The Best Revenge (31 page)

“Can you give us a description of the perpetrator?”

“You mean the man who shot him,” I asked, “or the man who gave the orders?”

“Just what you saw.”

“He's about fifty. Short, maybe five three or four. Very bald. His name is Bert Rivers. He's a lawyer.”

“You sure?”

“Sure I'm sure.”

I thought the cop was about to read me a lecture but we were interrupted by the doctor, who wanted to know if either of the women was Mr. Manucci's wife.

Mary held a hand up as if in school.

I thought of all those people at Elaine's. There was always mad gaiety until the first review was called in.

The doctor said, “He'll be in surgery for some time, Mrs. Manucci.”

“Can I wait here?”

“It's nerve-racking waiting here. Why don't you go somewhere with your friends and leave a phone number. We'll call you in about two or three hours.”

“Somewhere,” of course, was Elaine's. I took Mary by one arm and
Jane by the other.

“I can't go,” Mary said.

“Sure you can. It's what Nick would want.”

In the cab on the way over Jane asked if I wanted to call the party off.

“It's too late,” I said, glancing at my watch. “They're probably well under way.”

I looked at Mary. “Would you rather we went somewhere else?”

“They're expecting us,” she said.

*

From amid the chatter and smoke, Mitch emerged saying, “What'd you guys do, walk? What was all that noise out there? Where's Manucci?”

“He had to stop somewhere,” I said. And because my voice sounded like I was lying, I said, “He'll be along.”

Mitch was about to say something when Spelvin, the play's press rep, grabbed his arm and said, “It's time for the
Post
.”

We followed Spelvin to the phone. “Yeah,” he kept saying as he scribbled things down on the back of an envelope. Spelvin's handwriting was execrable, but the message was all over his face. When he hung up, he said, “A class act. Christopher Beebe terrific. Ruth Welch fantastic.”

“What about the play?” I said.

“Ably directed,” said Spelvin.

“Ably my ass,” said Mitch.

“What about the play?” I repeated.

Spelvin glanced at his notes. “‘Don't mind the poetry,' it says, ‘the audience loved it.'”

Jane laughed and gave Spelvin a buss on the cheek. I glanced at Mary. “Why don't we find a place to sit down,” I said, by which time Mitch was already leading us over to the big table where Ruth Welch and Chris Beebe were thanking the people who had run ahead to be the first with the news. Pinky had her arm around Gordon Walzer, who looked long lost to the world.

“Congratulations!” I shouted, as they made room for us. The waiter poured champagne. I couldn't make out anything that was said by the professional back-clappers. I just nodded and smiled and saw that Jane had her hand clasped over Mary's.

*

Spelvin called the
Times
twice and was unable to get anything. “He writes slow,” Mitch said. “He's looking in the thesaurus for adjectives.”

I realized Mary was trying to say something. Was she wanting to go back to the hospital? When I bent over in her direction she said, “If the audience likes it, doesn't it mean the reviews will be good?”

Jane, who'd heard, had to stifle the knowledge of dozens of opening nights. “Of course,” she said, hoping that Ben the Cynic would not contradict her.

All I said was, “The
Times
is pretty much a monopoly. Ever since the
Trib
died.”

I could see people at other tables looking at me. Among them were some of the smart ones who were so damn sure the production would never get to opening night. I owed them nothing.

I tried not to think of Nick. All I could think of was Nick.

Then there was the massive, rolling hush when the volume of the TV set near the bar was turned way up and I could hear Fliegel saying, “The play that wasn't supposed to get to Broadway did this evening and
The Best Revenge
is the best possible revenge against all the naysayers who say quality is dead on Broadway. There was a standing ovation tonight at the ANTA Theater for the best verse drama in three decades, starring Ruth Welch and Christopher Beebe in a heart-stopping play superbly directed by Mitch Mitchell, another hit for Benjamin Riller and…” Fliegel actually glanced down for the name. “And a newcomer to Broadway production, Nick Manucci.” Hardly were the words out of his mouth when the picture switched back to the anchorman saying, “A bulletin just in says that Nicholas Manucci, financier and co-producer of
The Best Revenge,
was shot by a person or persons unknown just outside the restaurant where the opening-night party was being held. A spokesperson for New York Hospital, where he was taken by police car, said he is still in surgery.”

More than a hundred faces swung their gazes from the TV set to our table. And all of us at the table looked at Mary.

*

It was said that Aldo Manucci, when he heard, had Clara wheel him three blocks to the rectory of the Church of the Sacred Heart, where he woke the priest to open up the church. There he prayed, demanding some of the strength of his youth. The next day, with Nick in intensive care, his condition critical, Aldo Manucci set about hiring every free-lance hit man in the East who was fool enough to try to get Barone. The old man didn't want a lone assassin, he wanted an army, each man competing for the prize that went with the head of the enemy. He wasn't even interested in Rivers.

Many weeks later it was Mary who called to say the old man had invited us, including the kids, to Christmas dinner in the Bronx. Jane, who was closer to me now than on the day we married, wondered if it was safe to visit the headquarters of a man at war.

“It's as safe,” I said, “as anything else we do.”

As we arrived at the front door, Clara greeted us. I apologized for being late, blaming trouble with the car rather than with the kids who'd wanted to go to a rock concert instead of a Christmas dinner among what they mistakenly thought of as a family of strangers.

“We waited for you,” Clara said, leading us in to the long dining-room table, at the head of which Aldo Manucci sat in his wheelchair, his eyes blazing the happiness of a man bent on vengeance. He shook my hand with the strength of centuries, then gave me leave to turn to the other wheelchair at his right hand in which sat Nick.

It is among life's difficulties to embrace a man sitting in a wheelchair, but somehow, with Nick straining upward on his strong arms and me leaning over, we managed a hug of brothers that drew applause from the others of the Manucci clan, and smiles from Jane and Mary, who, as wise women, had come to acknowledge more of the mystery of life in the weeks since our play had begun.

Clara sat me across the table from Nick and down a bit so that Nick and I had to shout at each other. Yes, the doctor hoped he would be rid of the wheelchair soon. Yes, he had read the new play I'd sent over, but he pooh-poohed his opinion. “You for it, let's do it.” He was glad my office lease was up for renewal. What did I think about sharing his space in the Seagram Building?

“It shouldn't go to waste,” Nick shouted through the din. “There's plenty of room for both of us when I get back.”

I couldn't bring myself to tell a man in a wheelchair that even now
our bond was like an affair, a convenience that would slip away in time.

Then Caesar clinked his glass with his fork. Even the grandchildren and my Matthew and Alice gave way to silence.

Aldo Manucci cleared his throat. “I have news from Sicily,” he declaimed. “Everyone know my son's enemy Barone is there on a long vacation.”

Of course we laughed.

“Barone…” he tried to continue. Nick was laughing the loudest.

“Please to shut up,” said the old man, smiling. “The news from Sicily is Barone has fall into a well. My friends, they say Barone instead bringing bucket of water up to his face, fool put his face down to bucket of water!”

Jane, I saw, was laughing too.

“He no drown,” Aldo Manucci proclaimed, his face mocking sadness, “but it be long time before he swim Atlantic Ocean back here.”

He raised his goblet, and waited for all of us to raise our glasses also, including the children.

“To God,” he said.

“To God,” we repeated.

“My friend Louie once say to me, if Jesus Jew then maybe God must be Italian.”

How could I not laugh?

Aldo Manucci, his goblet still raised, said, “To all Manuccis and Rillers around this table I say
Salute!
Special to Nick, who couple months back look like he going to visit God personally, then change his mind,
Salute!
Now Nick know what his old man know, to sit in wheelchair is hard on ass and good for brain. To my enemies, plague, to my family and friends,
Salute!
”

As we all applauded, I swear I could hear Louie's voice saying
Thank you.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

SOL STEIN has been
a prizewinning playwright, novelist, publisher, software inventor, State Department official, and father of seven talented children. His novels have been translated into French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish, Danish, Dutch, Greek, and Japanese, and his second in Russian will appear in an edition of 500,000 copies. With Tennessee Williams, William Inge, and Robert Anderson, he was a founding member of the Playwrights Group at the Actors Studio. Stein has lectured on creative writing at Columbia, Iowa, and the University of California at Irvine, and through his computer program, WritePro, has students in all fifty states and thirty-seven countries, perhaps more than any creative writing teacher in history.