Little Easter

Skull and Bones

The city drive was a lonely drive in winter. Farm stands, so alive in summer with berries and corn and gingham girls, were just hollow shacks now; flimsy and bent under the snow. The LIE was strangely hushed. Taillights and fenders of storm-abandoned cars peeked out at me from plowed drifts and icy shoulders. Greedy tow trucks, fat with the bad-weather bounty, flashed yellow lights my way as if saying: “You’re next. You’re next.” Maybe they were right. Maybe I would be next. I don’t know. In any case, that decision would not be mine.

When I walked into Larry’s suite, ten minutes early, nearly drained of resolve and severely in need of a piss, he practically tackled me. Over his shoulder, I could see Feld’s usually sour secretary smiling broadly. Larry busily babbled something to me in a panicky whisper, but I did not hear. I was too transfixed by the woman’s smile. It said more things to me than Larry’s words. It said she was pleased to see her boss so unnerved. That figured. Her smile also seemed to say: “You’re next.”

“I hope you know what the fuck you’re doing,” he cupped my face in his palm and aimed my eyes at his.

“I’ve gotta piss, Larry.”

“Over there,” the lawyer pointed absentmindedly to his right and repeated, “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“So do I,” I whispered.

“What?”

“Nothing, Larry. Nothing.”

Larry retreated to his office, walking like a rattling bag of bones in a fancy suit.

I looked at sardonic Mary, the suddenly smiling secretary. She’d heard my whisper well enough.

“Do please hurry, Mr. Klein. We don’t want to keep the gentleman waiting.”

I ignored her and escaped into a world of azure tiles, porcelain fixtures sleeker than sports cars and framed prints of petunias in purple and black. I stood over the toilet, bladder exploding, unable to urinate. What was there to be nervous about? I’d done tougher things than confronting New York’s most powerful crime boss. Sure, I’d done tougher things. But oddly enough, I couldn’t recall any. Now I was sick to my stomach and unable to piss. Nice combination, huh?

Stepping out of the men’s room, I noticed Mary had gone from her desk. Too bad, for I’d decided to puke on her lap if she were still smiling when I came out. So much for my plans.

I pushed Feld’s door open without knocking. No one ran or jumped me or went for a gun. There were three of them, counting Larry. One, a man I took to be Gandolfo’s bodyguard, stood between me and the other two men. He bettered me by half a foot and his shoulders weren’t quite broad enough to land an F-14 on. He had a waist like Holly Golightly, legs like bridge supports and a neck with the diameter of a frisbee. He had a machine-made tan, jet black hair tied in a pony tail and wore an expensive suit purposefully loose. He was too pretty to be any good at bodyguarding. His type worries too much about his own goods getting damaged. Gandolfo probably kept him around for show or company or to drive his flashy cars.

Dante Gandolfo sat in Larry’s chair, black leather boots on Larry’s desk. Those boots cost more than what I was wearing from head to toe. Those boots cost more than my entire wardrobe. I wondered if he’d trade them for my football coat. I didn’t put my wonder into words. The “Don” was even more handsome in three dimensions than in his pictures or on TV. But his black eyes, drained of fire and youth, detracted from his full lips, rugged lines and considerable dimple. His suit was a shiny gray, double-breasted Italian affair with a baby red rose pinned to properly wide lapels. His tieless shirt was black silk and he believed in using all of its buttons. In other words, he looked every inch the part.

Larry stood erect against a bookcase, practicing invisibility.

I opened my mouth to speak, but Gandolfo waved me off, closed his eyes in disapproval and shook his head no. I followed his advice.

“Vinny,” he spoke at the pony-tailed muscle head, “why don’t you wait outside for a few minutes?” It wasn’t a question.

“But bosth,” Vinny spoke with a nasal lisp, never taking his eyes off me, “I don’t know about thith guy.”

I raised my arms, opening wide my unbuttoned coat. It was a sign of submission, a sign that indicated I was willing to be frisked.

“That won’t be necessary, Mr. Klein,” Gandolfo graced me with speech. “Larry vouched for you. Put your arms down.”

I put them down.

“Vinny,” Don Juan returned to his original target, “go outside and keep Mary occupied for awhile. Take her to lunch. Better yet, take her to a motel. Must be ten years since she’s had any.”

“That old bitch!” Frisbee neck turned to his master for the first time since I’d walked in the room. “Sorry bosth, I’m picky about my fish.”

“Then here!” Gandolfo exploded up from his seat and threw a fistful of pocket change at his boy. “Go to a fuckin’ payphone and dial 1-900-Suck My Dick. Just get the fuck outta here!”

Vinny left without the scattered change or a word of protest.

“You,” Dante Gandolfo, still risen and with a raised voice, turned to the invisible man, “wait for me outside.”

“As your lawyer,” Larry started to object, “I must respectfully advise that I remain-”

“You can respectfully kiss my ass. Now get the fuck outta here.”

Larry departed, but I could see revenge in his eyes as he brushed past me. I remembered that look from childhood. It was a dangerous look. People always paid dearly for that look. The trouble was in deciphering for whom that revenge was intended: Gandolfo, for treating Larry like slave meat in his own office in front of me or for me, because I was the catalyst for the meeting? Worrying about Larry’s vengeance was second on my list at the moment.

“Sit down, Mr. Klein,” Gandolfo ordered me, sans histrionics, into a huge, bright red leather chair across from Larry’s desk. “What do you know about me?” he questioned once I’d settled into the red beast.

“I read the papers. I watch TV. I hear things. So I guess I know as much or as little as any schmuck out on the street.”

“Not just any schmuck, Mr. Klein,” Don Juan bowed his head. “Not just any schmuck would know about Azrael or be ballsy enough to drag me down here like this.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” I smiled, but nerves made it crumble.

“You take it however you take it,” Gandolfo wasn’t going to make this easy. “You want some coffee? I want some.” He picked up the phone and pushed two numbers: “Hey Vinny, bring us some coffees.” He covered the mouthpiece with his palm. “How you like yours?”

“Milk, no sugar.”

Gandolfo frowned. “God, how do you drink it like that? But I suppose you take it however you take it,” his full lips broke into a broad smile over his repetition of those words. He removed his hand from the phone: “Listen Einstein, one coffee, milk, no sugar and one triple espresso, four sugars,” he paused. “That’s right, genius, the usual.”

“Thanks.”

“Did you know I was a Yale man?” He showed me his perfect teeth.

“No.” I figured one-word-one syllable, if possible-answers were best until I found out how he was playing this.

“Yeah, really. But Skull and Bones wouldn’t have me. I suppose they thought I was already a member of a more powerful club. You see a man in my position has it tough. People fear me, but I get no respect. People are always confusing those two things; fear and respect. It’s a chronic problem, but c’est la guerre!”

“That’s war!” I translated.

“Good, Mr. Klein. That’s very good,” the Don applauded. “I’m telling you these things to help you understand.”

“Understand?”

“Yes, to help you understand that I expect you to honor and respect what I’m about to say. I don’t need you to fear me. You already fear me, but fear has its limitations. Fear didn’t stop you from pulling this stunt. So I want you to pay close attention.”

“Say your piece.”

“I don’t give a rat’s ass about that Judas cunt, Azrael. Are you listening?”

“Very carefully.”

“I don’t care whether she’s dead or alive and living in your back pocket or in Paris with Jacques Brel,” he was shouting now, wiping sweat from his forehead with the sleeve of his suit.

The Mafioso doth protest too much. I thought it. I didn’t say it.

“But this can’t always have been your attitude about her,” I tried playing shrink for a bit. “I heard you two were in love once.”

“Sure, at first my father was out for blood,” he confessed in an almost placid voice. “She tried to hurt me and my family. But that was a lifetime ago. I can’t even remember what she looked like.”

“Here,” I produced the white-bordered Polaroid of Gandolfo and Azrael taken two decades ago, “maybe this’ll help job your memory.”

“Where’d you get this?” His tone was cool, detached, but his face had gone white.

“Let’s just say I inherited it. Keep it.”

“I told you to listen carefully,” he was up, around the desk, standing over me. “Apparently, you didn’t hear me,” Gandolfo crumpled the photo like last week’s grocery list and threw it in my lap. “I don’t care if you know where she is. If you thought you were gonna get any money outta me or my people, you were wrong. Grandstand plays like yours only work in the movies. Didn’t your mother ever tell you that believing in the movies can be detrimental to your health?”

“No and we never discussed cooking soup either.”

“Huh?”

“Forget it.” I waved carelessly at nothing in particular.

“I suggest you do the same. Forget why you dragged me down here and forget that we ever met. Forget-”

“Coffees, bosth,” the lisping Adonis barged in.

“Mr. Klein won’t be staying for his, Vinny.”

I stood to go. I was being dismissed. Vinny remained frozen, coffee in hand, just inside the door. He gave new meaning to the term “dumb waiter.”

As I got just past Vinny, Gandolfo called for me. I turned around.

“I know who you are, Mr. Klein. I know about you and that cop, that no good donkey prick, MacClough. I hope you’re not here doing his bidding.”

“Johnny doesn’t know I’m here,” I couldn’t hold down my contempt. “He’d probably kick my ass if he did.”

“That’s good. I’d hate to think that potato-eating motherfucker sent you here to stir things up, to cause a little anarchy,” Gandolfo rubbed his hair with his palms. “I had a professor that used to say it was easier to shout anarchy than to create it. Do we understand one another, Mr. Klein?”

“We do.” I closed the door behind me.

Outside the door I smoothed the crumpled snapshot and put it back in my pocket. Mary was back at her desk typing; her face had resumed its normal gargoyle pose. Larry stepped toward me but I shooed him away and headed for the bathroom. Pissing, like love, is better the second time around. Before I could get most of me out of the bathroom, Larry descended. He locked my left arm in his bony right and guided me into an adjoining office.

I took it to be a conference room. There were twelve mahogany and camel leather chairs with a matching table slightly shorter than most par fives, more audio and video equipment than at a third world television station, a small bar, a refrigerator and a cappuccino machine. It was sort of a yuppie version of heaven. Larry key-locked the door and slunk to the far end of the room like a cat prancing on bayonets. I just sat down. My bullshit threshold had long since been passed.

Larry produced a fairly stuffed envelope from the inside pocket of his suit jacket, sneered at it, squeezed it like a cantalope and slid it down the table at me.

“You’ll make a hell of a shuffleboard player,” I picked up the package. “What is it?”

“An en-”

“This isn’t a sitcom, Larry, so spare me the straight lines. What’s in the envelope?”

“Gelt, cash money,” he yawned as he was wont to do.

“I’m a writer not a dentist. Don’t make me pull teeth. Who from and who for?”

“He says you’ll understand. You’ll know who it’s for.”

“Gandolfo says?” I twisted my eyebrows into a question mark.

“Gandolfo says,” lean Larry confirmed. “Open it up.”

I did. The thousand dollar bills were so crisp and fresh that it was nearly impossible to separate them.

“There’s one hundred of ’em,” the lawyer offered matter-of-factly. “I’ve been instructed to inform you that five of those bills are yours as a tip for delivering the remainder to the proper party and that any debts owed by you to me have been taken care of, wiped clean.”

“Nice tip,” I palmed five bills off the top and put the rest back in the envelope. “Problem is, I’m still a little unclear who the cash is for.”

“I’ve not been given any details on that matter,” Feld spoke to me in his courtroom voice.

“But if you had to make a guess. .” I trailed off.

“I’m not a guessing man, Dylan.”

“But if you were?”

“I’d say there are some women some men never get over no matter how much hurt passes between them.”

“Gandolfo just got done calling her a cunt and now you’re telling me he wants me to fork over ninety-five G’s to her.”

“Mr. Gandolfo is a very complex man, Dylan,” Larry’s courtroom manner returned. “Sometimes it is in his best interests to say certain things and have me say others. I’m certain you understand.” Feld looked at his Piaget like a buffoonish actor.

“I get the feeling class is out,” I caught his drift.

“Yes, well. . I do have other appointments. Oh, I almost forgot,” the lawyer snapped his fingers, “Mary has a file for you. It contains that information on the Barnum woman. Interesting stuff. She was pretty close to needing my services. You’ll see. And please be careful with it. The file contains, shall we say, certain documents that should have been impossible to obtain.”

“I understand,” I put my right hand out for Larry to shake. “I owe you one.”

“No, Dylan. You don’t owe me a thing,” he shook my hand more firmly than I can ever remember his doing previously.

“One more thing, Larry. What if the envelope turns out to be undeliverable?”

“Apparently, you don’t understand,” Cassius screwed his face up. “There’s no options here. You deliver that envelope one way or another. Good-bye, Dylan.”

The typing gargoyle barely noted my presence when handing me the Barnum file. I didn’t inspect the package but rather just stood there a moment observing the sour woman at work.

“Will there be anything else, Mr. Klein?” she asked, still refusing to look up. Actually it was more a dismissal than a question.

“Yes, Mary, there is. Why do you hate me?” A hundred thou in cash in your pocket makes such queries seem perfectly natural.

She ceased typing and looked directly in my eyes. “Hate is such an ugly word. I prefer contempt. That’s better. Yes, much better. It’s appropriately legalistic.” She was almost gleeful.

“Contempt, then.”

“Because you’ve known him your whole life,” she pointed at an enlargement of the cover of the Post showing Larry triumphantly holding forth on some courtroom steps. Above his picture the headline read: ‘Babysitter Strangler Slapped On Wrist.’ “You know what he is.”

“Better than most,” I confessed to the truth.

“Then you have your answer,” she stated as if she were Moses delivering the commandments.

“What about you, Mary?”

“Even whores judge people, Mr. Klein,” she winked. “But don’t fret, I have enough contempt for the two of us.”

“He pays you well. I imagine you need the money. I need the kind of information he’s good at getting. What’s wrong with needing?” I wondered weakly.

“Sometimes, need’s not a good enough excuse,” the secretary shook her head sadly. “Besides, we don’t really need him. His clients, they need him. We choose him, Mr. Klein.”

I walked to the elevator, envelope in pocket, file in hand. I didn’t argue with Mary. What good is it to argue with the truth?