To Save a Son (9 page)

David did exceptionally well at school, never falling below the top four in any subject, and in mathematics and English usually achieving first place. With time to adjust to anything now, Franks was able to respond personally to the headmaster's invitation, a year before examinations, and sat proudly in the man's study, sipping the overwarm supermarket sherry, to hear the suggestion that David's ability was such that he should be considered for scholarship entrance. Franks reflected how pleased his father would have been at a similar interview. Just as he was pleased and proud. His father would probably have accepted the invitation, Franks guessed. But he didn't. And he didn't because of his father, remembering the old man's disappointment at his having to complete his education at an American rather than an English university. He thanked the headmaster for his confidence in David's ability but said that if that ability were such, then there was little danger of the boy failing entry at Common Entrance. He was more than able financially to support the boy throughout any education. So wouldn't it be better to offer the chance of a free education to a less privileged child?

There was another glass of unwanted sherry in gratitude for his response and in the car on the way home a kiss from Tina, who said she never stopped thinking that he was the most wonderful man in the world.

Franks often thought of the perpetual testing that Enrico Scargo had imposed between himself and Nicky, knowing of course that the old man had always set the tasks for their benefit. But he found it impossible to lose the feeling that such constant testing had established in him the inferiority complex that had taken him so long to acknowledge. If that had been the result of the prodding, then he supposed it had caused him more benefit than harm. But he was determined against either of his children inheriting the attitude. And for that reason never set David against Gabriella in anything.

It proved unnecessary anyway, as an incentive to try. Gabriella's progress at the Ascot prep school was as encouraging as David's. Gabriella was stopped from being precocious by Franks' determination not to spoil her—just as he was equally determined not to spoil David—but there
was
precocity about her aptitude for learning. The school responded to it, urging instead of stifling, letting her jump whole forms until she was in classes a year and sometimes more ahead of her age and still able to find the curriculum untaxing.

It became a time when Franks concentrated upon the children, whom he adored, a man to whom security had increasingly become more important, deciding that he should do more to ensure their future. He created trust funds for both David and Gabriella of one million pounds. Franks drew up the governing clauses himself, insistent upon absolute protection, and then had them legally incorporated with only minor, unimpeding adjustments. The most essential provisions were that the capital sum remained untouchable by either child until each was twenty-one and until that time should be invested in gilt-edged bonds attracting the highest compound interest. It meant that by the time David and Gabriella reached maturity, each would have a fortune at least double and likely even more than his original gift to them. He was as careful about the appointment of trustees as he was about the rules of the trust. It was an impulse to think of Nicky, and when he talked it through with Tina she said she couldn't think of anyone better with whom to place the children's welfare than her brother. Franks asked the lawyer on the next visit to New York, and Nicky said he would consider it an honor. Thoroughly fulfilling his duties, Nicky asked to examine the trust documents, seeking flaws he didn't find, and said afterward, “They're damned lucky kids.”

Franks by now shared Tina's confidence in Nicky and was glad he'd thought of asking the man. It was visible proof of his feelings—not just to Nicky but to the Scargo family as well—but it was also an expiation of them, an atonement for his personal benefit for the wrong and unjust way he had regarded the American for too many years.

It was after their return from America where Nicky agreed to the principal trusteeship that Tina raised positively between them for the first time how different his life had become in the immediately preceding months.

“You're not running anymore,” she said.

“Is that how you thought of it?” he asked. “As me running all the time?”

“That's how it seemed,” she said.

Franks supposed it was a good enough description. “Maybe I'm just getting my second breath.”

“Are you?” she demanded pointedly.

“Complaining?” he said, putting a question of his own because he didn't know the answer to hers.

“You know I'm not,” she said. “You know I adore the amount of time we're able to spend together. I just want to make sure it's likely to continue, that's all.”

“I don't see any reason why it shouldn't,” he said.

Tina stared across the living room of the Thameside house, the disbelief obvious. “No more expansion?” she said.

“I'm not planning any.”

“Which just means you haven't thought of anything, not yet?”

“I haven't thought of anything,” Franks admitted. “And I'm not trying very hard, either.”

“That makes me very happy,” she said simply.

“Why?”

“You know why,” she said. “We've had enough for a long time now. I'm greedy. I want you all to myself.”

“So now you've got me,” he said.

“So now I'm happy,” she repeated.

It was a sudden, unconsidered decision to visit his father's grave, something he hadn't done for years. The provision for maintenance was made by bankers' draft and the site was immaculate, the surroundings neatly clipped and the flowers fresh and the stone only a little less white than it had been before David's birth, when he'd stood before it with Tina and wondered where the emotion was. It was a freak day in September, a warning of the winter that was to come, the sky greyly overcast with scudding clouds, herded by a sharp, thrusting wind. Franks hadn't brought a coat and regretted it, shivering before the resting place of his father.

“I've stopped now,” said Franks, aloud, embarrassed at the sentimentality. “I've achieved what I wanted, just like you achieved what you wanted. I'm sorry that I didn't understand.” Inexplicably the tears came that hadn't been there when they should have been. Franks swallowed against them and when that failed hurried a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his eyes. “Beloved father of Edmund” said the inscription. Franks had felt hypocritical about it before, but he didn't now. The old man
had
been beloved and Franks was glad that at last—after too long—he'd finally recognized it.

The reflection about his real father led naturally to thoughts of the surrogate one, settling without reason on the embarrassing toasting scene after Nicky's wedding. What was it Enrico had said? No man could be happier with the life he had. Something like that. Enrico—the constant challenger—had a challenger of his own now, thought Franks. He was sure that he was personally happier and more content than the old man in Westchester.

Franks was still in a reflective, subdued mood when he arrived back at the house, grateful mat Tina was involved with the nanny and Gabriella. He was in the study when the telephone rang and he answered it himself, ahead of the staff.

“Hello,” he said, recognizing Nicky's voice at once. “This is unexpected.”

“We've got problems,” announced the American. “Big problems.”

“What are you talking about?” demanded Franks.

“Not on the telephone.”

Franks was aware for the first time of the wavering uncertainty in the other man's voice.

“You want me to come across?”

“As soon as possible,” said the lawyer. “Tonight if you can.”

PART TWO

Revenge is a kind of wild justice,
which the more man's nature
runs to, the more ought law to
weed it out
.

Francis Bacon
O
F
R
EVENGE

12

That night was not possible because all the flights had gone. Franks went the following day, by the Concorde as usual, so he was in Manhattan by early morning, New York time. Nicky was already in the office, waiting, when he arrived. His brother-in-law was crumpled, as if he had slept in the suit he was wearing, and his face was drawn and badly shaved, tufted with missed stubble. There was no hand-pumping greeting. Instead Nicky remained sitting at the desk, actually appearing shrunken behind it, and when he used the telephone console to tell the secretaries outside to hold all calls Franks saw that the man's hand was shaking.

“What the hell's the matter?” demanded Franks.

Nicky looked away, refusing to meet Franks' look. His hand twitched in a palm-upward gesture of helplessness, and he said, “I don't know how to begin. I haven't slept at all and I've thought about it a hundred different ways and I still don't know how to begin.”

Franks leaned forward over the desk, so that only feet separated them, and said, “Nicky! For God's sake what is it?”

The lawyer looked at him at last, blinking red-eyed. “We're being investigated,” he said.

“Investigated!”

Nicky nodded. “I'm sorry, Eddie,” he said. “Really, I'm very sorry.”

“Investigated by whom?” demanded Franks. There couldn't be anything wrong with the books. He supervised the accounts with the care that he controlled everything else, and they were properly audited and the returns made promptly on time.

“The FBI,” said Nicky.

“The FBI!” Franks backed away from the desk, going to his chair. “Why should the FBI investigate us?”

Instead of replying directly, Nicky said, “They used you, Eddie. I swear to God I didn't know how they were going to do it when I set everything up. I thought it was a good deal. Safe. Honestly I did!”

“Nicky,” said Franks, forcing the calmness in his voice, “you're not making sense. You put in a trans-Atlantic telephone call to get me here, you look like hell, and you're rambling about the FBI and they—whoever
they
are—using me. If we've got a problem then I've got to understand it to solve it and at the moment I don't know what you're talking about. From the beginning. Tell me everything from the very beginning.”

Nicky made a conscious effort to recover, grasping one hand with the other and trying to straighten out of the slumped, collapsed way he was sitting. “It was a favor,” he said. “A repayment of a debt, I suppose. Although I didn't realize it, not at the beginning. Pascara set it up. He helped Poppa, years ago. Loaned him stake money to set up the trucking business and then made sure there were no union problems.…” Nicky shook his head disbelievingly. “Poppa always knew how it was.
What
Pascara was. Things weren't easy in those days. You used your friends. Pascara's family came from Bagheria: that's very close to Palermo, and Grandfather knew them. Pascara helped, when they asked him, and saw that stuff was put Poppa's way when the business started. The stake money was paid back, of course. All settled. They practically lost touch, for years.…” Nicky looked around the office, as if he were seeing it for the first time. “It was Pascara who made contact, about a year after I got taken on here. Made an appointment and came here with Luigi and said how pleased he was mat I'd done so well, that he'd heard about me joining the firm through some friends in New York and liked doing things the old way, arranging business through people he knew and trusted rather than through strangers. He wanted investment opportunities. Nothing high flying. Steady, sensible investment. I put him into a lot of things. Real estate, here in Manhattan and then outside, on the Connecticut border. Down in Florida, too; it was a good deal, Florida. Hit a development boom there. Lumber, in Oregon. Construction company, in Kansas …”

Franks sat bent forward, attentive to everything. There were a lot of questions he needed to ask but he didn't, not wanting to stop the other man despite the account being disjointed and his inability still to fully appreciate what the problem was.

“Then Flamini came, recommended by Pascara. Dukes, too. It was good business for me. Made my name, in fact. There was always money available, and if things went wrong—which they did occasionally, natural that they should—there was never a big complaint.…” The man looked up directly at Franks, shaking his head again. “Talked to Poppa about it, of course. He only knew Pascara, not the other two. That's how I learned what Pascara was; what he had been, at least.…”

“What?” demanded Franks, risking the interruption.

“Rackets,” disclosed Nicky. “Controlled a lot of shipping out of Chicago. Not just Chicago, either. Milwaukee, and across the state into Michigan, to cover Detroit …”