Sweetheart (18 page)

T
Y
O’D
EA
sipped a glass of vodka and grapefruit juice for breakfast and smiled uneasily at Rita O’Dea as she entered the kitchen in one of her voluminous robes, her black hair hanging long and loose, the bulk of one breast exposed like a target. She snatched up a cup, poured coffee from a Silex, and joined him at the table, the cane chair groaning as she settled in it. He eyed her cautiously. Years ago she had not allowed him to speak until she had finished her coffee. After a tentative clearing of the throat, he said, “How was Vegas?”

“Lousy.”

“You must have lost,” he said with sympathy.

“I won. I always win.”

“Alvaro?”

“He lost. You know he’s a loser. Look what he’s stuck with — me.”

Ty O’Dea did not know quite where to cast his eyes, for never before had he heard her deprecate herself in such a fashion. She put a fixing hand to her hair and tightened her robe, making herself more presentable. Her face was puffy.

“Our last night there I had bad dreams, and I woke up with the sweats. I don’t sleep good anymore, Ty. Sometimes I lie awake and hear voices, like from the other side. I hear Ma’s voice a little and Pa’s the loudest. Honest to God, I do.”

He did not know what to say and said nothing, which for a fleeting second made him feel strengthless, useless, parasitical.

She said, “It’s the way they went that I can’t deal with.”

“At least they went together,” he offered haltingly. “They weren’t alone.”

“What’s your idea of heaven, Ty?”

“I’m not sure I have one,” he answered nakedly. “What’s yours?”

“Pink and blue — baby colors.” Her eyes went sightless for a moment and grew moist. “Do you know what I mean?” He didn’t, but he nodded anyway while wishing mightily he had stayed in bed. He lifted his glass and drained it. She said, “That stuff’s killing you.”

He grinned sheepishly.

“You die, it’ll be bad for the kid. What would Sara do with it alone?”

“I’m not going to die.”

“Are you going to love it?”

“Yes,” he said solemnly, as if under oath to a judge and jury. He wanted to fill his glass again but didn’t dare.

“Do you still love me, Ty?”

Fear was the only emotion he truly associated with her. She had never been a wife to him, more like a shameless and incestuous sister explosively generous one moment and humiliatingly tyrannical the next. “There’ll always be something between us,” he fudged.

“It could be like it was.” Her hand shot across the table, grasped his, and squeezed it. “No. I don’t mean that. It could be better.”

“You’re hurting me,” he whined like a woman, and instantly she eased the ferocious grip of her fingers. Her eyes were soft, and her robe was loose again, this time with both breasts visible and rolling against each other.

“I’m big, Ty. I’m like an elephant, but I’m not whole. Do you know what I’m telling you?” He did not want to know, but he could not tell her that. He felt a small measure of relief when she withdrew her hand. “What time is it?” she asked. “Look at the watch I gave you and tell me.”

He obliged.

She nodded, gripping the edge of the table. “Where’s Sara, still in bed? I think it’s time I speak to her.”

“About what?” he asked in alarm.

“The future,” Rita O’Dea said.

• • •

Anthony Gardella took a call from Miami in his real estate office. Victor Scandura handed him the phone and said, “It’s Skeeter.” Skeeter’s voice came through in a quick rasp.

“Guess who I saw down here?”

Gardella said, “I’d rather you tell me.”

“How much is it worth?”

“Cut the shit,” Gardella said without patience.

“It’s the kid,” Skeeter said. “The one you’re looking for. He’s holed up in Ho Jo’s, the one near me.”

“That’s sweet news.”

“I thought it would be.” There was a cough, a rough one.

“How are you doing, Skeeter?”

“I got rotten lungs. Otherwise I’m doing good.”

“I’m sure you know who my new guy is down there. Tell him to give you the usual and something extra.”

“He’s new, Anthony, he might not know what the usual is.”

“Nobody’s that new,” Gardella said and disconnected. Scandura stood stolid. “Augie,” Gardella said in a muted voice, and Scandura evinced surprise.

“That was fast.”

Ralph Roselli, who was sitting near a window, put aside his newspaper and shuffled to his feet. “No,” said Gardella, “not you, Ralph.” Roselli dropped back down into his chair, leaned toward the window, and killed a silverfish on the sill. Scandura threw Gardella a puzzled look and received a thin smile. “Don’t you know who, Victor?”

“Yes,” said Scandura all of a sudden. “It’s only right.”

“Then what are you waiting for?”

Scandura left the real estate office, crossed the street, and walked up past St. Leonard’s Church to the funeral home. Sammy Ferlito was arranging flowers at a casket in one of the viewing rooms. In the casket was the corpse of a middle-aged nun in full habit; everything there, crucifix, beads, missal; the fixed face so shiny it looked like pure wax. “Rosie Riciputti,” Ferlito said with an uneasy gesture of sadness. “Cancer. Nine, ten years old, she used to show her twat for Clark bars, then she grows up and becomes a nun. How do you figure that?”

“Some things you don’t,” Scandura said.

Ferlito stepped away from the flowers, the cloying scent clinging to him, which gave him an intoxicated air. “Something’s the matter,” he said. “I can see it in your face. Is it Augie?”

Scandura nodded. “He’s in Miami.”

“I’ll take care of it. I’ll go down there and put him on a fuckin’ plane to Alaska.”

“Can’t be that way,” Scandura said. “He’s wanted, and sooner or later the feds will grab him. The kid can’t do hard time, which means he’ll deal.”

“Okay, I understand,” Ferlito said, holding himself rigid. “You guys do what you have to do.”

“Anthony wants you to do it.”

Ferlito shuddered. “Victor, please. Not my own blood.”

“Don’t beg, makes me sick.” Scandura stepped to the casket, dropped to his knees, stared at the nun, and said a prayer. Then he made the sign of the cross and rose. “You and Scat used to give her candy. I never did.”

“Victor, it’s twenty years since I clipped anybody.”

“It’ll come back.”

There were tears in Ferlito’s eyes. “I don’t even own a piece.”

“You don’t need one.”

“What the fuck am I going to use — my hands?”

“No,” Scandura said. “Bad dope.”

• • •

“I don’t understand why you’re looking so sour,” Russell Thurston said. “I pulled you off it, didn’t I? You should be happy.”

“I’m happy,” Agent Blue said.

“If anyone was to ask me, I’d swear you had a hair across your ass, though I’m wrong occasionally. I honestly thought you’d enjoy looking after Wade’s wife. A fine-looking woman. You must’ve peeked in her windows a couple of times. No?”

“You really don’t know a damned thing about me, do you?”

“I know the basics. I know you like being a federal officer. You like the status and the salary, and you like the way your neighbors look at you. There’s respect in their eyes, despite what might be in their hearts, right, Blue?”

“I don’t appreciate what you did.”

Thurston pointed a finger. “Don’t accuse me of what you can’t prove. But remember this, my friend, in this business you’ve got to be tough, and you’re always going to be tested.”

“You tried to set me up.”

“It was clumsy, I’ll admit.”

“No, it was smooth, and you know it.”

Thurston smiled. “Thank you, Blue. Now I’ll let you in on a little secret. I might be the only pal you have here. How does that go down with you?”

“No problem,” said Blue. “I know exactly where we stand.”

“No, you don’t,” Thurston said, slightly altering his tone of voice. “In fact, neither do I. Now get out of here. You and Blodgett have things to do.”

• • •

Christopher Wade breakfasted with his daughters in a greasy spoon kind of place near Boston University. The older, Cindy, who wore her kinked hair long and wild, told him over scrambled eggs that she was going to Israel for a month with her boyfriend. “I see,” said Wade, trying to sound sophisticated and then immediately abandoning the attempt. “Why Israel?”

“Philip is Jewish.”

“You could get killed there.”

“So could you, Dad, in what you do. We used to think when you didn’t come home that you were dead. Remember the clothes Mom burned, all the blood on them?”

Yes, he remembered, but he was astounded that she did, for she and her sister were little more than infants then, and he was working undercover in the Worcester area, mingling with the worst, buying drugs, worming his way in, except that he rubbed somebody the wrong way, an offhand remark that some junkie in the group took offense at. The next thing he knew was that he was sitting between two trash cans and watching a section of his shirt brighten and bleed. The pain hit him everywhere, even in the fillings of his teeth, especially there. A Worcester cop came upon him and deduced that the knife wound was bad, life-threatening. But the cop thought he was a druggie and took his time calling for an ambulance. It was a delay that nearly killed him.

Wade said, “I’ve never met your Philip.”

“You’d like him,” she said. “At least I think you would. He’s going to be a lawyer. And he’s not
my
Philip. Nobody belongs to anybody else. We belong only to ourselves.”

Wade munched toast. “All the same, I’d like to plead my case to him about not going to Israel at this particular time.”

“Dad, he’s six-foot-five. I don’t think you have to worry.”

“Size is no defense against weapons,” he countered without effect and looked for support from his other daughter, Barbara, who was aloof and taciturn, probably shy. She was, in a way, his favorite, perhaps because at birth she had looked so ugly. Now, like her sister, she was astonishingly good-looking.

She said, “I hate to tell you, but Tel Aviv is probably safer than Kenmore Square at night.”

“And who don’t you belong to?” he asked with a smile.

“His name’s Larry,” she said and no more. It pained him to think they wanted to share as little as possible with him and had little wish for him to meet their boyfriends. It pained him more when each finished eating before him and peeked at the time.

“I wonder if we might do this again sometime,” he asked but learned that Cindy was leaving for Israel within the week and that Barbara was starting a summer job at a resort in the White Mountains. “Maybe in September,” he said. “The four of us. Your mother.”

Cindy said quietly, “You’d better check with Mom first.”

Barbara, coming to his aid, said, “Mom won’t mind.” Then, after a tense pause, she added, “I’m glad she doesn’t see that Mr. Benson anymore. I hated his phony accent.”

He gave her a warm look. They had shared something. He picked up the check and stood in line to pay it while they waited outside. He could see them through the glass: Cindy taller than her mother and beautifully proportioned, and Barbara shorter but no less trim, each with a touch of worldliness that he found jarring. When he emerged from the restaurant, Cindy drew him to one side.

“Dad, I wonder if …”

“Of course,” he said, angry at himself for not being quicker. “How much do you need?”

• • •

Sara Dillon was asleep. Rita O’Dea woke her. “Sit up,” she said. “I’ve brought you some orange juice. Real stuff, not the junk made from concentrates.” Sara Dillon rose up gradually, fixing a pillow behind her, and accepted the juice glass reluctantly. Her face was blotchy, her hand shaky. She wanted a cigarette but was afraid to ask. All of a sudden, greedily, she drank the juice, spilling only a little on her pajama top, which Rita O’Dea impulsively put a hand to. “You’re getting bigger here. Pretty soon you’ll be my size.”

“Why did you wake me?” Sara Dillon squinted at her watch. “Is it that late?”

“You can stay in bed as long as you want. You’re pregnant, kid, which makes you the queen here. I proclaim it.”

There was a slight, uneasy movement from the bed, a drawing up of the covers, and then a tightness of voice. “Almost any woman can get pregnant.”

“But we’re talking about you.” Rita O’Dea pushed a padded chair close to the bed and sat on it ungracefully. “How many abortions have you had? One? Two? At least two, right?”

“Only one. I was very young.”

“How young?”

“Thirteen.”

“But you didn’t get messed up like I did.”

“In a different way,” Sara Dillon said.

“I’m not interested in the mental crap. What I’m trying to do is tell you something, so listen close. You relax while you’re here. Take good care of yourself. But after you have the kid, Ty stays. You go.”

“Have you talked to Ty about this?”

“I don’t have to. I’m prepared to give you a substantial amount of money.”

Sara Dillon, her voice trailing, said, “Are you telling me you want to buy your husband?”

“No,” said Rita O’Dea. “I’m buying your baby.”

S
ENATOR
M
ATCHETT
poised himself near the flagpole in front of his Rye Beach house and gave a quick little salute as the Stars and Stripes convulsed in a random breeze too hot to have come off the ocean. “I’m patriotic,” the senator announced in a rapid and nervous tone of voice. “Voted for Reagan and will again. Love the man. I’m a Democrat, naturally, but the country comes first.” He smiled tentatively through the heat, the June sun lying hot on his neatly barbered and sharply parted white hair. His face was large and puffy, with dark eyes embedded in the soft flesh. Suddenly he squinted. “Listen, Lieutenant, I’ve nothing to hide.”

“I’m sure you don’t,” Christopher Wade said.

“I’ve nothing to fear.”

“You certainly have nothing to fear from me, Senator.”

“Call me Joe.” His smile was cautiously bright. “You can understand my uneasiness. Some people think all politicians are fair game.”

“I thought it best to see you here in New Hampshire,” Wade said. “Less awkward for us.”

“I appreciate it. God knows what the
Globe
would make of it. Honest men have a hard time surviving these days. Look, may I call you Chris?”

“Of course.”

“Come,” said the senator, guiding Wade by the elbow. “I’d like you to meet my wife.”

Mrs. Matchett, down on her knees in her garden, lifted herself up from among her freshly planted annuals already in full color. She had pinks, whites, and blues, and the blues were the best, the tones royal. “Lovely,” the senator said, proud to show off both the garden and his wife, who was wearing a cotton top held up by elastic. Her plump shoulders were lightly freckled, and her hair was frosted. He introduced Wade.

“Goodness,” she said, “I hope you’re not here to arrest us.”

The senator laughed. “He wants a private powwow to pick my brain.”

“If this has anything to do with Massachusetts politics, Lieutenant, you’ve picked the perfect person.”

“Call him Chris, dear.”

“I love the name Chris.” Mrs. Matchett removed her garden gloves, which were scarcely soiled from her work, and offered a soft hand. “It’s a beautiful beach day. I do hope you’ll go swimming with us later.”

“That’s a great idea,” the senator interjected. “And he should stay for supper.”

“Any friend of Tony’s,” Mrs. Matchett said knowingly, pushing her sunglasses into her hair, “is a friend of ours. Isn’t that true, Joe?”

The senator and Wade entered the house through the breezeway and moved toward chairs in a long room dominated by glass panels that muted the sunlight while providing a panoramic view of the beach. While the senator poured brandy from a gift bottle, the ribbon and tag still around the neck, Wade made himself comfortable near a writing table that held a tray filled with notices, some with
demand
printed across them. Wade knew, from a file, that the senator was bad about bills. The smaller they were, the less likely he was to pay them.

There was a clinking of glasses, a toast. “To the United States of America, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and the State of New Hampshire,” Senator Matchett said grandly. Then he sat down. “Ask me anything you want.”

In a theatrical voice, a nice cadence to it, he denied any irregularities in awarding county contracts to companies in which Anthony Gardella had an interest, and he frowned with indignation that anyone might suppose he had engineered the sale of certain public properties to the advantage of Aceway Development Association. “Good God, is that what people think?”

“It’s been rumored.”

“Rumors are like rats, you can’t get rid of them. Even the USS
Constitution
still has them. I know because I toured her last month.”

“There are rumors you and some colleagues use Gardella to conceal money you don’t want to pay taxes on. The money’s supposedly channeled through you.”

“Absolute nonsense.”

“That’s what I thought,” Wade said and continued with his questions. With a flourish, the senator denied a hidden interest in Gardella’s porn operations, and Wade said, “I’m sorry I had to ask you that.”

“Don’t be. It’s your job.”

“I’m glad you understand.”

“But let me make one point clear, Chris. Though I’d never associate myself in a business way with pornography, I pride myself in not being a prude about it. It has its uses. My wife and I both believe there’s nothing on this earth that isn’t here for a reason.”

“That’s hard to argue with, Senator.”

“I guess you don’t want to call me Joe.”

“It just doesn’t come natural,” Wade said. “I guess I have too much respect for you.”

The senator’s eyes filled. “Thank you for saying that.”

There was a noise behind them. Mrs. Matchett came a few steps into the room and smiled. She had on a black bathing suit and a frilly rubber cap that made her head look long and gave her face an exotic dimension. The freckles on her shoulders repeated themselves on her breastplate. Her knees were dimpled. “Well?” she said.

The senator said to Wade, “I’ll get you some swim trunks.”

Wade, who was wired, declined. “But I’ll stay for supper,” he said.

• • •

As soon as Sammy Ferlito stepped out of the Delta terminal in Miami, the heat hit him hard, threatened to suffocate him. Three minutes later in an air-conditioned cab, his body sopping inside his suit, he said, “How the fuck d’you stand it down here?” The driver, who was Hispanic, did not respond. Ferlito rasped, “Dinty’s, on the dock. You know where it is?”

Strangely, despite tenseness and discomfort, he drifted off during the drive, a jerky little sleep just deep enough for the raw start of a dream in which someone, maybe the parish priest or the nun he had buried, touched the back of his neck, made him turn around, and blessed him with blackened fingers. “Jesus!” he said, waking with a jolt and digging into a pocket to pay the driver with one of several crisp bills he had drawn from an automatic teller that morning in Boston. Stumbling out of the cab, he fell over a rubbish sack. He didn’t hurt himself, but he let out a sob, as a child would.

Inside Dinty’s he peered through the chill, stale air at the obese barkeep and the lame waiter. Then, slowly, he took in the odd collection of faces at the bar and found Skeeter’s, though he did not recognize it at first. It was skin and bones. He went to a table, and the lame waiter brought him beer.

“It’s on Skeeter,” the waiter said.

“I want a shot too,” Ferlito said.

The waiter returned with one, and he tossed it off immediately. Skeeter, after using the men’s room, joined him and said, “I ain’t paying for the shot.”

“Nobody asked you to.”

Skeeter smiled. “You still in the undertaking business? A year, two at the most, you can bury me.”

Ferlito let out another small sob, not for Skeeter and not for himself, but for his nephew. He said, “You know why I’m here.”

“Never thought they’d send you, but it makes sense.”

“It ain’t right.”

“Don’t involve me.” He reached for the beer glass and drank from it. “That makes it mine now. You’d never drink after me.” He wiped his mouth. “The kid’s not at Ho Jo’s anymore. He’s shacking up with a broad.”

His face drawn with futility, Ferlito noted the address. “Skeeter, you do it for me. I’ll pay you good.”

“There ain’t enough money, whole of Miami.”

“And I’ll bury you free, pay all expenses bringing you back.”

“There’s water here, Sammy. All I gotta do is fall off the wharf.”

Ferlito’s head sagged. He had a headache and a chill, and something moved fiercely through his stomach. Skeeter prodded him.

“By the way, you can walk it.”

“What?”

“Where you’re going.”

Ferlito, in the heat, hiked a block and a half to a small rundown stucco house that looked little bigger than a shed. He rang a bell that barely worked, rattled a screen door that fell open, and entered a filthy kitchenette, empty beer cans everywhere, the remains of meals festering on paper plates. The biggest cockroach he had ever seen was in the sink. The bedroom, void of furniture except for a whirring fan and a mattress thrown on the floor, was where he found them. His nephew, nearly naked, in need of a shave, was sleeping soundly and noisily. The girl lying beside him, also wearing little, opened her eyes.

“Who are you?”

Ferlito did not look at her. His eyes were full of his nephew, the muscular arms, the slack belly, the stout, hairy legs. “I’m his uncle,” he said finally. “Don’t wake him.”

The girl — for that was all she was, sixteen at the most — sat up, resting her bare back against the wall and making herself modest with what might have once been a sheet. Her eyes, a kind of amethyst, were not truly focused, and her lower lip was swollen with a fever blister.

Ferlito, feeling lightheaded, said, “He was five, I took him to the Stoneham Zoo, that’s north of Boston.”

“I’m from Wisconsin, originally,” the girl offered almost cheerily.

“He was nine, I took him to see the Sox play the Tigers, but he probably don’t even remember. I mean, what’s gratitude? You know what gratitude is?”

The girl said, “I had my picture taken with my father’s prize cow at the state fair.”

“Shut up,” Ferlito said. “Just shut up.” His head sagged. He was tired. “All of us,” he said, “we’re in a bad way, ain’t we?”

The girl smiled vacantly. “You got any money?”

“No money, but I got this,” he said, pawing into his suitcoat pocket and producing a plastic bottle that once held aspirin. He tossed it. “Dexies. He’s going to need ’em.”

The girl squeezed the bottle. “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me.” His hand moved again. “Here,” he said with another toss. “A little coke too. Tell him it’s the last thing I’m going to do for him.”

“Enough for both of us,” she said with a little laugh.

“Yeah,” he said, backing away mindlessly, “enough for both.”

• • •

Russell Thurston, strolling in the Public Garden, stopped twice to glance casually over his shoulder. Later he spent a minute or so admiring flowers bloated and bright, their stalks heightened, their leaves extended. He listened carefully when somebody walked by whistling an up-tempo tune. The tune was from the early fifties, which gave him an idea of the age of the person. A quick look verified it.

On Arlington Street he found his way to a public phone, got in touch with the agents who were going by the names of Danley and Dane, and told them to meet him in the bar at the Ritz. At the Ritz he stirred his drink an inordinately long time and never did taste it. The waiter stopped by twice and was unctuous, which pleased him. Danley and Dane arrived just as he was becoming irritated by the wait. Coughing on a peanut, he said, “I’m going to leave, walk toward Beacon, and return to my office. I want you to see if anybody follows me.”

He took his time. He sauntered. He had strong legs and felt good about himself. On Beacon Street he vainly enjoyed his reflection in a long panel of glass that also pictured the slow float of traffic in the heat. Eventually he picked up his pace, all uphill, but he had no problem with his wind. Handball kept him in shape. At the top of Beacon, he paused with legs apart and stared up at the golden dome of the State House as if he were capable of taking on the governor, the attorney general, and the full membership of the legislature. In his office on the twenty-fourth floor of the Kennedy Building, he waited for Danley and Dane.

“Nobody,” said Danley, the first to enter the cubicle. Dane soon backed him up.

“You’re sure, absolutely sure?” Thurston asked, and they both nodded. He shrugged. “Well, I could’ve been wrong.”

• • •

Officer Hunkins left his cruiser at the roadside and walked into the woods to take a leak. The woods were hot, sticky, rank, and teeming with mosquitoes. One bit into him. He killed it and wiped the blood from his cheek. Then he opened his trousers and drenched a blueberry bush. When he came out of the woods he saw a car parked behind his cruiser and two men waiting for him.

“You had us worried,” one of them said. He was white, the other was black. The speaker, Agent Blodgett, showed identification. “We thought you were going to eat your gun.”

“Why the hell would I do that?” Hunkins said, trembling.

“Cops have been known to take that route,” Agent Blue said. “Cops with a lot on their minds.”

Blodgett said, “The report we got on you says you wear a magnum, but that’s a thirty-eight I see.”

“Maybe he lost the magnum,” Blue said.

“Maybe somebody took it away from him. What happened to your face, Hunkins? You trip and fall?”

“What the hell do you guys want?”

“We want to know what you were doing in Anthony Gardella’s real estate office,” Blodgett said. “That’s out of your league, not to mention your turf.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You want the proof? We got a picture.”

“I don’t care what you got,” Hunkins said, his anxiety telling on him. His mouth twitched as he tried to show a nervy little smile.

Blue said, “You can’t play with wise guys in Boston. They’ll eat you up. They already took a bite out of your face.”

“Maybe you’d better tell us all about it,” Blodgett said, stepping closer. “Otherwise we might have to fish you out of Boston Harbor.”

“Nobody kills cops.”

“No?” Blodgett reached into his jacket, came out with a snub-nosed revolver, and shoved the barrel into Hunkins’s belly. “I could close you out right this second. Who’d know? Who’d care? And get this. You’re not a cop to those guys, you’re a yokel. And yokels got no rights. Even black guys got more rights than you. Isn’t that so, Blue?”

Blue nodded, and Hunkins winced as if too much noise were running into his ears. “Fuck you all,” he said.

“What did you say?”

Hunkins staggered back, his lightweight cap falling off. He did not pick it up. “I’m not scared!”

They watched him leap into his cruiser and speed off, the vehicle skewing to one side of the road and then to the other before it got on course. Blodgett said, “First he loses his piece, now his cap.”

“I think we did it wrong,” Blue said.