34

Well, the way Eddie had it figured was this: Now that he knew Ben’s heart had checked out OK, now that practically all of Northern Jersey was breathing easier about Ben’s future health, the only thing still up in the air was the state of Benny’s … head.

And this kid—this brilliant goddamn kid—he’d done wonders for Benny’s head so far, hadn’t he? The more time Ben had spent with him, the better Benny’s mood and attitude had grown. Bottom line, therefore, was: that young Mr. Mulroy was psychologic medicine for Ben. And if young Mr. Mulroy was psychologic medicine for Ben, then the more time Ben got to spend getting Tommy Mulroy’s medicine, the better off mentally Ben would be.

Ergo, if a Friday afternoon pick-up time was good, then a Friday morning pick-up time would be better yet. And if the pick-up time could be tweaked a little earlier than what they’d originally planned—say as early as 7:00 or 8:00, well, that would be a whole lot better than the later morning pick-up time would be.

And so he worked things out, with Tommy Mulroy’s help, to that desired end. Tommy had a forty-hour work week in the Dworkin GMC garage, right? Well, wouldn’t it be possible, let’s say, to put in a few longer days from Monday through Thursday and take his scheduled Fridays off entirely? That way, Brendan could fly the Gulfstream out sometime Thursday afternoon, grab a steak, get himself a top-notch suite at the Camelback or maybe the Phoenician—whichever was the nicer of the two—load Tommy on the plane Friday morning early—really early, hopefully, (really early Arizona time, that is)— get him back to Red Bank by possibly as early in the afternoon as 3:00 p.m. Eastern Daylight (or maybe even 2:00)—which would give Ben and Tommy plenty of one-on-one together for the greater part of the day. Then they’d have all Saturday too, of quality time in one another’s company, and a couple of hours on Sunday, as well, to do their mutually beneficial thing, before the young man had to fly back home.

So Eddie coordinated the scheduling accordingly; and while he was coordinating it, the thought occurred to him that: Hey, this might be the perfect time for him to get an evening’s break from Red Bank too. He and Brendon—how ‘bout this?—the two of them could fly to Vegas, get a little gaming action in, shoot some craps, play some blackjack, have a drink or two with one or more of the beauties who hang around the bar, and….

But no, wouldn’t you know it? Charlotte started grilling him the very minute he got off the phone: Where are you going? Why? How? Who with? “You know, Eddie, if you’re planning to fly out west a whole day early to pick up the boy, don’t you think it would be nice of you to visit your daughter and son-in-law in California for a change? Why do you need to go to Vegas? Don’t you care about them? Your own flesh and blood? What kind of father are you turning into, anyway, huh?”

Well, hell, he knew he was a lousy father; he’d never made the least pretense of being otherwise. And an evening spent with Linda and Kenny, looking at baby pictures and dealing with the babies themselves, the ga-ga and the goo-goo and them spitting up and drooling on your nice blue pin-striped suit; then listening to Kenny boast about his penny ante job selling real estate to idiots—Christ! Not his idea of a fantastic getaway exactly. So LA was out—that was a given—Meaning Vegas was out as well, lest Charlotte check the charges on the VISA card. She was a sneaky little shit that way.

But he’d made the arrangements with Brendan already, and with Tommy as well, and with the airports and limos concerned—all already booked. So what the hell: Skip LA, axe Vegas, they’d fly to Phoenix, he and Brendon would, leaving Thursday early afternoon, which would get them on the ground in Arizona by maybe two or three local time. They’d get a couple of suites at the Camelback Inn or the Phoenician—whichever had the higher tab, of course—Hell, might as well live it up; and anyway, it was on the Company dime—They’d check out the bar, check out the lovelies at the bar, grab a couple of sirloins, medium rare, get some sleep—not too much, hopefully, if there were some tolerable chicks to pal around with—load Tommy in the plane at maybe 6:00 or so Friday morning, be back in Jersey at, oh let’s say 2:00 or 3:00, then half an hour for Luther in the limo to bring Tommy to Ben—Yep, that would work out fine. Phoenix wasn’t Vegas, no contest there, but it would be a welcome break from the old routine. And five hours on the flight back talking with a brilliant kid—That would be a treat all on its own. He’d run up this minute and pack his bag.

When Luther picked him up Thursday roundabout noon, Brendon was sitting in the back of the limo, checking out the flight plan and going over charts. Eddie sat up front with Luther, who, while he was driving, waxed effusive:

“Hey, you know somethin’, Mr. Parker, sir? That kid last week: You goin’ out to pick him up ag’in?”

“Sure am, Luther. Same exact kid.”

“He’s a sharp one, I’m a-tellin’ you. You know them things he said was wrong with my little Caddy here? Which was drivin’ down the mileage, like I tolt ‘em plenty at the garage that they didn’t pay no attention to—You know what I’m sayin’?”

“Sure I know what you’re sayin’, Luther. It was drivin’ down the mileage on the Caddy. I understand.”

“Well that kid, he said to check out the motor mounts, you tolt me, right?—which was genuinely bad; I had ‘em fixed last week. But that there mileage problem—‘member he said somep’m ‘bout the catalytic convertor was goin’ bad? Damn garage missed it for goin’ on six months ‘spite-a my complainin’. Had ‘em change it out this time, and you know what? mileage up now from sixteen to prackly twenny-fo’. That young fella, he a genius, you know that? That young man a reg’lar genius, no doubt!”

Couldn’t fault Luther on that conclusion. And, once he climbed out of the limo and climbed onto the plane, couldn’t fault Brendon on the flight either, which was smooth, comfortable and timely, touching down at the very minute it was scheduled to land. Another guy in another limo picked them up and took them to the Phoenician; but it being late August summer and something like a hundred and ten degrees out in the sun, wouldn’t you know it, but the goddamn place was dead. No one visits Arizona in the summer, and in August not even the people who live there dare to venture out. So there was nobody at the pool, nobody in the restaurants, and, worst of all, no thirsty little females hanging around the bar batting their mascara-lidded eyes. Brendan didn’t mind the solitude that much; his wife was young and slender and had a pretty decent face. But as for Eddie: This was hardly the kind of tons-of-fun excursion he’d had in mind. At 5:00 p.m., in utter desperation, he called the only person he knew in Phoenix for advice.

“You busy, kid?”

“Not too. Just finished with a door latch that was non-functioning, and I’ve still got to get the guy’s injectors cleaned out. Why, Eddie? Hey, I’m all set to go early in the morning. Anything else you need me to do?”

“Not you, Tom, not you. I was just wondering: What the hell is there to do in this shit-hole-of-a place?”

“Well what do you feel like doing? There’s a nice western art museum here, and if you like malls….”

“No, kid, no malls, no museums—Jesus! Isn’t there anything else you people got?”

“There’s a casino. You’re at the Phoenician, right?”

“Right.”

“Well the casino isn’t that far from where you’re staying then.”

“One of those Indian places, is it?”

“I think so. I haven’t been there myself, but it’s probably Indian-run.”

“No, those are Hicksville. Nothing like the real thing. And the odds are stinko too; that’s what I’ve heard. Besides, probably even the casinos would be deserted in the summers here—nobody to talk to, you know? Hell, I don’t know; maybe I’ll just buy a paperback and sit around the room. It’s too damn hot to lay out at the pool.”

“OK, well, I hate to leave you hanging, Eddie, especially after all the terrific stuff you’ve done for me—Oh, and Rachel too, by the way—the Boardwalk and all. But hey, how about this: You’ve got that limo, right? The same guy who came for me and Rachel last week?”

“Yeah, same guy. His name is Tony, I think. I think he midnights for the mob; he looks it. Cindy’s the one who came up with him; I don’t know how exactly—You remember Cindy, don’t you? Ben’s secretary? You couldn’t hardly miss her unless you were blind.”

“Yeah, I know who you mean, I think. The big lady, right?”

“Right, kid. Anyway, we got the same limo, yeah, and Tony too. What do you need it for?”

“No, I don’t need it. But what I was thinking: Why don’t you pick me up from the garage—It’s our late night, but I can be done by 7:00 if I hurry up—and then you can hang out at my place for a while. My mom would love to meet you, and she makes these fabulous pies—Do you like pies?”

“Pies? Yeah, I guess. I got nothing against them. But your place, eh? So what do you have happening at your place? And what does your mom look like? Did you get your handsome looks from her?”

“Yeah, well that wasn’t exactly what I had in mind when I made the suggestion. As far as that stuff goes, though, Eddie, my mom wouldn’t probably be your type. She’s—well, you know, she’s a mom. But she’s nice, she’s really nice, and I told her all about you, and she’d really like to meet you. And, truthfully, I think you’d probably get a kick out of her too. She’s smart in her way, and down to earth, and if you’re hungry, she can cook up something that I guarantee you’ll absolutely love. She’s fabulous in the kitchen, my mom is—So what do you say? You want to spend the evening with the Mulroys? See how the other half lives for once?”

“Hey kid, I used to be the other half when I was your age. So what the hell—Give me the address of your fuckin’ garage. I’ll see you at 7:00 on the nose.”

But wouldn’t you know it? Tommy’s mom was working late. Some waitress, name of Angela, with boyfriend trouble—Tommy said it seemed no matter what boyfriend she had at the time, the girl had trouble with him. When Eddie got to the garage, Tommy had just gotten off the phone with his mother and the estimated time of her departure from the diner was sometime between 9:00 and 10:00. No fabulous dinner at the Mulroy residence that night, apparently. But Tommy—gotta love the kid—he had another bright idea, namely:

“Hey, how about this, Eddie: Why don’t we just go straight to the diner and have Mom make us something there? Cosmo gives her free rein in the kitchen, and whatever you feel like eating, I’m positive Mom can cook it up as well as anybody can.”

“Cosmo’s the proprietor, I’m assuming?”

“Right. He owns the place. Mom’s been working there since my dad died—over seven years now.”

Eddie checked his Rolex. 7:22—And he was starving! Half a sweet roll for breakfast, some cheese and crackers on the plane, a puny bag of peanuts. Then nothing since the goddamn peanuts till now, no sustenance whatever, if you didn’t count the calories in the couple of ounces of Dewar’s he’d taken from the Phoenician’s mini-bar. His mouth was dry, his stomach growling, and therefore Eddie thought: Sure, why not? Cosmo’s Diner?—Yeah, screw it; what the hell.

“Hey Tony, you listening? You hear what the kid just said?”

“No, sir. I make a habit of not listening to the conversation of my passengers.”

“Yeah, I bet you don’t. OK, well Tommy here’ll tell you where the place is that we’re gonna eat. See if you can get us there ASAP.”

What Eddie was expecting wasn’t exactly what he got. New Jersey has loads of diners, some of them primarily Italian, most of them fundamentally either Portuguese or Greek. And one thing about the Jersey diners, is that they’re big and lavish and have voluminous menus offering everything from BLT’s to lobsters, everything from pesto sauce to Rubens with genuine kosher corned beef. The diners of Jersey are legendary for their quality and diversity, and if a typical Jersey diner was what Eddie had in mind, he sure as hell didn’t get what his Jersey mind conceived. What he got instead was a tiny little run-down burger joint with seating for maybe forty customers jammed in, splits in the orange vinyl seats, ratty counter stools, smoke pouring from a greasy grill, and two frazzled waitresses, one of which was Dottie Mulroy, according to the name tag on her uniform blouse: a fifty-something, moderately hefty woman with a purple polka-dot scarf of silk around the neckline of her soiled white blouse, and a pretty, ruddy, pudgy face. The moment she saw them enter, she rushed over to the door and gave her handsome son an enormous hug.

“Is this him, Tommy? Is this that nice man you stayed with, Mr., um, Mr….”

“Eddie,” Eddie said. “Just Eddie. No ‘misters’; I’m allergic to ‘em, Mrs. Mulroy—OK?”

“Eddie, sure.” She reached out and took his hand in both of hers—in both of her warm, moist, cracked, and calloused hands: Working women’s hands, washerwomen’s hands. And when he looked up at her face, he saw that it was lined and blotchy too, a working woman’s face to match the hands, the kind of face he wasn’t used to seeing in his million-dollar world. In his million-dollar world, even the restaurant workers, even the menials who cooked and cleaned and butlered in his home and chauffeured in the limos that took him here and there—all of them had soft hands and smooth faces, and were dressed up to the nines, devoid of polka-dot scarves and soiled white uniforms like the stuff that Dottie Mulroy wore. But their hands were colder, clammier, not like Dottie Mulroy’s at all. If Tommy was showing him how the other half lived, then this other half looked pretty damn attractive in comparison with the supposedly ‘better’ half he knew.

“Best seat in the house for my boys,” she said, and led them to just that very spot, a booth—the only presentable one in the restaurant, so far as he could tell—with vinyl that wasn’t cracked or torn, a tabletop that wasn’t worn or chipped, a front-row panorama out the window at the parking lot with its scattering of mostly older-model cars—well, other than the limo, of course, with gangster Tony sitting straight-backed in the driver’s seat jiggling a toothpick in his mouth and looking in the rear-view mirror for the Feds—maybe the same ratty toothpick he’d been chewing on last week when he’d dropped Tommy and his sister on the tarmac—Damn thing looked at least a full week old.

Inside the restaurant were about a dozen patrons, more than the cars in the parking lot would suggest, but there were residences on the side streets too, down around the corner from where the diner sat, so maybe some of the customers had a habit of taking a walk to get their suppers. And, truthfully, no reason Eddie could see for the people to go anyplace else: The vapors from the grill and fryer smelled pretty goddamned good.

Maybe they smelled that good because he was hungry. And luckily, Dottie Mulroy wasn’t cruel enough to make them wait. She didn’t bring them menus. Instead, she came back right away with two glasses of water and a basket of fresh-baked-looking rolls, and asked him—she didn’t bother asking Tommy:

“OK, Mr. Eddie, what can I make you good to eat?”

“What are my choices?”

“Well anythin’ pretty nearly. But I got some stuff fresh. The specials we get in fresh, not froze; so what I got today fresh, not froze, is some nice lookin’ shrimps—the special calls for fried, but I can make ‘em anyway you like. And I got some nice-lookin’ veal too. So anythin’ you’d like with shrimps or veal, anyway you’d like it, I can whip you up. That sound OK?”

“Mrs. Dottie, as hungry as I am right now, anything you make will be OK. I’ll leave it up to you. Just whatever you make, make lots of it.”

She knew what Tommy wanted. He always got a burger. So off she went, and, while Eddie chomped hungrily on a roll—terrific rolls, by the way, fresh and crisp and buttery—While he was chomping, Tommy stared at him in a funny way—a quizzical kind of way, probably reading his mind again, just like Ben, for he asked abruptly:

“So—You’re not expecting much of Mom’s cooking, are you, Eddie? You aren’t; I can tell.”

“Why? Did I say anything? What did I say to make you ask me that?”

“No, nothing that you said—It’s your eyes. I can see it in your eyes when you glance over at the kitchen that way. You don’t expect much from my mom. But you’re going to be surprised. Everybody always is when they don’t know what my mom’s cooking is like. That guy Cosmo—he’s over at the register; you see who I mean? He owns the place, but all he knows how to do is slice the gyros and warm the pita in the microwave. Then the short-order guy in the kitchen—his name is Johnny—You can see his head now and then. All he’s responsible for is the stuff they throw on the grill. Everything else they serve here, my mom makes. The other waitresses fill in for her when she’s got to cook, but since they’re shorthanded tonight, Cosmo’s going to be running around doing most of the bussing and serving himself. It’s funny to see him having to actually do some work.”

And the kid was right. It was kind of funny to watch. Cosmo, this pudgy little bald guy in a nice silk shirt and pleated pants, who looked as though he’d never left the register before. He fumbled with the silverware and glasses, took the plates of food off the serving counter and brought them to the tables one by one without a tray, which doubled and tripled the ridiculous amount of running around he had to do. If it wasn’t so pathetic, it would have been hysterical, but if it was still short of being hysterical, it was still a total hoot to watch.

And while Eddie was watching, smiling, salivating at the scents emanating from the kitchen, Tommy said:

“So—I didn’t ask you yet, Eddie: That report—I never got it in my email. Did you forget to send it out?”

“Report, kid? I’m not sure….”

“The echocardiogram. Ben’s test. Did you forget to send it out?”

“There wasn’t anything to send.”

“You mean he didn’t get it done?”

“No, kid, he got it done on Wednesday, just like I told you on the phone. But nothing showed up; so, like I told you, there was nothing for me to send.”

“It was read, though, right? A cardiologist read it? A cardiologist should have done it too, not a technician. That’s what I specified, remember?”

“Yeah, yeah, I had them do just what you told me. Carole made the calls, and she’s a stickler when it comes to Benny’s health. Harvey Axelrod was the guy Ben went to, and he’s not only the best heart doc in all of Jersey, but he’s also kind of a friend as well. Harvey was an investor in the Corporation from day one, and Ben’s efforts have made him a mint over the years. He could’ve retired twenty years ago on his profits from AthCorp alone, but I guess he likes what he’s doing so much he just keeps on doing it—Hell, Harvey’s probably gonna die in the office taking care of people who never pay him a dime—So yeah, Ben had the best guy in the area do the test and a loyal friend to boot. And if Harvey said everything was fine, then you can bet the family fortune that Ben’s heart is just as good as anybody’s. We all knew he was gonna be OK, but now we’re sure of it; and it’s a big relief to everyone, I can tell you that.”

“That’s good, Eddie. That’s great. I just wondered why I never got the pictures in an email like I asked.”

“Pictures? They do pictures? I thought it was just a test.”

“The pictures constitute the test. I would have liked to have seen the images.”

“Why? Would you even know what you’re looking at?”

“Yeah, I would. It’s kind of a long story, but to make it short, the cardiologist who did our echos—mine and Rachel’s—over the past few years: He’s got this ’69 Camaro that I worked on for him, and he was so happy that I got it running like it should—the carb was clogged, that’s all—that he taught me all about my dad’s disease and what to look for on the echos. Matter of fact, I went to his office and he even let me do some hands-on, testing a couple of his patients with the machine. I guess he told the patients I was a student doctor or something, so anyway….”

“Jesus, kid! Is there anything you don’t know how to do? I think if you got a migraine, you’d figure out a way to open people’s skulls.”

“No, I don’t do skulls, Eddie—And another thing, I’m a really lousy cook. But my mom’s a great one—A fantastic one, in fact—And here she comes, by the way, with your dinner and probably some other little dishes she’s managed to whip up. You’re about to have the best diner meal you ever ate.”

He smiled ironically. But the kid was right—damned if he didn’t hit the nail smack on the head! That food! The smell of it, the taste of it, the little carafe of wine she dug out from God-knows-where in some hidden recess of the little joint: All the next day, on the flight back to Jersey, on the way to the Corporate Headquarters with Luther motoring Tommie to his joyous reunion with Ben, and throughout the afternoon and evening, sitting home with Charlotte, while Ben and Tommy were together talking, communing, making their optimistic plans—All that day and through the morning afterward, Eddie could recall with salivating vividness the taste of Dottie’s scrumptious shrimp appetizer—creamy, garlicky, with some bread crumbs on top to crisp them up and hold the sauce against the surface—The texture of those fresh-baked rolls. The richness of that heaping plate of veal siciliano, made richer, tastier, more buttery than anything even Franco’s had ever turned out on one of their evening forays to the City—WOW!

And to top the whole incredible dinner off, what could have been more scrumptious than the pungent sweetness of Dottie Mulroy’s caramel apple pie? Bar none, without exception, the best damn food he could remember having had.

Ever.