Bitter Truth (36 page)

“Reddman, huh.”

“A distant impoverished line from the Pickle baron.”

“No Faith Reddman Shaw, but here’s something.” He took a file out and spread it open atop the box. “When exactly was the date of that invoice?”

“June 9, 1966.”

“Yes that’s it, and the amount?”

“Six hundred, thirty-eight dollars and ninety cents.”

“All right, that’s it exactly, but you had it wrong.”

“Wrong?”

“The patient. It wasn’t this Mrs. Christian Shaw, she was just the party billed for the service. The patient was a Kingsley Shaw.”

“What was the procedure?”

“Nothing too serious,” he said. “Just two minor incisions, a few snips of the vasa deferentia and then a few sutures to clean up.”

“What are you talking about?”

“A vasectomy. My father gave this Kingsley Shaw a vasectomy in June of 1966. Apparently it was a clean operation with no complications. No big deal. Why, is this Kingsley Shaw anybody?”

“No,” I said. “Nobody at all.”

After I had written out the check to cash for a thousand dollars, I asked Carp if I could use the phone. I picked up the receiver, turned my back to the hungry eyes of Peter Carp, and called my apartment.

“Hi,” I said when Caroline answered.

“That cop, McDeiss is looking for you,” she said. “He called your office and he just called here.”

“You didn’t tell him who you were, did you?”

“No, but he says if you get a chance you should show up at Front and Ellsworth, by the hockey rink. Do you know where it is?”

“I can find it. Thanks. Let me ask you something, Caroline. What’s your birthday?”

“You getting me a present?”

“Sure. Just tell me.”

“June 11,” she said.

“What year?”

“Nineteen sixty-eight. Why?”

“Not important. If McDeiss calls back,” I said, “tell him I’m on my way.”

40

W
HEN I GOT to the Ralph R. Rizzo Sr. Ice Skating Rink at Front and Ellsworth there was already a crowd behind the yellow tape. Across the street from the tape was Interstate 95, which hacks through the eastern edge of Philadelphia like a blunt cleaver. The ice rink, with its facade of blue-and-white tile, was squeezed beneath the elevated highway and beside the tiled building was an outdoor roller rink, this too in the highway’s shadow. Between the two rinks was a wedgelike opening with a solitary bench and in that opening five or six cops mingled around a large black thing that sat squat and smoldering. Parked on Front Street were two fire trucks, lights still flashing. Firemen, in black slickers, huddled with one another, smoking cigarettes.

The crowd behind the yellow tape held the usual crew of wide-eyed onlookers who congregate with a sort of muted glee at the situs of a tragedy. They shook their heads and cracked wise out of the sides of their mouths and shucked their weight from one foot to the other and fought to keep from laughing because it wasn’t them this time. Along with the onlookers were a few parasitic reporters, asking questions, and the inevitable television cameras readying the live feed for their insatiable news machines.

“What happened?” I asked one of the onlookers, an old man, thin and grizzled with suspenders and a black beret.

“Cain’t you smell it?” said the old man.

I took a sniff. The dirty stink of burned gasoline and something sickly sweet beneath it. “I’m not sure.”

“They burned a car, is what they did,” he said, “and they was some fool still in it when they did it. Now he ain’t but bar-be-cue.”

“Pleasant,” I said over the quiet guffaws that rose around us. I edged past him toward the yellow tape and called a uniformed cop over.

“I’m here to see McDeiss,” I said. “He asked me to come on down.”

The cop gestured his head to the group of cops under the highway and lifted the tape. Like a boxer sliding into the ring I slipped beneath the yellow ribbon and headed across Front Street.

It was clammy and cool beneath the highway and the stink I had smelled from across the street hung heavy as a fog. The smoldering shape was a car, dark and wet, with its trunk unlatched, and I could make out some red beneath the carbon black. It had been a convertible and the fire had devoured the canvas top so it looked a sporty thing, that flame-savaged car. A Porsche, a red Porsche, and I started getting some idea of who it was who might have been bar-be-cued.

McDeiss was off to the side, in front of the skating rink, interviewing a kid, taking notes as the kid talked. I waited for him to finish. When he sent the kid running off down Front Street, he turned and saw me standing there. “Carl,” he said with a smile. “Glad you could make it. Welcome to the party.”

“A real hot spot,” I said.

“We got the call about an hour and a half ago,” said McDeiss, walking back to the burned-out hulk of the Porsche. I trailed hesitantly behind him. “A car was burning underneath the highway. The uniform guys showed up and called the fire guys. The fire guys showed up and sprayed down the flames. When they popped open the trunk to make sure everything was out the fire guys saw what was inside and called us.”

“And since you guys are the homicide guys, I guess we know what was in the trunk.”

“You want to see?”

“I think not.”

“Come on, Carl, take a look. It’ll do you good.”

He reached back and took hold of my arm and started pulling me toward the burned Porsche, toward the rear, with the trunk lid ominously open, toward whatever lay singed and dead inside.

“I really don’t think so,” I said.

“I know a great restaurant just a block up on Front,” said McDeiss, pulling me ever closer. The open trunk loomed now not ten feet away. “La Vigna. Maybe after our visit you can take me out for lunch.”

“I’m quickly losing my appetite.”

“You should know what you’re dealing with here, Carl, before we talk,” said McDeiss.

We were slipping around the side of the car now, McDeiss moving quickly, yanking me along. “I get the idea.”

“Take a look,” he said, and then he spun me around so that I almost fell into whatever it was that was in that trunk.

“Arrgh,” I let out softly, closing my eyes as my stomach heaved.

A few of the cops standing around the car laughed among themselves.

“Take a good look,” said McDeiss.

I took a breath and smelled that nauseating smell and my eyes gagged open, ready to spy whatever was there in the trunk.

It was empty. Well not exactly empty. There was the charred remains of the carpet, and strange pools of incinerated liquid, and miscellaneous car-type tools lying around, and the smell, sickening and strangely sweet, like a marinated beef rib left way too long on the grill, but the main event, the body, was gone. In its place was an outline drawn in chalk, an outline of a man on his side, a somewhat corpulent man, with his arms bound behind his body and his knees drawn tight to his chest.

“The ambulance guys already took him to the morgue,” said McDeiss.

“You’re a bastard,” I said, stepping away from the car.

He opened his pad and started reading. “Male, mid-thirties, average height, mildly obese, hair dark brown, eyes indeterminate because they burst in the heat. His hands were tied behind him, his legs were bound together, a gag was stuffed in his mouth. There were no evident wounds, so he apparently burned to death, though the coroner will be more specific. His pants were pulled down and we found the remnants of legal tender deep inside his asshole, specifically a five, a ten, and two ones.” McDeiss closed his pad and looked at me. “That’s seventeen dollars, Carl, a paltry sum, denoting a notable lack of respect for the victim.”

“What am I doing here?”

“You ever see this Porsche before?”

I shook my head.

“It’s registered to an Edward Shaw. It was Mr. Shaw who was in the trunk. And the funny thing is, this Edward Shaw is the brother of Jacqueline Shaw, the woman whose death you were asking me about just a few weeks ago. So what I want to know, Carl, is what the hell is going on here?”

I looked at McDeiss and then back at the burned wreck of a German luxury sports car. “It looks,” I said slowly, “like someone is killing Reddmans.”

“Who exactly?”

“If I knew that I’d already be rich.”

“We notified the house but we’re still looking for the other two siblings, Robert and Caroline. Any idea where they are?”

“None.”

“So, if you don’t know who’s going after the Shaws, what do you know?”

Normally, in my position as a criminal defense attorney, I preferred to share absolutely nothing more than I was forced to share with the cops. We’re on opposite sides, with the exact opposite goals, and since knowledge is power I tried to keep as much power as I could for myself. But I wasn’t facing McDeiss now as a criminal defense attorney. I was looking for a third of any recovery for wrongful death against the person responsible for Jacqueline’s murder and now, most likely, for Eddie Shaw’s murder too. Nothing would be better than to have the cops find the guy and convict him and leave his assets dangling for me to snatch down with my teeth. There were things he couldn’t know, things about my client Peter Cressi and his boss Earl Dante, about my role as innocent bystander in the hit attempt on the Schuylkill Expressway, about Raffaello’s plan to turn over the city’s underworld to his nemesis. But anything I learned in my investigation of Jacqueline’s death, I figured, I could turn over to him, including what I had learned from Eddie’s wife. Telling all I knew to McDeiss might just make my job of getting what I could out of the Reddman fortune that much easier.

“You said that place La Vigna is pretty good,” I said.

“Sure,” said McDeiss, “if you like Northern Italian.”

“They have veal?”

“Scallopini pounded thin as my paycheck, drenched with the first pressings of virgin olives and fresh lemon.”

I wasn’t really hungry for veal. In reality, at that moment, surrounded by that saccharine fog of death, I feared I couldn’t keep down even a swallow of Pepto-Bismol. But McDeiss, I figured, was one to sharpen his appetite even as the fresh scent of death lingered in his nostrils. I took him for the type to eat a hoagie in the morgue while an autopsy of an old and bloated corpse was being performed and enjoy every mouthful, so long as the prosciutto was imported and the provolone fresh. It was to my advantage to talk to McDeiss and there was no better enticement for McDeiss to listen, I had learned, than a good meal. Except this time, it had to seem like he was pumping me.

“Well then, why don’t we try it out?” I said. “I could go for a little veal. But if you want to hear what I’ve found out, let’s say this time you spring for the check.”

McDeiss sent me across Front Street, to the other side of the yellow tape, to wait while he delegated the remainder of the crime scene work to his partner and the uniforms. I was watching him go about his business, listening to reports, talking with other witnesses, examining the car with the forensics guys. In the middle of it all he lifted up a finger to me, telling me he’d be there in a minute, and then went on with his work. For a heavy guy he was pretty limber and I watched with growing admiration as he stretched around and under the car, picking out whatever clues remained. As I watched I felt something grab hold of the crotch of my pants.

“What the…” I said as I tried to whirl around and found I couldn’t. A block of stone was behind my back and a steel cable was now wrapped around my chest, squeezing whatever air was left out of my lungs.

I tried to swing around again but found myself only being pulled back, away from the crowd.

“Get the hell off of me,” I tried to shout, my gasping voice actually loud enough for a few of the people in front of me to turn around to see what was happening. One of them was a short gray-haired man in a black suit and as soon as he turned around I stopped shouting.

“Funny seeing you here, Victor,” hissed Earl Dante through his small, even set of teeth.

It was the first time I had seen him since he had started his war. The sight of him there, that close in front of me, with some monster holding me from behind, set my knees to shaking and I sagged down for an instant before I recovered. This was exactly what Raffaello had talked about. The bastard was going through me to set up the meeting.

“Funny seeing you under the highway talking to that homicide dick,” continued Dante. “Funny as hell but for some reason I’m not laughing.”

Dante nodded at whoever it was who was holding me from behind. The arm around my chest loosened and the hand released its hold on my crotch. My knees sagged again but I stopped myself from falling, stood straight as I could and shucked my shoulders. The mere gesture made me feel a little harder until the reality of the situation impressed itself once again upon my nerves. I looked behind me. It was the weightlifting lug who always seemed to be around when Dante appeared. The lug nodded at me and then looked away, as if there was something more important to look at down the street.

“What were you and the dick talking about like such buddy-buddies under the highway?” said Dante.

“The weather,” I said.

“I hear there was a body in the trunk. It’s a shame to go like that. A tragedy.”

“You talking about the body or the car,” I said, “’cause if you ask me, it might be a bigger shame about the car.”

The lug behind me chuckled and even Dante smiled. Over Dante’s head I could see McDeiss making his way out from under the highway, walking toward us. The sight of him approaching gave me a shot of courage.

“Tell me something, Earl,” I said. “Who’s paying you to kill Reddmans?”

The smile disappeared and his composed mortician’s face startled for an instant. Then the smile returned, but there was an ugly darkness to it now. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Sure you do, Earl. Is it a Poole? Did a person named Poole pay for the hits?”

“Ahh, now I get it. You dumb shit, you think I flamed that bastard over there?”

“That’s exactly what I think. And I think you killed his sister in the luxury apartment and left her hanging like a coat on a rack, which is why you convinced that freak Peckworth to change his story for the cops.”

“You talked to Peckworth?”

“You bet I did.”

“You’re a dumb shit, you know that, Carl? I would have thought your little misadventure on the expressway would have wised you up enough to keep you out of the business, but no. If you weren’t such a dumb shit you wouldn’t think what you’re thinking.”

“You mean the fact that Eddie Shaw owed you a quarter of a million dollars and it looks now like he won’t ever pay?” I shook my head and looked up again. McDeiss was now in the middle of the road, about twenty yards away. “I figure you got that covered. His wife told me she had to sign something before he could get his little three-point-a-week loan from you. I figure you have a note in the full amount, for a legal rate of interest, signed by the dead man and his widow. With Eddie being the fuck-up he was, you have a better shot now at getting paid from the wife with her insurance money than you ever did from Eddie.”

“You’re a smart guy, Victor, oh yes you are,” said Dante. “You’d think a guy as smart as you wouldn’t be a lowlife shyster trying to hustle an angle into someone else’s game. You would think a guy as smart as you would be rich already.”

“I’m working on it.”

“The cop,” said the lug behind me. “He’s coming right this way, chief.”

“There’s going to be a meeting,” said Dante, talking low now, suddenly in a hurry, his words hissing out. “You’ve gotten the word already. Play it straight, Victor, all the way. Pretend for once you’re not a dumb shit and play it straight. You try to smart it out and play it on an angle and you’ll end up playing it dead.”

He put his hand up to my cheek and squeezed it between his fingers, like a dowager aunt showing affection to her nephew, before he spun to his right and walked off, his bodyguard in tow. He left just as McDeiss made his way through the crowd to get to me.