Elsinore (6 page)

“What did you say, Mr. Phipps?”

“I told them that their mothers slept with strangers, and their fathers only fucked cows and sheep, and if they didn't serve us in a second, you would piss on the wall and fuck their baby sisters.”

“They could have gotten angry, and I would have had to fight the whole restaurant.”

“Holden, you're wrong. They love to be cursed. That's the language that's dear to them.”

“When was the last time you ate in this restaurant?”

“Twenty years ago.”

“Then why were you so sure the same trick would work?”

“I took a chance. I've always been a gambler.”

Holden's nausea was gone. He had a bowl of tortellini soup, with great hunks of bread. Black wine arrived in tiny glasses. Holden drank six. He had chicken and potatoes. Broccoli and carrots. He had chocolate cake.

“You're a glutton,” the old man said. “I couldn't afford to keep you, Sid. You'd bankrupt me with an appetite like that. Want another dessert?”

He whistled to the waiter in that special Italian of his, and they brought Holden a wedge of cake with towers and canopies of hazelnuts and dark cream. Holden took a bite, and he would have killed for that piece of cake. “What's it called?”

“In English, Sid? College pie. It's a local dish.”

They had cups of coffee to wake Holden from the black wine. Then they got up and shook hands with all the waiters. But Holden never saw the bill.

“How come they didn't charge us?” he asked in the street.

“It would take an hour to answer.”

“I have the time.”

“This was one of my hunting grounds a long time ago. They recognized that from the way I spoke. They wouldn't have dared charge us for the meal.”

“And what did you hunt in New Haven?”

“Whales. The hooch we delivered was kept in big white barrels called whales.”

“Ah, when you were a bootlegger,” Holden said. “Did you bless the barrels with kosher songs?”

The old man fixed his bumper's eyes on Holden. “What kosher songs?”

“Don't take it to heart. A friend of mine says you were a cantor once.”

“Do I look like a cantor?”

“I wouldn't know.”

“Have you been investigating me, Sid? What did you find?”

“Very little. You were born in Milwaukee. You went to cantor's college. You were a big draw in the best synagogues, but you had to pull out. You surfaced again as a Pinkerton man in Seattle. And your name is Feldstein, not Phipps.”

“Your friend has an active imagination,” Phipps said. “I could show you my birth certificate.”

“Mr. Phipps, should I tell you how many birth certificates I keep in my drawer? I have enough social security numbers to field a baseball team. There were times when I had to disappear too. My dad loved the New York Giants. So I'm Johnny Mize. Jack Lohrke. Mel Ott.”

“And I'm Howard Phipps.”

They drove to Woods Hole and sat in a line of cars near the ferry slip. There was a fog over the water, and the ferry arrived out of the gloom. Holden heard the engines, and the boat docked with a soft bump. The ferry door opened and cars drove out of the ferry's big barn. Holden stared into that ribbed well and thought of a whale's mouth. Phipps shouldn't have mentioned whales.

Then it was Holden's turn to drive into the barn. He didn't want to sit in that enormous well. “Shouldn't we go up to the deck? We don't have to be baby-sitters for a goddamn car.”

“It's safer here,” Phipps said.

“I don't get it.”

“It's safer here. You can never tell who we might meet up on the deck. It takes one push, Sid, and we're overboard.”

“Is somebody after you, Mr. Phipps?”

“Not at all. But we'll be carrying a lot of paper on the return trip. And it's better for both of us if we're not conspicuous.… Stay in the car.”

And so they sat inside the whale. The ocean beat against the metal door with a thick boom that sent tiny shivers through the ferry. It felt like some sort of attack, that relentless drive of water. The ferry leaked. Water spilled in through the bottom of the door and a pool began to build under the stairs to the main deck.

“We could drown,” Holden said.

“I've been on this ferry a hundred times, and no one ever drowned.”

The engines stopped, and Holden heard that same bump of metal against wood. The door lowered like a drawbridge and the cars bumped over the door and onto Martha's Vineyard.

They drove to Edgartown and waited for another ferry. They had to cross the channel to Chappaquiddick. It was too far to spit across, and Holden could tell that the current was mean. The ferry had no doors. It was an open green box, and Holden watched the ferryman at his wheel.

It took half a minute to get across the creek.

Holden couldn't find a village on Chappy.

Sand and trees and a country club, houses with gray shingles, a couple of barns. It was his idea of what an island ought to be, a home for lots of Robinson Crusoes.

They stopped at a junkyard that reached across several fields. Holden saw stoves from the time of Martha Washington, toilet commodes, the bottom of a ferry, weather vanes, rotting wood and rust. Entire fields had that bright orange look of decay.

A pack of dogs guarded the junk. They weren't wild. They were meant to growl at strangers. The dogs surrounded the car and slobbered the windows with their wet jaws.

“It's time to get out,” Phipps said.

“With those dogs? They're attackers, Mr. Phipps.”

Phipps got out of the car, whacked the nearest dog with his cane, and the other dogs scampered to the next rusty field.

“Leave the key. No one steals on Chappy.”

They ventured into that rust.

The dogs grew courageous and barked at Holden, but only from a distance.

There was a house behind the junkyard, with the same orange color. The old man whistled once. The sound shot across the fields and rang in Holden's ear. Then a whistling came from the house. It was like birds calling, the birds of Chappaquiddick.

They entered the house. Three old men sat behind a table. It was a family, a father and his two sons. The sons had to be seventy-five, and the father could have been a hundred. Phipps introduced them as the Coleridges. Ethan and his sons, Minot and Paul. Holden smiled at all the aliases. The Coleridges were the Cardinales, gunmen who ran Providence for fifty years until federal attorneys chased them out of the rackets. All three were wanted for murder. Holden couldn't imagine a hundred-year-old man sitting on his ass in the pen.

“This is the baron of Rhode Island,” Phipps said, touching Ethan's shoulder.

“Phippsy, you shouldn't exaggerate. Why brag to the boy?”

“Because he's one of us. Sidney Holden.”

“Never heard of him,” Ethan Coleridge said.

“Don't you read the papers?”

“Was he in the
Vineyard Gazette
?” Minot asked, and fumbled with his hearing aid.

“That's a stupid question,” Phipps said. “He's not a local.”

“Phippsy, don't rile my boy.”

“But that's the problem,” Phipps said. “You're stuck here on Chappy, and you don't get the news.”

“Chappy's fine. You ought to come and live with us … you and the boy. There's nothing on the other side of the creek, nothing that's worth cooing about.”

“Come on. You can't even get cable TV.”

“We're happy. I play checkers with my boys. We have the run of the land. The rest of the world is one big graveyard.”

“I agree with my dad,” Paul said, and this was the brother who worried Holden. The quiet ones were always the first to go mad.

“Phippsy, ask the boy what he thinks,” Ethan said.

“I agree and disagree,” Holden said. “I like your island, Mr. Coleridge. I really do. I could live here. But I'd be unhappy about the thought of never seeing London again.”

“London?” Ethan said. “A pigsty.”

“Have you ever been?” Holden asked.

“Have I been to London? No. But there's nothing to miss.”

“The best sandwiches I ever had came from Holland Park. And there's nothing like tea at Brown's. You have to reserve a chair for high tea.”

“Dad,” Minot said. “Make him stop.”

“Don't be rude to the boy,” Ethan said.

“I mean, he's talking like one of those cosmopolites. We don't ride on planes. And we don't drink tea. I play checkers with my dad and I win … dada, he's wearing a gun. It's bulging out of his pants.”

“What do you expect him to wear? He's Phippsy's agent.”

“But he could have left it on the porch.”

“We're friends, Minot, don't you forget that.”

“Give them the paper, dad, and tell them to blow.”

“I can't do that, son. Phippsy was my protégé. He gave you presents when you were a toddler. He gave you toys.”

“I don't like his friend,” Paul said.

And Holden blamed himself for becoming Phipps' companion. Now he'd have to strangle a seventy-five-year-old man.

“Ah, I know how you feel,” Phipps said. “Strangers upset them. They were always shy, your boys.…”

“They're like animals,” Ethan said. “They never married … and after their mama died, they couldn't stand another woman in the house. I wanted to marry again. You know what Paul said? ‘We'll kill you and the whore, dad.' I'm their prisoner, Phippsy, swear to God.”

“Who'd ever marry you, dad?” Minot said. “You can't pee straight any more. And you have a tube in your dick.”

“Brother,” Paul said, “why are you telling this to strangers, giving them intimate details about our father?”

“You're right,” Minot said. “Give them the money, will you?”

The brothers smiled, and Ethan started to shake.

“Boys, I want no violence in this house.”

“Violence, dad?” Minot said. “We're giving them their cash.… Fetch it, brother.”

Paul went into a back room and returned with a pair of enormous suitcases. The leather had that same maddening orange rust. Minot must have salvaged them from the junkyard.

Holden picked up the suitcases; his eyes began to water from all that weight.

“Good-bye, Ethan,” Phipps said. “Good-bye, Minot. Good-bye, Paul.” He hugged the baron of Rhode Island and tried to hug Minot and Paul, but the boys moved away from him and smiled.

“Count the paper,” Minot said.

“I trust you. I know your father almost seventy years. I worked for him, Minot.”

“Count the paper.”

Phipps turned to Holden. “Please.”

Holden unbuckled the first suitcase. It was stuffed with a potpourri: packages of fives, tens, twenties, and thousand-dollar bills. Holden had never seen a thousand-dollar bill before. He felt like some king of the currency. But the king was more like a fool, counting on his knees. He unbuckled the second suitcase. No one talked. Ethan looked like a sick snake. It took Holden half an hour to count all the cash. He buckled up the suitcases and carried three million two hundred twenty thousand and sixty dollars to the door.

“See you, sonny,” Minot said.

Holden began to grumble once he left the house with Phipps. “How am I going to carry this, Phippsy, across three fucking fields?” The sun had gone down and Holden knew the dogs were out there.

“Stay,” Phipps said. “I'll fetch the car.”

“No.”

“Then let me carry one of the cases.”

“No. I don't like your friends, Phippsy. They belong in an institution.”

“Ah, Ethan's all right. And the boys are bitter. You heard Ethan. They never married.”

“What kind of deal did you make?”

“It wasn't a deal. The money's mine. I came to collect it, that's all.”

And Holden trudged across the fields of junk with Phipps behind him. He had to stop and rest after fifty feet. His hands were torn by the time they reached the car. None of the dogs had bothered them.

Holden put the suitcases in the trunk. Then he drove toward the ferry.

“Phippsy, you might have had an agreement with the father, but not with the sons. We'll be lucky to get off the Vineyard alive.”

“They wouldn't go against their father,” Phipps said.

“They're bumpers,” Holden said. “And they're crazy.”

The ferryman took them across the creek, and already Holden was suspicious. He didn't like the ferryman's dumb smile.

“We'll stay on the island tonight,” Phipps said. “I booked a room in Edgartown.”

“I don't think that's such a hot idea. We ought to distance ourselves from those boys.”

“We're staying at the Charlotte Inn.”

They drove to South Summer-Street and Holden parked in a little lot. He carried the suitcases into the inn. Phipps signed the book. And then Holden managed to get the money up the stairs to their room. He wasn't so jumpy inside the Charlotte Inn. The furniture and the little crooked hallways reminded him of Brown's, where Holden liked to stop in London, when he was stealing patterns for his tailor. He loved the wallpaper at Brown's, the adventures he had exploring the hotel, finding a corner where he could sit and read a book. There were always clergymen around, factory owners from Devon or Lancashire, and Yanks like himself. But he could never understand English hotels, because no one hounded him for the bill. The idea of cash seemed beneath the dignity of a hotel. And Holden had the illusion of staying at Brown's for free.

And so the Charlotte Inn soothed him, and he didn't worry so much about Ethan's boys. He had his shooter. He could relax a bit. And somehow he didn't believe that they would wander into the inn and start knocking on doors in the middle of the night. But they weren't rational beings. They'd been hiding too long, living with their dad, and Holden didn't take a chance. He slept with the gun.