A Long Time Dead Page 16

  “Vale of tears, Father?”

  “Vale of tears, son. We were put here in this problem-solving world, this physical purgatory, to exercise our free will. And if I can turn ill-gotten gains into the work of the Lord, I will do so, unashamed.”

  Why shouldn’t he? All he had to do was take confession from some other collar, and get his sins washed away for a few Hail Marys. But I didn’t say that. Hypocritical or not, Father Mandano had helped a lot of people. He was a practical man and that wasn’t a sin in my book.

  I got to my feet, my hat in my hands. “Thanks for seeing me at short notice, Father. Listen, if you happen to get a line on that ledger, let me know. It could spark a shooting war out on your streets. And innocent people could die.”

  “And that troubles you, doesn’t it, Michael?”

  “Don’t kid yourself, Father. This is just a job to me. I have a big payday coming if I pull this off. This is one valuable book.”

  “In my line of work, Michael,” he said, “there is only one book of real value.”

  Wilcox in Suffolk County was a prosperous-looking little beach burg with a single industry: tourism. In a month the population would swell from seven thousand to who-the-hell-knew, and the business district would be alive and jumping till all hours. Right now, at eight-thirty p.m., it was a ghost town.

  Sheila Burrows lived in a two-bedroom brick bungalow on a side street, perched on a small but nicely landscaped yard against a wooded backdrop. The place was probably built in the fifties, nothing fancy but well-maintained. A freestanding matching brick one-car garage was just behind the house. We pulled in up front. The light was on over the front door. We were expected.

  I got out of the car and came around to play gentleman for Velda, but she was already climbing out. She had changed into a black pantsuit and a gray silk blouse and looked very businesslike, or as much as her curves, long legs and all that shoulders-brushing raven hair allowed. She carried a good-size black purse with a shoulder strap. Plenty of room for the various female accoutrements, including a .22 revolver.

  She was looking back the way we came. “I can’t shake the feeling we were followed,” she said.

  “Hard to tell on a damn expressway,” I admitted. “But I didn’t pick up on anything on that county road.”

  “Maybe I should stay out here and keep watch.”

  “No. I can use you inside. I remember you hitting it off with this broad. She was scared of me, as I recall.”

  Now Velda was looking at the brick house. “Well, for all she knew you were one of Don Giraldi’s thugs and she was getting a one-way ride. And maybe something about your manner said that a ‘broad’ is what you thought she was.”

  “I wasn’t so cultured then.”

  “Yeah,” she said sarcastically, as we started up the walk. “You’ve come a long way, baby.”

  Twenty years ago, more or less, Velda and I had moved Sheila Burrows out to these Long Island hinterlands. That hadn’t been her name then, and she’d had to leave a Park Avenue penthouse to make the move. The exact circumstances as to why Don Giraldi had wanted his mistress to disappear had not been made known to us. But we had suspected.

  The woman who met us at the door was barely recognizable as the former Broadway chorus girl we had helped relocate back when LBJ was still president. She had been petite and curvy and platinum blonde. She was now stout and bulgy and mousy brunette. Her pretty Connie Stevens-ish features, lightly made up, were trapped inside a round ball of a face.

  “Nice to see you two again,” she said as she ushered us inside. She wore a pink top, blue jeans and sandals.

  There was no entryway. You were just suddenly in the living room, a formal area with lots of plastic-covered furniture. A spinet piano against the left wall was overseen by a big gilt-framed pastel portrait of our hostess back in all her busty, blonde glory.

  She quickly moved us into a small family room area just off a smallish kitchen with wooden cabinets and up-to-date appliances; a short hallway to bedrooms was at the rear. She sat us down at a round maple table with captain’s chairs and a spring-themed centerpiece of plastic flowers.

  She had coffee ready for us. As I stirred milk and sugar into mine, I glanced at the nearby wall where gray-washed wooden paneling was arrayed with framed pictures. They charted two things: her descent into near obesity, and the birth, adolescence and young manhood of a son. It was all there, from playpen to playground, from high school musical to basketball court, from graduation to what was obviously a recent shot of the handsome young man with an attractive girl outside a building I recognized as part of NYU.

  “That’s our son,” she said, in a breathy second soprano that had been sexy once upon a time.

  “We thought you were pregnant,” Velda said with a tiny smile.

  Her light blue eyes jumped. “Really? You knew? Why, I was only a few months gone. Barely showing.”

  “You just had that glow,” Velda said.

  Our hostess chuckled. “More likely water retention. How do you maintain that lovely figure of yours, Miss Sterling? Or are you two married by now?”

  “Not married,” Velda said. “Not quite. Not yet.”

  “She eats a lot of salad,” I said.

  That made Sheila Burrows wince, and Velda shot me a look. I’d been rude. Hadn’t meant to be, but some things come naturally.

  I said, “You probably never figured to see us again.”

  “That’s true,” she said. She sipped her coffee. “But I wasn’t surprised to hear from you, not exactly.”

  Velda asked, “Why is that?”

  “With Nicholas dying, I figured there would be some kind of follow-up. For a long time, there was a lawyer, a nice man named Bradley, who handled the financial arrangements. He would come by every six months and see how I was doing. And ask questions about our son.”

  I asked, “Any direct contact with Don Giraldi since you moved out here?”

  “No. And, at first, I was surprised. I thought after Nick was born … our son is Nicholas, too … that we might, in some way, resume our relationship. Nicolas Giraldi was a very charming man, Mr. Hammer. Very suave. Very courtly. He was the love of my life.”

  “You were only with him for, what? Five or six years?”

  “Yes, but it was a wonderful time. We traveled together, even went to Europe once, and he practically lived with me, during those years. I don’t believe he ever had relations with his wife after the early years of their marriage.”

  “They had three daughters.”

  “Yes,” she said, rather defensively, “but none after our Nick came along.”

  Funny that she so insistently referred to the son in that fashion—“our Nick”—when the father had avoided any direct contact. And this once beautiful woman, so sexually desirable on and off the stage, had become a homemaker and mother—a suburban housewife. Without a husband.

  Velda said, “I can see why you thought Nicholas would come back to you, after your son’s birth. If he had really wanted you out of his life … for whatever reason … he wouldn’t have kept you so close to home.”

  “Wilcox is a long way from Broadway,” she said rather wistfully.

  “But it’s not the moon,” I said. “I had assumed the don felt you’d gotten too close to him—that you’d seen things that could be used against him.”

  Her eyes jumped again. “Oh, I would never—”

  “Not by you, but by others. Police. FBI. Business rivals. But it’s clear he wanted his son protected. So that the boy would not be used against him.”

  She was nodding. “That’s right. That’s what he told me, before he sent me away. He said our son would be in harm’s way, if anyone knew he existed. But that he would always look out for young Nick. That someday Nick would have a great future.”

  Velda said, “You said you had no direct contact wit
h Nicholas. But would I be right in saying that you had … indirect contact?”

  The pretty face in the plump setting beamed with pride. “Oh yes. Maybe once a year, always in a different way. Nick is a very talented boy, talented young man now. He took part in so many school activities, both the arts and sports. And so brilliant, valedictorian of his class! But then his father was a genius, wasn’t he?”

  I asked, “What do you mean, ‘once a year, always in a different way?’”

  She was looking past me at the wall of pictures. Fingers that were still slender, graceful, traced a memory in the air.

  “There Nicholas would be,” she said, “in the audience at a concert, or a ball game, or a school play … I think Nick gets his artistic talent from me, if that doesn’t sound too stuck up … and best of all, Nicholas came to graduation, and heard his son speak.”

  Velda asked, “Did they ever meet?”

  “No.” She pointed past Velda. “Did you notice that picture? That one high up, at the left?”

  A solemn portrait of a kid in army green preceded the first of several baby photos.

  “That’s a young man who died in Vietnam,” she said. “Mr. Bradley, the attorney, provided me with that and other photos, as well as documents. His name was Edwin Burrows and we never met. He was an only child with no immediate family. He won several medals, actually, including a Silver Star, and that was the father that Nick grew up proud of.”

  I asked, “No suspicions?”

  “Why should he be suspicious? When he was younger, Nick was very proud of his heroic father.”

  “Only when he was younger?”

  “Well … you know boys. They grow out of these things.”

  Not really, but I let it pass.

  “Mrs. Burrows,” I said, sitting forward, “have you received anything, perhaps in the mail, that might seem to have come from Don Giraldi?”

  “No …”

  “Specifically, a ledger. A book.”

  Her eyes were guileless. “No,” she said. “No. After Mr. Bradley died, and his visits ended, another lawyer came around, just once. I was given a generous amount of money and told I was now on my own. And there’s a trust fund for Nick that becomes his on his graduation from NYU.”

  “Have you talked to your son recently?”

  She nodded. “We talk on the phone at least once a week. Why, I spoke to him just yesterday.”

  “Did he say anything about receiving a ledger from his father?”

  “Mr. Hammer, no. As I thought I made clear, as far as Nick is concerned his father is a Vietnam war hero named Edwin Burrows.”

  “Right,” I said. “Now listen carefully.”

  And I told her about the book.

  She might be a suburban hausfrau now, but she had once been the mistress of a mob boss. She followed me easily, occasionally nodding, never interrupting.

  “You are on the very short list,” I said, “of people who Don Giraldi valued and trusted. You might still receive that book. And it’s possible some very bad people might come looking for it.”

  She shook her head, mousy brown curls bouncing. “Doesn’t seem possible … after all these years. I thought I was safe … I thought Nick was safe.”

  “You raise the most pertinent point. I think your son is the logical person the don may have sent that book.”

  She frowned in concern, but said nothing.

  I went on: “I want you to do two things, Mrs. Burrows, and I don’t want any argument. I want you to let us stow you away in a safe-house motel we use upstate. Until this is over. You have a car? Velda will drive you in it, and stay with you till I give the word. Just quickly pack a bag.”

  She swallowed and nodded. “And the other thing?”

  “I want you to call your son right now,” I said, “and tell him I’m coming to visit him. I’ll talk to him briefly myself, so that he’ll know my voice. I’ll come alone. If more than one person shows up at his door, even if one of them claims to be me, he’s not to let them in. If that happens, he’s to get out and get away, as fast as he can. Is all of that clear?”

  She wore a funny little smile. “You know, Mr. Hammer, I think my impression of you all those years ago was wrong, very wrong.”

  “Yeah?”

  “You really are quite a nice, caring human being.”

  I glanced at Velda, who wasn’t bothering to stifle her grin.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I get that a lot.”

  If Wilcox at eight-thirty p.m. was a ghost town, the East Village at eleven-something was a freak show. This was a landscape of crumbling buildings, with as many people living on the streets as walking down them, where in a candy store you could buy a Snickers Bar or an eightball of smack, and when morning came, bodies with bullet holes or smaller but just as deadly ones would be on sidewalks and alleyways like so much trash set out for collection.

  Tompkins Square Park was this neighborhood’s central gathering place, from oldtimers who had voted for FDR and operated traditional businesses like diners and laundries to students, punkers, artists, and poets seeking life experience and cheap lodging. Every second tenement storefront seemed to be home to a gallery showcasing work inspired by the tragic but colorful street life around them. NYU student Nick Burrows lived in a second-floor apartment over a gallery peddling works by an artist whose canvases of graffiti struck me as little different from the free stuff on alley walls.

  His buzzer worked, which was saying something in this neighborhood, and he met me on a landing as spongy as the steps coming up had been. He wore a black CBGB T-shirt, jeans and sneakers, a kid of twenty-two with the wiry frame of his father but taller, and the pleasant features of his mother, their prettiness turned masculine by heavy eyebrows.

  He offered his hand and we shook under the dim yellowish glow of a single mounted bulb. “I appreciate you helping out my mom, Mr. Hammer. You know, I think I’ve heard of you.”

  “A lot of people think they’ve heard of me,” I said, moving past him into the apartment. “They’re just not sure anymore.”

  His was a typical college kid’s pad—thrift-shop furnishings, atomic-age stuff that had looked modern in the fifties and seemed quaint now. Plank and cement-block bookcases lined the walls, paperbacks and school books mostly, and the occasional poster advertising an East Village art show or theatrical production was taped here and there to the brick walls. The kitchenette area was off to one side and a doorless door led to a bedroom with a waterbed. We sat on a thin-cushioned couch with sparkly turquoise upholstery.

  He offered me a smoke and I declined. He had one as he leaned back, an arm along the upper cushions, and studied me like the smart college kid he was. His mother had told him on the phone that I had something important to talk to him about, and his need for caution. I had spoken to him briefly, as well, but nothing about the book.

  Still, he’d been told there was danger and he seemed unruffled. There was strength in this kid.

  I said, “You know who your real father was, don’t you, Nick?”

  He nodded.

  I grinned. “I figured a smart kid like you would do some poking into that Vietnam-hero malarkey. Did the don ever get in touch with you? He came to the occasional school event, I understand.”

  The young man shook his head. “Get in touch? No, not in the sense that he ever introduced himself. But he began seeking me out after a concert, a basketball game, just to come up and say, ‘Good job tonight,’ or ‘Nice going out there.’ Shook my hand a couple of times.”

  “So you noticed him.”

  “Yeah, and when I got older, I recognized him. He was in the papers now and then, you know. I did some digging on my own, old newspaper files and that kind of thing. Saw my mom’s picture, too, back when she was a real knockout. She wasn’t just a chorus girl, you know, like the press would have it. She had speaking parts,
got mentioned in reviews, sometimes.”

  “Your mother doesn’t know that you know any of this.”

  “Why worry her?”

  “Nick, I’m here because your father kept a ledger, a book said to contain all of his secrets. Word was he planned to give it to the person he trusted most in the world. Are you that person?”

  He sighed, smiled, allowed himself a private laugh.

  Then he asked, “Would you like a beer? You look like a guy who could use a beer.”

  “Has been a long day.”

  So he got us cold cans of beer and he leaned back and I did too. And he told me his story.

  Two weeks ago, he’d received a phone call from Don Nicholas Giraldi—a breathy voice that had a deathbed ring to it, and a request that young Nick come to a certain hospital room at St. Luke’s. No mention of old Nicholas being young Nick’s father, not on the phone.

  “But when I stood at his bedside,” Nick said, “he told me. He said, ‘I’m your father.’ Very melodramatic. Ever see ‘Star Wars’? ‘Luke, I am your father’? Like that.”

  “And what did you say?”

  He shrugged. “Just, ‘I know. I’ve known for years.’ That seemed to throw the old boy, but he didn’t have the wind or the energy to discuss it or ask for details or anything. He just said, ‘You’re going to come into money when you graduate from the university.’”

  “You didn’t know there was a trust fund?”

  “No. And I still don’t know how much is in it. I’ll be happy to accept whatever-it-is, because I think I kind of deserve it, growing up without a father. I’m hoping it’ll be enough for me to start a business. Don’t let the arty neighborhood fool you, Mr. Hammer—I’m a business major.”

  “Is that what Old Nic had in mind, you starting up something of your own?”

  The young man frowned, shook his head. “I’m not sure. He may have wanted me to step into his role in his … his organization. Or he may have been fine with me going my own way. In any event, he said, ‘I have something for you. Whatever you do in life, it will be valuable to you.’”