Mausoleum (14 page)

“I'll write you an official report if you want.”

“Monday will be fine.”

“Okay. So, oral report ended, I can offer you a glass of wine.”

She hesitated, looked like she wanted to rag on the case a bit more, then decided to drop it for now. “Would you by any chance have the makings of a vodka Martini?”

Silly me, offering wine to a Yankee on Friday evening. “Olives or twist?”

“Olives. Bad enough defying tradition with vodka, but I'm too old for gin.”

“Most people are. Straight up?”

“Absolutely.”

“I hope you don't mind Smirnoff. The
New York Times
swears by it.”

“Dad's favorite.”

I got out a pair of martini glasses to ice them, and Grace gasped. “Good Lord, Ben. That glass is enormous.”

“It eliminates repetitive strain syndrome. I don't have to pour so often.”

“Please don't pour mine anywhere near the rim.”

“Wait.”

I went out to the dining room to my grandmother's cabinet and returned with a 1920s martini glass. I had forgotten how small real martini glasses were originally. It made mine look like a horse trough. I went back and got another and dropped in small ice cubes to chill them.

When I finished shaking the cocktail shaker, Grace said, “Sixteen more shakes.”

“I beg pardon.”

“Thirty-three shakes is the magic number. Dad always said, A decent martini requires patience. Which is why they are rarely cold enough in a bar.”

“You're very observant, Grace. I don't know how many people would count the number of shakes.”

“I work with numbers. And I used to play the piano so I naturally count.”

I shook sixteen more shakes, dumped the ice out of the glasses, dropped an olive in each, poured and handed one across the work table. “Cheers.”

Grace took a sip that reminded me of Aunt Connie who could make one cocktail last until dinner. “Excellent.”

“When did you stop playing piano?”

“Years ago.”

“I'm curious why. I've been getting a yen to learn how.”

“My father played like Bobby Short. I decided one day I would never catch up.” She put down her drink and fished reading glasses from her purse. “Best read the recipe while I can still see straight.” I gave her a stool, and she read both pages slowly, word by word, pausing at each ingredient to locate it on the table. When she was done, she rearranged the ingredients in a precise row.

“Now they are in the order they will be used. When you are ready for the next ingredient just take the lead dish.”

“Brilliant. I should have thought about that. I was going nuts shifting between the page and the table.”

“Shall I read?”

“Grace, do you want a little bite of something first? It'll be a while 'til we eat.”

“I'm going to save myself for this recipe. Don't let me stop you.”

I was starving already, just thinking about the final result. But I said, “No. Abstemious—food-wise. More room for the recipe.”

“Brown the chicken,” Grace read. “The oil should be smoking.”

I turned on the exhaust fan, heated the oil in the Dutch oven, which I surrounded with a wall of tin foil to contain splatters, salt and peppered the chicken parts, and when white smoke rose from the oil laid them in skin side down.

“Five minutes,” said Grace, setting her wrist watch alarm.

I told her a little more about my hunt for Charlie, again leaving out Father Bobby. Her watch beeped. I turned a thigh with a tongs. Grace looked over my shoulder. “The recipe says ‘golden' brown. That's only tan.”

While we waited I said, “I saw you in Lorraine's movie.”

“Good God. That man took such advantage of Dad.”

“I never thought of your father as someone take-advantageable.”

“Dad was too polite to turn him down.”

“You mean about the film?”

“Dad could not figure out how to say no, and before he knew it Lorraine had him posing in front of Town Hall.”

“I thought your father's expression said a lot.”

“I'm sure it did. But subtlety only goes so far with someone like Brian Grose. You know Dad was a very sharp businessman—as ‘Yankee Trader' as you'd ever meet—but a hot shot like Brian Grose would seize on decency for his own purposes….It's golden brown. Turn it.”

I turned legs, breasts and thighs. Grace consulted the recipe and set an alarm for four minutes.

“Did you know Brian well?” I asked.

“I should hope not.”

“But he got close to your father.”

“He wormed his way in. If that's what you mean by close.”

I tugged some loose skin from a thigh with a tongs and discarded it. Ordinarily I would have tasted the crisper bites. But even though I was starving, my gut said this would be the best Moroccan chicken yet, and I honored my pledge to save myself for the final result.

“I was surprised when you brought Brian in as a trustee.”

“That's what I meant,” she shot back. “He used Dad. And no sooner had Dad invited him onto the board than Brian began recruiting allies.

“Who?”

“The younger ones.”

“Dan Adams?”

“No, Dan stayed loyal—but on the fence, if you know what I mean. He supported Dad, but Dad feared he would suddenly switch sides. For all his hot-headedness, Dan Adams has a fine sense of which way the wind blows.

“But how did it get into the court?”

“Well.” Grace took a sip of martini. “Dad was no sooner in his grave than Grose made his move.”

“To get his mausoleum approved?”

“He had already pulled that off—talked a few fools into allowing some form of memorial. We had no idea how big it would be. If my poor father had lived to see that monstrosity, it would have killed him.”

“Why did you go along?”

“
I
did
not
go along. Some of the others did. I've always suspected that Brian hinted to the fence sitters that he was terminally ill to get his way. I can't prove that, but I suspect it.”

“But how did you end up in court?”

“Brian over stepped. When they saw the mausoleum they had voted to allow, even some who had voted approval turned against him. They voted with me to ban any more such monstrosities and that vote pretty much drove Brian out of the picture. That's when he sued. That's what got us into court.”

“But with him permanently out of the picture, now, as it were, being dead, isn't it all moot?”

“Others who had joined in the suit, are continuing. They claim that as citizens of the town they have a right to be voted into the Association. If they get in, they will vote me out.”

“I wondered.”

Her watch beeped. “Take it off.”

I heaped the chicken on a plate.

“Pour off the extra fat.”

I dumped all but a tablespoon in the sink.

“Onions!” called Grace. “And two lemon zest strips.”

I dumped in the sliced onions and the lemon strips. “Here's where it gets tricky. We're supposed to stir until the onions are brown at the edges, right?”

“Five to seven minutes.”

“And then all hell breaks loose.”

“Garlic thirty seconds til fragrant,” Grace read ahead. “Then spices forty-five seconds, til very fragrant, then—”

“But I'm also supposed to let the chicken get cool enough to remove the skin, while stirring the onions.”

Grace took her third miniature sip of martini—my glass was bone dry by now—and stepped to the stove. “I'll stir. You skin.”

The skin on the drumsticks held tight. I used two tongs to prevent finger burns and snipped resistant strands with a scissors and had them skinned just in time to make first garlic, then spices, fragrant.

“Add broth,” read Grace. “And the honey…Scrape the pot. Are you aware that this recipe is called ‘simpli-
fying
, not simpli-
fied
?'”

“No, and that explains a lot.”

At last we had the thighs and drum sticks back in the pot, simmering.

Grace took her fourth sip. I refilled my glass. “I liked the history lesson you gave in the film.”

“I love history. And it's all there in the burying ground.”

“Grace, will you take over the Association?”

“What do you mean?”

“Replace your father as president—if the court breaks your way.”

“Good Lord no, Ben, though that's a big assumption. No, one of the young ones is welcome to that. I've got my hands full with the agency, now that Dad's gone. I'll just stay on as treasurer.”

“Rick Bowland?”

“I don't think Rick has the time—commuting as he does.”

I interpreted that as code for
No More Outsiders, Not Even The Best Of Them
, and said, “Dan Adams works right in town.”

“Dan would have been all right. Before he joined the new bank. We've had a relationship for so long with Newbury Savings—now that Wes Little has joined them, he could step forward. Though I would prefer one of their trustees.” Code for
Someone Who Has Been Around And Loyal Since At Least 1857
, the year of the bank's charter.

“An ‘Admitted Inhabitant'?” I asked with a smile.

She give up no more smile than she had in Brian's death film. “A resident who can be counted upon to take care of it for the next sixty years, as my father did for the last sixty years. A young townsman, like yourself.” Code for
You should volunteer, Ben.

“Not too many people live as long as your father, Grace.” Code for
Not every son is the man his father and grandfather were.

“Your Aunt Constance is going strong.” Code for
You've got the genes.

Her watch beeped. “Carrots and white meat.”

We laid a base of carrot rounds on top of the legs and thighs and laid in the breasts. “Simmer ten to fifteen minutes,” read Grace. “What is this you've written here? Lid on?”

“They forgot to tell you to put it back on. It keeps the moisture in, like a Moroccan tagine.”

“Is your thermometer ready?”

I got one out of the drawer. By then it was clear that Grace was not a woman to guess at temperature.

“So Brian was a really calculating guy.”

Grace thought that over. “In theory. In practice he was too impatient. Ramming that monstrosity in the burying ground before he had really solidified his power on the board was counterproductive.”

Twelve minutes and one-hundred-and-sixty degrees later we removed the chicken from the pot again.

Now Grace read from my notes in the margin. “Boil water for couscous. Chop cilantro.”

Six minutes later, when the carrots were tender and the liquid thick, Grace said, dubiously, “I see you have edited the next step.”

“If you put the chicken back in first you can't stir the cilantro and lemon.”

She put on her glasses, again, and re-read the recipe. I said, “Grace, you look as skeptical as if I had requested liability insurance for an eight-hundred horse power motorcycle.”

She kept reading and said, at last, “You know, I see your point.”

Into the pot went cilantro, garlic and zest, and lemon juice. Then I returned the chicken, piece by piece, coating each with the sauce. “What time is it?” asked Grace. “I am suddenly starving.”

“New world record,” I said. “One hour and twenty-seven minutes. Can you imagine Arabs cooking this over a fire?”

“Why not?” said Grace. “They own slaves.”

We carried our plates into the dining room, where I had already set the table and put a bottle of Lasendal in an ice bucket. After the first bite Grace closed her eyes and said, “I think this is the most delicious thing I have ever eaten.”

I had waited to see her reaction, and now I raised the first fragrant fork toward my mouth. The miracle of the dish was that each and every spice—

Deeee-Dahhhhh. Deeee-Dahhhhh.

The Plectron's duotone echoed down the stairs.
Firehouse, now! Firehouse, now! Firehouse, now! Firehouse, now!
“

I stood up.

“Fire or accident?” asked Grace.

In answer, a mechanical voice pinpointed the call: “Structural fire. Morris Mountain. Kantor Farm.

“Fred's place,” I shouted, running for my gear.

Chapter Twelve

We could see the sky streaming red long before we got up the mountain.

I was crammed into the jump seat of the older attack truck. Many bake sales and lobster fests from replacement, its tired diesel labored on the steep road far behind the light attack truck and Chief Eddie who had forged ahead in the SUV. Suddenly he radioed a warning to us and the pumpers behind us. He sounded less cheery than last time out, more in Iraq mode.

“Heads up. Some kind of police activity.”

The volunteers crowded into the cab looked at each other. “Police activity” did not describe the routine presence of Trooper Moody, which would be related as a simple, “Ollie's here,” or, “Doesn't Ollie ever sleep?”

The radio shrilled again. “They're all over the place. Try not to run over any cops.” A minute later Chief Eddie had scoped out the situation up close and he radioed another warning. A ton of Homeland Security money had been spent to get all the first responders on radios that could talk to each other, and be overheard. But Eddie Thomas was not a man to self-censor himself. “You see any of these idiots draw a weapon, hit the deck.”

In fact, we discovered when our truck had climbed high enough to see flames shooting from the roof of Fred Kantor's farm-hands dormitory, that various branches of Homeland Security had saturated the neighborhood with the automatic rifles usually found in a war zone. There were guns everywhere, not the sidearms cops draw from their holsters, but the heavy weapons that soldiers hang in front of their body-armored chests. They stood in the leaping shadows watching the building burn.

Nor was the smoke billowing into the sky the sort of smoke we expected. Spicing the usual mix of burning wood, shingles and insulation was the sharp sting of tear gas. It hung heavily in the air—the stink of street fighting, so unlike a hillside farm.

Garden hoses crisscrossed the barnyard between the dormitory and Fred and Joyce's house and the barns as if they had tried to fight the blaze before we arrived in the trucks. A private ambulance, not the Newbury volunteer's, was parked with its lights flashing. Hunched on its back bumper, an ICE agent was holding his foot. Just as we piled out of the trucks, the roof of the dormitory fell into the building, which erupted in volcanic sparks.

“Heads up!” Chief Eddie ordered. “The building's a goner. We're going to hose down the others before they catch too.” He broke us up into teams to run hose from the pumpers to a pond. I ended up at one of the barns, humping hose for Wes Little who aimed the nozzle at the roof. When we looked next, the dormitory had burned to little but cinders and a charred wooden frame. At least it was replaceable. Not one of the antiques that we were soaking down to save. But Fred Kantor was not looking on the bright side.

“Monumental screwup!” he yelled at an ICE agent, who had a bull horn dangling from his wrist.

“Back away, sir.”

“Don't ‘sir' me you son of a bitch. You know goddamned well what happened, you so-called agent-in-charge.”

The agent-in-charge looked even madder than Fred and completely discombobulated to discover that wealthy gentleman farmers were harder to bully than frightened foreigners. He drew himself up to his full height and yelled down at the much shorter Fred, “Operation Return to Sender raids are aimed at child molesters, gang members, violent criminals.”

Fred pointed at a half dozen Ecuadorians sitting on the ground with their hands cuffed behind them. “Those aren't criminals. They're my farmhands.”

“This raid sends a message: When we deport you, we're serious.”

“Serious?” Fred hopped up and down and screamed. “My employees came out as requested, hands in the air. That idiot”—he pointed at the agent holding his foot— “accidentally shot himself. Your other idiots responded by shooting at my building. My farm hands ran for their lives. You picked up that bull horn and ordered the men inside the building to surrender. Since there was no one left in there no one came out. But that was a concept beyond your comprehension, so you fired tear gas into my building. Which started that goddamned fire. You're telling
me
to back away.
You
back away!”

“Sir, we guard America's borders from inside.”

“Who needs borders when government runs amok?”

The heavy
thump-thump
of a helicopter interrupted Fred. He stopped yelling and threw an arm around Joyce, who looked up with a funny smile on her face.

The agent-in-charge whirled on a heavily-armed aide. “Who called in the chopper?”

“Not me sir.”

The machine clattered out of the sky and landed by firelight. Prop wash scattered ash and cinders. The agent ran toward it, saluting. The blades stopped twirling. The racket ceased. The door opened.

The ICE agent's salute dribbled toward his knees. Out of the helicopter hopped two men and a woman in business suits. Each carried a double-wide brief case.

“May we have your name sir?” they chorused.

“Who the hell are you?”

“Mr. Kantor's attorneys.”

***

The population of the barnyard fell by half as federal gunmen faded into the shadows leaving Newbury Hook and Ladder Number One, the ICE agent-in-charge, Fred and Joyce, and their lawyers to contemplate the ruins. I spotted a familiar-looking bulging silhouette edging toward the dark road and ran after him. “Found your way to the boonies?”

“Hey, what are you, Dude?” asked Big Al Vetere. “Fireman?'

“Volunteer. What are you doing here?”

“Drove up to bag Cubrero. Walked into a m-effing ICE raid.”

“What made you think Cubrero was here?”

“Does Gimbels tell Macy?”

“Gimbels went bankrupt thirty years ago.”

“I heard somebody saw his car on Route 7.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. So I headed up here, figuring he holed up in the nearest thing to home.”

“How'd you find it?”

“Google Maps. Anyway I'm nosing around in the bushes, about to make my move, and I see a bunch of SUVs creeping up the road with their lights off. A mob of Feds climb down wearing those big Kevlar gloves and I think, ‘Oh boy. It's a raid.'”

The Kevlar gloves, Al explained to the country bumpkin, were to protect the agents' hands from broken glass on window ledges and rusty razor wire. Another clue that tipped Al off, he admitted, were law enforcement IDs dangling on necklaces.

“They're going, ‘Police!
Policia
! Police' at that house. Somebody pulls back a curtain and they flash their badges. Lights go out. Shooting starts. I'm like behind the fattest tree in the yard.”

“The owner says the Feds just starting shooting.”

“No way. That's not true. The first shot came from inside.”

“You sure?”

“Damned sure. The guys inside shot first.
Then
the Feds opened up.”

“Amazing they didn't get killed. Wooden building, and the Feds had some heavy ordnance.”

Al rubbed his face. “Feds didn't start shooting right away. Someone in there let loose a round. Outside everybody froze. I mean these guys aren't DEA or special forces. They don't expect to get shot it. The fools they're after just run for it. So like for one second, they're all looking at each other, like, ‘What the fuck?'”

“Is that when the ICE agent shot himself in the foot?”

Al chuckled. “You saw that, did you? Just like in the jokes, the dumb fuck.
Then
they started shooting.”

I went back to helping the guys roll hose. Dan Adam's father Chuck—of all people—said to me, “Think how scared they must have been in there.”

“Who?”

“Fred's hands. Guns everywhere all of a sudden. Probably thought they were dead men. I would have run too.”

Chuck Adams had a point. I would have run too. Unless I was more complicated, shall we say, than an ordinary illegal farmhand. If I were a seasoned street fighter or a gang leader, accustomed to police raids, I would have squeezed off a shot in the air and slipped away in the chaos I had started.

***

As we headed back to Newbury, the attack pumper's headlights swept an unmarked State Police Crown Victoria parked at the foot of the Kantor's drive. Detectives Marian and Arnie were standing outside the car, so still and unhappy they looked like the sculptor George Segal had wrapped them in plaster.

I walked home from the fire house, too hungry to even shower the smoke off first. Grace had covered my plate with plastic wrap, cleaned up the kitchen and left a note. “It was delicious, thank you.”

A gentle nuking in the microwave warmed my plate. I sat to it with a cold glass of Vouvray, took a sip and reached for my fork. Someone started knocking on the front door. Very odd, so late; a friend would have tried the kitchen door; a real estate client would wait til morning. I hurried through the house and opened the door. It was Al Vetere. A beat-to-death Crown Victoria that he must have bought at a used police car auction was parked at the curb.

“Hey, Ben, Dude, can you tell me someplace to stay around here? I was just at that Yankee Drive place, and they want a fortune for a room.”

“It's kind of a honeymoon suite,” I explained. “They assume the guests are pooling resources.”

“Any idea where else I find a room at this hour?”

The nearest motel was a long drive and a rat hole, so I said, “Come on in, you can crash in the guest room.”

He lumbered after me through the living room and dining room—“Hey, Dude, some digs.”—and into the kitchen. “Oh man, that smells good.”

“Have you eaten, Al?”

“Kitchen was closed at that Drive place.”

“Welcome to the boonies. Here, have some of this.”

Al sat. I went to get another plate. The phone rang. “Excuse me a second.”

Rick Bowland wanted to talk. He said he knew that it was one in the morning, but he had heard there was a police raid at the Kantor farm and wondered had they arrested Charlie Cubrero. I told him no and good night and hurried back to the kitchen where Al removed a tooth pick from his mouth to say, “Hmmmm, hmmm, that was good. Got any more?”

With murder on my mind it was easy to say,“In return for a place to sleep tonight, and in return for me not
killing
you for eating my dinner—no, no, not to worry, a straight answer will hold me 'til breakfast—what did you mean when you said, ‘I heard somebody saw Charlie Cubrero's car on Route 7'. Who? Where? Why did you come here?”

“Well, Ben, I'm not sure I can flip a source.”

“The only motel that might still be open tonight is frequented by deer hunters. The beds are crawling with deer ticks that give you Lyme Disease.” It wasn't deer season, but I doubted Al knew that. “I'm not taking anything away from you, Al. I'm not moving in on your case. I just want some help. Tell me who, where, why? Or sleep in your car.”

“Okay, okay. I ran into a priest.”

“A priest? What kind of priest?”

“A priest priest. You know like a Catholic?”

“What's his name.”

“Gave my word I wouldn't rat him out.”

“God forbid.”

“The priest is doing an outreach—for the illegals? Lot of 'em do that. They got a lot of Latinos. Replacing Italians like me who stop going when our mother dies. The Irish, too, same problem. Nobody goes to mass except Latinos. So anyhow, he's outreaching these dumb illegals and we got to talking.”

“But you're on the other side, catching illegals.”

“Well he don't know that. I give him a card that says I'm a social worker.”

“And the priest bought that?”

“Damned straight he bought it. I can be very convincing.”

“How did you get to talking to the priest in the first place?”

Al lowered his voice and looked around my kitchen. The cat was out. We were alone. “I got a tip a wheelman was at this diner, in Bridgeport?”

“A wheelman?” Where did Al get his words, I wondered. Hundred year old TV movies.

“Yeah, you know. A guy who drives the car when you do a drive-by hit.”

“Oh, a
modern
wheelman.”

“Yeah, what do you think? Anyhow, this drive-by dude told me about a guy who drove for him. Best driver he ever saw. They did a couple of shootings down in Norwalk.”

“Why is a hitman talking to you, Al? I think you're jerking me around.”

“No, man. I took a page from your book. I helped a guy get away and he figured I was his pal. Like you did with those illegals when you slugged me.”

I looked at him in disbelief, but Al was not kidding. Without even trying, just by setting an example, I had become mentor to a half-assed bounty hunter who wanted to become a PI.

“You saved a hitman from the police?”

“No. Some guys were chasing him with baseball bats. I gave him a hand. Sure, enough, he's my buddy. Just like you did.”

The short of it was that Al's new best friend, a supposed drive-by shooter who I suspected was inflating his resumé, turned Al onto an Ecuadorian driver who sounded very much like Charlie Cubrero who was expected to show up in a diner where Al met an Ecuadorian outreach priest instead. Father Bobby did get around.

“And the priest sent you to Newbury.”

“Said somebody told him they saw his car heading that way. Orange ‘sucker. You couldn't miss it.”

“Presumably a different vehicle than the one he used for drive-by shootings?”

***

I was finishing my first cup of coffee early the next morning, when I heard giggles, and grunts and heavy breathing in front of the house. I looked out the window and saw Dennis and Albert Chevalley carrying a blue Smart Car around Big Al's fake police cruiser and up my front walk. It was the size of a mature Blue Angel Hosta in Aunt Connie's garden, big for a Hosta, small for a car. Albert held the front end. Dennis the back. Their cousin Anton, who had married into the felonious Jervis clan and was rarely seen in daylight, was holding up the middle.