She was lovely, so lovely, and just then I felt my erection stir because I was looking at her not as the woman in the pictures, an image which she couldn’t live up to, but as a beautiful woman buttoning her shirt on my couch. Is there anything sexier than a beautiful woman buttoning her shirt on your couch? But then it was too late to make another play, the relief on her face was palpable, and I wondered just then why she had been willing in the first place and so when I handed over the beer I asked her.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Because you reminded me of him and with him I always just agreed. With him I was helpless to refuse.”

“Who?”

“Tommy.”

“I remind you of Tommy Greeley?”

“Oh, Victor, yes. Of course you do. The spitting image.”

I blew wetly out my lips. “Maybe its just because I’ve been asking questions about him.”

“No, it’s more. It’s everything. You even look like him, tall and lanky. His hair was longer but he had that same flat mouth, the same eyes with the touch of hurt in them, puppy-dog eyes. And he was both funny and serious and irreverent all at the same time, just like you. But it’s something else. You carry the same sense of having been wronged a long time ago, of needing to overcome a disadvantaged start, a hunger to make something glorious of the future. And a crushing disappointment.”

“Disappointment?”

“Oh yes.”

“Disappointment with what?”

“With everything you each never had, and your failed search for the one thing that would make everything better.”

“And what’s that?”

“The one thing?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, Victor,” she said, standing now, placing her bottle on the coffee table. “You really do need to meet Cooper.”

But it wasn’t the enlightened Cooper Prod I ended up meeting the next afternoon, it was the freaking prince of darkness.

Chapter 39

“THEY WANT TO build a mall here,” said Earl Dante as we sat side-by-side on a bench at Penn’s Landing overlooking the wide gray Delaware River. A stiff breeze blew in from the water, but Dante’s waxy gray hair didn’t budge. “And that of course is just what we need. More malls.”

“Isn’t this too public a place for a meeting?” I said.

“They have a photographer across from the restaurant where I eat. They have an unmarked sedan following my car. They are parked in front of my house, snapping photos of my wife. Public is all I have left.”

“Where’s the car now?”

“Wilmington. I took a Camry here. I cannot fully express the humiliation of being under constant surveillance, but that word comes close. Camry.”

“What color?”

“Does it matter?”

“Just curious.”

“Blue.”

“And the interior?”

“Gray.”

“Of course it is.” I nodded at Leo in his green jacket a few yards down, leaning on the railing, eyes surveying the deserted strip of cement behind us. “Anyone else know we’re here?”

“No. You called and said you had a question.”

“Teddy Big Tits.”

“Yes?”

“What, is he just fat or does he take some sort of injections? I mean there are porn stars who eye him with envy. We’re talking triple D at least. How is this possible?”

“That is your question?”

“Inquiring minds.”

“Theodore sucks the marrow from the bone of life.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means he is fat.”

“What’s his racket?”

“He makes book, he lends money, he brokers deals. In this economy, we all must do what we can.”

“Does he pimp?”

“Not precisely.”

“Well, then, let’s be precise.”

“I told you to leave this be.”

“You told me to stay away from Manley’s company. I did. But I’m going to find out what happened to Joey.”

“Loyalty or money?”

“Does it matter?”

“Then it must be money. Theodore has arrangements with certain ladies. Some of their suitors might be short of funds. They steer those suitors to Teddy. Teddy provides the funds at interest to the suitors and the ladies kick back some of the generous gifts to Theodore. Everybody wins.”

“Except for Joey Parma.”

“She’s quite attractive in her way.”

“Oh, she’s a honey all right, that poor son of a bitch. What happens when someone can’t pay his tab to Teddy?”

“Theodore has his ways.”

“A slit throat?”

“More like a phone call to the wife. Or, in Joey’s case, the mother, which was for him a far scarier prospect.”

“And if the phone call doesn’t work?”

“Then he talks to us and we earn our share. But we didn’t earn it on Joey.”

“And no chance Teddy did it on his own?”

“It is a nice suit I’m wearing, is it not? Specially made for me by a gentleman who flies in twice a year from Hong Kong. You couldn’t tell just by looking at it how big the pockets are.”

“And Teddy Big Tits is in your pocket. Okay, then maybe he didn’t. So there is something you need to do. Before he was murdered, Joey had some sort of plan to pay off his debts. Teddy and sweet little Bev were in on it. I need you to find out for me what it was.”

“I could ask.”

“Thank you.”

“But then you would have to do something for me.”

“The hell with that. You owe this.”

“I owe you?”

“You owe Joey. You should have been looking out for him. He grew up in your territory.”

“He was a loser.”

“He was a stand-up guy, at least in your world, and you let those two con artists take him for a ride while you sat back and took a cut. That wasn’t right.”

“He was born to lose.”

“Anyone can take care of winners. Joey was looking for something more than he had, looking for love in the wrongest place imaginable, and you let those two pythons squeeze the life out of him. He was from the neighborhood, you should have been looking out for him. If you couldn’t even do that, what good are you?”

He turned to me and smiled his scary little undertaker’s smile. “No damn good,” he said.

“They’re going to take you down.”

“They’re going to try.”

“You think you’re different than Scarfo, than Stanfa, than Skinny Merlino. You’ll be in jail with the rest of them.”

“That’s where you come in.”

“What can I do about that? I am the least influential guy in this entire city.”

“You’d be surprised, Victor. Derek Manley has gone missing.”

“So he has.”

“It is important I pass a word on to him.”

“I think it’s too late for that.”

“It’s never too late.”

“What makes you think I’ll ever see him again?”

“Because you have a knack for being in the wrong place at all the right times. If you see him I want you to pass on a word. Just one word. You will be doing both him and me a service.”

“I’m not a messenger boy.”

“That’s right, you are lower than a messenger boy. You are a lawyer, a lawyer who has stepped over a line I had drawn. You are a liability. You are on borrowed time. Whatever jeopardy I am in, you are in deeper. One word, Victor. Magnolia. Do you think you can remember that?”

“I have to go.”

“Magnolia.”

I stood up from the bench. Leo pushed himself off the railing as if to intercept me, but Dante shook his head.

“I’ll have a little talk with Teddy,” he said. “You remember your word. We’ll do fine.”

“You should have taken care of him.”

“I should have done a lot of things,” he said. “I should have been a dancer.”

“I understand they have wonderful programs in prison.”

“Magnolia.”

“I heard you,” I said even as I was walking away.

It was always a dangerous thing to ask something of a man like Earl Dante, but Martha had called to say that Bev had no idea about Joey’s pending deal, sorry, though an itemized list of what Joey owed to Bev would be sent to me shortly. It would be a breathtaking piece of fiction, no doubt, as epic as Gone with the Wind and nearly as long. Still, Joey had something going on and that something might have gotten him killed and it seemed only Dante had the wherewithal to get the answer. So I had called him and even as I had called him I knew that he would want something in return. You want a free favor, call a priest; guys like Dante always make you pay.