Deacon King Kong

by James McBride

  She laughed easily, asking questions, the shyness gone now, while he nodded silently. She talked the entire twenty minutes, which seemed to pass in seconds, and all the while he felt like shouting, “I’m the seal on the beach. If you only knew me.” But instead he was light and firm, halfheartedly trying to block her questions by pretending to be aloof and distrustful. She saw through it all, he could tell. She saw him clearly. He felt naked. She wanted to know why he was there. She wanted to know everything.

  But she could never know.

  That was part of the arrangement. He had agreed to the Governor’s harebrained scheme, of course. In part because he loved his father. The parts of his father that he knew ran deepest were all about trust. Any man his father trusted had to be a loving, good man. There was no doubt. Guido Elefante had never backed out on his word with a man he trusted. Neither did his father care what others thought of him. Poppa loved his mother, no doubt because Momma was anything but the typical Brooklyn Italian housewife like so many on his block, the women who chatted about nothing, tossing cannolis around, filing obediently into mass at St. Andrew’s every morning praying for their husband’s redemption and, by extension, their own, complaining about the niggers and the spics taking over the neighborhood while their husbands ran liquor and shot anyone who opened their mouth wrong about their gambling operations and horse-racing fixes and their running roughshod over the coloreds. His mother didn’t care about the coloreds. She saw them just as people. She cared about plants, and digging for them in the empty lots around their neighborhood—plants, she insisted, that had kept her husband alive long after most expected him to be gone. And as for their son, she never asked questions of Thomas; she respected Elefante when he was but a boy because she understood, instinctively, that her son would be different from most of the Italians in the neighborhood, had to be different just like she and her husband had to be different to survive. She never made apologies for her family. The Elefantes were what they were. That was all there was to it. Poppa had welcomed the Governor into his world. And so Elefante did as well. They were partners now. That was decided.

  Also, there was the intrigue of the whole business.

  And of course, the money.

  Was it about the money? he asked himself.

  He glanced at the folded paper on the car seat next to him. It was the paper that the Governor had placed in his fist when they spoke of Poppa.

  “A man who does not trust cannot be trusted.”

  Elefante swung the big Lincoln to the off ramp of the FDR just past Houston Street. The silhouette of the Brooklyn Bridge loomed ahead. He thought of their conversation again, and the Governor’s story.

  “I’m losing my mind,” he murmured.

  * * *

  It had been late afternoon and the Governor was nearly asleep when he told Elefante the story of the “soap” he’d given to the younger man’s father. Lying on the couch, he spoke to the ceiling while a fan overhead creaked ceaselessly:

  “For almost a thousand years, the Church of the Visitation in Vienna, Austria, had these precious treasures,” he said. “Manuscripts, candleholders, altar cups. Most of it would be biscuits to a bear to you and me. Stuff used during mass, altar cup to drink our savior’s blood, candleholders, that sort of thing. Some gold coins. All of it was made to last. It’s hundreds of years old, this stuff. Passed down through generations. When World War II came, the church hid it from the Allies.

  “That’s where my younger brother Macy was stationed. He was sent there in forty-five during the war. America kept troops there after the war and Macy stayed on. Macy was eight years younger than me, a lieutenant in the army, an odd fellow. He was, um . . .” The Governor thought a moment. “A ponce,” he said.

  “A ponce?” Elefante repeated.

  “Light as a feather. They’d call him a sissy today, I guess. He had a taste for the finer things in life. Always liked art. Even when he was little. He knew all about it. He read books on art. Just had a taste for it. Well, the city was all torn up after the war, patrolled by different armies here and there, and somehow Macy found this stash of stuff. It had been hidden by the Nazis. In a cave near a place called Altenburg.”

  The Governor paused, thoughtful.

  “How Macy found that cave, I never knew. But there was valuable stuff in there. A lot of it. And he helped himself to it: manuscripts, tiny little boxes decorated with diamonds, with little panels of ivory. And some reliquaries.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I had to look it up five times before I understood it,” the Governor said. “They’re tiny boxes like coffins, made of gold and silver. Some are trimmed with diamonds. The priests kept jewelry, art, relics, even old bones of saints in them. This stuff was heavy loot. The spoils of war, m’lad. Macy got hold of a good gob of it.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I saw it. He had them in his house.”

  “How’d he get all of it home?”

  The Governor smiled. “He used his noodle and shipped it to himself by the US Military Postal Service. Little by little. I guess that’s why he stayed in the service so long. The stuff was small. Then after the war, he got a job at the post office so he could move it when he wanted without nobody making a stink. Simple as that.”

  He chuckled, and had to raise himself as he coughed a large amount of phlegm into his handkerchief. When he was done, he folded the handkerchief, put it back into his pocket, and continued.

  “It always seemed odd to me that Macy lived too well to work at the post office,” the Governor admitted. “He had an apartment in the Village the size of a rugby field. Full of fancy things. I never asked. He had no kids, so I figured it wasn’t anything. My poppa couldn’t stand Macy. He used to say, ‘Macy likes boys.’ I told Poppa, ‘There was a priest at Saint Andrew’s who’s said to like boys.’ But he didn’t want to hear it. I was a young man back then, fast on my feet and a bit of a wanker, but even then I knew the difference between a sick man who likes children and a man sweet on men. I knew because Macy talked me out of killing that half-langered Rale Bulgarian priest at Saint Andrew’s who acted the maggot with a lot of kids in the parish. I found out about him when Macy grew up and we started adding up crib notes on him. But Macy said, ‘He’s a sick man. Don’t go to jail for him.’ He was my kid brother and he was smarter than me in a lot of ways. So I listened, and went to jail on my own! Even in prison, Macy’s smarts helped me. If you walk into the slammer not looking for a hop on, knowing that what a man does in his private time is his own damn business so long as he doesn’t make things worse for you, well, you’re all right. So I loved Macy for what he showed me. And he trusted me.”

  The Governor sighed and rubbed his head as he plowed through the memory. “He didn’t live long after the war. First our mother died. Then a couple of years later, cancer got him. That and a broken heart, poor lad, because his father didn’t want him. Toward the end of his life, he came to me and confessed everything. He took me to a closet in his house and showed me what he had. He kept all those things from the cave in a closet, imagine that. Wonderful things: Bibles with solid-gold covers. Relics. Manuscripts rolled into tubes made of gold. Gold coins. Diamond reliquaries with the bones of old saints inside. He said, ‘This stuff is a thousand years old.’ I said, ‘You’re a millionaire.’

  “He said, ‘I hardly sold any of it. I made a good living at the Postal Service.’

  “I laughed at him. I said, ‘You’re a stock.’”

  “A stock?” Elefante repeated.

  “A fool.”

  “Oh.”

  “He said, ‘I didn’t want to sell them. I just liked looking at them.’

  “I said, ‘Macy, it’s not good. These are things from the church.’

  “‘The church doesn’t care for people like me,’ he said.

  “Oh, it broke my heart when he said that. I said, ‘Macy,
my boy. Our dear mother in heaven would fall to fever at God’s throne knowing you sit here with stolen things from her Lord and Savior. It would break her heart.’

  “That brought a tear to his eye. He said, ‘I have to live. Maybe I’ll find a way to return a few things.’”

  The Governor looked at Elefante. “And return them he did. Oh, he sold one or two more things in droves to keep his lifestyle before he died. But most of the things he returned. He got them back to Vienna the same way he got them here. He mailed them back little by little. He returned them in a way so he could never get caught. But there was one item he didn’t return.

  “And what was that?”

  “Well, it was something I wanted. A little statue.”

  “Statue of what?”

  “A fat girl. The Venus of Willendorf.”

  Elefante wondered if he was dreaming. A statue of a fat girl? The Governor’s daughter was like that. A beautiful one. Could this be a trick? A coincidence?

  “Is that the name of a soap?” he asked.

  The Governor smirked at him, irritated.

  “I’m just asking,” Elefante said.

  “Macy said it was the most valuable piece in his collection.”

  “Why was that?”

  “I can’t say. Macy knew why but I don’t know those things. It’s reddish gold. It’s very small. Made of stone. No bigger than a bar of soap.”

  “If it’s not gold, why is it worth so much?”

  The Governor sighed. “I’m thicker than a bag of spuds when it comes to art, son. I don’t know. Like I said, I had to look up the word ‘reliquary’ five times before I understood it. This statue was in one of those reliquary things. A tiny container, like a coffin, the size of a bar of soap. It’s from thousands of years ago. Macy said the box alone was worth a fortune. He said the little fat girl, the Venus of Willendorf, was worth more than anything he had.”

  “Then it likely lives in one of those big castles in Europe where the welcome mat’s printed in old English, and he was holding a fake. Or the real one’s living in a museum. How come it’s not in a museum? A museum would know if it’s a fake, by the way.”

  “So what. Son, your pop and I were in prison with several sweet-tongued buncos who could sell ice to an Eskimo. These blokes could even out your bank account to a flat zero faster than a fly can mount shit. They knew more insurance swindles, bank diddles, and hand tricks than a Philadelphia bartender. Smooth as taffy, these fellas. And each one will tell you that most times the trout who gets hooked or bamboozled hushes up tight about it. They want that kind of news kept quiet. The fancy hoofers running your museums are no different. If they’re holding a fake, why would they blast it to the world? So long as a cad is paying a shilling to eyeball it, who’s to know the difference?”

  Elefante was silent, taking this in.

  “You think I’m having you on?” the Governor asked.

  “Maybe. Did you ever ask your brother why it was worth so much?”

  “No, I didn’t ask him. I took it before he changed his mind. Then he died.”

  “The Venus of Willendorf. That sounds like the name of a soup.”

  “It’s not a soup. It’s a fat girl,” the Governor insisted.

  “I knew a fat girl in high school who was a real treasure. But nobody made a statue of her.”

  “Well this one will fit in the palm of your hand. I stashed it before I went to prison. Your father got out two years before me. I was afraid someone would find it, so I told him to fetch it and hold it for me. He told me he did. So you have it someplace.”

  Elefante held his hands out. “I swear on the Blessed Virgin, my poppa didn’t tell me where he put it.”

  “Nothing?”

  “He just told me about that stupid song you sing, about the palm of God’s hand.”

  The Governor nodded in satisfaction. “Well, that’s something.”

  “That’s nothing. How can I look for a thing if I don’t know where it is or what it looks like?”

  “She’s a fat girl.”

  “There must be a million statues of fat girls. Does she have a bump on her nose, or is she fat like a blob? Does she look like a horse if you turn her sideways? Are the head and stomach the only parts you want to go pokey at? Or is it like one of those crappy things where a guy throws paint on a canvas and art slobs cream all over it? Does she have one eye? What?”

  “I don’t know what. It’s a fat girl. From thousands of years ago. And there’s a guy in Europe who will pay three million dollars cash for it.”

  “You said that before. How do I know he’s the real deal?”

  “He’s real, all right. Macy sold him one or two pieces before he died. He told me how to reach the guy, but Macy died while I was in prison. I couldn’t call nobody from Sing Sing. So I left it alone. You can end up in an urn in somebody’s cemetery playing tricks with a fella you never seen before and done no business with. I never called him before I went to prison. After I got out, my wife got sick, I had to take care of her, and I didn’t want to go back to the joint. Then a couple months ago, when the doctor told me I had this . . . sickness, you see, I called the guy in Europe and he was still alive. I told him I was Macy’s brother and told him what I have. He didn’t believe me, so I sent him the one picture I had. I’m an old crook. I’m too stupid to keep copies. Saints be praised, he got the picture and got serious. He calls me almost every week now. He says he can move it. At first he offered four million dollars, and I said, ‘How can you get that much money?’ He said, ‘That’s my business. I’ll give you four, because I can sell it for twelve million. Or even fifteen. But you need to get it here.’ He said he’s in Vienna.

  “I smelled a rat then. I almost backed out. I didn’t trust him. So I said, ‘If you’re the guy my brother said you are, wire me ten grand and tell me the name of one thing my brother sold you.’ He did. I ain’t daft. I didn’t tell the guy where I lived. He thinks I live in Staten Island. That’s the return address I put on the envelope with the picture I sent him. He wired the dough to the bank in Staten Island I told him to. I sent him the ten grand back and said okay.

  “But I got no muscle to move this thing. I can’t get it to Europe now. Even if I could, I wouldn’t go all the way over there and have the guy lay boots on me or worse, then bag the thing and run off. So I says to him, ‘You come here and get it and I’ll let it go for three million dollars. You can keep the extra million for your troubles.’

  “I was just talking,” the Governor said. “I thought he’d say ‘Get lost.’ I didn’t think he had the balls to do it. He said, ‘Let me think about it.’ After a week, he called back and said, ‘Okay. I’ll come get it.’ That’s when I come to you.”

  “You’re throwing a pretty long pass here, mister. What makes you think I’d give it to you—or to him—if I found it?” Elefante said.

  “Because you’re your father’s son. I ain’t just flying it, son. I asked around about you. See, your poppa and me, we knew who we were. We were always little guys. Moving guys. We never wanted muscle or trouble. We moved stuff. This guy from Europe I’m talking to, he’s a head guy. He talks smart. With an accent. Smooth. Head guys like that are always one step ahead of you. No matter how smart you think you are, they got a leg up on you. That’s why they’re head guys. You fool with a head guy, you better be the full shilling. Your poppa always said you were the full shilling.”

  Elefante thought that one over and said softly, almost to himself, “I’m not really a head guy.”

  “For three million chips you are.”

  The Governor was silent a moment, then continued. “I took it as far as I could. I called the guy and said, ‘Let’s arrange a meet.’ He said, ‘Put it in a locker and let me come get it and I’ll leave your dough.’ That was the idea. We meet at Kennedy. Make the switch in a locker there, and go on. We didn’t talk about th
e exact switch, how we’d do it, but I agreed on the locker bit.”

  “Then work out the last bit and go make your money, for Chrissakes.”

  “How can I do that if I don’t know where the statue is?”

  “You did know,” Elefante said. “You had it before my poppa did.”