by William Cain
Frank considers the amount of time she’s been out of touch. He’s made a few calls, but she doesn’t answer, and she hasn’t returned any calls, “Oh, so that’s where she’s been. I was worried. I don’t think any one of us want to have a mother whose decomposing body was found a month after she dies because her kids didn’t bother to check up on her. Anyway, I thought it was odd for her to drop off the radar. She didn’t answer my phone calls. Nothing. And you know she’s been away how?”
“I was worried about her, too. Some business came up near Heritage Hills, so I stopped by there. I had lunch with her a few days ago,” Edwin tells Frank, and Frank gets the impression there’s more to this story. Ed didn’t just call to tell him that.
“And?” Frank says, leading him.
“Reggi tells me Ken’s been sober four months now and has asked her to marry him. He asked her during a dinner party with neighbors and friends they hosted together in Florida, in Naples. She showed me the four-carat diamond engagement ring she’s wearing on her left hand. Take a look at what I just sent you,” Edwin says as he sends Frank a picture of it.
“She claims to have the receipt and that it cost over three hundred thousand. They’re having an engagement party in May in Naples. Reggi asked me to fly down early, a few days before the party, for some reason. I don’t know what for, but I think she wants me there early, along with Charlotte, for some official business,” Edwin says importantly.
Frank is almost throwing up over the pumped-up nature his brother-in-law is in. But he doesn’t miss a beat and laughingly tells Edwin, “You and Charlotte are the most official of all. You’re probably right. She’ll need you both.”
“Yes, I think so, too. Charlotte told me Mom called her and asked her opinion on a few evening gowns in the Neiman Marcus catalog. They found, with Charlotte’s help, one or two that Reggi would look beautiful in. The next weekend, Ken and Reggi took a trip to Atlanta and went on a shopping spree. Ken helped find that gown and purchased that and two others for the engagement and other holiday parties at their place in Naples. Reggi described the dresses to Charlotte in detail. It’s only a matter of time for them to set a wedding date. They’ll probably announce it at the engagement party.”
Frank is shaking his head over this self-important piece of theater. He keeps mentioning Naples for a reason. Maybe he thinks he’ll inherit the place. Frank can’t get over what has happened to his sister in the years since college. She’s the one he’d chase around in the front yard of their parents’ home. The girl with the crazy parties and goofy friends. Charlotte’s the poor slob who needed a friend when her first husband divorced her so many years ago. It’s sad, what money can do to a person.
There’s a pause, and Frank assumes Edwin has something else to unload. He does, and it’s a big one. “What is it, Ed? You’re holding out on me.”
Slowly, Edwin begins, “I don’t want to jump to any conclusions about Ken Jones. But here goes. Reggi went with us to a party at Biltmore Forest Country Club. Only myself, Charlotte, and Reggi went; the girls weren’t there. We were just making small talk when another member, someone I know but not too well, pulled me aside. So I walked with him out onto the veranda of the clubhouse, the one that overlooks the golf course. It can be private at times, and no one else was there smoking or taking a break from the party inside.”
Frank is all ears. Usually you can’t take Edwin at his every word, but this could be going somewhere.
Continuing, Edwin tells Frank, “He asked me, almost jokingly, about my eighty-year-old mother-in-law and the reported wedding plans she has. I mean, everyone’s talking about it. The guy emphasized eighty like it was some number at which you didn’t get married any longer, like it’s strange to do.”
“Well, I told him that it’s not so crazy to want to be married at that age and that she wasn’t eighty yet. I even went so far as to tell him that Reggi didn’t want to be married again, but that her fiancé was insistent,” said Edwin, at his most haughty, “I told him she’s marrying Ken Jones, a billionaire.”
“And you know what he did next, Frank?”
“No, I don’t know, Ed, I wasn’t there,” Frank replies sarcastically. “So you tell me.”
“And I will. He just stared at me like I had two heads,” Edwin feigns surprise. “After a few moments, the man says ‘Really, Ken Jones? Wow. Well, I guess he deserves it. It’s nice for him after his wife died.’”
Frank’s getting a little bored, and he’s determined by now that this story is going nowhere, “That’s it, Ed? You called to tell me about some boring conversation you had with a guy at your club?”
Edwin tells Frank, “Wait for it. Wait for it. Here it comes,” and Frank is listening again. This had better be good or he’s going to give his brother-in-law the dial tone. “So I said to him, ‘Cancer’s an ugly thing, right?’ and the guy is looking at me with two heads again. After a while, I said, ‘What is it?’ and he says to me ‘Cancer? She didn’t die from cancer.’ Then the guy pauses like he’s not sure if I want to know what he’s going to say. Then he slowly tells me, emphatically, ‘She was murdered.’”
Frank is floored, “What? She was killed? Murdered? What? Are you sure?”
“Yes, I looked into it. I have connections. They confirmed that Ken Jones’s wife, Elsie Jones, was murdered in Heritage Hills in July of last year!”
“Get out! Did not happen! Really? Wow!” Frank is just shell shocked. That was big news. His mind is running in every direction, thinking, Isn’t September about the time Mom started to see Ken Jones? The guy works fast! This is surreal!
Then Edwin drops the really big news on Frank, “There’s one more thing, Frank. This is really going to give you more food for thought than you’ve ever had. If information was money, I’d be a quadrillionaire.”
Frank becomes impatient. “Ed, tell me now, or I’ll let Charlotte know about your little friends,” he says, referring to Edwin’s down-low boys club he gets into once in a while. Charlotte already knows Edwin likes the young lads, but Edwin’s not the insightful kind, and Charlotte continues playing him. He’s her meal ticket.
Edwin gets a little flustered, “Ok, ok, calm down. Ken Jones, well, it isn’t his real name.”
“Ok, now you’re blowing my mind, Ed. You’re kidding about all this, right? I mean, Mom marrying Ken Jones, his wife murdered, it’s not his real name.”
“No. I’m not. I’m not kidding. And then there’s one more thing. The guy I spoke to told me that Mr. Jones isn’t the nicest of people. That he has a sordid past,” Edwin explains. He’s really depending on Reggi marrying someone wealthy so he can recover from his losses. Edwin’s nearly bankrupt. “Maybe he’s turned over a new leaf, but it’s a pretty big leaf.”
Frank concludes Reggi has some explaining to do, and he is very concerned. His head is swimming and he’s wondering where Edwin’s going with this, and he says in a sappy voice, “Whatever do you mean, Edwin?”
“Ok, you should sit down, Frank, this next part is going to send you over a cliff. Ken Jones is a retired mobster from Chicago, retired as the head of the DiCaprio Family. What do you think about that? Anyway, the guy is retired. And he’s rich. And for whatever reason he likes Reggi. Go figure.”
Frank is lost for words. This is not happening. His mother is involved with a gangster? His wife was murdered? What is this guy doing in Heritage Hills? Gangsters retire? Is that even possible? She can’t marry that guy. What the hell is going on? Edwin still wants her to marry him? Is he insane?
Then, Frank stops with the questions running through his head and it dawns on him. He’s pulling one memory after another, one news clip after another, and he practically screams it, “What the fuck, Ed! The DiCaprio crime Family. Oh, man! Do you know who that is!?”
“I do now.”
Edwin spells it out for Charlotte’s big brother, loudly, dramatically,
“Don Gennarro Battaglia.”
Chapter 9 Frannie
Feb
Addie hears her cell tinkling her ringtone, the theme from Dragnet, and looks over to it from the shower. New York is calling, and she excitedly opens the door and reaches for it, stubbing her toe on the rim as she exits the bath. Damn! She dances around a little bit on one foot and holds the phone to her ear as she wraps a towel around herself. “Frank!” she answers. “Hang on a minute, I just got out of the shower and I’m, uh, indisposed.” And she puts the phone down, quickly pats herself somewhat dry, puts her robe on, folds the towel over her hair and snatches the cell back up, “Frank, I’m glad you called!” She knows she sounds overly excited to speak to him, but she can’t help herself. She’s not embarrassed to show how she feels anymore. She wants him to know.
There’s a pause on the other end. “Frank?” She’s hoping it’s not another robo call. They’ve gotten pretty sophisticated; it’s really a nuisance. Then her mind plays detective. Something is wrong, and the voice on the other end replies, “Hello, Detective Henson?”
It’s Frank’s voice, but why is he so formal? “Yes, this is Detective Henson. Frank, what’s going on? You’re scaring me.” The last message from Frank was over a week ago. They’ve been texting more and more, and everything was falling into place. This phone call is not normal; something is wrong.
And there is something wrong. “Hi, Detective, this is Frank’s son, the other Frank. My dad and I sound alike. Sorry I startled you. I know we haven’t spoken before, but I had to call you.”
Addie raises her free hand to cover her mouth. Something is terribly wrong, and she can feel her eyes begin to well from growing tears. She’s not going to like what he says next, she can feel it. This is bad. This is really bad. “Yes?” she says apprehensively.
Frank Jr. simply blurts it out, “My dad was in a car accident in the city. It happened last night. A woman ran a stop light and hit my dad’s car as he was going through the intersection. He was hit on the driver side. The car she was driving was a pretty big SUV. We don’t know if she was speeding yet. The cops are investigating still.”
“Oh my God. Oh my God,” Addie loudly expresses, and she begins to cry. She’s sobbing, and what she hears next sends her over the edge.
“Detective, the airbags couldn’t save him from being struck.” As soon as Frank Jr. tells her this, he knows it’s the wrong words at this critical time. But it’s too late, and he hears Addie dropping her cell and he can imagine she’s fallen to the floor. All he hears is her anguished cries a distant one thousand miles away. “Detective? Detective?” he shouts into her cell, louder and louder.
Slowly, she picks up her phone beside her as she’s slumped to the floor, her back against the vanity, and, in her broken voice, asks, “Was he fatally struck, Frank?” The sadness she feels is as audible as her words. She has to ask, but she knows what the answer will be. She hasn’t begun to curse herself over her foolishness yet, putting their relationship on hold, but it’s definitely coming.
Then Frank Jr. tells her, choosing his words carefully, “I’m sorry, Detective.” Addie begins crying again, she can’t help it. “The woman that hit my dad didn’t survive, but Dad’s in the hospital. That’s what I meant about the airbags; they couldn’t save him from a direct hit on the driver side.”
“He’s alive,” Frank Jr. adds.
Addie almost passes out, dropping her phone again, and she releases a loud crying wail, an emotional discharge of relief, sadness, her head in her hands, convulsing with sobs, a release of bottled energy that comes from within. It’s from months of wanting and needing and worrying and apprehension. When she’s done, and it takes a while, she reaches for her phone again, “Frank’s alive? Oh God! Is he ok? Oh God!”
Frank Jr. wonders if he made a bad decision in calling her. She sounds so small, like a little girl. “Detective, I’m really sorry. There’s just no easy way to tell anyone about it. I’m really sorry I upset you. My dad told me a while ago about you and said you were important to him. But that’s not the only reason I called you this morning.”
Addie’s beginning to clear her head more, and she’s trying not to cry again. She needs to know how bad it is. It must be bad if his son called her. “Oh shit, shit, shit! How bad is it? Will he live? What do you mean that’s not the only reason you called?”
Frank Jr. tells her, “The doctors tell me he’s injured from the collision, but his internals are undamaged, and he’ll survive. But I have to tell you, Detective, he looks pretty messed up. His left side looks like one big bruise and it’s swollen. His cheekbone is fractured, too. His left side of his face is red, his left shoulder is red and bruised, his rib cage on the left is bruised. He’s in bad shape.”
While Addie takes this in, Frank Jr. continues, “I think he has to have surgery on his shoulder. That’s today, in around two hours. The doctors tell me that will relieve him of the pain he’s in now, and he’ll begin to recover quick. They’re not guaranteeing it, but they think he can go home in a few days. They want me to stay with him for a week to help him around the house and keep him from going back to the office.”
Addie remembers something, “What was the other reason you called me? You said he told you I was important to him, but that wasn’t the only reason.”
Frank Jr. replies, “He’s delirious, in and out. Sometimes he’ll open his eyes, but he has them shut most of the time. I think they gave him a painkiller or two, before the operation on his shoulder. He sees me when he has a clear moment, but I had a reason to call you right away this morning.”
Frank’s son tells her the reason, and what he tells her drives the nail home on all the emotions she has for this man, everything she feels for him, her love for him. Slowly, Frank Jr. tells her, in a hushed, serious manner,
“You’re the only one he’s asking for.”
◆◆◆
After Addie and Frank Jr. end their call, she puts her robe on and sits down on the toilet seat with her hands before her in her lap, trembling. There are a million thoughts trying to break out of her head, all at once, and they all point an accusing finger at her. How could she have been this careless? This thoughtless? To not have been mature enough to see Frank as he is. A gentle man who has developed feelings for another person, her, Adelaide Elaine Henson.
She pushed him away, played games, hurt him. Hurt herself. It’s her fault, this mess. Why is she always so suspicious, this foolish girl? She is so angry with herself she wants to scream. Frank is asking for her, he still wants her, after everything she’s done or not done. She begins to cry softly. As the tears begin to flow freely, she begins to sob, sad for herself and for Frank.
She begins to think about the first time they met at Reggi’s home. He stared at her and she at him, smiling. And the time he came to see her and they had dinner at that little French place. That weekend was the happiest time in her life that she can remember. He was funny and warm, and a gentleman. They shared thoughts they probably had never shared with anyone else. Things were always natural between them. They shared their first kiss, too. At least she doesn’t deny herself the memory of that night.
It’s been her nature through her life to build walls, to keep everyone on the other side. And it has to come to an end.
She reaches for her phone again and pulls up her airline app, looking for flights to New York City. Charlotte has the nearest flight, but she can’t make it there in time. Greeneville/Spartanburg flights have already departed, as has the Asheville flight. The airport here is small, and only one flight goes out every other day to New York. She has to get there, to the hospital Frank Jr. told her about, New York Presbyterian. She needs to be with Frank, at his side.
Staring at the floor, she makes a decision. This is going to be big, but she’s a determined woman and she decides it’s time to stop following the rules. It could mean her job.
Addie opens the closet and finds her travel bag. After throwing on casual clothes and stuffing what she
needs inside the bag, she grabs her service weapon, shuts the lights off and climbs into her car. On her way out of town, she calls into the stationhouse and tells them she’ll be gone for at least four nights. That a friend was in an accident and she needs to be there, and that she’ll check in every day.
She’s heading to Heritage Hills. When she arrives, she passes through security and takes the now familiar drive to the house she’s going to. She pulls down the driveway and jumps out, retrieves her bag, and walks to the front door and knocks.
When Gennarro Battaglia opens his front door, he finds Detective Henson standing there. It wouldn’t be all that strange except she has a packed suitcase on rollers, the handle in her hand. “Hello, Detective, are you headed somewhere?”
“I need your jet.”
◆◆◆
He invites her in, and they take seats on the kitchen stools. Addie tells Gen about Frank and why she needs to be there as soon as she can. She tells him a lot, and she knows she’s breaking all the rules. He knows it, too. But her story is compelling.
“And that’s why I need it. I have to be there for Frank, and he’s having surgery in an hour, and he’s calling my name, and I can’t wait until tomorrow, and I’m in love with him.” She pauses, anguished, “and I never tell anyone things like this, and I know I sound like an idiot. Aren’t you going to say anything?”
Gen looks at her, and he remembers how young love felt. He misses his wife Elsie. It’s softened him up a little. He breaks into a slight smile. He thinks he should negotiate with this person, make her feel as if she’s paying him for this, and not exactly in his debt, to make it easier on her, “And what do you have for me if I agree?”
