William Lashner - Bitter Truth

“Nat, you’re talking about.”

“That’s right. With the red eye. A quiet man, but he always smiled at me and said hello.”

“You told all this to the cops?”

“They did not ask.”

“All right, the day of Jacqueline’s death, who came up and didn’t sign in?”

“I didn’t start work until twelve that day. The only one I remember coming in was Mr. Edward. He seemed to be in a hurry, but he left before Miss Jacqueline arrived.”

“You sure of that?”

“Oh yes, I remember. He rushed in very harried, like he was being chased. I told him Miss Shaw was not home but he insisted on checking for himself. I opened the door for him on the way out and he didn’t even nod at me.”

“Did you tell that to the cops?”

“They did not ask.”

“You said it was an old family place?”

“Yes, the Shaws had it for as long as I’ve worked here. The old cripple lady was in it and then it was empty for a while before Miss Jacqueline moved in. The family only recently sold it, after the unfortunate accident.”

“It’s funny how many hangings are accidental. Is it a nice place?”

“Very.”

“Well lucky for the Hirsches, then. One last thing. Any of your tenants besides Jacqueline belong to some New Age religious group out in Mount Airy?”

“How the tenants pray is none of my business. I’m just the doorman.”

“Fair enough.” I winked. “Enjoy the smokes, Roberto.”

“Yes, I will. You come some afternoon, we can savor one together,” he said, as he stepped from behind his desk and opened the door for me.

“I’d like that,” I said.

I walked again through Rittenhouse Square and down to Walnut. I headed east for a bit and then quickly turned on my heels and headed west. I saw no one behind me similarly turn. I darted into a bookstore on Walnut, just east of Eighteenth. As I browsed through the magazines I checked the plate window and saw nothing suspicious. Then I took the escalator to the second floor and went to an area in the rear, by the mysteries, and found the phone. With the receiver in my hand I swung around and saw no one paying the least bit of attention to me, which is just the way I liked it. I dialed.

“Tosca’s,” said a voice.

“Let me talk to table nine,” I said, roughing up my throat like I was Tom Waits to confuse the guys at the other end of the tap.

“I’m’a sorry. There’s no one at’a table nine right now.”

“Well when you see the man at table nine again tell him the scout needs to talk to him.”

“I don’t’a know when it will be occupato again.”

“Tell him the scout knows where the money came from and who’s behind it all,” I said. “Tell him I need to talk to him and that it’s urgent,” and before he could ask for anything more I hung up the phone.

It was as I was walking out of the bookstore that I spotted the late edition of the Daily News, whose front-page photograph instantly set my teeth to clattering.

I PAID THE FOUR BITS,folded the tabloid in half to hide the front, and took the paper straight to my apartment. I locked the door behind me. I pulled the shades down low. I flicked on a lamp by the couch and unfolded the paper beneath the artificial arc of light. Staring up at me was the picture that had shaken me so when I first glimpsed it in the bookstore. It was a picture of a man, stretched out on his back like an exhausted runner, a dark shadow slipping from beneath his head. The man’s mouth appeared to be laughing and at a glance it might have seemed a cheery picture except I knew the man and he was not much drawn to laughter. What seemed to be laughter was really a twisted grimace and the shadow was not a shadow and the man was no longer a man but now a corpse.

Dominic Volare, an old-time mob enforcer with strong ties to the boss. They had clipped him when he left his favorite diner in South Philly, waited as he leaned down to stick his key in the door of his Cadillac, rushed at him from behind, blasted him in the back and the neck, leaving only his face nicely unmarred for the picture. I had played poker with Dominic Volare, lost to him, been frightened by him, but he had never hurt me and had actually done a few favors for me along the way. I had thought him retired and now, I guess, he was.

There was a story inside linking the Schuylkill Expressway attack on Raffaello to Dominic’s murder and to another hit, just as deadly, if less photogenic. Jimmy Bones Turcotte, massacred in his car, a Caprice, the windows blown to hell by the fusillade that took with it his face. I didn’t know Jimmy Bones, had never had the privilege of standing in court beside him and saying “Not Guilty,” but I knew of him, for sure. He was another longtime associate of the boss. It was getting dangerous just then, I figured, to be a longtime associate of the boss, especially in or around your car.

The headline above Dominic’s death mask on the front page said it all: WAR!

It was on, yes it was. Dante’s battle for the underworld had begun in earnest and no one was safe, especially not a nickel-and-dime defense lawyer who had been roped into scouting for one side or the other. I turned off the light and thought about fleeing, maybe to Fresno, where mobsters in the movies always seemed to flee, Fresno. Or I could just cower in my apartment until it passed. I’d be all right, I had a television and a freezer for my frozen dinners and there was that Thomas Hardy book I had been meaning to read. I could hide out until it all blew over, lose myself on the bleak heaths of Hardy’s Wessex, I could, yes. But I wouldn’t. I had things to do, a fortune to hunt, and no slick-haired tooth-sucking loan shark like Earl Dante was going to push me off my path. What I needed was advice, serious advice, and there was only one man I trusted who knew enough of the ins and outs of the family business to give it to me.

With trembling fingers I dialed the 407 area code and then information. It was a shock to actually find his number there, as if all he was was another retiree, waiting by the phone for calls from his grandchildren. “Be there,” I whispered to myself as his phone rang. “Please to hell be there.”

“Yes?” said a woman’s voice, squeezed dry by massive quantities of cigarettes.

“Hello,” I said. “I’m looking for Walter Calvi.”

“He no here now.”

“I need to speak to him, it’s very important.”

“He’s gone two, three days, fishing.”

“Fishing? I didn’t know Calvi fished.”

“Big fish,” she said. “From a boat.”

“When will he be back?”

“Two, three days.”

“Can you give him a message for me?”

“He’s fishing,” she said.

“Can you give him a message for me? Can you tell him Victor Carl called and that things are going on up here and that he should get in touch with me?”

“Okay,” she said. “Victor Carl.”

I gave her my number and she repeated it to me.

“Could you tell him it’s important?”

“Nothing more important down here than big fish,” she said. “Except maybe cleaning the air conditioner and feeding the cat. But I tell him, okay?”

I hung up the phone and waited in the dark of my apartment for a while, waited for the light outside to grow dim, waited for Calvi to get his butt off his boat and tell me what to do. At least it had turned out all right for him, I guess. He was sitting on some boat off the Florida Keys, snapping marlins from the cool Atlantic waters, while the rest of us were stuck up here ducking Dante’s bullets. Of all the deals that were handed out Calvi got the best, for sure. I just hoped he would get his butt off that boat in time to tell me how to get one for myself.