"C'mon in, c'mon in, buddy,” he said, waving me into a spacious and somewhat overdecorated apartment.
"Can I get you something? Scotch, beer? Or coffee, if you're on the job."
"No thanks, Phil, nothing really. I can't stay and my folks are expecting me."
I sat on his plush tan couch, my feet sinking into his plush cream-colored carpeting.
He asked about my parents, my wife and kids, his eyes bobbing, not at all puppy looking. And he kept moving around as if he couldn't decide whether to sit or run.
"I'm really here to talk to you about my cousin Flora,” I said.
That stopped him in mid sentence. He frowned, said, “Who?"
"Flora. Flo Oliveira. Flo Souza when she went to school with you."
"Yeah, right, I knew who you meant. I mean, I've always known Flo. But what's the problem?"
He was good, I'll give him that, going in a millisecond from looking like he was trying to hide a cocaine habit to looking, I don't know, stunned.
"She told me about you at the Masses at Our Lady of Fatima,” I said. “Sitting near her and taking her hand during the handshake thing. She thinks you're ... insinuating yourself on her too much."
"Me? On your cousin? Gilbert, I wouldn't..."
He stopped whatever he was going to say, took a deep breath, dropped himself into one of the other tan couches, and said, “I'm sorry, Gilbert. And please tell Flo I'm sorry. I didn't want to give her a wrong impression. I swear I didn't, and I promise I'll leave her alone."
"You're sure?” I said. “I didn't want to have to tell her about how to get a restraining order."
It would have been a lot safer than telling Henry about what was going on.
"No, no, Gilbert. I swear, I won't go near her again. Swear to God. I didn't know it was bothering her."
People lie to me every day on the job, but he seemed to be telling the truth.
"Well, I'm sorry to have bothered you about a misunderstanding,” I said, rising. “It was just, y'know, Flora was afraid to say anything to her husband, Henry. So she asked me to talk to you."
"No problem, no problem, buddy. I'm glad it was something so easy to clear up."
He followed me to the door, made some halfhearted attempt to ask me if I really wanted anything to drink, and I made a halfhearted assurance that my parents were waiting for me.
"Give ‘em my best, then,” he said. “And, again, tell Flo how sorry I am about the misunderstanding."
* * * *
I drove away from Evergreen feeling that this had been too easy and that somehow Phil and I hadn't been talking about the same thing. But as I thought back over what we'd said, I couldn't see any room for confusion. So since it was past time for Henry to be off to the Ace, I called Flora and gave her the good news.
"Thank you, Gilbert,” she said. “Thank you so much."
I could hear what sounded like all six of her children, ages nine to one, arguing about something in the background, so we didn't talk long, though I did manage to tell her to let me know if Phil didn't keep his promise. I also asked her, as I always do, how Henry was. She told me he was fine, pretending again that she didn't know what I meant.
Then I drove to my parents’ home to be grilled by two expert interrogators on the status of my own marriage.
* * * *
I didn't give a single thought to Flo and Phil over the next couple of weeks, so when my cell phone rang and the caller ID showed Henry Oliveira's name, a sudden “uh-oh” bounced through my brain. I wondered if he was calling from a jail on a manslaughter rap as I answered.
"Gilbert, I gotta talk to you,” Flora said.
"Yeah, Flo, what's up?” I said, tentatively relieved.
"It's Phillip Furtado again."
"What? He didn't keep his promise?"
"No, no, Gilbert. It's not that. Well, he did show up for the eleven o'clock Mass at Our Lady's again the day after you talked to him, but he didn't sit near me. Though he was a little close behind as we were leaving."
"We? You were with Henry?"
"No, no. My friend Doris. I almost always go to Mass with her. But he didn't bother me. No, the problem is Phillip's gone."
"Gone? But isn't that what you wanted?"
"No, I mean, gone from the city. Disappeared. Gone that way."
"Flo, he's a single guy. He can go anywhere he wants to, any time he wants to."
"Without his car? I don't think so, Gilbert. He's got a little red convertible, and it's still parked outside his apartment. It's been there for two weeks now."
My first unasked question was, of course, how the hell did she know his car had been in front of his apartment for two weeks? But that was one minefield I didn't want to wander into.
"If he took a plane somewhere, he could have gotten a ride to the airport. Maybe he didn't want to leave his convertible parked at the airport."
"But nobody at the condos where he lives knows what happened to him either. They think maybe something bad happened."
Okay, the minefield seemed determined to come to me.
"What were you doing at his condo, Flo?"
"Me? For God's sake, I'm a married woman, Gilbert. With six kids. I haven't been anywhere near his stupid condo."
"Then how do you know all this about him?"
"My friend told me. We talked about it, and I told her she should look into it. Her being single and all."
"Your friend?"
"Right, Doris. I told you about her. She's my best friend. We go to Mass together, and I told her I'd spoken to you about Phillip and all."
"Doris who?"
"Doris Nobrega, of course. You remember her, don't you? She was a couple of years behind me at Our Lady's, but she's always lived in the neighborhood."
Doris Nobrega. Yep, I remembered her all right. I remembered her father, too, Frank Nobrega. He had disappeared almost two years ago, one step ahead of a federal investigation into racketeering in southeastern New England.
"Doris goes to Mass with you every Sunday?” I said.
''Of course."
"And she went to the Evergreen condos to look for Phil?"
"Yes. Why? Oh no, Gilbert. It wasn't nothing like that. Doris never even looked at him. And she's as single as single could be. If Phillip wanted to see her, he wouldn't have to go to Mass. He could call her, see her anywhere he wanted to."
Sure he could. Anywhere at all.
It was Friday afternoon. My mom, knowing she could always bribe Sondra and my kids with the promise, had called earlier in the week saying she'd made some kale soup and would buy some massa, Portuguese sweet bread, if we could come down for lunch on Sunday.
"Tell you what, Flora, how ‘bout I stop by the church and we can talk after the Mass?"
"Okay, Gilbert. I just ... I just hope me getting you involved in this didn't lead Phillip to do something drastic."
"I'm sure it didn't. I'll see you Sunday, okay?"
"Okay,” she said, but she didn't sound too okay as she disconnected.
* * * *
We got to my parents’ house after eleven. I told them I had to leave for a few minutes, but I'd be back a little after noon. I'd already told Sondra my plans, and my mom and dad couldn't have cared less so long as they had my wife, son, and daughter to entertain.
I had some trouble finding a parking spot, but the priest was just finishing his sermon by the time I slipped into the back of the church. I stood there for a while, looking around as if I were searching for a seat. But I was really looking for a person, uncertain whether it would be a male or female.
It was a male. Couldn't miss him, really. He was alone in a pew at the back. He was tall and pale in a church full of people who mostly were not. He had a close haircut and a bland suit and tie. And he was looking toward the left side aisle, up front, where my cousin was standing next to her best friend, Doris Nobrega.
I slipped into the pew and sidestepped over to be next to him. He hadn't looked, but I sensed that he knew wher
e I was from the time I'd entered the church. He didn't even tense as I reached into my pocket. He nodded as he looked down to the shield I was showing him.
He waited until it was time for the congregation to respond to the priest, a response I doubt he knew anyway, before he hissed out of the side of his mouth, “What do you want, Mr. Souza?"
"Where's Phillip Furtado?"
"You guys want him for something?"
"Nope. I just want to know where he is."
"We haven't got him."
"You sure? You been watching him right here for a couple of months, passing notes to Nobrega's daughter."
"How the hell did you know...?"
But there was a break in the prayers and he had to shut up. He'd given me what I needed anyway. My cousin had helped explain it, though she hadn't realized that was what she was doing, especially her mention of Phil sometimes offering her his left hand. I later figured out what it could be because he had something he wanted to give Doris in his right hand and Flora had greeted him first. I mean, when you know the Feds are watching your family, probably tapping your phones and keeping video cameras on their every move, where else could you regularly communicate with them but at Mass? While the Feds were watching you do it, no less. Frank Nobrega would like that, I think.
"You don't have Phil?” I asked, as the prayers began again.
He shook his head briefly, said, “Someone must have scared him off. We had a wire in his place. About a week before he left, we taped some moron telling him to stay away from the other woman, the one up there with Nobrega's daughter. We ran the moron's plate, found out he was a cop too. But he never really knew what the hell Furtado was up to. Neither did Nobrega's daughter's friend. That visit probably scared Furtado into running."
Hmm. Right. It might have. That was probably why Phil had come to the church the last time and was behind my cousin and her best friend Doris as they left. One final note. Kind of a romantic gesture, if you think about it in a slightly off-center way.
Speaking of off-center, since this guy obviously knew who I was even before seeing my shield, I wondered why no one with a neat haircut wearing a bland suit had come to see me in the weeks following my visit to Phil.
"She's my cousin,” I said quietly. “And I didn't know about your operation."
He let out a small snort, nodded, said, “We know who she is, and we figured you had no clue. We checked with your chief anyway."
Damn! I would have preferred they'd just shown up at my house in one of their inconspicuous sedans.
"I want to talk to her after Mass."
"Not about us. Not that it matters, though. This whole phase of the operation's been a dead end from the beginning."
"No, I just want to tell my cousin that Phil's okay. She's worried about him. She thinks he took off because of her."
He snorted again, shrugged his okay just as the priest was announcing the sign of peace and people began turning to shake hands with those around them. There was no one within reach of either of us.
"Don't even think about it,” he hissed out of the side of his mouth.
* * * *
I waited outside for Flora. When she came out, she was, of course, with Doris, so I asked if we could speak alone. I was sure there was some directional mic in a nearby van pointed at us, picking up whatever we said.
Doris stepped back but, knowing what we were talking about, eyed me narrowly.
"Look, Flo,” I said, “I can't tell you why I know this, but Phil's okay. And he didn't leave because of anything you did. You know I wouldn't lie to you about something like this, so you'll just have to believe me."
"Then he wasn't ... wasn't ... trying to, you know, get close to me?” she said, looking a little more disappointed than relieved.
"I never said that,” I said.
It was true, I hadn't said that.
"Then he was?” she said.
Married ten years, mother to six, wife to hot-tempered Henry, she'd never asked for much. And had never gotten much.
I took her hand and smiled, and her eyes lit briefly, brilliantly, and she nodded and smiled back.
"Gotta go,” I said, kissing her on the cheek and looking past her, past Doris, to the church door, now almost empty except for the tall, pale man in the nondescript suit who seemed to be listening to something no one else could hear. He shrugged his shoulders, briefly smiled toward me, and lifted the first two fingers of his right hand by his side in a V. It was a gesture that I realized, with an appreciation for his sense of irony, was also a sign of peace.
Copyright (c) 2007 James T. Shannon
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THE SURVIVOR OF THE STORMS by Dick Stodghill
* * * *
Linda Weatherly
* * * *
I would have preferred to rush down there after the shooting ended and get the story that way.
After Roman Stankowski had hobbled off to the restroom, I turned to the little man seated beside me and said, “What do you make of it, Ernie? Do you believe his story?"
"I can't make up my mind. It's a wild one, that's for sure, but I can't see why he would be telling it if it isn't true."
"Unless he's a nut case. Say it is true, then he doesn't need a newspaper reporter, he needs a detective. I know the best in the business if he wants to talk to him."
"Ask him when he comes back."
So I did, and he did. I went to a phone booth and called home, the boardinghouse on Dudley Street. Mrs. Bauer grumbled when I asked her to get Jack Eddy, but she climbed the stairs to his room and a couple of minutes later he was on the line. Twenty minutes after that, he came striding into the restaurant at the Mayflower, Akron's finest hotel, gave the glad hand to a couple of people he recognized, then sat down at our table in that cocky way of his that made it seem that the chairman of the board had arrived and now we could get down to business.
After being introduced, Jack shook Roman Stankowski's hand but gave me a raised-eyebrow look that clearly asked if I had summoned him to meet some bum off the street. His manner was more cordial when he turned to the fourth man at the table and said, “So you're Ernie Pyle, the guy with that cream-puff job. I read your stuff sometimes. Not bad."
* * * *
It had begun nine hours earlier when I walked into the Times-Press newsroom after completing my morning rounds on the police beat. I pulled up short because every desk was deserted. Instead of banging out copy with deadline approaching, everyone was gathered in a tight little circle near the managing editor's office. I walked over to see what was going on, then stopped halfway and went back to my desk. Ernie Pyle, the star of the Scripps-Howard syndicate, was to be in Akron for a couple of days, and it was obvious that he had arrived. He was the envy of nearly every reporter in the land because of his assignment: driving around the country, stopping for a day or week or month wherever he pleased, and then writing a daily column on anything of interest to him. Even the best of us had to admit one thing, though: He had the plush assignment because he could write the socks off every other Scripps-Howard employee.
Pyle had a way of putting words together that painted a picture, brought his columns to life in your mind so you could see the scenes he described and, when he wrote about people, you could feel their pain or share their joy. Any reporter worth his salt could do it on occasion; Ernie Pyle did it five days a week. People loved his stuff. Woe to the copy editor who trimmed his column to fit a space if readers were able to tell something was missing.
With someone like that you expect a bigger-than-life character, so I was stunned when the crowd parted and there he was, Ernie Pyle in the flesh. He was a shrimp, a skinny little guy with a nearly bald head, a tortured expression on his face, and the biggest Borsalino hat I had ever seen in his hands. It was brand new, fresh from the carton, but wouldn't be that way for long if he continued to twist the brim as he was doing. It took about five seconds to realize that this was not someone who basked in the glory of his notoriety b
ut instead was a mild-mannered little guy who hated being the center of attention. But then he smiled at something someone said, and it lit up the room.
The brass hats were taking him to lunch. Even city editor Ben Goldsmith was going along, so his assistant had taken over his desk. A couple of hours later Goldsmith laughed as he told a few of us what had happened during their stay at Puffy and Louie's, one of those restaurants that were popular in the 1930s, the kind where the waiters made a game of insulting the customers and people couldn't get enough of it. Certain people, that is, and I knew Ernie Pyle was not one of them. Pyle had been set up in advance. When asked what he wanted, he hesitated a second or two, so the waiter yelled, “Hey, this rube won't order!” Other waiters came running, picked up the chair with Pyle on it, carried it outside, and set it down on the sidewalk, then went back to their duties. They polished his bald spot, and when the group was ready to leave and Pyle had retrieved his decrepit old raincoat from a hook, the waiters came running again and started pulling silverware and salt and pepper shakers from the pockets, making quite a spectacle of it. The big shots from the paper thought it was hilarious. Poor Ernie ... Well, I guess he managed a weak grin.
In late afternoon I was dawdling around the office, thinking it was too early to go home, too late to do anything else, when Ernie Pyle came in, saw I was the only one there, said, “Hi,” and turned to leave again. He was almost to the door when he stopped, took a few steps back toward me, and said, “Is there a quiet place close by where a man can get a drink?"
"Stone's Grille at this time of day. It's a few blocks north on Main Street."
"Care to join me?"
Do zebras have stripes? I was on my feet before he had time to change his mind. When he asked my name and what I did at the paper I said, “Bram Geary. I cover the police beat."
"A lot of the best men in the business started that way."
As we walked up High Street he said he wasn't drinking at the time, but I knew his reputation for hitting the bottle and decided that to him a couple of drinks didn't constitute drinking. He also told me his wife, Jerry, was going to join him in Akron late that evening. Pyle didn't say so, but I had heard via the grapevine that she had been drying out in a sanitarium somewhere. Word had it that the pair of them kept a distillery or two in business.
AHMM, October 2007 Page 6
