Hush Money

8

Carl Reed’s study was an afterthought, a cubbyhole that in the architect’s original house plan was a storage room, just an oversize closet, really. But in the ten years Carl and his family had been living in their ranch-style home on the outskirts of West Lake, Iowa (a village just west of Lake Ahquabi, just south of Des Moines), the cubicle-size study had provided an invaluable sanctuary from evenings disrupted by the sounds of two teenagers growing up. Of course there was only one teen-ager around the house these days. Len was twenty-one now and taking prelaw at the U of I, while Len’s wife (a pretty little brunette girl from Des Moines who was a year older than him, with her B.A. degree behind her) taught second grade and took the burden off Dad as far as paying the kid’s bills was concerned. Which was nice for a change. Carl’s daughter Amy was seventeen, a high-school senior, a cheerleader and student council member and, with her 3.9 grade average, a potential class salutatorian. She was also a potential political radical, or so she liked to say; anyway, she was to the left of her liberal dad. Amy would be living at home next year (commuting to Drake in Des Moines) where her old man, thank the Lord, could still keep an eye on her. You’d think growing up in a little flyspeck town in the middle of Middle America would serve to isolate or at least protect a child somewhat; but apparently it didn’t. Perhaps that was because Des Moines was so close by. Whatever the reason, the kids around here were as wild and disrespectful as anywhere else, and maybe that was the way it should be: Carl wasn’t sure. But he was sure that growing up in a vacuum wasn’t good for a child, as he’d once thought it might be, and was glad his daughter had a mind, even if it didn’t necessarily mirror his own.

And that was typical of the sort of decisions Carl made in his little study: quiet, perhaps not particularly important decisions. They were the leisurely reflections of a man who grabs leisurely reflection where he can, in the midst of a life full of the wearing of various hats: politician, banker, father, husband and lover (both of those hats being worn in the presence of his wife Margaret who seemed as lovely to him today as twenty-seven years ago when they’d met on the Drake campus after the war, and thank God for Margaret’s sustaining beauty, because Carl just didn’t have the time to fool around).

There was a couch in the study, and a desk with chair and not much else. There were books and an occasional keepsake (such as the dime store loving cup inscribed “World’s Greatest Golfer” from his kids a couple of Christmases ago) in the ceiling-to-floor bookcase behind the desk. The other walls were cluttered with framed letters (the one from Robert Kennedy, particularly, he treasured) and photographs of him with various state and national political leaders (shaking hands with then-Governor Harold Hughes on the steps of the Capitol building). Sometimes he wondered whether his private sanctuary being decorated with the mementoes of his political life was a sign of idealistic dedication to public service or just overblown feelings of self-importance. Not that those two traits were necessarily contradictory. It was possible, he supposed, for a man to be both an idealist and a pompous ass. He just hoped he didn’t fit the description himself.

This study, then, was his private, self-confessional booth, a place for the sort of soul-searching everyone must go through, now and then, to retain sanity in a chaotic universe. But tonight (or this morning, as it was nearly one-thirty already; he’d been sitting here for hours now) his usual run of the soul-searching mill was set aside for more practical concerns. And first priority was the sorting out of the events of the day — or, rather, yesterday — to try and make some coherent meaning out of them, to try and find the proper response for Carl H. Reed to make to these events.

The shooting at the country club, on the heels of Joey DiPreta’s bribery attempt, seemed to have happened years ago, rather than mere hours. The events seemed to recede in his memory like a nightmare that, while vividly realistic as it runs its course, begins to fade immediately on waking. They were the stuff of madness, and his subconscious was trying desperately to protect his psyche, but Carl wouldn’t let it; he sat at his desk and set those events out before himself and examined them one by one.

Perhaps the most confusing of all was the only event he himself had controlled: his conduct at the police station. The station was on the East Side, across from the old post office and near the bridge, an ancient, rambling stone building he had driven by daily but had never really seen before, not before today, when he found himself in the company of two detectives, who ushered him into a gray-walled cubicle about the size of this study but hardly as pleasant and asked him questions about the shooting.

And he hadn’t told them.

Why? Even now he wasn’t sure. Oh, he’d told them about the shooting itself, of course. What was there to tell? The eerie experience of seeing the bullet tear through DiPreta followed by the sound of gunfire. He’d told them that, and they’d nodded.

But when one of them — the hatchet-faced, pockmarked guy with the short-cropped gray hair — Cummins his name was — began to ask questions (such as “Were you aware of Joseph DiPreta’s alleged connections to organized crime?”) Carl had held back. Held back the conversation leading up to the shooting. Held back DiPreta’s offer of fifty thousand dollars “hush money.”

And it certainly wasn’t because he’d had second thoughts about the offer; it wasn’t that Carl was waiting for another DiPreta to come around so he could accept this time. Quite the reverse was true. Every time he thought about Joey DiPreta’s offer he got indignant all over again.

So what had it been? Why hadn’t he said anything?

“Carl?”

He turned in his chair. It was Margaret, peeking in the door behind him. She was in an old blue dressing gown and her hair was in curlers and she wore no makeup and she was beautiful.

“Dear?” he said.

“I thought you might like a drink.” And she handed him a Scotch on the rocks.

Margaret didn’t approve of drinking, and Carl had long ago had to put aside his college-days habit of two-fisted drinking, at home anyway. The liquor cabinet was stocked strictly for social affairs, and a before-dinner or before-bedtime cocktail was not the habit around this household. So for Margaret to fix and bring him a drink was an occasion. He was suitably impressed.

“Thank you, Maggie. What have I done to deserve this?”

She came over and sat on the edge of the desk. She smiled in mock irritation. “You’ve stayed up close to two in the morning, worrying me half to death with your brooding, is what you’ve done.”

“Is Amy off to bed?”

“Yes. You shouldn’t have told her she could stay up for that late movie. It just got over a few minutes ago, can you imagine? And on a school night.”

“She’s a young woman, Maggie. If she wants to trade sleep for some silly movie, that’s up to her.”

“The Great Liberal. If I had my way, the girl would have some discipline.”

“The Great Conservative. If you had your way, she’d be in petticoats.”

And they laughed. It was a running argument/joke that came out of one of the better kept secrets in the state: Maggie Reed was a conservative Republican who canceled her husband’s vote every time they went to the polls — with one obvious exception.

“Carl...”

“Maggie?”

“Did... did what happened this afternoon upset you terribly? Does it bother you terribly, what you saw?”

Carl sipped the Scotch. He nodded. “That’s part of what’s on my mind, I guess. Come on. Let’s go over and sit on the couch. What’s it like outside? Kind of stuffy in here.”

“There’s a nice breeze. I’ll open the window.”

Maggie opened the window by the couch and they sat together and he told her about Joey DiPreta and the offer he’d made. He hadn’t been able to tell the police, but Maggie he could tell. She listened with rapt interest and with an indignation similar to his own. The very idea of someone even considering her husband corruptible got up the Irish in her.

“What did the police say when you told them about this?”

“That’s just it, Maggie. That’s what I’m sitting here mulling over. You see, I didn’t tell the police what I’ve just told you.”

“Carl... why not?”

“I’m not sure, exactly. Have you ever been inside the police station?”

“Just downstairs. To pay parking tickets.”

“Well, then you know the atmosphere, at least.”

“You mean the halls seem so cold and clammy.”

“That’s it. And there’s an antiseptic odor, like a public restroom that’s just been cleaned. I can’t explain it, but that atmosphere got to me, somehow, and I found myself hesitating when that detective, Cummins, began asking questions.”

“Are you going to tell them?”

“I don’t know. There was something about that fella Cummins that... I don’t know.”

“What was it about the detective that made you lie to him, Carl?”

“Dear, I didn’t lie. I just didn’t tell the truth.”

“Now you do sound like a politician.”

“Please. That’s hitting below the belt. If you want to talk about that kind of politician, talk about my predecessor, Grayson — one of your Republicans, incidentally — who was on the DiPreta payroll and raked in God knows how much money.”

“You must’ve had a reason, Carl, for holding back when that detective questioned you.”

“Well, I did have a reason. Or not a reason, really... a feeling. Instinct. Something about that man Cummins. I just didn’t feel comfortable with him. Didn’t trust him is what it boils down to, I guess.”

“Didn’t trust him?”

“I guess not, or I would have told him what I knew. It was just that his voice stayed so flat, so controlled, while his eyes... shifting around all the time, narrowing, nervous... God, Maggie, the damn eagerness in those eyes. Lord.”

“Could he be on the DiPreta payroll himself, Carl?”

“That thought occurred to me. Of course. And why not? If the DiPretas can buy a state highway commissioner, they can buy a lowly damn detective on the Des Moines police force. Sure.”

“Then I think you did the right thing. Holding back, I mean. But where do you go now?”

“I don’t know. I have to admit the whole thing’s got me a little bit scared, Maggie. Maybe more than a little bit. Suppose I had talked freely to Cummins. When word of my refusing Joey DiPreta’s offer got back to the surviving DiPretas, that and my telling of that offer to the police, well, I might not have made it home tonight. I might have had a mysterious accident of some sort, got run off the road by a drunken driver, something of that sort.”

“My God, Carl, now you’re starting to get me scared, too.”

“You should be. Because the DiPretas are going to make their offer again. I don’t know when or how, but they will. My business meeting with Joey DiPreta was interrupted, but as soon as the smoke clears, the rest of the family will be there to take up where Joey left off. Since I said nothing to the police, the DiPretas will assume Joey either didn’t get a chance to make his offer or that he did and I accepted. Either way, they’ll be wanting to see me.”

“What can you do? Couldn’t you go to the newspapers?”

“Telling the press isn’t a bad idea, Maggie, but I have no evidence. Just my word about what a dead man told me. I’ve been thinking it over. Carefully. I’ve been examining what I’ve seen today, and heard. I’ve been thinking about what options are open to me. And I’ve decided to amass evidence on my own. DiPreta said that as soon as I begin to delve into the highway commission records it’ll become apparent enough what was going on during Grayson’s administration. So I’ll begin that examination, tomorrow. Today. As a full-time project. And I’ll keep the lid on, too. Minimum of secretarial help, and then only in a way that could not make clear what I was up to. It’ll be a tough, time-consuming job, but it shouldn’t take me long, if I get at it, and when I have the evidence amassed, then I will talk to the press. I’ll hold a press conference and tell the damn world. But not ’til then.”

“Finish your drink and come to bed.”

“You think it’s a good idea?”

“Yes. Know what else I think?”

“No.”

“I think my husband is a great man. Even if he is a damn liberal. Now come to bed.”

“I’ll be in in a few minutes. I think I’ll go out on the back stoop and finish my drink and get some air first.”

“Carl...”

“Just for a couple of minutes. Then I’ll be in.”

“Okay. I’ll read ’til you join me.”

“You don’t have to do that... unless you want to.”

“I want to. That is, I want to if there’s a chance of this dowdy old housewife in curlers and robe seducing her brilliant and handsome husband.”

“There’s more than a chance. I’ll guarantee it. And you’re not dowdy, Mag. You’re beautiful.”

“I know, but it sounds better when you say it.” She smooched his cheek. “Go out and get your air and finish your drink. I’ll give you five minutes and then I’m starting without you.”

He laughed and patted her fanny as he followed her out of the study. She turned off toward the bedroom and he went on out the back way and sat on the cement stoop and sipped the Scotch and thought some more. There was a nice breeze, but it wasn’t cold. The night was dark, moonless, but there were stars. Very pleasant out, really, and he felt good... about the pleasant night... about the decisions he’d made... about his wife, his beautiful wife of almost three decades waiting in the bedroom for him.

Someone touched his shoulder.

“Maggie?” Carl said and started to turn.

He felt something cold touch his neck. He knew almost immediately, though he didn’t know how, that the something cold was the tip of the barrel of a gun.

“Who is it?” Carl whispered.

“That’s right,” a voice whispered back. “Speak softly. We don’t want to attract the attention of anyone in your house. Your wife or your daughter, for instance.”

“What do you want?”

“I’m not here to hurt you. I’m a friend. I know you may find that hard to believe, but it’s the truth.”

“I have a lot of friends, my friend,” Carl said, hoping his fear would not be apparent, hoping he could put a tough edge in his voice. “None of them holds a gun to my neck when they want to talk to me.”

The coldness of the gun barrel went away.

“Maybe that was unnecessary,” the voice said, “but my situation’s kind of precarious. I hope you can understand that. I hope you’ll excuse me.”

The voice was deep but young-sounding, and there was a tone of — what? Respect? Carl wasn’t sure exactly. But whatever it was, he wasn’t afraid any more, or at least not as much as perhaps he should have been in the presence of an intruder with a gun.

“Is it all right if I turn around?” Carl asked.

“Please don’t. I’ll be sitting here right behind you, next to you on the stoop, while we talk a moment. But it’d be better for us both if you didn’t see me.”

“Then I shouldn’t ask who you are.”

“You won’t have to. I’ve already told you I’m a friend. Do you always stay up so late, Mr. Reed?”

“Do I what?” The question caught Carl off guard, and he almost laughed, despite the gun and overall strangeness of the situation.

“Do you always stay up so late? I’ve been waiting for you to go to bed for several hours now. My intention, frankly, was to enter your house after you were asleep so I could look through your papers in your study.”

“Why would you want to do that?”

“To see if my judgment of you today was correct.”

“Your judgment? When did you see me today?”

“On the golf course.”

“On the... oh. Oh my Lord. You...?”

“That’s right. I shot Joseph DiPreta this afternoon.”

“My Lord. My God.”

“I hope you’ll forgive me, but I’m afraid I was listening outside your study while you were speaking with your wife. I found what you said encouraging. I’m glad you’re taking a stand against the DiPretas and what they represent. We have that in common.” The man paused, breathed in some of the fresh night air. “The breeze feels nice, doesn’t it? There was a breeze like this this afternoon, remember? I was watching you through the telescopic sight of a rifle. You were arguing with DiPreta. I’m not a lip reader, but it was clear you were having some sort of disagreement. And then at the end of your argument the wind carried DiPreta’s voice to the high grass where I was watching. If I heard correct, DiPreta threatened you because you would not accept money to keep quiet. But I couldn’t be sure. I had to come here tonight to try to see if I could find out where you really stood. And I think I’ve found an ally.”

Carl’s mind stuttered. The boy seemed lucid enough, not at all the madman he must be, but then madmen often seem lucid; their illogic is often most seductive.

“You may be wondering why, if I learned what I needed to know by eavesdropping earlier, I would risk coming out in the open now to contact you. Because you obviously won’t approve of my methods, even if our goals are similar. But I have something important to tell you. I have this certain body of data you will be interested in.”

Carl found the ability to speak again, somehow, asking, “Data? What sort of data?”

“Tapes. Of conversations in motel rooms, both private and meeting rooms. Of phone calls. Also photographs, other documentary material. Pertaining to the DiPretas and their family businesses and their connections to organized crime, specifically to Chicago. A lot of the material, in fact, pertains directly to Chicago. I hesitate to call this body of data evidence because I’m no lawyer. I don’t know what a court would do with this stuff. But if nothing else, it can serve as a sort of blueprint to the DiPretas and everything they have done, are doing, and are likely to do.”

Carl spoke with all the urgency he could muster. “If you do have such a collection of data — and, damn it, I believe you do, Lord knows why — you must turn it over to me. You were listening to my wife and me, you know that I’ll be mounting a personal, intensive investigation of the DiPretas and their activities, and it’s my intention to expose them and the people they deal with for what they are. To tell anyone who’s interested that the Mafia is alive and well and living in Des Moines.”

“I may do that. Eventually.”

“Eventually? And until then?”

“I’ll use the... blueprint... to serve my own methods of dealing with the DiPretas.”

“You mean... killing them.”

“Yes.”

“My Lord, man. That makes you no better than they are.”

“Mr. Reed, war is amoral. There is no morality in war, just winners and losers.”

“War? Is that what you imagine yourself to be doing? Waging war? Launching a one-man campaign, one-man war against the DiPretas? How old are you? You’re just a boy, aren’t you. Twenty-five? Thirty? Were you in Vietnam? Is that it?”

“I was in Vietnam, yes, but that’s not ‘it.’ Please don’t use that as an easy answer, Mr. Reed.”

“Turn your information, your data — turn it over to me at once. This course of action you’re charting is not only dangerous, it’s — forgive me — but it’s psychopathic. Good intentions or not, you’re charting the course of a madman.”

“Mr. Reed, I thank you for your concern.”

“Listen to me, I beg you... You can’t go on trying to... wage this crazy war or whatever it is you picture yourself doing.”

“I don’t expect your approval, sir.”

“What do you expect of me then?”

“Your silence.”

“What makes you think I won’t go to the police and tell them about this conversation tomorrow? Or call them right now, for that matter?”

“Because of your suspicions about Detective Cummins. Which are correct. He is on the DiPreta payroll. To the tune of five hundred dollars a month.”

A sick feeling was crawling into Carl’s stomach.

“I’ll make arrangements so that if anything should happen to me... if I am a casualty in my own war... then the body of data I mentioned will be turned over to you. Good night, Mr. Reed.”

“Please! What can I say to change your mind!”

“Nothing.”

When Carl entered the bedroom, his wife was asleep. He went out to the liquor cabinet, refilled his glass of Scotch, and went back to the study.

9

Frank DiPreta buttered his hot Danish roll. Even before Frank had begun stroking the butter on, the pastry was dripping calories, sugary frosting melting down into cherry-filled crevices. But Frank had been born thin and would die the same; nothing in the world put weight on him. He bit into the sweet circular slab and chewed, in a bored, fuel-consuming way that could make a fat man weep.

He was sitting in the back booth of the Traveler’s Inn coffee shop. Alone. Elsewhere in the shop, strangers were sharing booths and relatively cheerfully, too, but not Frank. His was in a rounded, corner booth that could have seated six, and this was the busiest time of morning — it was seven-thirty now, the peak of the seven-to-nine rush — but Frank seemed blissfully unaware that the rest of the rectangular shop was a sardine can crammed with people as hungry for room to breathe as food. The regulars knew better than to say anything, however, and most of the non-regulars were too busy just trying to get some food and get it down to bother complaining. Complaints, of course, came on occasion, and to take care of that a sign was placed in front of the back booth: this section closed, sorry. This was all part of a routine that dated back to the day the motel and its coffee shop first opened, eleven or so years ago.

The coffee shop was aqua blue: the booths, the counter and stools, the mosaic tile floor, the wallpaper, the waitresses’ uniforms; even the windows that ran along the side wall by the booths were tinted aqua blue. It was like eating in a fish tank. Nobody seemed to mind; nobody seemed to notice. The food was not particularly reasonably priced, but it was good and attracted an almost exclusively white-collar clientele; and then there were the guests at the motel who mistakenly wandered in for a leisurely breakfast and became a part of this morning madhouse instead. It was this latter group who most often expressed displeasure about the man in the big back booth who was sitting all by himself, eating a buttery Danish roll. And Frank ate three or four of the Danish every morning, and he took his time.

It would have been hard to guess, looking at this calm, self-absorbed man, that very recently he had suffered a great personal loss; the death of his brother Joey did not show through the mask that was Frank DiPreta’s face. His eyes were not red. His appetite was certainly unhampered; he was now engaged in the consumption of his second Danish and looking forward to his third. He was not wearing black; in fact, the tie he wore with his tailored powder-blue suit was colorful: red and white speckles on a blue background, like an American flag exploding. There was no apparent tension in him either — no tapping foot, no drumming fingers. No, the only way to know the condition of this man, to understand the extent of grief he felt and his desire for revenge and the depth of that desire, would be to look into his mind; and no one could look into the mind of Frank DiPreta. Frank DiPreta was a private man, with private thoughts, needs. Even his late wife, Rosie, had never been really close to him and had known it. His daughter, Francine, thought she was close to him, but she wasn’t really.

Cummins came in at seven-thirty. Fifteen minutes late. He was a tall man with a skinny man’s frame and a fat man’s belly. He was dark-haired, dark-complexioned, wore a rumpled brown suit and looked like a cop, which is what he was. As he joined Frank in the back booth, a waitress put Cummins’s usual breakfast down in front of him. The Friday morning meeting between Cummins and Frank was a ritual, and the necessity of placing an order had long since passed. Cummins mumbled an apology about his tardiness, then dug into the double order of waffles and ham.

“You’re late,” Frank said. With people in the booth behind him, Frank naturally kept his voice down. But his words were anything but soft-spoken.

“I’m sorry, Frank.”

“You’re sorry.”

“Look, I almost didn’t come.”

“You what?”

“I sort of forgot.”

“You forgot Friday, Cummins? I never knew you to forget Friday before.”

“I just didn’t think you’d be here, because of — I thought you’d be making funeral arrangements and things.”

“I made those last night. Tomorrow is the funeral. Today is business as usual.”

Cummins looked up from his waffles and ham. “Well, that’s fine. I think that’s the way it should be. You got to order your priorities, you know?”

“I know,” Frank said. He handed the envelope under the table to Cummins who took it and stuffed it casually inside his suitcoat.

“You going to want anything special on this thing, Frank?”

“Not really. Keep me informed. You’re on the case?”

“Yeah.”

“So there should be no problem, right?”

“Right.”

“Only thing special I want from you is I want this guy personally.”

“You want him how?”

“I want him. When you find him, I want him.”

“Frank, uh, if you mean what I think you mean...”

The booth was large enough, and the racket in the room loud enough, for Frank to say anything he wanted without fear of being overheard. But just the same he leaned across the table and whispered harshly, “You know what I mean, Cummins. These last few years not much has been asked of you. We’re goddamn businessmen now, thanks to Vince, and maybe he’s got the right idea. But this time we’re doing it the old way. This one time you’re going to earn your goddamn money.”

And Cummins said, in a whisper that was little more than a moving of the lips, “You’re going to kill him.”

“I’m not going to fuck him. Fuck him up, yes. Hell, you may not ever find the son of a bitch’s body. I might lay some goddamn state highway over him and let the trucks and cars make their tire tracks on his goddamn grave.”

“What... what am I supposed to do, Frank?”

“Give him to me. Find him and give him to me. And then cover for me. Shut up for me. That’s what you’re paid for, mostly. Shutting up.” He leaned back.

“Whatever you say, Frank,” Cummins said and returned to his waffles and ham.

“Now,” Frank said. “What do you have to tell me?”

“Just what I said on the phone last night. Empty shell casing in the high weeds, the rough. Four-sixty Mag.”

“That’s old. Nothing new? Anybody see the guy?”

“No. Nobody at the country club saw a thing. ’Course there wasn’t anybody else on the golf course, being so late in the season and all. Back of the rough is a blacktop road with a farmhouse across the way, but the damn farmhouse is set back from the road maybe two hundred yards and nobody there saw a thing, didn’t even notice if a car was parked out front or anything, which it probably wasn’t. He probably parked it up around the turn, where there’s no houses around.”

“How do you read it?”

“Except for the size of the gun, which is weird, I’m telling you, I’d say it was a pro did it. I mean it was very smooth, very professional. No hitches at all. Only I can’t see why some hit man would use a big-game rifle. That’s — I don’t know — silly, or strange, or some damn thing.”

“Somebody’s trying to scare us,” Frank said, meaning the DiPreta family itself. “Somebody’s trying to scare shit out of us.”

“Who’s got a reason?”

“I don’t know. Nobody. Lots of people. Vince has been bitching with Chicago over some things. Talking about cutting some of our ties with ’em, which is part of his wanting to go even more legit than we are already.”

“Would that be smart?”

“Going legit? Well, we could cut some of the dead weight off our payroll, that’s for sure.”

“Frank, that’s not fair.”

“Take it easy, Cummins, I’m just kidding. Me, I don’t mind taking a few chances, if that’s where the money’s at. My brother Vince, he’s older, more conservative, that’s all. But this, this is just a business thing. I can’t see Chicago shooting anybody over it. That’s just not done any more. At least not on our kind of level. The DiPretas are a family, just like Chicago is a family. Nowhere near the same level, sure, I’ll admit we’re not, but we’re a family just the same, which is something that carries respect; that at least is left over from the old days. When that is gone we’ll know the businessmen and politicians have took over. No, not Chicago, not likely. That four-sixty Mag, though, you know what that sounds like to me? That sounds like revenge.”

“I talked to Vince about the playing-card thing.”

“See? That fits in. Revenge. Some personal thing, somebody trying to scare us sort of thing.”

“Yeah, well, I was talking to Brown, you know, my partner?”

“The nigger?”

“Look, Frank, I happen to like Brown, I don’t see any reason calling him a nigger.”

“He’s a nigger, isn’t he?”

“Yeah, he is, but you don’t have to call him that. Anyway, he was in Vietnam.”

“Who was in Vietnam?”

“You know, Brown, the nig, he was in Vietnam and he was telling me about the playing card deal. I mean, I told him about Vince getting that card in the mail, just like his brother Joey did, and Brown said in Vietnam they used to distribute whole damn packs of the ace of spades. Whole fuckin’ damn decks of nothing but aces of spades, and the Americans, after they wasted a bunch of slants, they’d spread ’em around like confetti on the slant corpses, ’cause these slants, they’re superstitious bastards, and the ace of spades, it stands for death, you know, so the Americans would leave ace of spades all over the ground, on and around the dead bodies, to spook the V.C.”

“So what?”

“So maybe somebody’s doing the same thing to you. Trying to spook you with the ace of spades. Like I said, it stands for death.”

“Yeah, I know it stands for death, you dumb-ass, I know that’s what somebody’s trying to do is spook us with the goddamn ace of spades. I mean, it wouldn’t make much sense sending the deuce of hearts, would it, dumb-ass?”

“No, Frank, you don’t follow me. I mean maybe the guy who shot Joey is out of Vietnam. Maybe that’s where he picked up on shooting, too. Sniping. If he was a soldier, I mean. In Vietnam.”

“Wait a minute,” Frank said. Something was starting to click in the back of his head somewhere. Something was starting to click together. “Wait a minute.”

“What, Frank?”

“Nothing yet. Let me think a second.”

Cummins shrugged and returned to his waffles and ham, which were cold now, though that didn’t seem to cool his enthusiasm any.

A few minutes passed, and suddenly somebody rapped on the window right by their booth. Both Frank and Cummins looked up and saw, through the aqua-blue-tinted glass, a figure in jeans and khaki jacket. The most striking thing about the figure was that he was wearing a woolen ski mask. The ski mask was dark blue with red and white trim around the eye holes and was out of place. The morning was a little bit chilly, yes, but a ski mask certainly wasn’t called for.

Then the man in the ski mask held up his right hand to show Frank and Cummins why he’d rapped on the window for their attention.

In the man’s hand was a grenade.

The pin had been pulled, and only the pressure the man was applying to the lever was delaying the triggering of the hand grenade.

Both Frank and Cummins froze for a moment, not yet fully comprehending what was going on. During that moment they watched as the man in the ski mask jogged backward a couple of steps and brought his arm back and then forward, like a major-league pitcher, and the grenade was hurtling toward the window before either man had realized what was happening.

The aqua-blue window shattered, letting in the white light of the sun and the grenade, which bounced once on the booth’s table top and landed on the floor, where Frank and Cummins already had gone to escape the oncoming missile. The two men were on their knees and the grenade was on the floor between them. They looked at each other like two of the Three Stooges doing a take and then scrambled off in opposite directions.

“Jesus Christ, a grenade!” somebody hollered (not Frank, or Cummins, either, both men having their priorities in order, as usual, namely saving their own asses).

People got up from booths, stools, bumped into each other, doing the panic dance. Some of them, the ones close to the door, even managed to get out of the building.

Frank was praying when the grenade exploded; Cummins was crying. The explosion was loud enough to be terrifying, but only momentarily.

There was smoke, but not much, and when it cleared, the grenade was revealed as a lump of metal sitting on the floor of the coffee shop, looking like an oversize walnut with a cracked shell and just about as dangerous.

“A dud,” Cummins said, getting out a handkerchief and hastily drying his eyes. It wouldn’t do, after all, for the detective on the scene to be in tears.

“Not a dud,” Frank said. “Whoever packed it with powder packed it with just enough to make a big bang and scare shit out of everybody.”

The grenade’s shell casing was cracked, but the explosion hadn’t been enough to break it into the destructive splinters that do the damage.

“Like I said before,” Frank said, “somebody’s trying to scare us. Somebody’s playing goddamn games with us.”

“In Vietnam,” Cummins said, “they called it psychological warfare.”

Frank nodded.

Cummins turned to the confused, relieved, but badly shaken group of people, who were standing around the rectangular coffee shop like passengers in a surrealistic subway car, and began to speak in loud, reassuring, authoritarian tones. Pretty good for a guy who a few seconds ago was bawling, Frank thought.

Frank walked back over to the booth, where the broken window gaped; shards of glass filled the seats and littered the table. He went on to the adjacent booth — whoever’d been sitting there before was making no move to reclaim it — and sat down.

On the table was a playing card.

10

Francine DiPreta was sitting on her bed, which was shaped like a valentine and soft as custard. The spread was fluffy, ruffly pink. The room around the bed was pink, also: pink wallpaper, pink colonial-style dresser with mirror; even a pink stuffed animal — a poodle — peeked out behind pink pillows resting against the bed’s pink headboard. When Frank, Rosie, and little Francine had moved into the house some ten years before, the little girl had loved the pink room. But Francine was a big girl now and kept in check her intense dislike for the room in all its nauseating pinkness only because it held for her father too many memories of Francine’s childhood and those happy years when Mother was alive. Besides, next year, the year after maybe, she’d be moving out. She was, after all, nineteen years old and a college freshman. Living in this child’s room was a beautiful young woman, with platinum blonde hair and China blue eyes and a trim, shapely figure. As she looked around, she shook her head and thought of the line from that Carly Simon song — “Daddy, I’m no virgin” — but knew that particular sentiment was one she’d never find nerve to express to her own Daddy.

This morning, she sat on the pink elephant of a bed, wearing a pastel-blue cashmere sweater dress, and no panty hose (her summer tan was holding up nicely, her legs looked nice and dark) and thought about the death of her Uncle Joe and wondered what it meant. She’d heard the whisperings, of course, from grade school on up, of how the DiPreta family was supposed to be part of the Mafia, which seemed so silly to her she’d never really got upset about it. Once, though, when she’d asked her father about it, he’d laughed and said, “Everybody who’s got an Italian name, somebody’s gonna think they’re the Mafia... too much stupid TV, honey.”

But every now and then there were indications that maybe her father was into something — well — shady, or something. He did, after all, carry a gun at times, but he had his reasons (“I carry a lot of cash, ’cause of the business, honey. There’s lots of crooked people who would take a man’s money if he let them”) and she’d long ago dismissed that. And then there were the occasional men who would come around, the sort of men her father would stand outside on the porch and talk to, or hustle into the study and shut the door. Big men, with odd faces — faces that seemed somehow different from a normal person’s face, colder or harder or something; she didn’t know what. And when she would confront her father with these men, accidentally bump into him while he was talking with one of them, or burst into his study while he was conferring with one or more of them, he would never introduce her. Oh, sometimes he would say to the men in an explaining way, “This is my daughter.” But never would he say, “Mr. So-and-so, this is my daughter, Francine. Francine, this is Mr. So-and-so.”

And now Uncle Joe getting shot. Why would anybody want to shoot Uncle Joe? Everybody in the family regarded Joe as the baby. Even Francine, his niece, less than half Joe’s age, thought of him as the spoiled kid of the clan, the genial loafer, the golf bum, a practical joker, a kidder — but somebody who somebody else would want to shoot? That was crazy.

But then so were the rumors about DiPreta Mafia connections. So crazy Francine didn’t take them seriously, even found them laughable. Look at Uncle Vince, for example. Chairman of half the charities in town, one of the all-time biggest contributors to the Church, besides. Uncle Vince was one of the most socially concerned citizens in all Des Moines. And her father, Frank, who like all the DiPretas belonged to the swankiest country club in town, counted among his close friends men in city, state, and national government, senators, judges, the highest men in the highest and most respected places. Were these the friends of a “gangster”?

Her father was a gentle man, a kind man, although he did keep his emotions in and might seem cold to, say, some of the people he did business with. Even Francine had considered her father somewhat remote, aloof, until she finally got a glimpse of the sensitive inner man when her mother died six years ago. Her mother had been killed by a drunken driver one rainy, slippery night, just two miles from home. (The road in front of their house in the country was then narrow and treacherous, and only recently — partly through her father’s pulling of political strings — had that road been widened and improved and watched over diligently by highway patrol officers.) Francine, crushed, stunned and (perhaps most important) confused over her mother’s death, had wondered why her father didn’t show his grief more openly, why he seemed almost callous about the loss of his wife; and, as a child will do — and she’d been a child then, just having entered junior high and loving that pink room of hers — she had asked him straight out, “Why, Daddy? Why don’t you cry for Mommy?” And the tears had flowed. The dam had burst, and for several minutes Frank DiPreta had sobbed into his daughter’s arms. She had cried, too, and had felt very close to her father then for perhaps the first time. There had been no words spoken, just an almost momentary show of mutual grief; but it was the beginning of her father’s transference of worship for his wife to his daughter, and thereafter anything she’d asked of him, he’d given. She had tried not to take advantage, but it hadn’t been easy.

He was a remarkable man, though. What with all the silly Mafia rumors and all, you might think of him as the kind of man who would harbor thoughts of violence and revenge where his wife’s killer was concerned. But Francine had never heard her father say even one word about that man who’d run his car over the center line, in a drunken stupor, forcing Rose DiPreta off the road and killing her. Francine remembered saying, “I could kill that man, Daddy. I could just take him and kill him.” And her father had said, “You mustn’t say that, honey. It won’t bring Mommy back.” He had seemed content to let the courts handle the man, who’d been arrested at the scene of the accident. Of course poetic justice or fate or whoever had taken care of things, ultimately. Before the man could be brought to trial, he himself was, ironically enough, run down and killed by a hit-and-run driver.

And now, with Uncle Joe’s death, her father was again reacting in a subdued manner, though she could tell — or at least guess — that he was very much moved by the loss of his brother. The DiPreta men were a dying breed anyway, this branch of the family at any rate. Joe had been a bachelor; Frank had only one child, Francine herself; and Vince’s only son had died of leukemia a few years back. Uncle Vince seemed more visibly shaken by his brother’s death than her father, but then ever since Vince’s son had died he’d been walking around under a cloud. That was the bad thing about Uncle Vince, sweet as he was: You could get depressed just thinking about him.

She didn’t like being depressed. When her father had asked her to go down to the funeral home where Aunt Anna and the other relatives were greeting friends and such, she told him she wasn’t up to it; she just couldn’t take all the mourning and tears. And, of course, her father hadn’t insisted she go; he never insisted she do anything, really.

She got up from the bed and grabbed her schoolbooks and sketch pad from off the dresser, having made the decision to get out of the house, to drive into Des Moines to the Drake campus and attend the rest of the day’s classes, death in the family or not. She’d go downstairs and tell Daddy and that would be that. Life goes on; that’s the best way to handle tragedy, right?

Francine found her father with her uncle in the study. They were talking to a tall, gaunt man with shaggy dark hair and a droopy mustache and a sort of Indian look to him around the cheekbones and eyes. Though the man was nicely dressed, in an obviously expensive tailor-made suit, he had that vaguely sinister aura of so many of the men Francine had seen in this house over the years.

“My daughter,” her father explained to his guest and took her by the arm and stepped outside the study with her. “What is it, honey?”

“I’m going on ahead to school, Daddy. I don’t see any reason missing any more classes. Unless you want me to stay and fix you lunch or something.”

“Baby, I don’t care about lunch, but don’t you think you ought to be helping your aunt at the funeral home? People are coming from out of town, friends of the family. Lot of important people will be expecting to see you there.”

“Come on, Daddy. It’s a funeral home, not my coming-out party. I won’t be missed. Besides, it’s just too much of a downer, Daddy, please.”

“Downer? What land of word is that?”

“Please, Daddy.”

“You should help out.”

“Maybe tonight.”

“For sure tonight?”

“Maybe for sure.”

She kissed him on the cheek and he pushed her away gently, with a teasing get-outta-here-you look on his face.

The white Mustang she’d gotten for high-school graduation was parked in the graveled area next to the house. The house was a red brick two-story with a large red tile sloping roof, brick chimney, and cute little windows whose woodwork was painted white, as was an awning arched over the front door. The house sat on a huge lawn, a lake of grass turning brown now, though the shrubs hugging the house, and the occasional trees all around the big yard, were evergreen. It was the dream cottage every couple would like to while the years away in, right down to the picket fence, but on a larger scale than most would dare dream. Immediately after Mother’s death, her father had put the house up for sale; soon after, though, he’d relented, and had since treated the house like a museum, keeping everything just the same as when Mother was alive — Daddy’s-little-girl pink bedroom included.

At first she didn’t notice the other car parked on the gravel on the other side of her Mustang. But it was hard to miss for long, a bright gold Cadillac that was finding light to reflect even on an overcast day like this one. A young guy was standing beside the car, leaning against it. He was cute. Curly hair, pug nose, nice eyes and altogether pleasant, boyish face. He was probably around twenty or twenty-one, kind of small, not a whole lot taller than she, and looking very uncomfortable in light blue shirt and dark blue pullover sweater and denim slacks. Looking as though he wasn’t used to wearing anything but T-shirts and worn out jeans and no shoes.

“Hi,” she said, when she was within a foot or so of him.

“Hi yourself.”

“Are you a relative?”

He grinned. “I’m somebody’s relative, I guess.”

“But not mine?”

“I hope not.”

“You hope not?”

“If I was too close a relative of yours, it would spoil the plans I’ve been making, ever since I saw you come out that door over there.”

This time she grinned. “You’re a shy little thing, aren’t you?”

“Normally. It’s just that sometimes I come right out and introduce myself to pretty girls. It’s a sickness. I’ll just all of a sudden blurt out my name. Which is Jon, by the way.”

“Hi, Jon. I’m Francine.”

“Hi, Francine. We said hi before, seems like.”

“But we didn’t know each other then.”

“Now that we do, can I ask you something personal? What the hell made you think I was your relative? Because we both got blue eyes?”

“My uncle died yesterday. People are coming in for the funeral by the busload.”

“Oh... hey, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean any offense, I mean I guess I picked a poor time to make with the snappy patter.”

“Don’t worry about it. My uncle was a nice man, but he’s dead, and I can’t see crying’ll do any good. So, listen, if you aren’t here for my uncle’s funeral, I mean if you aren’t my cousin or something, what are you doing leaning against a Cadillac in my driveway?”

“I’m here with the guy who’s inside talking to some people who probably are relatives of yours.”

“You mean the guy with the mustache? Sour looking guy?”

Jon grinned again. “That’s him. Brought me along for company and then didn’t say word one the whole way.”

“How far did you come?”

“Iowa City. Left this morning. What time is it now?”

“Getting close to noon, I suppose. Maybe noon already. When did you leave Iowa City?”

“Around seven. We had some business in Des Moines first, then we drove out here. My friend didn’t say why, though. Didn’t know he was paying last respects, though I should’ve figured it.”

“Why? Should you have figured it, I mean.”

“Well, this friend of mine usually dresses pretty casual for a guy his age... sport shirt, slacks. Today, we’re setting out on a fairly long drive, and he shows up in a gray suit and tie and shined shoes, the works. And tells me to lose my T-shirt and get into something respectable, which is something he’s hardly ever done before.”

She smirked.

“And just what are you smirking about?”

“Just that I guessed right, that’s all. The way you’re squirming in those clothes you’d think you were wearing a tux.”

“Is it that obvious? Hey, is that a sketch pad?”

“Yeah. I’m taking an art course at Drake. I was on my way to class, before you sidetracked me.”

“Let me see.”

She shrugged, said okay, and handed him the pad.

“Pretty good,” he said, thumbing through. “That’s a nice horse, right there.”

“We own a farm with some horses down the road. I do some riding sometimes.”

“Why is it girls always draw horses?”

“I don’t know. Never thought about it.”

“Must be something sexual.”

“Probably,” she said, laughing.

“Shit,” Jon said.

“Why shit?”

“Shit because you are one terrific girl and I’m meeting you in the worst possible situation. Why didn’t I meet you in goddamn high school? Why didn’t I meet you in a bar in Iowa City? Why do I meet you during the warm-up for your uncle’s funeral, while my friend’s in the house talking to somebody for a minute?”

“I think they call it fate. How long you going to be in Des Moines?”

“Don’t know. Today and tonight, reading between the lines.”

“Your friend doesn’t tell you much.”

“What I don’t know can’t hurt me.”

“That’s your friend’s philosophy, huh?”

“Christ, I don’t know. He’s never even told me that much.”

“Jon?”

“Yeah?”

“I like you.”

“You like me. Okay. Sounds good. I like you, too, then. The back of the Caddy’s nice and roomy. Wanna wrestle or something?”

“Tell you the truth, I wouldn’t mind it. My father, however, just might. Could you leave for a while? How long’s your friend going to be inside?”

“I don’t know. He never—”

“—tells you anything.”

“Right.”

“Right. So leave a note. Here, tear a corner off one of the sketch pad pages. I’ll get a pen out of my purse.”

They did all that, and Jon said, “Swell. Now. What do I write?”

“Did you see a sleazy little joint called Chuck’s on the way here? Just outside of town?”

“Weird Mexican or Spanish-type architecture? Yeah. I mentioned it to my friend as we passed by.”

“And what did your friend say?”

“He grunted.”

“Does that mean he did or didn’t notice the place?”

“Where my friend’s concerned, one grunt’s worth a thousand words. He noticed it.” Jon scribbled a note and left it on the dash of the Cadillac.

Chuck’s was a white brick and cement block building with a yellow wooden porchlike affair overhanging from the upper of the two stories. There was black trim on the yellow porch-thing and around windows and doors, and it looked vaguely Spanish as Jon had said. On the door to Chuck’s was the following greeting:

No Shoes No Shirt No Service

“No shit,” Jon said.

Francine laughed, and they went in. The place, which was appropriately dark and clean, provided lots of privacy for Francine and Jon, as they were the only customers in the place right now. They chose a booth.

“I’m glad I didn’t meet you in high school,” Jon said. “I take back what I said before.”

The barman came over and said, “What’ll you have?” and they ordered draw beers. The barman went away, and she said, “Why do you take back what you said?”

“Why do I take back what I said about what?”

“About wishing you’d met me in high school.”

“Oh! Well. If I’d met you in high school, I couldn’t have got near you.”

“Don’t be silly.”

“Silly, huh? Let me remind you about high school. You are president of the student council. I am hall monitor. You are Representative Senior Girl. I am left out of the class will. You are cutest and most popular of all the cheerleaders. I am assistant statistician for the basketball team. You go steady with the captain of the basketball team. I play with myself in the corner and get pimples. You are a vision of loveliness. I am a lowly wretch who... What you laughing at? This is serious stuff I’m layin’ on you. This is the story of our lives. Am I right?”

“I plead guilty to a couple of those charges. But I’m not a high-school kid anymore, Jon. I hope I’m not that shallow anymore.”

“There’s nothing wrong with being shallow. I’m not saying you are, but keep in mind how boring most deep people usually are. Let’s be shallow together, you and me. We can go wading together or something. Wonder where those beers are? Say, uh, I hate to ask this, but are you going with anybody or anything?”

“Broke up. You?”

“Breaking up, I think.”

“Let’s not bore each other with any of the details, Jon, what d’you say?”

“Fine with me.”

The beers came.

“Hey,” she said, sipping. “Why were you so interested in my sketch pad back at the house?”

“I’m an art major myself. Or was ’til I dropped out.”

“Dropped out, or...?”

“No, I didn’t flunk out. One thing I left out of my soliloquy before was ‘You’re rich, I’m poor.’ No money.”

“What about a scholarship?”

“Well, I did have good grades, yes, I did, but I didn’t see eye to eye with the art professors, so recommendations for scholarships were kind of scarce where I was concerned.”

“Why didn’t you and the profs see eye to eye?”

“Because I want to draw comic books when I grow up.”

“You what?”

And he repeated what he’d said and told her in fascinating detail of his aspirations to be a cartoonist, of his massive collection of comic art, of the projects he was currently working on in that field, in trying desperately to break in. Despite what he’d said about the merits of being shallow, he was a very intense and sincere young man, so enthusiastic about his chosen profession that she had no doubt he would eventually make it. To find out she handed him her sketch pad and pencil and told him to draw, and while he continued to talk, and while they put away three beers each (or was it four?) he drew her picture, at her request.

“Make it cartoon style,” she told him, and he nodded and went on talking.

He didn’t let her see the page as he sketched, and he hardly seemed to be looking at her; he seemed to be concentrating on talking to her, telling her of his hopes and dreams and such until she finally began to doubt he was drawing her at all. It certainly had to be a big sketch because he was all over the damn page, and it was a big page at that.

“Here,” he said at last and handed the sketch pad to her.

There was not a single sketch on the page.

There were five.

In one Francine looked remarkably like Daisy Mae of Li’l Abner, though still recognizably Francine. In another she looked like one of those exotic girls Steve Canyon used to run around with before he got married: it was a full-figure pose of Francine in a slinky, low-cut gown, with a flower behind one ear. And in another she had Little Orphan Annie’s big vacant eyes and, as it was another full-figure pose, a couple of things Annie doesn’t have at all. In the fourth sketch Jon had drawn her as underground artist R. Crumb might have, with undersize breasts and exaggerated thighs, truckin’ on down the street. The final sketch was fine-line style, a realistic drawing that showed her how very beautiful the artist must consider her to be.

“Is this your own style, this one here, Jon?”

“I wish it was. That’s in the style of Everett Raymond Kinstler, a portrait painter who worked in the comics in the fifties. He did Zorro. One of the greats, but not as well known as he should be.”

She was sitting, staring at the page. “Jon.”

“Yeah?”

“This is beautiful. It’s wonderful. I mean it. I’m going to frame this, so help me. You’re good, Jon. Terrific.”

“Yeah, well, my problem is all I can do is imitate. I can do everybody’s style, but I don’t have one of my own.”

She leaned across the table and kissed him. On the mouth. It started quick and casual but developed into something slower, longer.

The barman cleared his throat. He was standing by the booth. “Excuse me. I hate to bust up a beautiful romance.”

Jon got a little flushed. “Then don’t.”

“Cool off, kid. Your name Jon?”

“Yes, my name’s Jon. What of it?”

“Jesus, I said cool off. I don’t care if you kiss her, hump her under the table if you want to. Jesus. There’s a phone call for you.”

“Nolan,” Jon said.

“Who?” Francine said.

The barman was gone already.

“My friend,” Jon said.

He got up and came back a minute later.

“He’s got some things to do,” Jon said, “and said if I can hook a ride back to the motel with you, he can go it alone for the time being. What say?”

“Sure.”

“Okay. I’ll go back and tell him.”

Jon did, came back, sat down again.

“Jon?”

“Yeah?”

“Would you like me to take you back to the motel?”

“Yeah. I thought we already agreed to that.”

“I know. But I wonder if you’d think I was out of line if I asked to go back to the motel with you.”

“With me?”

“That’s right. I mean, I looked under the table, and it’s land of dirty under there.”

“Kind of dirty under there.”

“I prefer sheets.”

“You prefer sheets.”

“Yes.”

“You prefer sheets. Let me see if I got this straight. You’re beautiful, you met me forty-five minutes ago, and you want to go to the motel with me?”

Later, in the motel room, in his arms, she would offer a possible explanation for her impulsive outburst of promiscuity: “Maybe my uncle’s death is getting to me more than I thought. I was trying not to think about him dying, and I was trying so hard I wanted to get my mind completely off it and just have some fun. And you came along and that was that. You know, there’s something about making love that makes you feel protected from death and closer to it at the same time.”

And Jon would tell her his uncle, too, had died recently, a couple of months ago, and she would say she was sorry, and he would go on to say he had loved the guy, that his uncle had been the closest relative he’d ever had, closer, even, “than my goddamn mother.” And she would comment that life was sad sometimes, and he would agree, but go on to say that sometimes it isn’t, and they would make love again.

But that was later, in the motel room.

For right now, Francine just said, “Yes,” and let it go at that.