“Sure,” said McDeiss, “if you like Northern Italian.”
“They have veal?”
“Scallopini pounded thin as my paycheck, drenched with the first pressings of virgin olives and fresh lemon.”
I wasn’t really hungry for veal. In reality, at that moment, surrounded by that saccharine fog of death, I feared I couldn’t keep down even a swallow of Pepto-Bismol. But McDeiss, I figured, was one to sharpen his appetite even as the fresh scent of death lingered in his nostrils. I took him for the type to eat a hoagie in the morgue while an autopsy of an old and bloated corpse was being performed and enjoy every mouthful, so long as the prosciutto was imported and the provolone fresh. It was to my advantage to talk to McDeiss and there was no better enticement for McDeiss to listen, I had learned, than a good meal. Except this time, it had to seem like he was pumping me.
“Well then, why don’t we try it out?” I said. “I could go for a little veal. But if you want to hear what I’ve found out, let’s say this time you spring for the check.”
McDeiss sent me across Front Street, to the other side of the yellow tape, to wait while he delegated the remainder of the crime scene work to his partner and the uniforms. I was watching him go about his business, listening to reports, talking with other witnesses, examining the car with the forensics guys. In the middle of it all he lifted up a finger to me, telling me he’d be there in a minute, and then went on with his work. For a heavy guy he was pretty limber and I watched with growing admiration as he stretched around and under the car, picking out whatever clues remained. As I watched I felt something grab hold of the crotch of my pants.
“What the…” I said as I tried to whirl around and found I couldn’t. A block of stone was behind my back and a steel cable was now wrapped around my chest, squeezing whatever air was left out of my lungs.
I tried to swing around again but found myself only being pulled back, away from the crowd.
“Get the hell off of me,” I tried to shout, my gasping voice actually loud enough for a few of the people in front of me to turn around to see what was happening. One of them was a short gray-haired man in a black suit and as soon as he turned around I stopped shouting.
“Funny seeing you here, Victor,” hissed Earl Dante through his small, even set of teeth.
It was the first time I had seen him since he had started his war. The sight of him there, that close in front of me, with some monster holding me from behind, set my knees to shaking and I sagged down for an instant before I recovered. This was exactly what Raffaello had talked about. The bastard was going through me to set up the meeting.
“Funny seeing you under the highway talking to that homicide dick,” continued Dante. “Funny as hell but for some reason I’m not laughing.”
Dante nodded at whoever it was who was holding me from behind. The arm around my chest loosened and the hand released its hold on my crotch. My knees sagged again but I stopped myself from falling, stood straight as I could and shucked my shoulders. The mere gesture made me feel a little harder until the reality of the situation impressed itself once again upon my nerves. I looked behind me. It was the weightlifting lug who always seemed to be around when Dante appeared. The lug nodded at me and then looked away, as if there was something more important to look at down the street.
“What were you and the dick talking about like such buddy-buddies under the highway?” said Dante.
“The weather,” I said.
“I hear there was a body in the trunk. It’s a shame to go like that. A tragedy.”
“You talking about the body or the car,” I said, “’cause if you ask me, it might be a bigger shame about the car.”
The lug behind me chuckled and even Dante smiled. Over Dante’s head I could see McDeiss making his way out from under the highway, walking toward us. The sight of him approaching gave me a shot of courage.
“Tell me something, Earl,” I said. “Who’s paying you to kill Reddmans?”
The smile disappeared and his composed mortician’s face startled for an instant. Then the smile returned, but there was an ugly darkness to it now. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Sure you do, Earl. Is it a Poole? Did a person named Poole pay for the hits?”
“Ahh, now I get it. You dumb shit, you think I flamed that bastard over there?”
“That’s exactly what I think. And I think you killed his sister in the luxury apartment and left her hanging like a coat on a rack, which is why you convinced that freak Peckworth to change his story for the cops.”
“You talked to Peckworth?”
“You bet I did.”
“You’re a dumb shit, you know that, Carl? I would have thought your little misadventure on the expressway would have wised you up enough to keep you out of the business, but no. If you weren’t such a dumb shit you wouldn’t think what you’re thinking.”
“You mean the fact that Eddie Shaw owed you a quarter of a million dollars and it looks now like he won’t ever pay?” I shook my head and looked up again. McDeiss was now in the middle of the road, about twenty yards away. “I figure you got that covered. His wife told me she had to sign something before he could get his little three-point-a-week loan from you. I figure you have a note in the full amount, for a legal rate of interest, signed by the dead man and his widow. With Eddie being the fuck-up he was, you have a better shot now at getting paid from the wife with her insurance money than you ever did from Eddie.”
“You’re a smart guy, Victor, oh yes you are,” said Dante. “You’d think a guy as smart as you wouldn’t be a lowlife shyster trying to hustle an angle into someone else’s game. You would think a guy as smart as you would be rich already.”
“I’m working on it.”
“The cop,” said the lug behind me. “He’s coming right this way, chief.”
“There’s going to be a meeting,” said Dante, talking low now, suddenly in a hurry, his words hissing out. “You’ve gotten the word already. Play it straight, Victor, all the way. Pretend for once you’re not a dumb shit and play it straight. You try to smart it out and play it on an angle and you’ll end up playing it dead.”
He put his hand up to my cheek and squeezed it between his fingers, like a dowager aunt showing affection to her nephew, before he spun to his right and walked off, his bodyguard in tow. He left just as McDeiss made his way through the crowd to get to me.
“Who are your friends?” said McDeiss, nodding at the two men walking away from us.
“One’s a pawnbroker I know from up on Two Street.”
“Anybody I should worry about?”
“Not really,” I said. “He’s just a guy that the dead man owed a quarter of a million dollars.”
McDeiss looked at me and then turned his head to look back at Dante, but the little man and his musclebound shadow had by now turned a corner and disappeared.
“What else do you know about this case?”
“You buying me lunch?”
“I’m buying if you’re talking.”
“Well then,” I said as we turned in the opposite direction and started walking together up the block to La Vigna, “let me ask you. Ever hear of a man named Poole?”
41
I DIDN’T RUSH RIGHT FROM THE LUNCH with McDeiss to tell Caroline about her brother. You can’t just tell a girl her brother is dead and then leave to grab a super-sized extra-value meal at McDonald’s. You have to hug her tightly when you tell her and let her cry on you and stroke her hair and feed her soup and rub her leg as she keens, bending forward and back, arms crossed at the waist. You tell a girl her brother is dead you better be ready to stick around and comfort her through the long sleepless night as she shivers and sobs in bed. The whole rigmarole could chew up a lot of time and there was still something I had to do that day. So I didn’t tell Caroline about her dead brother right off. What I did was ask McDeiss to refrain from announcing the name of the victim to the press and instead drove back out of the city, up from the river, into the deep dark depths of the Main Line. Along the narrow road with the bending archway of trees, down to the bridge that forded the stream, up through the gate and across the wide-open field on the long winding drive that rose to Veritas.