Death at the Member Guest

by James Y. Bartlett

  “But he’s coming back for the funeral,” I said.

  “He’s coming back to make a claim for the inheritance,” Leta said sharply. “I’ll probably have to buy him off. Little shit. I don’t like him either and I’ve never met him.”

  “Would you like some cheese with that whine?” I said sarcastically.

  There was a rustle from the back seat and something round and hard was thrust into the back of my neck at the base of my brain.

  “Hacker,” she said coldly, “Are you sure you want to be insulting someone who’s carrying a loaded firearm?”

  I felt the blood drain from my face. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Jack try to stifle a grin. He failed. I whirled around. Leta was holding the thick end of a fountain pen. She and Jack burst out in peals of laughter.

  “Bite me,” I said, which was the best I come up with to regain some dignity.

  We rumbled across one of the suspension bridges that span the mighty Merrimac near downtown Lowell, and worked our way through the center of town. The town hall, a huge monolithic turreted structure constructed out of gray granite blocks, rolled by on the left. A long four-story red brick building stretched off to the right for several blocks: one of the miles of mills that made up this rusty old town.

  “You know where we’re going?” I asked Jack.

  He nodded. “I think Rene keeps something of an office in one of these old buildings on the canal,” he said. “I’m looking for a sign.”

  “Lemere Legbreakers?” I asked. “You call, we haul, that’s all? The best pain money can buy? Don’t leave your loansharking to an amateur…call the best!”

  “Hacker?” Jackie said gently. “Are you wigging out on me?”

  “Sounds like it,” said the voice in the back seat.

  “There it is!” Jack said. “Teamsters Foundations. Doesn’t that sound like a nice little law-abiding business?”

  He pulled into a small, cobblestoned parking area. The building was brick, three stories high, and filled with large windows, most of them on the upper floors boarded up. Next to the parking area was a loading dock, the bay shuttered tight, and a gray door above which hung a lone metal light. It was dark and getting chilly. A lone streetlight a few yards away threw dark shadows across the sidewalk. There were no lights on inside the building that we could see, and no other cars in sight, except for a beat-up pick-up truck parked down near the corner. The only sounds were a dull rumbling of cars from a main street a few blocks away and the mournful cries of the crickets in the weeds. They knew their goose was cooked.

  We got out of the car and looked at the dark facade. I was encouraged by the lack of lights. Leta was not. “Shit,” she said, “No one’s here.” Good, I thought, maybe we can get out of here with our brains intact.

  “You never know,” Jackie said. He walked up to the door beside the loading dock and pushed the bell. We heard a ringing echoing inside. He waited a few moments and pounded on the door. Nothing.

  “Oh well,” he said. “Let’s try Plan B.”

  I was about to ask him what the next brilliant strategy was when the door creaked open, spilling bright light into the parking lot. A guy with a large head of brilliantined hair stuck his head out the door.

  “Th’ fuck you want?” he grunted.

  “We’re looking for Rene Lemere,” Jack said. His voice, I noticed, had just the smallest quiver in it.

  “You got an appointment?” the guy asked, his frown causing his entire massive face to droop.

  I laughed out loud. I didn’t mean to, of course. But the question struck me as absurd. That one would need an appointment to see a hood. In a dump like this. At seven o’clock on a Sunday night. Leta, standing next to me, gave me an elbow shot to the ribs, but it was too late.

  “Th’ fuck’s so funny?” the guy grunted, not looking happy in the least.

  “My friend is a little on edge,” Jack smoothly interjected. “We’re trying to find Rene and have a little sit-down with him. My friend here is Hacker, and we understand Rene’s been looking for a meeting. Thought we’d save him some time and effort and drop in.”

  The guy looked Jack and up and down, and then focused his dark and beady eyes at me and gave me the up and down thing too. Then he turned to Leta, who said “Keep your eyes to yourself, bozo.”

  That was enough. The guy threw the door open and motioned us inside.

  “Ah,” Jack said, sounding proud of himself. “So he’s here?”

  “Naw,” the guy said. “But you three pieces o’ shit ain’t goin’ nowhere until he says so.”

  “Well,” Jack said, “Thanks anyway, but we’ll wait until …”

  “You’ll wait until nuttin’” the guy said. He pulled back his jacket to show us his pistol tucked in his waistband. “Get your sorry asses in here. Now.”

  Our asses, sorry and not, went inside.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  The inside of Rene Lemire’s crime syndicate headquar- ters looked more like Joe’s Insurance office. The slick-haired guy pointed us down a narrow corridor and into a tiny airless room at the back with one half-boarded-up window. Outside, there was a small dark canal and, across a weed-choked vacant lot, another long brick warehouse, all as dark as the thoughts of the condemned. The room was covered in cheap dark paneling of the kind that every off-price home improvement store carries and illuminated by three banks of harsh fluorescent lights overhead. The walls were empty save two items: a gilt-framed 10 x 12 color photograph of an elderly woman with a huge bouffant white hair-do and thick rhinestone glasses, hanging behind the desk; and, tacked above a colorless three-drawer file cabinet, a color calendar showing Miss September pulling downwards on her tight white tee-shirt so as to highlight her twin cantaloupes. Her lidded eyes were half closed and she was chewing on her lower lip as if she was ravenously hungry for something. My guess was that it wasn’t a Caesar salad with the anchovies on the side she was hungry for.

  Slick motioned at the three of us to park it on a threadbare sofa covered in a red-plaid tweed. We sank down simultaneously, which caused a stringy shriek from the ancient couch. We stared across three feet of space at a gray metal desk, the top covered in fake wood veneer. There was a black telephone, a large calendar-type desk pad and a stapler arranged on the desk. There was not a lot of warmth in Rene’s office, but I relaxed, figuring the worse Rene Lemere could do to us was try to staple us to death.

  I nodded at the photo of the old woman on the wall. “Nice photo,” I said to Slick. “Is that …?”

  “Rene’s mother,” Slick said. “And don’t get funny. He’s very protective of his mother.”

  “Which one is Mom?” Jackie asked, looking innocent. Slick pulled back his hand as if to give Jack a whack upside the head, but didn’t. He walked around the desk and heaved himself down into the desk chair, which also squeaked in protest. Slick’s head was enormous and glistened in the fluorescent light of the office. He had no neck to speak of, a thick, round chest, and a bit of a gut. But he looked like he could move fast if he had to. He had a red, bulbous nose which looked like it might have been broken a few times, and his upper lip was thick and sweaty. He looked across the desk at us with small, dark, unblinking eyes, almost as if he didn’t even see us sitting there.

  “What’s the plan, Stan?” Jackie asked. “I got things to do.”

  Slick shrugged, an almost imperceptible movement of his shoulders.

  “Rene’s on the way in,” he said. “When he gets here, we’ll all find out.”

  He sat back and fixed us again with those small, dark, unseeing eyes. I tried to watch to see if ever blinked.

  My cell phone rang. I pulled it out of my pocket, flipped open the top and answered.

  “Mister Hacker?” came a scratchy high-pitched voice. “Tony Zec here. I’m on the New York Turnpike, heading back to Boston. We’re all done here. Sam Tennyson won in a playoff. Shot a terrific last-round 63. It was amazing …”

/>   “Zec,” I cut him off sharply. “Shut up. Did you send me the stuff?”

  “Yessir,” he quavered over the line.

  “Good,” I said. “Good job. Drive safely. Why don’t you come in to see me tomorrow afternoon?”

  I saw Slick’s left eyebrow go up about two centimeters.

  “Check that,” I said into the phone. “Can you come in Tuesday?”

  “Yessir…as long as it’s in the morning. I have a class at two. It’s my Law and Journalism seminar, and …”

  “Zec!” I barked again. “Tuesday morning. Ten.”

  “Okay,” he said. “See ya.”

  We hung up. Slick didn’t move a hair. Jackie and Leta were looking at me.

  “It was my college intern,” I said. “He was covering the tournament for me up in New York.”

  “You have a college intern?” Leta asked with some amazement in her voice. “You?”

  “Wasn’t my idea,” I said. “It’s a long story.”

  “Well, I certainly don’t have anything better to do at the moment,” she said, sounding a bit peevish. She folded her arms and waited.

  I was going to say something smartass to her when my phone rang again. I jumped at the sound. Angrily, I flipped the top open.

  “Goddam it Zec, I’m busy here,” I snapped into the phone.

  There was a pause. “What’s a Zec?” came a cheerful feminine voice. “And why are you busy when you’re supposed to be at my house eating baked chicken and ziti?”

  I felt myself go red. “Oh, hi Mary Jane,” I said sheepishly. “Sorry. Thought you were someone else.”

  “You thought right,” she said. “I am someone else. Where the hell are you?” In the background, I could hear little Victoria say “Mommy, you said hell.”

  “Damn,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  “You guys celebrating a win?” Mary Jane laughed softly into the phone. “Maybe you’d better sleep it off instead of driving home.”

  I had a sudden brainstorm.

  “Listen,” I said. “I’ve been called into a sudden meeting up here in Lowell with Lemere. Do me a favor and call your father-in-law and apologize for me. Tell him if I could get out of this I would, but I can’t. He’ll understand.”

  There was dead silence on the other end. I kept talking.

  “Yes, I know, but he’ll understand,” I said. “He’s been in this situation many times. Just tell him there’s no way I can get out of this right now.”

  “Hacker,” Mary Jane said in a soft whisper. “Do you know who my father-in-law is, I mean, was? Why are you talking about him? What the hell is going on?”

  I heard Victoria say ‘Mommeee…” Mary Jane said nothing. “Thanks Mary Jane,” I said. “And again, I’m very sorry. Yes, give your father-in-law my regards. Of course. Yes. Right. Bye.”

  I hung up and silently prayed that Mary Jane would understand. Or, even better, not understand anything and call her former father-in-law and ask him what the hell was going on. Victoria would be mortified, but you can’t win them all. Everyone was looking at me. I took a moment to put my phone away, hoping that the few extra seconds would help me calm myself down.

  “My downstairs neighbor,” I said to the room at large. “She had invited me to dinner tonight with her family. Her father-in-law is an avid golfer, and he wanted to hear some of my stories about the tour. We’ll just have to reschedule I guess.”

  “I guess,” said Slick.

  We sat there in silence again. Leta shifted her heavy shoulder bag around on her lap. All those wrapped bills must have been heavy. Not to mention her little silver gun. I started having a fantasy that involved the three of us shooting our way out of Rene Lemere’s tawdry little office, but quickly shook my head to clear it away. Anything like that would no doubt result in someone dying, and I suspected it wouldn’t be Slick.

  A bell rang insistently from down the hall. Slick stood up and headed out of the room to answer it. He stopped and held his hand out to me. “Phone,” he said. I reluctantly reached into my pocket and handed him the cell. Slick pocketed it and went to answer the door.

  “Finally,” Jackie said. “Some action. I was about to start singing ‘Some Enchanted Evening.’ This sitting around drives me crazy.”

  “What are your feelings about gunplay?” I asked incredulously. “That seems to be our only option here.”

  He was about to answer when Herb Incavaglia came bursting into the office. He stared at the three of us sitting on Rene’s couch. “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” he muttered and turned on his heel. He slammed the door to the office shut with his heel and began yelling at Slick. We couldn’t hear exactly what he said, but it didn’t sound like he was happy to see us gathered there. Slick’s deep bass voice answered Herb in staccato, angry bursts.

  “I guess we have established a relationship between Herb and Rene,” Jackie said.

  “I coulda told you that,” Leta laughed. “In fact, I think I did.”

  “So what are we doing here again?” I asked no one in particular. “Besides risking life and limb?”

  “I don’t know what you’re doing here,” Leta said sharply, “But I’m trying to find out who killed my husband.”

  “And Hacker, you’re here because you heard Rene the Lip wanted to see you, so you thought you’d drop by before you headed back to Boston,” Jackie reminded me helpfully. “And me? I’m just the designated driver.”

  That struck all three of us as rather funny, and we were giggling on the couch when Herb Incavaglia came striding back into the office, looking red and sweaty, followed by Slick, his face impassive as always.

  “What the hell is so funny,” Herb almost shouted. “Do you know how much trouble you’re in?”

  We stop giggling and all three of us looked up at Herb standing there, hands on hips, hair somewhat wild, eyes large and round. Then, without planning, all three of us uncrossed our legs and crossed them again. It was like a Rockettes number. That also struck all three of us as instantly funny and we began to howl with laughter.

  Herb had reached the end of his rope.

  “Bust ‘em up, Bennie,” he said to Slick. “Start with that guy,” he motioned at me. Slick Bennie bounced on the balls of his feet, light as a cat.

  “Whoa,” I said, holding one hand up and wiping the tears out of my eyes with the other. “No need for violence here. We’re all just a little on edge and we’re waiting to talk to Rene. He probably wouldn’t be too happy if he got here and found us all mashed up.”

  Bennie looked at Herb, who nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “Well, just shut the fuck up then.” He stalked out of the room. Bennie went over and sat down behind the desk again and stared at us. Jackie sighed, Leta giggled, and I stared back. He blinked. Which I guess proved that, at the very least, Bennie wasn’t a lizard.

  I don’t know how long we sat there. Jackie eventually began humming what sounded like something by Lerner and Loewe. That made Leta giggle. I gave her an elbow shot, which landed mostly on the side of her breast. “Ooo, Mister Hacker,” she cooed, “Aren’t we getting a little fresh?” I snorted an aborted laugh. Bennie blinked again, reached under his jacket and pulled out his gun, flipped the safety off and ratcheted a bullet into the chamber.

  “Next one who makes a sound gets one in the kneecap,” he said. He put the gun down on the calendar mat and stared at us with those tiny, dark eyes. I think we all believed him, because for the next half-hour or so, we sat motionless, and silent, waiting for Rene the Lip.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  The appearance of Lowell’s foremost gangster was a bit of a letdown, after all the anticipation and buildup. Jackie was snoring softly at the far end of the sofa, and Leta had pulled out an emery board and was busy shaping and smoothing. That left Bennie and me to stare at each other.

  Finally, I heard the door out to the loading dock swing open, and footsteps as someone walked down the hall. I could also hear a soft, tuneless whistle.


  Rene “the Lip” Lemere came into his office carrying a Coke from Burger King and his cell phone, both of which he put down carefully on his desk. “Get out of my chair,” he said to Bennie, who shot up as if he had been goosed. Then Rene turned to look at the three of us.

  He was an avuncular sort, with white, thinning hair, large sagging ears and bushy eyebrows that pooched out of his careworn forehead. Rene was wearing a blue plaid sport shirt and baggy khaki trousers. Two pens were clipped to his breast pocket, and a brown belt failed to corral his spreading midsection. He looked more like someone who had just finished mowing the lawn than the head of a crime empire. He peered at us through black eyes. He had a severe overbite condition, which made his top lip protrude outwards, giving his countenance a permanent frown. Hence, I figured, his colorful Mob moniker.

  “So,” he said, his voice sharp and hard-edged, unlike his appearance. “What do we have here?”

  I stood up. “Name’s Hacker,” I said, sticking out my hand. “Heard you wanted to talk. This is John Connolly, owner of the Lowell Citizen,” I motioned towards Jack, who had, thankfully, woken up. “And this lady is Leta Papageorge, whose husband was murdered yesterday out at the Shuttlecock Club. We all would like to know what you know about that.”

  Rene listened to me, his eyes locked on mine, arms folded, nodding slightly as I introduced everyone. Bennie stood motionless leaning against the wall. I had no idea where Herb had gone.

  “Right,” Rene said. “Let’s talk about that.” He walked around his desk and sat down in the chair. He reached over for his Coke and sipped some through the straw poking out of the plastic to-go cup. He picked up his black desk telephone and punched a button. “Herb,” he said into the receiver, “Get in here.”

  “First of all,” he said after hanging up, “Let me express my sincere condolences to you, Mrs. Papageorge. Vitus was a friend of mine, and his death is a tragedy. I will miss him.” He nodded at Leta.