The Vaults (6 page)

In any case, the phone call left him feeling reenergized, and he went to his kitchen to make a pot of tea.

The second call came as he finished his last cup. This, if anything, surprised Puskis more than the first. A call could conceivably come anytime, he reasoned, and since Puskis was hardly likely to go the rest of his life without receiving an incoming call, it could as easily come one time as the next. Two calls in one morning, however—that was a true anomaly.

“Puskis,” the voice on the other end of the line said.

“Yes?”

“You’ll find Reif DeGraffenreid at this address.” The caller read an address in a country town called Freeman’s Gap, which was a couple dozen miles from the City’s limits. His voice was slow and honey-tinged with an accent that, to Puskis’s considerable frustration, he was unable to place.

“Who is this please?” Puskis asked, but the line was dead.

Puskis hung up the phone with trembling hands. He sat back in his chair and closed his eyes. He tried to see the logic behind the call. What was the caller hoping to accomplish? Was he, Puskis, supposed to journey out to Freeman’s Gap to find DeGraffenreid? Who had called and why did he want him to take this course of action? What would the caller gain?

Puskis was contemplating these questions when the third call came. By this point, he was beyond surprise. He had pulled out the photograph of the man who was not Reif DeGraffenreid and it sat, faceup, on the pocked dinner table before him. He was staring at it, trying to make sense of the visceral reaction he had to the face; or the expression; or whatever information was being subliminally conveyed to him from that image.

He picked up the receiver to find that it was Lieutenant Draffin again, sounding apologetic. “The Chief asked me to call you back and tell you that there is a meeting he needs you to attend this Friday.”

“A meeting?” Puskis asked. Never, in his nearly three decades in the Vaults, had he been asked to attend a meeting. One-on-one chats with the Chief were not unheard of, but never a full-fledged meeting. And scheduled two days ahead, no less.

“Did he happen to mention, ah, mention what it was about?”

“No, sir, he didn’t. He just told me to tell you to be at that meeting.”

“Hmmm. Yes,” Puskis said, thinking. “Lieutenant Draffin, I was wondering if I might be able to, well, let me put it this way: I was wondering if the force had a pool of autos, you know, for use by officers . . .”

“You mean unmarked?”

“Yes. Yes, I suppose that would be preferable.”

“Yes, sir, we do.”

“Do you think that you could arrange for me to borrow one?”

“I don’t see how that would be a problem, sir. When would you like it?”

“Today, actually. Today would be fine.”

Back when Frings was starting out as a reporter, the
Gazette
had an aging, alcoholic reporter on staff by the name of Tomasson, who was something of a legend among the younger journalists; his seediness seemed to hold a kind of glamour. To Frings it had seemed that Tomasson had seen everything, his insight informed not merely by conjecture or personal bias but by previous
experiences
. Frings had often gone drinking with him at the old Palomino Tavern, before it was torn down, along with half that block, to put up the Havana Hotel. Frings could never match Tomasson and always left him at the bar, ranting to whoever would listen—and people did generally listen. Frings had kept careful track of the wisdom that Tomasson imparted on those nights and still remembered most of it clearly, though as Frings grew in experience, he found that he disagreed to a greater or lesser degree with much of what Tomasson had once said.

Like most reporters of the time, Tomasson was deeply cynical about the City’s government. There seemed no end to the stream of corrupt mayors who took the City’s helm. Darwin, Tomasson had claimed, explained it all. The most able of the “criminal class,” as he called it, rose to the top and were able to defeat any honest challenge through vote-rigging, bribery, intimidation, and downright theft. The strongest criminal, he said, always prospered.

Frings agreed that Darwin explained it, but he understood Darwin a little differently. To Frings, it was a matter of innovation: Innovation was required to gain and hold power; thus, old methods of corruption and graft became obsolete quickly, and success depended on being able to quickly and constantly formulate new methods and forms of acquiring wealth and maintaining power. Maybe, in the end, Tomasson’s argument was essentially the same. But to Frings, the nimble mind trumped all other attributes.

Frings’s desk sat in a corner of the newsroom, part of a maze of desks, topped by black Smith-Coronas and Bell telephones. At the best of times the room buzzed with noise. Inexperienced reporters struggled to concentrate amid the tumult. Today, just a day after the Block bombing, the newsroom had all the intensity of a squadron scrambling for battle. The assistants scuttled around purposefully, answering to the frequent shouts from reporters at their desks. Everyone seemed to be smoking a cigarette or a cigar, obscuring the ceiling in a haze of tobacco smoke.

Frings, though, was in a marijuana-induced zone, undistracted by the maelstrom around him as he typed a column that would run in the next day’s newspaper.

A Man of Action

By Francis Frings

Provocation will bring out the true nature of the provoked. A man who is by nature contemplative will consider his options and select one that seems to best respond to the provocateur. This is the modus operandi of the chess master, the debater, the general. In short, this is the method observed by men for whom an improper response is irrevocably disastrous. The contemplative man’s opposite number is the man of action. Like a drunken lawyer caught with an ace up his sleeve, the man of action’s response to provocation is to flail out with frenzied violence at the first unfortunate to cross his path. His violence is used as a salve to his own wounds, rather than to punish the offending party.

I bring forth these two types of men because I fear for the political Left in the City in the substantial wake of the recent bombing directed at the mayor’s cohort Ian Block. Why do I fear? The mayor is, I feel indisputably, a man of action. He is a retired professional pugilist who, by training and nature, responded to insult to his person with immediate, furious, and overwhelming violence. Does anyone doubt that his instincts in the mayor’s office have been the same as his instincts between the ropes? Ask the thugs of the White Gang, who were eradicated like so many culled rabbits in the wake of the Birthday Party Massacre. Draw your own conclusions as to the justice of that remarkable period, but understand that other, less obviously culpable targets may be the next to feel the mayor’s considerable wrath.

Why do I fear for the political Left? Because when the mayor begins his flailings, the easiest and most obvious target will be the anarchists and communists. Who else would you expect to bear the burden of blame? The Bristol Gang? They are now part and parcel of the mayor’s regime, as much a part of the king’s court as the industrialists who are the public faces of the mayor’s cabal. Who else? I cannot think of one to supplant the anarchists and communists from the top of the mayor’s accounting of conspirators and subversives. And, in this, the mayor may very well be borne out. My point is that the mayor must wait for the uncovering of actual evidence before acting in what will surely be a direct and devastating manner. The mayor is in no danger of losing his opportunity for personal vengeance against those who have dared to cause injury to the property, if not the persons, of his cadre. He must take the course of the contemplative man and identify the transgressors and punish them accordingly.

Frings pulled the paper from his typewriter and placed it in his empty out-box. Barking out for a newsboy, he then headed for the diner on the ground floor of the
Gazette
building.

The coffee was thick and strong, and stray grounds found his tongue as he sipped. He sat alone in a booth, thinking about his column. What was the point in writing it? Partly, he supposed, to provide cover for the people he knew would be scapegoats. Though not a Red or anarchist himself, Frings was outraged by the mayor’s easy demonization of the Left as a means of advancing his business friends’ interests. Workers had legitimate beefs, and tainting them with labels, such as
unionist
—generally perceived as a euphemism for
Communist
—was a disservice to the City. If Frings could boldly predict their bearing the brunt of the mayor’s retaliation, then maybe there would be pressure not to target them automatically and, instead, to conduct a proper investigation.

This was, of course, the nobler of his two reasons. The other was his distaste for the mayor. Red Henry was arrogant, corrupt—a bully. This, in itself, was hardly notable in a mayor. But Henry had entered with so much promise, had been such a strong presence, that Frings and others had dared to hope that he might be incorruptible. Frings himself had risen in prominence during Henry’s campaign and in the early months of that first mayoral term. He had been supportive of Henry in his columns. Briefly, it
had seemed as if that faith had, indeed, been well-placed. But then, less than a year into the term, the Birthday Party Massacre and Henry’s subsequent response had felt like a betrayal. The incorruptible Red Henry had, it seemed, chosen to be corrupted. And now he was driving the corruption.

Frings gored Henry in his columns with the rage of an apostate. Any chance Frings had to antagonize him was taken. None of this was lost on the mayor, who was not, despite everything else, stupid.

Just then, as if the workings of the universe were somehow tailored to his thoughts, a man slid into the seat across from Frings. Tall and handsome, his blond hair greased and combed straight back, he wore an expensive suit with bold pinstripes and wide shoulders. He settled in, placing his black fedora on the seat next to him. His expression was benign, but his eyes were intent. “How are you, Mr. Frings?”

Frings had run into this man before. His name was Smith and his job seemed to be keeping people in line for the mayor. In Frings’s experience this meant trying to intimidate reporters into giving the mayor positive coverage. Or at least to discourage the negative.

Frings shrugged. His pulse raced.

“You don’t look so swell from this side of the table.”

Frings snuck a look to see who else was in the diner, both to establish whether the man had brought backup and also in the hope that he could rely on someone for help if things went south.

“The mayor’s been keeping me busy.”

“I’m sure you mean the bombing has been keeping you busy.”

“I imagine it’s keeping both me
and
the mayor busy.”

Done with the small talk, Smith leaned over the table. “The mayor was wondering whether you would be commenting on the bombing in tomorrow’s paper.”

Frings looked at Smith dully, his high rapidly fading and his headache beginning to reassert itself at the front of his skull. “Sorry. No sneak previews.”

“Don’t be a wiseass with me, Frings.”

“No wiseass. You’ll have to buy a paper, read it tomorrow.”

“Don’t make things difficult for yourself, Frings. This one is personal for the mayor. He’s not going to put up with your bullshit on this. One of his closest friends was nearly murdered.”

“I’m not criticizing the mayor, if that’s what he’s worried about, okay?
I just want to make sure they get the right guys and not just the most convenient ones.”

“Yeah, well, you’d better watch your words very carefully.” Smith grabbed the salt shaker between his thumb and index finger and shook it into Frings’s coffee. Amateur tough-guy stuff. Holding Smith’s eye, Frings picked up the mug and took a long sip of the coffee. More stupid tough-guy stuff, he knew, but when you were dealing with stupid tough guys . . .

Smith winked and stood up. Putting down the mug, Frings watched him saunter out the door and into a black Ford idling at the curb. One of these days, Frings thought, I’m going to push him too far.

Stenciled on the outside of Poole’s door in black-edged gold paint were the words
ETHAN POOLE, INVESTIGATIONS AND INQUIRIES
. This work was not exactly a steady source of income, but it did augment the money he got from his less legal endeavors. Mostly it consisted of tailing husbands or wives or business partners and either confirming or allaying his clients’ fears. Sometimes he falsely reported good news while blackmailing the disloyal spouse or scheming partner, depending on who the client was. He looked to Carla for guidance in those situations, trusting her to determine where his clients were positioned in the chain of production. This visitor, though, was not his typical client.