by Alan Hruska
“My father and his father were….” He makes a guttural sound. “They found labor wars and fought in them. My father was killed when I was nine.”
“Not a risk-reducer.”
“Actually it is. To essentially zero.”
“It wasn’t zero in Akron.”
“It’s because of Akron that it’s now zero, full stop. It was low before Akron, but that wasn’t low enough, was it?”
She sits back, has a puff, finishes her coffee. “We do two things. We supply security guards, and we install security systems. Your form also says you’re experienced in those.”
“That’s right. One of the things I did. In addition to organizing.”
“Including motion detectors?”
“Of course.”
“I don’t know why, but I believe everything you’ve told me.”
“I don’t know why either. But what I’ve told you is true.”
“You know my husband started this business.”
“Did he?”
“It’s very successful, which is why I need someone to run crews.”
“Glad to hear it.”
“He died two years ago, my husband. A boating accident. Some stupid fishing trip up in Rhode Island.”
“I’m sorry.”
“He may have had too much to drink. He did that. They all did.” Her eyes water up and she says with a flourish, “Just went over the rail.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah. And you’re a widower?”
“Right.”
“Mind saying how….”
“She was an alcoholic,” he says. “She died of pneumonia, but it was the drinking that killed her.”
“Boy.”
“You could say that, yeah.”
“There’s something weird about all this.”
He laughs for the first time in their meeting.
FOURTEEN
Alec’s in the habit of getting to the office too early and leaving too late to conduct much of a personal life, let alone catch up on the news of the day. His reading consists of judicial decisions, interoffice memos, documents, and briefs. With Mac still in Miami, however, Alec finds time, on the way downtown, to flip through the morning papers.
The New York Times is filled with stories about Kendall, Blake clients. Telemarch News, Braddock’s big media client, is involved in a humongous libel action brought by the police chief of a Milwaukee suburb who was accused by World Week magazine of stealing the department’s Christmas fund for underprivileged children. Alec’s already worked on two Telemarch libel actions with Mac. He knows that the burden is on the publisher of the accusation to prove that it’s true, though most of the litigators at Kendall, Blake, Steele & Braddock work tirelessly to convince the courts that a public-figure plaintiff should be required to prove falsity. If they succeed in shifting this burden, it will cut libel litigation down to a trickle of easily winnable cases and destroy most of Harvey Grand’s business. Telemarch is also said to be near a deal to serialize the autobiography of the Japanese mogul Spike Ikuda, written with the help of a hack writer named Leland Franks. Alec mulls over that story. A notorious recluse such as Ikuda publishing an autobiography? Doesn’t ring true. Somehow, Alec thinks, there’ll be litigation coming out of this one too.
The lead story of the day, however, dwarfs anything else in the newspapers or, potentially, in the American courts. It seems that an old-line financial institution, United States Safety Vault & Maritime Company, headed by World War II hero Gen. Marcus Rand, had recently created a subsidiary for the warehousing of diesel fuels. By means as yet unclear, that company and a flock of banks had allowed themselves to be swindled out of $1.2 billion by notorious con man and ex-convict Salvatore Martini.
The U.S. Safety Vault story stays on Alec’s mind as he comes out of the subway and marches down Wall Street. While the details might yet be surprising, one outcome is highly predictable. There will be tons of litigation. He wonders who represents U.S. Safety. Whatever the firm, they’re about to get super busy. And rich.
Alec turns left on Water, crosses to the east side of the street and heads into the lobby and elevator of his own building. In that brief trip he passes several hundred hatted, vested, prosperous-looking men of all ages, many of whom may already be engaged in rescuing U.S. Safety from this debacle. No women, however. The working women in this building are secretaries or clerical help who arrive early; not lawyers or bankers. Only a tenth of Alec’s law school class were women—at Harvard it was one percent—and the top-ranked girl, who happened to have had the highest grades in the class, is still looking for her first job.
As Alec streams toward his office, his young secretary, Joni, tries to warn him: “He’s in there!”
“Who?” Alec asks, naturally enough, but not stopping.
Should have. Swiveling around to face him, in Alec’s own cushiony desk chair, is Alec’s boss, Frank Macalister.
“You lucky son-of-a-bitch,” Macalister says, bright blues radiating. “That cross-examination stunt on Tierney—the oldest fucking trick in the book.”
“Had I been able to get you on the phone,” says Alec, recovering, “you might have put me in touch with something more current.”
“You did just fine. Exercised the one authority you always have.”
“Not to fuck up.”
“That’s the one. Just don’t start believing your own press.”
“You mean, despite my smashing victory for Biogram, I’m not being made partner after a year and a half at the firm?”
Mac laughs at the ridiculousness of that statement and derricks himself to his feet. He’s a large man with coat-hanger shoulders, a prodigious head, leathery skin, and a smile known to warm opponents into submission. “What do you know about the storage of diesel oil?”
“About what?”
Mac, letting his laugh trail off, says, “We got a meeting tomorrow morning at nine in Gen. Rand’s office. United States Safety Vault & Maritime Company.”
“We?”
“Seems some oil there has gone missing. One-billion-two-hundred-million-dollars’ worth.”
“That’s yours?” says Alec, not hiding his excitement. “The biggest goddamn case on the Street, and I’m on it?”
“Should I get someone else? You too busy?”
“No, Mac. I think I might be able to squeeze it in.”
“Good,” says Macalister, making for the door.
“We have a defense to this mess?”
Mac gives him a look.
“Right,” Alec says. “If it were that easy, any firm could be doing it.”
“Y’know,” Macalister says, on his way out of the office, “there might be hope for you yet.”
FIFTEEN
At a lunch in a private room in a steakhouse on 116th Street, Phil Anwar, at the head of the table, listens to ten angry men squabble. Better this, he thinks, than the alternative. Every one of these guys is a short-fuse executioner and commands at least thirty equally violent assassins. The way they know to express themselves verbally is to shout, but it’s beginning to get on Phil’s nerves.
“All right, enough. Enough!” Phil says. “I’ve talked to the man. He’ll go quietly like he always does. He’ll be out in eight years, and inside be treated like a fucking potentate.”
Eddie Ragno has qualms. And he’s the third most powerful man in the room. “You trust this, Phil?”
“I do, Eddie.”
“Why’s that?”
“He has a son, Martini does.”
“And where’s the boy?”
“Palermo.”
“How old?”
“Fourteen.”
“Ah. And he’s being watched, this boy?”
“He is.”
“Martini knows this?”
“He does.”
“So you’ve been careful?”
“Always, Eddie.”
Anwar looks around the table. The faces aren’t pretty, nor do they look convinced. At the othe
r end sits an enormously fat man with a bulbous nose and glossy black hair, “Little John” Cuitano, who controls all Jersey mobs but the dockworkers’ union and was let in on the Martini deal. His own men sit silently behind him.
“See Phil,” says Cuitano, “I don’t worry about Sal Martini. He’s a pro. This is what? Third time he’s going up? He’s tested out. It’s early retirement for him, and he’s funded. You know who worries me? With all due respect. Your wife. Sorry. But that’s how it is. That’s the reality of the situation.”
Phil, keeping his temper, says softly, “What worries you there, John?”
Little John is a doodler. His subject is the submachine gun. He’s proficient in most models, current and classic. His canvas, at restaurants, is a napkin, even a cloth napkin, on which he works with a ballpoint pen. “Word getting back to me,” he says, looking up from his sketch, “is she’s on the street.”
“You’ve been misinformed, John.”
“Aaron was worried about her.”
“I wasn’t aware of that.”
“Haven’t heard from Aaron in a while. Know where he is?”
“Aaron?” Phil makes a gesture of not knowing or caring.
“The man just disappeared. Not like him.”
“No idea, John.”
“She’s not living with you, I hear. Your wife.”
“For the moment,” Phil says.
“Not even using her married name.”
Phil looks at the man without speaking.
“You have her on a leash?” John asks.
“Very tight leash.”
“Some place nearby?”
“That’s correct.”
“And where’s that, Phil?”
“Sorry, John. Can’t do that.”
“She knows a lot, I understand. Maybe too much.”
“It’s not a problem. You have my word.”
“She’s doing heroin, they tell me.”
“For the moment. A little. That’s part of the leash.”
“I don’t like it, Phil.”
“You’re going to have to trust me.”
Silence in the room. Tension with a lot of bowed heads. Little John observes them. Phil knows that everyone in the room knows that only Little John could have gotten away with the conversation they just had, but that any further intrusion would mean bloodshed.
“Okay, Phil,” says John with a cold smile. “For now.” He returns to his doodling.
No one but John’s men care for his tone, but everyone but Phil wants the woman dropped in the bay.
SIXTEEN
Gleason’s Gym. Center ring. Ray Sancerre, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, pounds his sparring partner with a flurry of blows, taking violent pleasure in the pummeling.
The audience for this spectacle consists of a group of beat reporters and photographers who egg Sancerre on. Their cries ring out with each punch landed. A barrel-chested bald man in his fifties, Sid Kline, chief of the Criminal Division, watches with a dour expression.
Landing a particularly vicious shot to the head, Sancerre signals an end to the punishment. He whips off his face protector and, grabbing a towel, knifes out of the ring. Wending through the gentlemen of the press, he’s a dark, saturnine, lipless man with the sort of thick neck, thick hip structure that steals from an appearance of height. In his big shoes, purple trunks, and sweaty tank top, he resembles an oversized, deviantly aggressive Hobbit. “So whatta you say, fellas? Still got a punch?”
“You could sure beat the shit outta the last U.S. Attorney!” wisecracks an unshaven reporter for the Daily News.
“Before or after he took off his dress?” responds Ray.
As the assemblage gives this a halfhearted cackle, Sancerre gestures to Kline to follow him into the locker room.
While Ray’s in the shower, Sid waits on a side bench that catches a current from an air vent in the ceiling. After a few minutes, Ray calls out, “We alone, Sid?”
“Yeah, Ray.”
Sancerre steps out in a towel. “What are you getting from the Bureau on that U.S. Safety diesel oil scam?”
“The guy who did it—”
“Sal Martini?” Ray says, going to his locker.
“He’s talking,” Kline says. “Up to a point. What he’s dishing us is how he did it.”
Sancerre slips into his underwear. “That right? How did he do it?”
“Real simple. Martini goes out, buys, say, ten million dollars of diesel, takes it to one of the U.S. Safety Vault storage tank yards, says, ‘Please, sirs, will you store my oil for me?’”
“Which they’re happy to do.”
“Of course. Guy running this operation, name of Whitman Poole, says, ‘Sure thing, that’s our business.’ So Poole takes the oil and gives Martini a warehouse receipt for ten-million-dollars’ worth. Martini then goes to the bank, borrows eight million dollars on the security of that warehouse receipt—and all’s fine, except, in the dark of night, Martini goes back to the storage facility and siphons all the oil out of the tanks. Ain’t that a fucker! So now Martini’s got the original oil plus eight million dollars in cash which he uses to buy more oil. And guess what?”
“He does it all over again,” says Ray, “this time with eighteen million dollars of oil, rather than ten. And keeps leveraging up. I’m surprised he didn’t corner the market. How’d they catch him?”
“Market price fell,” says Kline. “Banks got nervous about their security. Sent their own inspectors in to check out the oil tanks.”
“Who backed him?”
“Funny,” Sid says, allowing himself a trace of sarcasm. “That, Martini’s not telling us.”
“Had to be inside help. Who gave it?”
Kline shakes his head.
“We’ve questioned everyone? Thoroughly?”
“Short of physical torture,” Sid says.
“You getting fastidious?” says Sancerre, deadpan. Then, buttoning his shirt, grins at Kline’s reaction. “Just kidding. What about shaking the tree?”
“What tree?”
“This is a mob job, Sid. You might talk to Phil Anwar.”
“You wanna signal a mob boss he’s a suspect on this?”
“We got something to lose?” Fastening his tie in the mirror, the chief federal prosecutor admires his face, as if fleshiness were the new chic. “Seriously,” he says. “The FBI’s been on this a week. They’ve got nothing except how the thing was done—which we could have pieced together without Martini’s so-called cooperation. The wiretaps are worthless. And nobody else is talking, nor are they likely to. What the fuck’s the downside on this?”
Kline’s face registers plenty of downside, including a risk to his own life, but he says nothing.
Ray, getting his shoes on, looks up. “There’s a wild card in Phil’s deck. A junkie wife who’s now left him. I’m watching her; you talk to Phil; it’ll give him a reason to shuffle some cards. Okay?”
“While we’re shaking the tree,” Sid says.
“What? You don’t like mixed metaphors?”
Sid shrugs. “What’s not to like?”
And Ray laughs. He likes Sid, likes his banter. But the best thing of all? Sid will never upstage him.
SEVENTEEN
Phil Anwar’s principal residence is a three-story Tudor estate on the North Shore of Long Island. Its sixteen acres of lawn roll down to the Sound. The swimming pool and tennis court share a changing facility that would comfortably house a small family. Phil’s study sports two Rothkos and a Twombly.
The entrance and main rooms are large, but graciously so: no drama to the fireplaces or moldings, or curvatures to the central stairs, though the gallery is two stories high and hung with other fashionable and expensive paintings. The furniture is contemporary, in keeping with Phil’s collection of art; each sofa, chair, cabinet, and table is the signature piece of a well-known designer. The colors are muted, with just a splash here and there of something not primary but vibrant. Th
e windows, though dressed, are carefully treated to afford individually framed views of different aspects of the property and, as now, the setting sun.
For Phil’s associates, it’s like entering Brigadoon. Some live in scaled-down replicas of mansions. Most have at least visited people in large and expensive homes. But few can explain the effect Phil’s house has on them. Especially Vito, who lives in an apartment over the five-car garage. He thinks of Phil’s house as “high class.”
At the edge of the water, Vito, while patrolling the grounds, walks a big black mongrel of a dog, part Labrador, part English setter. It’s a pound dog that Vito rescued and owns, and he’s named it Friday after a character in a book he read in the fifth grade. At his first glimpse of the animal, Vito thought, He wants to please me. As Vito judges the matter, it would seem that, for Friday, Phil’s estate is dog heaven, and Vito himself, the perfect owner. He enjoys watching the dog romp around on the undulating lawns, scampering on the beach and hiding in bushes to look out for birds, other animals, and people. He even enjoys watching him play with the well-groomed pedigrees of neighboring estates. Someone trained Friday before he came to Vito, but the dog transferred allegiance to him almost with the first feeding and took to his further training. To run around with Vito, retrieve thrown balls or sticks, or simply stride alongside his human seems to fulfill this handsome creature’s undoubted emotional life.
Vito hears a car pull into the driveway. No one, so far as he knows, is expected. He calls the dog while heading toward the house, and Friday turns from his inspection of a dark patch of lawn to race after him. There is an obvious analogue to the pet’s devotion, and indeed his name, but that would no more have occurred to the master than it would have the dog.
Phil, at his desk, smokes an after-dinner cigar as he watches his four-year old daughter, Sarah, coloring pictures on the floor. His feeling is close to contentment. The spoiler, when he thinks about it, is his young wife, who slips the tail constantly. And he can’t help but think about her whenever he sees Sarah.
Leaving the cigar in an ashtray, he kneels down to admire her work. An angelic auburn-haired beauty, very serious about her coloring book, she moves slightly to allow her daddy to admire.
