William Lashner - Bitter Truth

Calvi took the cigar out of his mouth for a moment and stared at it and for the first time a smile cracked his face. “You hear that, Peter,” he said. “It’s done.”

“It’s too easy,” said Cressi, shaking his head.

“I told you it would be easy,” said Calvi. “This never was his business. He was a cookie baker before he came into it. He never had the stomach for the rough stuff. He had the stomach he would have killed me rather then let me slink off to Florida like he did. I ain’t surprised he’s on his knees now. You’ll set up the meeting, Vic.”

“Now?”

“Not yet,” said Calvi. “I’ll tell you when. Sit down.”

“Why don’t you let her go while we talk,” I said, gesturing to Caroline, still standing behind me, quiet as a leg of lamb. Her face, when I looked at her, was transfixed with fear and I couldn’t tell just then if she was more terrified of the sight and size of Cressi’s gun or of the cat lying atop the metal box.

“She stays,” said Cressi.

“We don’t need her to speak to Raffaello,” I said.

“She stays,” said Calvi. “No more discussion. Sit down, missy. We all got to wait here some.”

Cressi gestured with the gun and I pulled out two chairs from the table, one for Caroline and one for me. Carefully I placed her in the chair to the left and sat in the chair directly across from Cressi. Calvi was to our right and the metal box from Charity Reddman’s grave was on the table between us. The black cat jumped off the box and high-stepped to the end of the table, sticking its nose close to Caroline’s face. Her body tense and still, Caroline shut her eyes and turned her face away.

“What, missy, you don’t like my cat?”

Caroline, face still averted, shook her head.

“She has a thing about cats,” I said.

“It’s a good cat. Come on over, Sam.” The cat sniffed a bit more around Caroline and then strolled over to Calvi, who stroked it roughly beneath its neck. “I named it after a fed prosecutor who’s been chasing me for years. I named it Sam, after the fed, and then took him to the vet to get his balls cut off. Very therapeutic.”

Cressi laughed.

“While we’re waiting,” said Calvi, “maybe we can take care of some unfinished business.”

Cressi leaned forward and lifted the lid off the metal box. “Where’s the rest of the shit what was supposed to be inside here?”

Caroline, her face still tense with fear, looked up with surprise. “What are you talking about?”

“Whatever it is I’m talking about I’m not talking to you,” snapped Cressi. “Vic knows what I’m talking about, a smart guy like him. Where’s the rest of it, Vic?”

“I don’t understand.”

Cressi reached into his jacket and pulled out a piece of paper. “A certain party what had been paying us for our services has requested we recover this here box and its contents, which are listed right here in black and white. The photographs and documents about some trust and old pieces of diary, they’re in here, all right. But the piece of paper, it lists other stuff that ain’t and so maybe you know where that other stuff, it went to, Vic.”

“Who’s the certain party?” I asked, wondering who would be so interested in the contents of the secret box of Faith Reddman Shaw.

“Not important.”

“It’s important as hell.”

“Give him what he wants, Vic,” said a scowling Calvi, his voice ominously soft. The cat’s black fur pricked up and it jumped off the table. It hopped to one of the couch cushions on the floor and curled on top of it. When it was settled it watched us with complete dispassion. “Give him the hell he wants and be done with it.”

“There’s a doctor’s invoice of some sort,” said Cressi, reading from the list.

I looked at Cressi and his gun and nodded. “All right,” I said. I stood and went over to the corner and found my briefcase among the scattered contents from the closet, the case’s sides slashed, its lock battered but still in place. I opened the combination and took out the invoice and handed it over.

Cressi examined it and smiled before placing it in the box. “What about some banking papers that are also missing?”

“They’re not here,” I said. “But I’ll get them for you.”

Cressi slammed the butt of his gun on the table, the noise so loud I thought the monster had gone off. Caroline inhaled a gasp at the sound of it. “Don’t dick with me, Vic.”

“I don’t have it here. I swear.”

“Where is it?”

“I’ll get it for you,” I said, not wanting to tell them anything about Morris.

“Go on, Peter,” said Calvi, staring hard at me through the smoke of his cigar.

“A three-by-five card with certain alphanumeric strands, whatever the fuck that is.”

“Also someplace else,” I said.

Cressi glared at me. “What about this key it says here?”

I reached for my wallet, took out the key that had opened the breakfront drawer at the Poole house, and handed it over. Cressi examined it for a moment.

“How the fuck I know it’s the right key?”

“It’s the right key,” I said.

“Is that it?” said Calvi.

Cressi nodded and put the list back in his jacket.

“It’s very important, Vic, now that we’re partners,” said Calvi, “to keep this party happy. It’s not so cheap making a move like we’ve made here. You just can’t bluff your way through. Even with a cookie baker like Raffaello, you have to be ready for war, and war’s expensive. This party’s been our patron and we keep our patron happy. You’ll get the rest of that stuff for us after the meeting.”

“No problem.”

“Good,” said Calvi. “I think, Vic, you and me, we’re going to do just fine together. You and me, Vic, we have a future.”

“That’s encouraging,” I said. I was referring to the fact that I might actually have a future outside the range of Cressi’s gun, but Calvi smiled as if he were a recruiting sergeant and I had just enlisted.

“You want a cigar?” said Calvi, patting at his jacket pocket.

“No, thank you,” I said as kindly as I could.

“Now we wait,” said Calvi.

“Where’s yous liquor?” said Cressi. “We was looking all over for it.”

“I don’t have any,” I said. “Just a couple beers in the fridge.”

“We already done the beers,” said Cressi. He turned to Calvi. “You want I should maybe hit up a state store?”

“Just shut up and wait,” said Calvi.

Cressi twisted his neck as if trying to fracture a vertebrae and then leaned back in silence.

“What are we waiting for?” I asked.

“It’s need to know,” said Calvi. “You think you need to know?”

I shook my head.

“You’re right about that,” said Cressi.

And so we sat at the table, the four of us, Calvi leaning on his elbows, his head in his hands, sucking on his stogie, Cressi, Caroline, and I asphyxiating on the foul secondhand smoke, none of us talking. The cat licked its fur atop the cushion. Every now and then Calvi sighed, an old man’s sigh, like he was sitting by the television, waiting to be called to the nursing home’s evening program rather than waiting to set up a meeting to take control of the Philly mob. I could feel the tension in Caroline as she sat beside me, but she was as quiet as the rest of us. I laid a comforting hand on her knee and gave her a smile. The silence was interrupted only by Calvi’s sighs, the scrape of a chair as we shifted our positions, contented clicks rising from the throat of Sam the cat, the occasional rumble from Cressi’s digestive tract.

Our situation was as bleak as Veritas. Someone had paid Calvi to kill Jacqueline and Edward and, now, to get the contents of the box. Who? Who else had even known that I might have it? Nat had learned we were digging. Had he told someone? Was that the reason he was missing? Was that the reason he was murdered, too, because he knew about the box and someone was determined that no one would ever know? Whom had he told about our nocturnal excavations? Harrington, the last Poole? Kingsley Shaw? Brother Bobby? Which was Calvi’s patron, ordering Calvi to kill Reddmans for fun and profit while building up his war chest? And why did the patron care about a box buried in the earth many years ago by Faith Reddman Shaw? Unless it wasn’t buried by Faith Reddman Shaw. And whoever it was, this patron had also paid to kill Caroline, or else why would Cressi have been searching for her, and once the bastards killed Caroline they would have no choice, really, but to kill me too. I was the man who knew too much. Which was ironic, really, considering my academic career.