Black Tide (21 page)

Felix and I were at a small table in an alcove that had windows overlooking the downtown, and we saw the foot traffic of Porter, the people in shorts and casual clothes, many carrying shopping bags, thronging the sidewalks outside. The windows were open and rock music from a loft apartment down the way echoed softly in the early evening streets. Felix and I were dressed almost identically in tan chinos and short-sleeved shirts, although Felix looked almost naked, not wearing a jacket to cover a holster and pistol. Both of us were weaponless that night.

He picked up a glass and swirled some ice around, looking outside, his features set. "The thing is, I'm not too sure how Tony Russo is going to approach this. There's a couple of ways, you know. Start off sharp, try to get me fuzzed up, needle and poke. He just might try it soft, build up gradual and then just let it hang out." The ice cubes rattled again as he moved his glass. “Then he might fool us and just lay it on the line. He accepts my demand, we arrange the meet, and we give up the address of the house and the paintings tomorrow. And tonight we leave good friends after coffee and dessert."

"From the way you're acting, I don't think he's going to fool us, Felix."

"Yeah, I know." I took a sip from my own glass. We were both drinking ice water. This wasn't the kind of night to be drinking any type of alcohol. When I had ordered two glasses of ice water, Art Cloutier --- wearing a  tank top with an American flag that said "These Colors Don't Run" ---- glared at me and was going to say something nasty, until I slid a ten-dollar bill over the stained wood of the bar.

"Why Porter?" I asked. "You'd think he'd be wanting you to come to Boston. Having someone with his reputation… well, it seems odd that a guy connected with the Boston mob would be traveling an hour or so north to Porter."

"Yeah, I thought about that, too. My guess is that he knows the safe house is somewhere in Maine, and he's working out of a place around here. Thing is, too, the post office box I replied to is in Porter."

"Is that how it worked, when you made contact?"

Felix nodded. "I finally sent a card back, saying I was ready to talk, and I told them the final and absolute price for the address of the safe house. Within two days, Tony Russo called and left a message on my answering machine, and he set the time and place. The Vault Restaurant. Tonight."

"Does it make you nervous that he set the time and the place?"

Felix turned and smiled at me. "Why, are you worried about an ambush? What do you think this is, The Godfather? Think Tony Russo is going to get up to take a crap and when he comes back he's gonna blow us both away?"

I rattled some ice cubes of my own. "The thought's entered my mind a couple of times." "

“Just a couple of times?”

''All right, a couple of times in the last thirty seconds." He took another sip. "You writer types think and worry too much. Listen, Lewis, I've been in situations like this before where the stakes were a hell of a lot higher, when you were negotiating between two groups who were fighting and had a history of dumping bodies in car trunks. You want to talk nervous, then nervous is when you're sitting across from someone whose brother’s just been nailed by your pals. That's nervous. But talking’s a good sign. It means the other side is serious, is looking for a settlement. And putting the meet in one of the most popular restaurants in Porter, well, that's another good sign. Look. I'd be a hell of a lot more nervous if he wanted to meet at a gravel pit in Tyler Falls at midnight. Then I'd be wearing a Kevlar vest and I have a guy or two as backup in the woods with a scoped AR-15, Lewis. Relax."

Felix turned away and I didn't bother telling him that I was already relaxed. Well, that wasn't the whole truth. It wasn't relaxation, and it wasn't fear. It was something else. It was like I was racing above it all, like an ice skater on an incredibly smooth lake surface, gliding away and moving with no effort or thoughts. I was with Felix and a Sousa march was playing on the speakers , and even the ice water had a mysterious taste to it, a taste that hint of  something exciting and wonderful.

When Felix turned around again I said, "Tell me about Tony Russo, then. You said you would."

He looked at his wristwatch. "We don't have that much time.”

"Maybe so, but I want to know."

He looked down at his glass, and for a moment I had to strain to hear his voice. Art Cloutier was yelling something about how Douglas MacArthur was an idiot in World War II but managed to learn something in Korea, and I leaned forward some more.

Felix said, "Like I said last night, one of the several good and heavy reasons that I'm up here, remote and away from the action, is because of Tony Russo."

"Oh."

“Yeah, oh. Back when I was in my twenties, Lewis…. well, it’s hard to explain. You're young, connected and invincible. You eat the best food, you go all over the country and you pull in some great bucks. You look at civilians and the way they have to earn a living, Jesus, doing nine-to-five shit that would drive anybody batty. I mean, humping and working for some company, so that after you work for fifteen years, you get four weeks vacation out of fifty-two? That's living? And going week to week not knowing if the place you're working for, if it's still gonna be there a week from now?"

The words were something, but his eyes, his manner, were telling me something else. "So how come you're still not in Boston? Or New York?"

"Hmm," he said, finishing off his ice water. "Many a time I've been asked that question. And you're probably one of the few people I could give a good answer to. It just started after a while, seeing how nobody who was connected was much older than their forties or fifties. It's 'cause they die out. They get killed or they go to prison. So it started eating at me, wondering if that's what I really wanted. Making great money and pulling off incredible deals, and then ending up in a prison, taking showers with a dozen tattooed bikers, all 'cause I got ratted on by someone turning state's evidence. Or driving somewhere and getting a piece of piano wire wrapped around my neck 'cause I winked at someone's sister. Back then, when I started thinking like that, well, I wasn't fully in. I still had some room to maneuver. Then, one weekend, I was working for Tony Russo."

I said nothing, watching as Felix reached into his glass and yanked out an ice cube, which he popped into his mouth and crunched for a moment. He said quietly, "It was summer, sort of like the weather we're having now. Me and another guy --- Ricky Grimes, he got killed doing a bank job in Connecticut later --- we were told to pick up two people and deliver them to Tony’s house. We had a nice Lincoln Continental, and we drove out to East Boston. Well. We picked up two kids. Brothers, maybe ten or eleven years old. And they were waiting on the porch, like they were expecting us. No mother or father there to say good-bye. Even today, I wonder where they were. I think they were in the house, hiding. Out of shame. We took them out to Boxford, up on the north shore, and they just sat in the backseat, not saying a word. Ever been to Boxford? If there's a house in that town that's worth less than a quarter million, then I'd eat my shorts."

“That's where Tony Russo was living?"

He poked at another ice cube with his fingers. ''At the time, yeah. Nice place, with a long driveway and a house that could fit twenty people, with big windows. We drove up and a couple of Russo's people took the kids in. Ricky and I were told to wait."

"Then what?"

Felix shrugged. "The kids never came out. And I don't know they ever did. One of Tony's boys came back an hour or so later and sent us home, and that was it. Oh, maybe I overreacted or something. I don't know. Maybe the kids were spending the night with Tony, maybe he was their godfather or something. Maybe. But I just remember seeing those two kids go up the walkway, and then they started holding hands, and they looked back at me, like I was going to come rescue them. I got a strange feeling that night, one I've never been able to shake, and right then I knew I wasn't gonna work for Tony Russo or Jimmy Corelli or anybody else ever again. They demand obedience, Lewis, utter and unquestioning obedience, and I wasn't going to give it to them, or anybody else. So I left, and I've never gone back."

He stayed quiet for a few moments, and another Sousa march played over the speakers. I looked outside and back at Felix and said, "We should get going."

"We should," he said, and in several seconds we were outside the warm and troubled night, heading out to see Mr. Anthony Russo.

The Vault Restaurant is four blocks from the Frozen Chosin, located on the ground floor of an old five-story hotel whose upper floors have been turned into condominiums. The building had a lot of old brickwork and turrets, and granite steps flanked by large lions, lead up to wooden double doors at the entrance to the restaurant. Felix held me back as I started walking up the steps, and I nodded in understanding when we fell behind two couples that were going in the same direction. Both men gave us quick smiles as they led their women up the steps.

Safety in numbers. As I followed the two couples, I almost started laughing at the utter absurdity of it all. The couples in front of us ---two husbands and two wives in their early fifties --- were going out for a quiet evening in Porter in their best summer clothing. I'm sure they had pleasant expectations of a nice meal, good companionship and interesting conversation, but I'm also sure that in their wildest imaginings they couldn't know that they were serving as human shields for the two well-dressed and polite men following them. I patted the head of one of the lions for good luck as I went in with Felix.

The hostess took care of the couples, and when she came back, standing behind a wooden lectern, Felix winked at me and said to the hostess, "We're here for Mr. Corelli." She made a check mark on a notepad and pulled up two menus, and we followed her into the dining area. The inside of the Vault is heavily carpeted, with deep mahogany wainscoting along the walls and carved panels in the ceilings. The lights were faux Tiffany lamps, and there were sets of tables with white tablecloths and secluded booths that were separated from each other by bookshelves filled with old leather-bound volumes.

She took us to a rear booth to the right that was about the most secluded, and a man was sitting by himself with a drink before him. He looked up and she said, "Well, the rest of your party has arrived," and he replied, "Isn't that nice."

Felix slid in first, saying, "Tony," in an oddly strained voice, and I sat next to him, conscious that I was smiling, and yet I was looking quite hard at Tony Russo. From the story Felix had told me, I was expecting a jowly old man with stained clothes and wet lips, with "Child Abuser" tattooed on his forehead, but the man sitting there could have been a model for whenever
Esquire
runs its fashion spreads for men in their late forties. He was wearing a dark blue suit and white shirt with a striped club tie, and his light brown hair was cut close and sculpted to his head, showing me a man who knew he was losing his hair and wasn't going to put up with the indignities of a toupee or a hair transplant. His skin was slightly tanned and I saw that he was squinting his eyes while looking across the table, like he was slightly disgusted at the two of us.

Tony nodded back and looked at me and said, "So. This is your adviser?"

"That's right. Lewis Cole. A magazine writer, lives down near Tyler Beach."

He looked at me and didn't offer his hand, and I returned the non-gesture. With a motion of his eyes, Tony dismissed me instantly and said, "When you worked for me, Felix, you had a good future. You were an up-and-comer, worked sharp and didn't ask any questions and got the job done. Now you live in this rotten little state and make your money by hiring out to whoever's got the biggest checkbook, and for your counselor you get a guy who earns a living by stringing words together. I can't understand it."

I looked over at Felix, wondering how I was going to achieve my mission of keeping him calm, for while the words weren't that harsh, Felix's hands were tight against a water glass.

"Let's just say he's a bit more trustworthy than some of the people I used to run with back in Boston," Felix said, his voice flat. "Some of those people have forgotten a few things, about loyalty and respect."

Tony stared right back. "So you say. You're late, you know. You call that respect?"

The hand was still tight against the glass. "It's whatever you make it"

I stepped in, saying, "Well, have you ordered yet?"

"No," he answered, still looking me over. "Just the drink. And to show you how late you are, I gotta take a men's room run. Stick right here until I get back."

"You can count on it," Felix said, and after Tony got up and left I said, "Felix, I knew this was going to be a strange favor to take care of for you, but you're making it difficult, right from the start. I thought you were ready to take off his head with a butter knife. "

Felix stared straight ahead. "Yeah, well, I didn't think it was going to be so tough, seeing the bastard face to face. I started thinking about things Tony has done recently, and I started losing it."

"Started thinking about what?"

''About this." He reached down and pulled out his wallet, taking out two photographs. The first he handed over immediately. It showed Felix with a younger man who bore a bit of a family resemblance. They were on the deck of a boat, smiling toward the camera, both wearing loud bathing suits.