Death Never Sleeps (30 page)

S
ilvano Marchetto, the venerable owner of DaSilvano, the man who brought Florentine cooking to New York, approached the Lesters’ table. Dressed in a pink V-neck sweater, his unruly white hair almost flowing over his bold, oversize silver-framed glasses, he had a patrician manner that appeared to barely contain a wild and unpredictable core. “I understand that you are friends of Michael’s?”

“Yes, is everything okay?” Skinny Lester answered.

“
Si
,
si
, of course. Welcome. You gentlemen just don’t
look
like most of his friends.”

Skinny Lester looked at his cousin. “Jesus, Lester, you could’ve ditched those wrinkled jeans for once.”

But the great Silvano Marchetto put his hand on Fat Lester’s shoulder. “Relax, my friend, you are good. What I meant was that many of Michael’s friends are, how do you say, uptight. Maybe the ones I have seen are more business associates. I can tell though that you two enjoy good food, good wine, and each other. That’s all that matters. Enjoy your evening here.” Marchetto gave a combination sigh and a low, guttural laugh as he moved on to the next table.

Fat Lester exhaled, his tension seeming to dissipate. Skinny Lester watched Marchetto and said, “Still, it’s probably why they gave us a table in the back, near the bathrooms. This is a pretty fancy place. It’s one of Michael’s favorites.”

“Do you notice how well Michael dresses when he goes out to dinner? He’s always wearing a sport coat or a cashmere sweater. He’s got cuff links on his shirts, you know—French cuffs. His suits look custom.”

Fat Lester twirled his fork into his tagliatelle alla Bolognese, “That shit works for him. He’s got to dress up for his day job. It wouldn’t work for us. But Alex was a pretty sharp dresser too. You know, I looked in his closet once; he had at least fifteen custom-made sport coats from that Korean guy, Gung Ho, in Flushing. Although, now that I think of it, he was always saying that none of them fit.”

“The Korean guy is Chung Ho, not Gung Ho,” Skinny Lester said before his thoughts drifted somewhere else. “It was just a month ago that we were at Alex’s birthday party. Same fifteen or so guys—Joe D, Shakes, Frankie the Bookie—and same table at Piccola’s, every year. Even Tony the usher showed up this year.”

“Yeah, I remember him from when Alex would take us to the Yankee games,” Fat Lester said, smiling over the memory. “Tony was the usher at the stadium for forty years. Alex had his season box there for all those years, and this guy shows up at the dinner. He’s got to be seventy-five. He said Alex was his nicest customer, always tipped him well and just treated him well. How many guys have the usher from the stadium go out of their way to show up at their birthday party?”

Fat Lester pointed his fork as he made his point. “And don’t forget Michael. He’s been coming the last few years, even though he skipped about twenty before that.”

As the two of them sat together and enjoyed their pasta and a bottle of Chianti Classico late that night, they had a chance to reflect on the path that got them where they were, their years with Alex, and the prospect of life with Michael.

“Who the hell would have ever believed Alex would be gone and his kid brother would take over? I always thought Michael was kind of an intellectual. He was always reading books,” Fat Lester said, a forkful of the Bolognese disappearing into his mouth.

“We knew Alex for over forty years. We’ve actually known Michael for almost as long, since we saw him when he was first born,” Skinny Lester said.

“I would have never thought he’d want to do what Alex was doing. If he’s still in it after all the shit that’s gone on the last several weeks, he’s no fuckin’ baby anymore,” said Fat Lester. “When Michael met with Sharkey at Luger’s that day, I was outside the room. In the middle, I heard a commotion. I wasn’t sure if maybe Michael was in trouble, so I opened the door just a little to check it out, be sure he didn’t need help. Michael had Sharkey by the throat. He had him so hard that Sharkey’s eyes were bulging out of his fucking head. I thought Michael was going to kill him right there. Sharkey had to beg for his life.”

“Shit,” said Skinny Lester. “I didn’t know it was that bad.”

Fat Lester stopped eating, which didn’t happen often when he was attacking spaghetti. “Les, could you kill a man if you had to?”

Skinny Lester looked up from his meal, his forehead wrinkled from the pressure of the question. “I’ve thought about it over the years. I guess it depends on what you mean by, if I ‘had to.’”

“Christ, just answer the fucking question.”

“No, maybe in self-defense or something like that. Could you?”

“Yeah, sure. But, it’s funny, only when I’m angry. Not when I think about it at all. I’ve come close a few times. You know, once when I had someone down, and I’m beating him. I got all wrapped up in it. I realized I could do it. I could finish him off.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I don’t know, Les. I’ve asked myself the same question, you know: Why did I stop? And it wasn’t any of the assholes from the business. Just some guys here and there in a bar who pissed me off.”

Fat Lester continued. “I miss Alex. He was a stand-up guy. Even when I had my problems, he never left me. You two guys were the only ones I could count on.” Fat Lester’s eyes glistened again with the hint of a tear.

But his face appeared to turn red as he switched gears. “Lester, who the fuck ordered the hit on Alex? Sharkey was real pissed at Michael, but why would Sharkey have wanted to kill
Alex
before any of this crap started or before Alex paid him his seven hundred grand that he won?”

“You know,” Skinny Lester said, “there’s an expression: when you’re looking to solve a crime, when you can’t find the money, look for the dame.”

Fat Lester stopped chewing and just looked, dumbfounded, at his cousin across the table.

Skinny Lester, knowing he had obviously confounded his cousin, smiled and said proudly, “My shrink, Donald Connor, told me that.”

Fat Lester’s face turned an even deeper shade of red. “First, I don’t know why you have to see a fucking shrink. All these Jewish guys, like Woody Allen, see shrinks. Is that why you see one?”

“Well, I am Jewish, Lester—and so are you. Maybe you should see Connor also.”

“I don’t need a fuckin’ shrink, Lester. And by the way, I’ve never even heard of an Irish shrink—with that name, he sounds like a comedian. The Irish are already so screwed up themselves. They’re dark—I think it comes from all that dark beer they drink. First they sit at the bar laughing and everything and then, when they’re good and drunk, they go and sulk in the back room or they just go and blow their brains out. You don’t see Italians or Greeks becoming shrinks or going to them.”

“And why is that, Lester? Not that it has to do with anything.” Skinny Lester knew that his cousin had lost him in the dust in the conversation.

“That’s because they drink grappa and ouzo, stuff that’s healthier for you,” Fat Lester answered. It appeared, however, that a light now went on in his head as though he realized he’d gone off on one of his semisensical tangents. More calmly now, he continued, “But what the hell does that expression mean anyway? You think there’s a woman behind Alex’s murder?”

“Listen, Lester. There’s a lot of shit that’s gone on in just a few weeks. Alex and Russell murdered, Michael kidnapped, that Merlin guy showing up dead in Michael’s car in the river. There’s also money flying around all over. Some money from Alex’s will, then the safety deposit box and money in the dining room, lots of money. Anyway, Dr. Connor was actually quoting Freud—”

Fat Lester, obviously bewildered again, interrupted. “Are you going fucking nuts now? You’re giving me this Freud shit?”

Unfazed, Skinny Lester continued, “What he meant was that most crimes like this are committed either because of money or a woman. Probably both, many times.”

Fat Lester, looking serious now that he had absorbed the thought, said, “So, who are you thinking? What woman? How about that hairdresser Alex was seeing? Or maybe Donna found out about her and wanted to get back at Alex? What about fuckin’ Greta? She hated Alex.”

“I don’t know. But Alex had a lot of women all around him, and he had a lot of money. I think the two are connected. Now we know Sharkey went after Michael, but that was separate from
Alex’s
murder. So, we probably have more than one killer out there. And the cops haven’t brought in anyone. They can’t even find Sharkey now; he’s disappeared.”

“He probably just finished his spaghetti at Al Moro in Rome,” Fat Lester said. “He used to tell me that when I went to Rome, that’s where you and I had to eat. Like we were ever going to go to Rome. Even Alex never went to Rome. He was always either in Queens or maybe Miami. He never wanted to leave the country. I’d love to get to Italy.”

“Maybe one day we can, Les,” Skinny Lester said.

Fat Lester’s eyes widened. “I’ll bet the Italian food is good there.”

Chapter 54

Flushing, Queens, New York

December 18, 2009

M
ichael was alone in Alex’s office.

He closed the door separating Alex’s office from the larger, open space containing the bank of phones and the other employees’ desks. At this late hour, it was almost certain that the entire two-story building was empty. The Mediterranean deli on the ground floor had closed hours ago. It was another bitter cold and windy night. The only sounds were an occasional car horn and the wind howling down Northern Boulevard.

Both Lesters were out making their nightly rounds throughout the city, delivering the winnings to their customers, picking up what was owed, or simply going to their regular bars and hangouts and buying an existing or prospective client a drink.

Michael turned off all the lights in the outer office as he switched on his brother’s old, simple desk lamp and watched as Alex reemerged from his deep, dark sleep onto the Apple laptop screen.

Michael thought that tonight he would try to get Alex to talk about the stream of criminal events that had occurred in just a matter of weeks—the murders, Merlin the Magician’s body in his BMW, and the intrusion into his own home. It was possible, he thought, that once Sharkey was captured, Michael would be safe—except for the fact that someone was still out there who had wanted
Alex
dead. Until that crime was solved, Michael could never be sure who was still in danger.

So far, Alex’s conversations with Michael had certainly been thought provoking and, at times, helpful. But Michael was unsure whether he could achieve a true breakthrough of insight from Alex. It appeared that despite the surreal reality of Alex’s image, facial expressions, and voice, most of what Alex provided was an output of various facts and his own life’s experiences that had, at some point, been loaded into the artificial intelligence software. But Alex was asking questions and apparently beginning to figure out how to use what he was discovering on the Internet.

At times, Michael felt that Alex may have been learning more from Michael than the other way around. Maybe Alex needed to digest and calibrate that new information. Perhaps, as Alex said, he was
learning
—and faster and better than the real or original model. The question was whether Alex would be able to assimilate
new
information such as the events leading up to and after his death, filter that new input through the personality model based upon the real-life Alex, and then make informed deductions from that information that would be revealing in solving crimes that appeared to be connected.

“Good evening, Alex, it’s Michael.”

“I know.”

“Alex, I need your help.”

“I’m no good when it comes to marriages.”

Alex was apparently regaining his sense of humor, Michael thought. “No, it’s not about that. I’d never ask your advice about marriages.”

“You never really liked my wives, did you?”

Michael was impressed. Alex normally would never have made such a revealing or emotionally provocative statement to Michael unless he had already had several drinks.

“You’re right. I disliked all three.”

“Some of them weren’t crazy about you, either,” Alex said, with a smirk.

“I’m sure they weren’t,” Michael said. “Anyway, I kept my distance.”

“You’ve got to remember, I wasn’t a great husband either. I ran around on all of them. I was probably more faithful to my wives after they became ex-wives—well, except for Greta. I couldn’t stand her any better after we divorced than when we were married.”

“So that just left Pam. Did you see her while you were married to Greta and Donna?”

“Yeah, I guess so. I saw Pam more after we were divorced than I did before.” Alex laughed. “She was more fun then. It was easier. I should have only divorced her and never married her, if that’s possible. We had a great relationship once we divorced and were married to other people.”

Michael had to think about that for a minute.

“Listen,” Alex continued, “I should never have gotten married—to anyone. Marriage changes everything. I don’t like feeling like I can’t do what I want to do. And once you’re married, people think you’ve got to do certain things—you know, you can’t see other women, you can’t see your friends or go out to the bars or do whatever shit you want to do.”

That was certainly an interesting statement, Michael thought, one that Alex had made even while alive and married to Donna
. I couldn’t live like that,
Michael thought.
How could two brothers from the same parents have such different concepts of women and marriage?

“Alex, I think you’d have missed being married. After all, you did it three times. There had to be something there that made you want to do it.”

“I like the sex the first few months. After that, it gets complicated. But now maybe I’ll try one of those computer dating sites. I should have an inside track, if you know what I mean.”

“That’ll really work well, Alex. Particularly once the poor woman googles you and finds out you have already been murdered.”