Past Due (26 page)

She was lovely, so lovely, and just then I felt my erection stir because I was looking at her not as the woman in the pictures, an image which she couldn’t live up to, but as a beautiful woman buttoning
her shirt on my couch. Is there anything sexier than a beautiful woman buttoning her shirt on your couch? But then it was too late to make another play, the relief on her face was palpable, and I wondered just then why she had been willing in the first place and so when I handed over the beer I asked her.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Because you reminded me of him and with him I always just agreed. With him I was helpless to refuse.”

“Who?”

“Tommy.”

“I remind you of Tommy Greeley?”

“Oh, Victor, yes. Of course you do. The spitting image.”

I blew wetly out my lips. “Maybe its just because I’ve been asking questions about him.”

“No, it’s more. It’s everything. You even look like him, tall and lanky. His hair was longer but he had that same flat mouth, the same eyes with the touch of hurt in them, puppy-dog eyes. And he was both funny and serious and irreverent all at the same time, just like you. But it’s something else. You carry the same sense of having been wronged a long time ago, of needing to overcome a disadvantaged start, a hunger to make something glorious of the future. And a crushing disappointment.”

“Disappointment?”

“Oh yes.”

“Disappointment with what?”

“With everything you each never had, and your failed search for the one thing that would make everything better.”

“And what’s that?”

“The one thing?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, Victor,” she said, standing now, placing her bottle on the coffee table. “You really do need to meet Cooper.”

But it wasn’t the enlightened Cooper Prod I ended up meeting the next afternoon, it was the freaking prince of darkness.

“T
HEY WANT TO
build a mall here,” said Earl Dante as we sat side-by-side on a bench at Penn’s Landing overlooking the wide gray Delaware River. A stiff breeze blew in from the water, but Dante’s waxy gray hair didn’t budge. “And that of course is just what we need. More malls.”

“Isn’t this too public a place for a meeting?” I said.

“They have a photographer across from the restaurant where I eat. They have an unmarked sedan following my car. They are parked in front of my house, snapping photos of my wife. Public is all I have left.”

“Where’s the car now?”

“Wilmington. I took a Camry here. I cannot fully express the humiliation of being under constant surveillance, but that word comes close. Camry.”

“What color?”

“Does it matter?”

“Just curious.”

“Blue.”

“And the interior?”

“Gray.”

“Of course it is.” I nodded at Leo in his green jacket a few yards down, leaning on the railing, eyes surveying the deserted strip of cement behind us. “Anyone else know we’re here?”

“No. You called and said you had a question.”

“Teddy Big Tits.”

“Yes?”

“What, is he just fat or does he take some sort of injections? I mean there are porn stars who eye him with envy. We’re talking triple D at least. How is this possible?”

“That is your question?”

“Inquiring minds.”

“Theodore sucks the marrow from the bone of life.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means he is fat.”

“What’s his racket?”

“He makes book, he lends money, he brokers deals. In this economy, we all must do what we can.”

“Does he pimp?”

“Not precisely.”

“Well, then, let’s be precise.”

“I told you to leave this be.”

“You told me to stay away from Manley’s company. I did. But I’m going to find out what happened to Joey.”

“Loyalty or money?”

“Does it matter?”

“Then it must be money. Theodore has arrangements with certain ladies. Some of their suitors might be short of funds. They steer those suitors to Teddy. Teddy provides the funds at interest to the suitors and the ladies kick back some of the generous gifts to Theodore. Everybody wins.”

“Except for Joey Parma.”

“She’s quite attractive in her way.”

“Oh, she’s a honey all right, that poor son of a bitch. What happens when someone can’t pay his tab to Teddy?”

“Theodore has his ways.”

“A slit throat?”

“More like a phone call to the wife. Or, in Joey’s case, the mother, which was for him a far scarier prospect.”

“And if the phone call doesn’t work?”

“Then he talks to us and we earn our share. But we didn’t earn it on Joey.”

“And no chance Teddy did it on his own?”

“It is a nice suit I’m wearing, is it not? Specially made for me by a gentleman who flies in twice a year from Hong Kong. You couldn’t tell just by looking at it how big the pockets are.”

“And Teddy Big Tits is in your pocket. Okay, then maybe he didn’t. So there is something you need to do. Before he was murdered, Joey had some sort of plan to pay off his debts. Teddy and sweet little Bev were in on it. I need you to find out for me what it was.”

“I could ask.”

“Thank you.”

“But then you would have to do something for me.”

“The hell with that. You owe this.”

“I owe you?”

“You owe Joey. You should have been looking out for him. He grew up in your territory.”

“He was a loser.”

“He was a stand-up guy, at least in your world, and you let those two con artists take him for a ride while you sat back and took a cut. That wasn’t right.”

“He was born to lose.”

“Anyone can take care of winners. Joey was looking for something more than he had, looking for love in the wrongest place imaginable, and you let those two pythons squeeze the life out of him. He was from the neighborhood, you should have been looking out for him. If you couldn’t even do that, what good are you?”

He turned to me and smiled his scary little undertaker’s smile. “No damn good,” he said.

“They’re going to take you down.”

“They’re going to try.”

“You think you’re different than Scarfo, than Stanfa, than Skinny Merlino. You’ll be in jail with the rest of them.”

“That’s where you come in.”

“What can I do about that? I am the least influential guy in this entire city.”

“You’d be surprised, Victor. Derek Manley has gone missing.”

“So he has.”

“It is important I pass a word on to him.”

“I think it’s too late for that.”

“It’s never too late.”

“What makes you think I’ll ever see him again?”

“Because you have a knack for being in the wrong place at all the right times. If you see him I want you to pass on a word. Just one word. You will be doing both him and me a service.”

“I’m not a messenger boy.”

“That’s right, you are lower than a messenger boy. You are a lawyer, a lawyer who has stepped over a line I had drawn. You are a liability. You are on borrowed time. Whatever jeopardy I am in, you are in deeper. One word, Victor. Magnolia. Do you think you can remember that?”

“I have to go.”

“Magnolia.”

I stood up from the bench. Leo pushed himself off the railing as if to intercept me, but Dante shook his head.

“I’ll have a little talk with Teddy,” he said. “You remember your word. We’ll do fine.”

“You should have taken care of him.”

“I should have done a lot of things,” he said. “I should have been a dancer.”

“I understand they have wonderful programs in prison.”

“Magnolia.”

“I heard you,” I said even as I was walking away.

It was always a dangerous thing to ask something of a man like Earl Dante, but Martha had called to say that Bev had no idea about Joey’s pending deal, sorry, though an itemized list of what Joey owed to Bev would be sent to me shortly. It would be a breathtaking piece of fiction, no doubt, as epic as
Gone with the Wind
and nearly as long. Still, Joey had something going on and that something might have gotten him killed and it seemed only Dante had the wherewithal to get the answer. So I had called him and even as I had called him I knew that he would want something in return. You want a free favor, call a priest; guys like Dante always make you pay.

But I wouldn’t have an opportunity to let slip Dante’s word to Derek Manley. Manley had disappeared, just as Earl Dante had said, and I was pretty damn sure he wasn’t ever going to be found. In that alley, after the big squeeze, he had as good as spelled it out for me: his hopeless financial and penal situation, the sickly son needing expensive care, the insurance policy that could take care of everything. A peculiar sort of heroism for a peculiar sort of man. So no, I wouldn’t be passing Dante’s word to Derek Manley, and so yes, Dante would be disappointed in me. Just add it to the list.

I was in the middle of something, of which I didn’t have the first clue. I had gotten on the wrong side of a State Supreme Court justice, whose wife had developed an unhealthy interest in me. The guy who was supposed to pay my inflated bill was flat broke. Kimberly Blue was in some sort of trouble that I couldn’t quite figure. My peter was petering. My cable was out. The next day I was due in Traffic Court to defend my license against a series of malicious attacks by the city’s police force. My very existence was turning quickly to crap.

And to top it off, as my father fought for his life while struggling to tell me his sad lovesick tale, both his health, and his story, were about to take a serious turn for the worse.

A
ND THEN A
doorway of shelves in that treasure room swings away, swings open. And there, in the opening, the hidden doorway, darkness streaming in from behind him, stands the old man. Tall, thin, his hair brushed back, his back only slightly bent by age, his eyebrows raised in mock surprise. And he’s smiling, smiling with the eyes of a fox, smiling at all his little treasures, his golden statuettes, his jade fetishes, his pearls, his coins, her, smiling at her, my father’s love, smiling at her as if she were merely another one of his trinkets that had only temporarily been misplaced.

He takes a step toward her and my father is at him like a panther, driven forward by his love and his rage. The old man’s ropy neck is in my father’s fist, the old man’s crooked back is slammed so hard against the shelving that a crouching jade dragon is hurled to the ground and smashes in a dazzling blossom of green.

Don’t touch her, my father growls.

I wouldn’t dream of it, gasps the old man, his accent purebred Brahmin.

His sly smile, dropped only at the onset of the attack, returns. My father loosens his grip on the old man’s neck.

I was merely admiring the coin, the old man says. A very rare twenty-dollar piece. Saint Gaudens. 1907. Ultra-high proof. The most beautiful American coin ever minted. Only twenty-four were
struck, twenty remain in private hands. I own four. He looks beyond my father at the girl. You always had exquisite taste, he says.

I was well taught, she says.

Do you mind, the old man says to my father, tapping lightly on my father’s wrist.

My father is puzzled at the calmness of the conversation. There is no shock on the old man’s face at seeing the two of them in his treasure room, no threats of arrest from the old man, no howls of abuse from her. A brittle civility holds sway. He lets the old man go, steps back, slinks into the corner, subdued as much by the old man’s accent as by the actual nature of the relationship playing out before him. Whatever has gone on in this house, he realizes, she has not told him the half of it. And whatever is to come, the old man’s accent has marked with utter clarity their respective positions in the world, the old man’s and my father’s, has shown all the old man can offer to this girl and all that my father never could.

My father’s voice as he recounted the scene to me was faint, barely discernible through the oxygen mask and beneath the rasp of his breath. His blood oxygen level couldn’t fight its way above eighty-seven percent and his respiratory rate was in the mid-twenties. He was weaker than I had ever before seen him in his life. Nothing was working, the new drug wasn’t working, death was coming, and he was struggling mightily to beat the scythe as he told me the story. He didn’t have the strength to set the scene, to lay in all the details, so I was forced to do that for myself, but by now I had been so captured by the story, and by his burning desire to tell it, that it was not a burden to listen to his faint words and provide for myself the details of the conversation between the old man and the girl my father loved.

I knew you’d come back, the old man says.

Just for what I’m owed, she says.

And what do you believe is that, dear girl?

She gazes around the room, her eyes full of light. She scans past my father as if he were a ghost, while she takes in all the riches on the shelves. She looks down at the coin in her hand. She returns the coin to its small velvet sack, places the sack back in the box, closes the lid. Atlas with his burden stares balefully out at her.

Maybe just this, she says, placing her hand on the box. This should be enough.

I daresay it would, says the old man. That one coin is near price-less. The entire set is beyond imagining. More than one fortune has gone into acquiring what is in that box. Nora has asked for you. You didn’t say good-bye.

How is she?

Her arthritis, well, you know. She hobbles through her day but is ever cheerful. She is making her famous duck tomorrow evening. Such an event, all the flame and pageantry. It was always your favorite. You must join us.

I can’t, she says.

Just one last time. Please. For Nora’s sake. To say good-bye.

She glances at my father. No, she says.

Her glance is quick, furtive, but the old man catches it with all its import. He turns to my father. So this is the one.

Yes, she says.

Our motorcycle man. Well, he certainly is big enough.

He loves me.

I don’t doubt that. And you, my sweet. Do you love him back?

Her jaw rises, there is a quiver in her voice as she says, Yes. I do.

And that is why you can’t share one last meal with me, one last evening to pass our good-byes, one last chance to share brandy by the fire, to kiss gently as the phonograph plays the Verdi you so much admire, to hold hands as we ascend together the stairs, one last time to spread the satin sheets on your soft featherbed.

Go to hell, she says.

My dear dear sweet. He mows lawns for a living.

Our love is enough.

Obviously not, or you wouldn’t be here. But if that is what you want, then go. My blessing on you both, he says even as he steps forward to the table, grabs hold of the box of coins, snatches it away from her hand, and clutches it to his chest. Go, he says. But know that when you leave here, you leave with nothing. Let your lawn mower man take care of you from here on in. The two of you will be quite happy, I am sure, in your penniless love.

You owe me, she says.

Who owes whom? Go back to what you were when I found you, in your cheap clothes, chewing your gum, so very proud of your stenography.

She steps forward and slaps him.

And the old man laughs. He laughs, laughs his Brahmin laugh, his jaw tight, his laughter loud, mocking, carrying in it all the solid self-certainty of his class.

She hits him with the bottom of her fist, first the one then the other, she hits him on the shoulder, on the chest, she hits him again and again, hits him with all her fury, even as the old man continues his assaultive laughter.

It is then, only then, that my father feels able to intrude upon their scene. The same thing in the laughter that so infuriates her sends a calm into my father. He knows where he belongs, he understands perfectly his place, finds a comfort in that knowledge that his son will never know. The truth is in the very Brahmin accent that intimidated him just a few moments before. Except he doesn’t want anything that the world of this room, this house, this man has to offer. My father has already gotten all he ever wanted, his lover, his one true love. It was a mistake to come here, he knows, a mistake from the start. But he also knows, with a sense of relief, that it is over, that whatever she had come for is gone and it is now time to leave. He steps forward with his own calm, takes hold of her from the waist, pulls her back, away from the old man, who is now shielding himself with the box.

Let’s go, says my father.

No, she says.

But he is pulling her away, away from the man, this room, this house. She is fighting him, fighting him and the old man both as he pulls her away, and then she slips out of his grasp.

She slips out of his grasp, grabs the box from the old man, swings it back, and slams it into the old man’s head.

The old man falls to his knees.

She swings the box again, a corner plunges into his scalp, blood spurts. She swings the box again.

By the time my father is able to make sense of what he has seen, is able to gather his wits enough to grab her at the waist and pull
her away, throw her to the other side of the room, the old man is sprawled dead on the floor, the bloodied box is lying by his side, and her skirt, her blouse, her hands are stained red with the old man’s blood.

What have you done? he says, staring now at the devastation before him.

She rises from the floor, slowly, carefully, weaving back and forth as she rises, and when, finally, she is standing, she makes her way to her lover, my father, her lover.

I didn’t mean to, she says. He drove me to it.

He steps away from her, backs away until his shoulders are against a wall and the corpse is between him and the girl, his love, the girl in the pleated skirt. But she steps up to the corpse of the old man until she is facing my father, close to my father and she says, It will be all right, Jesse, won’t it?

My father is paralyzed with loss as she reaches her bloodied hands to touch him, leaves a trail of blood on his arm, his shoulder, his collar. She places her hands at the back of his neck and stands on tiptoes and pulls him to her as she pulled him to her just moments before in the darkness.

We’ll be forever together, like we said, Jesse, like we promised. Together forever, you and me, like you told me was all you ever wanted, like you made me promise.

And then she kisses him, while they stand over the old man’s corpse, she promises my father everything he ever wanted just moments before, and she kisses him, and my father, God forgive him, kisses her back.

“Kissed,” he said in the softest of whispers as I leaned so close the plastic of his mask brushed against my ear. “Kissed her back.”

It would have been nicely symmetric if the poison of the story had its way with him right then, sent him into respiratory failure, clanging the alarms, bringing the army of doctors and nurses and technicians rushing to that room to battle for my father’s life as I stood by and watched with a horrified silence. But it didn’t right then, not right then. My father whispered, “Kissed her back,” and
then his eyes closed and he drifted off to some finer place. And his respiratory rate eased, and his heartbeat slowed, and somehow the level of the oxygen in his blood started to rise. Eighty-eight percent. Eighty-nine percent. Ninety percent. I left my father in the hospital that night with a slight sense of hope that maybe the worst had been revealed and so the worst was behind him.

But it was a feint, hope with my father was always a feint, and the alarms were sounded not long after I stepped out the hospital’s front door.