Sweetheart (19 page)

“What’d we do wrong?”

Blue picked up the cap. “I think he’s cracking up.”

• • •

Christopher Wade helped Mrs. Matchett clear the supper table, his insistence. “I never helped my wife do it,” he explained. “Sometimes I wasn’t even there for supper. So I guess I’m feeling guilt.”

“You mustn’t feel guilt,” Mrs. Matchett said, her violet eyes jetting up at him. “All of us are too vitally human to be dragged down by it, though some of us let it happen. Don’t you, Chris.”

He smiled.

She smiled wider. “The Lord loves those who love themselves.”

“You’re sweet,” he said, nearly meaning it.

“I always have been. You can ask Joe.”

In the kitchen he helped her load the dishwasher. She seemed to have in stock every appliance and device imaginable, from the latest microwave oven to a glittering array of Japanese knives advertised on television and available only through toll-free telephone orders. She ran a hand across one of the knives. “They’re not as nice as they lead you to believe.”

“Things seldom are.”

“How long have you been separated from your wife, Chris?”

“I think from the day we married.”

“But you have children, you said. You got together for that.”

“That’s always easy.”

“Do you miss her, Chris?”

“Now more than ever, though I’m growing philosophical about it.”

“Starting right this minute,” Mrs. Matchett said, her voice charmingly low, “you’ll always have Joe and me. I want you to know that.”

He soon joined the senator in the room where they had talked privately. The senator, back on the brandy, was sitting with his feet up on an ottoman and staring out at the beach, where shadows were lengthening. “It was nice of you to give her a hand,” he said, his voice and mood mellow. “And, please, help yourself to the brandy.”

Wade poured only a little, diluted it with ice, and sat down with a glance at his watch. “I’d better be leaving soon,” he said, and the senator threw him a distressed look.

“We were hoping you’d stay the night. In fact, we’ve planned on it. A bed’s already been made up for you.”

“It wouldn’t look right.”

“Who’d know?”

“You can never tell.”

The senator sank a little deeper into his chair and shifted his sandaled feet on the ottoman, crossing them at the ankles. “I’m at a time of my life when things are especially good. I hope they’re good for you too, Chris.”

“I can’t complain.”

“We owe it to ourselves to be comfortable. To be healthy of body and happy of heart. That’s what’s important, not power, though God knows I have it. But I’m not interested in it. I’m interested in a glass of brandy, and the way my feet feel when I stretch my toes, and the way I react when my wife whispers in my ear. What interests you, Chris?”

“I guess those same things, more or less.”

“I’m glad to hear that, because life’s short, no matter what your age is. You’ve been to high school reunions. You know what the talk is?
Who’s gone
.”

“I hope you’re not getting morbid, dear,” Mrs. Matchett chided as she slipped into the room, her frosted hair arranged a little differently, in a manner that made her seem a shade more matronly. She peered at the brandy bottle. “He’s not going to fall asleep on us, is he, Chris?”

The senator stretched an arm out for his wife’s hand and gave it a small squeeze. “I thought we might entertain Chris with one of Tony’s tapes, though I wouldn’t want him to take it the wrong way. Some people get a little uptight.”

“I don’t think Chris will,” Mrs. Matchett said confidently, with a brief look at Wade, as if an understanding had passed between them in the kitchen.

The room went dark as Mrs. Matchett lowered the blinds over the glass panels, shutting out the ocean and the world. From another part of the room she unraveled a wall screen and activated a videocassette. Then she floated toward a chair closer to Wade than to her husband and dropped into it, drawing up her legs and curving them under her. On the screen appeared the images of deep-waisted women and muscular men.

“Say the word,” said the senator, “and I’ll turn it off.”

“No,” said Wade. “I’m interested.”

“Gardella won’t watch his own stuff,” the senator said with a snort. “Thinks it’s disgusting.”

From the depths of her chair, Mrs. Matchett said, “I think it’s cute.”

The senator had seen it before and, with reedy laughs, anticipated scenes. “This is good … watch this … she’s terrific.” On the screen a young woman, naked and vivid, parted herself, first in private, then with others. “She’s the best,” the senator whispered with evident excitement, as if caught up in a moving experience, deep-felt, indelible.

“What they won’t think of next,” Mrs. Matchett murmured after a prolonged silence.

“Shhh,” the senator said, and his eyes stayed glued to the screen until the tape ran out. Then his head dropped back as if from exertion. Mrs. Matchett rose quietly in the gloom and took the empty brandy glass from his hand and stroked his hair, which did not in the least disturb him.

“He’s such a dear.”

Wade also rose and was amazed at how quickly sleep had absorbed the senator.

“He’s a kind and thoughtful man, Chris. He’s hard-fisted with money, but I’ve never wanted for anything. Neither have the children. We have one at Harvard, you know.”

Wade leaned against his chair, waiting for the proper moment to leave. She approached him with short steps and stood close, as if she wanted to touch his face.

“Aren’t you staying?” she asked, and he shook his head. “Maybe that’s for the best,” she said. “We trust you, Chris. Maybe we shouldn’t, but we do. Don’t ever deceive us. Promise?”

Wade, with a twinge, promised.

• • •

A light showed from the house, but somehow he knew she was not inside. Leaving the Camaro on the side of the road, he walked around to the patio, and her voice wafted out of the dark. “Why are you bothering me again, Lieutenant?”

He made out only an edge of her face and the tip of her fine nose. A cool draft from the ocean bathed him as he inched toward where she was sitting. “I didn’t plan to,” he said.

“But here you are.”

“I was visiting the Matchetts.”

“That must’ve been fun.”

He let that slide. He could see more of her now, the shine of her fair hair, the length of one arm, like a smooth flow of water. Her hand cupped a cigarette, which he knew was not an ordinary one. “May I sit down?” he asked.

“For a while. But don’t come near me.”

He felt for a chair and dropped into one. “How’s your foot?”

“Fine.”

“Obviously you didn’t mention everything to your husband.”

“What should I have told him? That you gave me a little peck on the mouth?”

“It was more than that to me.”

She did not finish the joint. She flipped it into the dark, and they sat in silence. The silence grew, mixing with the restlessness of the ocean and threatening to drown them. She said, “Why are you trying to make me? It’s really stupid of you.”

“Why is it stupid?”

“Answer that yourself.”

He felt inside his sports jacket for his Beretta, simply to reassure himself that it was there. “I’ll admit your husband scares me,” he said, “but he should scare you more. No matter how you cut him, there’s a dirty streak.”

“You see him one way, I see him another.” Through the dark she made a present of her smile, a vacant one. “What I see is an old-world
magnifico
. Do you know what the word means?”

“I can guess, but does it apply?”

“Oh, yes,” she said and went quiet as if from a proliferation of feelings too difficult to deal with.

He said, “Are you expecting him?”

“What if I say yes?”

“I’ll leave.”

“I’m expecting him.”

“You’re lying.”

“But you don’t know that for sure — and do you know why you don’t know for sure? Because you don’t know me.”

She walked him to his car, headlights from the boulevard sweeping over them, paralyzing their features. They avoided each other’s eyes. She looked at the Camaro. “It doesn’t seem like your kind of car.”

“Sometimes I don’t feel like my kind of man — whatever the Christ that is.”

He walked around to the other side of the car and climbed in quickly because of the traffic. Then he rooted for keys as she peered in at him from the passenger side, her face a pool in the square opening of the window. “Do me a favor,” she said quietly.

“Name it.”

“Tell Thurston he’s giving me too much to deal with. Tell him he’s an obscene son of a bitch.”

Wade stared at her as if his ears didn’t belong to him.

She said, “Goodnight, Sweetheart.”

T
HE MAN
Victor Scandura approached in the plaza in Copley Square was slick-haired and moon-faced and wore a tropical suit wrinkled from the heat and the concrete ledge he had been sitting on until he stood up to scratch his behind. His name was Deckler, and his car, which bore New York plates, was parked nearby. Scandura said to him, “Got anything yet?”

“I got four guys on him,” Deckler said. “You know why four? I respect him. He’s smart.”

“Maybe you should have eight guys. We’re paying enough.” Scandura glanced around. People were sunning themselves near the spray of the fountain: youths with their shirts off, businessmen with their ties loosened, women with their skirts hiked up. Scandura said, “When can we expect results?”

“Maybe never. Like you were told, no guarantees.”

“But what’s your feeling?”

“Thurston’s a funny guy, very private. I knew him when I was a narc. Did him a favor.”

“Small world,” said Scandura.

“Smaller than you think.” Deckler grinned. “I was in the army with your boss. Haven’t seen him since. I always thought our paths would cross, but they never did.”

“Now they have.”

“Yeah, now they have. You tell him, okay?”

Scandura told him a half hour later in the real estate office. Anthony Gardella had the television on and was watching the noon news. He listened to Scandura without removing his eyes from the pretty anchorwoman, though his expression altered subtly, disappointment replacing nostalgia.

“You never know how people are going to turn out, do you, Victor?”

“Maybe I did the wrong thing.”

“No,” said Gardella. “I think the guy will come through for me.”

• • •

Russell Thurston, lunching with agents Blodgett and Blue in the cafeteria in the Kennedy Building, laid a clipping on the table,
Miami Herald
, the day before’s date. “We lost him,” he said in a reproving tone. Blodgett read the clipping first, slowly, and then Blue did, quickly. “We had him, you know that,” Thurston said. “All we had to do was find him.”

“We didn’t figure him for Florida,” Blodgett said defensively, “not this time of year.”

“We could’ve squeezed him dry,” Thurston said angrily. “Gardella knew that. He found him first.”

Blodgett, rereading the clip, said, “Overdose. That’s what they think it was.”

Blue said, “The girl was only fourteen.”

Thurston had a dish of garden salad before him, nothing else. He explored it with his fork and said, “We’ve still got Hunkins. Or have we? You two tell me.”

Blodgett said confidently, “I think he’ll jump into our lap, just a matter of time.”

“And what do you think?” Thurston asked Blue.

“He’s going to do something. I don’t know what.”

“Okay. Put more pressure on him.”

“Blue thinks he’ll snap,” Blodgett said.

Blue said, “I think he’s already snapped.”

• • •

Deputy Superintendent Scatamacchia left his office in the Area D station in the South End and, with an occasional eye in the rearview, drove several blocks to a dry cleaning shop, where he placed a bet on a horse named Laura’s Boy. “I got a good feeling about this animal,” he told the bookie and left with a smile. On his way into Dorchester he glanced in the mirror and saw a car leap ahead of another. That was when he suspected he was being followed.

He left his car in an alley, skirted the rear of a derelict tenement house, and entered a small cinder-block building by the back door. The place was a private social club. The only people at the bar were two off-duty firemen talking baseball. He sat at a wall table, and the waitress took her time coming over to him. She was red-haired and green-eyed and the mother of seven. “How you doing?” he asked and glided a hand beneath her bottom.

“You get away with murder, d’you know that?” she said sullenly.

“What’s the matter, you mad?”

“You haven’t shown your face here in a month.”

“I’ve been busy.”

“I can imagine. You want a beer?”

“I want a beer,” he said, “and I want a frank, lots of mustard. Any sauerkraut? Put some of that in too.”

When she returned with his order, she sat down with him. The frank was sloppy with mustard. The bun was loaded with sauerkraut. With a minimum of bites he finished it off while she smoked a cigarette. “How’s your hubby?” he asked, in need of a napkin, which she pushed at him.

“Find him a job,” she said. “That would do a whole hell of a lot for me.”

“I could find him twenty jobs, he wouldn’t keep one of ’em. He’s a lush.”

“Don’t remind me.”

“I’ll send him a note. Where does he take his mail? Detox center?”

“Don’t be nasty.”

He downed his beer and used another napkin. “You busy?”

“Doesn’t look that way,” she said with a shrug, and he grinned.

“You want to?”

“It’s up to you.”

They got up from the table, moved to the rear, and climbed the stairs to a narrow room that contained a neatly made-up army cot. A Currier and Ives adorned one wall, Norman Rockwell another. He looked at his watch and said, “I haven’t got that much time.”

She kicked off her shoes, skinned away her white pantyhose, and lay on the cot. Her toenails were painted pink, and he traced a finger over them, his only frivolity. He didn’t make love to her; he jackhammered her. Afterward, she was slow to get up and even slower to make herself decent.

“How was it?” he asked, getting himself together.

“I wish the hell you wouldn’t ask me that each and every time. One of these days I’m going to tell you and end a perfectly good friendship.”

“Friendship, hell,” he said. “C’mere.”

She stepped forward, and he tucked a twenty-dollar bill into her frayed bra.

With an added sense of himself, he left the club by the same door he had come in. In the harsh, bright sunlight his step turned cautious, and he scanned every window of the abandoned tenement house before passing it. He entered the alley from a different direction, falling into a semicrouch, knowing the obvious spot where anyone might be waiting for him. The man had his back to him, but he recognized him at once.

“You fucker,” he said.

Officer Hunkins twisted around with a .38 revolver in his hand but never got a chance to fire it. Scatamacchia shot him with his own weapon, the magnum.

• • •

Rita O’Dea was a surprise visitor to the real estate office. She nodded to Victor Scandura, who was sitting with his glasses off, and gave her brother a heavy, wet kiss half on his mouth, which embarrassed him. She had on a flouncy yellow sundress and a lacquered straw hat. She took the hat off and dropped it on her brother’s desk. “Would you mind, Victor? I’d like to talk to Tony in private.”

Scandura did not move until he got the signal, almost imperceptible, from Anthony Gardella, who then viewed his sister with infinite patience. She drew up a chair and sat in it with her large legs crossed.

“Do I look happy, Tony? I know I do. I’ll tell you why in a minute. First I want to talk business,” she announced, and he regarded her warily. “I was talking to Rizzo,” she said. “He tells me you’re not going to sell G&B.”

“I was thinking of it,” Gardella said in a casual manner, “but the heat’s off it now. And Rizzo’s negotiated some pretty big contracts. Better we keep it.”

“Tony, G&B’s my company, isn’t it? I mean, mostly mine. You said it was.”

“It is,” he said. “I just make sure things go right.”

Her face came forward. “Tony, I’d like to run it straight from now on.”

“We run it straight, we don’t stay in business. You know that, or at least I thought you did. What’s the matter, Rita?”

“I want to know where we’re dumping the waste now.”

His eyes rested carefully upon her. “A place way up in New Hampshire, so far up the people only speak French, but they understand dollars. They lead our trucks into woods with dirt roads that come out to gravel pits. That’s where we unload the poison, hurts nobody.”

“People up there drink out of wells, Tony.”

“Not where we dump. Nobody lives anywhere near it.”

She shook her head. “The stuff doesn’t just stay in the ground. It travels.”

“Nobody’s dying up there.”

“Not yet.” Her eyes clouded. “Kids are dying of cancer in Woburn. You must’ve seen it on TV.”

“Woburn’s got nothing to do with me. You come in here saying you’re happy and then hit me with this. You want to explain?”

“It’s simple,” she said in a voice charged with a sense of occasion, celebration. “I’m concerned about children, little babies. I’m going to have one.” His stare was disbelieving, his silence somber. “Actually Sara Dillon’s having it,” she explained, “but it’s going to be mine.”

He was no longer looking at her. He spun a pencil around on his desk, as if from a need to gain time. He straightened slips of paper filled with figures.

“Tony, I deserve it.”

“There could be trouble.”

“There won’t be. I swear.”

“Can I talk you out of it?”

“Tony, please!”

Something in her voice made him lift his eyes. He got up from his chair and held his arms out to her.

• • •

When Russell Thurston returned to his office from the cafeteria, he found Christopher Wade waiting for him. Wade was leaning against a spare desk, a large envelope under his arm, and staring straight at a wall. “I’ll take that,” Thurston said, freeing the envelope, which contained a report of Wade’s activities and a tape of his meeting with Senator Matchett. “I should’ve had this at nine o’clock.”

“I slept late. Very late.”

“And you should’ve sent Danley or Dane over with it. You’re bending the rules.”

“I didn’t know we went by any,” Wade said, and followed Thurston into the cubicle, closing the door behind him. Thurston gave him a backward look.

“Do we have something to discuss?”

“Jane Gardella,” Wade said, poising himself behind a chair and gripping the top of it, as if for support. His breathing was barely detectable. “Tell me about her.”

Thurston carefully read Wade’s face and leisurely seated himself. “I can see you know. She told you. I figured she would in time.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Maybe it amused me not to.” Thurston reached behind for an accordion-pleated file folder. “Would you like to read about her? Her code name’s Honey.”

“I want
you
to tell me.”

“You do, do you? Your arms are shaking. Why?”

“You really don’t want to know,” Wade said grimly.

“Okay,” Thurston said. “You relax. You sit down.”

Wade stayed as he was, his eyes squarely on Thurston. He seemed to be seeing the man for the first time, as if before he’d been only a voice.

“We recruited her when she was Jane Denig and a flight attendant working the Florida run and Gardella was a regular passenger. That was the year he was setting up his Florida operation with his cousin Sal Nardozza. It was also the year he lost his wife. I heard he cried like a baby. That surprised me. I didn’t know those people felt things like us. Anyway, he was a lonely man, and Honey was — is, of course — a good-looking woman. I suppose you could call her beautiful. Would you call her beautiful, Wade?”

“Yes,” said Wade, “I’d call her beautiful.”

“Gardella was interested in her, we saw that right away. He always went out of his way to talk to her. She had something going with her pilot boyfriend, a guy named Charlie, up to his ears in debt. They used to hide dope on the plane, run it up to Boston. We knew all this, you see, but Gardella didn’t. I talked the narcs into busting them and then letting me have them. It worked perfectly. I mean, what could go wrong? You want me to continue?”

“Yes,” Wade said. “Continue.”

“My proposition to her was her boyfriend would walk and she’d work for me, nurture Gardella’s interest, get something going. Do you know what my code name was during all this? Cupid!” The word popped out of Thurston’s mouth like a cork from a bottle. He seemed delighted with himself. “When she first told me he wanted to marry her, I didn’t believe it. I thought she had flipped out. But they were in love with each other, can you imagine that?”

“Yes,” Wade said. “I can imagine it.”

“There was a while I didn’t know which way she’d go. A couple of times she went hysterical on me, threatened to blow it all. The possibility of a crisis,” Thurston recalled with excitement, “was constant.”

“I get the impression you liked it.”

“Loved it. No sense lying to a smart fellow like you.”

“It’s blood sport. If Gardella ever finds out, he’ll kill her. He won’t have a choice.”

“Nobody’s safe in this world. If a car doesn’t get you, cancer will.”

Wade’s stare was stony. “I don’t want her to die.”

“Of course you don’t. It’d be a shame if she did, so we’ll all do what we can to prevent it.”

“I’m going to protect her.”

“You protect her all you want, so long as you don’t tip your hand. I’ve worked too hard on this to watch Gardella walk away.”

“Then I’d better warn you, I’ve got feelings for her.”

“You think I don’t know that?” There was a flatness in Thurston’s smile, a deadness in the way he sat at his desk. “You’ve got a muscle in your pants, why shouldn’t she arouse you?”

“It’s more than that.”

Thurston flexed his jaw before he spoke. “I don’t doubt it for a minute. And I appreciate the irony of it, but I’m busy.” He made a movement toward papers on his desk. “See you later, Wade.”

“I’ve a feeling,” said Wade, “we might see each other in hell.”

• • •

Two police officers arrived in a beat-up van. The one driving quietly backed it into the alley, stopping a few feet away from Deputy Superintendent Scatamacchia’s unmarked car. They hopped out quickly and yanked open the rear doors of the van. Scatamacchia flung open the trunk of his car, in which lay the body of Officer Hunkins.

“Get rid of it. I don’t care where or how, but get rid of it.”

The two officers, struggling, lifted the body out and deposited it in the back of the van. Swiftly they shut the doors.

Scatamacchia said, “His car’s around the corner. Get rid of that too — take it to a chop shop.”