Blue Heaven (15 page)

I heard the story from Aggie who cornered me the minute I entered the ballroom. She was drunker than when I'd seen her last but still in command of her consonants which was not the case with many others.

Someone looked out and noticed the headless king and suddenly there were about fifty people all crowding round the ballroom's French windows staring at the scene, splitting their sides. Under more stress than ever, I started making jokes, calling it the Brian DePalma Nativity. Given that my audience was comprised entirely of drunks who'd all been busting their guts before I'd even started I had little trouble inducing fresh gales of mirth.

In the midst of this Gilbert elbowed his way through to me.

"Hi!" he said manically. "How are you!"

"I'm
greatl
How the hell are you!"

"Couldn't be
better?'

We both broke down in helpless laughter and everyone else was already laughing so hard they didn't bother to wonder what it was all about. Then the crowd parted respectfully and Freddy came forward
leading Moira by the hand. He'd apparently not spoken to Gilbert since the shooting, for he said, "Ah, here you are, Gilbert. I believe we were interrupted."

Everyone guffawed at the pleasantry, and Freddy beamed.

"I was about to make a request of you on behalf of your cousin Aggie. I see your friend is here, too. Good, good!"

"Oh Gilley!" said Moira, "you're just going to love this! You too Philip!"

"Perhaps, you should ask them, Aggie," said Freddy.

"Love to! Listen, you two," she said, taking us both by our hands, "you're both a couple of starving artists and you both need something to keep bread on the table till you're both as famous as I'm sure you're gonna be. Now, my little restaurant has immediate openings for a host and a bartender, or rather it will have when I give the two I've got now the old boot. Hah! Well, they deserve it, they're bores! What I need is a couple of young charmers who can keep my surly relatives smiling even when they have to wait for a table they don't want to begin with, and the cook is smashed and burning the pasta! I had two princes with me for years but they left, and since then no one has worked out at all. I need you Tuesdays through Saturdays; we're closed Mondays and I rent it out Sundays for parties. You don't have to be there till five and you're always out by one so you have
all
day to work on your writing."

"Isn't it perfect?" said Moira.

"I don't care who tends bar and who hosts. You can flip a coin! So, kids, what do you say?"

"Well . . ." I began and was immediately drowned out by a chorus of lethal admirers coaxing us into submission. What could I say? That I didn't need work? After my merry quips about my poverty-stricken existence? And what could Gilbert say with Freddy standing there grinning munificently? That he didn't care if his wife and children starved while he finished (or, rather, contemplated beginning) his
great novel?

We conveyed our grateful acceptance to the delighted applause of the assembled, and after much shaking of hands I excused myself, pleading that I had to seek out my fiancee and give her the joyous
news.

I found her in the living room where she was still gamely coaching the good sister. She saw me and, excusing herself, ran to my side.

"Philip!" she whispered. "Where on earth have you been? I've been worried sick! Do you know what's been going on here? Gilbert went for a chat with
Freddy.
And in the middle of it that psychopath who works for him fired shots at Maddie's Christmas display! These people are poison, Philip! At least you can thank God you're not in too deep yet. Tomorrow morning, you tell Gilbert you're sorry but you are
out
of it. You don't intend to lay eyes on any of these hoodlums ever again. Is that clear?-Shhh! Such a nice party, isn't it, dear? Why, hello, Leo! How are you? So good to see you again!"

Fourteen

T
he next day Gilbert, Claire and I met at Claire's Riverside Drive apartment. The weather that day seemed deliberately chosen to intensify our mood. It was cold, gray and drizzly, and Claire's studio, which on a nice day looks small and cheerful, looked small and bleak, a place where pawnbrokers might go to die.

We hadn't discussed the situation since the party when I'd stammered out the news of our sudden career opportunities. The complications had become so overwhelming that there seemed no point in trying to sort them all out right there in the enemy camp. Claire just pulled us aside to secure our agreement on one thing: that from here on in Moira was to be told nothing.
Nothing.
She was not to know Claire was in on it, nor that any of us had the first idea we were dealing with the Mafia. Moira could turn any information to her own foul purpose so secrecy was the only advantage we could hope to cultivate.

We saw the wisdom in this plan and wasted no time in putting it into effect. The moment we left Maddie's we began waxing rhapsodic about the party and the family's boundless charm. As for the Massacre of the Magi, it was hard to affect a naivete so thorough as to have been left intact after that bit of carnage, but we tried. Wasn't it natural that a man of Freddy's wealth should have an armed bodyguard? Rock stars had them, after all, and so did politicians. And how frightening those Magi must have seemed out of the context of the manger, swinging into view with their long robes and tall hats like some strange band of transvestite assassins. Still, how funny it had been when they'd all realized Serge's mistake! How Gilbert had laughed!

"Well, Gilbert," said Claire, locking her door, "I've been reading up on your family all morning and I can't say I'm encouraged for you." We noted her small dining table was piled high with library books and copies of
New York
magazine. Various pages were marked with paper clips.

"God, where did you get all these back issues?" "They're mine. They've been sending it to me for six years. I keep winning the contests. They do a lot of mob pieces, so I knew I'd find something. The books are worth looking at, too. Feast your eyes."

She disappeared into the kitchen alcove. Gilbert and I seated ourselves and, with trembling hands, began inspecting the evidence. There was a book called
The Blood Broker.
I could see from the imitation
Godfather
lettering on the cover that it was one of the spate of tell-all Mafia books rushed into print in the wake of the fabulous success of Puzo's novel and its celluloid offspring. This one was about a Philadelphia racketeer named Louis Lucabella who'd flourished in the fifties and sixties.

Claire had marked a page. It recounted an incident that took place in the late thirties when young Louis was taking his first baby steps toward infamy. In brief, he and three enterprising cohorts had begun a small pharmaceutical concern, the purview of which overlapped that of a similar enterprise operated by Beefman Bombelli (for this was in the days before he was called the Pooch, or they'd never have been so rash).

Soon one of their little band disappeared and a week later the rest were summoned to Freddy's slaughterhouse for a few friendly hands of poker. Louis and his friends, however, had some difficulty enjoying the game for it was repeatedly interrupted by the sounds of bloodcurdling screams and cracking bones, all coming from the next room. At each of these pesky interruptions, Freddy apologized, explaining that this was, after all, a slaughterhouse with a daily quota of cattle to dispatch-though which rare breed of cow was capable of screaming, "No more, please, just kill me!" he didn't say. In a mere three hours poor Bossie fell silent and Freddy, who was behind, let the three depart with their chips, saying he'd be only too happy to cash these in whenever they cared to return.

I looked up from this cheering account to see Gilbert staring at an article as if it were the last chapter of a Stephen King novel. Silently we traded off.

It was a piece about Freddy, written two and a half years ago when he was released from prison. It painted a frighteningly inaccurate portrait of a sad little man, debilitated, chastened, "tired of the bloodletting" and close to death. There was a picture of a tiny hunchbacked figure dolefully leaning on his cane in a small unweeded garden, a man who couldn't have been more unlike the horridly robust homunculus I'd met at Maddie's party. My heart sank as I thought of that shrewd lizard, gulling the public into thinking he was a spent force when he was still bursting with malignant energy.

Claire reentered with coffee for us.

"Did you
see
this?" I risked.

"Yes. Stupid journalisst. Completely taken in!"

"Oh my gawwwd," moaned Gilbert, immersed in Freddy's slaughterhouse shenanigans.

"And that's hardly the worst of it," said Claire with a nod to the books and magazines we hadn't yet perused. "They're dreadful people. And there are more of them than you can shake a stick at."

"I don't get it. That day at Trader Vic's Maddie made it sound as if the Bombellis were dropping like flies. What's that all about?"

"Who cares?" moaned Gilbert. "I don't want to know!"

"That's exactly the sort of attitude that got you into this mess to begin with."

"Do you want to pick on us or do you want to help us?"

"Both,
if it's all the same to you. I mean, I've seen idiocy before, but nothing to compare with the sheer witlessness of your behavior

last night. Running around begging for attention! And you, Gilbert!

Why on earth did you have to make such absurd promises to Freddy?"

"Fuck you, Miss School Marm. I just told him what he wanted to hear. You going to tell someone like that what he
doesn't
want to hear?"

Claire agreed he had a point.