Inherit the Mob (29 page)

“People change as they get older,” said Grossman. “Anyway, that’s the story. Now you know.”

“I don’t understand Velvel. How could he have gotten involved in something like this?”

Al sensed Jerry Shulman’s implication; it was his fault for letting his son get into this mess. “I warned him, Jerry, but you know how, ah, attractive the life can be. They waved big bucks at him and he bit. After all, you’re a smart guy too, and you weren’t exactly a saint when you were Velvel’s age.”

Shulman smiled faintly. “Touché, Al. Anyway, what brings you down here? Shouldn’t you be back in New York with Velvel?”

“I’ve got him holed up with a friend,” said Grossman. “Until I can get some protection for him. There’s nobody left in the city, the guys are all down here.”

“The guys?” asked Shulman, puzzled. “What guys?”

“Harry Millman, Zuckie, Weintraub, Indian Joe—”

“My God, I didn’t even know Indian Joe was still alive,” said Shulman. “Come to think of it, I didn’t know any of them were still around. But what good can they do you? I mean, Indian Joe must be seventy-five, and the others are pushing seventy.”

“Seventy’s not so old anymore,” said Grossman. “Harry Millman looks like Bill Tilden. Weintraub—he’s a rabbi now if you can believe that—is in good shape. Most of them are.”

“Maybe for seventy-year-olds, but I assume that Spadafore’s people are a little younger. Doesn’t sound like much of a fight.”

“That’s just the point. Who could I get in New York to buck Spadafore? Anybody with any brains would know what the odds are,
and even if I could find some guys, Spadafore could get to them. I’d be left with the psychos, and that’s all I need. No, the most important thing is guys who know how to handle themselves, and I can count on their loyalty. We’re not talking about a real war here; I’m pretty sure Spadafore doesn’t want that. I just need a few guns and some time.”

“You think you can talk him around?” asked Shulman. His voice was weak, and Grossman could see him growing tired.

“That’s the problem,” Grossman admitted. “Spadafore has no respect for me, he never had. You know that as well as I do. To him I was always Max’s kid brother; he never took me serious—ah, seriously. Neither did Max, for that matter. You were more like his brother than me.”

“Aw, Allie—” Shulman began, but Grossman cut him off.

“Let’s not bullshit each other, Jerry,” he said. “Maybe Millman and Zuckie and the others thought I was the crown prince, but you knew the score. I’m out of my league when it comes to dealing with Luigi Spadafore and I know it.”

“You’ve always underestimated yourself, Allie,” said Shulman. “You’ll handle Spadafore all right.”

Grossman shook his head. “That’s why I came to see you,” he said. “I thought that you, well, you could come up, just for a day or two, and talk to him. He always respected you, just like he did Max. You could convince him that the whole thing is a mistake, that Velvel had nothing to do with Mario—”

Shulman began to cough, his eyes watering and his slender body jerking back and forth. “I’m sorry, Allie, you see how it is with me,” he said.

“Just for a day, Jerry,” he said. “I never asked you for a thing—”

“Except my corner,” Shulman said.

“Yeah, except your corner, and I didn’t get that. I’m not gonna say you owe me one—you don’t owe me a thing. But I’m gonna tell you something I couldn’t say to another person; I’m scared for my boy, Jerry. He’s counting on me to fight for him, and I don’t know how. Except to ask you for help.”

Shulman sighed and Grossman heard the phelgm rattle in his chest. He stared into space for a long time. Finally he focused his brown eyes on Grossman. “It’s too late, Allie,” he said. “I just don’t
have the strength for what you want. I’d never make it back from New York.” Shulman saw the disappointment and fear on his old friend’s face. “Listen, even if I don’t talk to Luigi myself, we could work out some strategy together. I’ve got an idea or two. Let me rest on this, come back tomorrow and we’ll talk some more. We’ll come up with something, don’t worry.”

Grossman stood. “I’ll be back tomorrow,” he said. “In the meantime, think hard, Jerry. Velvel’s life depends on it.”

T
hat night Grossman called Bev. “How’s my favorite baby-sitter?” he asked.

“Just fine,” she replied in a bright voice. “I miss you, though.”

“Glad to hear it. Can I talk to Velvel?”

She passed the receiver to Gordon. “Dad? How’s it going down there?”

“Good. You been staying in the house?”

“Yeah.”

Grossman had expected Gordon to complain about being cooped up. “No cabin fever?”

“It’s all right,” said Gordon neutrally. “When are you coming back?”

“Day after tomorrow. How’s Flanagan?”

“Much better. I talked to him today.”

“Didn’t I tell you not to use the phone?” said his father gruffly. “Well, what the hell. When’s he coming out?”

“Tomorrow. He’s going to stay with that friend I mentioned to you.”

“That’s fine. You got the number at his place?”

“I got it. You find what you were looking for down there?”

“Yeah, everything’s under control. Lemme talk to Bev again.”

“Dad, what about—”

“No more questions, boychik. I’ll give you the full report when I get back. Gimme Bev for a minute.”

She came back on the line. “You and Velvel getting along all right?” he asked.

“We’re having a ball,” she said.

“That a fact? Well, I’ll be back day after tomorrow, so don’t get too attached to him. Anything you want from down here?”

“Not really,” she said. “I’m all set.”

Bev spent the day after Gordon arrived at her house at Temple Beth Shalom, where she supervised the most successful bazaar in the history of the sisterhood—eleven thousand dollars raised for charity and, everyone agreed, a lot of fun, too. She sent Madge Thalstein to the bank to deposit the money, called Rabbi Simon to report on the results and then bought three ounces of Northern California grass from Clarence the janitor.

On the way home she stopped at the butcher shop and picked up a four-pound sirloin wrapped in pork fat and bound by an intricate web of string. Down the street, at Moran’s, she bought a head of lettuce, vegetables, popcorn, a bag of potato chips, a round of Gouda cheese, a wedge of Roquefort, two dozen assorted chocolate bars, a fudge cake, an apple pie, a case of Miller High Life, six bottles of Cabernet and three fifths of Wild Turkey 101. “Having a party?” the checkout girl asked.

From Moran’s she drove to Brooks Brothers in the mall, where she picked out half a dozen striped button-down shirts, two cashmere sweaters, three pairs of prewashed straight-leg Levi’s, white deck shoes, sweat socks and a dozen pairs of colored bikini underpants. The sweaters and the underpants were her gifts to Gordon.

Heading home, she popped Eric Clapton into the tape deck and sang along. The shopping spree reminded her of the days when she
used to buy clothes for her kids and refreshments for the parties that she and her husband Norm threw on the weekends. In those days, though, it had been Norm who bought the dope.

People who knew Norm from his clinic, the temple or Weeping Rock Country Club considered him a solid, somewhat unimaginative guy; several times, at social functions, she had heard men wonder aloud what a great-looking girl like her saw in old Norm. Those were not the people who attended their private parties, however; if they had, they would have known a different Norm Friedman.

During their first years of marriage, Norm sometimes asked her in a kidding way if she ever thought about other guys. At first she denied it, but when she realized that he was disappointed, she confessed that she did, indeed, sometimes fantasize about making love to other men. “Like who?” he asked in a thick voice.

“Oh, Robert Redford, Paul Newman, I don’t know,” she said.

“How about someone we both know?” he asked.

She had ducked the question, but the next time he brought it up she said, “Marty Roth is cute.”

“Cute or sexy?”

“Well, sexy, I guess.”

“You think Pam is sexy, too?” he asked. They were naked in bed and she could feel that her husband’s feet were cold as ice.

“She’s got a great body,” Bev said.

“Maybe we should invite them over sometime,” he said. She paused. It wasn’t hard for her to imagine what he had in mind, and she was surprised to find that she wasn’t shocked. Bev had been raised to feel a connection between sex and sin, but she was also alive to the link between sin and excitement. “Maybe,” she said.

That weekend they sent the kids to her parents’. Marty and Pam brought a bottle of good French wine. Bev cooked rice pilaf. Norm supplied a bag of grass, an ounce of cocaine and a dozen little vials of laughing gas. By the end of dinner, everyone was stoned.

Norm went to the stereo and put on Sam Cooke’s
Music for Sentimental Lovers
. “Let’s dance,” he said, leading Bev into the living room. He pressed her close and she could feel his penis throbbing against her. After a moment, Pam and Marty joined them.

The song ended and another began. Norm took Pam in his arms, leaving Bev with Marty. She knew what would happen next and she
felt so nervous and excited that she could barely swallow. She saw Pam grind her thin, athletic body against her husband. Marty saw it too. She felt his hand run down her back and rub her ass. This is it, she thought, and put her tongue in his ear.

That night with the Roths was the beginning of a long, secret portion of the Friedmans’ marriage. Outwardly they were a conventional suburban couple, and they derived a delicious satisfaction from their little deception. A few times they seduced other couples from the club. Occasionally they cruised the swingers bars in the city, often coming home with a girl to share or sometimes a young guy who made love to Bev in front of her husband—Norm wouldn’t touch other men, but he enjoyed watching. These sessions, once every few months, were enough to keep their sex life full of fantasy and heat.

And then Norm had dropped dead, not, as she sometimes feared, from sexual exertion, but in his office, peering at an X ray. At first she got calls from some of the couples they had played with, but she turned them down; without Norm, she would have felt like a sex toy, and she didn’t want that. She was only forty-one, still a beautiful young woman, but she spent her nights at home, and, after the kids went away to school, alone.

What she wanted was a new life, but it wasn’t easy in the couples world of Scarsdale. Since Norm’s death, she had had exactly three blind dates—a professor of biology at a junior college who spoke with a lisp, a friend’s cousin who came over with Shelley Berman records and laughed raucously at the punch lines, and a man with a huge head and tiny body who had opened his fly at the movies and tried to force her hand inside. When Al Grossman had picked her up at the mall that morning, she had been very ready indeed.

Compared with the others, Al was the prince of her dreams. He was surprisingly good in bed, had a gruff sense of humor she found diverting and was generous, although she didn’t need the gifts he brought. On the other hand, he didn’t talk much, especially about himself, and he rarely wanted to go anyplace except to some sports event. His idea of a great movie was
Somebody Up There Likes Me
. And, of course, Al was seventy; he wouldn’t be around forever.

She had been curious about Gordon ever since she had learned that he was Al’s son. Bev was no intellectual, but she read the papers
and watched television, and she knew that William Gordon was one of the best-known journalists in America. Several times she had suggested inviting him over for dinner, but Grossman had always waved the idea away. At first she had been offended, supposing that he didn’t think she was interesting enough for his famous son, but she soon realized that the problem was with Grossman—he didn’t feel comfortable with Gordon.

When Al had asked her to let his son stay with her, she had tried hard not to show that she was elated. She saw possibilities—not necessarily romantic—in the arrangement: if she and Gordon became friends, he might welcome her into his world, a place, she imagined, of embassy parties and country homes full of famous, sophisticated people and clever talk. There she would find fun and laughter and men, unattached or detachable. She hoped it wouldn’t be necessary to seduce Gordon in order to win his friendship—she genuinely liked Al, and an affair with his son would be messy—but she was prepared to do it if necessary. She would do anything to get out of Scarsdale, the big silent house and the bleakly cheerful shopping malls.

Gordon had been a surprise. From what she had read and seen, she had been expecting a younger, more refined version of Al—a tough, confident man of the world. But he had showed up on her doorstep looking shaky and uncertain, like a little boy. Putting him in her son’s room, instead of the guest suite, had been a stroke of inspiration. So had the pajamas. She wanted to make Gordon feel warm and safe.

When her kids were little, Bev Friedman occasionally allowed them to stay home from school. Those days she turned into events, stocking up on goodies, cooking their favorite foods, allowing them to watch television until all hours and stroking their backs with gentle fingers. Her kids called this “making nice,” and she had loved doing it for them. During Gordon’s first three days with her, she had done the same for him. She enveloped him in a cloud of warm luxury, poured him drinks and fixed him delicious meals, encouraged him to tell her stories about his foreign adventures and listened with flattering attention. It wasn’t a disagreeable task; Gordon could be charming when he wasn’t feeling sorry for himself, and he was an excellent raconteur.