The Widening Gyre

Chapter 27

Susan and I spent all day Saturday at the National Gallery. We looked at the special Rodin exhibit and we cruised through the various galleries, looking at the French impressionists and, briefly, cubists and whatever the hell Jackson Pollock was; but I spent the most time, as I always did, in among the low-country painters like Rembrandt and Vermeer and Frans Hals. Saturday night we drove up to Baltimore and ate crab cakes in Harbor Place. And Sunday we stayed mostly in bed and read newspapers and tested room service.

I left her at work Monday morning. She kissed me goodbye and we both had a sense, I think, of incompleteness, of something left out. As if we stepped to the tune of different drummers. Jesus Christ. I shook my head angrily, alone in the car, and stepped to the tune of mine out to National Airport.

I ditched the rental car and took an Eastern flight back to Boston. At quarter of two I was pulling up in front of an office building on State Street. Before I went into the office building I looked up to the top of State Street where the old South Meeting House stood, soft red brick with, on the second floor, the lion and the unicorn carved and gleaming in gold leaf adorning the building as they had when the Declaration of Independence was read from its balcony and, before it, the street where Crispus Attucks had been shot. It was a little like cleansing the palate. Washington 's federal grandeur faded.

I took the elevator to the eleventh floor and walked down the marble wainscotted corridor to the far end, where a frosted glass door had CONTINENTAL CONSULTING CO. lettered on it in gold leaf that had begun to flake. I went in. The same Utrillo prints were on the walls. A perky-looking receptionist with a plaid skirt and a green sweater smiled at me and said, "May I help you?"

"Joe Broz please."

"May I say who's calling?"

I told her. She spoke into the phone. Then she turned to me. Her face serious. Her nose, I noticed, turned up slightly at the end. Her brown hair was cut short and very neatly groomed. Her nail polish was fresh and dark, almost brown.

"May I ask concerning what matter, Mr. Spenser?"

"Gerry," I said. She relayed the message.

The door behind her opened and Vinnie Morris stood in it. His face was blank, but he was looking at me very hard. He jerked his head and I went in. Everything was the same. The room all in white. The big black desk. The wide picture window that looked out over the waterfront. The dark blue rug. But Broz had changed. Ten years had made him old. His hair was white. He seemed smaller. He was still overdressed and immaculate but much of the theatricality had left him. He didn't seem on camera anymore.

Amazing. And here I was as youthful and vigorous as ever.

"What the fuck do you want?" Broz said.

"Ah, Joe," I said. "It's what makes you special, that little spike of real class."

"I asked you a question."

In addition to Vinnie, Ed was there leaning against the padded bar, an open copy of People on the bar in front of him. There was another member of the firm sitting in a black leather chair with his feet up on the coffee table. He had longish black hair and a vandyke beard. He had on a pink cashmere sweater that was stretched to a gossamer web around his upper arms and his waist. Fat, but hard fat. A bodybuilder gone bad.

"This is family talk, Joe. You want them around?"

Without taking his eyes off me he said, "Ed, you and Roger wait in the other office."

They went at once, without question or comment. When they were gone Vinnie leaned against the door, his arms folded.

Broz leaned back. His face was tanned and full of lines. He still had a big mouthful of white teeth and he still wore a diamond pinky ring. And his eyes were without humanity. He nodded his head once for me to begin.

"I can put your kid in the pokey, Joe."

Broz made no movement. It was like staring deep into the eyes of a turtle.

"He's selling cocaine. He's involved in sex orgies with underage children. He's distributing pornographic materials. I know that and I can prove it."

Vinnie was immobile against the door. Broz's eyes were barely open. Nothing moved.

"What I don't know, but I can guess, is how much of this is performed as your agent."

Still nothing moved.

"I say he's not. I say he's out on his own and trying to be a success on his own to impress the old man."

I paused. There was a crystal stillness in the room. Broz seemed to have gone deeper inside his own silence.

"I say he's also blackmailing Meade Alexander with dirty pictures of Mrs. Alexander."

The sky through Broz's picture window was a clean blue, no clouds, some pale winter sunshine. Below and at a distance I could see the curve of the harbor and the shoreline south past Columbia Point.

Broz's voice when he finally spoke seemed barely connected to him; it seemed to ease out of something deep and remote.

"Tell me about it," he said.

I told him about the death threats to Alexander. I told him about the two kids that got shoved around in Springfield. I told him about Louis Nolan. I told him about the blackmail threat and about the films. I told him that one of the actors in Mrs. Alexander's film was Gerry. I told him about burglarizing Gerry's apartment. About the two teenyboppers, and the cocaine delivery route and the granny party and the talk I had with Bobby Browne in his office with the fake mahogany paneling. Throughout the whole recitation Joe's eyes were barely visible through the lowered slits of his eyelids. He might have been made of terra cotta as he sat tanned, old, and impeccable, without even the signs of breath stirring him. Behind me, at the door, Vinnie was no different.

Then I was through. Broz's gaze stayed on me and then moved away and settled on Vinnie. Only his eyes moved. The tanned, wrinkled face and gray head remained stationary. His old man's hands rested stilly on the desk before him. The pallid sun shining in through the picture window made a small spectrum on his desktop, where it shined through the diamond on his finger.

When Broz spoke it was again in that distant deep remote voice.

"Vinnie?"

"Yeah, Joe. I knew about it."

"And I didn't," Broz said.

"I knew about it after the kid was into it, Joe. I did the best I could."

I looked back at Vinnie. He was as he had been, arms folded, leaning against the door. He paid no attention to me. His eyes were on Broz.

Again silence. I could hear the sound of Joe's breathing now, soft and unlabored.

"And what he's telling me is so?" Broz said.

"Yeah, it is, Joe. Kid wants you to respect him. He…" Vinnie shrugged and turned his palms up.

Broz's voice got softer. "I love him," he said. "He should settle for that."

"He ain't very old, Joe," Vinnie said.

Broz nodded slowly. It was the first movement he'd made since I started talking. "I know."

Vinnie was quiet. Broz shifted his look to me.

"You don't have kids," he said.

"Not exactly."

"I didn't either until I was old. What the kid did he did on his own. Some of what he done ain't my way. Dirty movies, that stuff. I don't like that."

"And you don't like him risking Browne on something like this."

Broz nodded. "I invested in him his first time out for office," Broz said. "I been putting money in every year since, investing. Browne gets his cover blown and I've lost money on my investment. You should have told me, Vinnie."

"Maybe. But I knew how you'd feel about it, Joe. I tried to clean it up before you knew."

"My kid, Vinnie, my problem."

"I'd have cleaned it up if Alexander hadn't gotten him." Vinnie pointed at me with his chin.

Broz nodded. "Okay, Vinnie, I was you I'd have done the same." He looked at me. "What do you want?"

"I want the tapes of Mrs. Alexander destroyed. I want the both of them left alone."

"That's all?"

"Yes."

"What about the election?"

I grinned. "May the best man win," I said.

"We could drop you in the harbor," Broz said.

I nodded.

"We'll be in touch," Broz said.