by Thomson, Lh
“He’s a nice boy, but he doesn’t necessarily see the potential in these things.”
Walter had always been a showman. He got most of his clients acquitted, but he also got the pick of the best clients by knowing how to capitalize on something public.
The gallery robbery wasn’t a big story, as long it stayed just that: a straight snatch-and-run by a couple of thugs. But Walter was smart enough to know that if something else came up in the insurance investigation, suddenly the story might have public relations legs.
“Got a favorite spot?” I asked
“How about Modo Mio? Italian joint off ...”
“Are you kidding? It’s a few blocks from my parents’ house. Good food.”
We arranged to meet at 1 p.m.
“Looking forward to it, my boy,” he said.
Any time Walter was that happy, it had to be bad news for somebody.
I went back home and worked on my foot movement, dancing circles around the heavy bag, making sure to keep them wide enough to be balanced, but narrow enough to be mobile, staying on my toes.
It’s not that I ever expected to compete in the ring again; there’s just something relaxing about the consistency of the exercise, taking half steps then shuffling a few paces sideways, stepping up, shuffling back, then bob and weave, then throw, then shuffle out. If I hadn’t gotten back into boxing in prison, I might have gone stir crazy, as its library wasn’t exactly extensive.
Nora had called earlier in the day and left a message on my home phone but I didn’t return it until after my workout. I got changed into boxers and an undershirt, brewed some tea and put my feet up in front of the TV, turning it on with the sounded muted before I dialed her back.
“Hey you,” she said. “You’re finally home.”
“Working man.”
“Even weekends?”
“Especially weekends.”
She chortled. “I really enjoyed the game today. Awesome.”
“Yeah, nothing like free tickets.”
“And cold beer.”
“And a good game.”
“And the company was nice, too.”
I said, “Yeah, wasn’t the crowd something else today? Wow.”
She sighed. “I was thinking more that it was a nice place to take someone special.”
“Yeah? So what, you’re going to take a date the next time you go and leave me behind?
Nora was silent for a few seconds. “Sometimes I wonder if you were hit in the head too many times when you were a fighter, you know that?”
“Very funny. Hey, everybody, it’s Nora, the standup from Fishtown.”
She said, “So what are you doing for the rest of the night?”
“Nothing. Just worked out. Going to watch a little T.V. Then I’ll probably hit the sack.”
“Mr. Excitement.”
“It’s hardly the heady thrill of being an art curator…but hey, you know me.”
She laughed. “I’m glad I do at that. Why aren’t you working on any of your art?” She knew my probationary restriction had already passed, but I still wasn’t interested. So I changed the subject.
“Are you going to come with me to next week’s game? They’re home again, to D.C.”
“Ahhh… damn. I can’t. My cousin Ellie is getting married and I’m in the wedding party.”
“You’d skip the Union and an afternoon with yours truly for a horrendous bridesmaid’s dress? Couldn’t you tell them you have a flesh-eating disease, or something?”
She laughed. “I don’t think they’d buy it. I’d have to amputate a leg before I could go back to work.”
“And then you couldn’t go to soccer with me no more, what with the jealousy, watching those guys run around all afternoon, and you with your one good leg.”
We both chuckled. It was an entirely stupid conversation, which is what we usually enjoyed most. But I was tired, and I’d run out of things to say. I wanted her to keep talking. I always wanted Nora to keep talking.
Instead, she just sighed again and said, “Goodnight, Liam.”
“Goodnight Nora.”
The small corner restaurant had windows smudged as much by age as dust, and the door creaked on its spring when we entered. Inside, booths lined both walls, and a simple cash register upfront lowered the pretension level.
It was busy for a Sunday, and the only table was at the back near the washrooms.
“Way to reserve us a decent spot, Walter,” I said sarcastically as I joined him, reaching across the red-and-white checked tablecloth to shake his hand.
“You have to try the Agnolotti, my boy. It’s a wonderful homemade ravioli that they prepare with a mixture of rabbit and veal. Absolutely delicious.”
I laughed. “I’ve had just about everything on the menu. You want something amazing? Try the Razze. It’s fresh skate in marsala, almond and asparagus butter. My neighbor Mrs. Pescatelli makes it, and even hers isn’t as good as this place.”
Walter looked up to the Heavens and mouthed a silent prayer of thank you. “I love good food, my boy. There’s nothing like a neighborhood joint where the chef is just cooking home dishes from the old country.”
“I didn’t know you were religious, Walter.”
He shrugged. “I find we all need some help from the man upstairs sometimes, so it helps to stay in touch.”
Seemed futile to me; Walter’s various and sundry sins would cost more to bail out than any church had on offer.
We ordered a bottle of wine, along with some polpo and bruschetta for appetizers. Once the waiter had taken our order, Walter leaned in. “All right, my boy, spill it: what’s the story with the gallery robbery?”
“You got me.”
“Really?”
“Really. It’s a robbery. So far, that’s all I really know.”
“But you’ve been asking a lot of questions nonetheless, all over town. I understand the Hecht brothers, among others are less than happy with you.”
“You know them?”
“I know of them – in a ‘stay the hell away from them’ sort of way. The word is they’ve got some very organized friends, if you get my drift. You need to keep your head down.”
“I’m trying.”
“Really? It sounds like your spinning around in circles.”
“Well sure. But that sort of makes sense when you don’t know much about a situation, right?”
He was probably right but I wasn’t going to admit it.
He thought about it for a moment as the waiter set down our appetizers. “Okay, I’ll give you your due. What makes you think there’s an inside connection? Why not just random guys?”
I shook my head. “Doesn’t sit right. That’s an obscure, esoteric artist, and yet the Vermeer was the only piece they touched. That’s someone with some knowledge.” I didn’t mention the Dufresne; my instincts told me keeping back the quirkier aspects might keep Walter off of my back later on.
“Sure; but why someone there that day? Why attend one’s own robbery?”
“For the simple reason that right now the only half-dozen people the Philly cops aren’t particularly interested in are the people who were there at the time. They figure it the same way as you.”
His eyes narrowed. “But you figure it different.”
I nodded. “I haven’t figured anything yet, Walter, but there’s definitely something going on.”
“Hmmm….” He smiled. “You know, whoever those two poor, disillusioned and disadvantaged individuals were who robbed that gallery, they’re going to need solid legal representation, my boy.”
“Walter, have you ever considered before you took on a client whether they actually committed the crime?”
His eyes twinkled. “System only works if everyone gets a good defence, Liam. Guilty, not guilty… that’s not my business. In fact, I make it clear that I don’t really want to hear it either way.”
“Long as they don’t move in next door to you when they get out?”
He leane
d across the table conspiratorially and whispered under the lunch time din. “I’m on the twenty-third floor. They’d need suction cups and a hell of a head for heights.”
“Some of the guys I met inside? I wouldn’t suggest it if I were you.”
Walter studied me for a moment. “Whatever happened with you, boy? When you were in college and I was just getting started defending guys in your neighborhood, everyone saw big things.”
It was a hell of a question; he was never long on tact, the counsellor from Franklintown. But it was one I’d considered myself a few times. These days, however, things were looking up. I said, “I made my mistakes young enough that I still have time to recover.”
“Good to know, my boy. If you ever need any investigative work on the side, you know you can always look me up.”
Walter was a busy guy, a lawyer to headline makers. In the prior year alone, he’d had a high-profile armored car crew, the Southside Shouter – a particularly bizarre home invasion specialist who woke his victims in the middle of the night by screaming in their ear – the loan officer accused of the worst case of fraud in Philadelphia banking history, and high-profile sex assault charges against a kids’ sports coach.
He was a great guy; but I didn’t need him involved. My list of unanswered questions was mounting and Walter snooping around wasn’t going to help me figure out why someone would leave thousands of dollars in vintage art behind at a robbery, or how local wiseguys might be involved, or whether they had any connection to the Hecht brothers and their lackey John DeGoey.
“Walter, how are you going to take on the gallery thing as well? You already have a caseload that would tire a cop.”
He snorted. “I feel as capable as when I was your age.”
“Doesn’t it wear you down a little, seeing the same parade of faces over and over again?”
Walter grinned devilishly. “Not really, my boy. Not so long as the last faces I see are Andrew Jackson, Ulysses S. Grant and Benjamin Franklin.”
“All about the Benjamins, isn’t it, Walter?”
“Makes the world go round, Liam, my lad,” he said, taking a long pull on his glass of beer. “Makes the world go round.”
Chapter Five
Walter had taken a cab over to the restaurant, so I agreed to drive him over to his club, where he was meeting his buddies for a bout of competitive drinking, with maybe some poker thrown in for good measure.
The Ivy Club is the kind of place the guys from the Chestnut Hill mansions went when they got lonely in those big empty houses, a white plaster and brick estate-sized building. It had been a men’s-only club for years – and an exclusive one, at that. But modern times meant new attitudes, which had meant the possible intrusion of …shudder … people’s wives and visible minorities.
The solution had been to create a clubroom specifically for women, designed by women. They were like two trophy rooms: the trophy husbands in one, the trophy wives in the other.
Still, Walter swore up and down that the weekly Texas hold ‘em game upstairs was the best action around. “These guys couldn’t tell an inside straight from an inside right, Quinn. You should get in on this,” he said, as I pulled up outside the oversized front steps.
“I’m supposed to be turning over a new leaf. Besides, these guys run rich for my blood.
He laughed. “Oh please. The art expert from Fishtown? We are who we are.”
Yeah, and if I believed that, Walter would be representing me right now.
“You sure you don’t want to come in for a post-lunch snifter?” he said.
“Nah. I told my Ma I’d be working today. The guilt would kill me.”
“Suit yourself,” he said, as he got out. “Me? I need the odd shot of courage. I know people like to think of me in purely cold, reptilian terms, but there are days…” Then he leaned back through the open window. “Like I said, keep me posted, Liam. There’s a lot of work I could throw your way.”
There was a certain pragmatic reality to it.
“Hey,” I said. “Who’s the blonde?”
He turned and looked over his shoulder. It was the same woman I’d seen coming out of Leo Tesser’s apartment building. I was pretty sure it was …
“That’s Paul Dibartolo’s girlfriend, Monica Lamb,” he said. “She’s the latest in a string since the departure of the much–lamented Mrs. Dibartolo.”
That clinched it. The girl from the picture. “You know he was there the day of the robbery, right?”
Walter looked back over his shoulder again quickly. “Really? I should probably comfort the man.”
“Pure class, Walter. The blonde was also walking out of your boy Leo’s apartment building yesterday. Heck of a coincidence, that.”
“Isn’t he dating the gallery curator?”
“Apparently one among several.”
Walter’s smile was a mile wide. “Perhaps I misjudged the boy. He might have a future as a lawyer yet.”
After dropping him off, I drove home and parked in the underground lot, then took the elevator up to my floor.
Something felt wrong the second I stepped into the hallway, the sensation of imminent danger, boundaries crossed and out of place. I’d seen Ricky just that morning; but he wasn’t in the habit of leaving his apartment door open a half-foot. I walked over and gingerly pushed it the rest of the way with my foot.
I went in cautiously, moving slowly down the small corridor that led past his kitchen and into his living room area. He was spending more time than ever these days downstairs at his boyfriend Al’s place, so it could have been a robbery without him being home.
“Ricky? You okay buddy?” I said, before peeking around the corner of the living room.
Ricky was sitting in his armchair in a t-shirt and jeans, shaking with fear. He had a welt above his eye, and given his company, I figured the butt end of a gun for the culprit. The heavy in the other armchair was older, late sixties, neat moustache, balding, suit. His partner was a young guy, tanned, immaculate suit, late twenties, standing behind Ricky’s chair, gun trained on me.
The older one leaned forward, like a grandfather who wanted to chat, or maybe tell me a story. “Mr. Quinn. Thank you for joining us at last. Your friend here said you’d gone to meet someone for lunch. You sure do take a long time to eat.”
“It was Modo Mio. It’s this good little…”
The kid waved the gun at me to shut me up, annoyed. “Who you talking to? We know it, okay. Shit… guy’s a restaurant critic.”
The older man hand-motioned for him to calm down. “Will you relax? For crying out loud …” He turned his attention back to me. “Sorry about that. And sorry for bumping your friend on the head here, but he got all hysterical like and started screaming and stuff.”
“Do you blame him? You guys aren’t exactly Ricky’s usual social circle.”
He smiled thinly. “I got that impression, yeah. Listen, we got an associate wants to talk to you.”
“Not an ex-boxer by any chance, sort of slow? Proud he was Golden Gloves once?”
The older guy looked puzzled. “Not that I know of. And I wouldn’t suggest it to him, neither. He might take it the wrong way.”
That was interesting: it sounded like they weren’t with the three jerks who’d tried to work me over earlier. I didn’t really have any choice in the matter, anyway, given their hardware.
The old guy looked up at his younger associate. “Make the call, kid,” he said.
A few seconds later, the kid was talking rapidly on a cell phone. He hung up. “He’ll be here in a few minutes,” he said.
Sure enough, after a tense five-minute wait, the older guy led us out of the apartment. As soon as we were in the corridor, he motioned for Ricky to go back inside. “Don’t even think about calling the cops, or we’ll be back,” he said, in a permanent, final tone.
Ricky was still stunned, hesitant. I said, “It’s okay, Ricky. Just head on back inside; these gentleman aren’t looking to make any waves.” I didn’t
tell Ricky that if they’d planned on killing me he’d probably have been dead already. The poor guy was already frightened enough. The term “material witness” wasn’t likely to comfort him.
We took the elevator down with one of them on either side. Unlike the guys in the alley, the two of them didn’t seem inclined to escalate the threat level; it made sense to wait the situation out and see what was going on.
Outside the building and down the front steps, a black stretch limo had pulled up to the curb. “In,” the younger one said. The sidewalk was empty aside from the three us, and a moment later the rear passenger door opened.
The older man got in first and took the far passenger seat. The jump seats were open, and the young guy motioned for me to climb aboard.
Sitting next to the older hood was a familiar, heavy-set figure. His three-piece suit was immaculate, a tightly-knit black wool with dark pinstripes, and his silver-black hair as neat as a magazine cover.
Vin “The Shin” Terrasini had seen his share of newspaper covers, and then some. Or, as he liked to tell his associates, one hundred and twenty-two charges to date … and no convictions.
At seventy-two, he’d ruled over the traditional local underworld for two decades. The nickname stemmed from his infamous rod of correction, an iron bar he’d used when he was younger to shatter guys’ shins when they couldn’t pay their debts. Allegedly.
“Mr. Quinn. We haven’t met.”
I nodded in his direction. “Mr. Terrasini.”
He smiled, well aware he didn’t need to introduce himself. “I hear from my associates that you’re looking for the two guys who knocked over that gallery.”
“Yes sir. I work for an insurance company.”
“You’re Al Quinn’s boy, aren’t you?”
That threw me a little. “You know my father?”
He nodded. “Good cop. Could have retired earlier if he wasn’t such a good cop.”
“Nice to hear, sir.” Comforting too, after talking to Norm Esterhaus. And yeah, I called him sir. It wasn’t that I wanted to score points in particular; he just scared the hell out of me.
