Hard Case Crime: Dutch Uncle (26 page)

It couldn’t be the cop. This had to be a burglar, somebody thinking he wasn’t home because the house was so dark. Then, rounding the corner from the dining room to the kitchen, it wasn’t dark at all.

The lights popped on and Leo saw it wasn’t the cops and it wasn’t a burglar, it was that fat little fucker Negrito with some greaseball sidekick. He was taller than Negrito, like that was saying anything, and he was wearing a suit that was tight under the arms. His horrid tie featured diamonds, swirls, and stripes, red, blue and beige against a silver background. He had a gun in his hand and so did Negrito.

It dawned on Leo that he had made two very serious miscalculations. One, he should have run away from the sound of the breaking glass and not toward it. Two, he should’ve kept the gun he used to shoot Beaumond. He wasn’t looking all that bright right now, up against Negrito and this other spic with the shocking taste in neckwear, no weapon to protect him.

Leo said, “What the fuck’re you doing?”

The muzzle flash surprised him. He didn’t think you’d be able to see it in the light.

Negrito’s shot hit him in the shoulder. It spun him around and it took his legs and he cracked his head against the kitchen table. That hurt. He put his hand to his forehead, feeling for blood, thinking this had turned a lot more serious than it had originally seemed. The second shot went in below his fourth rib, and he wouldn’t swear to it, but he thought he heard a third. Leo Hannah left this world wondering why people always made such a big deal over dying. It was the easiest thing he had ever done.

Harry wanted to meet his brother somewhere far from his office, where the restaurants weren’t jammed with the cheap suits from Grand Street, guys who had two settings, overdrive and dead. Arthur had been one of those cheap suits in the ’80s, but he’d emerged from the decade a wealthy Healy, his heart still beating and his record unblemished. His wingtips had licked a crazy Fred Astaire on the outskirts of some headline-grabbing scandals, and he’d hustled with guys who did Fed time, but he’d steered clear himself, and the end result was he still had a desk at Salomon while his buddies had to content themselves with lecturing at universities.

Harry didn’t know exactly what his brother did, and he got further confused when Arthur tried to break it down for him. The bottom line was, if Wall Street was rocking in one direction or the other, Arthur got quoted in newspaper stories, and because he was good at describing the action in terms anybody but Harry could understand, he frequently popped up on cable TV shows like the one Aggie saw him on, holding forth on what it all meant. Arthur in suspenders and one of his monogrammed shirts, amused and giving the impression the subject was serious, but not too serious.

The restaurant he picked out was known for its sushi. Harry hoped they served something else. He wasn’t too big on raw fish.

Arthur was blowing out a cloud of cigarette smoke, sitting at the bar and chatting with the bartender. His suit was grey and his shirt was grey, and a burgundy pocket square peeked out of his pocket and matched his tie. He hugged Harry and kissed him on the cheek.

Harry followed him to a podium, where a guy with coal-black hair was waiting. He nodded at Harry and shook Arthur’s hand, then penciling a line thorough Arthur’s reservation, he said, “Right this way.” Their table was in a corner.

“Perfect,” Arthur said. He shook the guy’s hand again, this time with a folded bill in his palm.

Harry said, “I thought you had juice here.”

“I’ve got juice everywhere.”

“Then why’d you tighten up the maitre d’? The joint’s deserted.”

“Yeah, tonight. What about tomorrow,” Arthur said, “or Friday? I get an oil guy in from Texas. His wife reads about Soho in
Newsweek
, and they mention this restaurant. We show up at eight-thirty, no reservation, we’re looking at a two-hour wait. I explain the situation to my man, and as soon as something’s free, we’re dining. I look like a big man in front of my client and his wife. If it costs me an extra twenty or thirty when I’m here, so what?”

Harry lit a Marlboro, and he was looking for someplace to put the match. “Why did he seat us in nonsmoking? Don’t you wanna smoke?”

“I always want to smoke,” Arthur said. “Unfortunately, I can’t do it in the dining room. You’re going to have to turn that off.”

“You’re kidding,” Harry said.

“He’s not kidding,” their waitress said. In spite of the tattoo that marred the milky skin on her shoulder, she looked wholesome, with muscular thighs and a high, round ass. She pulled an ashtray out of her apron, and set it on the table. “Sorry.”

“Not your fault,” Arthur said. “You didn’t vote for that ordinance, did you?”

“As a matter of fact, they didn’t consult me.”

Harry huffed a last drag and squelched his smoke.

“There’s all these, like, draconian social laws,” the waitress said. “Don’t smoke, don’t eat, don’t drink, don’t, don’t, don’t.”

Arthur said, “Draconian?”

“That’s right. I said draconian and I meant draconian. I’ve been to college. What are you guys drinking?”

Arthur asked for a vodka and soda and Harry ordered a beer. He studied his brother. His haircut was flawless. His clothes, immaculate. Personal demeanor, enviable. How could you lose if you were Arthur Healy?

“This is how you know you’re getting old,” Arthur said. “I’m probably her father’s age, but I’d love to bang her. Take a look at that walk.”

Harry watched the waitress switch her hips back to the bar.

“Just like a woman,” Arthur said.

“Speaking of women, how’s your wife?”

The waitress brought their drinks. Arthur ordered sushi and a salad. Harry looked through the menu, ordered the Szechuan sirloin. Szechuan. What kind of restaurant was this?

“The old man told me you ambushed him the other day. He seem okay to you?”

What was there to say? The old man was the old man. Harry said, “Fine,” and then to change the subject, “How’re the kids doing?”

“Teenagers,” Arthur said. “They’re a constant worry. Last week, Odette went on her first date where it was just her and the boy. I thought I was going to start crying.”

“What is she, sixteen? That’s old enough. What was the kid like?”

“Very tall. Captain of the basketball team.”

“He doesn’t sound too threatening.”

“He wasn’t. But when I pulled him aside to slip him a few bucks, I told him, with this big smile on my face, he doesn’t have my little girl back under my roof by midnight, I was gonna set his car on fire.”

“What time did he get her home?”

“You think I was watching the clock?” Arthur stopped chewing, arugula and a bit of onion impaled on his fork. “It was eleven twenty-four.”

Arthur handled his chopsticks like he’d never used a knife or fork, dislodging a fish chunk from its marble pedestal, dipping it into a shallow bowl of soy sauce clotted with atomic green mustard. Harry wondered where he picked up these Asian table manners. Certainly not at home. Arthur was pure self-invention, and this invented self was very pleasing to the world. Harry was more or less self-invented too, except it won him friends like Jimmy De Steffano.

“How’s that steak?”

“Very tasty,” Harry said. Which it was. Very tasty. It just didn’t taste very good.

“How about you?” Arthur said. “How’re you doing?”

Harry said, “To tell you the truth, Art, I’m in a lot of fucking trouble.”

The dining room had filled up around them. The waitress hustled to stay on top of her section, people asking for more water and more soy sauce and more cocktails, but when Arthur smiled at her, she stopped in her tracks.

He ordered a lichee mousse that came in a martini glass, a mint leaf sticking out of the top of it. Harry asked for a double Dewar’s, neat. Maybe he’d get drunk. Then maybe he’d go find Jimmy De Steffano, that shouldn’t be too hard, and give him a beating, just for fun.

“You understand now,” Arthur was saying, “your first mistake.” A smear of mousse had the nerve to settle on his top lip. He wiped it away, eyes narrowing at the stain on the napkin.

“Which mistake are you referring to?”

“The one you made by not calling me.”

“I thought about it,” Harry said. “I did.”

“Then why didn’t you do it?”

“Because I was ashamed.” And he was. Ashamed then, and even more ashamed now.

Arthur’s hand cut the air. “We retain legal counsel immediately,” he said, more to himself than to Harry. “First thing in the morning, you call me at the office. I get to work early.”

And that put the matter to rest. No questions regarding guilt or innocence. Arthur had all the details he needed. Decide. Act. Be in charge. Nothing could go wrong as long as he was pulling the strings. He straightened his tie and set his jaw, like asking for the check was the first step of this new challenge and there was no way Arthur Healy was going to fail.

If Arthur was going to hire an attorney, Connor Merrill was exactly the kind of brand-name mouthpiece he’d come up with. He made his bones in the ’80s, like Arthur, when he demolished a set of RICO beefs the Feds were hanging on two mob bosses. Crooked bureaucrats were fitted for halos under his counsel, and there was a judge still sitting on a bench somewhere in Texas thanks to Connor Merrill.

Whenever Merrill showed up on TV or in the papers, it was to issue a tight-lipped no comment. After a case was decided, Merrill would read from a single page, a paragraph or two that took thirty seconds, and he didn’t hang around to answer anybody’s questions. Connor Merrill was old school.

His corner office had views that looked north and east for miles. The 59th Street Bridge looked close enough for Harry to touch, Queens spreading out on the polluted horizon, the hills of Harlem visible up Lexington Avenue.

Harry was sitting on his leather couch. Merrill was sitting on the chair that made it a set, relaxed and confident in the way that people who have money are relaxed and confident.

“Do me a favor,” the attorney was saying, “lose the charming low-life routine.”

He was wearing a navy blue suit, serious and precise. A taut, trim man, Merrill’s eyes were slate grey, and his thin nose was perfectly aligned on his narrow face. His hair was going silver at the temples, but only there, and Harry wondered if the rest of his follicles weren’t receiving some sort of cosmetic assistance.

“Let’s get back to Leo,” Merrill said.

“It was like he was waiting for me.”

“Are you trying to tell me you were framed?”

“Framed seems too advanced for Leo. But yeah, he set me up.”

Merrill leaned in, his suit sleeves riding above his ruby cufflinks. “You understand I can’t help you if you’re lying.”

Harry was stung. “I’m doing the best I can.”

Merrill got up and walked to his desk. It was uncluttered with snapshots or books. He didn’t use an in-and-out box. The only items taking up space on it were an ink blotter and a telephone. He slid a yellow legal pad out of a drawer.

“Is there anybody who can corroborate your story?”

“There’s this chick Vicki, the one who was in Manfred’s room when I went to go pick up the package. She knows he was alive when I left. But she wasn’t there when I got back.”

“The good news, Mr. Healy, is that the burden of proof is on the state. We don’t have to prove you didn’t do it. They have to prove that you did.”

Harry got off the leather couch and went to stand by the windows. Merrill seemed far away. “You don’t believe me, do you?”

“If I’m going to represent you, I have no choice but to assume you’re telling the truth.”

Somehow Merrill was managing to make Harry feel guilty, even though every word he’d spoken was true.

“What we’re going to do is negotiate your surrender, and let them worry about building a case against you for this murder you didn’t commit.”

“What about all the other charges?”

“We’ll get to them. Let’s take care of your biggest problem first. You’re going to go spend an extremely quiet evening at home, wherever home is, and you’re going to be back here at nine o’clock tomorrow morning. Do you understand?”

Harry said, “That’s it?”

“No, that’s not it,” Merrill said. “But that’s all you need to worry about for now.” He stood up, and Harry was dismissed, like a bad boy who was finished serving his detention.

He rode the elevator for thirty floors. It was raining again, like it had every day since he got to New York, and it was icy cold. Walking down Third Avenue, trying to get his teeth to stop chattering, it felt more like November than April. He pushed his hands deep into the pockets of his jeans and lowered his chin.

One of the thoughts Harry tried to keep on the run, with the help of a lot of scotch, was that he’d played an important part in bringing himself to this point. It wasn’t as if things had just been done to him. Bad thinking led to bad decisions, and bad decisions led to stupid actions. It made him feel dizzy, this whole interconnectedness of things. Every event in life was knotted around the thing that happened before it, and led straight into the thing that came after it.

If he hadn’t been involved with Julia, what were the odds of him meeting Leo? A billion to one? And if he’d ever bothered to make something of himself, he wouldn’t have been delivering cocaine to parties that had guests like Julia. He wouldn’t have worked for Frankie Yin, and he never would’ve met Manfred. Poor old Manfred. His poor Dutch Uncle. Was it Manfred who set off this chain reaction of bad juju? Or was it Harry? Or just destiny?