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Authors: Mark Arsenault

BOOK: Loot the Moon
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H
er name was Nelida and her fabric softener smelled like Christmas trees. Martin huddled on a three-legged barstool in her kitchen and watched his linen suit, shirt, socks, and lucky Boston Red Sox boxer shorts tumble in her professional-style clothes dryer. She had lent him a long white terry-cloth robe, with a tasseled gold rope for a waist belt, and the letters
GH
embroidered in scarlet script over the breast pocket.
Gilbert Harmony's robe.
I'm his wife.
She chopped scallions on a maple cutting board. Martin watched her from behind. She wore steep wedge sandals, a loose pair of dark knee-length gauchos, like something a stylish cowgirl might wear to a rodeo, and a clingy patterned top in muted southwestern colors. Her weight shifted from one foot to the other and Martin noted the easy pivot of her hips.
She was not Gil Harmony's
wife
, exactly, she had explained to Martin, after hustling him into the apartment and demanding he strip his wet clothes in her bathroom. For two years, she and Gil had
enjoyed something of a common-law arrangement, two nights a week. She was around thirty-eight, he guessed, about twenty years younger than her lover. Martin liked how she moved: smooth and precise, like a dancer.
Her kitchen was mostly white, with Corian countertops, stainless-steel appliances, and a tremendous copper hood over the stove. Six bottles of wine, all reds, dangled in a wire rack suspended from the ceiling, next to a hanging rope of garlic and a cluster of dried parsley. She dropped a handful of scallions into a pan of hissing hot olive oil.
Martin cleared his throat. “You don't have to feed me,” he said.
“You said you had not eaten. So you'll have an omelet.” She turned down the blue flame under the pan and stirred the scallions with a wooden spoon. “No more arguing with me.”
Fine, then. No more arguing. He was starving and his mouth watered at the scent of home cooking.
There was no reconciling this woman, this apartment, even the robe, with the judge Martin had known in Providence. So he stopped trying. The woman was real; therefore, Martin's long-standing image of Gil Harmony was false. Or at least incomplete and in need of a rewrite. Martin imagined Gil's voice in his head.
Even the Constitution had to be amended, Marty.
Nelida's silence as she cooked for him made Martin feel even more naked inside Gil Harmony's robe. He attacked the quiet. “I'm sorry, um—for your loss.” The words came out like a question and Martin regretted saying them.
“A loss unlike I have ever known,” she confirmed. Her dainty eyebrows rose and fell, agreeing with what she had spoken. She poured yellow egg batter from a mixing bowl into the pan, and then turned the heat down again. She looked at him. “A loss for you, too. He was your friend.”
“And mentor,” Martin said, eager to reach common ground with her.
She suddenly snapped the spoon in his direction, pointing to him. “No sausage in this omelet, right? You don't eat meat.”
Martin could not help a laugh. “I'm not supposed to eat eggs, either, but I cheat. How could you know that?”
She shrugged and carelessly tested the omelet with the spoon. “Gil told me that if anything ever happened to him, you'd be the one from Providence to find me,” she said. “You'd represent his wife, of course. And Gil figured that nobody else would be
particular
enough to find this apartment hidden in his paperwork.”
“Gil's partner, Ken Thybony, knows about you,” Martin guessed.
She shrugged. “I have met Ken in Gil's company so he knows I exist. Whether he knows that Gil and I were to be married as soon as Gil left his first wife, I couldn't say.”
He was struck that she referred to June Harmony as Gil's
first wife
. Would he really have left June? And scandalized his name in Rhode Island? That seemed inconceivable, though Martin had to remind himself he did not know his friend as well as he thought. He summoned the courage to ask, “When was he planning to leave?”
She folded the omelet and then clanked a metal lid over the pan. “Give the egg a few more minutes to set,” she said.
“Smells great.”
“He would have left as soon as the time was right,” she informed Martin, though she did not look at him. Was she embarrassed at stealing a husband? Or did she doubt her own story? “I didn't push him to leave, because his son was still in their house in Rhode Island. That was okay. I knew I had Gil's heart.”
Martin was too polite to cross-examine over her alleged hold on Gil Harmony's heart. Maybe she was right; maybe she knew him better than anyone. Or maybe she had bought the same easy lie as every other
comatta
since Moses carried the bad news about adultery down from the mountain.
“Gil was already in semiretirement,” she said. “He was working
to add a third class to his university schedule here in the city so that we could have another evening together each week. Once he left the bench completely in Rhode Island, he would have moved here and this would have been our home.” She gestured to the cabinet above Martin's head. “There are plates in there.”
Martin was loath to move around in the robe. He held the edges of the garment in place and spun on the stool. On the inside of the cabinet door he discovered an eight-by-ten photograph that snatched his breath.
The picture of Judge Gilbert Harmony had been taken at a ball game. He sat in the bleachers, beaming under a navy blue Red Sox cap. Nelida sat to his left, in the blue and orange cap of the New York Mets. She grinned in the picture; her chin pressed to his shoulder and she hugged his arm.
Martin had not doubted Nelida's story about the affair, and the robe had been confirmation enough, but he was stunned by the irrefutable proof of Gil Harmony's secret life.
At least she's not a Yankees fan
, Martin thought.
She caught him staring at the photo and explained, “It was taken last year.”
“A lovely shot,” Martin said, admitting the truth.
They look happy
. “Who took it?”
“My son, Jerod.”
Martin noticed the empty seat next to Gil in the photo. So this had been a family outing to the ballpark. He pulled a plate from a stack. He stopped himself before he asked aloud why she kept such a lovely photo hidden from view. Of course, he realized, it was tucked away so no visitor would see it accidentally. Never having had his own affair, Martin assumed this was standard infidelity procedure.
She took the plate from him and eased the omelet onto it. She added a fork and a twist of orange and handed the meal to Martin. She scrubbed the pan as he ate. He wondered,
How much did she love
the judge?
Enough to slide alone into her empty bed five nights a week, knowing that Gil would be in bed with June? She seemed genuine, but there were a lot of great actors in the world. What if she loved him too much to share anymore? He watched her arms flex as she washed the dishes. She was a forceful, direct person. What if she had demanded that Gil leave his wife, and he had refused?
Suddenly, Martin recalled what Gil had said to June on the video.
I didn't intend for it to happen, all this hurt you're feeling. Some things are, well, just larger than ourselves.
Of course. Seemed so obvious in hindsight. Martin had assumed at the time Gil was apologizing for somehow crossing fate and getting killed. Gil must have figured June might learn about the affair, maybe even that Martin would discover the mistress.
Hmm, so he didn't intend for it to happen? Small comfort in that.
Some things are larger than ourselves
… sounded like a confession of love. Maybe he did intend to marry Nelida, or at least he did the day he made the tape.
He finished the food and left the plate on the counter. “Brilliant,” he announced.
She smiled with satisfaction at his empty plate.
“Tell me,” he asked, probing something that bothered him. “Why did Gil warn that I might find you, should something happen to him? Was he expecting something to happen?”
Her face darkened with dread and her hands began to twist a dish towel into a rope. She started to speak, but paused, and then turned toward footsteps coming from the hall and asked, “Are you going out?”
A young man of about twenty poked his head into the kitchen, gave the mostly naked lawyer on the barstool an up-and-down inspection, and answered, “I'm going to Zach's.”
“I thought he was coming here.”
“I screwed up. I'm late.”
Nelida gestured to Martin. “Jerod, this is Mr. Smothers,” she said brightly. “He was close to Gil.”
The two men seemed more in tune to the awkwardness of the moment. Martin glanced to the dryer to see his boxer shorts tumble past the porthole. He nodded hello to Jerod. Nelida's son was obviously an athlete who had worked hard honing a V-shaped torso. The hair above his ears was shaved to swathes of stubble, leaving a patch of black curls atop his head. He wore a long green New York Jets football jersey with the number 28, and big round eyeglasses in wire frames, looking similar to the fake glasses Martin often provided for his clients, to make felonious people look studious in front of a jury.
“Are you packed?” Nelida asked her son.
“When I get back.”
“Leave yourself time because we have a long drive.”
“Mm-hm,” he promised as he left.
Martin waited until the apartment door banged shut to ask, “Are you traveling?”
“To Providence,” she said. “For Gil's memorial. You'll be there too, I'd assume.”
The funeral had been for family only. The bar association had organized a public tribute for the legal and political communities to pay respect to Judge Harmony.
“Gil's clerk is organizing the speaking program at the memorial,” Martin said. “She asked me to say a few words.”
And June Harmony, too.
Nelida read his mind. “There were reasons to stay hidden when Gil was alive,” she said. “Not anymore. I won't dishonor our relationship by being ashamed of it. You can help. You can tell them that I am coming and I'm bringing the son Gil treated like his own.”
The dryer buzzed and Martin's clothes collapsed, as if from exhaustion, to the bottom of the drum. Nelida stepped toward the dryer
but Martin raised an index finger and froze her in place. “Why did Gil think something might happen to him?”
She retreated a few steps and grabbed the counter, for strength, perhaps. “He had a threat.”
“Judges get threats all the time,” Martin replied. “Convicted men being led away in chains yell all sort of crazy stuff.”
My own goddamn clients.
“This one was from the mobster, Glanz.”
“Rhubarb Glanz?”
“Gil sent his son to prison. I suppose you did not represent him, Mr. Smothers?”
“My clients are not so rich.”
“Glanz swore he would have revenge.”
“I don't remember hearing of any threat,” Martin said, challenging her, to measure how she reacted.
“The threat was in a restaurant on Federal Hill, a few weeks after the sentencing. Gil and his clerk were having lunch and talking about some cases when Glanz and two big goons walked in. They told Gil he should reduce the sentence he had imposed on Glanz's son. When Gil refused, they told him he would regret his decision, and that he would pay. Not in so many words, but Gil got the message.”
“There must have been witnesses to this threat.”
“Just his clerk.”
“Well, that would have been enough evidence to get the police involved. Maybe not enough to file charges, but certainly enough to have some protection assigned to the judge.”
She looked away. “Gil didn't report the incident,” she said. “He didn't want protection. He told me not to worry, and that he probably would not need it.”
“He what—?”
Oh. Of course. Gil Harmony could not have undercover cops
following him to Mets games with his secret second family. Martin looked down to his bare feet and the curling yellow toenails that suddenly embarrassed him. He needed his clothes. He needed to get out of there. He needed to find a phone, to reach Povich and turn him on to Rhubarb Glanz.
“
B
o, don't make funny faces at the blind guy,” Billy ordered. “Grandpa's doing it,” the kid replied in self-defense.
“Nobody likes a tattletale,” the old man said.
Stu Tracy laughed in a happy gurgle. He said, “I won't be blind when they take these bandages off. And then I'll see what those faces look like.”
“Do I have to dial nine to get an outside line?” Billy asked, the room phone in his hand.
No answer.
“You talking to me?” Stu said.
“Yeah, what am I thinking? Sorry.”
“I can hear somebody making faces at me,” Stu said. “And dial nine, Billy.”
Bo giggled. “Oh Stu-oooh,” the kid called playfully. “Mr. Einstein is making faces at you.”
Stu laughed. He said, “Then I guess Mr. Einstein ain't as smart as everybody says.”
Stu Tracy's hospital room seemed less morbid since Billy had
persuaded Stu to add the Povich family—the kid, the old man, and Mr. Einstein—to his visiting list. After the old man's blood treatment, they visited with Stu.
Bo sat on a folding chair at the head of the bed, next to the old man, in his wheelchair.
Stu seemed less loopy on this visit. He had said the doctors had eased back on his pain medication, to find the right compromise between agony and alertness.
Billy had arranged the visits as much for his old man's benefit as for Stu Tracy. The old man liked spilling his stories to a captive audience, and Stu wasn't going anywhere on shattered legs.
And Stu wanted to live. He was desperate to live. Maybe, Billy hoped, a little of that desperation would rub off on his father.
The old man had been badgering Billy to take him to the park, alone, without Bo, so they could talk, man to man. William Povich Sr. wanted to talk about stopping his treatments. These visits with Stu had helped Billy put off the conversation.
“What was so
special
about the New York World's Fair of nineteen thirty-nine was that all the exhibits were
mechanical
,” the old man lectured to Stu.
“Mmm,” said Stu.
“Not like today where computers can do whatever magic you tell them to do. This was before the intelligent circuit breaker. Take the Ford exhibit, for example …”
Of course, after a few more hours of this
, Billy thought,
Stu may lose his will to live, too.
Billy took the phone across the room and sat on the windowsill, six stories above the highway. Cars whizzed south down Route 95; those coming north into the city crawled three abreast in a blaze of brake lights. He found a dial tone and tapped the cellular telephone number of a loan shark he had used from time to time to cover tardy payments to impatient bookmakers.
Bo grabbed the dangling plastic IV tube running into Stu's right arm and gently shook it.
“Bo!” Billy scolded. “Stu's eating dinner through that tube right now.”
“Don't play with his food,” the old man added.
After three rings, a gruff voice said into Billy's ear, “Señor Pizza, may I help you?”
Billy knew to ignore the greeting, which was a front. Sometimes the loan shark answered as a tire store, sometimes as a pet depot. One time, he answered as a gynecologist.
“Garafino?” Billy said. “It's Povich.”
A pause. “Well, Billy, this is a pleasure. No hard feelings on your end, I see.” He chuckled.
Billy scratched his nose where Garafino's thugs had once broken it. “That was a misunderstanding,” Billy said.
The shark chuckled again. “Did you misunderstand that I wanted to get paid? What did I say that made you think I preferred you stiff me on the loan? Hmm? Just so we don't have any more misunderstandings.”
Billy pictured the loan shark: narrow, squirrelly face; a big schnoz with black hair curling inside the nostrils; one gold canine tooth; eyes so dark they seemed all pupil; bushy muttonchop sideburns that tapered to a short Vandyke, carefully trimmed into a demonic triangle; skintight black T-shirt tucked into silk trousers held up by a big square silver belt buckle with a dollar sign on it; annoying chuckle at the misfortunes of others.
Billy switched the phone to his other ear and turned away from his family. “I don't need money,” he said. “I need information.”
Garafino chuckled again in Billy's ear. “So what I hear is true, eh? You're looking to get to Rhubarb Glanz.”
Billy jumped to his feet. “You heard this?”
“News travels.”
In the day since Martin had returned from New York City with the news of Judge Harmony's secret life—and of the threat on Harmony's life made by Rhubarb Glanz—Billy had made at least twenty calls to former cop sources, bookies, and retired legbreakers, looking for information on Glanz. He was alarmed that his hunt for news had raced ahead of his calls.
“I need to know where I can find Glanz—outside of his nightclub, his limo with the dark windows, or that fortress he calls home in Newport.”
“You think you can whack him?” The shark chuckled.
Whack him?
“Who the fuck do you think I am?” Billy demanded in a low voice. He heard the chuckle again and realized Garafino was taunting him. Billy needled back, “Do you think I'm
you
?”
The shark laughed. “In your best dreams.”
“I want to talk to Glanz. Five minutes—with no cops, notebooks, tape recorders, or any of his goons.”
Garafino paused. The howl of a fire engine passed on the shark's end of the phone. Billy heard him slurp a sip of something. Sounding grave, Garafino said, “So you wanna talk to Glanz, eh? Do you puff dynamite like a big red cigar?”
“I won't tell him I talked to you.”
“Who knows what you say when they hang you head-first into the cheetah cage at the zoo, eh? Will you light a stick of dynamite in my lips, too?” He slurped something again, and then announced, “Might not be in my best interest to help you. I have to think about it, Billy.”
Click.
Billy called into the dead phone, “Hello? Hello?” He slammed it down. “That slimy son of a bitch!”
He turned to see June Harmony in the doorway, and Brock a step behind her in the hall.
“Oh, Jesus, I'm sorry,” Billy stammered.
“Slimy son of a bitch!” Bo echoed with glee.
The old man shushed the boy. Billy wanted to shrivel up and skitter under Stu Tracy's bed.
 
 
Bo had shouted the curse in Stu Tracy's ear. Stu grinned and listened to the room. He heard the footsteps stop at the door, a thick-heeled shoe. A woman's shoe, he guessed. He heard Billy apologize again, and then step into the hall. Stu's head turned automatically to look at the door, though his face was still bandaged. The grayness he saw seemed three-dimensional, as if it started at his eyes and extended for a long distance. Maybe for infinity. His mind converted the sound of footsteps into jagged blue bursts on the insides of his eyelids, like electric mites dashing across his pupils. He banged his left fist on the bed in frustration. Distracted by the visit from the Povich family, he had briefly forgotten he still could not see.
“What's that?” he whispered. “Who's there?”
“They're hiding from us!” Bo shrieked. “Einstein and I should go under the bed.”
“You won't like what you find under there,” said Mr. Povich, Billy's hoarse and long-winded father, who was forever moaning quietly about the humiliations of old age, and spinning stories about the New York World's Fair of 1939. Stu's chemically warped mind had imagined the fair as some kind of Jazz Age Burning Man festival, populated by merry naked people in fedoras.
Mr. Povich leaned close to Stu. “I think that was June Harmony.”
“The judge's wife?”
“I recognize her from the paper. Mm-mm, a fox.”
“Mmmm, a fox!” Bo repeated.
“Stow that kind of talk, boy,” Mr. Povich ordered. “Till you're twenty-one.”
“What is she doing here?” Stu begged in a stage whisper.
“She heard that I was here, and she's looking for some all-night manly action,” said Mr. Povich, in his dust-dry delivery that broke Stu into painful chuckles.
The door latch clicked. Stu heard the door push lazy air out of the way as it opened. He heard footsteps, a lot of them. Mr. Povich wiggled in the wheelchair. Even Bo seemed to sense the solemnity of the moment; the boy was still.
Billy made the introduction: “Stu? This is June Harmony, the judge's … wife. And her son, Brock. Um … it's okay, Brock.”
“He made you drive the car,” Stu said, imagining the frightened face in his memories.
There was a long, uncomfortable pause.
They're looking at me. Measuring my freakishness against their expectations. Whistling quietly past the cemetery. There but for the grace of God … They are afraid of me; I smell it. I am the greasy thumbprint of Death, so close it puts a catch in your throat
.
A woman's voice, strong, maternal: “Thank you for having us, Stu. I thought it was important … that is, Brock and I thought it important that we see how you are, what you need … if there is anything we may do for you.”
Smells like guilt.
Stu waited, listened, and heard a soft sniffling.
So he cries.
Stu had not cried much since that first night, right after the crash. Mostly they kept him too stoned to cry. His parents never cried in his presence. The nurses were too professional to cry. Stu was pleased to hear that
somebody
could cry over what had happened.
“It's okay, Brock,” Billy Povich said, tenderly.
“Yes, dear,” the woman agreed. “It's all right.”
Stu heard what sounded like a hand rubbing a shoulder; such a comforting sound. Suddenly, with a burst of imaginary yellow inside
his eyelids, Stu Tracy realized he was the most powerful person in the room.
He cannot help me, but I can help him.
The blind and broken man in the bed discovered an almost Christlike power to cure another man's psyche.
Speak the words and he shall be healed … .
Stu mustered depth in his voice and said into the darkness: “There was nothing more you could have done. Nothing more either of us could have done. I don't blame you.”
The sniffle erupted into a heavy sob.
“Oh, honey,” the woman said softly.
Heavy footsteps pounded out of the room.
“Be free!” Stu called after him. He felt like a healer.

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