, but I heard about it. What a to-do there was about that. Cardinal Sullivan got the marriage annulled. Mary? Was that her name?”

“No, Rosleen.”

“That’s right, Rosleen. They paid her off. They sent her away. Does she still call herself Bradley?”

“I guess so. I just call her Rosleen. She’s the dental technician for Dr. Sabiston in Nogales. She cleans my teeth.”

“Do you think you could arrange for me to see her while I’m here? Or to meet up with Desi?”

“How are the boys?” asked Harrison.

“Fine,” said Claire.

“Tell them I miss them.”

“They miss you, too.”

“I bought them some cowboy hats.”

“They love presents. Oh, yes, they’ll love them.”

Claire was not one to long for the impossible, to yearn for lost love. They sat together in Borsalino’s, toying with Northern Italian food, making conversation. They had to talk about something. He did not tell her about meeting Rosleen Bradley and young Desi in Nogales, which she would have enjoyed hearing about, because it might accidentally overlap somehow into his reluctant reentry into the Bradley circle, with his imminent luncheon engagement with Gerald Bradley, whom she hated, or his love affair with Kitt, which he could not bring himself to discuss, for fear of hurting her.

“What do you want to do about the dining room table and the sideboard?” Claire asked.

“What about them?”

“They were your grandmother’s, weren’t they? That’s what your aunt Gert said when we got married. Do you want them sent in to your apartment?”

“Oh, no,” he said quickly. “Leave everything. Don’t disrupt the house. I certainly don’t need a dining table and sideboard. I don’t think I’ve eaten home once since I moved there.”