Marked Man

63

It was a strange reunion, two old friends with a long-buried secret who hadn’t seen each other in decades. Joey Pride and Charlie Kalakos.

The cab was parked on a side street just off the boardwalk, and when we reached it, Joey was outside, leaning on the fender, giving Charlie a hard look. There was a shake and then an awkward reticence, with shoes kicking at the asphalt. I introduced Charlie to Monica. Charlie’s head cocked when he heard her last name.

“That’s the same as the girl,” he said.

“Yes it is.”

“You related?”

“I’m her sister,” said Monica.

The two looked at each other and kept their distance. And then, cutting through the tension, Joey loosed a shot of anger.

“You were trying to dick us out of our share, you little Greek snake,” said Joey. “You were leaving your oldest friends out on the side of your highway to happiness.”

“I wouldn’t have done that, Joey. I wouldn’t have done that.”

“We all deserved a taste.”

“I know that, Joey. I do.”

“You heard about Ralphie?”

“Yeah.”

“It was your old running buddies who did it to him. They was looking for you.”

“They aren’t my friends no more, not for a long time.”

“If you just kept your mouth shut and stayed away, none of this would have happened.”

“It was my mother.”

“What you say?”

“It was just that my mother-”

“Still the same, ain’t you, Charlie? When you going to break away?”

“I thought I had.”

“Fool. She’ll be dead and buried, and you’ll still be tugging at her apron. ‘Mama, Mama, what am I going to do?’ What are we going to do, Charlie?”

“I guess we’re going to tell them what happened.”

“I guess we are. What about the painting?”

“I don’t know?”

“You still got it?”

“I know where I put it.”

“You going to sell it?”

“Maybe.”

“Well, let me tell you this, you Greek snake.” He stepped forward, stuck a finger in Charlie’s chest. “I don’t want nothing from it no more.”

“What?”

“Don’t include me.”

“You sure?”

“It still haunts me.”

“Yeah, I think I understand.”

“What do you understand?”

“I think about her, too. A lot more lately, after Victor showed me the picture.”

“Well, then, maybe you do.”

“Guys,” I said, breaking in. “This is sweet and all, quite the tender moment, but can we get moving? We still have a lot to do, and there are people trying to kill us.”

“Kill him,” said Joey, jerking his thumb at Charlie.

“I don’t think they care about the body count, do you? Let’s go.”

We piled into the cab, Joey and I in the front seat, Charlie sitting in the back next to Monica, and headed out of Ocean City. We drove around the traffic circle at Somers Point, with its bars and liquor stores. Signs pointed toward the Garden State Parkway, which led to the Atlantic City Expressway and straight to the heart of Philadelphia.

“Let’s go back the way we came,” I said.

“That’s way the hell out of the way,” said Joey.

“So it is, but we have another stop to make.”

“Where?”

“To buy some tomatoes. Nothing better than a Jersey tomato fresh off the vine.”

“We’re not hungry,” said Joey.

Charlie said, “I could use a little-”

“Let’s just get on with this,” said Joey. “We’re not hungry.”

“That’s good,” I said, “because they might be a little out of stock.”

We headed back, through traffic and past strip malls, toward the long two-lane road on which we’d come east. I had Joey keep careful check on his rearview mirror to see if he caught anything in the least suspicious, but he said it looked clean. About ten miles along, there it was on our side of the road. The broken-down shed of Schmidty’s Farmer’s Market.

Parked in front was a generic silver midsize rental. On the table to the side was a large picnic basket, red-checked tablecloth festively sticking out one of its sides. And sitting on the bench in front of the basket, her pretty legs crossed, her eyes crinkled in welcome and her hand waving hello, was Rhonda Harris.

I told Joey to park the cab in the weed-strewn lot behind the shed. A cab might attract some unwanted attention, while a single car and a few picnickers would look totally in place. Rhonda had taken verisimilitude to a new level. After a few moments of setup, we were all seated at the table with the tablecloth spread, our paper plates loaded with fried chicken and potato salad, our paper cups topped up with soda or wine. A few citronella candles burned in their clear plastic shades.

Rhonda started to ask Charlie a question, but I cut her right off. “Before you do anything, you have to promise to hold the story until I give the okay,” I said.

“I promise,” said Rhonda Harris.

“I don’t want the bastard behind it all to lam out before the cops can nab him. But I also want to give Charlie a chance to get his story on the record before the feds get hold of him.”

“To keep the prosecutors honest or your client honest?”

“Both,” I said. “And to make sure our friend in L.A. pays the full price for what he did.” I looked at Charlie. “Are we ready?”

Charlie nodded.

“Okay, Rhonda,” I said. “Go ahead.”

“Hello, Charlie,” she said with a bright smile. “I’ve been looking for you for a long time.”

“Ain’t you the lucky one, then?” said Charlie.

And right there, as cars whizzed by on their way to or from the shore, she conducted her interview, with both Charlie Kalakos and Joey Pride pitching in to tell the whole sad and fabulous story of the greatest art heist in the history of a city known for its robberies and rip-offs.

“What about your life on the run, Charlie?” said Rhonda once the old men had finished telling her the details of the robbery. “Tell me what you’ve been up to after skipping bail fifteen years ago.”

“What’s there to tell?” said Charlie. “It was a whole lotta crap.” And then he proceeded to give us a sad recitation about the long period of his exile: the mean apartments he was able to rent without identification, the menial jobs that kept him afloat, his inability, without his mother’s influence, to create any kind of meaningful life for himself. As he spoke, I kept changing my mind about Mrs. Kalakos. Was she a monster, an eater of dreams, or the rock of reality that kept those around her from floating into the ether and expanding into nothingness?

“Okay,” said Rhonda after Charlie arrived at the part about his first meeting with me and his decision to come home, “I think that’s everything except for the Rembrandt. What happened to the Rembrandt?”

“That’s involved with the girl,” said Charlie.

“Girl?”

“The girl’s the point of this whole thing,” I said. “It’s why you’re here. To write about the girl.”

Rhonda looked at me a little startled. In the darkening evening, with the red of the sky behind her and the yellow of the candles on her face, she had a weird, demonic glow. “No one told me about a girl,” she said. “What girl?”

“Her name was Chantal Adair,” said Monica. “She was my sister, and that’s why I’m here, too. To hear Charlie tell me about Chantal.”

“Joey knows what happened to her, same as me,” said Charlie. “We all did. We were all a part.”

“But you the one that was there,” said Joey. “You the one that was handed the painting. It’s your story, Charlie boy. You tell it.”

Charlie sat quietly for a long while.

“Go ahead, Charlie, and tell us about the girl,” said Rhonda Harris as she fiddled with her tape player. And after another long moment, as we slipped into the gloaming, Charlie did.