Sweetheart (17 page)

“You want a cappuccino? They put whipped cream on it if you ask.”

“See, you’re not listening.” Thurston rose slowly and stood gracefully immobile. “Which is too bad. You might be uneducated, but you’ve got a brain. We could’ve had an intelligent talk.”

Gardella, sotto voce, spoke in Italian.

“I know what you said,” Thurston declared, flashing a proud smile. Gardella reopened his newspaper.

“Then you know what I think of you.”

Thurston pointed a triumphant finger at him. “I got to you, didn’t I?”

“Yes,” Gardella conceded. “You got to me.”

• • •

As soon as they got into his room in the Howard Johnson’s Motor Lodge, Officer Hunkins pulled Laura close to him and pressed an urgent hand into the front of her red dress, below the waist. She squirmed free. “We don’t touch until you pay.” He paid with crumpled bills, which she smoothed out and counted carefully and then pressed into her large leather shoulder bag. The bag looked Mexican. Her hand lingered in it. “Do you mind if I have a joint? It helps me get in the mood.”

“You kidding?” His face expanded. “I’m a cop. You know that, you heard.”

“Right now, you’re a john,” she said and lit up. Closing her eyes, she took a deep drag and exhaled with a slow sigh. He circled her and came up behind her, his hands trembling for her. His palms were clammy, which made her flinch. She turned around, and he kissed her, ate her lipstick. His stubble scratched her.

“Don’t tear my dress.”

“Then take it off,” he said. She wore black under the red. He quickened when he saw the garter belt. “Lemme help.” With awkward fingers, he worked her bra loose while she avoided his breath. The white of her breasts was a purer white than the rest of her. He began stripping, his black police shoes first, then his wrinkled sports jacket. He placed his magnum on the dresser. “Don’t touch it,” he said. “It’s loaded.”

She looked at her watch.

“What are you doing, timing me?” He yanked off his trousers, skinned away his skivvies and, placing his hands on his hips, grinned. “What d’you think, huh?”

“Let me finish the joint,” she said and reached toward the ashtray.

“No. Put it out.”

On the bed, his senses taken by her, he used his tongue low on her body. “You don’t want to do that,” she advised in a flat voice, which did not stop him. It seemed to urge him on. “I was with somebody earlier,” she explained with the same flatness, and he jolted up on stout arms.

“Jesus Christ, did you have to tell me?”

She heard what he failed to and glanced at the door, which he thought was locked. A second later the door crashed open, and two uniformed Boston police officers burst into the room with drawn revolvers. One was a patrolman in leather boots, and the other was Deputy Superintendent Scatamacchia, whose uniform, with its abundant braid, looped lanyard, and gold insignia, made him look like a rear admiral. He thrust the barrel of his revolver inches from Hunkins’s stricken features and said, “Move and you die!”

Hunkins, a blob of naked flesh, did not breathe. Laura covered herself with the sheet and looked at Scatamacchia as if to say What the hell took you so long? The officer in the boots strode to the dresser and said, “The guy’s got a cannon.”

“I’m a cop,” Hunkins said weakly.

“Shut up!” Scatamacchia said.

The officer inspected the ashtray. “Also we got ourselves the remains of a controlled substance,” he said, holding up the butt.

“Pot party, huh?”

“No,” said Hunkins, and Scatamacchia glared.

“I told you to shut up.”

The officer opened the leather bag that looked Mexican and poked inside. Laura stared at the wall. “What have we got here?” the officer said, plucking out a plastic packet held together by a rubber band. He undid it, sniffed inside, and then, wetting a finger, took a taste. “Coke,” he said. “Somebody’s pushing.”

“It’s not mine,” Hunkins said, and Scatamacchia instantly struck the side of his face with the revolver, just hard enough to break the skin and bruise the bone.

“Twenty years,” Scatamacchia said coldly. “That’s what you’re going to get. Check his pants. See if he’s really a cop.”

The officer lifted Hunkins’s trousers and extracted a bulky wallet. A moment later he said, “Yeah, I guess he is. He’s a hick. Greenwood PD. Where’s that, near Pittsfield?”

Hunkins, collapsed on his side and clutching his face, said nothing. His belly made glugging sounds. Scatamacchia prodded the callused sole of his foot and said, “Nothing I hate worse than a crooked cop. Did you hear me, hick?” Hunkins raised himself up on an elbow and hung his battered face out as if for a spoonful of kindness. Scatamacchia snorted. “Get dressed. I’m sick of looking at you.”

Hunkins moved warily off the bed and stumbled for his clothes. He put his pants on and stuffed his underwear into a pocket. He thrust naked feet into his shoes. The woman did not move. Scatamacchia beckoned to his officer and spoke in a whisper. “Cuff him and take him outside. Talk to him like I would.”

“You mean — ”

“I do.” Scatamacchia winked. “That magnum. It’s mine now.”

“Yeah, you always wanted one.”

“I know what you’re thinking,” Scatamacchia said with a grin, “and you’re right. I’m too cheap to buy one.”

After the officer led Hunkins away, Laura got off the bed, dragging the sheet with her. Scatamacchia reached around her and drew her close by cupping her bare bottom. She frowned instantly and stood with her back rigid. “This wasn’t part of the deal.”

“Sure it was,” he said with a leer. “You just didn’t pay attention.” When she tried to step away, he gripped her at the waist and walked her backward to the bed with his thumbs pressed into her pale skin. She cursed him, and he smiled with half of his mouth. He dropped the smile when she fought him.

Outside the motor lodge the officer guided Hunkins smartly away from the lights and halted abruptly where the shadows were the deepest. “Where’s your car?” he asked, and Hunkins gestured with his manacled hands, his wrists hurting. The right side of his face, which had swelled and yellowed, looked grotesque. His nose was leaking. The officer said, “You know how to get to it fast?” Hunkins stared uncomprehendingly. “If you don’t know, I’ll tell you. You run.”

Hunkins stood rooted. “What are you telling me?”

“Gimme your hands.” The officer produced a key and removed the cuffs. “What I’m telling you is the deputy’s giving you a break, you being a cop and all. We’re letting you escape. But we’re not forgetting you. We ever see you back here again or hear anything about you, you’re dead.”

Hunkins trembled. “I run, you’ll shoot me.”

“You got it wrong. You don’t run, I’ll shoot you.”

Hunkins ran.

Twenty minutes later Deputy Superintendent Scatamacchia emerged from the motor lodge. He signaled to the officer sitting in an unmarked car to wait and walked a short distance down the street to a darkened Cadillac parked at the curb. He looked in at the lone occupant and said, “Tell Anthony he owes me.”

Victor Scandura said, “You really want me to put it to him that way?”

Scatamacchia grinned. “It’s just a figure of speech.”

Scandura gave a quick glance over his shoulder. “Where’s the woman?”

“She could use a little help,” the deputy superintendent muttered and walked away.

Scandura climbed out of his car, looked furtively around, and then moved at a fast pace toward the motor lodge. He tapped on the door to Hunkins’s room and opened it. The room was in darkness. He found the wall switch and swiftly shut the door behind him. The woman lay on the bed as she had been left. Scandura bent over her. “Can you hear me?” he asked, and her head moved a little. Her eyes were blackened and swollen. She could not see, nor could she speak. Her jaw was broken. “I’ll get you a doctor,” Scandura whispered.

• • •

Christopher Wade had a sub for supper, which he ate on the balcony of his apartment while absently watching traffic on Commonwealth Avenue, the cars shadowy with people he couldn’t see. Later, in bed, he watched a Jack Nicholson movie,
The Last Detail
, which he had seen twice before. He watched the eleven o’clock news and dozed off during
Nightline
. He dreamed of his wife, his daughters, and Jane Gardella. In the dream he was himself, a grown man, but curiously like a child who needed his hand held. He rose early and breakfasted at the usual place on Newbury Street, where he lingered over a second and then a third cup of coffee. One of the waitresses, whose mother had died the previous week, said, “Thanks for the flowers.”

Wade gave her a warm smile. “How are you doing?”

“No one should lose a mother. After that, really, you got no one.” She snatched up his check and folded it. “It’s on me.”

“I can’t let you do that,” he said.

“Sure you can. You’re a cop.”

When he arrived at his office he found Agent Blodgett sitting at his desk. “Make yourself at home,” he said with instant annoyance. Blodgett pushed a photograph across the desk, a five-by-seven glossy, the product of a zoom lens.

“Who is this guy?”

Wade picked up the photo and studied it longer than he had to. “Who wants to know?”

“Who the hell do you think? Thurston. We took the picture of him a couple of days ago coming out of your friend’s real estate office. He looks familiar, but we can’t place him.”

Wade returned the photo. “His name’s Hunkins.”

• • •

At the real estate office Victor Scandura said, “I got somebody to wire her jaw. It’s broken in two places.”

Anthony Gardella, preoccupied, murmured, “So what do you think we should do about Scat?”

“I think we should break his in three places.”

“Scat’s an animal. He figured she was there, she was his. What we’ll do is send her off to someplace nice to recuperate, with a nurse and all. Scat can pick up the tab.”

“That’s letting him off easy.”

“What would you have me do?” Gardella asked impatiently. “Cut off his balls?”

Scandura pulled back, and Gardella went to a window to look out at the street, his shoulders drawn tight, his arms behind his back. Two passersby from the neighborhood saw him and waved, but he peered through them. Finally Scandura said, “What’s the matter, Anthony? I know something’s bothering you.”

“That fed Thurston.” Gardella gnashed out the words as he wheeled around. “First he shows up at my parents’ funeral and sends a nigger into the church. Then last night he comes into the Pompei and insults me worse.”

“Take it easy, Anthony.”

The tendons in Gardella’s neck seemed to have a life of their own; his chest heaved. “I want something on him. I want it bad. You hear me, Victor?”

Scandura looked doubtful. “Guys like Thurston are usually clean, nothing there.”

“Nobody’s clean,” said Gardella. “That’s a universal truth.”

R
ITA
O’D
EA AND
A
LVARO
made arrangements through Benson Tours and went away for five days. They could have gone to Atlantic City, which would have reduced their hours in the air, but Alvaro argued for Las Vegas. He had never been there before. They checked into Caesar’s and made the rounds. Rita O’Dea, her mouth ablaze with a new color she was trying, wore large frilly dresses with tulle fronts and ate filet mignon at the best restaurants. They went to shows where glittery Wayne Newton sang silly songs and dough-faced Buddy Hackett told toilet jokes. Alvaro lost ten thousand dollars of Rita O’Dea’s money shooting craps. Rita O’Dea, impatient in all things except cards, won a thousand at the blackjack table. She cashed in the chips and waved her winnings at Alvaro. “This is for the kid,” she said.

“What kid?”

“Ty’s.”

“The thing ain’t even born yet, and who says it’s his? You going to take
her
word for it?”

She regarded him with good-natured condescension and said, “There are some things you can’t understand, pet, so don’t try.”

On their next to last day there, she spent much time at the pool. Using a rubber doughnut, she floated on her stomach. Alvaro, tiring of the sun and of ogling young women, went up to their room. A half hour later she followed him up and found him slouched in a chair with the latest
Penthouse
. Conscious of her derisive glance, he said, “I don’t buy it just for the snatch.”

“Tell me another,” she said, shedding her sodden bathing suit. There were ridges in her skin where the suit had been too tight. Her breasts looked waterlogged, hurt. She massaged them with her palms. He threw aside the magazine and got up.

“Let me do that.” The butts of his fingers brushed her. His lightweight trousers were so tight at the crotch that his penis did more than suggest itself. “I’m horny,” he whispered. “How about you?”

She shook her head. “I’m tired. I need a nap.”

He took the refusal in good grace. He picked up the magazine and stuffed it into a drawer. His smile was careless, his teeth brilliant. “Then I might go out for a while. Can you spare a coupla hundred?”

“Is that what a piece of ass costs here?” she asked with an air of detached interest, and he colored. She pointed to her pocketbook. “Give it to me.”

“Look, you want me to stay, I’ll stay.”

“The pocketbook!” He handed it to her, and she gave him two crisp hundred-dollar bills.

“I’m going to play the slots.”

“Have a good time,” she said. “That’s what counts.”

At the door he looked back at her as she wrapped herself in one towel and began rubbing her hair in another. “Rita, I got a serious question for you. You getting tired of me?”

Her eyes narrowed. “You want me to be?”

“I’m just asking.”

“If I wake up at three in the morning, I want to know you’re there.”

He winked. “What if I’m not?”

“God help you.”

• • •

At the house in Rye, Anthony Gardella sat in a distant room with two visitors from Providence, men wearing silver-gray suits with metallic tints that made them look like tin soldiers. Jane Gardella hovered in another room, where she could catch murmurings and from time to time glimpse faces. She heard mention of Miami, bits about money and island banks, and something vague about cocaine. She heard names mentioned, but only first names, nicknames. Solly. Skeeter. Chickie. Buster. She heard her husband, in a slightly irate voice, say, “Maybe I ought to talk to Raymond myself,” and then the reply, “He’s not feeling so good.”

Later, business apparently over, voices grew louder and lighter. There was laughter. She glimpsed the profiled face and thick neck of one of the visitors. “You remember Mikie’s brother,” she heard him say. He was an exuberant speaker. Spit flew. “He was squeamy about getting his finger pricked, and he closes his eyes when they do it. Then they tell him he’s a
soldato
now,
long live!
but he don’t hear none of this, he’s looking at his fuckin’ finger and getting ready to faint. Someone holds him up. They don’t want him making a donkey of himself. True story, no shit!”

Her husband’s laugh was genuine, full-throated. She could tell when he was letting himself relax.

The other visitor, a pale man, said, “The third brother, spur of the moment, wants a new car to drive to California. He goes to a Pontiac place and buys a Firebird, but it’s a lemon and breaks down someplace in Oklahoma. So he flies back, goes straight to the showroom, and shoots the salesman right between the fuckin’ eyes. Maniac!”

“I can understand the frustration,” Anthony Gardella said. “Getting back to Raymond, does he still wear white socks all the time?”

“Has to, he’s got funny feet. Can’t put nothing dark on ’em,” the pale man said. “Remember when Raymond had to go to Washington and testify before that Senate committee? It was right after they made Puzo’s thing into a movie, and the chairman says to Raymond, ‘Tell me, Mr. Patriarca, how much of
The Godfather
is actually true?’ and Raymond clears his throat and says, ‘Senator, it’s pure
friction
.’ ”

During the guffaws, Jane Gardella slipped quietly out of the room and out of the house. An ocean breeze blew her hair about and cooled the bare backs of her legs. She hiked up the road to Philbrick’s store and, with coins ready, placed a call to Boston from an outside phone. When a voice asked whom she wanted, she said, “Thurston. Tell him it’s Honey.”

Thurston, who had been expecting her call, came on the line without delay and listened without interruption. When she finished, he said, “Describe them,” and she did so in a low, quick voice, mentioning the pallor of one and the thick neck of the other. “You sound nervous,” he said.

“I’m always nervous.” She covered an ear against traffic.

“Can you give me any idea what they talked about?”

“No.”

“You must have picked up something. A word. A name.”

“Nothing.”

“I wouldn’t like to be lied to,” Thurston said. Then his tone mellowed. “How’s he been?”

“Who?”

“Who else? Your husband.”

“Fine.” She hesitated. “But quiet. Like he’s annoyed with me about something, but I don’t know what.”

“Maybe it’s your imagination,” Thurston said with a measure of satisfaction that he did not quite conceal. “You got anything more to tell me?”

“Yes. Tell Sweetheart to keep his hands off me.”

She hung up the receiver slowly, her gaze drifting well beyond the road. High above the beach a multicolored kite throbbed in an air current, its tail twitching. At the same time, absently, she was aware of a car creeping by, an endless Cadillac. Her knees went weak as she drew back. The driver was Victor Scandura.

• • •

The Greenwood police chief, who had a stubborn and pious face, cornered Officer Hunkins inside the little police station, displayed a dry, rigid smile that wasn’t really a smile at all, and said, “I want a straight story from you. What the hell’s going on?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Hunkins said, all innocence, while tugging at his gun belt and trying to keep the damaged side of his face from the chief’s view.

The chief said, “You’ve done something wrong, I don’t know what, but you’d better tell me.”

Hunkins issued an abused look. “I still don’t know what you’re talking about,” he protested.

“Let me put it another way,” the chief said. “Are you a good cop?”

“Yes.”

“A clean one?”

“Yes.”

“Then why for the love of Christ is the FBI asking questions about you?”

Hunkins went ashen.

• • •

Victor Scandura gave a short wave to the two Providence men, who were leaving in their Hertz rental as he arrived in his spotless Cadillac. He parked in their space, climbed out, and ran a hand over his scant hair. “How’d it go?” he asked Gardella, who stood just outside the house, near a rose bush, cool air swimming against his face.

“They want more control and more of a cut of the Florida thing.”

Scandura stepped nearer. “There’s enough for everybody down there.”

“That’s not the point. They’re pushing.”

“Maybe they just want to know you’re reasonable.”

“I’m always reasonable.”

“Then I guess they want to be reassured.” Scandura averted his face and let out a ragged cough.

“What’s the matter?”

“Allergy.”

“You’re a bundle of complaints.”

“Nothing I can’t get over.”

“You doing anything yet on Thurston?”

“It’s going to cost you something,” Scandura said with a small bronchial wheeze. “A detective agency in New York, run by guys who used to be feds themselves. They’re good, probably the best. They want fifty grand up front, and they give no guarantees. If they come up with anything, they negotiate the rest of the fee.”

“They sound like barracudas.”

“They are. Top guy’s an ex-narc.”

“Do it,” said Gardella.

They walked around to the ocean side of the house and sat on patio chairs. It was breezy, too cool for swimming, but a woman was in the water anyway. She had on a frilly bathing cap and leaped up each time a wave rushed at her. Finally she threw herself into one.

Scandura said, “I have to tell you something you’re not going to like. Augie got busted for breaking and entering up in Montreal. Sammy Ferlito almost didn’t want to tell me.”

Gardella’s eyes rolled. “Stupid shit!”

“That’s not the worst. He jumped bail. Ferlito doesn’t know where he is.”

Gardella’s jaw seemed to shift. “Put the word out. I want him.”

Scandura nodded. “The kid’s a loser, Anthony. I think it’s about time we admit that.”

“I just did.” People trickled by on the beach. Gardella glared at his watch. “Where the hell did my wife go?”

Scandura, surprised, pointed. “Isn’t that her in the ocean?”

“Jesus Christ, Victor, get yourself new glasses. That broad’s fifty years old. It’s Senator Matchett’s wife.”

• • •

Jane Gardella took a long, unmeasured walk that kept her out until dusk. When she returned to the house, there were no cars in the drive except hers and her husband’s. He was on the patio waiting for her, casually dressed in a thin cashmere sweater and charcoal slacks. When she saw the hard look in his eye, her heart turned over. “Where were you?” he asked, and she remained perfectly still, dry in the mouth and damp under the arms. She was not confident she could speak normally.

“I didn’t want to be in the way,” she said painstakingly.

“Everybody’s long gone. From now on, tell me before you just take off like that.” His arms went out to her. “I was worried.”

Her sense of relief was electric, and she pitched toward him. The kiss she gave him was as passionate as if they had been in bed. Knowing that he had to return to Boston, she edged a trembling hand under the sweater and slid it up into his chest hair. “Do you have time?” she whispered up into his face, and he stared at her so starkly that her fears raced back.

“Do you know why I have time?” he asked and, in a soft voice, answered himself. “Life is short.”

• • •

Three hours later, in Boston, Gardella said, “Excuse me,” squeezed between two waiting couples, and penetrated the dimness of the upstairs lounge of the Union Oyster House. The bar was lined and every table was taken. The patrons were mostly young, in their twenties and early thirties. A waitress with drinks tried to maneuver by him, and for an instant, inadvertently, the wide front of her thigh lay warm and hard against him. “It’s okay,” he said dryly. “I’m a married man.” Seconds later a voice stretched out to him and he pivoted toward it. A chair was edged out for him.

“You’re late,” Christopher Wade said dourly. “I almost left a half hour ago.”

“I’m glad you didn’t.” Gardella dropped into the chair. “What are you drinking?”

“I’m nursing my second Heineken. Here, you want it?”

“The only person I drink after is my wife.”

“Then buy your own.”

Gardella rested his elbows on the table. With forced good humor, he said, “Quimby from the bank called me. That visit of yours pissed him off. I take it you went out of your way to make yourself look clean.”

“I have to protect myself.”

“I hope you’ll be more diplomatic with Senator Matchett. He’s made of softer stuff.”

“I’ll see what I can do. Incidentally, that’s a nice sweater you’ve got on. What is this, your casual look?”

“I’ve got three more like it, different colors. You want, I’ll tell you where I buy ’em. Second thought, what’s your size? I’ll send you some.”

“You’re in a rare mood.”

“Not really. I’ve got a serious question to ask you. This guy Thurston, the fed. What do you know about him?”

“He’s a zealot. That kinda says it.”

“He calling any of your shots?”

“Sure he is, indirectly,” Wade said in a muted voice. “He’s got the DA’s ear.”

“You never spelled that out for me before,” Gardella said accusingly.

“Maybe you didn’t listen.”

“Don’t play it close with me.” Gardella spoke in a low, guttural tone. The waitress who’d had contact with him approached with her order pad. He looked up fast and said, “Not now, later!” Wade lit a cigarette. Gardella said, “Thurston doesn’t go for the throat, he goes for the balls. I don’t like a guy who does that.”

Wade glanced at other tables, pretty women. “What exactly did he do?”

“Came at me with shit about my wife. The man’s mind worries me. Tell me, Wade, why would he do that?”

“That’s easy,” said Wade. “He hates you.”

“That’s something else you never told me.”

“I’m rented, not bought.”

Gardella also looked at other tables, pretty women, their handsome escorts. The chatter was vigorous. “One of these days,” he said quietly and reflectively, “you’ve got to make a choice.”

“Meaning?”

“I think you know,” Gardella said and motioned for the waitress.