The Vig

Chapter Fourteen

A cane in one hand, Angelo Tortoni walked out of Saints Peter and Paul church at Washington Square. His wife, Carmen, held him in the crook of her elbow on the other side, and their two sons, Matteo and Franco, walked in front of and behind him as he turned left off the steps.

He walked slowly, enjoying the beautiful morning, enjoying his wife’s chatter. Carmen was nearly twice the size of Angelo, but was not at all fat. He liked to think of her as sturdy-good solid legs, a hard round culo, a wide waist and melon breasts. She was twenty years younger than he was, originally from Italy and, because of that, well-trained but with a passionate nature and a seemingly innate knowledge of what kept your husband happy, even after a couple of decades.

Several times the Angel had thought his wife would kill him with her energy, but he was beginning now to realize that her enthusiasm was probably keeping him young. She could be tireless in the pursuit of his pleasure, as she had been last night, and then demanding that she got hers, too. Tortoni thought that was fair-he didn’t think there were many women who could bring him to life so often as Carmen did. Even when he thought he didn’t want it.

The little procession crossed the square, then turned up Powell at the Fior D’Italia. Sunday was God’s day. Carmen was happy. Angelo wouldn’t leave the house after lunch-a few neighbors would stop by to pay their respects, perhaps ask a favor or two. Today they would find Angelo Tortoni a soft touch. He turned his head and nodded, smiling, at something his wife said. She looked down almost shyly, squeezing his arm. They slowed even more, turning uphill off Grant.

Angelo’s legs were as good as any man’s, but he enjoyed putting out the message that he was somehow getting frail. It might keep his enemies off guard should he ever need that. But he had found it also served to slow down all his rhythms-to give his words a weight, his judgments a finality that they had lacked when he was young and fast. A quiet voice, whispering, helped, too. When you didn’t raise your voice, people had to come to you, to concentrate on every syllable. It was power.

Franco ran ahead and opened the gate in the white wall in front of his house. They turned into the small front yard, waiting on the walk for Franco to bound up the nine steps and open the front door.

It pleased Angelo that his boys took care of this security, without any supervision, to the steady hum of Carmen’s voice. She was not a gossip, a scold or a shrew, but she liked to take her after-Mass Sunday walk and feel she was catching up on all the news with her husband, who didn’t respond much except to nod or pat her hand. Yet it made her feel they were sharing things in their daily life, although Tortoni knew that nothing could be further from the truth. Carmen knew almost nothing about his daily life, other than that he was a counselor to troubled people, a philanthropist to those in need, an elder in the Knights of Columbus.

The foyer basked in sunlight colored by the stained glass above the doorway. Angelo breathed in the smell of lamb roasting in the kitchen. Garlic and rosemary. He helped Carmen with her coat, kissing the back of her neck before he handed the coat to one of the men. Only then did he notice Pia, the maid, standing by the entrance to the living room, wringing her hands. Carmen patted Angelo’s arm and crossed over to talk to her quietly in Italian. It was probably something about lunch, something they’d burned or forgotten to buy. Well, it was all right, whatever it was.

“There is a woman to see you,” Carmen said, “in the study.”

Tortoni made a face. “Now?” He turned a hard glance on Pia. He didn’t know any women, certainly none who would dare come to his own house on a Sunday before noon. “Do we know her?”

Carmen spoke in Italian. “Pia could not send her away. Don’t be angry with her. The woman looks as though she’s been beaten. She begged for your help.”

Tortoni told Pia she had done the right thing. He would see the woman, find out what this was about.

He nodded to Matteo. He would go into the study and see that the woman was not carrying a gun or a knife in her purse or anywhere else. Tortoni asked Pia if she would bring him two glasses and his bottle of Lachryma Christi, the sweet yellow wine he drank after Mass every Sunday. He took off his coat, placed his cane in the umbrella stand by the door, turned around and gave Carmen a kiss on both cheeks. “Ti amo,” he said. Then, back to English, “I won’t be long.”

The study was dark, but even in the dimness he could tell at a glance that this was a stunning woman. Makeup had tried to cover the welt on her cheek, but an eye was swollen and her full red lips looked bruised. They made you want to kiss them and make them better.

She wore a light tan skirt that now, as she was sitting, came to just over her knees. Her hair was pulled back, held to one side with a mother-of-pearl comb. She reminded Angelo Tortoni of his wife on the day he married her. He dismissed Matteo and the door closed on the two of them.

He walked in his regular gait to the couch. He had planned to sit behind his desk, but after seeing her, he did not want any artificial separation between himself and this woman.

The room was kept dark by slatted wooden shades over all the windows. He reached up and opened one column of slats, and horizontal shafts of light painted the rug on the floor like some luminous ladder. Motes of dust twinkled through the rays. He raised his hand and motioned for the woman to approach.

She got up and knelt on one knee before him, picking up his hand and kissing the back of it. She had clearly been well brought up.

They spoke in Italian.

“What is your name?”

“Doreen Biaggi.”

He patted the couch next to him and she sat and arranged herself, half-turned to him. The light missed her, slicing the air between them. Tortoni reached up a hand and ran a finger along her face from her chin to her eyebrow.

“Who did this to you?”

There was a knock on the study door. Angelo sat back. “Vieni.”

Pia entered with a bottle and two glasses. He let her set the bottle onto a silver-ridged coaster on his desk. She, correctly, poured only one glass, offering it to him, but he gestured with his left hand and she handed the glass to Doreen. After pouring his, she was gone, closing the door quietly behind her.

Angelo held his glass out between them, and she raised hers to touch his. Prisms from the cut crystal danced around the room. They each took a small sip. He noticed the way she held the glass on her lap, one hand on the stem, the other on the bowl. She did not look down at it.

“I ask you to forgive me for bothering you on the Lord’s day.”

Angelo waved that away. “How can I help you?”

“I owe you money, and I owe you my gratitude.”

He nodded. It was a good start. She wasn’t just coming here to whine about her vig.

“I am also very afraid.”

Angelo sipped his wine. He saw her lower lip begin to tremble, but she got control of herself quickly, taking a deep breath.

“There is nothing to be afraid of here,” he said.

She looked down at her lap. As though surprised to find the wineglass there, she raised it to her lips. “I want to pay you”-she hesitated-“but I must ask for, for arrangements to be different.”

Angelo was confused. After he had spoken to Johnny he had been confident things would get straightened out. “The vig is too much?”

She shook her head, sitting now in silence. A tear formed in her swollen eye. “It is not the vig. I could pay a hundred a week for a few weeks. After that”-she paused, collecting herself-“I haven’t paid any vig. Johnny LaGuardia”-she looked up, her large brown eyes now liquid-“Johnny…” She broke, crying aloud.

Angelo took a spotless white cotton handkerchief from his shirt pocket and touched it to her face. As he watched her try to collect herself, he was putting it together, feeling his rage. Johnny had been scamming other clients to cover Doreen’s short. When she couldn’t make the hundred he upped somebody else on his own-maybe the mysteriously disappeared Rusty Ingraham-and started taking Doreen’s vig out of her ass.

Doreen was sniffling now, wiping away the tears. “Mi scusa, Don Tortoni.”

Worst of all, Johnny had been keeping Doreen Biaggi a secret. A woman like this, in her situation, she could be priceless to Angelo. Not directly, perhaps, she might be too classy for that. But certainly a woman of her grace and breeding, her looks and substance, could be used somewhere-to bind an allegiance, to weaken an enemy, to blind a competitor in legitimate business. Perhaps even to marry a son.

Angelo moved closer to her on the couch. He knew the sunlight was now falling across his face. Doreen, embarrassed, looked down into her lap, his handkerchief clutched around the stem of the wineglass. Closer, he inspected the face, which now, even bruised, could, he thought, make the angels sing. The loyalty and love of a woman such as this was a gift from God. And he knew he could get it for nothing. Johnny had already paid enough of her vig to cover her principal-he would hardly even lose any money.

He lifted her chin and drew her face to his. He kissed both sides of her bruised lips, then both cheeks. Gently, with his thumb, he rubbed a trace of a tear away from under her eye.

“Look at me,” he said.

She raised her eyes. Johnny had nearly broken her. Angelo smiled. “Will you eat with my family today?” He moved his hand down over her neck, her shoulder, coming to rest under her arm, feeling the full curve of the side of her breast as he moved her back away from him as though trying to get her into focus. “As of this moment,” he said, “you owe me nothing except a smile from your beautiful face.”

He touched the corner of her mouth with a finger, lifting it as he would do to a baby. “A little smile,” he repeated.

She tried, and he pushed again at her lip, playfully. The smile, when it came, nearly broke his heart.

He would have to deal with Johnny LaGuardia.

Flo Glitsky and Frannie Cochran were doing dishes together. They watched Dismas and Abe walking in the small playground that bordered the backyard the Glitskys shared with their neighbors downstairs. They had moved into the duplex when O.J. was born, unable then, as they still were, to afford their own house on Abe’s salary in San Francisco.

Now, of course, there was no chance at all, but the duplex was rent-controlled and they paid less than most everybody else they knew. Her own house was one of the dreams Flo wasn’t going to get, but she had her three healthy boys and her man who loved her, and if that was the trade, she’d take it any day.

“Are you really leaving?” Frannie asked her.

It was all that had been on Flo’s mind for the last two days. She had never seen Abe this down. He had actually applied to the Los Angeles Police Department and was talking about moving there as if it were settled. All Flo knew about L.A. was that if Abe thought housing was high here, they wouldn’t stand a chance there. And she’d heard the public schools there were in bad shape-the teachers mere truant officers whose jobs were to keep kids off drugs and off the street until three o’clock. And not only didn’t Flo believe in private schools, she knew they wouldn’t be able to afford one anyway. And her boys were all smart.

Flo shook her head. “I’ll let Abe work out what he has to, and then I guess we’ll make some decision.”

“That’s how you do it, isn’t it?” Frannie said. “That was always it with me and Eddie. What he wanted and what I wanted, back and forth, until we got somewhere together.” She wiped at a soapy plate. “I’ve gotten out of that habit. I miss it, I think.”

Flo took the plate from her, starting to dry it. “How long has it been now?”

“Four and a half months.”

Flo, like the other cops’ wives Frannie knew, didn’t let herself think too often about losing her husband. It was a possibility that came with the territory, and you accepted it and went on if you wanted to stay together.

“You’re holding up better than I would,” Flo said.

Abe kicked at the tanbark under the swing he and Hardy were on. His arms were looped around the chains and as he kicked he rotated from side to side, facing Hardy then turning away.

“How are you gonna be a good cop anywhere if you don’t care?”

“How many guys care?”

Hardy waited on the rotation, until Abe was faced back toward him. “I think about four, but you were always one of them.”

Glitsky, spinning now on the swing, shook his head. “Now I’m a professional policeperson. I go where they pay me to. Enforce the law.”

“And the brass decide?”

“Correcto.”

Hardy did a pull-up on the A-frame of the swing. He did another one, the two big guys playing on the monkey bars.

“Besides,” Abe said, “Lanier is handling it. They’ll pass off my cases to McFadden ’cause he’s the other solo, and Baker will go down like he should. Order will be restored to the cosmos.”

Hardy was hanging full-length from the frame. “You reading Shakespeare again?”

Glitsky stood out of the swing. “Criticism. The Tragic Fallacy by Krutch. You ought to check it out. Says there can’t be any tragedy unless there’s a Zeitgeist of ultimate order that can be destroyed and then restored.”

“Zeitgeist,” Hardy said.

“Kraut word. Means the general intellectual, moral, and cultural climate of an era, such as our very own, for example.”

“I know what the fuck it means, Abe. I’m a college graduate.”

“So that’s why we don’t have any modern tragedy. We don’t believe in the importance of any one individual anymore. Since nobody screwing up can destroy the order of the cosmos, then nobody getting enlightened can restore it, see?”

“I was just thinking about this yesterday.”

Glitsky cast a sideways glance at his friend. “So how’d we get on this anyway?”

“You said Louis Baker going down will restore order to the cosmos.”

Glitsky nodded. “Yeah, right. Let’s go get another couple of beers.”

They headed back to the house, but Hardy still couldn’t let it go. “But my problem is the blindside thing-it was like ‘what girl?’ ”

“Maybe he was concentrating on Rusty so hard he didn’t even notice Maxine.”

“You don’t notice a naked woman you have to shoot three times?”

Glitsky stopped again by the back door. They stood on a square of porch, hands in their pockets. The boys were playing somewhere within earshot, maybe around the front of the house. Hardy blew out, surprised to see a vapor trail. The chill had come in fast-a high-pressure cold that had wiped the sky almost purple.

“Okay, so he noticed her.”

“But, Abe, that’s my point. Baker said he had no idea what I was talking about when I said a woman had been killed at Rusty’s. And he sounded convincing, even to these ears.”

Glitsky shrugged. “He was lying.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Well, that’s your problem.”

“And if he wasn’t, it means he wasn’t there when Rusty got shot.”

“Diz. Listen up now. His prints were there.”

“Jesus, Abe, my prints were there, too.”

“A-ha!” Abe raised a forefinger. “Another hot lead in the case.”

“You can laugh.”

“I do laugh, Diz. Dig it. Yesterday you were the personification of outraged public crying for the head of Louis Baker. I, modestly, represented the restraining force of law in our society-”

“You got a pair of boots?”

“What?”

“It gets any deeper, I’m gonna need boots.”

Glitsky put an arm around his friend’s shoulder. “I am making a point. And the point is that we, we the police, aren’t supposed to go flip-flopping according to the whims of the public we’re supposed to protect. That, old buddy, includes you. Yesterday you thought Louis Baker was guilty of everything you could think of. Today, what? You’re trying to have me check out these other suspects just after I find out-and for the first time-that Louis is finally in fact a righteous suspect? Prints at Rusty’s. Puts him there. Now he’s got a motive. He’s got opportunity. Now he’s a suspect, and now you want me to drop him? There is some irony here.”

“I don’t want you to drop him. I just thought in your thirst for justice you might want to be completely thorough-”

Glitsky blew out through tight lips. “I’m the one who has been thorough here all along. I continue to be. But several things have changed since just yesterday. One, Louis got himself a gun and did some B and E. This makes his rehabilitation in prison somewhat suspect-at least to me. Second, he was in fact at Rusty’s. We knew neither of these things yesterday, and knowing them now moves old Louis up several rungs on the maybe-he’s-guilty ladder. I really would like a beer.”

But Hardy didn’t move when Abe pushed at the door. Glitsky sighed. “Okay, what?”

“You’ve looked at Medina already. Who is Johnny LaGuardia? Where does Ray Weir fit into all this? There’s just things you as a cop can do that I can’t.”

“Thousands.”

“Well, shit, Abe. Do a few of them.”

Abe shook his head. “No.”

“Why not?”

“Because I am out of here, Diz. Gone. Los Angeles may need me and that is another jurisdiction. These aren’t going to be my cases and I don’t need the aggravation. Plus, I think there’s a good chance that our Louis Baker in fact did all this, and there’s enough to bring him in on it, and after that it’s up to the D.A. and twelve of Louis’s peers, if they can find them.” He pushed at the door again. “It’s no longer police business and certainly not mine. Now, you want a beer or what?” But he stopped again. “Besides, why do you care? Baker is off the street. Go back to work. Let the wheels of justice grind fine, why the hell don’t you?”

Hardy looked at the sky, stuffing his hands further into his pockets. ’Cause if he didn’t do it-I’m not saying he didn’t, but if… He doesn’t deserve to die for it and I’d be killing him if I let it go-”

“You bleeding your heart for Louis Baker?”

“I’d love to ace him in a fair fight and that’s a fact.”

“You know your odds of getting a fair fight out of him?”

“Slim, I would guess.”

“And none.”

“Well, at least it would be just me and him.”

“Mano a mano?”

Hardy shrugged. “I can’t back in to what would amount to me killing him. I’ve just developed a case of reasonable doubt, is all.”

“You don’t think he was coming after you?”

Hardy nodded. “Yeah, I guess I do think that.”

“Well?”

“We’re gonna hang the bastard because he’s mad at me?”

Glitsky shook his head, pushed again at the door.

Hardy followed him up the stairs. At the top of the steps they stopped one last time. “I’ve got no great hots to save Baker, you know,” Hardy said. “But something else has got to be going on here. It’s just too convenient.”

“You think somebody paid him to bust into Jane’s house?”

“No. I think he did that on his own.”

“So what else?”

“So me is what else. I’ve been part of this since the beginning, and now suddenly Baker’s on ice and somehow it’s over. But I’m still involved. Especially if I’m being used to patsy up Baker when maybe he didn’t do it. Anything capital, anyway.”

Glitsky, his hand on the kitchen door, ran a finger across the scar that went through his lips. “So you want me to help?”

“A little look around is all.”

“Let me think about it,” Abe said. He turned the knob. “Okay, I’ve thought about it. No.”

He opened the door and said hi to Flo and Frannie.