by Thomson, Lh
But he had a look that said that wasn’t it. “That all?” I asked.
Bryson chewed his lower lip for a split-second then opened up. “Honestly? I’ve been a security expert for twenty years, and none of my employers have ever been hit. This is the best job I’ve ever had, and they’re great to work for. I’m not going to let that be ruined.”
I didn’t need to ask him why they hadn’t just called the cops. Even with a break-in, the case would be “warehoused” – stored on a metaphorical high shelf, where it didn’t have to take time away from priority investigations, things involving public safety or great financial loss. Recently, the department had taken heat for not showing up at home-invasion-style burglaries until nearly an hour after they’d happened; this didn’t even warrant a look, by comparison.
“Can you get me a couple of tickets for the next game?” The Union were playing Toronto that weekend in a battle for second place in the East. “I’ll snoop around a bit. Same crew working?”
“Sure. We can comp you for as long as you need. Just meet me at the office a half hour before kickoff. What are you thinking?”
I said, “I’ll play it by ear, but there’s usually an inside connection on this sort of thing. It’ll be kids, probably. They had to hear where the beer was from someone, had to know when to hit it.”
“So you figure it was to drink it, not sell it?” He said it with a twinkle in his eye. We were both teenagers once.
“Maybe a bit of both. It’s a lot of beer; might be tough to get them to roll over on each other.”
“Over to you, chief,” he said.
“Hey, worst come to worst, I get to go to the game,” I said.
“You’re a fan?”
“Yep. Caught four last year, one so far this year.”
“You don’t have season seats?”
I shook my head. “Just one of those things. I’m still planning on it, though.” I didn’t tell him the likelihood of my attending was down to my season-ticket holding brother, Mike, and his current level of irritation with yours truly.
Bryson sighed. “Better sooner than later, chief. They’re a hot draw these days.”
He had a point. The Union was about the only reason for me to go to Chester, I figured. When the crowd roared and the Sons of Ben sang with full voice, it sure beat just watching the game on TV.
I don’t know why I felt the need to go over to my parents’ old neighborhood after meeting with the stadium security expert. Perhaps it was the reminder at the gallery, earlier in the day, that I’d strayed a long way from my roots, both as an artist and as a decent human being.
I avoided the house and just walked around instead. After about twenty minutes, I found myself standing outside a familiar stucco building, two businesses, one on each floor. It was the building I’d rented for my first studio, the place at which I’d been “discovered” by my mentor in the world of forgery. In its back room, I’d dissected the works of multiple schools and multiple artists; Yokoyama Taikan, Gensou Okuda, Shibata Zeshin; I’d used the finest brush points to mimic the former’s minute, precise strokes, trying to recapture his esthetic view of picturesque mountain scenes and elegant cranes; I learned to blend colors precisely, like the beloved ochre and reds of Okuda’s landscapes. I learned the self-control and restraint required to work in the simple-yet-profound manner of Zeshin.
When you’ve developed an obsession, it’s usually easier for people on the outside to spot your problem, to tell you it’s time to back off or get help. But when you’re addicted to art? No one sees that as a bad thing. It’s just too damn refined. If you drink too much coffee or eat too much junk food, someone will tell you about it. If you spend hours studying paint whorls in Japanese classics? They just think you’re a geek.
It took eighteen months of intense study and concentration to reach a point at which my work would fool even the most avid supporter, but it was eventually that good. And I’d revelled in it, in the long, languid hours that passed while working on the tiniest detail; it was as precise as boxing, but with none of the speed, the frenetic ferocity.
From the particle board over the main window, it looked like maybe the place hadn’t had a tenant since my move uptown, a year before I went to prison. Even though the neighborhood was humming, it was as if my acts of selfishness had scarred it permanently, left it unwanted.
And that had me thinking: when a gallery has a handful of small-but-expensive classic artists on display, why would a robber ignore them? Each was worth in the tens of thousands, even hot. So why would someone grab the Vermeer but not those? Sure, it was retirement dough if they could move it on the black market. But that was a big if.
And most crooks I know? They don’t leave money on the table.
Chapter Two
My family’s neighborhood is called Fishtown, and it’s about as glamorous as the name sounds.
The narrow old brick-and-wood buildings are attached, block-on-block, crammed together tight, tall and skinny, dark hues and wood shingle siding. Many of them are multi-family and still others – like my parents’ house – were just the most that young immigrant families could ever hope to afford back in the day. The streets between them are no wider than modern alleys, with decades of beaten down, repaired and patched asphalt, worn to a near-glassy smoothness in the occasional spot.
The neighborhood has been filled for years by the ranks of the blue-collar working man: firefighters, cops, dock workers, construction workers, garbage men, mailmen, teachers and transit drivers, all crammed in with their wives and husbands and kids and grandparents, like shoes stored in a box one size too small, then piled on top of one another in a corner cupboard.
Nearly everyone here is Irish, or Italian or Russian. But everyone displays their Star Spangled Banner in some prominent spot on their house and means it, too. Every person here, no matter how well off they’ve been, has a father or a grandfather who’s willing to smack them silly still, and sit them down and lecture them about life in the old country, and how good they’ve got it now.
In summer, when the mercury climbs high, the humidity swelters and the sidewalk feels like it might melt; the close quarters can boil over into trouble, with nowhere good for all of that pressure to go, long-time next-door neighbors coming to rapid blows in short, unsustainable explosions of passion.
But usually, you see the best in people, a kind of hum of activity as they blow off that steam, of guys in football jerseys and long shorts swapping stories on the stoops while sharing a tall boy, and kids playing in the street, hanging around Central Pizza for a slice or a hoagie, maybe cooling off under an open hydrant; it’s a real village in the city, if you come from here.
Even though it’s gotten a little more upscale in recent years, with musicians and artists enjoying the affordability, people have thought of Fishtown as low-rent for years. But that’s fine with us. When you lived here, you at least knew who your neighbors were. My parents, Al and Maureen, raised five kids in one of the those tiny houses, with my dad walking a beat for twenty years and manning a precinct desk job for another ten after that. My sister’s a pharmaceutical executive in California, and we don’t talk much. We didn’t give her the easiest time growing up.
Their four boys all stayed home, took on good traditional Irish Catholic jobs: my eldest brother Andy is a priest, my youngest brother Davy is a beat cop, like his old man. Brother number two, Michael, is working his way up the ladder with the city workers’ union, although like everyone else, we joke that there ain’t much real working involved.
Me? I was supposed to be the boxer, the success story. I was a silver gloves champ as a teenager. But in hindsight, that sense of community that seemed so important to me became a weight around my neck, like trying to keep the world’s largest family happy. Everyone in the neighborhood expected me to be an athlete and had decided my future before I’d even thought about it.
So I loved to get away from them all, to find quiet places where I could read or draw. I should
have – would have – paid more attention in class if I hadn’t been doodling or drawing constantly, or trying to figure out a world no one else could see. My friends thought I was nuts, I think.
When I discovered girls and started rebelling against my parents, my boxing career really went south, a victim of teenage time management. Half out of desperation, my Pa let me attend the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts after high school; it has a world-class rep but it wasn’t what he thought of as a manly kind of thing to do.
That decision and all of my stupid choices that followed played frequent roles in our conversations.
I was hoping he wasn’t in the mood to go a round or two when I stopped by The Druid.
It was his favorite watering hole, a corner draught bar just off Marlborough Street that had long been a hangout of local Irish Americans and a fair cut of the Philly police department as well. It was hallowed ground, a safe-haven, the kind of place where they never had to hear shit about what goes on behind the blue shield. In the Druid, the good guys were never the bad guys, criminals were all derived from the same ethnicity – scumbag – and modern ideas about diet, feminism and civil rights pretty much went out the window.
Its walls were lined with black-and-white photos of Philly lore: Shibe Park, the first local pro ball diamond, long torn down, a rebar-and-concrete pillbox built before the first war; Mike Schmidt teeing off on Mr. Spalding, driving it upper deck; Chuck “Concrete Charlie” Bednarik, the greatest tackler who ever played in the NFL, posing with a ball back in the ’50s; Norm Van Brocklin after beating the Packers back in 1960.
As you might have guessed from the age of the display, it wasn’t exactly a happening, trendy spot; the red velour upholstery was even older than the customers.
My father had his own regular stool along the bar, just in front of an impressive line of draught taps. There was a spot on one side of him reserved for Davy, and the spot on the other side for Michael. Andy didn’t drink so much, except on special occasions. I didn’t get a stool, not no more. In fact, most of the time I got the sense I wasn’t welcome, at least from the younger regulars. But I made the effort anyway, because … well, because it’s family, and that’s what you do.
My brothers were nowhere to be seen, which was a good thing. Michael wasn’t such a problem, but Davy was still taking grief over me at his station over having an ex-con for a brother. We’d gotten along real good when we were kids. The fact that I’d reformed, landed a respectable job? It wasn’t cutting much slack with him. He wouldn’t have believed me, but I understood it; I was at least as ashamed of myself as he was of me.
“What’s up kid?” Pa asked as I sidled into Michael’s spot. He had a Salisbury steak on the bar counter in front of him and had already demolished about half of it. “You working hard or hardly working?”
“Hey Pa, how’s the battle?”
“Can’t complain. Dickie Marshall retired last week and his old lady’s already driving him crazy, so he’s coming down for a pint. Says he’s going to start hanging out here days.”
“Someone else for the crib games.”
He thought about that. “You know… that’s a hell of an idea. He’s one shit crib player, and he’s a bad gambler, too. I could use a little extra cash.”
Marty was the big, elderly bartender/day manager. He knew everybody who drank here regularly going back forty years, but he never said much, even if he knew you well. He was big and he stooped a little, with the haunted look of a man who understands the world in which he lives. He brought me over a Rolling Rock – another reason I wasn’t too popular with some regulars. I looked at the green beer bottle, its imprinted white label. It had been years since they moved Rolling Rock’s production to Jersey, but some of the locals still swore they’d never drink it again.
Marty said, “You keeping out of trouble, kid?”
I tipped the bottle in his direction and took a swallow. “Pounding the pavement, making a buck. How about you?”
He waved both hands and leaned on the bar for a moment, fatigued. “Bah. You know how it is, kid. Economy’s too rough for me to retire just yet. What I really need is another set of hands around here, but nobody wants a half-time job no more. You got that insurance gig still?”
“You bet. Saved the company a hundred grand just this morning, which puts me one step closer to having a mortgage again.”
My father took another big mouthful of Salisbury steak and got halfway through it before cocking a glance sideways. “That so? Lunch is on the kid today, Marty.”
I wasn’t going to argue. I not only owed my old man, big time, I wanted to give him good reasons to be proud for the first time since my college graduation.
He finished up, sponging the remaining gravy with a dinner roll, before centering his cutlery. Then he finished the second half of his glass of beer. “Another Straub, Marty,” he said. Straub was hard-core local beer; a German-style brew produced in small batches by an old family outfit in St. Mary’s, a small town up in the northwest of the state.
My old man loved it, even though he was Irish as they come. It was either Guinness or Straub, and nothing else.
He nodded towards the patio. “Let’s go stand outside for a minute so I can have a smoke.” Even though he’d beaten prostate cancer when he was younger, my old man still went through a half-pack of Winston a day. We’d all long given up trying to change his mind.
Well, everyone except Ma.
Pa took a deep drag and blew out the smoke. “So what’s up kid? You never come around this time of day. That fancy new condo of yours downtown feeling lonely?”
I was renting a nice loft just off the arts district until I could put a down payment on my own place. “No, I just wanted to stop in when I had a chance,” I said, checking out the busy street traffic, noisy in the late afternoon. “Look, I’ve got a big case to work on; not sure I’m going to make it over for Sunday dinner.”
He shot me a dead stare. “You want me to tell your mother? I don’t think so. You’re skipping her Sunday dinner? You call her up and tell her. Jaysus, the last time I didn’t hear the end.”
“You talk to Davy yet?”
Pa looked down at his shoes. “So: that’s what you’re really worrying about.”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
“Look, you just got to give him time, Liam. He needs to get past it in his own way, like the rest of us.”
“You ain’t past it, either.”
“Should I be?”
I looked down at the pavement, feeling the shame again. “No, course not. I know how bad I fucked up, believe me. I did the time.”
He blew out a turbulent cloud of blue smoke “We all did the time.”
“Yeah.” I knew that, too.
“Well, it’s just going to be harder for Davy, that’s all. He’s got to work with guys you both grew up around.”
“So… you’ve talked to him?”
He shook his head. “No. But if you’re not coming over on Sunday, I’m sure the topic of your job over the last year will come up. Your mother will raise it, if nothing else.”
“She’s the best.”
“Better than either of us deserve. Hell of a lot better. So what’s the case?”
“Art gallery robbery yesterday, City Center. A Vermeer.”
I regretted the words as soon as they left my mouth, and sure enough, he looked at me cockeyed again.
“That supposed to mean something to me?”
“Old dead Dutch guy.”
“So… worth a lot of money, then.”
“Yeah, a ton.”
He hated that I liked art, that I saw more in it than he did. Maybe it was just old Irish resentment; Ma had always enjoyed a pretty oil or landscape and she’d painted a few still life works of her own, although admittedly without success. But Pa had never understood it or seen much in it. I think he was a bit embarrassed by it all.
“You couldn’t just be a bank robber, like Pavel’s youngest boy.”
Pavel
Yashin was our Russian Orthodox neighbor. He and dad competed over everything.
“That would be better that forging?”
He snorted. “Cop has a grudging respect for the old-school criminal. But who wants a painter in the family?” He tossed his cigarette down onto the roped off sidewalk that substituted for a “patio” at The Druid. “Well, you’re mother’s not going to be happy, so you’ll hear about it next week. But at least you get out of church, too.”
“You got that right.”
He smiled and clapped a hand on my shoulder. “You figure out a way to get me out of it too, you let me know.”
I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I kind of enjoy church. I’d already shattered any illusions he’d held about being a jock. Liking church would forever mark me as weak-willed to Dad and Davy, even as they told everyone how proud they were of Andy. They were always scheming to get out early and watch football.
It was one thing to be a priest; a local neighborhood priest could still command some respect, even with the troubles the church was facing. But admitting you liked church? Well, that was like admitting you enjoyed missing the pre-game show.
Dad had his priorities figured out. If he could get out of church, he would. He’d still pray, of course – but it usually had something to do with the Eagles and whether they’d beat the point spread.
Leo Tesser lived in a condo that was part of a neat old factory conversion off Broad Street and Lehigh Avenue. It was the kind of immaculate old dark-brick place that could have doubled for a set on a TV show in which trendy young people shared their hilarious life problems.
Alison Pace had called ahead to tell him I was coming. I parked the beast under a shade tree outside so the cracked-leather seats wouldn’t suffer.
I was about to cross the street when a short blonde woman walked out of the building. She was beautiful, her hair pushed up in a flowing pony tail, white blouse, short blue skirt, white stockings, tall heels with seductive ankle straps. She couldn’t have been more than five-feet-two.
