Money, Money, Money

5 .

SO THIS IS WHAT the family has turned out to be, Carella thought.

This is what this family has become on this Christmas Day in the new millennium.

There's still me and Teddy, thank God, and the twins, thank God again, although he didn't appreciate the fact that they were slowly inching their way toward puberty. Before he knew it, Mark would be readingPenthouse and April would be dating seniors, and he and Teddy would be in wheelchairs in a nursing home. Forty years old, he thought. Jesus. Where did it all go so soon?

There was his sister Angela, too, of course, with her own twins- they ran in the family-and their older sister. Tess was eight, the twins four, all three far distant from puberty. Angela had named the twins Cynthia and Melinda, and then had begun calling them Cindy and Mindy, as if they were a tap-dancing team in Vegas, shame on you, Sis, even though their father had insisted they be called Cynthia and Melinda as originally planned, a noble thought.

Tommy wasn't here this Christmas, the little girls' father was God-knew-where on this bright cold afternoon as everyone was called to dinner, or lunch, or whatever it was at two in the afternoon. Tommy Giordano wasn't here today because he and Angela were divorced now-but not because he'd insisted on calling his daughters by their true and proper names. Tommy Giordano had been caught having a love affair, was still having a love affair, but the lady in question wasn't a lady at all, although she was often called that. Tommy Giordano was having a love affair with cocaine. He had tried psychiatric help, had tried rehabilitation, had tried every damn thing he and the family could think of, but he was hooked through the bag and back again, and nothing had worked. The marriage had fallen apart when Angela just couldn't take it any longer. Tommy was still snorting the Devil's Dandruff,wherever he was- the last time they'd heard it was Santa Fe, New Mexico.

In Tommy's place today was an assistant district attorney named Henry Lowell, who had received his undergraduate degree from Duke, his law degree from Harvard, and a smattering of lesser education from Oxford University, or so the precinct locker-room jive maintained. Lowell had been with the D.A.'s Office for almost five years now. In that time, he had racked up thirty-eight convictions, an impressive record, four of them on murder cases. The only murder case he'd ever lost, in fact, was the one he'd prosecuted against the man who'd killed Carella's father.

Maybe this was why Carella didn't like him too much.

Gee.

What Carella couldn't understand was why hissister was sleeping with the son of a bitch, and bringing him around to his mother's house on every goddamn holiday that came along. That was what Carella couldn't understand, but maybe he was just old-fashioned. Maybe he thought real life here in the big bad city wasn't the same thing as Greek tragedy where you slept with your father's murderer or ate your own children. Given that the murderer had finally been gunned down by Carella himself or maybe Brown, who'd been standing by his side and firing at the same time …

Or maybe both of them …

Given that bygones should be bygones …

Justice had been served …

An eye for an eye and all that …

Givenall that …

Should Angelareally be considering marriage to the man?

But even worse thanher defection …

How could hismother have forgotten so soon?

THE SECOND INTERLOPER at the table today was a man named Luigi Fontero from Milan, Italy. Henry Lowell was sitting on Angela's right, and Luigi Fontero was sitting on Louise Carella's right-Carella'smother's right, right! Nor was this the "Luigi" of ancient television fame, a fruit peddler or whatever the hell he'd been, a man who spoke broken English the way the immigrants at the turn of the century had, although the show took place in the Fifties, Carella guessed, he'd only seen a single rerun on theNick at Nite channel or one of the other hundred and ninety-nine channels proliferating like fleas on a dog.

ThisLuigi was a furniture manufacturer.This Luigi made furniture fashioned by some of Europe's most important designers.This Luigi spoke fluent English with merely the faintest trace of an accent.ThisLuigi wore suits hand-tailored in Rome, and shoes hand- cobbled in Florence.This Luigi was holding his mother's hand. If this were Greek tragedy, Carella would have cut offthis Luigi's hand at the wrist.

"How was the weather when you left Milan?" Lowell asked pleasantly.

"Milan is always the same this time of year," Fontero replied pleasantly. "Drizzly and cold. Very much like Paris."

Two old buddies chatting about the weather.

Carella wanted to kill them both.

"Couldwego to Paris sometime?" April asked her mother, simultaneously signing.

Teddy signed back,Yes, next weekend, darling.

"Really?" April said, her eyes opening wide.

Image of her mother, black hair and brown eyes. Talked up a storm, a constant chatterer-well, exactly like her mother in that respect as well, except that Teddy could only talk with her hands and her eyes. Born deaf, she had never heard a human voice, never heard any sound at all. Almost everyone at this table knew how to sign, some perfectly, some to a lesser degree. Except the interlopers, of course. They looked at Teddy's hands as if she were scribbling Sanskrit on the air.

April was wearing lipstick. Not yet thirteen, and wearing lipstick. Teddy assured Carella it was all right. Carella didn't want to think his daughter was growing up. He didn't want to think his sister would be marrying the man who'd let their father's killer go free. He didn't want to think his mother was starting up with some Italian gigolo so soon after his father's death. On Christmas Day a year ago, she'd burst into tears whenever his father's name was mentioned. Now she was openly holding hands with a man who looked too fucking much like a young Marcello Mastroianni.

Maybe I've had too much wine, Carella thought.

"I love Italian furniture," Angela said.

Right, Sis, Carella thought. Aiding and abetting.

"Yes, it is quite beautiful," Fontero said.

In all modesty, Carella thought.

"Lamps, too," Angela said.

Compounding the felony, Carella thought.

"What's the name of your company?" Lowell asked.

"Mobili Fontero."

"Could I have more lasagna, please?" Mark asked.

The conversation ebbed and flowed, washing the table in familiar sound, except for the voices of the inept district attorney and the sartorially resplendent furniture man from Milan. Carella's mother had been on a diet for the past two months. Now he knew why. She was styling her hair differently. Now he knew why. He wondered how long they'd known each other. Wondered how they'd met. Wondered …

"How'd you two guys meet, anyway?" Lowell asked.

You two guys. As if they were teenagers. His mother was sixty-three years old. Fontero was sixty-seven if he was a day. You two guys.

"You tell him, Luigi," his mother said, and patted his hand.

Looking like a schoolgirl. The funeral meats not yet cold upon the table. He suddenly remembered his brief stay in college, remembered playing a bearded Claudius to Sarah Gelb's Gertrude, a girl he'd later taken to bed-if you could call it that-in the back seat of his father's car.

He missed his father so very much.

Luigi was telling them about Louise's best friend-

That was Carella's mother he was talking about. Louise. Louise Carella. Luigi and Louise. And, of course, Luigi was Louis in Italian, Carella's middle name, Louis and Louise, oh howcute!

- Louise's best friend Kate, who lived next door, and who was related somehow to Luigi's brother in Florence (Firenze, Luigi said) who had suggested that Luigi stop by to say hello while he was on his business trip to America, which he had done, taking a taxi the first time …

"That was a mistake," Louise Carella said, his mother said, rolling her eyes. "Luigi didn't know how much it would cost, all the way up here to Riverhead."

"You should have asked for a flat rate," Angela suggested.

"Well, at home they warn us all the time about the taxi drivers in this city, but I must tell you I have never once been cheated on any of my visits here."

"How often do you come here?" Lowell asked.

"Three, four times a year. To sell my line to American dealers. But also because I love this city." He smiled. Beautiful white teeth. Marcello Mastroianni teeth. "Now I have reason to come more often," he said, and squeezed Louise's hand, squeezed Carella's mother's hand.

"To make a long story short," his mother said, Louise said, "I was there having coffee with Katie when this taxi pulled up and Luigi stepped out …"

"This was in October," Luigi said.

"He was wearing a gray coat with a black fur collar …"

Like a Russian diplomat, Carella thought.

"No hat," Louise said.

Carella noticed that he had thick black hair, Luigi did.

"He came up the walk, and rang the doorbell," Louise said. "Katie was expecting him, of course, but not until much later. He introduced himself …"

"I soon forgot I was there to say hello to my brother's friend," Luigi said, and squeezed her hand again, Carella's mother's hand, Louise's.

"We went out to dinner, the three of us," Louise said.

"I asked Katie to join us for the sake of courtesy," Luigi said.

A beard, Carella thought.

"And that's how we met," Louise said.

"I came back the very next month."

"Before Thanksgiving."

"We talk every day on the phone."

"We've known each other since October fifteenth," Louise said.

Birthdate of great men, Carella thought, but did not say.

"Seventy-one days today," Luigi said.

But who's counting? Carella thought.

His sister's eyes met his.

There was something like a warning in them.

Et tu, brute?he thought.

He'd played Caesar, too. And had gone to bed with Portia after the opening-night party. A year and seven months in college, and he'd been able to score with only two girls, big Lothario. How did he suddenly get to be forty? It occurred to him that he had never been to bed with another woman since the day he met Teddy. Nor did he ever plan to. Nor had he ever felt the slightest desire for any other woman. He wondered how many womenSignore Marcello over there had been to bed with,Signore Casanova, wondered if he'd already been to bed with Carella's mother, Louise, with her stylish new clothes and her svelte new figure and her elegant new coiffure, wondered if his mother had already forgotten that once upon a time there'd been a gentle, loving man named Anthony Carella who'd been shot to death during a holdup in his bakery shop, wondered if sooner or later everyone who dies is forgotten, and thought, curiously, Shakespeare isn't forgotten, I was Claudius, I was Caesar.

He poured himself another glass of wine.

This time, it was his wife's eyes that shot a warning across the table.

He smiled at her and raised his glass in a silent toast.

She sighed and turned away.

SHE DID NOT SAY ANYTHING to him until she was certain the children were asleep. Carella was already in bed when she came to him. She sat on the edge of the bed, and in the light of the lamp burning on the night table, her fingers and her eyes told him what was on her mind.

You're drinking too much,she said.

"Come on," he said, "a few glasses of wine, what's wrong with you?"

It started in November, when Danny Gimp got killed …

"Danny was a stool pigeon," he said.

He was your friend.

"I never considered him a friend."

He came to the hospital.

"That was a long time ago."

He came when you were hurt. And now he's dead. And you never cried for him.

"He meant nothing to me," Carella said.

Did your father mean something to you?

Carella looked at her.

You didn't cry for him, either.

"I cried," Carella said.

No!her hands shouted. Her eyes were flashing. He realized all at once that she was containing enormous anger.

"I cried inside," he said.

Why are you still so angry with Henry?

"Oh for Christ's sake, is heHenry already?" Carella said.

Your sister's going tomarryhim!Teddy said.You have no right to make her feel guilty about it! She loveshim!

"Love!" Carella said.

Is that all at once a dirty word?

"He lost the case!"

Do you think he wanted to?

"He let the man who killed my father …"

Steve,she said, and put her hand on his arm.Sonny Cole is dead. You killed him, Steve. He's dead. Let it go, honey. Leave it alone.

"Seems everyone's asking me to do that these days," he said, and shook his head.

What does that mean?

"Nothing," he said. "Forget it."

You never used to say Nothing, forget it.

Her hands stopped, the room went suddenly still. She looked at him for what seemed a very long time.

Steve?she said at last.Do you still love me?

"I adore you," he said.

Then what is it? Is it the job?

He shook his head.

Is it?

"No. No, I love the job."

She took a deep breath.

And in the stillness of the night, she asked him why he'd drunk so much at his mother's house today, and at first he told her he hadn't drunk that much at all, a glass or two of wine, and then he admitted he'd had at least a full bottle, but this was Christmas Day, so what the hell, she didn't have to start talking to him as if he was some kind ofdrunkard, this wasn't Tommy Giordano here sniffing his life up his nose in Santa Fe or wherever. Then he admitted that he was annoyed that his sister would evenconsider marriage to the man who'd let Sonny Cole walk out of that courtroom …

"Never mind that it ended with me shooting him, do you think that's something Ienjoy doing?" he asked. "Gunning down a man? Do you think I became a cop so I could shoot people dead in the street, twenty yards from the house where my wife and my children are sleeping, do you think Ienjoy doing that?"

I think the job is getting to you, she said, and he told her Don't be ridiculous, and she said I think the job is beginning to get to you, honey, you're not the same since your father got killed, you just aren't the same man I married, and she began sobbing into his shoulder. He told her Come on, nothing's changed, Ilove the job. And Idid cry for my father, you don't know how much I cried. I cried for Danny, too, hewas a friend, I know he was, he practically died in my arms! Jesus, Teddy, don't you think Icare for people, don't you think I have any feelings?

And suddenly he was crying again-or perhaps for the first time.

She moved out of his arms.

She sat up.

Listen to me,she said.

He nodded. His nose was running. Tears were rolling down his cheeks.

If it's the job,she said,I want you to leave it.

He shook his head. No. Kept shaking it. No.

I don't want to lose my husband to the job.

Tears kept streaming from his eyes.

I don't want you eating your gun one day.

He kept sobbing.

At last, she turned out the light and went to bed with him cradled in her arms.

He fell asleep thinking that only two days ago, he'd seen a woman chewed to pieces like raw meat.

VISIONS OF SUGAR PLUM FAIRIES danced in Ollie's head, even though Christmas Day had come and almost gone. Visions of roast beef slices, too. And candied yams. And buttered beans. And thick apple pie with vanilla ice cream sitting on its flaky crust. And red Delicious apples, and Bartlett pears, and Baci chocolates with a sort of fortune-cookie message that readA woman's soul is like an angel's kiss. Lying alone in bed, he thought of all the delicious things his sister had served for Christmas dinner today, and he forgot all about the two separate-or so he thought-cases he was currently investigating. Suddenly famished, he got out of bed and went to the refrigerator.

He fixed himself a thick Genoa salami sandwich on rye bread smothered with butter and mustard, and poured himself a glass of whole milk, and carried these to the upright piano he'd rented.

It was almost midnight.

He sat down and started playing "Night and Day."

Somebody in the building yelled, "Shaddup, you jackass!"

A fart on thee, Ollie thought, and continued playing.

He had to admit he wasn't yet a jazz giant, but tomorrow was another day.

WALTER WIGGINS , better known as Wiggy the Lid, liked to frequent a bar on St. Sebastian's and Boyle because there were very often white hookers in here. Wiggy was in the mood for a white hooker tonight. Not any of your Puerto Rican hookers wholooked white because they were of Spanish and not African descent. What he wanted was a genuine white hooker.

As a black kid growing up in America, Wiggy had played basketball in the schoolyard, had joined a street gang when he was thirteen, had convinced a twelve-year-old deb member of the gang that slobbering the Johnson wasn't the same thing as having sex, had killed two other black kids from opposing gangs when he was sixteen, had decided when he was eighteen that gang-busting was for the fools of this world, had become fond of cocaine while serving as a mule for a Colombian dope dealer whose business he'd later acquired after he'd shot the man with a Desert Eagle semi-automatic he purchased from a black gun dealer.

As a grown man living in America-Wiggy had just turned twenty-three-he earned more each year than the head of General Motors did, but he still lived in Diamondback, the almost exclusively black section of the city, and he still dated black women, and went to a black barber who knew how to cut his hair, and wore expensive clothes he bought from a shop on Concord Av because the black owner knew what looked best on a black man. He liked eating steak and potatoes, but he also liked collard greens, and fried chicken, and grits. He enjoyed television shows and movies with all-black casts. He didn't read much, but when he did it was mostly novels about crime-none of them by white writers, who he felt didn't know shit about black thieves, and shouldn't even try. In fact, Wiggy distrustedall white people because the men believed he was a criminal-which he happened to be, by the way-and the women believed he was a rapist, which hedidn't happen to be, and hadnever been, by the way. He especially distrusted cops because he'd suffered too many beatings from them when he was coming along, and he was now paying off too many of them to look the other way when it came to this small matter of dealing controlled substances. Having a few dozen cops in your pocket did not engender faith in the criminal justice system.

Wiggy generally steered away from white neighborhoods altogether because he felt reviled there, observed, suspected, never treated with the respect he earned on his home turf. As a result, his universe was largely defined by theabsence of white people in it. This was why he liked to go to bed with white hookers. Same way lots of white dudes came uptown looking for black hookers, because these girls were something outside of they purlieu, so to speak. The Starlight Bar often had white hookers in it, which is why he was not surprised when along around twelve-fifteen or so on Christmas night, this leggy blonde walked in all alone and took the stool to his right at the bar, and crossed her legs to show enough gartered stocking to qualify her for porn stardom. This little girl seemed most definitely for sale. If she was Puerto Rican, however, he didn't want her. Because to his mind, that meant she wasn't white, she was just a spic.

America was a peculiar place.

"Merry Christmas," he said.

"Merry Christmas," she said and turned to him, and smiled.

"Merry Christmas, Miss," the black bartender said. "Something to drink?"

"I'll have a Tanqueray martini," she said. "On the rocks. A twist."

"Another scotch, Mr. Wiggins?" the bartender asked.

"No, John, I think I'll try what the lady's drinking," Wiggy said, and swung his stool around to face her. "What'd you just order there, Miss?"

"A Tanqueray martini."

"Sounds good to me," Wiggy said.

"It is," she said, and smiled.

He had never drunk a martini in his life. He did not know what Tanqueray was, either. He had, however, seen a lot of James Bond movies.

"Stirred or shaken?" he asked.

He did not like Bond making it with black girls. The girl here looked very white indeed. But if so, what was she doing in a black bar at midnight on Christmas Day?

"Shaken is better," she said, and smiled.

"Shakin it, huh?" he said. "Is better, you think?"

"Oh yes," she said. "Much."

"Then, John," he said, "you best shake it for me, too."

"Two martinis comin right up, Mr. Wiggins," the bartender said.

"So," Wiggy said to the blonde, "how was your Christmas?"

"Very nice, thank you," she said. "And yours?"

"Spent it with my mama," he said, which was the truth. His mama didn't know he was dealing drugs. She thought he got lucky as a day trader. Only person in his family knew he was thus involved was his cousin Ashley, who was one of his runners. Kid made more money than Wiggy's father did, who was a mailman. "How about you?"

"Uh-huh," she said, but he noticed she hadn't mentioned who with, or exactly how she'd spent the day.

"Santa treat you nice?" he asked.

"Oh yes," she said.

"Two martinis on the rocks, a twist," John said.

"Thank you, m'man," Wiggy said, and raised his glass to the blonde. "Cheers," he said, "Merry Christmas."

"Merry Christmas," she said again, and clinked her glass against his.

Wiggy tasted the drink.

"Mm," he said. "Good."

"Told you, didn't I?"

"So you did."

Not a trace of Spanish accent, but lots of these third-generation spics spoke English good as he did. Last thing he needed was a roll with a girl had six diseases she'd picked up in San Juan.

"Walter Wiggins," he said, and put his glass down, and extended his right hand. She took it in her own hand; it was cold from holding the drink.

"I'm Sheryl," she said.

"Nice to meet you, Sheryl."

Didn't sound like any Spanish name he knew, maybe she was white, after all. Or Jewish maybe, which was even better. You got some of these Jewgirls in bed, they screamed down the whole fuckin hood.

"You live up here in Diamondback?" he asked.

Smattering of spics lived up here, maybe she was one of them, after all. He was tempted to take John aside, ask him who the blonde with the long legs and the big tits was. A Spanish working girl or an import?

"No, I spent the day here with a girlfriend," she said.

"She live up here?"

"Her mother does."

"She a black girl?"

"No."

"Spanish?"

He looked her dead in the eye.

"White," she said. "Same as me."

"Where doyou live?" he asked.

"Same place my girlfriend does. We're roommates."

"And where's that?"

"Downtown. Hastings and Palm. Near the Triangle."

"Nice neighborhood," he said. "So what are you doing up here?"

"I told you. My girlfriend's mother invited us for Christmas."

"White woman living up here?" he asked.

"On thepark," she said. "What is it with you?"

"I thought you might be Puerto Rican."

"I'm not. But what difference would it make?"

"None at all."

"So what's the bullshit?" she asked. "I mean, what is it, areyou so fucking white?"

All at once, he liked her.

"Have another drink," he said.

"Oh, am I suddenly white enough for you?"

"You're white enough, honey," he said, and put his hand on her thigh. She looked into his eyes.

"Another Tanqueray," she told the bartender.

"How about you, Mr. Wiggins?"

"I'll join the lady, sure," Wiggy said, and squeezed her thigh. She kept looking into his eyes. She was jiggling her foot now. She had terrific tits in a very low cut black dress.

"So what are you doing here at the Starlight?" he asked.

"What areyou doing here at the Starlight?"

"Hoping to meet a gorgeous blonde from downtown on Hastings and Palm," he said. "Near the Triangle."

"So you met her," Sheryl said, and covered his hand on her thigh with her own. Her hand was no longer cold.

"Seems I have," Wiggy said.

Sheryl looked at her watch. "My girlfriend's picking me up in five minutes," she said. "We've got a car and a driver. You want to come downtown with us, honey?"

"Let's have our drinks first," Wiggy said.

THE LIMO WAS a black Lincoln Town Car driven by a black chauffeur. There was another blonde on the back seat, wearing a black dress like Sheryl's, high-heeled black shoes like her, a black cloth coat identical to hers, little black fur collar at the neck. The car felt warm and smelled of expensive perfume. "Hi," the other blonde said, extending her hand. "I'm Toni." Wiggy slid onto the seat beside her, took her hand. "Hi, honey," she said, and leaned across him to kiss Sheryl on the cheek. He felt her breasts against his arm. Her dress was high on her thighs. The door on Sheryl's side slammed shut. She moved closer to him. The brother came into the car, made himself comfortable behind the wheel.

"We're going home," Toni told him, and the tinted glass separating front from back slid up at once.

"Excuse me, ladies," Wiggy said, "but how much is this going to cost me?"

"One million, nine hundred thousand dollars," Toni said.

He turned to look at her.

She was holding an AK-47 in her lap.