You Get What You Pay For (The Tony Cassella Mysteries)

by Beinhart, Larry

  _______________________

  From the Notebooks of Joseph D’Angelo

  I rode out to Brooklyn, standing like I used to, as a kid, looking out the subway window, as we went over the Manhattan Bridge. Dusk sky and building lights, it was again as wondrous a thing as urban man can make. Vital dreams levitated as real as granite. Money, money, money, on the tip of Mammon’s ideal island. God got his shot on the Brooklyn side. The Jehovah’s Witnesses announced the Watchtower with a sign in lights, ten feet high, sixty feet long.

  Down to the courthouse on Schermerhorn Street, where, I thought, I would find Alicia Bronstein.

  They had her doing arraignments. Grunt work. Her, a judge, a Legal Aid lawyer, and a never-ending supply of criminals. In Brooklyn they get them arraigned at a rate of one every 3.2 minutes. When the judge finally called it a day, I rose in anticipation of Bronstein coming to me or me going to her.

  She strode up the aisle and out the doors like I didn’t exist. I followed her. She turned right when she left the courthouse, along the back side of downtown Brooklyn’s shopping district. She went into A&S, the department store where my parents bought me my first suit, for grade-school graduation.

  I came up beside her on the escalator.

  “What do you want?” she asked me.

  “Hey, how you doing?”

  “Fine,” she said.

  “Still in arraignments,” I said sympathetically. We got off at ladies’ lingerie. “You didn’t get back to me,” I said.

  “That’s true,” she said, her head framed between mannequin legs.

  “Let me take you out for a drink. Sit down and talk things over.”

  “What do you want?” she said as we passed the bras for full-figured gals.

  “Always direct, to the point,” I said. “The report. I need it again.”

  She turned away from me and marched to the counter. “Panty hose,” she said to the Puerto Rican clerk.

  “What kind?” the girl said.

  “What’s on sale?” Alicia asked.

  The salesgirl said there was a special on Lady Femmes at $2.39 a pair.

  “Fine,” Alicia said. “I’ll take a half dozen.”

  The girl went to gather and bag the merchandise. “Can I get it from you?” I asked her.

  “Maybe,” she said. “Maybe.”

  “It’s important,” I said.

  She shrugged.

  “Look, I got a new thing going. A TV show. For real. With Des Kennel. On crime. Magazine format, feature-style news. It would be real easy to do a feature on a … ” I almost said “lady,” then “woman,” then settled on “female prosecutor. Without hitting the female part. Just a D.A. story that happened to be a woman.”

  “I’ll give it some thought,” she said dryly.

  The girl rang up the sale. Alicia signed for it. “We can do each other a lot of good,” I said. “Lemme buy you a drink.”

  “No,” she said.

  Alicia took her panty hose. I went home to Mother.

  The smells coming from my mother’s kitchen were wonderful. A Sicilian poem, sharp as Romano, soft as Ricotta, erotic as real ripe tomatoes mated with sweet basil. Emphatic as garlic.

  Which was unusual, because my mother can’t cook.

  “My friend is cooking,” she said.

  “I’m glad you got a friend who can cook, Ma,” I said.

  We walked into the kitchen. “This is Guido,” she said. “Guido, meet my son, Tony.” The man standing at the stove, wearing black slacks and a white T-shirt, turned around and smiled at me. He was older than my mother, about seventy. Fine-boned and slender but for a small round potbelly—from his own cooking, to judge by the smell—thin white hair over a Piedmontese face, deeply lined only around the weary eyes. His nose was thin but beakish, his teeth were either excellent or false, and there were liver spots on his hands.

  He put down the wooden spoon long enough to shake hands. His were soft.

  “It is a pleasure to meet you,” he said. It was an educated, even elegant voice, soft. The faint traces of accent matched his face. “Your mother has told me a great deal about you. She is very proud of you.”

  “She didn’t tell me anything about you,” I said. Whenever I had asked her about men, or suggested that she find one, she had always dismissed it. As if it were something that just wouldn’t happen. An attitude sadly grounded in reality. There aren’t a lot of men around for widows of sixty. I was delighted to see that she might have one of the very few.

  We started with a tortellini salad, news of the neighborhood, a little endive, and some politics. Mother had written off Gary Hart. He’d changed his name. Guido had used distinctly fresh basil in the dressing. Unfortunately, Walter Mondale had all the sex appeal of polenta. Ronald Reagan, she said, was very good on television. “Mr. Nice Guy,” she said. “If you want to not believe him, you have to work very hard. How are regular people supposed to know what is true and what is not? TV is not good for politics.”

  The “big lie” tactic can work because TV and the media do not concentrate on the content but simply supply the medium for delivery.

  KEITH BLUME, The Presidential Election Show

  “I don’t know,” Guido said. “This time it works for someone you do not like. Other times it worked for things you did like. For Kennedy.”

  “It makes things shallow,” my mother said.

  “People are shallow,” Guido said. “They were shallow when we had radio. They were shallow when we had only newspapers. Only a very few people want to think things through, to distinguish between their prejudices and the facts. That is difficult and … and painful.”

  “Yes, Guido,” she said gently, “it is.”

  He laughed. “Not everyone is as strong-minded and independent-minded as your mother,” he said to me.

  “That’s true,” I said.

  “An important position, a person they’ve got a responsibility,” my mother said, clearing the salad plates. “Like a lawyer is supposed to work for his client, a newsperson you would think they should work for the truth.” While Guido brought in his veal and eggplant Milanese, zucchini marsala on the side: “This is a very complicated world, this modern world. To know what is true or not true, you need a staff to look things up. A computer. I don’t think the television people are doing their job.”

  Guido looked at me. I grinned at him. “They certainly could do better,” he said. “Doing a good job is a rare but excellent thing. Even a humble job, it’s unusual to see it done well. … You, I understand, are very good at what you do.”

  I made my modesty noise. I bit into the veal.

  “Of course he’s good at what he does. But he could have been an attorney. Yale Law School.”

  “This,” I said about the veal, “is superb.”

  “Anna,” Guido said, “a man’s profession is not to be sneered at. It is never to be belittled if it is honest labor and well done.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “Personally, I envy your choice of professions. What you do must be quite exciting,” Guido said.

  “Usually it’s boring. I talk to a lot of people who don’t know anything. I sit and watch buildings, waiting for someone to come out and go somewhere. Then they decide to stay home and watch Dallas. It’s not like TV.”

  “Nothing is like TV,” my mother said.

  “But you are a doer,” Guido said to me. “The actor in your drama, not the audience.”

  “Sometimes,” I said.

  “Also,” he said, “the things you did in your previous career, with the prison department. This shows you are a person of integrity. And courage.”

  “Hey, Ma,” I said, “what’d you tell this guy? You must of laid it on pretty thick.”

  “Your mother,” Guido said, “probably does not tell you how proud she is—”

  “Guido,” my mother admonished. “Too much praise is not good for a child.”

  “How did you do this zucchini?” I asked. “It’
s wonderful.”

  He launched into his recipe. Between the brief steaming and quick sautéing in olive oil with garlic, my mother started in again on the pernicious effects of television. “That’s why people love this President so much. He tells them the world is like a TV show. We have complications now, but he’s going to get the writers to put in a happy ending at the end of the episode.”

  Dessert was hot zabaglione. Rich. Luscious. I sat back with a full round stomach and savored it spoonful by spoonful. Something nice was going on between Guido and my mom, even if I didn’t know exactly what it was.

  After dessert, Guido brought out espresso and Strega. Mom wanted to show everybody old pictures. Again. Why not? She asked me to get them for her. They were on the top shelf in the hall closet.

  When I opened the door, I saw Guido’s jacket hanging inside. I pulled up a chair and stood on it to get the photo box. Looking down, I saw something underneath the jacket. White. I climbed down and pushed the jacket aside. There was a rabat underneath it. The stiff white collar and black dickie of a priest.

  My mother was seeing a priest.

  My father would have died. Except that he was dead already. What would he have said? He would have said what Garibaldi said. Just for starters.

  A priest is an impostor, and I am devoted to the sacred worship of truth.

  GIUSEPPE GARIBALDI

  I have been certified an anti-Communist by the CIA. Therefore, I am permitted to point out that in its historical context, the Marxist hatred of religion has a certain justification. When the church reaches a concordat with the state, it becomes the willing coconspirator with, if not the instigator of, every oppression, every murder, every violation of human rights that the state could commit. I saw them do it in Poland. You can see them do it in South America, Vietnam and the Philippines today.

  The church that opposes abortion today is the church that opposed anesthesia during labor because it said that the Bible said that women should give birth in pain.

  The history of progress, of science, of medicine, of civil, human, and political rights, is the history of overcoming the opposition of organized religion.

  STANISLAW ULBRECHT, 1972

  Toleration made the world anti-Christian.

  John Cotton (1584-1652),

  Puritan clergyman,

  “The Patriarch of New England”

  There are plenty of people who really believe, no matter what. A lot who just hedge their bets. A lot go through the motions for public appearances.

  Me, I can’t do it. All the contradictions, hypocrisy, obvious untruths, all the pain, stupidity, and oppression that occur in the name of Christ—or whatever else they got—stand up in my mind like rocks in the middle of the ocean. They’re there. My mind keeps hitting against them. If that shocks my friends and neighbors, if people want to use that against me, and they do, if they think I’ll recant on my deathbed, or claim that I must have prayed in the foxholes, so be it.

  Truth is truth. Bullshit is bullshit. That’s the ultimate human right, and maybe mankind’s highest destiny—to discern truth from bullshit.

  MICHAEL CASSELLA

  “Mom. Ma, can I talk to you a second,” I said. “Privately.”

  “Certainly,” she said.

  We went into the bedroom. I closed the door behind us. “What the hell is going on?” I said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “He’s a priest,” I said.

  “I know that,” she said.

  “What the hell are you doing with a priest? Huh? Is your brain going soft?”

  “What are you so upset about?”

  “Look, you gotta understand. If you’re with a guy, I’m happy for you. I’ve been hoping you would find someone. … ”

  “I have a right to live my life.”

  “Yeah. Yeah. You have every right. But, Ma, a priest. Next thing, are you gonna start having plaster saint statues in the window? It’s one thing to sleep with the guy, but, Ma, is something theological going on here?”

  21.

  Confession

  ____________________

  T made a funny story about his trip up to Dannemora. Figured he could get to Scorcese through a corrections officer. Not a bad idea. Spoke to a CO named Earl. Good country name.

  Met Earl at a roadhouse.

  They’re country here. Think they’re hard. The fucks still remember. T made a funny story out of it. He was sober, they were drunk. He made it to the car. The only thing that got punched out was his headlights. Ha-ha. He ran over someone’s foot. Ha-ha.

  T doesn’t learn. He can’t see the connection between this and that. COs selling dope to inmates, cops on the pad, federales doing break-ins, don’t see themselves as criminals, don’t accept the people who bust them as just the other half of the game.

  Couldn’t face drive. T said fly Plattsburg, rent car.

  Spend money. No question expenses this one. He’s right. Unfortunately. We spend, we profit.

  Is T taking good care Mario while I’m away?

  CASH

  Misc. $5.68

  Gas $10.45

  Bkfst $2.10

  CO P.K. $100 carry message

  Lunch $5.30

  Evening beverages $5.00 (while I wait for CO P.K. to return Hennessey’s Utopia Bar & Grill with an answer, maybe, to offer to Scorcese: $20K for Gunderson info).

  If this is utopia, let me die in Newark.

  Call son. Who is son? See grandson. Should mean more. That’s the truth. Take a vacation.

  __________________________

  From the notebooks of Joseph D’Angelo

  Guido came to see me at the office. He was in uniform. Black and white. He was very polite. “Excuse me for interrupting, I’m sure you’re very busy.”

  “Yup,” I said. I was waiting for Joey to get back from Dannemora.

  “I think there is perhaps some confusion. About the relationship between your mother and me.”

  “Look, Father,” I said, “the only confusion is your whole life.”

  “You feel strongly about this, don’t you,” he said mildly, more amused than anything else.

  “Let me make this as clear as possible. You got a religion that beats people up for fucking. I happen to be the kind of person thinks fucking is good. A positive good. On the other hand, a mass murderer can come in, get his feet oiled, make a brief apology, and you’ll tell the sonofabitch he’s gonna go to heaven when he dies.

  “People got to be responsible for what they do.”

  I never met a mobster didn’t have plaster saints on his windowsill.

  MICHAEL CASSELLA

  “It is refreshing to talk to you,” he said. “As it is to your mother.”

  “What is between the two of you, and when will it stop?”

  “You see, not only do the two of you have very strong opinions; they are thought out and informed. You feel passionately about them. That is unusual. Difficult to find. So the relationship with your mother is very important to me. And I would like to clear up what stands between you and me.”

  “The history of Western civilization,” I said. Rather pretentiously.

  He laughed. I found it disarming.

  “Look, Father—”

  “Guido.”

  “Yeah, well. Maybe I’m flying off the handle a little bit. Maybe I’m not giving you a chance,” I said. “So I’ll tell you how it is. People like you busted my father’s chops his whole life. Now, for a lot of his life, I think he enjoyed it. You know, being the iconoclast. But towards the end, he was getting tired from telling the truth. And when things were bad for him, it made the pious Catholics in our neighborhood very happy. When he died, one of the nuns at Saint Mary’s told my cousin Carmine he couldn’t get out of school for the funeral. Told Carmine that my father’s death was God’s punishment on an unbeliever. Then she mentioned that my father, who was as good a man as I’ve ever known, was going to burn in hell forever.”

  “I’m sorry,” he sai
d.

  “Don’t be. Carmine came anyway. Carmine even managed to reconcile it with being a good Catholic. Until he went to Nam. He claims he fragged the chaplain. It didn’t bother him, he said, when the chaplain used to say, every time a guy died, that it was God’s will and he would go on to a better reward. But then some guy, Carmine’s buddy, lost his eyes and his dick, all at once. The chaplain said it was a blessing in disguise. He would be without the temptation to sin. The blind, dickless guy, that is. That’s when Carmine fragged the chaplain. He says.”

  “Catholics are a lot like regular people,” Guido said. “A lot of them are assholes.”

  Mario, who had been napping in the corner, barked. He’s got different barks. There’s the food bark, the warning, the walk-me. This was the happy bark. Joey was back.

  Mario ran to the door and stood there like an anxious idiot.

  “I got business,” I said to Guido.

  “I envy you,” he said. “I was raised in a family that believed strongly. It is easy for a young man, who is sensitive to ideals, to romantic notions, to get swept up by religion. Now, as I approach the end, I envy someone like you. I would like to know more about what it is to lead a real life.”

  The door opened. Mario jumped for joy. As if he had been deprived, or beaten, as if I hadn’t fed him and walked him twice a day and even patted him on the head from time to time, once or twice.

  “Oh yes-s-s, oh yes-s-s, that’s a good boy,” Joey cooed obscenely as the mutt lopped saliva all over his face. “What’s a matter? Didn’t Tony take care of you? Didn’t he feed you or walk you or pet you?”

  The mutt barked “Yes.” Lying little bastard. Joey glared at me.

  “How’d it go?” I asked.

  He stood up and shook his head. “Scorcese said no.”

  “Didn’t even ask for more money? Or anything?”

  “You’re barking up the wrong tree,” he said. “Whatever secrets Santino got, he’s keeping them close.”

  “Santino Scorcese?” Guido asked.