by Nancy Martin
He smiled grimly and made notes on a legal pad. “Okay, let’s leave that out for now. Tell me what you do know about Abruzzo.”
“I understand client privilege, Tom, but I can’t go blabbing information about a man who clearly wants to keep his own secrets, even from me. He’s too private.”
“Do you think he’s a crook?”
The blunt question took me by surprise. “In my heart? No.”
Tom said, “Has your heart or your head come to that conclusion?”
“He has tried to separate himself from the Abruzzo family. But there are other people around who are different.”
“Different how?”
“Scarier.”
“I’ve seen pictures of your friend. He looks pretty scary himself.” More gently, he asked, “What do you know about money laundering?”
“That it doesn’t involve detergent and water. Other than that, I don’t have a clue.”
Tom doodled on his pad. “Does Abruzzo keep his savings under a mattress? Has he ever bought a car or a boat or a big-ticket item using quarters? Does he run off to Caribbean islands frequently?”
“No, nothing like that.”
“Does he sell drugs?”
“Oh, my God, no.”
“But he has a lot of little enterprises that all bring in a cash income?”
“Yes.”
“And what does he do with the money?”
“I don’t know. For a while, he was paying off a debt to Rory Pendergast, but when Rory died, the debt was forgiven.”
“A big debt?”
“One large enough to start a couple of his businesses.”
“Nice deal if you can get it,” Tom said lightly. “What does he do with the cash now?”
“He probably reinvests in other schemes. He’s always got something under construction. He’s very smart, very . . . uhm, creative. He’s got half a dozen businesses going.”
“Such as?”
I told him about Gas ’n’ Grub, the Marquis de Sod, Mick’s Muscle Cars, the limousine service, the motorcycles and the Delaware Fly Fishing Company. And, more reluctantly, the tattoo parlor. Tom managed to remain straight-faced during the whole list.
“Okay.” Tom put down his pen. “I’ll try to keep this simple. Banks are required to report cash deposits of more than ten thousand dollars. A few currency-transaction reports start adding up and a red flag is raised. My bet is that he’s run up a bunch of red flags and the FBI wants to find out if he’s legit.”
“But don’t other businesses deposit large amounts of cash in banks?”
“Of course. But they aren’t owned by members of the Abruzzo family.”
“Isn’t that harrassment?”
“I’ll bet that’s what his lawyer calls it.”
We talked for a few minutes about gambling and money laundering and organized crime in general.
At last, Tom said, “My advice? Don’t talk to the FBI. Before you know it you’ll be on a witness stand with your hand on the Bible.”
“But what if I can be useful?”
“Nora,” he said, “you’ve got a lot of personal feelings tied up with this guy.”
“Not at the moment.”
“Okay,” he said steadily, “then we don’t have to discuss the wisdom of your seeing this person on a romantic level. But I’ve got to assume he’s got a thing for you, too. Don’t you think he’s kept you in the dark for a reason? Abruzzo wanted to spare you this. You say he’s smart, so let’s assume he’s made the right decision on this, too. Let me take care of the FBI today, and we’ll plan a strategy for when they come back. Because they’re going to come back, you know. And next time, they won’t be as friendly as they pretend to be today.”
The FBI agents were ushered into Tom’s office. They seemed unimpressed by his commanding view of the city and the displayed photos of Tom posing with two former presidents of the United States and mobs of kids in wheelchairs. They got down to business fast.
Spike quivered with rage in my lap, ready to hurl himself at an FBI jugular at a moment’s notice.
“No,” I said in answer to the first question. “I don’t know which banks he deals with.”
“No,” I said. “I have never seen large amounts of cash sitting around.”
“No,” I said. “He has never asked me to deposit any money in any of my own bank accounts.”
“Miss Blackbird, we have currency transaction reports that show Mr. Abruzzo making large deposits into accounts in two different banks. We’d like to establish if, in fact, Mr. Abruzzo made these deposits himself or required an acquaintance or employee to do so.”
The agent passed a stapled set of papers across the smooth table to me while Tom made disapproving noises. “Will you look at those dates, please, and tell us if you were in Mr. Abruzzo’s presence on any of those days and times?”
I looked at a year’s worth of bank transactions and blinked. “I can’t do this off the top of my head.”
“Do you keep a social calendar?”
“Of course I do.”
“So perhaps you’d allow us to look at your calendar and establish exactly when you were with Mr. Abruzzo?”
“Gentlemen,” Tom said firmly, “I think we’re all intelligent adults here, and we know Miss Blackbird is not going to throw her life open to the FBI. I suggest we agree to disagree right now and allow Miss Blackbird to get back to her job.” He cast me a look that said he knew how badly I needed that job. “If you want her cooperation in the future, you’re going to need a subpoena.”
The FBI agents did not appear astonished by this suggestion. They gathered up their paperwork and politely declined to make me a copy of the dates in question. They departed with friendly handshakes and smiles that promised we’d meet again.
The second agent reached out to give Spike a friendly pat.
Spike took the opportunity to bite him.
I lingered to thank Tom and then took Spike down to the street, where he lifted his leg on the curb, looking pleased with his day’s work.
I said to him, “That was a federal employee, you know. Which probably means you committed a felony.”
Checking my watch, I discovered there wasn’t enough time to run out to Bryn Mawr as I’d hoped, so I hotfooted my way back to the newspaper offices. There I made some phone calls and responded to the fresh influx of invitations that had arrived in the mail. Then I repaired my makeup and called Reed to pick me up.
By the cocktail hour, I was walking into a venerable private club that might have been founded before the Magna Carta. A few founding members seemed to be still sitting behind their Wall Street Journals in the smoking room. The cracked leather furniture hadn’t been reupholstered since Harry Truman visited, and the Oriental rug looked as if a family of Persian cats had enjoyed a claw-sharpening contest. The mantel sported a dreary portrait of the club’s first president, whose expression indicated he’d eaten too many pickled herrings.
I tiptoed past, careful not to wake anyone.
The creaking elevator dawdled its way up to the fourth floor. I left my coat in the musty cloakroom and went into the paneled ballroom, where a few dozen of the city’s most elderly citizens leaned on their canes, sat in chairs or teetered precariously on their orthopedic shoes while straining to communicate with each other. I heard the squeal of many malfunctioning hearing aids.
My arrival caused everyone in the room to turn and go silent. I felt like the ringmaster arriving in the center of a slow-motion circus. The average age of the party guests around me was a hundred and twelve.
Pasting a bright smile on my face, I plunged in.
“Merry Christmas, Mr. Bartholomew!” I shook the hand of the first frail curmudgeon in the receiving line. “How is your great-grandson Arthur?”
“I had another colonoscopy!” he bellowed back. “The doctor says it doesn’t look good!”
His spidery-thin wife shouted, “I finally had my thyroid removed!”
The next couple
wanted to discuss his and her mysterious stomach pains.
A trio of doddering women asked if I had regular breast examinations, because I couldn’t be too careful.
At last I came upon Dotty Dubose, huddled in a rump-sprung wing chair and waving her cane to flag me down.
“Get me out of this damn chair,” she said. “I’m stuck like a pig in the henhouse door!”
I grabbed her arthritic hands and hauled Dotty to her unsteady feet. She had shrunk to barely five feet tall, but the look in her eye was Amazonian. “Thank God you’re here,” she said. “I’m bored to tears, not to mention starving. Is there anything besides strained baby food on that buffet?”
“Let’s find out.” I put my hand under her arm and helped her hobble across the ballroom floor.
The city’s social strata included a variety of levels, but at the summit, or very close, was a very small, elite group of elderly widows—patrician, sedate ladies who lived lives of unparalleled privilege. They had inherited great fortunes on their own and had also enjoyed the tremendous accumulated wealth of their powerful husbands, now dead. Some had successful careers on their own, but their foremost accomplishments were in more rarified arenas. Their days were very detail-oriented. Things were just so in their homes, as with their clothing and jewelry as well as with their precise, hands-on and generous philanthropic work. Each had chosen a particular cause or institution upon which they bestowed financial largesse and their leadership in matters of taste, networking and fund-raising. To a woman, they were intelligent connoisseurs with generous spirits, and I felt privileged to know many of them. There were no greater role models.
Dotty Dubose was one such woman.
Known as dotty Dotty, she had cut a colorful figure in my youth. Always competing with her friends to dress more extravagantly, Dotty had been among the first women of the city to wear hot pants and go-go boots. As years passed, she inherited her father’s steel fortune and the proceeds from her husband’s oil ventures. She kept exquisite homes in the city, Florida, Wyoming, Maine and Provence. In her seventies, she had climbed the Great Wall of China and ridden camels around the pyramids of Egypt. Now in her eighties, she still regularly paid for medical supplies that she personally accompanied to South American communities destroyed by hurricanes.
While her husband was alive, she devoted herself to the study of Chinese porcelain. Now, I had heard, she was arranging matters with the museum to donate her collection after her death—and the donation would include the construction of a satellite facility for research and appreciation.
Meanwhile, dotty Dotty was still a good-time girl.
“While we eat,” I suggested, “you can give me all the details on this wingding. I hear you’re on the organizing committee.”
“You think we rate any coverage in the newspapers? All of us mothballed antiques?”
“Of course you do. What are you raising money for? A city architecture foundation? What a good cause.”
“You can’t snow me, young lady. You’re as bored as I am. Life’s too short, so let’s talk about what really matters.”
“Okay, Dotty, that’s a magnificent dress.”
She sent me a twinkly wink. “Schiaparelli. Your grandmother and I bought a matching set. Hers was blue.”
“I know. I’ve worn it.” I smiled down at her. “It looks so much better on you.”
“Hogwash. How do you like my bling bling?”
The string of diamonds around her wrinkled throat could have blinded P. Diddy himself, and her triple bracelet might have made a significant improvement in the national debt. “They’re astonishing, Dotty.”
“Thanks. I get them out of the vault every few years for exercise. See this ring? Your grandmother gave it to me when I was just about your age. We raised some hell, your gramma and I. At a Paris fashion show, we once threw spitballs at Twiggy. Did she tell you that?”
“I believe she did, yes. And a movie star was sitting next to you.”
“Vivien Leigh. That was years earlier. She offered me a Benzedrine. God, look at this food! It cost us ten thousand dollars apiece to walk into this room tonight, and all they’ve got is leftovers from the lunch special downstairs. Christ on a crutch, is that macaroni and cheese?”
“I don’t know.” I looked at the forlorn display of easily digestible fare. “Do you want me to try some?”
“God, no, why risk being poisoned? They never keep these steam trays hot enough, and someday some old fossil is going to keel over from botulism. Knowing the management of this dump, they’ll blame it on a heart attack. Tell me what you’re doing these days, dear. My son says you got a newspaper job. Are you using Rosalind Russell as your role model?”
“No, I’m just winging it.”
“Well, I’m sure you’re good at your work. You’re not talking to rapists and pornographers, are you? No? Well, that’s disappointing. What do you do, exactly?”
“I’m helping Kitty Keough. Right now, we’re trying to cover all the Christmas parties.”
“Kitty Keough. Is that bimbo still sucking up to any breathing man with a big portfolio?”
“Well . . .”
Dotty cackled. “Come clean! She always had an eye for the single men with money. Who’s she chasing now? I have no pleasure left in life except good gossip. So tell me. Who is Kitty’s victim?”
“Tottie Boarman,” I admitted. “But you didn’t hear it from me.”
“Tottie Boarman!” Dottie scoffed. “That old softie! I had a little fling with him myself, you know.”
“You? Dotty!”
I was floored and must have looked it, because she laughed. “Help me over to that settee and I’ll give you all the gruesome details. I was tarty in my younger days, you know. And he didn’t seem to mind that I was a few years’ more experienced than he was. He didn’t mind a bit, in fact.”
“How in the world were you attracted to a man like Tottie?”
“Oh, don’t let appearances fool you, Nora. He might act as if he’s got a swarm of bees in his boxer shorts, but he’s as sweet as pie underneath.”
“Are we talking about the same man?”
Dotty flumped down onto the settee. “Oh, he was a randy rascal in his youth. Quite the lady’s man. Very handsome, but rather sweet, really. Shy, if you can believe it.”
“Sounds as if you know Tottie very well. And I haven’t known him at all.”
“Oh, ancient history is dull as beans to you young folks. Tottie’s known his share of ladies over the years. It’s a damn shame that he’s only got Kitty Keough to stand by him when he’s going through this awful financial mess. He deserves better.”
“Not many people would agree with you.”
“Well, what do most people know?” Dotty challenged with a fiery look in her eye. “Surely nobody ever thanked him for all his good works. But Tottie hates public displays of generosity.”
“I can’t imagine Tottie being generous.”
“No? Well, you have a limited imagination, then. Tottie’s as generous as any of the old coots in this room. Maybe more so. But he never allows his name to be associated with his charitable work.”
“Are you serious?”
“Of course I am. Anonymous benevolence is considered old-fashioned these days, but it’s still classier than all the self-serving chest-thumping that’s taken over. I hate those lists with people’s names and a dollar amount beside each one. You know that new section of the children’s hospital? The new section they call the Freedom Wing? Tottie gave that.”
“That was a hundred million dollars at least! From Tottie? I don’t believe it!”
“He wouldn’t allow them to name the wing after him. But he gave the money. I know. I was on the board at the time. We were sworn to secrecy.”
“Dotty,” I said, looking into her keen face, “you’re telling me now for a reason, aren’t you?”
She smiled sweetly. “I haven’t had champagne in months. I would love a glass of champagne right now.” She was
looking perkier by the minute and sat up straighter. “Do you suppose a little bubbly would interfere too much with my medications? Oh, what the hell. You only live once. Waiter!”
A passing waiter—at least as old as most of the guests—limped to Dotty’s side and presented her with a tray full of glasses. I was afraid he’d never be able to straighten up again, but when she chose a tall flute of gently fizzing champagne, I heard his back give a crackling noise when he straightened and hitched away from us.
When he was out of earshot, I leaned closer to my elderly companion. “Dotty, are you suggesting the Intelligencer reveal who donated the Freedom Wing?”
“I’m not suggesting anything.” She sipped from her glass and smiled with satisfaction. “I hate to see a man go down in flames, that’s all, when he’s been more philanthropic than half the bums in this town.”
I thought back to the moment I’d seen Tottie storm into the Koats for Kids Christmas party. He’d been furious, and I assumed he didn’t like the party. But perhaps he’d simply been angry about being “outed” as the charitable sponsor of the event.
I shook my head. “Dotty, there are some strange things going on right now, but that information is certainly some of the strangest.”
She grinned. “Okay, your turn. Doing anything naughty these days? Give me a vicarious thrill, would you?”
“Sorry. I’m behaving myself.”
“A lovely young thing like you? Don’t waste time, Nora, dear. Take my advice and grab the sexiest man you can lay your hands on and have a fling you can brag about when you’re my age. Enjoy life. Before you know it, all your chances will be gone.” Dotty suddenly looked her years again. She drank down the last of her champagne. “Grab life while you can, dear.”
I left the party soon thereafter and went down to the street again.
“Where to?” Reed asked, holding the end of Spike’s leash while the puppy tried to climb up my leg.
I wanted to go home. I wanted to stop thinking about murder and blackmail and self-serving people.
But I had miles to go before I slept, so I told Reed about our next stop and we took off for another party.
