“Tod’s been helping me go through some of Ben’s things. He’s been a lifesaver, my rock to lean on during this period.” Her hot-pink mourning attire and the fact that she is here with her latest flame speak to Talia’s total lack of concern for the social constraints that rule other, less self-possessed souls.
“I see.”
She looks back at him, over her shoulder, and smiles. He has a confident grin. The kind that says I’m no competition. The glazed look of lust in Talia’s eyes confirms his assessment. While I can’t explain it, this hurts. I carry no torch for Talia, and yet my middle-aged ego is crushed. Seeing the two of them standing there, virtually oblivious to my presence, lost in this glow of mutual infatuation, somehow feeds a primeval yearning within me. I stand here mired in this quicksand of social discomfort.
Silence spawns a crusade for small talk-Talia’s latest real estate venture, Tod’s tennis exploits. Talia has pushed the conversation to the domestic side, asking about Sarah. She chides me until I reach for my wallet and pictures. I’m saved by Florence, Tony’s secretary, who has come to retrieve me for the meeting.
Florence Thorn is a tall, stately woman on whom social pleasantries appear a lost art. She’s all business.
“Mr. Madriani, if you’ll follow me. They’re waiting for you.”
The acid begins to churn in my stomach when I hear the plural pronoun. Skarpellos is ganging up on me.
Tod looks at me and smiles. “Nice to have met you.” For all of his looks there is a disarming sincerity, a kind of country honesty under the polished virility. Talia could have done worse, I conclude.
Tony’s secretary sets a brisk pace down the hall. We turn the corner and there-it hits me like an iced dagger. For a moment I break stride, staring in silence at the walnut-paneled double doors leading to Ben’s office. One of them is open. Police tape, a single band of canary yellow with busy black lettering, clings to the paneling near the door frame.
The secretarial station across from Ben’s office is vacant and dark. Jo Ann, Ben’s secretary, is not in. And then it strikes me. She was not at the funeral either. For as long as I had known Ben, Jo was a fixture, always at his elbow.
“Where’s Jo Ann?” I ask.
“Oh-Mrs. Campanelli is no longer with us.” She offers nothing more man a pleasant smile. That’s it-fifteen years with the firm and Jo Ann’s epitaph is covered in four words, “no longer with us.”
Florence taps lightly on the rich black walnut. The door to the spacious corner office is opened from the inside. Tony Skarpellos rises from behind an immense pedestal desk, its base formed from polished redwood burl. Tony’s waste basket is the hollowed foot of an elephant. A seamless horn of ivory is mounted on the wall above the window. In this, as in so many other ways, the Greek is tasteless. To Tony social disfavor is a badge of honor. He would nail Bambi to the wall if Disney would sell him rights.
“Paul, come in,” he says. “Please come in.”
“Tony.” I greet him, not warmly, merely a statement of fact.
The surface of his desk is a slab of polished black granite. It picks up the reflection of Tony’s mendacious smile. To reach him I traverse yards of carpeted expanse, taupe in color, and deep as sand on a dry beach.
He extends his hand. I give it a quick shake. Then behind me I hear the catch on the door as it closes. I turn to find Ron Brown standing there-playing doorman. This is not a warm reunion.
Tony clears his throat. Left with no recourse, he does the honors. “Ron, I think you know Paul Madriani.”
Brown glides across the room like a purebred Arabian steed skimming the sand. “Sure. Paul and I are old friends. It’s good to see you again.” He thrusts his hand in my direction as if it’s spring-loaded and pumps my arm like the handle on a hydraulic jack. Brown excels in such settings. Today he’s playing the enthusiastic corporate lackey-all teeth, beaming from beneath a meager pencil mustache.
On first blush, Ronald Simpson Brown is a difficult man to dislike. He’s personable and outwardly affable. Like corroding metal, his oppressive insecurity doesn’t become apparent until stress is applied. During my stint at Potter, Skarpellos, Brown and I discovered our mutual coefficient of friction at an early stage. From that point we maintained our distance.
“I’ve asked Ron to join us here this afternoon. Please-have a seat.” Tony smiles and gives a broad gesture toward the two leather client chairs situated in front of the vast rock of ages. I settle into cushioned nothingness and wait for the revelation-the reason I’ve been summoned.
“Some coffee, Paul?”
“No, thanks.” The empty cup situated at the edge of the black desk in front of Brown indicates that whatever Skarpellos has to say will come as no surprise to Brown. The two have been at it for some time before my arrival.
Brown opens his leather notebook and removes the screw cap from his fountain pen-three hundred dollars of black enamel and gold filigree with a twenty-four-carat writing nib the size of a spear. He sits poised with this baton on his fingers, as if he’s about to sign a treaty ending world poverty. When these pens first started appearing in the hands of young lawyers in court a year ago, Harry dubbed them “spear-chuckers.”
Skarpellos opens a gold cigar box on the desk and tilts it in my direction.
I shake my head.
“You don’t mind if I do?”
“It’s your office.”
He offers one to Brown, who declines.
These are not big stogies, but smaller and black, twisted and shapeless corkscrews, things that Skarpellos discovered on a trip through Italy two years earlier. By the old Italians who smoke them, men whose few remaining teeth are brown as the snow piled along the edge of highways, I am told, these cigars are known simply as toscanelli. Ben swore they were pieces of dog shit. Several seconds in, with thick clouds of dark smoke wafting about Tony’s head, I wonder whether Potter’s euphemism was grounded so much on their appearance as the odor they emit. It’s the latest affectation, like the ginseng tea following his whirlwind tour of China, and the array of bottled mineral waters on his return from Eastern European spas. As with the frog in The Wind in the Willows, in time each went the way of the Greek’s last fad. One can only hope that his fling with toscanelli will soon follow the same course.
The accoutrements of wealth and tastelessness now in place, Skarpellos and Brown are ready to begin business.
“We all appreciate your coming by today.” He turns his head to the side and spits out little bits of tobacco, stripping the end of his tongue with his teeth and lips to comb off the last few pieces. “The partners, that is. I know that Ben’s death affected you deeply, as it did all of us.” He’s still spitting in between syllables. “Whatever caused you to leave the firm, well, that’s all water under the bridge-as far as I’m concerned. I want you to know that.”
Tony pauses. Like the village pastor, he’s giving me an opportunity to make a confession.
“I appreciate that, Tony.”
“Yeah, well.” He’s fingering a single piece of paper centered on the desk in front of him, lines printed in large type so Tony can read them without his glasses. He’s searching for his place on the script. In all of this smoke, his eyes are beginning to water.
“There’s been a lot of confusion around here. I guess you can imagine.”
I nod.
He leans back, having mastered the subject once more. “The cops have really been working the place over. We hear rumors, stories, nothing specific.” He looks at me for signs of interest. And then with typical finesse: “Have you heard anything?”
Skarpellos is not a man of small talk-or for that matter great thoughts-but for those in a hurry he possesses the virtue of directness.