“The baseball bat and the guy with the suitcase who was hit in the face and then the splash. Do you remember the splash?”

“Shut the fuck up.” Manley stood, threw his plastic water cup at my face. Lucky me, the water landed mostly on my tie. Isn’t polyester a wonderful thing?

“This deposition is over,” said John Sebastian.

“That’s what you and Joey discussed on the phone the morning before he died, isn’t it?” I said. “What you did together that night at the waterfront?”

“Are you deaf,” said John Sebastian, standing himself now. “It’s over.”

“What did you do with the suitcase, Derek?” I said. “What happened to the money in the suitcase?”

Derek Manley, his face crimson, his nose fluorescent with rage, leaned over and jabbed his finger at my face. “You don’t know shit about what happened.”

“And what did you do twenty years later to Joseph Parma?”

“Yo,” he shouted. “I didn’t have nothing to do with whacking Joey. He was my friend.”

Sebastian put his hand on Manley’s shoulder as if to comfort. “Don’t say anything more, Derek.”

“On the advice of counsel I’m shutting up for good. But let me give you some advice, Victor. You like your bowels? You find it convenient having them sitting there between your mouth and your asshole?”

“Let’s go, Derek,” said his lawyer, the hand on the shoulder now pushing him out.

“You shut up about what it is yous asking about or I’m gonna reach down your throat, pull out them bowels, toss them against the wall so they stick, you understand, you little pissant? You don’t watch out you’ll be shitting out your ear. Don’t think I won’t.”

“This was totally inappropriate,” said Sebastian after Manley had stormed out of the room. “The judge will hear about this and so will the Bar Association.”

“Don’t leave, John,” I said, as he made his exit too. “There are still Danish left.”

“They seemed to have marched off in a huff,” said Beth.

“What does that mean anyway, ‘in a huff’? A huff. It sounds like one of those short fur jackets.”

“Is that what you wanted?” she asked.

“Close enough,” I said. And it was. Manley had as good as admitted to being there that night with Joey Cheaps when the bat had slammed into Tommy Greeley’s face. And he had as good as admitted that he had been there on the behest of a friend. It was the friend’s name I needed; all I’d have to do was squeeze a bit to get it. It wouldn’t be so hard. I was a lawyer, my entire professional training was in the art of the squeeze.

And it wouldn’t end with Manley. I fully expected word would get out about what I was looking for; I fully expected someone other than Manley would start to feel the pressure. I just didn’t expect it to happen so fast.

Chapter 18

I HAD A date the very night of my deposition of Derek Manley with Dr. Mayonnaise of the serious mien and the pretty blue eyes. She was everything I was supposed to want in a companion, the moral and financial rock upon which I could securely anchor my flailing existence. And she was a doctor, a doctor to bring home to my Jewish mother, if I had one to whom I still talked and who gave a damn about more than her next drink. So I decided that I would work at this one, that I’d see if I could build, with the good doctor, something akin to a healthy relationship. It was not something I was good at, building healthy relationships, but I was determined to give it the old community college try.

We met at my favorite restaurant in Chinatown, with its barbecued mallards hanging in a row at the entrance, and everything should have been right with the world. Yet, as I pawed with my chopsticks at the tofu stir-fry, tofu because Karen, which I discovered to my utter delight, was a vegetarian and we were sharing, I found myself scheming of ways to get the hell out of there.

Maybe I was simply a coward. Yes, I was afraid of committing myself to a healthy relationship, whatever that was, and yes, I was intimidated by anyone with a richer past and a brighter future than my own, which included most of the known world and certainly included a doctor, and yes, I was paralyzingly afraid of earnestness and sincerity. I was a coward, that was undeniable, but maybe what really got to me was the sight of the heaping platters of duck and beef and chicken and shrimp passing by our table as I pawed at the tofu. This is what I have learned of life from eating in Chinese restaurants: The meal that would make me most perfectly happy is always being served at the table next to mine.

“After dinner,” said Karen slowly, seriously, as if making a statement of great portent, “let’s say we go back to my place.”

I punched my chest as a soft piece of soy curd caught in my throat. “Excuse me?”

“I want you to meet my little family.”

Her family? Back at the apartment? Waiting to meet me? “Don’t you think it’s a bit premature?”

“I don’t hide anything from them. They saw me getting ready to go out, they’ve been wondering where I’ve been.”

“You live with them?”

“Of course.”

“They came from Ohio to live with you?”

“Why wouldn’t they. I’m sure they’ll like you, and, if they approve, we can all cuddle together.”

I stared at her and the furrow between my eyebrows must have canyoned out because she said, her voice ever serious, “Victor, I’m talking about my cats.”

She had four of them, and they swirled around her like she was a great piece of catnip and she spoke to them like they were cute little babies. I forced a wide smile onto my face as she told me their names, their idiosyncrasies, the adorable things they did. I sneezed when one of the little critters hopped on my lap and when Karen offered to show me her photos I sneezed again. Later, as I tried to wile my way out of there, she held one close to her face and snuggled while making big baby eyes at me and I wondered if maybe the Chinese didn’t have it right after all.

I was walking home from Karen’s apartment in the art museum area, heading south along a deserted commercial stretch on Twenty-third, beneath the Kennedy Boulevard overpass, when I spotted the car, long and black, following me slowly; about fifty yards behind but matching my pace. I sped up my step: the car sped up too. I began to sprint, looking behind as the car gained on me, and turned my head just as I ran smack into a broad expanse of bright green broadcloth.

I bounced off an elbow to the ribs and fell back, threw out my arms to protect myself, jammed my wrist hard as I hit the pavement. I looked up at a big piece of beef in the green sport coat, his jaw huge, his nose pinched, his short black hair sticking up from his head as if repelled by the dim but violent thoughts careening around his cranium. I knew this guy and he knew me.

“How are you doing there, Leo?” I said.

Leo leaned down and flicked my forehead.

I let out an “Ow.”

“You going somewhere, Victor?” he said.

“Home?”

“You asking or telling.”

“Telling?”

“Then say it like you mean it.”

“I’m going home.”

“Good. We’ll give you a ride.”

“That’s not really necessary, Leo,” I said. “I can walk, but thanks, awfully, for the offer. It’s been a real treat seeing you again. And congratulations on your win at Augusta. The jacket looks marvelous.”

A long black Lincoln slid beside me, the back door opened. A voice came out of the back of the car, a soft voice with the slightest lisp. “Shut your mouth, Victor, and get in.”

I couldn’t see a face in the gloomy interior of the car, but I didn’t need to. “You didn’t waste any time,” I said.

Leo, in the Masters’ jacket, grabbed my shoulder, hoisted me off the sidewalk, shoveled me into the car, where I ended face-to-face with Earl Dante.

A few years back I had found myself in the middle of a war for alleged control of the alleged mob. It was all very medieval and unpleasant but I survived, which, believe me, was no sure thing. The winner of the alleged war was a pawnbroker with a shop on Two Street, the Seventh Circle Pawn, the very shop where twenty years before Joey Cheaps had pawned a stolen watch. The broker was a black-suited figure of the macabre, with a sharp dark face and small white teeth. It was the kind of face you expect to see when the door opens after that final elevator ride takes you down down down and the smell of sulfur fills your soul. The door opens and the man with that face and those teeth smiles darkly and says, “How grand that you’ve come. We’ve been expecting you for ages. Right this way, please. And don’t forget your baggage.”