The Way of All Fish: A Novel (36 page)

In the distance, he could see the Duquesne Incline, the wonderful trolley-like ride up Mount Washington that he had loved as a child, which made him think about his little sister, Jenny, who had died when she was fifteen.

He turned his eyes away from the incline back to the river, streaked with late-afternoon sunlight, and wondered—was this the real reason he was so into the séance thing? Talking to the dead? Had he meant the whole exercise for himself? Was he just looking for another Pittsburgh?

Both disheartened and feeling foolish, Paul pushed away from the rail and continued on his way across the bridge. Back at the hotel, he handed the ticket for his car to an attendant in front and asked that it be brought around or up from whatever urban dungeon cars were kept in.

Inside of ten minutes, he was in the car and on his way to Sewickley.

It had been years—no, decades—since Paul had seen Sewickley (it depressed him to think he was old enough to measure off his life in decades). A wealthy cousin had lived here, and Paul had been invited to visit on summer days and the occasional holiday. The house was big and beautiful, the lawn sparkling green, the massive trees lending shade and filtered light. In his ten-, twelve-, or fifteen-year-old mind, Sewickley had always been a sort of idyll of fireflies in the grass and painted falling leaves.

He drove through the village, which had changed a lot but seemed the same. How would a real estate agent sell you nostalgia? Ah yes—“footprint.” (“You can see the footprint hasn’t changed at all.”) Along the main street, he picked out buildings and businesses, the new from the old. He was guessing, but it made no difference. The footprint was still the same.

Driving on, out the other side, he turned onto a road that led to Sewickley Heights. What he was looking for was a hill, high enough for a vantage point that would allow anyone on top to see the road and the car below. It would also be nice if it were backlit by the sun. Was he driving north? He had no sense of direction. If Odysseus had depended on Paul instead of omens, he’d have been a dead man. Anyway, as far as sunlight went, there would be no way to judge exactly when everybody would converge on the hill he sought.

He consulted the makeshift map beside him, directions he had taken down in a phone conversation with Johnny. The road wound between old stone walls for a couple of miles. Sewickley Heights was not a euphemism, as it usually was for a section of suburbia outside any city. Along this road were clearly pricey houses, some set in acres of woods. The few he could see through a long pathway of trees were white and so distant, they might not have been houses but clouds.

Then he came to it, the perfect hill crowning a big field. The sun was obligingly setting behind it. Paul would have taken this as an omen if he’d believed in omens.

But he was in omen territory: that sunset, those cloud houses, the dark, dense undergrowth. Omen territory. Sewickley Heights, reconstituted by his old childhood friend Johnny del Santos.

Johnny del Santos was of Spanish, Italian, or possibly Mexican descent. It had always been impossible to pin him down, even to the country of his ancestors. When Paul was a teenager in Shadyside (a wonderful appellation for Johnny), Paul had been a freshman and Johnny a junior. Johnny had a Jimmy Stewart way about him, slow-smiling, utterly disarming.

He wasn’t the actual star of the high school baseball team because he was too lazy to train. He was an outfielder, and when he was in position, the air grew brittle. Balls didn’t want to go through it. They would have dropped at Johnny’s feet if he hadn’t been there to hold out a mitt and catch them.

Johnny del Santos was the most accomplished scam artist Paul had ever come across. He could even con a baseball. So here he was, running an abbey a few miles outside of Sewickley. No monk would be said to “run” a monastery unless it were Johnny del Santos. “Run,” Paul supposed, was exactly what Johnny did.

Paul turned the car around, drove back the way he’d come. He had missed it when he’d driven by, and no wonder. It was up on the right—high up—the undulating building that Paul thought must be the abbey. Imagining Johnny as a man of the cloth made Paul want to weep with laughter.

Then he saw the sign that he had missed because the shaded light fixed to its top had burned out. The sign, creaking (he was sure) in the wind. Sitting on it was an owl.

If there were Johnny del Santos, there had to be a casino.

And that damned owl had to be stuffed.

M
ontagne Cassino. Place your bets, folks.

The stone buildings were enclosed by walls of that sunburned-colored stucco that passed for adobe, with rounded corners and jutting arms and a church tower that resembled the famous church in Taos, New Mexico. Paul had seen pictures of it but couldn’t recall its name.

“I’ve always liked the Southwest,” said Johnny.

Paul paused. “What you’ve always liked doesn’t strike me as being the point. This is a ‘Benedictine monastery.’ Please note the tonal quote marks.”

“So? You don’t think they have monasteries in New Mexico? I visited one in Pecos.”

“Yes, but I’ll bet they don’t look like the Santa Fe Hilton.”

Johnny chortled. “The contractor was from Albuquerque. Hard to restrain.”

“You could restrain a mad bull with a red flag, Johnny.”

“But look.” Johnny pointed up to the church tower and the surrounding roofline. “At least I insisted the roof be tiled.”

“Those tiles look Spanish. We’re in Pennsylvania. Where in hell did you get the money for all this?”

“Folks like you, Paul.” Johnny’s smile was a shortstop away from divine.

Johnny del Santos. One great thing about Paul’s mission: There would be no hesitancy, no gasping wonder, no door slammed in his face at the idea of doing something off the charts. Would a monk do anything like
this? Yes, if the monk were Johnny and the anything were money. There was nothing Johnny would rather do. If it’s worth doing, it’s worth being paid for—that was Johnny’s version of the old saying.

The other thing Paul could depend on was that no matter what amount Paul offered, Johnny would try to up it. As in their conversation when Paul had called him the day before:

“A million bucks for this one small gig, Paul? Must be important.” Brief pause. “How about a million two?”

Paul laughed. “I was expecting a million five.”

“Nah. We’re old friends. What do ya take me for? A two-bit chiseler? You think I’d fleece a buddy?”

“If you didn’t have anyone else around to fleece, you bet.”

Johnny liked old words like “fleece,” “two-bit,” and “chiseler.” A hustler, a scam artist, a swindler, a con man—Johnny del Santos was an old-time crook, if ever there was one.

Walking through the herb garden, the knot garden, and the rose garden, Paul and Johnny passed the occasional prayerful monk (or “monkish type”), moving with eyes downcast, hands knuckled before waist. Most of the people they walked by appeared to be civilians: i.e., tourists, or “guests,” for whom Montagne Cassino was a retreat, a sanctuary.

Paul commented on the number of civilians here in one capacity or another.

“Ah, yes. If you remember Saint Benedict—” said Johnny.

“No, actually, I’d forgotten him.”

Johnny smiled. “Saint Benedict believed a monastery should always have guests.”

“Are you going to reference the blessed monk for everything?”

“This by way of being a Benedictine monastery . . .”

“ ‘By way of being.’ I like that. Aren’t these men walking around in black with notched collars monks?”

“Well. Monkish.”

Paul rolled his eyes and shook his head. “I love the name, Johnny.”

“Montagne Cassino? Monte Cassino was Benedict’s first abbey. It’s in Italy.”

“No, it’s in Vegas.”

Johnny stopped. He smiled. “Hey. You came to see me, man. Why’re you being an asshole?”

“Oh, I’m just jealous. You were always cleverer than me.”

“Paul, nobody is cleverer than you.”

They were back in Johnny’s office. Paul would have said “study” or “den,” as it lacked the Spartan simplicity one might have expected in a monastery or abbey. Paul didn’t know the difference between the two, but it hardly mattered, given that the place seemed to be neither.

“Just what do you call this place?”

“Call it? It’s an abbey, like the sign says.”

“That makes you an abbot, right?”

Johnny gave a protracted “umm,” a sound that called into question the appellation “abbot,” and rocked his hand, a gesture that sent the word even further south.

Paul looked around the office. He saw a lot of zebra wood, oxblood leather, and Oriental carpet. “You’ve done well for yourself, I’m not surprised to see.”

Johnny leaned back in what looked like a task chair designed by Mies van der Rohe, his hands locked behind his head. “Saint Benedict believed in simplicity, not necessarily austerity.”

“You’re living up to that standard. That liquor cabinet is simplicity itself; you can see right through the etched glass doors.” They were drinking Scotch as smooth as the stuff in Bobby Mackenzie’s office.

“Explain what you want me to do for this million-plus.”

Paul told him the story of Cindy Sella and L. Bass Hess.

“My God, what a creep.”

“What I want, obviously, is to get rid of Bass Hess.”

Johnny shrugged. “I know some people, but—”

Paul held up his hand, palm out, and shook his head. “I’ll bet you do. If that’s what I wanted, I wouldn’t have left New York. No, what I want is for our friend Bass to—you could say—recuse himself from the New York literary scene permanently.”

Johnny met Paul’s smile with a slow smile of his own. “So you want him to . . .”

Paul nodded, smile in place. “Right. You do have rules here, don’t you? I mean, such as what a monk—or monkish person—has to do, and so forth? ” Paul didn’t really know what he meant.

“Oh, certainly.” Johnny laughed. “What an experiment. How are you going to manage it?”

“Hess has already had one or two, you could say, spiritual experiences.” Paul recounted the events in Central Park and the junkyard. “We’ve got him kind of softened up.”

Johnny laughed and shook his head. “Sweet Christ, Paul.”

“He’s due for another—spiritual experience, I mean—on the way here.”

“When will the way here come?”

“In a couple of days. It won’t be hard to convince him. The guy’s from Sewickley, not that he ever visits.”

“I’m looking forward to it.” Johnny raised his glass. “Cheers.”

“Cheers.” Paul lifted his and tilted it in Johnny’s direction. “Another thing: There must be stables around here.”

“Stables? Racing, you mean? I know a couple of jockeys.”

“No, Johnny. Not everything in life involves a bet. Just ordinary horses that people ride.”

Johnny looked disappointed. “Sure. About a half mile up the road.” He wrote on a slip of paper, handed it to Paul. “Tell them I sent you. You’ll get a deal.”

“You bet I will. Thanks.” Paul laughed, pocketed the notepaper, and said good-bye.

T
he Duquesne Incline, an inclined railroad similar to a funicular, ferried passengers from the bottom of Mount Washington to the top. Before such inclines—of which only two remained—residents who lived on the top of Coal Hill, as it was called, had been forced to walk.

Paul, who was at the moment walking up the long flight of wooden stairs to the building at the incline’s end where passengers boarded, couldn’t believe people had walked up to their homes at the top. He remembered how he used to beg his father to take him on this little trip, but he won him over only twice, and probably because Jenny had helped with the begging. Paul had really loved Jenny, who’d been ill for most of her childhood with some form of lymphoma and had lived far beyond the doctors’ expectations to the age of fifteen.

A few steps ahead were an elderly woman and a little girl, probably her granddaughter. The woman was dressed in a well-cut suit of gray silk or gabardine that had a sheen to it, something very fine, like the dust on a butterfly’s wing. Her white blouse was a frothy material. Her hair was the same gray as her suit and also had a sheen to it. She was quite small, a wisp of a woman, a moth grandmother. She leaned down and said something to the little girl, who was no older than six and probably four. The child shook her head and held up the bear she was carrying, worn but silky, like the old woman.