Past Due (14 page)

“What’s this all about, Mr. Dean?” said Beth. “Why do you care what happened to Joey Parma, or what Joey Parma and Derek Manley might have done twenty years ago? What is your stake in all this?”

“It’s about living up to an oath,” he said. “It’s about not forgetting the past. It’s about paying one’s debts.
Hamlet,
I suppose.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Sit down, all of you.” He glanced around him. “Kimberly, Colfax, make yourselves comfortable. This may take a while. I have a story to tell. Sit down, please.”

Dean moved toward the fireplace and leaned on the mantel. Beth and I took seats beside each other on a stiff blue couch. Kimberly Blue curled into a wide aubergine wing chair to the right of the fireplace while Dean, with a careful impassive gaze, watched her every movement. Colfax remained standing by the door, guarding the exit.

“Good, now, are we, all of us, comfortable?” He lifted the cigarette to his mouth, inhaled, blew out a plume as if he were about to give a soliloquy on a great stage set to a packed house of adoring fans. “A long time ago,” he said, “I had a friend. His name was Tommy Greeley.”

Tell me why I wasn’t surprised.

“T
OMMY
G
REELEY WAS
the kind of friend you only find when you are six or seven and then only if you are very lucky,” said Eddie Dean. “We were a unit, he and I. Fric and Frac, Tweedledee and Tweedledum, Eddie and Tom.

“This was in Brockton, Massachusetts, where I grew up, famous as the Shoe City of the World. We played baseball in the church yard like we were Yastrzemski and Fisk. We hung out by the railroad tracks. We swam at the lake. We spent long summer days in a tree house we hammered together deep in the park. He was closer to me than my family, closer to me than my own skin. I would have done anything for him and he me. When Frankie McQuirk took a shot at me it was Tommy who stepped in and got the broken nose. No big thing, but the kind of thing you never forget. Never.

“He came from a difficult family, nothing that ended up in the paper, but it had its effect. The Greeleys were rich by Brockton standards, country club people. They belonged to Thorny Lea Golf Club, where the boys I grew up with could only hope to caddie, and they lived in a huge stone house on Moraine Street, the best street in town, and on the best part of Moraine too, just north of West Elm. But when you stepped in the house it smelled wrong, like some crime had just been committed. The mother was cold, distant, more interested in her martinis than her son. And the father,
Buck—everyone called him Buck—was big and bluff with a bright streak of anger at everyone and everything, an anger that grew to monstrous proportions when the shoe manufacturer Buck worked for went bankrupt and Buck found himself on the street, looking for work in an economy that was shedding jobs by the thousands.

“One afternoon—we were about eight by then—Tommy came out to the tree house with a black eye and split lip. He wouldn’t tell me what had happened but he didn’t have to tell me, I knew. It was Buck. The violent undertone of his bitterness, which had been there all along, was finally unmasked. And right after that, Tommy’s mother left the house, moved up to Framingham where she had a sister. And she didn’t take Tommy with her. The maternal instinct was not strong in Mrs. Greeley, killed off, I suppose, by massive quantities of gin.

“That beating was only the first Tommy took that summer at the hands of Buck—God that name, how purely it fit the hulking brute. It got so bad, Tommy took to hiding in that tree house in the woods and I, with my mother’s permission, hid out with him.

“One night, in the park, we built a fire. We smeared lipstick on our faces like war paint. We concocted a strange Indian ceremony. And then we swore each other an oath. That we would be friends for life, together forever, the brotherhood of the woods. That we would take care of each other no matter what. That if something happened to one, the other would chase the wrongdoer to the ends of the earth to see justice done. This last bit was insisted on by Tommy and I understood exactly what it was about: Buck. Tommy wanted protection, for himself and his mother, if something happened to him, and he thought that in some strange way I could give it. But Buck was a big, hard man and I knew I could never do a thing against him. Still we sliced our palms like in the movies and clasped hands and, with solemn voice and full heart, I promised to protect him with my life.”

He looked down at his right hand, stroked something on his palm, as if stroking out a memory.

“What happened?” said Kimberly, leaning forward now, sitting on the edge of the wing chair.

Eddie Dean turned his face to her, that same careful, impassive
gaze directed her way, as if this story had some special meaning for her, as if it was directed at her and her alone. And then, as much as it was possible with that face of his, he smiled.

“Nothing. Buck found a job of sorts and Tommy’s mother moved back and the danger in the Greeley house receded. Six months later my father was transferred to the West Coast office in Sacramento. And so we moved. And that was the end of it. I never saw Tommy Greeley again.”

I cocked my head, looked at Beth, looked back at Eddie. “So?”

“So, a couple years ago I was having my…” Eddie Dean took a long drag from his cigarette, another quick glance at Kimberly. “Episodes. I made too much money too quickly and found too many ways to spend it. There was a fire—we’re in Richard Prior territory here—a fire which paradoxically saved my life, and I ended up where all the foolish rich end up, in rehabilitation. It’s the same old story. But in this program, you were supposed to tally up all the obligations that you failed in the past, as a way to gain a grip on how you ended up addicted in the first place. Step seven it was. And that’s when I remembered my oath with Tommy Greeley. Friends for life, together forever, the brotherhood of the woods. So I started looking for him.

“It’s easy now, right? Just check the Internet. Everyone’s on the Internet, but not Tommy Greeley. I called his mother in Brockton. And she told me this. That twenty years ago, Tommy Greeley had been living in Philadelphia, studying to be a lawyer, and then one day he simply vanished. Gone. Disappeared out of thin air.

“I had two choices, forget about it or pursue it. I probably would have forgotten about it, friendships die, that is the nature of things, and so do friends. But I had begun to see the wisdom in the program. If I couldn’t be faithful to the dearest friend I had ever had, how could I be faithful to myself? A promise had been made, an oath had been taken. If something happened to one, the other would chase the wrongdoer to the ends of the earth to see justice done.”

“So you decided to solve the mystery on your own?” said Kimberly.

“It sounds silly, I know.”

“No it doesn’t,” she said, and something in Dean’s immobile face lit with a deep pleasure.

“I had a contact in Los Angeles,” he continued, “a police detective. I am a donor to a number of charities, including one with which he was intimately concerned. A tragedy involving his son. With his eyes welling in gratitude at my generosity, he had told me to call him if I needed help on anything, anything at all. I took him up on the offer. He made a request to the Philadelphia Police Department for any information they had on Tommy Greeley. There was a file. A missing persons file. And in the file was a memo about an offer from a jailhouse snitch. He said he knew why the person was missing. He said that Tommy had been set up, that a valuable suitcase had been stolen, that Tommy had been murdered. He said he would tell who had done the killing for a reduction in his sentence. The memo ended with a notation about the snitch being murdered in a fight in the yard. There was nothing more to be done. But the snitch had given something to the police, a tidbit of what he could offer if given a deal. He had given a name: Cheaps.”

“Joey,” I said.

“It didn’t take much to find him, his nickname is unique enough, or to confirm that Joseph Parma and the jailhouse snitch were incarcerated at the same time in a prison called Graterford. I sent my man Colfax east to rent suitable housing and to hire a staff. When I arrived, Colfax and I paid a visit to Mr. Parma.

“He denied everything. Despite our entreaties, both firm and generous, he denied everything. He never heard of Tommy Greeley. He never was involved in anyone’s disappearance. He never told a thing to the jailhouse snitch. It was all exactly as I expected. But it wasn’t what he would tell me on which I had pinned my hopes, it was on who he would call afterward. My detective in Los Angeles obtained the phone logs. Two calls of interest. And this is where you came in, Victor. One call was to a Derek Manley, and the other was to Joey Parma’s lawyer.”

“So you used me to put pressure on Manley,” I said, “based on information you believed Joey Parma might have disclosed to me.”

“I
hired
you for that reason, yes. I had hoped my vice president of external affairs would clue you in to what I was after and she didn’t disappoint. I realized from the start that Joseph Parma was at the bottom of a chain. He was nothing more than a tool, and so was
the Derek Manley of twenty years ago. My obligation required me to rise up the chain, step by step, to find the person ultimately responsible. Because there was more to Tommy Greeley’s disappearance than a mere accident of crime. The snitch said he had been set up. Someone close to Tommy, for some reason, had wanted to do him harm. Someone close to Tommy was responsible for his disappearance. He is the one I intend to find.”

“And what are you going to do when you find him?” I said. “The same thing you did to Joey?”

He tilted his head at me, the only form of puzzlement his frozen face allowed him to display, and as he did his vertebrae cracked. “We were rougher with Mr. Parma than I would have liked, yes, but it was more for show than anything else. We meant him no real harm, we only wanted him to be afraid enough to take some sort of action.”

“Slicing his throat was just for show?”

“Excuse me? Oh, I see. Victor, no, you have it wrong. I had nothing to do with that. In fact, I had been hoping you would convince Mr. Parma to go to the police with what he knew. What happened to Mr. Parma was a major setback.”

“That still leaves the question of what you are going to do if you find the man responsible,” said Beth.

“Turn over all that I’ve learned to the proper authorities. What else? Victor, do you have the name of a detective who could prove useful?”

“I might indeed,” I said. I glanced down at my hands, and then peered directly at Eddie Dean when I said, “You did know, didn’t you, that Tommy Greeley was one of the leaders of a million-dollar cocaine enterprise?”

Eddie Dean didn’t flinch, his immobile face was unable to perform such gyrations, but he did glance to the side, to where Kimberly was still curled on the chair. My gaze followed his. Kimberly was watching carefully, surprise clear on her face.

“Yes,” he said, finally. “My police detective in Los Angeles informed me of the indictment against him. Never proven in a court of law, of course, so I choose to presume him innocent. Maybe I’m being overly gallant toward my old friend, but my protector from the ravages of Frankie McQuirk deserves at least that from me, don’t you think?”

“Depends on how tough McQuirk really was?”

“Oh he was a beast, believe me,” said Dean. “Four-foot-six, sixty-four pounds, at least. So, that is my story. Have your questions been answered? Are you willing to continue my collection action and learn what you can from Mr. Manley?”

I looked at Beth. She shrugged. It was my case, she was leaving it up to me. I pursed my lips and pretended to be impressed, even though I knew his story to be a total crock.

You might imagine that I was angry at being lied to, that I would storm out of that house in righteous indignation. But, frankly, if I waited for a client I believed one hundred percent I would starve. In no relationship are the lies more blatant, excepting perhaps the marital relationship, than the relationship of a client to his lawyer. Clients lie, it’s what they do, that clients lie to their lawyers is the first of three immutable laws of the legal profession, and so I wasn’t shocked, shocked that Eddie Dean would be lying to me. What surprised me was the forethought of the lie. Eddie Dean had created a marvelous, intricate, Gothic lie, a touching story of childhood friendship and adult remorse and pledges unfulfilled. I was flattered, frankly, that he cared enough to craft such a fine full lie, and puzzled too, that he would think it mattered enough to go to all the trouble, even though something about its ornate nature indicated it wasn’t quite manufactured for me. But a lie still it was. For Edward Dean could not have known that I had seen the missing persons file, but I had, and there was no note from a jailhouse snitch with details of Tommy Greeley’s murder and the name “Cheaps” prominently displayed.

I looked at him for a long moment, his masklike face revealing nothing, and then looked at Kimberly. Eddie Dean’s story was a lie, yes, but it seemed to me just then that it wasn’t told for my benefit, it was told for hers. Why would he care? What did she have to do with anything? I remembered what I had thought when I first saw her in that house, her feet bare, her robe clutched close.

“So, Victor,” said Eddie Dean. “Can I count on you? Are you willing to help me pursue the ends of justice? Are you willing to help me solve the murder of Tommy Greeley?”

“T
HAT DOCTOR CAME
in again,” said my father, after I had slipped into his room, trying to avoid that very same doctor.

“Which doctor?” I said with sincere disingenuousness.

“The cute one.”

“I thought you said she wasn’t so cute.”

“Cute enough. She came in again. She asked about you.”

“Wonderful,” I said, my smile tight.

“What’s the matter.”

“She’s a vegetarian, Dad.”

“Oh.”

“And she’s got cats. A swarm of them. She takes their pictures.”

“See, I told you.”

“Yes you did.”

“Ohio.”

“How are you feeling?” I said, though the room itself provided my answer. Two new monitors had been installed. One showed the rate of his breaths, now at nineteen per minute, which I knew already was dangerously high. The other monitor showed the beating of his heart, one hundred and nine beats a minute, his heart struggling to keep up his respiratory rate. Things were not going well for my father.

“I feel like crap,” he said, wincing as he shifted on the bed, “which is good.”

“Why is that good?”

“Because as soon as I start feeling better they’re going to open up my chest and cut out my lungs.”

“That’s true.”

“You don’t got to be so damn cheery about it.”

“I just want you to get well.”

“Why?”

Good question, why indeed? What wondrous marvels of life awaited my father as he stepped out of the hospital with his lungs slashed in half? My father had always been able to cut through the noise and ask the telling question, which was one of the things I couldn’t stand about him.

“Where am I?” he said.

“Dad?”

“Where? Where am I?”

I felt tender toward him for a moment, an old ill man who had completely lost his bearings. “You’re not well, Dad,” I said. “You’re in the hospital.”

“I know that, you idiot. In the story.”

“Of course,” I said. “The story.”

“Oh yes,” he said, closing his eyes. “Now I remember. Yes. The morning after.”

The morning after the night before. The world seems new, cleansed somehow. He doesn’t get up before the sun this day, not with his newly minted love still asleep on his chest. Aaronson and his damn mowers can get along without him for once. He lies there, staring at her, feeling her hair tickling his chest, waiting for her eyes to open, for the expression of pleasure to brighten her features when she sees that it is him there, that his body is the pillow beneath her head. And they do, and she does. And my father didn’t say it, but I knew what also he was waiting for, waiting for her to awaken so he can kiss the sleep from her eyes, to lick the film from her teeth, to reach again for the perfect closeness, the perfect urgency of the night before. And the way my father’s eye’s widened at the memory told me it was just as perfect, and maybe, my God, even more.

“I said it,” he told me. It. “And she said it too.” It. The word that had so pained my father that he had been unable to pronounce it more than a handful of times for as long as my entire life, and I had an inkling now of why. They say it, back and forth, it, and the it he proclaims is not the rote mewings of habit or the smooth lies of the Casanova, no. For my father it is a declaration that cements for all eternity the swirl of emotion that has overwhelmed him and defined him anew. I love you. I love you too. Yes I do. Me too. Oh yes. Yes. I love you I love you I love you. There, in that most unlikely of places, that narrow bed in that cramped decaying apartment in North Philadelphia, there my father and the love of his life promise the world and their hearts one to the other.

Tell me we’ll be together forever, he says.

Together, she says.

Promise me, he says.

Forever, she says.

Promise me, he says.

I promise. You and me, Jesse. Together forever. I promise and now you promise too.

I do, he says. I promise.

And so it is asked and answered, promised, sealed. The crucial most difficult steps have been taken with remarkable ease. The rest are mere details. Details, where, according to the sages, both God and the devil reside.

Let’s go somewhere, he says.

Okay, where?

I don’t know. California maybe.

They are lying on the bed, the morning sun is now slanting in the window, a soft cloud can be seen floating by in the distance. His arms are behind his head, the future rolls ahead of my father like a long lazy river to be savored and explored together with this girl, this naked girl in his bed, their love the raft keeping them dry and buoyant.

California sounds nice, she says.

San Francisco, or maybe Los Angeles.

Hollywood? she says.

Sure, Angel, anywhere you want.

Hollywood then. Anywhere, really, so long as it’s away from him.

The cloud drifts across the sun and the room suddenly darkens.

Who is he? he asks.

Nobody.

So why does he matter?

Because of who he is.

And who is he?

He is rich, greedy, grasping, she says. He is a soulless spider. And then she tells my father of how she became entwined in his web.

“Her mother had been sick,” said my father, fighting now for breath as he struggled to explain. But he didn’t have to struggle so hard. As soon as the sick mother was marched to the fore all the other elements fell in behind her. The financial need, the golden opportunity, the lifesaving stream of income, the financial dependence. And once the dependence was settled upon her shoulders like a yoke, the more unusual secretarial requests. The personal letters. The inventory taken side by side on the large dining room table. The late hours. The working dinners. And then the rainy evening, the roads awash. You mustn’t try to go home in this weather. It isn’t safe. I insist you stay the night. I simply insist. And so there she was, tossing awake in the big iron guest bed, as the sounds assaulted her from every side. The lashing of the rain against the windows, the wind scraping the tree limbs across the stone facing, the old house settling down upon itself. And then something different, the creaking of the floorboards, the whispered entreaty, the low whine of the door as it slips open, only the long bony fingers visible at first. “Her mother had been sick,” said my father, which was explanation enough for all that followed, the gasp in horror, the calm voice of age and authority, the tears, the sobs, the ultimate submission as the old man rutted atop her like a bearded billy goat, while she stared at nothing and thought only of her mother, her sick, old mother, and the medical bills that were piling against their door higher and higher with every visit to each new specialist.

My father had always been quick to anger, anger being his natural state, so it wasn’t hard to imagine his reaction, the bile flowing through him at the thought of the old man taking advantage of his love, the old man turning his love into something ugly, something
unclean. “I wanted to kill him,” my father said and of that I had no doubts. He wants to smite him as the defilers were smote in the olden days, to stone him to death for what he did to her, to his love.

No, she says. You can’t. No. Let’s just go away.

What about your mother?

She passed away, her illness, she was too weak even with the specialists.

When?

A month ago. Maybe two.

So why are you still with him?

Where was I to go? I had no place else. No place else, Jesse, until I met you.

She would have kissed him then, kissed him hungrily, urgently, sucking the air from his lungs. And I knew how he would have reacted, how her kiss would have dissolved his anger, banished his questions, how it would have stiffened his devotion, I knew all of that without him telling because he and I were of the same blood.

All right, he says, the sweat pouring off of him, her taste like an opiate on his tongue. All right, let’s just go, go away somewhere. Let’s go.

Okay.

To California.

Hollywood?

Sure.

Okay. Yes. Let’s go.

I love you, he says. I’ll love you forever.

Yes, she says. Me too. Yes. But first, before we go away, we have to go back.

To the old man’s house?

Everything I own is there. All my belongings. We have to go back.

Forget them.

All I own is there, and more. He owes me, Jesse, don’t you see? There are unpaid wages…and there is more. He owes me. We can’t get started, she says, we can’t live the way we deserve until we get what he owes me.

“What he owes me,” said my father, from his bed, his voice now
merely the softest of whispers riding over his wet sucking breath. “Only what he owes me.”

He was right, my father, once again. He wasn’t getting better. The new antibiotic wasn’t any more efficacious than the old one, and his lungs remained flooded with poison. They would have to try something new, some other wonder drug to cure his infection, though I sensed as I watched him fall into a pained sleep, with the words “What he owes me” on his lips, that there wasn’t any new wonder drug that could cure what was truly ailing him. Maybe I had been right before when I had suggested they pump him full of Iron City beer, because that was what he had been using all these years, I recognized, to keep these memories at bay. But they were coming out now, one after the other, pulled from his throat like a rope of knotted kerchiefs, as if he were some second-rate magician and I an audience of enraptured schoolkids. And as each one passed it left its own virulent strain of bitter disappointment in his blood that no antibiotic could ever hope to destroy.

The only answer was to pull it to the end, to get the entire story out of his gut, to tell it and maybe in the telling to free himself of the past, which was killing him day by day, and which had been killing him, I now believed, since long before I was born.