A Long Walk Up the Water Slide

by Don Winslow

  “ACLU?” the guard asked.

  “Certainly not,” answered Kitteredge, who believed that the term civil liberties was possibly oxymoronic and, in any case, a bad idea.

  “What’s in the bag?”

  “Peppers.”

  “Peppers?”

  “Peppers.”

  “You don’t look like a paisan,” the guard observed as he pawed through the vegetables.

  “Nor do I feel like one,” Kitteredge said.

  A senior guard behind a glass booth leaned out, tapped his associate on the shoulder, pointed at a clipboard in his other hand, and said, “He’s here to see Don Merolla.”

  The younger guard flushed, hurriedly put the peppers back in the bag, and escorted Kitteredge down a hallway, saying, “Sorry about that. Uh, I have a brother-in-law who’s Italian.”

  They walked down a long narrow corridor to a metal door. The guard knocked and a heavyset guy with silver hair opened the door, looked Kitteredge over, and handed the guard a twenty-dollar bill. The guard left.

  “You this banker?” the guy asked.

  “I’m Ethan Kitteredge.”

  “Yeah, that’s right. Come on in.”

  If Ethan Kitteredge had ever seen an Italian social club, he would have known that this large room in the middle of a maximum-security prison was indistinguishable from one.

  The converted recreation room had a fully equipped kitchen in the northeast corner. Two large pots bubbled on the stove and a stooped old man gently stirred the contents of a saucepan. Kitteredge noticed to his horror that a complete cutlery set went along with the several cutting boards and the chopping block, at which a tall young man was wielding a cleaver on what looked to be a large piece of veal.

  A long table with metal folding chairs occupied the center of the room.

  In the southern half of the room, a dozen or so men were playing gin at three folding card tables, while another three or four were sitting in easy chairs or on a big sofa and watching two large-screen color televisions.

  The silver-haired convict noticed Kitteredge’s odd stare and explained, “The ‘General Hospital’ guys were fighting with the ‘Guiding Light’ guys. On Sundays, it’s the Giants and the Patriots. It was easier to have two TVs. Wait right here.”

  Kitteredge watched him walk over to the old man stirring the sauce and whisper in his ear. The old man set his spoon down on the stove and shuffled over to Kitteredge.

  Kitteredge was shocked at how frail Dominic Merolla appeared. He was thin and stooped, and what little hair he had left was cotton white. Liver spots marked his olive skin and his blue eyes were rheumy. He wore a plaid wool shirt, baggy khaki trousers, and old slippers.

  “Did you bring the peppers?” he asked.

  Kitteredge held up the paper bag. Merolla’s hand shook as he reached out. He opened the bag, took a pepper, gently squeezed it, sniffed it, and handed it to the silver-haired man. He seemed satisfied.

  “You know my grandson?” he asked.

  Kitteredge nodded. “Very well.”

  “He’s a good kid,” Merolla said.

  Merolla faltered as he made his way over to the long table and sat down. The silver-haired man gestured for Kitteredge to sit down.

  Merolla said, “It’s Sunday. We cook a big meal. I wanted you here and gone before the families arrive.”

  “This shouldn’t take long.”

  “I hate you pricks,” Merolla said. The silver-haired man set a glass of heavy red wine next to Merolla, who swallowed some wine and continued. “Do you know what I’m here for? Two guys steal my money; I have them killed. The police shoot thieves, they get medals. Dominic Merolla gets twenty to life. You old-money Yankees think you’re safer because Dominic Merolla is in prison. Now there’s no gambling, no loan-sharking, no vice in New England, huh?”

  Kitteredge vaguely remembered that two brothers had been gunned down while eating pasta in a Federal Hill restaurant. As he recalled, the newspaper photos were rather bloody.

  “I’m seventy-eight years old,” Merolla said. “What do they think I could do on the outside I can’t do on the inside? Chase broads? If I could still do that, I could get a broad in here, no problem. I eat, I sleep, I watch TV, I cook. I take care of business.”

  “I came—”

  Merolla interrupted. “I hate you pricks because you’re hypocrites. I buy you all, then you go on television and call me a danger to society. Accuse me of bribery. Okay, I’m the briber. I’m here. Look around the room. Do you see the bribees? No. Do you know where you’ll see them? At your cocktail parties and charity galas. On your boat. Yeah, I know all about you, you prick.”

  Kitteredge understood why Merolla had insisted he come personally—to stand in for the old WASP establishment and take a beating. Kitteredge leaned back in his chair.

  Merolla went on. “I knew your father before you and his father before him. All pricks. Your grandfather and my father did business. I can remember walking downtown with my father and seeing your grandfather walking with his family … and your grandfather walked past my father like he wasn’t there.

  “Your grandfather hid money all over New England. He hid bootlegging money, gambling money, smuggling money. Then he wouldn’t even look down his nose at my father. So I’m glad you came today to ask for your favor, so I could say no to your face. I have to check my sauce.”

  Merolla tottered to the kitchen. The young man at the chopping block had cut up the yellow peppers. Merolla inspected the peppers and stirred them into the sauce.

  Kitteredge got up and stood next to him at the stove.

  “I’m not asking for a favor so much as—”

  “Doing business,” Merolla said. “You’re the same prick your father was.”

  Merolla dipped the spoon in the pan and tasted the sauce.

  “When I started, we had the numbers,” he said, “and it was illegal. Now you have the lottery. We had booze. Now you can buy booze at the drugstore. We had the bookies. That’s still illegal, but the same newspaper that calls me a criminal prints the point spreads. We made dirty movies. Now you can go to Loew’s, see dirty movies. Dope? Now Hollywood actors joke about cocaine on the television and everybody laughs. But Dominic Merolla is locked up, so everything must be okay. You—”

  Kitteredge said, “I’ve heard enough of your self-serving, self-pitying diatribe, Mr. Merolla. You cannot create corruption and then curse it. You are a murderer, a usurer, an extortionist, and a whoremaster. While it may be true that you simply take advantage of human frailties, it’s also true that you and your ilk prey upon this society like carrion birds, except that you don’t even have the decency to wait for your vice-wounded victims to die.

  “A sterner society would stand you all up against a wall and shoot you, and were I asked to serve on such a firing squad, I would do so cheerfully and then take myself out for a very good lunch and eat it in good appetite.

  “As for the relationship between our families, it is a sad reality that earthly exigencies sometimes force one to handle excrement, but one is expected to wash one’s hands afterward. I’m glad my grandfather snubbed you, Mr. Merolla. I only regret such standards have lapsed and that we seem to be living in a society that embraces filth. Personally, I am sick to my stomach that I have to do business with you.

  “You may not have comprehended this unfortunately long-winded soliloquy of mine, Mr. Merolla, so let me put it in words you might understand: Fuck you.”

  During the seemingly interminable silence that followed, Kitteredge listened to the desultory sounds of the televisions droning what he assumed to be a football match. He wondered whether he had just botched the negotiation. It would have been better to have sent Ed Levine, who was much better at this sort of thing.

  Merolla resumed stirring the sauce and said, “You’re a prick, like your whole family. What do you want?”

  “An introduction to Carmine Bascaglia.”

  Merolla’s laugh sounded like a dry cough.

&
nbsp; “That’s funny! The banker wants to meet The Banker!” he crowed. “Why come to me? Carmine has his business in New Orleans; I have mine in New England.”

  “Because he would never see me without an introduction.”

  “That’s right.”

  Merolla set down the spoon and wandered along the counter to check a tray of antipasto. He swiped a sliver of salami from the tray and popped it in his mouth.

  “You have a problem in New Orleans, prick?” he asked.

  “Possibly.”

  “Possibly. You didn’t lower yourself to come here for ‘possibly.’ ”

  Merolla shuffled back to the long table and sat down, forcing Kitteredge to follow him around like a lovesick suitor.

  “We believe that it is in Mr. Bascaglia’s interests to talk with us,” Kitteredge said.

  “Carmine will let you know what’s in his interests,” Merolla said. “I can do this for you. It’s a phone call.”

  Kitteredge felt the cool breath of relief.

  “But why should I?” Merolla asked. “Why should I do anything for you?”

  “Perhaps you can tell me.”

  “Tell you what?”

  “What it is that you want in exchange,” Kitteredge said. “You wouldn’t have asked to see me if you didn’t think that there was something I could do for you.”

  Merolla bent over and gestured with his fingers for Kitteredge to do the same. Kitteredge found himself inches away from the old man’s face. The old man’s breath smelled of fresh garlic and stale cigars.

  “This thing of ours, it’s over,” Merolla said. His rheumy eyes looked teary now. “The Chinese, the South Americans, even the niggers are running us out. I can’t fart without the Justice Department telling me what I had for lunch, and every time I turn on the TV, I see another associate singing songs to congressmen.

  “I have grandkids, great-grandkids. You understand?”

  “I think so.”

  Merolla grabbed Kitteredge’s hands.

  “I’ll put you with Bascaglia,” he said. “I don’t want anything from you, prick. But maybe my grandkids, my great-grandkids will need a favor sometime.…”

  Merolla’s hands felt like old musty paper.

  Kitteredge slid his own hands away, swallowed hard, and said, “I’d be pleased to assist them in any way.”

  Merolla wiped his hand on his trousers.

  “Favor for favor,” he said. “Like the movie.”

  “Sorry?”

  “That movie. With Brando,” Merolla explained. “The Godfather.”

  “Yes, of course,” Kitteredge answered, making a mental note to ask Levine to watch this film and brief him. Kitteredge had gone to a movie theater once and hadn’t liked it. He could scarcely hear the hopelessly banal dialogue over the incessant bovine sound of popcorn chomping, an overly involved viewer spoke back to the actors during the entire ordeal, and his shoes got stuck on spilled soda as he tried to leave. He recalled it as a thoroughly miserable fifteen minutes.

  Merolla shakily rose to his feet, signaling that the meeting was over.

  “You’ll be hearing from Jimmy,” Merolla said, pointing his chin at the silver-haired man. “Get out of here before the families come in.”

  He turned and shuffled back to the kitchen counter.

  Jimmy walked Kitteredge to the door.

  “I’m afraid I’m unacquainted with prison etiquette,” Kitteredge said at the doorway. “Do I tip the guard on the way out?”

  Jimmy answered, “We got it covered, chief.”

  Kitteredge had the driver take him to the bank. He stopped in the rest room to scrub his hands, then went into the office. Ed Levine was poring over books at the conference table.

  “How did it go?” asked Ed, concerned that Kitteredge looked so tired.

  “He will make the introduction,” Kitteredge said. He sat down behind his desk and began to stroke the thread lines on the model of his boat, the Haridan.

  “What’s it going to cost?” Ed asked.

  “Have you seen a film called The Godfather?”

  “Sure.”

  “So has Dominic Merolla,” Kitteredge said. “He wants a return favor for his grandchildren or great-grandchildren. In exchange for a telephone call, the Merolla crime family has our marker for potentially the next century.”

  The news didn’t surprise Ed, but it did add heat to the heartburn he’d been feeling for the last hour or so, ever since he’d figured out what had been bothering him about Marc Merolla’s fraternity picture.

  “I’ve been doing some research,” Ed started. “Guess who was Peter Hathaway’s college roommate.”

  Kitteredge had a headache. He didn’t want to guess. “Who?”

  “Marc Merolla.”

  Kitteredge gazed at the sleek lines of his boat. He longed to be skimming through the clean blue water of the open ocean.

  After a while he smiled and said, “We’ve been had, Edward.”

  “We don’t know that yet, sir,” Ed answered. “It might be a coincidence. I have people working on it now.”

  Kitteredge nodded, but his instincts told him the truth: Dominic Merolla had just committed him to the Mafia takeover of the Landis television empire.

  “It brings rather a new meaning to the Family Cable Network, doesn’t it?” he asked.

  “There’s something else.”

  “Oh, good.”

  “Just an oddity, really,” Ed added quickly. “He had another roommate at Brown.”

  “Martin Bormann?”

  “Kenny Lafreniere.”

  Kitteredge stared at him blankly.

  “Dr. Kenneth Lafreniere,” Ed prompted. “Seven years ago, he sliced up his wife and took a header off the Newport Bridge. It was in all the papers.”

  Ethan Kitteredge realized that he had never managed to make Ed understand that the only newspaper articles he ever saw were the ones that Ed clipped out and made him read.

  “Small world,” Kitteredge said. “Providence.”

  Perhaps it’s time to retire, he thought, attend board meetings, social functions and the like, and let Ed run Friends. The board would have to be persuaded to allow someone outside of the family in that post, but perhaps they could be persuaded that times had changed.

  Kitteredge sighed. “Does it seem to you that the world becomes more vulgar every day?”

  “I live in New York,” Ed answered.

  Kitteredge stood up.

  “I’ll be at home,” he said. “Check out Marc’s involvement; let me know the second our mob associates call.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And Ed, visit with a realtor, would you?” Kitteredge said from the doorway. “I might want you to relocate to Providence. I’m thinking of taking a long trip when this is over.”

  “Where to, sir?”

  To the clean open ocean, Kitteredge thought, away from all … this.

  “I was thinking of the nineteenth century,” Kitteredge said as he walked out the door.

  20

  The light came on over the confessional booth and Joey politely waved an old lady in front of him. She smiled and tottered over to confess her sins.

  Joey smiled back. He didn’t give a shit about the old lady, but he was trying to maneuver the situation so that he could get the priest in the other booth. Joey liked to confess to Mexican priests who didn’t understand a single word he was saying. This Catholic thing was the best deal in the world if you worked it right.

  The other booth opened up and Joey hustled over. He knelt down, the window slid open, and he fought the urge to order a double cheeseburger, fries, and a large diet soda. Instead, he mumbled, “Bless me, father, for I have sinned. It has been one day since my last confession.”

  He went on to relate the usual litany of fraud, larceny, extortion, blackmail, and fornication, got sentenced to three Hail Marys and a Sincere Act of Contrition, went out and did them, then met Harold at the back of the church.

  “If I died right now
, Harold,” he boasted, “I’d go straight to heaven.”

  Joey was always trying to get Harold to go to confession but insisted that he do it in another jurisdiction, like Guatemala or someplace like that. He didn’t fully trust Harold to confess his own sins and keep him out of it, and the nuns had never been really clear—despite Joey’s constant questions—on what happened if someone dropped a dime on you instead of you doing it yourself.

  “God send you a long life, boss,” Harold said.

  Joey wasn’t entirely happy that his bodyguard seemed to be leaving this matter to God, but he had other things on his mind. “Have you located that one-armed midget yet?”

  “Get this, Joey. Yesterday, it’s like he drops off the face of the earth. This morning, he’s sitting out on the River Walk eating breakfast like he doesn’t have a care in the world.”

  “I’ll give him a care,” Joey said as he got into the car.

  This worried Harold.

  “Joey,” he said, sliding into the driver’s seat, “you remember Carmine said you were supposed to keep a low profile here. I don’t think he’d like you trashing some guy on the River Walk on a Sunday morning.”

  “I’m just gonna talk to him.”

  This didn’t do much to soothe Harold. He’d been present at one of Joey’s conversations, when his boss smacked the listener in the face with a tire iron and then peed into the guy’s shattered mouth. True, that conversation had been in the back of a warehouse, but Harold had also tried to restrain Joey the night he’d made the late Sammy Black take his clothes off, stroll through a shocked crowd of theatergoers on Times Square, and recite, “I will never hold back on Joey Foglio. I will never hold back on Joey Foglio.” Both those evenings had started off by Joey saying that he just wanted to talk.

  Harold thought he owed it to Joey to try again, because Carmine “The Banker” Bascaglia wasn’t going to put up with this kind of shit. The reason Don Carmine was called “The Banker” instead of “The Butcher,” even though the latter sounded better, was because he was all business. He had warned Joey in no uncertain terms that he was there to make money, not headlines.