Rhode Island Red

by Charlotte Carter

  “Killed? Me? Oh, child, please! I run a tits and ass joint and make sure the bartenders don’t steal them blind. It’s just a job and a pretty good one, considering. Come to think of it, it’s too bad your boyfriend couldn’t just look at it that way. You’d both be a lot happier now if he had.”

  “Henry, you mean. Yeah, maybe so. But I don’t see how our paths ever would have crossed if he had just been one of the boys.”

  “You’d be surprised, baby. A lot of them that look like cute Mr. Guido from Jersey have got them some brown sugar on the side. And would kill anybody who messed with it.”

  “Well, that’s nice for them. But I don’t want to be nobody’s ‘on the side’.”

  Justin snorted. “That’s something only a smash-up would say. I’m an aging homosexual. Wasn’t for the side, I’d never have a boyfriend.”

  I toasted him with my snifter, deferring to his wisdom, but not swallowing it whole.

  We fell silent when the good-looking singer made his appearance. “Girl, he is special,” Justin whispered to me. “I knew Aubrey wouldn’t have any dumb smash-ups for friends.”

  After the set was over, I asked the bartender to freshen our drinks. I felt there was so much more to say to my new buddy, but I didn’t know how to say it. So I sat listening to his horror stories about life in the closet that is Indiana, and the glory of stepping off the Greyhound and into the seamy Times Square night lo those many years ago. I guess Justin needed a buddy, too.

  “What did you really want to tell me tonight, Nanny?” he said at last.

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. Maybe I wanted to run my lecture on Charlie Parker past you.”

  “That would be a waste.”

  “Why? Who do you like?”

  “Luther.”

  “Figures,” I said, laughing a little. “Henry likes jazz a lot, you know. That’s kind of how we met. If I ever see him again, there are a couple of … old records I want to give him.”

  “I bet I bet that’s why you’re trying to hunt him down.”

  My hand was creeping involuntarily toward my purse. It was all I could do not to take out the gun and show it to Justin. But I wasn’t sure what the point of that would be. Did I want to show him how tough I was or did I want to beg him to take it away from me and bury it somewhere? Was I asking him to endorse my plan or talk me out of it?

  I withdrew my hand and turned the bag clasp side down on the bar.

  “All I can say is, he’s lucky it’s you and not Aubrey,” Justin said, laughing diabolically.

  He reached over and handed me one of the paper napkins from the pile next to the container of maraschino cherries. My eyes were a little wet. I hadn’t even known it.

  We sat through another show. The singer blew a kiss our way at the end of his last number. Justin caught it and put it in his breast pocket.

  It was late.

  “Well, thanks for the date, Nanny,” he said as I called for the check.

  I removed a hundred dollar bill from my bag and pushed it toward the bartender.

  Justin took note of it and smiled. “Scared of you.”

  “You should be. Not too many unemployed smash-ups throw around bucks like this,” I began, “but I only—”

  “Never mind,” he interrupted. “You know what the president say—‘Don’t ask. Don’t tell.’”

  “Good night, Justin. Kiss Aubrey for me.”

  It was very late. And I had promised myself I’d get to bed early. Tomorrow was going to take just about all the strength I had left.

  But on the other hand, what difference did it make? I knew I wouldn’t sleep.

  CHAPTER 16

  These foolish things

  I went to the flower market, to a small stall just around the corner from the apartment where Walter murdered Inge. I bought two dozen yellow roses at the wholesale price. Our lady of the flowers, all in black. That was me. I had on the same Norma Kamali that I’d worn to my grandmother’s funeral, and the much prized leather jacket Aubrey had bought me when one of her mysterious investments went platinum. The little felt cloche hat I had bought just two days ago. If I looked like a mob widow who also happened to be a fashion model, so much the better. On my wrists were the cheap leather bracelets that had belonged to Charlie Conlin.

  On the cab ride north, up Eighth Avenue, I tried to settle on an opening line. What, exactly, would be my first words when Henry opened the door? Would I have the gun already drawn? It was a tough call. Besides, I couldn’t stop thinking about Walter this morning. His touch. His breath. His laugh. Those goddamn WASPy loafers of his, with all that blood on them, floated across my vision again and again.

  All the death. All the devastation. The violence. The betrayals. I was of it now. Walter had made me part of it. Henry had made me part of it.

  If I could have it all back the way it was before this insanity started, here’s what would happen: I’d sit Walter down over a hamburger and a beer and tell him it wasn’t going to work out for us, the best thing he could do for himself was find himself another woman. And as for Henry, our affair would begin at a smoky club somewhere. I’d go out with him for a while, sleep with him, travel with him, live with him, love him with my life.

  But that was all make believe. The reality was that Walter was dead. The reality was that Henry had tricked me, used me, wrecked my life—shit, I was ready to blow a hole in his neck because of all those things, wasn’t I? And yet the reality was that I still loved him, and maybe I wanted to blow the hole in him because of that too.

  My history with Walter, my passion for Henry, my guilt and rage—all of it jumbled and boiled and bubbled over there in the back seat of that taxi.

  I stood on the curb outside the hotel until I could pull myself together, then I went in.

  The sleepy, balding man behind the desk rubbed at his eyes as he watched me approach, as if he thought this lady in black with all the yellow flowers might be part of his dream.

  “Mr. Dameron ordered flowers?” he asked after I’d stated my business.

  The concierge looked a little confused and I didn’t blame him. It was only a quarter to seven in the morning.

  “No,” I said with a Mona Lisa twist of the mouth. “They’re from me.”

  He regarded me for a moment and then, finally getting it, tentatively returned the smile.

  “I’ll just call up.” He reached for the phone at the edge of the counter.

  “No, don’t,” I said softly, placing my hand over his. “It’s a surprise.”

  Concern clouded his face for an instant. And I took the opportunity presented by that second’s worth of hesitation to place a folded twenty in front of him.

  “It’s 810, right?”

  “Yes ma’am. 810.”

  I took the elevator up.

  The Inn was still sleeping. I could almost hear the collective toss and turn of every sleeper behind every closed door, breathing gagged and heavy, dreams troubled, saturated with last night’s mistakes.

  I leaned on the bell of 810 and kept up the pressure until I heard shuffling from within.

  “Yes? Who’s there?” he called, sounding crazy in that roused from sleep way.

  I mumbled an utterly incomprehensible response that ended with “the front desk.”

  He repeated, “Who’s there?”

  And I repeated the same nonsense syllables, but much louder this time, and with an edge of high handed impatience.

  He bought it. There was the sound of the safety chain sliding away from its cradle, and then the click of the dead bolt.

  The door swung open a second later. And before he could speak again, I thrust the flowers into his arms.

  He was wearing dopey patterned flannel pajamas, looking for all the world like a kid who’d misplaced his teddy bear.

  “Very hot look, Henry,” I said, stepping into the room and slamming the door closed with my foot.

  “Oh. It is you, Nanette. How beautiful you are.”

  I swung the
palm of my hand, which by now held the gun, against the side of his face. It connected just right.

  Henry reeled backwards and staggered until his legs gave way beneath him and he was sitting on the factory outlet carpet. The long stemmed yellow beauties were still in his arms. He had not raised a hand against me nor tried to fend off the blow.

  I pointed the gun at his stomach. He blinked once, then looked away.

  I waited. And waited.

  “Nothing to say, Henry?” I spoke at last.

  “Yes, my love. I do have something.”

  “Good. What is it?”

  “I would like to have a cigarette.”

  “Oh sure, baby. Sure. Here, let me light it for you.”

  I walked over and kicked him in the groin.

  The roses went flying. He lay flat on his back, gasping for air, beginning to cry.

  “Uh uh, Henry. None of that. Sit up straight like a good boy.”

  “Why have you come here, Nanette? Surely there is nothing you could want from me now.”

  “It’s story time, Henry. I want a story from you. Tell me about Rhode Island Red.”

  “It will not help you to know. It will only—”

  “Henry, do you believe that I’m prepared to pull the trigger on this fucking thing and walk out of here without a backward glance?”

  “I do not know.”

  In answer, I pushed the safety catch to the off position.

  “What about now?” I asked, holding the weapon straight out in front of me.

  He sighed. “All right. But I truly do wish to have a cigarette. May I?” He nodded toward the coffee table where the packet of Dunhills lay.

  “Go ahead.”

  After he’d taken his first draw, he raised one hand gingerly to the wet slash at his temple. The blood pulsing out of it was like a miniature stream carrying debris.

  “Before I tell you your story,” he said, “I want to tell you something else.”

  “I don’t want to hear anything else, you bastard.”

  “But I will tell you anyway,” he pronounced calmly. “I know how angry you are. But how many times can you kill me?”

  He had me there. I fell silent.

  “It is true that I used you in an inexcusable way. It is true I have no right to even hope for your forgiveness—in this world or any other. But it is also true that I fell in love with you … Yes!” he shouted as I began to smirk. “No matter what you do to me and no matter how terribly I betrayed you, I won’t have you say I didn’t love you.”

  “Okay. Fine. That’s out of the way. Now tell me about Rhode Island Red.”

  “In a moment. I will in a moment.”

  With some effort, he rose off the floor then, my weapon trained on him, and regathered the flowers into a bouquet. “Will you allow me to put these in water?”

  “For godsakes, man!”

  But he was already at the small tin sink.

  The roses gave off a brilliantly sad light in their empty stewed tomatoes tin.

  Henry called over his shoulder, the tap still running, “How old are you, Nanette? I never thought to ask.”

  “What are you—kidding?”

  “No, my love. I want to know.”

  “Don’t call me that again,” I threatened.

  He shrugged.

  “I’m twenty-eight. How old are you—were you?”

  “And so I am already dead for you?”

  “What do you think, Henry?”

  “Yes. I know. Well, at least you see why it doesn’t matter so much to me that you may kill me. I suppose that is the way it was always meant to be—that someone would kill me. What difference does it make who does it? Coffee, my—I mean, Nanette?”

  I could see that he’d filled a cheap tin espresso pot with water and was scooping out coffee grounds from a brightly colored can.

  I strode over to him, plucked the can from the kitchen counter, and threw it against the nearest wall.

  That did me in. That was my last little explosion of bile.

  I sat down heavily in one of the ugly tufted barrel chairs and shook my head. “Listen, Henry, do you have an Uzi hidden in the milk or something? I mean, are you going to catch me off guard and blow me away before I can get you?”

  “Don’t be insane! I love you!”

  “Whatever. Because if you are, I guess I don’t really give too much of a fuck either. Just make the coffee and get back over here and talk. And do something about your mother-fucking head! You’re bleeding all over the stove.”

  Henry had changed into a dark brown turtleneck and black trousers. On the fake wood coffee table, the ice cubes inside the hotel wash cloth he had used to staunch the blood dripping from his wound melted one by one.

  I sat smoking one of the Dunhills, not speaking, watching his lips move, refusing to cry, wanting his mouth on me, hating myself.

  “You know almost as much as I do now,” he said. “But you don’t know the history. The story, as you say.

  “As you can see, I do not have the thing called Rhode Island Red. I will never have it. I know that now. I don’t know where it is. I just know that it’s gone. Gone—again.

  “It is so much like you to think you could go to the library and find out what you need to know about criminals. You cannot, Nanette. Any more than I could expect to absorb this—what?—this essence of a great black musician by listening to his music and worshipping his image.”

  Henry looked depleted, sick around the edges. His eyes were swollen from the two-way crying jag we’d had in the bathroom.

  “And when you could find nothing from the books, to think that you walked into the lair of this lieutenant … Tom …”

  “Justin Thorn,” I corrected, no life whatsoever in my voice. “And he’s hardly a lieutenant.”

  Suddenly he was rushing over to my chair, eyes wet again. He tried to take my hand, kiss it.

  “Don’t!” I pulled my fingers out of his grasp, shaking my head violently. “Just don’t.”

  Slowly, he backed away from me and onto his own seat again.

  He continued. “In your research did you read of a man called Tonio Abbracante?”

  “I don’t know. Perhaps.”

  “He was a hard man. A mafioso. As bad as they come. Long ago, it was he who controlled everything in Providence. In the late 1940s and early 1950s.

  “He may have been a vicious criminal, but first he was a man. And one day he fell in love with a woman. A different kind of passion than he had known before. For a different kind of woman. She was a rich and beautiful lady from Newport who had fancy horses and fancy ancestors.

  “Abbracante was not content to have an affair with her. He wanted to marry her. To this woman he probably represented excitement, adventure. Or perhaps the only reason she ever gave him the time of day was to scandalize her family. To rebel. Who knows what she really thought of Tonio? He may have been nothing but a clown in her eyes.

  “One thing about this lady, though: she was absolutely fearless. Fearless enough to play with Tonio Abbracante as if he was no more than a college boy suitor. Tonio never stopped asking her to marry him. And finally she relented. It was a very foolhardy thing to do. In a way she set her own doom in motion with that acceptance. She said she would marry him if he could get the great Charlie Parker to play at their wedding.

  “Can you imagine it? She’d marry him if he persuaded Bird to play at the wedding! As if he were on the same level as the caterer or the seamstress who sewed her veil.

  “She may have been mad, but she was interesting, this woman. She made Tonio understand that Parker would have to come—or be enticed to come—of his own free will. That Tonio must not threaten him in any way. For if he did, not only was the wedding off but their relationship would end. Period. He must persuade Bird. She must have known it was an impossible task.

  “Abbracante was an ignoramus about music. He likely had never heard of Parker and could not have cared less about his genius. But he wanted that woman. H
e did what had to be done.

  “From his ranks he chose a trusted underling to be sent as an emissary to Parker. It could only help that this underling loved music and had been an amateur guitarist.

  “That man was my father.

  “Needless to say, Bird laughed in his face—the first time. But Abbracante was persistent. He would buy Bird or die in the effort. After all, he was a criminal, and he knew that every man has his price. After trying just about everything else, he sent my father to a pawn shop to buy an ordinary saxophone. Then he filled the saxophone with pure heroin and soldered the top shut, and all the stops, with gold. He offered it to Parker as the fee for one night’s work.

  “Parker accepted. It was the one lure he couldn’t walk away from. And so he played at the sumptuous wedding.

  “For a little while Tonio Abbracante was happy in the unlikely marriage he had made with the woman who had so obsessed him. He had gotten what he wanted.

  “And about eighteen months later he had her murdered. No one seems to know why.

  “Shortly after that, my father must have offended Tonio. Because he killed him too.

  “Parker was set to tour Europe a few days after the wedding. He was to go over by ship. At the last minute, the tour was canceled without explanation. Bird had been spotted at the dock. But no one could explain why, at the last minute, he refused to sail. The theory is that he canceled because the sax was stolen from him somewhere on or near the ship.

  “There were a dozen whispered stories about what happened that day. Rumors. Nothing was ever proved. But the most likely one said the theft had been engineered by a group of New York longshoremen.

  “I was no more than a boy then, of course. After my father was killed, I was sent back to Greece to live with my widowed grandmother. My poor mother must have believed that that was the only way to keep me out of the life of crime that had killed my father. She was wrong. By the time I was twenty-five I was back in the States and eager for all the things I thought the mob could provide me with. Money. Women. A beautiful car.

  “But it was a disaster, start to finish. Not only was I the world’s worst criminal, no one seemed to understand that I had been raised in Europe and would naturally be different, strange to them. They made fun of my manners, of the way I spoke English, of my interest in music and so many other things. I was called a homosexual, a fool, a coward.