Dreams Bigger Than the Night (25 page)

At the end of the meal, he asked Arietta to join him for a drive along the river. To his surprise, she consented. T volunteered to grab a taxi back to the hotel. Piero told his daughter not to be late. Jay’s mind was already racing ahead. How would he persuade her . . . to do what? Protect herself? Others? She was obviously on the run looking for a good place to hide.

On a bluff overlooking the Missouri River, they sat in the car and watched a barge with lanterns at bow and stern. As it floated south, he drifted into a plea.

“In the woods, I thought you actually cared.”

“I do, Jay.”

Her invoking his name sounded contrived, like the bonhomie of a used-car salesman.

“Is that why you left me? Your idea of caring and mine have little in common.” He then told her about his escape from Rolf Hahne.

“Now you see why no one must know where we’re headed, not even Longie. For my father and me, it’s a life-and-death matter.”

“May I ask: Why Kansas City?”

“I came to talk to Satchel . . . my father to ask for money,” she said simply. “Mr. Wilkinson told my father to contact him if money was short. Wilkie always insisted that my dad did him a favor by delivering beer to the stadium during Prohibition. We had no time to sell the house before leaving Newark. So we took him up on his offer.”

The lack of invention gave her explanation the ring of truth. They talked, heedless of the time. It was now late, and Arietta asked him to drive her to the hotel. She described the Muehlebach as an Italian Renaissance palace with, on the main floor, a warren of shops and, at the top, celebrity penthouses. (Tom Pendergast was reputed to maintain one.) He accompanied Arietta to the front desk and told her that in the morning they had to talk. Intending to call her early, he asked the desk clerk for her room number. His raised eyebrows hinted at sin.

“Her room is a single, sir!”

“I have no plans to join her.”

Arietta smiled sweetly. “Room 422,” she replied and entered the elevator. Sure enough the Otis stopped at the fourth floor. Jay retreated to the lobby for several minutes pondering Longie’s motives. Why not let Jay bring them back; why the need to send two of his boys? If protecting them was uppermost in Longie’s mind, that concern might explain his haste to send out his mugs. But why would Arietta resist such protection? Something was missing. In the far reaches of his memory stirred a quotation from some long-forgotten statesman: “There’s your side, my side, and the right side.” If Jay substituted the word “truth” for “side,” he would be implying that truth depended on the teller, that perception, and not some universal all-seeing sage or substance, was the source of one’s truth. Small wonder people believe what they want to believe, and woe to the Teiresias who divines differently.

By the time Jay bedded down, the clock showed nearly three. But though dog-tired, he couldn’t sleep. He kept mulling over motives and what Arietta and he would say to each other in the light of a new day. About eleven the next morning, T went off to see some friends, and Jay met the Maglioccos at the Muehlebach. He treated them to breakfast in a corner cafe that Mr. M. declared had “something like real coffee.” As they settled into a booth, several sorry-and lonesome-looking men sat at the counter morosely eating.

“You know what I liked about the priesthood,” said Mr. M., clearly not expecting an answer, “the camaraderie. I felt as if I belonged to a world of like-minded people, to a group devoted to the same ends, the improvement of the community’s spiritual life.”

“The socialists say the same thing, don’t they, except they’re concerned not with heaven but with food and jobs?” The moment Jay made that comment he realized that Mr. M. might find it offensive.

He needn’t have worried; Mr. M.’s next comment flirted with the same point. “The only groups like it are the trade unions and gangsters.”

At first, Jay found the inclusion of gangsters strange, but when he mulled it over, taking into account mutual interests, companionship, self-protection, and, not least of all, money, the idea made sense.

“Do you miss it—the priesthood?”

“To worship an abstraction, the Mother of God, or a real woman, Arietta’s mom?” He breathed deeply, paused, and, on the exhale, murmured, “I made the right choice.”

As in Jay’s past encounters with these two, Arietta said little in the presence of her father, whether from deference or fear or for some other reason. When Jay tried to include her in the conversation, she seemed out of sorts, replying tersely and even imperiously to whatever he asked, as if his questions were unworthy of a response. When Mr. M. said that he had an appointment at twelve-thirty with Mr. Wilkinson, Jay accompanied her back to the hotel, where they settled into a couple of deep leather lounge chairs and sat staring at each other for so long that he thought maybe it was a contest to see who would blink first. Unable to stand being pinioned by her great green eyes, he weakened and sighed:

“I give up!”

She smiled wanly and crossed her legs, causing her pleated skirt to hitch up above her knees. His loins pulsated as he imagined her wrapping those gorgeous gams around his back while he sank into her delicious body. Of all the unbidden thoughts that came to him in unexpected moments, uppermost was the image of her legs, long, shapely, elegant, suggestive . . . sleek for the flight into sex. He wanted to take her upstairs in the hotel and make delirious love. Forcing himself to rearrange his mind, he tried to focus on her motives, not her legs, and tried to elicit more information.

“How much does your dad know about you and Axel, or for that matter, about you and Longie?”

“Enough.”

“Is that why he came away with you?”

“He’s my father.”

For a moment, Jay weighed that comment, realizing how little respect he had shown his own father, who had always appeared as “old world,” even his socialist beliefs. His manners and habits, his style of dress, his formal speech patterns all struck Jay as old-fashioned. But was that any reason to value him less? He felt certain that Arietta would have said that the very characteristics he found disagreeable were well worth honoring.

“You must care for your father a great deal.”

“He’s my father,” she repeated.

“Yes, but some fathers beat their wives and kids; they drink, womanize, goldbrick. I don’t think they’re worth caring about.”

“The kind of man you describe is not my father.”

He took that statement as a rebuke. “Well,” he said in a conciliatory tone, “tell me who your father is. I hardly know him.”

She puckered her lips, as if savoring her tongue, and replied laughingly, “Like all priests, he has a devious streak. You have to if you want to get ahead in the church. Hierarchies are just that way. To rise or be assigned a good parish, you have to know when to ingratiate yourself with the monsignor and bishop and when to stand up for a principle. My father fiercely fought against hunger and want, always asking his superiors for more money to buy food and clothing to aid the poor. He did the same for my mother and me.”

Her last sentence left Jay speculating whether Mr. Magliocco had approached the church for personal assistance, to help him and his daughter during these hard times. If yes, Piero must have felt deeply uneasy, given his desertion of the Jesuits for a life of the flesh.

“My father would go to any lengths for his family.”

“Even . . .” Jay broke off unwilling to give his thought words.

“You were saying?”

“Arietta, let’s quit the shadow boxing. You’re in terrible danger, and I am as well.”

She shivered and hugged herself. “How do I know I can trust you? What you’re saying could all be for Longie.”

“I swear to God!”

“So does every heretic.”

“Please, Arietta, listen to what I’m saying—and tell me what you know about the two murders.”

But she wasn’t forthcoming. He could see that the only way to make her believe him was to win back the old confidence between them.

“Would you like a cup of tea?” she asked. “I would.”

Catching the attention of a waiter, she requested a pot of green tea. While waiting, they again lapsed into an uneasy silence.

“What are you thinking?” he asked, not wishing to be stared into making some frivolous statement.

Looking at her folded hands in her lap, she said softly, “I was remembering the woods outside of Cape May.”

“Idyllic . . . perfect.”

“If you’re really free of Longie . . .”

“I am.”

“Then it all depends on you.”

“What?”

The waiter brought a tray with a pot, saucers, and cups. As Arietta sipped her drink, she brazenly seduced Jay with her bewitching eyes as she had so often done. He knew that look all too well: You can have me if you’re up to it.

“Arietta, I would like nothing more than for us to . . .”

She interrupted. “Would you marry me?”

Speechless and bewildered, he could see in her eyes that, for Arietta, his muteness belied his disavowal of Longie.

“I thought so,” she said sadly.

“But I haven’t answered.”

“Yes, you have, Jay.”

“What would it mean?” he asked incoherently, trying to gain time.

“Marriage?” She downed her tea in three gulps. “That you would stand by me—and mine. That you would be loyal, even if not sexually faithful, though that would be nice, but always loyal.”

His head was spinning. He had neither the intention nor the means to marry; and in all honesty, having no precise idea what she meant by loyalty, he had misgivings. It sounded ominous and strangely illegal.

“While you think over my proposition—I trust, you realize, that
I’m
the one asking you to marry
me
—I’ll just use the ladies’ room.”

Fifteen minutes later, he asked a woman hotel clerk to look in on Arietta, to make sure she hadn’t taken ill. When she returned, she said that the lavatory was vacant.

On a hunch, he called Mr. Wilkinson’s office. Yes, Piero had been there and left. How long ago? In the last twenty minutes. Doubtless Mr. M. had arranged to pick up Arietta somewhere outside the hotel at an approximate time.

Proceeding on his supposition that the Maglioccos were heading for Milwaukee, Jay and T wearily packed their belongings and once again hit the road, lodging at the usual cabins and cottages. They drove through Des Moines, Iowa City, and Davenport. On discovering that the opera house was featuring Gilbert and Sullivan’s
Pirates of Penzance
, they stayed the night, though the only accommodations they could find were in a fetid tent camp; then they continued to Moline, Sterling, and Rochelle. Before Jay turned north to Rockford, T asked him if he’d mind dropping him off in Chicago.

“That’s where my niece Janice and her daughter, Melanie, live. I’ll give you their number. You can pick me up on the way back.”

Jay drove through Chicago to a brown one-story brick house with a large stoop. A young black girl skipping rope in front stopped when T called her name. As T emerged from the car, she hugged him and then shot up the steps, yelling for her mother, who a moment later flew out the door. Jay could see that T had come among loved ones; so after being introduced to the family, he left.

The roads out of Chicago teemed with the dispossessed and the homeless, living in and out of their rattletrap autos and trucks. In the gullies and next to culverts, families sat holding up signs that read: “No money for gas or oil or food. Please help!” Ragged-looking children sat on their parents’ laps, presumably to induce travelers to take note of their condition and stop. In fact, he did pull over for one family because the mother and two children, lying on a threadbare blanket, appeared dead. The mother, crippled by polio, could only crawl; her husband held out a bony hand and begged for relief. Jay slipped them a deuce and thought the man would die from ecstasy. The poor man embraced Jay’s legs and started kissing his shoes, to Jay’s painful embarrassment. He remembered what T had said when they passed through some desperately poor areas in Iowa, “America ain’t all that it’s cracked up to be.” Jay had replied, “Not for the poor.” To which T had added, “And the fat cats don’t seem to notice.”

Crossing into Wisconsin, Jay made for Milwaukee. West of Racine, he saw some men striking a local cheese factory and soliciting money. He gave them a few bucks, noting the paradoxical contrast between the rich chernozem fields and the wretched workers. The prosperous farmlands would have led one to think that the Great Depression had never touched this part of the world. But the towns themselves told a different story: the usual boarded-up stores, decay, half-empty streets, and ragged people out of work.

He had never been to Milwaukee, the beer city on Lake Michigan. Approaching it from the south, he stopped at a small grocery in a Polish neighborhood to grab a bottle of soda and look at a telephone book. He left the car engine running. The effluvium of sausage pervaded the store. In a corner stood a religious icon with a votary light. The counterman saw him staring at it and said, “The black Madonna”; “of Czestochowa,” the man added. “She’s sacred to all Poles.” Not Jewish ones, Jay thought. Thumbing through the directory, he found a Reinhard Gehrig Jr. at 334 Sixteenth Street. The telephone number matched the one on Longie’s list. In Sea Girt, George McManus had mentioned a “Mrs.,” but women usually took their husbands’ names. The grocer eagerly asked if Jay wanted anything else, recommending the cheese, which he bought. A surly motorcycle policeman greeted him at the car.

“This your automobile, sonny?”

“Yes.”

The cop gratuitously sneered, “Well, I knew it didn’t belong to no darkie, ’cause those guys have to steal ’em to afford ’em.”

The logic of that statement caused Jay to blink. Why would stolen cars be less expensive to maintain than ones purchased legitimately? Undoubtedly the bull meant to say that the only way a black person could obtain a car would be through theft. But when Jay thought of some of the Monarch baseball players and the chariots T told him they had once driven, even that statement did not stand up to scrutiny.

“Got the papers to prove it? And while you’re at it, let me see your license.”