Sweetheart (14 page)

“No complaints,” Scandura said, his eye going from one to the other. They were from Providence, trusted representatives of the organization, and the same age, more or less, as Scandura, who was meeting with them secretly. He glanced around. “Anthony knew about this, he’d blow his stack.”

“No reason he should know, right?” the pale man said.

The one with the pouches said, “All we want is a clear picture from you, so we can tell the man in Providence everything’s all right. You’d tell us if it wasn’t?”

“Of course,” Scandura said, stiffening a little. “What’s the man worried about?”

“A lot’s going on up here,” the pale man said. “The Justice Department’s all over the Angello family.”

“That’s been going on for years, got nothing to do with me and Anthony. All Anthony’s got against him is the DA looking to make a name for himself.”

“You didn’t let me finish, Victor. You know well as I do the man don’t think so much of Angello anymore and wouldn’t care if the prick went down. But Gardella’s different. The man’s got special feeling for him, thinks of him as a son, maybe even as his successor. You appreciate that?”

“Yes,” Scandura said. “Anthony appreciates it too.”

“But we all know Anthony changed a little when his wife died.”

“He took it hard,” Scandura said defensively.

“That’s what I’m saying. Then he went and married some kid, a fuckin’ stewardess. There are those that say you shoulda talked sense to him.”

“I advise him. I don’t tell him what to do.”

The man with the pouches said, “What he did to avenge his mother and father, nobody faults him, but he played it close, like he did right afterwards down in Miami. That was smooth, damn smooth, but he was lucky he didn’t get burned.”

“Nothing’s luck with him,” Scandura said dryly. “He figures everything.”

The pale man drank some of his coffee, now that it had cooled. Scandura sat straight and adjusted his glasses. The man with the pouches said, with a vague look of depravity, “How’s his sister doing? I remember her years ago when she couldn’t keep her eyes off guys’ crotches. She still that way?”

Scandura did not respond.

“She still fat?”

“She’s heavy,” Scandura said.

“Anthony lets her in on too much. That never went over with the man. You see, Victor, all this adds up, which is why the man worries. Something’s going to fall apart up here, he wants to know about it.”

“He’ll be the first,” Scandura said.

A few minutes later they rose from their chairs. The man with the pouches went to a display case and ordered powdered pastries and glazed cookies. Scandura and the pale man went outside and stood in shadows well away from the neon. The traffic on Route 1 was swift. The pale man said, “So you’re not worried about the heat from the DA.”

“A state cop’s in charge of it, and already Anthony’s got him half in his pocket. Tell the man that.”

Presently the other one, carrying a bakery box and a bag, joined them. He cast dead eyes on Scandura and said, “By the way, you know a fed up here named Thurston? A few years ago Justice was using him against Angello and then squeezed him out, didn’t like his personality. We don’t either.”

“I never met him personally,” Scandura said, “but I know of him. He keeps his nose around.”

“A fuckin’ wop-hater is what he is. The man wants you to watch out.”

Scandura nodded. “How is the man?”

There was a slight pause. Then the man with the pouches inched up, a careful grip on his baked goods. “Every year we think he’s gonna die, and he don’t.”

The pale man said, “That answer your question?”

• • •

From his chair, Anthony Gardella said, “You feel corrupted?”

Christopher Wade, from his chair, said, “I don’t even feel lightheaded.” The joint smoldered down to his fingers, and he mashed it out in a leaf-shaped dish, where it continued to diffuse its perfume. “Only dry in the throat.”

“Maybe you didn’t do it right. I feel good.”

“You’ve had practice.”

“Actually, no.” Gardella’s expression was drowsy, oblique. His voice was unhurried. Everything about him seemed relaxed, especially his smile. “The thing I tried to do for you with your wife, you still mad at me?”

“Just don’t interfere again.”

“You want, I’ll see she gets her old job back.”

“Too late for that.”

“You don’t want her back there, anyway.” Gardella said knowingly. “She takes the job at Rodino Travel, you’ll be able to drop in on her every day. Nice, huh?”

“The job is her decision. What’s Rodino to you?”

“The family’s Italian, that’s all.”

“That’s enough.” Wade closed his eyes for a moment. He had lied about not being lightheaded. After an unnecessary cough, he said casually, “I have an answer to the question I asked earlier.”

“Ah, yes,” said Gardella, his smile affable.

“I want a piece of all your action. I want a percentage. A Swiss bank account. Not the Caymans or some place close like that. I want Switzerland.”

Gardella laughed. “You want the moon. Remember you’re only a lieutenant.”

“I don’t want the account in my name,” Wade went on blithely. “The money goes to the kids. My two daughters. And I want it done so they won’t know about it until they’re middle-aged women.”

Gardella whistled, his smile steady.

Wade said, “While you’re thinking about it, I should warn you the DA has ambition for higher office, which is the reason he’s assigning me more men. He wants me to speed up the investigation, particularly into your laundering and pornography operations. He also wants the politicians you deal with, at least those that aren’t his friends. If I come up with something juicy I can’t use, he wants me to turn it over to the FBI.”

Gardella’s smile did not wane, but his jaw shifted to one side. “You got anything more to say?”

“The percentage is negotiable.”

“Is that so?”

Wade waited, aware of a tiny break in the rhythm of his breathing. His throat was parched, to a degree that he feared speaking again. Small sounds filtered through the window behind him. It took him a while to realize it was raining and a moment more to notice the subtle change in Gardella’s demeanor.

“Maybe your daughters will get together with my sons,” Gardella said, rising. “Wouldn’t that be something?”

• • •

Supervisor Russell Thurston was not alone in his apartment when the telephone rang. “Christ,” he muttered, jacking himself up on an elbow, his face extremely unpleasant. A long stretch was needed to reach the receiver, which he did not accomplish without discomfort. The anxious voice on the line said, “This is Honey.” Immediately he punched the Hold button. Questioning gray-blue eyes stared up at him from a pillow as he struggled into his robe.

“It’s private,” he explained.

He took the call in the room he used as an office, perching himself on a corner of the teak desk. The caller said, “I want to meet with you.”

“That’s totally unwise,” he said in a penetrating tone.

“Please!”

“Where are you calling from?”

“You know where.”

“You’re being foolish, very foolish,” he said stonily. “All right, I’ll meet with you. Not tomorrow, I’m busy. And not the next day. We’ll make it the day after that.” He named the time and place. He heard a groan.

“I can’t wait that long.”

“You’re going to have to,” he said and disconnected.

He returned slowly to the bedroom. His bedmate was dozing, a smooth naked shoulder protruding from the covers. He leaned over and shook it. “Time for you to go.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Not in the least.”

Twenty minutes later he poured himself a glass of sherry and carried it into his office, where he sat at the desk, opened a number of file folders, and, from time to time, glanced at the phone. More than an hour later, when he was about to go to bed, it rang.

Lieutenant Christopher Wade said, “This is Sweetheart.”

“You almost disappointed me.”

“You knew I’d be calling?”

“I suspected. I must be psychic.”

“Things look good.”

“You in?”

“I’m in,” Wade said.

R
ITA
O’D
EA
, wrapped in a voluminous housecoat at the breakfast table, offered a choice of three cereals to her guests: Froot Loops, Frosted Flakes, and Raisin Bran. “I knew you would,” she said when Ty
O
’Dea opted for Froot Loops. “You used to eat ’em out of the box, remember?” Sara Dillon, who wanted only coffee, lit a cigarette. Rita
O
’Dea said, “You’re pregnant, you should eat. But you shouldn’t, for Christ’s sake, smoke.”

Sara Dillon took a quick puff and dashed the cigarette out.

“You act nervous. You nervous?”

“No.”

“You want eggs, I’ll make ’em for you.”

“This is fine,” Sara Dillon said and shook a bit of Raisin Bran into a bowl. Rita
O
’Dea thrust a plastic pitcher of pineapple juice at her.

“Have some of this first,” she ordered. “You need it.”

“Leave her alone, Rita.”

“You shut up. You want the kid to be born human, don’t you?”

Ty O’Dea nodded submissively and dug his spoon into his cereal. His throat was torn from shaving, and a fluff of toilet paper clung to one of the cuts. As nonchalantly as possible, he asked, “Where’s your friend?”

“My friend, as you call him, is getting my car washed. He earns his keep, something you never did.” She smiled ironically as she poured juice, first for Sara Dillon, then for herself. “If it won’t make you jealous, I’ll tell you about him.”

“No,” Ty O’Dea said. “I’m not interested.”

“And you’re not jealous either,” she said, more than a little bitterly.

Later, partly because he knew he wouldn’t be missed, he left the women alone and slipped out the back door. The air was cool from the rain that had fallen most of the night, but the sun was strong. For a number of moments he watched a lone robin pulling at the ground, its energy endless. His own was minimal. Careful to keep out of sight of Anthony Gardella’s house, he made his way to the open garage. There he waited.

When Alvaro returned with the car, he rose from the box he’d been sitting on. The car, smelling of hot wax, was a little sports job, and he wondered how Rita O’Dea fitted herself behind the wheel. He watched as Alvaro climbed out with a little smile, his hair and beard glistening. His shirt was blazing red.

“You fool.”

“Watch your mouth,” Alvaro said.

“Why the hell are you still here? With Nardozza dead, you’ve got no more contract. You’d better run.”

“I run, it’ll tell Gardella what he don’t know.”

“He’ll find out sooner or later, assuming he don’t know already.”

“How come you’re still alive?” Alvaro asked with a sidelong glance.

“I’m family. Rita feels for me. You think I’d be standing here now she didn’t like me?”

“Then I’m safe.” Alvaro increased his smile as if for perversity’s sake. “You she likes, me she loves.”

Ty O’Dea turned away. He stepped out of the garage and then looked back. “This minute,” he said. “This minute she loves you.”

• • •

Late that day Ty O’Dea was summoned to Anthony Gardella’s house. His legs went weak as Rita O’Dea escorted him over. “Be a big boy,” she said when he stumbled going up the front steps. She rang the bell but did not wait for a response. She had her own key. Before she opened the door, she said, “How do you feel?”

“Not a hundred percent,” he admitted.

She said, “You got reason.”

Inside the house he did not see Gardella at first and gave a start when he did. The measured neatness of the man’s suit made him feel shabby. He smiled without meeting his eyes and gave another start when he saw Rita O’Dea edging away.

“Aren’t you staying?” he asked in a panic.

“Anthony doesn’t want me to.”

He began moving when Gardella made an abrupt motion. He entered a long room and saw the large, baggy face of Ralph Roselli, who was reading a newspaper in a chair. Roselli did not look up. He kept walking, Gardella directing the way without a word, and soon found himself in the library, near leather chairs. Because he had not been told otherwise, he remained standing while Gardella seated himself. Finally, in a voice deceivingly soft, Gardella spoke.

“You should be dead. Wasn’t for Rita, you would be.”

Ty O’Dea leaned forward, as if he wanted to kiss Gardella’s hand. Had he been given permission to move, he would have. “Anthony, I swear I didn’t know what was going on in Miami. I was just working for Nardozza, trying to make a living. He was your cousin. I thought it was all right, cleared with you.”

“What is it about you makes me sick?”

“Anthony, please.”

“You trying to tell me you didn’t know Sal was doing a number on me?”

“I swear.”

“You trying to tell me you didn’t know he had a contract out?”

“On you? Jesus Christ, no! I’d’ve been the first one to warn you.”

“Why are you sweating?”

“I’m in front of you, I always sweat. I get scared. You know that.”

“You worry me, Tyrone. You always have.”

“Anthony, please. I’ll do whatever you say. I got relatives in Ireland. You want me to go there, I’ll go.”

Gardella stared enigmatically at him. “What if I asked you to go up and down the street picking up dog shit, would you do that?”

Ty O’Dea smiled weakly.

“Yes, you’d do it,” Gardella answered for him. “You wouldn’t have a choice. What if I told you to throw yourself in front of a car on the Southeast Expressway?”

Ty O’Dea teetered in place, his head burning.

“I’m waiting for an answer.”

“Please, Anthony.”

“You ever lie to me again, that’s where you’re going.”

• • •

In the office of his funeral home, standing in the blue light that fed his ficus plants, his hands smelling of fluids, Sammy Ferlito glowered at his nephew Augie. “You ain’t got the brains you were born with. You wasn’t my sister’s kid, I’d throw you to the fuckin’ wolves.”

“I ask for advice, you give me garbage,” Augie said miserably. “You act like it was my fault.”

“No, peckerhead, not your fault,
mine!
I never shoulda asked Anthony to use you.”

“What should I do?”

“You keep your fuckin’ mouth shut, that’s what you do. You don’t say nothing to Anthony, better he forgets you’re alive. And you see those two feds coming again, you run.
Capisce?
”

“That’s all? That’s all I should do?”

“You can pray,” Ferlito said in a voice tailored to fit fear into him. “Now get to work. You got two stiffs to dress. Do the woman first.”

When his nephew left, Ferlito locked himself in the office and after considerable thought picked up the telephone. He was lucky. He reached Victor Scandura on the first try, and he spoke rapidly, at length, with pain. Suddenly he interrupted himself. “Do you understand my position, Victor?”

“Sure,” said Scandura. “You’re covering your ass.”

• • •

Anthony and Jane Gardella ate at an overpriced restaurant on Newbury Street and afterward went for drinks at the Parker House, where politicians sidled over to pay respect. A state senator, who owned a summer house near theirs in Rye and who prided himself on his courtly manners, kissed Jane Gardella’s slim hand. He also admired her choker necklace with its subtle diamond pendant. When she realized the senator was hoping for a chance to talk to her husband privately, she excused herself and went to the powder room.

When she returned, the senator was gone. Gardella said with a small smile, “What did you think of him?”

“Such a gentleman,” she said playfully. She touched her necklace and dangled the pendant. “This really impressed him.”

“He probably knew what it was worth.”

“What is it worth? You’ve never told me.”

“I don’t want to scare you.”

“Do you think money scares me?”

His smile was light, indulgent, caring. “I don’t want anything to scare you.”

“Do you think I’m a baby?”

“Not at all.”

She leaned forward over the dark table, her eyes teasing. “How much money do you have, Tony? Give me a vague idea. A lot? A whole hell of a lot? Or an unbelievable amount?”

He said, “Somewhere in between the last two things you mentioned.” Then he stared into her face. “You tipsy?”

“A little. You mind?”

“No,” he said and raised a hand for the check. “But you’re shut off.”

• • •

Her sleep was restless. Too many unpleasant dreams tunneled through it, and Jane Gardella rose well before she wanted to, careful not to disturb her husband. In the kitchen she heated old coffee and carried a cup toward the sun room. Ralph Roselli, who she had forgotten was in the house, glanced up from the chair he had fallen asleep in. She clutched at her brief wrap, and he lowered his eyes so that he saw only her calves and ankles.

In the sun room she nestled in the cushions of an enormous wicker chair, her head aching just enough to disconcert her. Her thoughts stretched back to the sixties, the bows in her hair, the Scout shoes on her feet, the hard-earned A’s on her report card. With less pleasure she remembered her adolescence, the shock of her father’s departure, the thrill of boys she imagined loving forever, the bitterness of her mother when she passed up a university scholarship to become a waitress in the sky. Only dimly could she recollect the first time she laid eyes on Anthony Gardella, though he remembered everything, even the flight number.

Through jalousie windows she watched a jay fly low over the lawn, and then she closed her eyes, as if assessing something in herself. Her pulse raced for no reason.

When she returned to the kitchen with her empty cup, she found that Ralph Roselli had made fresh coffee and had laid the morning papers on the table, the
Globe
on top, as if he knew her preference, which made her feel something of a princess. A note said he would be back later. She was at the table, hugging a raised knee and reading Erma Bombeck, when a voice asked, “You always sit around that way?”

The question came from her sister-in-law, an assertive presence, who had entered the house with little sound and was peering in on her. They were not close. They were, she had recognized early on, rivals. She said, “Not always,” and dropped her knee.

“I don’t suppose Tony’s up yet.”

“I can wake him,” she said.

“Never do that,” Rita O’Dea said with eyes that seemed to make a calculated assault on her. “Even if somebody should point a gun at him, you don’t wake him. You jump in front of him.”

“Is that what you would do?” she asked while trying to smile.

“It’s what any wop wife would do.”

“I’m trying to be one.”

“You’ll never make it dressed like that. Don’t tell Tony I was here. It’s not important.”

Jane Gardella accompanied her halfway to the front door and then slowly reached out to detain her. “Sometime, Rita, when you’re not busy, would you teach me to make sauce?”

Rita O’Dea tossed her hair back. “It’s not your cooking he married you for.”

“Then suppose you tell me what.”

“Christ, I would’ve thought you knew that,” Rita O’Dea said with eyebrows drawn in. “You’re showing most of it.”

• • •

Lieutenant Christopher Wade, wearing a flat cap and sunglasses, occupied a box seat for the season’s opener at Fenway Park. A cheer went up when the Red Sox loped onto the field. The seat next to Wade was vacant, but before the first inning was over Gardella was sitting in it. “You haven’t missed much,” Wade said without looking at him, and Gardella shrugged. It was not until the second inning, the Red Sox already losing, that he spoke.

“All my life,” he said, shelling a peanut, “I’ve lived in Boston, but I never rooted for the Sox, always the Yankees. You know, DiMaggio, Rizzuto, Berra. Had to be loyal to the Italians. Though I’ll admit I liked the old Red Sox. Williams, Doerr, Tabor, those were players you could care about. Now who’ve you got? Rice? What am I going to do, cheer for a nigger?”

“You could do worse,” Wade said without sympathy.

“Sure, I could root for Yastrzemski. Has-been with no class. Guy doesn’t know when to quit.”

“Most of us don’t.”

“Some of us can’t.” Gardella denuded another peanut and ate it, then rustled the bag at Wade, who declined. “My kind of thing you don’t walk away from. Guys who take over for you think you’re going to want to come back sometime, which means they don’t trust you. They’d rather you be dead.”

Wade kept his eyes on the field. The opposing team was Toronto, which was still scoring runs, the ball bounding between the shortstop and third baseman.

Gardella said, “Petrocelli was still playing, he’d’ve got that.”

Wade said, “You don’t sound happy.”

“I’m not. Your people hit on more of my places yesterday. That I was expecting. What bothers me is the way they did it, came on like gangbusters. At Video Home Products they were throwing cassettes around worth more than the suits they were wearing. I could sue for damages.”

“You’d probably have a case. I can’t watch my people every minute.”

“They scared the office girls. Some quit, afraid they’d get their names in the paper.”

“You can always hire new help,” Wade said and then, with a shade of distaste, added, “Some of those adult flicks you push go beyond raunchiness.”

“Tell the Supreme Court, not me. I’m only a businessman, an investor looking for a decent return.” Gardella glanced at a teenage girl stuffing half a hot dog into her mouth, wincing as if unable to chew fast enough. “Put a camera on her, and that’s pornography.”

“My people are more interested in learning how you managed to take over the company,” Wade said and received an austere look.

“I thought we had an understanding.”

“We’ve got nothing yet.”

“What you asked for takes time. You made it complicated. The Swiss part’s a pain in the ass, but we can work it through New York. What I don’t do is deal in percentages.”

“I’m not impossible.”

“I’m not either,” Gardella said. “You got a pencil?”

In silence, manipulating a scorecard, turning player numbers into monetary ones, they negotiated figures, a substantial one up front, more moderate amounts by the month. Wade gave a slight nod.