"That's one hell of a welcome sign they've got back there," Tom whispered as they followed an attendant. Something about this place made you whisper.
"Welcome sign? Where?"
Tom jerked a thumb over his shoulder. "Back there. It says
Jack noticed that Tom's ruddy complexion of yesterday and earlier this morning had faded to gray. His skin glistened with a sheen of sweat that reflected the harsh overhead fluorescents.
"You all right?"
Tom nodded. "Yeah. Fine." A heartbeat later he shook his head. "No. Not really. This has all been abstract until now. Surreal. Like a fever dream. Ever since you called I could almost pretend it hadn't really happened. But after filling out those papers…"
"Now it all becomes real."
It was already real for Jack. He'd seen Dad lying on the air terminal floor, seen the blood, his slack face, his dead eyes… all without a grace period to brace himself.
Tom swallowed. "I'll be okay. I've seen dead bodies before. It's just that none of them was my father."
Just then Jack spotted a painfully thin guy with pale, shoulder-length hair and a goatee coming their way. He wore green scrubs.
Oh, hell. Ron Clarkson. One of the attendants. Maybe he wouldn't see—
"Jack?" Ron smiled. "What're you doing here, man? You're getting to be a regular."
Jack kept walking. "Here to pick up somebody."
"One of our boarders?"
"Yeah."
Ron fell into step with him. "Which one? Maybe I can—"
"Thanks, Ron." He pointed to the other attendant walking two steps ahead of him. "It's all taken care of."
"Yeah, but—"
"Ron… this is a private thing. I appreciate your concern, but everything is arranged, okay?"
"Okay, man. But you need anything, you let me know, okay?"
"Right."
If paid enough, Ron would do just about anything. And on those rare occasions when Jack needed a body part for a fix-it, Ron supplied it. For cash.
Ron turned and continued on in his original direction.
Tom glanced over his shoulder at the retreating figure. "You
"Just him."
"What was that crack about being a regular?"
"I had to… identify someone last month."
"Really? Who?"
"Just somebody."
"You were a bit rough on him, don't you think?"
"He's a nosy busybody."
Jack hadn't wanted Ron to know that the "boarder" he was picking up was his father. Ron would then know Jack's real last name. That used to matter a lot—he hadn't wanted anyone from his past to find his present, and no one in his present to know his past—not for his sake but for his family's. Now, with his past encroaching on the present, he didn't know if it mattered much. Still, better to keep things the way they were, especially where a weasel like Ron Clarkson was concerned.
Up ahead the attendant pushed through a pair of swinging doors and held one open for them. Jack propelled his brother ahead of him. Tom had completed all the paperwork upstairs. All that remained now was the official identification of the body and a final signature—Tom's.
As he stepped into the room, Jack heard a voice to his left.
"Jack? That you?"
Who now?
He turned and saw Joey Castles standing by a gurney as an attendant zipped up a black body bag. He was short, maybe five-five, Jack's age, with black hair and dark eyes; the surname on his birth certificate had not been "Castles." He wore a black sport coat, gray slacks, and a black polo shirt. His hair, usually blow-dry perfect and sprayed granite hard, was in disarray today. His eyes looked red and puffy.
Jack stepped closer and extended his hand.
"Joey. Jeez, what happened? Who—?"
His Adam's apple worked, his voice sounded choked. "Frankie… the La Guardia thing."
Jack gave his hand an extra squeeze.
"Oh, no. Christ, I'm sorry."
Joey and his brother Frankie came from a long line of scammers, most prominent among them their father, Frank Castellano Sr.
"He was coming back from visiting Dad—he's got this big place in the Keys—and I was supposed to pick him up but I was late and…"
The words choked off.
"How's your dad taking it?"
Joey shook his head. "You ever hear a grown man cry? Especially your father. It's…" He shook his head again. "A son shouldn't have to hear that. And a father shouldn't have to hear that his oldest son was shot down like a dog on his way home from visiting him.
"Whoa. Wrath of Allah? What's that?"
"Didn't you hear? Some group of stronzos called the
Jack hadn't turned on the TV this morning. He'd figured they'd only be talking about today being a national day of mourning and he'd heard all he wanted to about that.
He squeezed his eyes shut. So it
"They're bringing him out and I don't want to do this alone."
As Jack stepped away, Joey gave his upper arm a squeeze. "Hang in there, Jack. And don't take off right away. Got a little something I want to talk to you about."
Jack nodded and moved toward Tom, thinking about cyanide bullets. Dad had caught one in his thigh, a flesh wound that under normal circumstances would—
Listen to me… "normal circumstances"… shit, what was normal about being shot while waiting for your baggage?
He had little doubt that Dad, like Frankie Castles, would have survived a wound like that from a normal bullet.
Jack's jaw muscles ached from clenching his teeth as he stood next to Tom and watched them wheel out a body bag on a gurney. The attendant, a black guy with short spiky dreads, looked bored. Jack wanted to punch him.
He steeled himself as the guy grabbed the zipper tab and pulled. When he'd opened an eighteen-inch gap, he spread the sides to reveal someone's head.
For an awful instant Jack thought it might not be Dad, that somehow his body had been misidentified or gone missing or been spirited away. But no, there he was. He looked better than yesterday, his eyes closed, his mouth shut, his features more composed.
But still very dead.
Jack heard the air whoosh out of Tom.
"Oh, shit," he croaked. "Oh, shit, it's him. It's really him."
Jack said nothing. He couldn't.
"What next?" Tom said.
"I have to call the Knight Funeral Home. Soon as I confirm the body's been released, they'll send a car to pick him up and take him back to Johnson."
Tom sighed. "I guess that's the best course. Bury him next to Mom."
Jack looked at him. "Was there ever a question in your mind?"
"Until now there's never been a reason for the question to
Jack turned to Tom as they reached the bottom of the steps. "Wait here. I need to talk to someone."
Tom made a face. "Can't it wait? It's cold out here."
Jack pointed across the sidewalk to a pushcart by the curb. A plastic banner proclaiming HOT COFFEE & BAGLES waved in the breeze.
"Maybe his coffee is better than his spelling. Give it a try while I see what this guy wants."
"Jack," Joey said when he came up to him. He lowered his voice as he hooked Jack's arm and drew him closer. "You gonna do anything about this?"
Jack stiffened. "What do you mean?"
"I need payback. Need it real bad."
Jack knew the feeling. "Don't we all."
"You don't have to play cute with me. I don't know exactly what you're into, but I can make guesses. Word gets around and word is you ain't no guy to mess with."
Jack kept his underworld contacts and acquaintances in the dark as to the details of how he made his living, but every so often he'd drop hints to leave the impression that he had his hand in some smuggling and fencing with a little grift thrown in just for fun.
He shrugged. "Can't believe everything you hear."
Joey's smile was tight. "Okay. Play it your way. Just let me know you hear anything. You decide to mix it up, I want in on the damage. Big time."
Jack slapped him on the upper arm. "You'll be the first guy I call."
"About what?"
Jack turned and saw Tom standing behind his right shoulder, sipping coffee from a paper cup.
Joey smiled. "This guy's got to be your brother, right?"
Jack felt as if he'd been slapped.
"What? Yeah. Joey, Tom. Tom, Joey Castles." As they shook hands Jack said, "How come he's 'got to be' my brother?"
Joey's eyebrows shot up. "You kidding? Like peas in a pod, man. Shit, you two could be identical twins except for, well, I mean, okay, Tom here is a little older and a little, um, bigger—"
A
But he couldn't seem too agreeable.
He shook his head. "I don't know if I should talk about Joey's occupation. I mean, what with you being an officer of the court and all."
exactly, but Tom had seen enough louche types to spot one a light year away.
"Don't worry about that. I'm not a judge up here. Not even licensed to practice. Just another plebeian. And let me tell you, I've already guessed your pal isn't a neurosurgeon. What's he do—sell stolen hubcaps or something?"
Jack hesitated, then, "He's a
Maybe things were starting to add up, disconnected pieces beginning to form a picture. Jack's leaving the family and hiding out in New York for fifteen years… everyone had wondered where he was and what he was doing. The word had come that he was an appliance repairman. Yeah, sure.
Tom had a growing conviction that his little brother was living, as they say, on the wrong side of the law.
It explained everything.
Jack pointed to the traffic lights on First Avenue. They'd turned red.
"Let's cross."
Tom held back. "We're walking?"
"I'd rather not talk about this in a cab."
Now
No contest. He hunched his shoulders against the chill and stepped off the curb.
"Okay. Let's go. Start talking."
"Well, Joey's last name isn't Castles."
As if I didn't know, he thought.
"Let me guess: It's Castellano or something like that."
"Castellano—right. Very good. His older brother Frankie was killed along with Dad."
It shouldn't have come as something of a shock that other people had lost family members too, but Tom had been focused on Dad.
Not that that should surprise anyone, he thought.
He was always taking heat for being self-centered. Privately he agreed—nolo contendere—but made a point of blustering about the unfairness of the charge whenever one of his wives brought it up.
"Shit. Too bad. They were close, I bet. Not like us."
Jack gave him a long look. Was that regret in his eyes?
"No. Not like us."
Tom didn't want to get onto that subject.
"So what were these brothers into?"
"Their father, Frank Senior, used to run one of the original telephone booth scams out of Florida."
Florida…
Tom shivered as they started up 29th Street. A lessening of the wind here between the avenues made the air seem warmer, but not a whole hell of a lot. He could use a little Florida himself right now.
"Connected?"
"Yes and no. He wasn't in the outfit, but he paid them a piece of the action to, you know, avoid trouble."
"Telephone booths… I've had a lot of scams come through my court, but that's a new one."
"No, it's an old one. It's passe now. But back in the day Big Frank would take out ads in small town papers all over the South and in the Midwest offering to sell people phone booths."
"Phone booths? What would anyone want—?"
"Just hear me out and you'll know. The pitch was you could buy as many as you wanted; you could install them yourself or, for a small percentage, Big Frank's company would handle installation, maintenance, and collect all those coins. Once you were set up you'd have a steady stream of cash without lifting a finger. All you'd have to do was sit back and start counting your money. Everybody's dream, right?"
"And people fell for that?"
"Enough to make Frank Castellano rich."
"You mean people would see this ad, write out a check, and just send it to him?"
"Not with the price Frank was asking. No, the really interested ones would call the toll-free number, and if they sounded like live ones, Frank would buy them a plane ticket, fly them down, and show them around his telephone booth plant."
Tom was nodding. "I'm getting the picture. A Big Store."
He'd always found scams fascinating—the more elaborate, the better.
"Right." Jack gave him an appraising look. "So you know a Big Store when you hear it. Interesting."
"Everybody who's ever seen
"And so they started writing checks."
"Big ones. Thousands and thousands."
Tom had the picture now: "But the booths never showed up."
"Never. When folks started to complain, Frank put them off as long as he could. When they finally came looking for him, Frank was gone. He'd moved his operation to the other side of the state."